"Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx’s Method analyzes Karl Marx's method of theorizing. It
 focuses on the Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, a work
 considered by many to be the most important of Marx's texts. The complete text has been
available in translation only since 1973, although a volume of excerpts edited by  David
McLellan was published in 1971. The Grundrisse ("Outlines") combines the humanist
concerns of Marx's earlier philosophical work with the technical concerns of political
economy that dominate his later work in Capital. Because it appears to be the most
comprehensive of his works in certain respects, it provides an opportune place to find
how Marx links the different aspects of his concerns.

"Martin Nicolaus, the translator of the Grundrisse, stresses the importance of understanding
Marx's method. In fact Nicolaus's reading of the Grundrisse enables him to make reference
to the 'unknown Marx'.

"The usual formulation of Marx's method, dialectical materialism, stresses the anti-idealistic
aspect of his work. This emphasis made sense in light of the philosophical developments
in Marx's time. However, given developments in the social sciences, a stress on the anti-
positivistic, phenomenological aspect of his work makes more sense today. Dialectical
phenomenology provides a comprehensive analysis of this aspect of Marx's theorizing.

"Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx’s Method treats Marx's analysis of capitalism as
exemplifying a phenomenological mode of theorizing, one that is characterized by inquiry
into grounds or presuppositions of our knowledge of social life. Marx's version of
phenomenology differs from others in certain specifiable ways.

"Marx's method of theorizing, the method of dialectical phenomenology, deals with the
separation of subject and object. Instead of assuming that an object's meaning or sense
is inherent or given with the object, phenomenology claims that we can know the meaning
or sense of an object only in its relation to a knowing subject. The meaning is grounded in
or internal to the relation of subject and object. It is not internal to the object, nor is it internal
to the subject. This approach is in its nature dialectical.

"A subject or purpose presupposes the existence of some object or objects necessary for
accomplishing that purpose. The qualities of the object inhere in the object; they do not
originate with the mind. However, the object and its qualities are known only in terms of
their meaning for purposive activity. The object takes on its meaning from, that is, its
salience to a knower derives from, a form of life within which the knower stands.

"The term, 'form of life,' comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical investigations,
1953), who uses the term in order to stress that language must be understood actively as
a form of life and not passively as a totality of names for things that exist independently of
subjects. A form of life- or language-game may be understood in terms of unspoken rules
or presuppositions for knowing an object. These rules constitute a 'game,' a purposive
activity, within which acts and words, like moves in a game, come to make sense. Only
within the game are the moves or words intelligible as such. Hence forms of life ground
objects of knowledge.

"I use the term, 'form of life,' to refer to the productive relation of subject to object, the
incorporation of an object into the life of a subject. The term, 'form of life,' avoids the narrow
economic meaning that the term, 'production,' tends to have. Dialectical phenomenology
inquires into the form of life in which an object of knowledge is embedded, its active relation
to a subject. From this form of life or relation, the object derives its sense. Dialectical
phenomenology treats the object as grounded in a form of life and, therefore, as a social
object rather than an object given with nature. In other words, it treats an object as a
thing-for-a-subject rather than a thing-in-itself.

"Just as the salience of an object presupposes its subject, the subject would not be
possible as such without the object and its distinctive qualities. Although a subject might
exist, it would not be the same subject if its object were not the same or if its relation to the
object changed. Thus objects should be thought of as objective conditions for the
accomplishment of some subject. Instead of conceiving of subjects and objects as
separate, self-sufficient things, we should think in terms of the activity that links them and
makes them possible as subjects and objects, their form of life. For example, the object,
tillable land, which seems to be an objective thing in the world, only exists as such for a
subject that conceives tilling as a useful activity and distinguishes types of land to this end.
Similarly, the subject, tiller of the land, is only possible as such where land may be tilled.
This unity of subject and object constitutes the purposive activity of tilling.

