 This is Professor Resnick again. I want to talk about very briefly just one particular idea today, and that's the difference between the order of a theory and the objects designated by that theory. That sounds very complex, so let me work on that a little bit. In what we have done so far in your readings, you've noticed that there are two tools that I keep on emphasizing. One is classes, the entry point of Marxism, and the other is the causal logic over determination. As I said last time, for class to take on meaning and concreteness, it has to be connected to non-class, and for non-class to take on meaning it has to be connected to class. That's this logic of over-determination or Hegel's dialectic. So these are the two tools, class, connection to non-class, and the concept of over-determination. We use those tools to produce a theorization of society, the thought concrete. But in the theorization that we produce of society using those tools, nothing is more important than anything else. So there seems to be a difference between the logic of our theory and these privileged tools, which is class and over-determination. And that which we produce with these tools, that which we produce is a knowledge of society in which nothing is more important than anything else. And that's the difference between the logic of a discourse and the object literally designated or constructed with those tools. It's to use a different metaphor. In order to produce a meal, you need a variety of different ingredients. Those are the tools that one uses to produce this meal. But in the meal that you produce, you don't taste any of the ingredients and you don't see the oven and the frying pan and so forth, etc. Those are the tools that one uses to produce the meal that we enjoy at dinner or lunch or breakfast or whatever. So the thought concrete is that which we produce and we use tools to produce it. Marxism is distinguished then by the particular kinds of tools that it uses that is compared and contrasted with other theories which have different entry points, different kinds of logic. They don't deploy the dialectic more often than not. But it also differs from them in terms of the obviously the objects that are produced because it's using a different set of tools. Once again, in Marxism we don't give a priority to class or to non-class precisely because of the tool of over-determination. So we have to get bear in mind here is the difference once again between the order of a theory, in this case Marxian theory, and the objects designated by that theory. That's a part of the reading and knowledge in class that I asked you to look at. But you need to bear in mind once again there is an emphasis on obviously the entry point and the logic, but there's no similar emphasis on the objects designated precisely because the tools are really an entry point, although that's terribly important, and a notion of causation. The notion of causation, the dialectic, demotes, as I showed you the last two times, any ultimate causes. That concludes this lecture.