By Carlos

"It is impossible completely to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!"
-V. I. Lenin, Conspectus of Hegel's 'Science of Logic' (1)

Marx says in his Postface to the second edition of Volume 1 of Capital (2) that his method is none other than the dialectic. It is not, however, a direct application of the Hegelian dialectic. On the contrary, Marx tells us that the dialectic in Hegel-based on the journey and self-development of the Idea, of which the world is a result or "external appearance"-is exactly the opposite of his own. With Marx we have a materialist dialectic wherein the Idea is a "reflection" of the real world rather than its creator (3). And yet Marx also goes on to call himself a "pupil of that mighty thinker [Hegel]," and says that the "mystification which the dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner," calling the "rational kernel" inherent in Hegel's dialectic "critical and revolutionary" (4).

Much has been made of these remarks on Marx's relationship to Hegel, as well as of that relationship simpliciter. Where some (in the Structuralist and Analytical camps) have seen a complete rejection of Hegel, others (in the broadly "Western" and Humanist camps) have seen an important continuity between the two thinkers. This question has fascinated me since I first encountered Marx six years ago. I surmise that its importance was all the more apparent to me given that my introduction to Marx was not the Communist Manifesto (as is usually the case with most contemporary readers), but rather Erich Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man.

I wish below to briefly examine two aspects of Capital and Marxism in general that are greatly illuminated by the reading of Hegel, particularly the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic: 1. the dialectical structure of Marx's critique, and 2. the difference between abstract and concrete negativity.

Reading 'Capital' in Light of Hegel's Dialectic

Marx begins his analysis of the "wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails" with what appears to be (but is in fact not) the most concrete form distinguishable therein-the commodity (5). I have come to realize that this starting point bears more than a coincidental resemblance to Hegel's own in the Phenomenology of Spirit (6). There, Hegel begins his examination of the phenomenal development of consciousness from its apparently most concrete form: Sense-Certainty. Right away, however, Hegel shows us how this "bare fact of certainty... is really and admittedly the abstractest and poorest kind of truth." (7) Likewise, to begin an analysis of the capitalist mode of production with the commodity as an "elementary form" is to begin from the most seemingly concrete-but, in fact, most abstract- point of departure. Hegel and Marx are both quick to show how these beginnings, chosen by some because they bear the superficial mark of immediacy, harbor within them irreconcilable contradictions. It is the development of these contradictions, through negativity, that will take them all the way to the highest and most concrete forms in their respective scientific analyses. Thus, in Marx's own analysis in Capital, we see how the fundamental contradiction within the commodity form-the duality between its exchange-value and its use-value-is unfolded into subsequent forms (exchange-value, money, surplus value, capital...) by a constant process of diremption and coming back into self at higher and more concrete stages of development.

Another aspect of the structure of Capital that is illuminated by the reading of Hegel is the question of the relationship of actual historical development to Marx's critique. If it must be stated simply: Marx is not doing history in Capital-at least he is not crudely reporting history. On the contrary, the forms that he is considering are not necessarily abandoned once higher forms supercede them, as though they were left behind in the chronological past. Nor, for that matter, are the forms we find in Marx's analysis considered in the order in which they appear historically (although some rough correspondence exists, just as with Hegel's Phenomenology). Rather, all of the forms are 'moments' of a totality that is the process of development of the capitalist social formation.

Instead of a historical reporting, what we have in Marx's analysis is a logical unfolding of the social categories under his purview. This explains both why Marx does not consider the political economists in the order in which they contribute to the overall development of that branch of knowledge, and also why he relegates the discussion of the historical genesis of capital to the very end of Volume 1.

That Marx is unfolding the different forms logically and not historically can be further ascertained if we consider specific moments in his analysis. Consider how, even though he has deduced the money-form from the commodity-form in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 he tells us that: "We have already reached the result [the money-form] by our analysis of the commodity. But only the action of society can turn a particular commodity into the universal equivalent" (8). Or consider how the entirety of Capital is replete with instances where, as Hegel puts it, the "object" comes into correspondence with its "notion" and vice versa. For instance, in Chapter 3 Marx says:

In world trade commodities develop their value universally. Their independent value-form thus confronts them here too as world money. It is in the world market that money first functions to its full extent as the commodity whose natural form is also the directly social form of realization of human labor in the abstract. Its mode of existence becomes adequate to its concept. (9)

Money, the "universal" commodity inasmuch as all other commodities express their exchange-value in it, acquires a mode of existence that is truly universal once we have the development of the world market, for the value (based upon socially necessary labor time) of each commodity is now determined, not at the national, but at the global level.

A deeper understanding of the Hegelian method, then, allows one to more fully grasp the argument in Capital; most importantly, the dialectic allows us to comprehend the correspondence of capital (the category) to capital (the social formation).