"If we use the analogy of a game, the subjective aspect would be the players of the game,
the objective aspect the material of the game. However, neither the players nor the
equipment are possible as subjects and objects of the game without the rules. The rules
constitute the purposive activity of the game. They link the player to the means of playing
and in so doing make possible the game as a unity of subject and object. The players are
possible as players only because of the game that they play. That is, the individual's acts
or moves, the very concept of player, is made intelligible by the game, the relation of players
and material known as the rules of the game.

"Furthermore, to the extent that a game or activity appears to be external to the
self-constituting relations of players and material, there will be some sense in which the
game denies the social character of its accomplishment. In other words, it will appear as
natural rather than historical. This denial of the social or historical brings with it a denial of
the self-constituting character of the players. This means that the players appear as natural
beings instead of as historical ones who (re)create themselves as such in the course of
carrying out the rules of that specific game. Or the players may appear as things, objects
that are moved about by an externality. The appearance of a reality as external to the subjects
that know and (re)produce that reality belies that reality as a historical and social form of life
and denies its subjects as historical social beings.

"A form of life in which the rules and objects appear to be separate from and independent
of the actors, an unself-conscious form of life, must be distinguished from a self-conscious
form of life in which the individuals are not merely passive players, but active re-creators of
the game. To the extent that the rules and equipment are consciously re-worked by the
players themselves, the players become free subjects of the process, free social individuals.
Such individuals would be self-conscious as they would be conscious that their co-operation
and their moves were (re)creating the game and that the game was creating the very
possibility of their moves. The distinction between active and passive, united and separated,
self-conscious and unself-conscious, parallels the distinction between dialectical
phenomenology and positivism and between socialism and capitalism. Dialectical
Phenomenology: Marx’s Method addresses itself to these distinctions and the relations
between them.

"Dialectical phenomenology treats objects as objective conditions for the accomplishment
of some activity. Conversely, it treats the activity as a condition for the knowledge of the
object. For this type of analysis, no object exists as an abstraction, a meaning that is
removed from all purposive activity, all history. Rather, every object is seen as grounded in
its form of life. Thus a subject's activity presupposes objective conditions for its
accomplishment and those objective conditions presuppose a subject for which they have
salience. This active unity of subject and object constitutes a purposive activity, a form of life
or subjectivity.

"The distinguishing features of dialectical phenomenology are: (1) its treatment of subjects
and objects as united; (2) its treatment of this unity of subject and object as purposive activity
or form of life; (3) therefore, its treatment of subjects and objects as grounded in their form
of life. In contrast, a concrete or positivistic consciousness presupposes a separation of
subject from object -- a divided subjectivity. Positivism, in this sense, treats subjects and
objects as separate and knowable in that separation, as if the sense of an object could be
taken for granted as emanating from the object independently of any relation to a subject.
In this way, the object as it is known, that is, the knowledge or meaning of the object,
appears to be natural and eternal, rather than social and grounded in a historically specific
form of life.

"Positivism is the treatment of subjects and objects as they appear, separate and
independent of each other. This separation makes it possible for positivism to speak of
being subjective as a problem of bias, as a distortion of consciousness or observation by
the intrusion of a subject. Positivism conceives of the subject not as a social subject in
terms of membership in a community, but as a private subject in terms of purposes and
attitudes that originate with the individual rather than with a language community, an
ongoing form of life. Positivism can also talk of objectivity -- letting facts speak for
themselves -- as if social reality was not a process of dialectical re-creation, a relation of
subject to object.

"In reacting against a positivistic interpretation of social phenomena, some versions of
phenomenology become subjective or idealist. A subjective phenomenology takes two
forms. It can be the view that reality is whatever people think of it (instead of whatever social
life makes of it) and, therefore, that reality is mind or concepts. It can also be the view that
behavior must be understood in terms of individuals' meanings and intentions. Instead of
reifying society, this view advocates studying individuals as they go about their activities of
constructing reality. Both of these approaches are subjective in that they explain social
phenomena as originating with the mind (its categories or concepts) or the individual's mind
(his or her intentions or perceptions).

