Vygotsky’s theories are often criticized out of a misapprehension of his concepts in their contextual setting. He was a showpiece of Soviet science. Living and working in a totalitarian régime, he had to pay far more than lip service to Marxist dogma. However the fact that Marxist doctrine forms the foundation for Vygotsky’s thought does not in and of itself disqualify his theories. It is the economic theory of value that does not pass the acid test of empirical experience in the realm of time. Vygotsky’s theories were specific to human development and he describes them in a manner analogous to dialectical materialism. Specifically, the dialecticism which was the Hegelian foundation for the thought that Marx took in a Materialistic direction away from the Absolute Spirit of Hegel.

He introduces a dichotomy between the satisfaction of developmental hurdles by the individual and the race as to methodology. For example, the conceptual contextual background to dialectical materialism is that of the evolution of social structure in history leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat as a culmination similar to the culmination of physical evolutionary forces in the human species. This goes beyond mere phylogeny and ontogeny. In accordance with the Marxist theory of history there is an element of social development to Vygotsky’s theories. This forms a background to the foreground of individual development. This dialogue between phylogeny and ontogeny can be described in geometrical terms as there are multiple dimensions. There is an epistemological dimension, an active dimension, and more. In activity there are the implementation of tool usage and its development through practice. Signs are transmitters of meaning, but what is meaning? It is by communication that existential aloneness is transformed into meaning. It is the dialectical exchange between the individual and society.

Joseph Campbell speaks of social roles as masks in his lecture series, “Mythos”. He indicates a possibility of minimal relation between the inner and outer selves.

Once again, the meaning is found (in Marxist theory) in the dialogue. Activity consists of spectrums of development in four stages. The practice of tool usage begins with the use of the hands to insert items in one’s mouth and continues unto the construction of complicated machines.

Motivation has an additional fifth step that consists in the discrimination between ends and means. This step is primary because ends and means are the pathway to action.

There is only one demarcation for the spectrum between internal and external development because there must be a developmental foundation laid before interaction between them can occur.

The delta vectors for these values are different for history than for the child. First, Marxist theory of social evolution through history is an unsupported presupposition made in advance of empirical data. But there are also similarities such as long term interactions between levels. Interactionism is an integral part of dialectical Materialism but both individual and social development begins with tool usage. We have no soft tissue fossil evidence of laryngeal development, so we have no idea when vocal communication entered the social development of our ancestors, but it is not unreasonable to assume that the employment of hand axes preceded communication except for communication the construction techniques necessary for building a stone hand axe by example. But in the child there is no doubt that the vocal manipulation of the environment precedes the digital.

Beyond the most basic examples of stimulus-response association and cut and try techniques, deliberative judgments concerning concrete relations and tool usage as a means toward an end describe a progression away from Interactionism. Thinking in terms of concepts in the absence of sensory input whereby cultural values are internalized, and rational analysis employing mathematical and logical operations are the systems on mentation that describe us as humans and the gulf between us and beasts. The chimpanzee, who employs a stick even one of constructed length to get at a banana, does so in a flash of insight and not by any synthetic or analytic judgments. It is human thought that transcends empirical tranactionalism.

The distinctiveness of human cognition was attributed by Vygotsky to cultural history, but this is a reflection of the Marxist theoretical environment in which he operated. To state that the analysis by dialectical materialism upon human history discovers a difference between animal behavior and human in terms of the adaptability and development of animals and the adaptability and historical development adds nothing to the equation beyond humans develop through history and animals do not because humans have culture and animals do not. The difference between synthetic and analytical judgments is essential to understanding this failing of Vygotsky’s. This statement beyond that of the species does not add anything in terms of descriptions of qualities of the predicate and while this may be criticized as a positive historical error of pettio principi, one must understand that for Vygotsky’s political and scientific overlords, Dialectical Materialism was an article of faith, and his position in society, was dependent upon developing a Marxist psychology in line with the Marxist philosophy of history, no self-revelation of the Absolute Spirit culminating in human art, philosophy and religion allowed, the ultimate self-revelation of the Absolute Spirit was the development of the dictatorship of the Proletariat. Was he merely expressing the dialogue between his inner and outer self by employing active motivation to interact with his social environment?

References:

Killian, Melanie, Langer, Jonas Ed., 1998 Piaget Evolution and Development Lawrence Earlbaum and Assoc. Mahwah, New Jersey, and Killen, Melanie

Langford, Peter E., 2005

Vygotsky’s Developmental and Educational Psychology

Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Hove and New York