Concrete Negation and Socialism

Just as the entire unfolding of Capital is more perspicuously grasped in light of its affinity with the dialectical unfolding of the phenomenal forms of consciousness in the Phenomenology, so are the different attitudes within Marxist (and other radical) theory to the post-capitalist society better understood in terms of Hegel's categories of abstract and concrete negation.

The analysis in Capital confronts us with the urgency of revolution. It is clear that Marx's thought never ceased to be moved by his own dictum: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it" (10). The certainty that history is not over (pace Fukuyama), and that finite substances have within them irreconcilable contradictions that lead to their ultimate subsumption in higher forms, is perhaps the most valuable aspect of the dialectic that we inherit from Hegel. After so many failed revolutions in the 20th century, especially the turning of the Russian Revolution of 1917 into a brutal State-Capitalist society, the question still confronts us today: What kind of society comes after capitalism? (11) It is exactly here that the difference between an abstract and a concrete negation-elucidated by Hegel in his section on Lordship and Bondage-becomes so crucial.

Many Marxists today insist that the answer to this crucial question is simply: we do not (or cannot) know (12). The section on Lordship and Bondage shows the danger political movements run into when their opposition to capitalism is indeterminate or abstract. There, we see how the life and death struggle between two self-consciousnesses in pursuit of recognition results not in their self-certainty, but in the rupture of the dialectical process:

They cancel their consciousness which had its place in this alien element of natural existence...But along with this there vanishes from the play of change the essential moment; viz. that of breaking up into extremes with opposite characteristics; and the middle term vanishes from the play into a lifeless unity... (13)

This act of self-consciousness Hegel calls "abstract negation," which he distinguishes from the kind of (concrete) negation "characteristic of consciousness, which cancels in such a way that it preserves and maintains what is sublated, and thereby survives its being sublated."
The lesson to be drawn from this distinction is that the abstract opposition of terms does not lead to a higher form of appearance but instead to a reversal in the unfolding of the dialectic of phenomenal forms of consciousness. In like manner, abstract opposition to capitalism-that is, practical opposition that is not grounded in a determinate vision of the new society-fails, despite all its good intentions, and ultimately turns into its opposite (i.e. the capital form). Furthermore, the attitude of abstract negativity creates a vacuum in which the term "socialism" gets thrown around and applied to just about anything.

Here, then, is an area in which a return to Hegel contributes greatly, not only in understanding a problem in Marxism, but also in beginning to posit its solution. The task now becomes figuring out just what a determinate negation of capitalism "looks like," and once we begin to explore this question it becomes clear to us that Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program and some of the passages in Capital in which he discusses "an association of free people" (Cf. pp. 171-173) have much promise as a starting point.

Recreating the Dialectic

If I have spoken of how the Hegelian dialectic shines light on the reading of Marx and on debates within contemporary Marxism it is not to imply that I take the dialectic to be a done deal. As a method, it has nothing in common with a series of results that must be memorized and merely regurgitated in the right circumstances. Each area of philosophy has, for Hegel, its appropriate starting-point and laws of development, which are immanent to the subject matter being considered. This is why Hegel begins the Science of Logic with a lengthy discussion of the appropriate starting point, (14) and, likewise, why he addresses the question of a starting point in the Philosophy of Right. Hegel says in that late work that

The science of right is a section of philosophy. Consequently, its task is to develop the Idea-the Idea being the rational factor in any object of study-out of the concept, or, what is the same thing, to look on at the proper immanent development of the thing itself. (15)

The fact that we must concretize the dialectic for our own empirical circumstances and for the subject matter under consideration is the reason why Marx's comments in the Postface to Volume 1 of Capital seem so ambiguous. But they are nothing less than what we would expect from someone who has truly grasped Hegel's method, appropriating it for his own circumstances. So too, for us, the dialectic must be a living process whose further determinations must be worked out through the "seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative" (16).

NOTES

(1) See p. 180 in Lenin, V I. Collected Works. Vol. 38. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972.
(2) Marx, Karl H. Capital. NYC, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1976. Hereafter, 'Marx.'
(3) Marx, p. 102.
(4) Marx, p. 103.
(5) Marx, p. 125.
(6) All my references to Hegel are to the Phenomenology of Spirit, excerpted in Hegel: The Essential Writings, edited by Frederick G. Weiss. NYC, N.Y.: Harper & Roe, Publishers, 1974. Hereafter, 'Hegel.'
(7) Hegel, p. 54.
(8) Marx, p. 180.
(9) Marx, p. 241.
(10) This is Thesis XI on Feuerbach. See p. 173 in the 2nd edition of Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan. Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press, 2000.
(11) For a shrewd analysis of this situation, see Raya Dunayevskaya's Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today.
(12) See, for instance, John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today and Moishe Postone's Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory.
(13) Hegel, p. 74.
(14) Hegel, p. 102-13.
(15) Hegel, p. 265. Emphasis added.
(16) Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller trans.), Paragraph 19.