"Instead of this subjective version of phenomenology, the analysis in Dialectical
Phenomenology: Marx's Method derives from a tradition that stresses a reciprocal relation
of subject and object which I call dialectical phenomenology. The latter approach rejects
the subjectivistic and objectivistic versions of the theory of reflection: the view that objects
reflect either subjective meaning or mental concepts and the view that subjective meaning
or mental concepts reflect the reality of objects. In agreement with Georg Lukács (György
Lukács, 1885-1971), dialectical phenomenology sees objectivism and subjectivism as two
sides of the same problem:

          In the theory of 'reflection' we find the theoretical embodiment of the duality of thought
          and existence, consciousness and reality, that is so intractable to the reified
          consciousness. And from that point of view it is immaterial whether things are to be
          regarded as reflections of concepts or whether concepts are reflections of things. In
          both cases the duality is firmly established (Georg Lukacs, History and Class 
          Consciousness, 1923).

The problem is the duality of thought and existence, consciousness and reality. Instead of
a duality, dialectical phenomenology posits a unity. However, this unity is not the result of
reducing the objective to the subjective or the reverse. The object does not lose its
distinction from the subject. Rather, both are united in a process, an active relation of
subject to object. This relation may be understood as production in the sense of a subject's
appropriation of an object, the incorporation of an object into the life or intentional activities
of a subject:

          Thus thought and existence are not identical in the sense that they 'correspond' to each
          other, or 'reflect' each other, that they 'run parallel' to each other or 'coincide' with each
          other (all expressions that conceal a rigid duality). Their identity is that they are aspects
          of one and the same real historical and dialectical process (Georg Lukacs, History and
          Class Consciousness, 1923).

"This distinction between dialectical phenomenology and positivism corresponds to a
distinction between self-conscious socialism and capitalism. The correspondence can be
seen in Marx's treatment of subject and object. A form of life refers to an active, purposive
relation of subject and object. This is also what we mean by mode of production -- the
subject (re)produces itself in the appropriation and production of its object. The form of life
that constitutes capitalism, for Marx, separates subject (labor) from object (objective
conditions of its production). This separation occurs with the mediation of capital between
labor and its object. In a self-conscious form of life (socialism) there would be no mediation
and no separation. Subject and object would be united. Labor would directly realize itself as
social in the relation to its objective conditions, the social activity of production. It would not
have to convert itself into wage labor or exchange value before it could appropriate its object.

"Because of the separation of subject from object in capitalism, the subject, labor, appears
as an independent thing separate from its object, which takes the form of the commodity,
gold or money. The object appears not as socially produced human wealth, but as a
separate natural thing that has value in itself, a thing without grounds. Marx refers to this
appearance and treatment of objects as the fetishism of commodities. In fetishism, the
meaning or value of the object seems to reside exclusively with the object, rather than with
the subject's active relation to the object.

"A comparison with Sigmund Freud's (1856-1939)  work may help us better to understand
the similarity between a positivistic treatment of objects and Marx's notion of fetishism.
Reciprocally, Marx's notion of fetishism may help us better to understand Freud's work.
According to Freud, the meaning or salience of an object resides in the subject's
relationship to the object. A fetish develops when the subject becomes divided. This means
that the subject becomes of two minds, possessed of opposing tendencies toward the
object. Given the internal conflict, the subject denies (represses) one side of itself. Or the
object may appear as a divided object such that in one aspect, the object attracts while in its
other aspect, it repels. Because of the opposing aspects, one side of the object becomes
repressed.

"The repressed subject may (re)present itself as a bodily symptom or its repressed object
may (re)present itself as a fetish. Which form it takes, bodily symptom or fetish, may depend
on which aspect of the relationship is denied more strongly, which side involves greater
conflict. A bodily symptom may be due to repressing more strongly the subjective side, the
desiring itself. A fetish may be the result of more strongly repressing the object of the desire.
A conflictual relationship or form of life may (re)produce itself one-sidedly as a compulsion
in which the active desiring appears to control the subject, or as an obsession in which the
passive object seems to take possession of the subject.

