54 SOCIAL SCIENTIST correct theory. The other ruse is to formulate the Hegel-Marx relationship in such a way as to arrive at a metaphysically denuded Marx. It is against this contemporary background that I propose to use the Grundrisse3 to arrive at my own reading of the problematic. For this purpose, I start with three categories—method, theory and metaphysics. First, I assume that these three are structurally inter-dependent categories such that statements about any one of them must involve reference to the other two to some extent. By theory I mean a systematic statement about what one claims to know such that it tells one about the structure, internal relationships and inter-structural relationships about what is "reality". By metaphysics I mean an a priori commitment to an overall view regarding the nature of "reality55. Now, my contention is that the method we adopt presupposes a metaphysic, and that the theory we propose or advocate presupposes also such a metaphysic. The metaphysic may be invisible but no theory or method can occur outside a metaphysical context. Indeed, and paradoxically, claims to being anti-metaphysical can be shown at bottom to be metaphysical in tlieir own way. Now let me turn to the Grundrisse. The Notion of the Historical-General In the Introduction, Marx refers to what he calls "illusion" which has been and continues to be "common to each new epoch to this day" (p 83). Now, how can one discover that this is an illusion and by what method can one know reality? Part of the answer to this query is the definition of the illusion itself. We may call it the naturalistic illusion insofar as it arises because of understanding a human phenomenon, say, production, as if it were natural in the sense of being the product of "human nature", an ahistorical category. The method recommended for piercing through the illusion to the bare bones of reality involves history, "historical footing55, which Marx credits Steuart with, to some extent (p 84). To be "historical59, and to use the historical method is to start from the present and then go back, in order to know the reality about a thing. In other words, to know a thing now is to know it as the present condensation of a historical process. But this exercise would also reveal that a thing is a summary present code for a complex reality, involving a whole set of specific relationships with things such that they tend to cohere into a "whole" or a totality. But Marx also appears to fall into the naturalistic fallacy when he states,"... The human being is in the most literal sense... not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society...55 (p 84). (The quotation uses the Greek expression for a political animal). In saying that man is a social and political being, can Marx be accused of abadoning the historical category for a natural category? I think not, if we take into account the method used, which is to go back in history to arrive at a general category. In this sense, this statement is a historical general, not a historical specific. This