6 - Dialectic as inquiry and exposition

Summary

Besides a way of viewing the world, the dialectic also serves Marx as a method of inquiry and as a type of organization and set of forms in which to present his findings. Marx points to the difference between these latter two roles (he assumes here the function of the dialectic as a way of seeing things) when he says, ‘of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connections’. (My emphasis.) Nothing that was said regarding the philosophy of internal relations was meant to deny the empirical character of Marx's method of inquiry. Marx does not deduce his knowledge about capitalism from the meanings of terms, but, like a good social scientist, does research to discover what is the case. Marx even delayed finishing Capital II, in part because he wanted to see how the crisis about to break out in England would develop.

The dialectical method of inquiry is best described as research into the manifold ways in which entities are internally related. It is a voyage of exploration that has the whole world for its object, but a world which is conceived of as relationally contained in each of its parts.