"In either case, a divided subject-object (re)presents itself one-sidedly as pure subject
(physical impulse or bodily symptom) or pure object (a fetish or obsession), rather than as
a relation. According to Freud, actively re-membering or self-consciously reliving in relation
to the therapist the conflict that represses and separates the relation of subject and object
enables the patient to become self-conscious, to reconstitute itself as a self-conscious
relation of subject and object.

"Similarly, for Marx, actively re-membering the separation of subject and object provides the
solution to the problem of the split between subjectivity and objectivity, idealism and
materialism, mind and body. Marx's theorizing founds itself in this disunity and in the active
struggle that the disunity produces. This ongoing tension or conflict does not end except by
overcoming the disunity, thereby making possible a self-conscious mode of self-production,
socialism, as opposed to the repressed mode of production, the divided subjectivity that we
have with capitalism.

"A self-conscious subject is one that (re)produces itself and knows itself in its relation to its
object and knows and produces (the meaning of) its object in relation to itself. Capitalism,
an unself-conscious form of life, represses unity by separating subject from object. The
separation entails a divided object, the exchange value and use value of the commodity form,
which in turn presupposes a divided subject, proletariat and bourgeoisie. A divided objectivity
(re)presents itself as a fetish, an object whose value seems to be independent of a subject.
A divided subjectivity (re)presents itself as internal conflict, class struggle.

"It is important to recognize that the struggle of which I speak does not impose itself, from
some large external entity conceived as society, capitalism, social structure or form of life,
on passive individuals as if struggle and opposition were independent of persons and their
strivings, as if individuals were passive objects moved about by external forces of society.
To say, as I do, that the strivings and struggles are made possible by a form of life and that
individuals are not the authors of their acts, therefore, needs some clarifying.

"A form of life that appears as external to its members, and denies itself as a
self-constituting process, also denies its members as self-constituting, and therefore free,
social individuals. This denial contradicts its positing of individuals as free and equal. This
self-contradictory character of the form of life puts individuals in an untenable position. They
presume themselves to be free yet they seem not to be free; they presume themselves to
be historical, social subjects yet they appear to be ahistorical, natural things; they presume
themselves to be the end to which their activity aims and yet they appear as means to some
other end.

"Individuals, then, find themselves internally divided. In striving to realize one side of
themselves as free, social subjects, they find that they are opposing the other side of
themselves, the side in which they appear as and are treated as commodities or things,
means for some end that is external to themselves. In other words, the very striving to assert
the self as a free, social individual which is made possible by this form of life opposes
another side of this same form of life -- the aspect in which the self appears as an unfree
thing, a commodity or exchange value. Marx conceives of this opposition, this divided form of
life, as class struggle. Although the motive force of class struggle is the individual's striving
to realize itself as a free, social individual, it must be stressed that a specific form of life
grounds or makes possible class struggle and such striving. In other words, the very striving
of the individual to realize itself as a free, social subject would not be possible in another
form of life, another mode of social reproduction. On the other hand, this form of life that
makes possible the free, social individual at the same time denies or suppresses this
possibility.

"The struggle engendered by a divided subjectivity makes possible the conception of history
as a movement toward self-consciousness, toward self-conscious (self) (re)production. In
other words, class struggle becomes understood analytically or metaphorically as a
movement toward a self-conscious form of life, a mode of (re)production whereby the relation
of subject and object realizes itself actively and consciously as a self-constituting unity.

"Hegelian readers of Marx may refer to this struggle or movement as the history of reason
that culminates in self-consciousness. But for Marx, self-consciousness is always
self-conscious (re)production. Thus reason is not some abstract thing in the world,
consciousness, but a rational form of life by which the human subject realizes itself as such,
a mode of (re)production. In this sense, (re)production refers not merely to the making of
things, but also to the activity whereby the human works on, that is, transforms, what is given
as object and in the process develops new needs and abilities, that is, transforms itself as
subject. Human history, then, is the self-constitution of the human subject through production.

"For Marx, the capitalist division of labor and alienated labor refers to a divided subjectivity, a
separation of subject from object. This is why I conceive of Marx's theorizing as dialectical
phenomenology, corresponding to self-conscious socialism. Dialectical phenomenology is
the treatment of the separate thing-like appearance of subject and object as a problem, as
symptom of a repressed relation and a repressed consciousness -- the separation of
subject from itself, from the conditions for its possibility and realization. This is how Marx
analyzes capitalism. In addition to accomplishing his critique of capitalism in terms of
subject and object, Marx's method of dialectical phenomenology distinguishes itself from
and constitutes a critique of bourgeois political economy's method of theorizing.

"A method of theorizing may be reformulated as a mode of production. Just as Marx's work
on capital inquires into capital's mode of production and does not simply treat capital as a
thing-in-itself, I read Marx's text in terms of its mode of production. This mode of production
or method of theorizing, I formulate as dialectical phenomenology. Just as I treat Marx's work
as a product of its mode of production, dialectical phenomenology, I read Marx as
(re)presenting the categories of classical and bourgeois political economy as products of
their mode of production, capitalism.

"Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx's Method shows how a positivist mode of theorizing
corresponds to a capitalist mode of production and how dialectical phenomenology as a
mode of theorizing corresponds to a socialist mode of production. Reading Marx
phenomenologically and as dialectical phenomenology means reading his analysis of
capital in terms of a separation of subject and object as his main achievement. Capitalism,
according to this analysis, then, becomes interchangeable with positivism. Both capitalism
and positivism treat the separation of subject and object as natural. Furthermore, the
opposition of subject and object that comes with their separation parallels the opposition
between socialism and capitalism and between dialectical phenomenology and positivism.
Each of these pairs may be thought of as a metaphor for each of the others.

"Marx's analysis of political economy and my analysis of Marx's theorizing display the same
commitment. His method and mine require treating objects of knowledge as products and,
hence, as presupposing a mode of production. Grounding objects in their mode of production
constitutes the distinctive feature of this theorizing. However, the reader should be cautioned
that the term, 'mode of production,' must be understood broadly and existentially as referring
to human life experiences conceived as a reciprocal relation of subject and object. It refers
not only to the production of economic goods as in some interpretations of Marx, but more
fully to the social production of any object of knowledge and its corresponding subject.

"It should also be stressed that the production of knowledge as intended here does not
refer to processes of mind conceived abstractly and universally. Rather, it means a social
mode of production, knowledge that is reflexively tied to the social conditions of its production.
As distinguished from an exclusively economic interpretation and from an exclusively
idealistic interpretation, mode of production becomes understood as form of life. By
grounding capital in a form of life, I read Marx as showing the existential issues implied in
the production of capital, for example, the (re)production of human activity, and hence the
self, as a commodity or thing that is alien to the producers or actors themselves. Similarly,
by grounding Marx's text in a form of life, I try to show the existential concerns implied in his
theorizing, for example, the struggle for self-conscious self-production.

"Dialectical phenomenology begins within a positivist, empiricist approach to social
phenomena. However, it orients to the overcoming of positivism. It does this by showing
how social phenomena which appear as things without grounds are possible, how they are
embedded in a form of life. Dialectical phenomenology presupposes the empiricist mode
as its other, that which it negates but which it requires as a condition of its own possibility.
Hence it is not a self-sufficient program in itself, but a critical program. This means that, by
the very act of showing grounds, an inquiry into the possibility of a concrete, positivist
consciousness negates that consciousness and constitutes a critique. Similarly socialized
labor, as the grounds of capital, by its very presence, negates capitalism's denial of grounds
and constitutes an internal opposition to or critique of capitalism.

"Because dialectical phenomenology treats all objects as grounded in a form of life, a
phenomenological analysis of a text inquires into the grounds of the text. It formulates a form
of life for which the text becomes a necessary result and a necessary condition. The
formulation provides for the possibility of the text; it brings the text to life by showing the text's
embeddedness in a form of life. By inquiring into grounds, a phenomenological analysis of
a text makes for a self-conscious or reflexive reading.

"The reader becomes a reader with the process of making sense of the text. Similarly, a text
only becomes a text with a reading. The meaning of a text comes neither from the text, nor
from the reader. Rather, the reader encounters the text within a form of life that grounds the
text. A reading is, therefore, never innocent or original. It always presupposes a form of life.
A reading, then, is a re-reading, a re-reading of a form of life that grounds the text and makes
it meaningful. A reflexive reading displays its own grounds as it self-consciously inquires into
the grounds of its text.

"The notion of a text's grounds refers to that which is necessary for or presupposed in
reading (or writing) the text as an intelligible and conceivable social accomplishment. By
inquiring into how Marx is able to make sense to me as a reader, I am also inquiring into
how I as reader am able to make sense of Marx. Thus, I conceive of the reading as a
self-conscious or reflexive reading.

"Because a reader and its text are constituted in the work of reading, an inquiry into grounds
of a reading is an attempt to do self-conscious work, unalienated labor. Needless to add, by
self-conscious I do not refer to a personal self but to a conception of self as reader.

"In contrast to Alvin Ward Gouldner's (1920-1980) conception (The Coming Crisis of
Western Sociology,1970, this version of a reflexive reading is not one in which a reader
makes personal values or perspective explicit. (I am using the terms 'text' and 'reader'
broadly to refer not just to a written work but to any social object and the subject that makes
sense of the object.) Rather, a reflexive reading inquires into the grounds of the reading, of
the sense of the text, not of the reader or of the author as a personal individual. John O'Neill
presents a similar critique of Gouldner's notion of reflexivity: 'Because he has neglected to
consider the philosophical foundations of reflexive sociology he is obliged to make his
choice of a sociology a political choice' (Sociology as a Skin Trade, 1972). Unlike Gouldner's
conception, in other words, the grounds of a work are not personal or political choices.
Rather, they refer to that which is internal to or presupposed by a work as a meaningful
object. Grounds are inherent in the accomplishment of that work, in the meaning that the
work has for a reader. They provide for the possibility of the work; they are that without which
the text could not exist as such. Grounds are form of life. They constitute a process of
production -- the production of the work as a meaningful object. Grounds are a way of
seeing an object as having a history, a subjectivity in relation to which the object has
meaning.

"In order to anticipate misunderstandings of the notion of grounds, I list some common
interpretations of the term as they might be applied to an analysis of Marx's work. None of
these, it must be stressed, constitutes phenomenological grounds as I use the term:

Personal motives -- such as considering Marx's analysis to reflect his private sympathies
or ambitions.
External causes -- such as attributing his analysis to his personal position in a social
structure.
Personal experiences -- such as deriving his views from childhood socialization.
Underlying assumptions -- such as imputing to him a version of human nature that informs
his work.
Taken-for-granted notions -- such as seeing his work as based on a commonly held view
that workers were being exploited or unfairly treated.
Objective conditions -- such as seeing his work as the observing and reporting of external
conditions or occurrences in the world.

In formulating a phenomenological analysis as a concern for grounds, I do not mean any
of the above. Phenomenological analysis must conceive of objects as universals and not
as particulars, as social products, not as individual creations. Therefore, grounds of a
social product, Marx's theorizing, cannot be located in the individual or his or her personal
situation. Rather, grounds are given with a form of life that is presupposed by the work.

"This version of phenomenological grounds can be compared with John O'Neill's version
of reflexivity. Instead of reflexivity as awareness of the 'infrastructures' of knowledge in culture,
class and biography (John O'Neill, Sociology as a Skin Trade, 1972), the standard notion of
a sociology of knowledge, O'Neill develops the concept of 'reflexivity as institution,' which
may be likened to a self-conscious form of life. He does not conceive of reflexivity as
awareness of personal conditions of a knowing subject. He likewise rejects a notion of
reflexivity as 'resting upon a transcendental subjectivity.' For O'Neill, 'the ultimate feature of
the phenomenological institution of reflexivity is that it grounds critique in membership and
tradition' (Sociology as a Skin Trade). Grounds are given with membership, not with the
personal situation of an individual. They are internal to a work. They constitute its form of life,
the membership and tradition it presupposes.

"Because grounds are given with membership, not with the personal situation of an
individual, in referring to the grounds of an objectivity one treats the objectivity as a
historically specific universal. Thus one might talk of the grounds of science, a historically
specific universal, independently of the personal conditions of particular scientists.
Of course the personal conditions of particular scientists, in the capacity of scientist, include
the conditions that are presupposed by science itself. Similarly, the personal conditions of
any individual life include the conditions presupposed by the historical activities in which
that life participates, that is, the historical grounds of those categories in terms of which that
life knows itself.

"In treating an object as a universal, one distinguishes between a historically specific
universal and an abstract universal. To illustrate, one could use Marx's work as an example
of theorizing in general and then analyze the conditions for theorizing. That would be treating
it as an abstract universal. Or, one could analyze the conditions for Marx's theorizing that
distinguish it from other types of theorizing. This would be treating it not as an absolute, but
as a possibility, a historically specific object or product. Others make the same distinction
between an abstract universal and a concrete universal (for example, Carol C. Gould, 'The
Woman Question: philosophy of liberation and the liberation of philosophy, 1973-4).

"In this work, I treat Marx's work as a historically specific form of theorizing, a historically
specific universal. As a universal and not a particular, it is conceived as a type of theorizing
that is independent of the particularity of its author or social setting. In other words, it is
conceived not as a personal achievement, nor as a result of its setting in time and place,
but as a social achievement. This means that it is rule guided. The rules refer to its
reproducibility. In other words, the theorizing is reproducible in principle and not just by
accident. This analysis makes explicit the conditions or rules that can reproduce that
theorizing.

"The historically specific conditions (rules or grammar) necessary for reproducing the
theorizing are its presuppositions or grounds. These conditions are not personal to the
author but are impersonal. They are presupposed in the reading. A reflexive reading locates
a text within a set of conditions. These conditions make possible the text as it is known to
the reader. The totality of a phenomenon and its conditions, an object and the relations and
practices it presupposes, constitute a form of life. Science can be formulated as a form of
life as can capitalism.

"Dialectical phenomenology is similar to a sociology of knowledge in relating the object of
knowledge to social conditions which make that object possible (intelligible) as such.
However, dialectical phenomenology treats those social conditions as internal to the
knowing of the object, as internal to the object as it is known. Thus one must analyze the
knowing -- the form of life within which the object makes sense. This differs from a
sociology of knowledge approach that locates the origins outside of the knowing as coming
from some external cause or set of conditions, as if, for example, capitalism were external
to some theory, concept or idea and somehow caused it.

"In his work on capital, Marx can be read as analyzing a category or object by tracing how it
operates within a form of life. This reading suggests that an object of knowledge operates
within something. If the form of life is formulated as a mode of production, then the object is
a force of production. Accordingly, if the form of life is formulated as a mode of theorizing,
then the object is a category of the theorizing. A force of production and a category of
theorizing are analogous terms. The terms 'category' and 'force of production' call attention
to the embeddedness of an object (physical or mental) within some form of life. The
implication of embeddedness is opposed to the conception of objects as things in
themselves.

"Thus objects are analyzed as universals, not particulars. Furthermore, these universals are
not treated as given with the mind or nature or language. Rather, they are treated as
grounded in a historically specific form of life.

"In Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx's Method, I refer to the tension between a positivist,
empiricist program and a phenomenological one that negates the former as a dialectic of
the concrete and the analytic. The term, 'concrete,' takes on a technical meaning. It refers
to the appearance of social phenomena as ungrounded things. Concrete theorizing treats
social phenomena as they appear before analysis. In concrete theorizing, concepts are
abstractions, names for things whose meanings are simply given; they are ungrounded in
specific, historical forms of life. The term, 'analytic,' refers to the knowledge of social
phenomena as grounded in their forms of life. That phenomenology is dialectical, refers to
a dialectic of the concrete and its grounds. A display of that dialectical relation dissolves the
concrete, 'objective' thingness in which our world now appears to us.

"I adopt the term, 'analytic theorizing,' from the works of Peter McHugh, Alan Blum and their
collaborators (Peter McHugh, Stanley Raffel, Daniel C. Foss and Alan F. Blum, On the
Beginning of Social Inquiry, 1974). As used by these theorists, analysis shows how a
phenomenon comes to make sense. Its logical opposite is concrete theorizing in which the
sense of a phenomenon is taken as given. The distinctive feature of analytic theorizing is
its inquiry into grounds: 'analysis is the concern not with anything said or written but with the
grounds of whatever is said -- the foundations that make what is said possible, sensible,
conceivable' (On the Beginning of Social Inquiry).

"Its opposite, concrete theorizing, treats its object as complete in itself. McHugh and Blum
treat no speech or text as complete or ahistorical; they treat a speech or text as embedded;
they treat it as a result of participating in a form of life. Thus analysis treats its object as a
history, a product with origins in a process of production. It, therefore, sees concrete speech
as a denial of itself as an achievement, a denial of its own history:

          Concrete speech, which treats itself as secure, contradicts itself because the very
          occurrence of intelligible speech makes reference to its achievement (and speech 
          which treats itself as secure claims that it is first, natural, and has no history). Analysis
          brings to light the contradiction by treating the speech as an appearance of that which
          grounds it (On the Beginning of Social Inquiry).

A reflexive reading or analytic approach formulates a relation of object to ground. This must
be contrasted with a reading that sees only objects without grounds, a passive reading. A
passive reading treats the text as a report about or explanation of things in the world. An
animated reading treats the text as presupposing some form of life that is not stated, but
which provides the animus for the text, a problem or contradiction that the text resolves.
Analysis shows how a report or its objects come to make sense. It, therefore, can be
understood as violating the text; it violates the 'surfaces and conventions' of the text in order
to see the author as 'saying something other than what he speaks' (Alan Blum, 'Reading
Marx', 1973). For Blum, analysis 'treats all material, data, and text as exemplary, as having
the status of examples for inducing the analyst to re-collect and re-orient to some
fundamental problem which the surface structure of the example conceals' ('Reading Marx').

"Instead of treating a phenomenon as immediately sensible, analysis treats a phenomenon
as a universal that presupposes and derives its sense from a historically specific form of
life. A reflexive reader formulates a form of life which animates the text for the reader.

"A concrete reading renders the text as dead but memorable, correctly or incorrectly. The
analytic renders Marx a living theorist. That is, it makes it possible to be Marx; it makes it
 possible for the text to be a work in process. This is not to say that Marx has a use today or
that Marxist formulae are correct empirically, and so forth. These are still readings of a past
work only applied today and not a living work in progress. An animated reading brings Marx
to life, makes him contemporary -- not appropriate today, but living.

"By grounding a phenomenon in a form of life, phenomenology reveals a tension. It displays
the tension between an object as it appears -- without grounds -- and as analysis knows it
-- with grounds. Dialectical phenomenology does not reveal grounds as an end in itself. It
does so in order to show its own possibility as critique of an unself-conscious form of life
in which objects appear not to have grounds. Dialectical phenomenology is a critique, not
a positive thing in itself. Its own possibility as a mode of theorizing is grounded in the
dialectic of the concrete and its negation."
-- Roslyn Wallach Bologh, Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx’s Method, 1979