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MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
Dialectical Materialism - from Hegel to Marx
by TED TRIPP
HEGEL (1770-1831)
Hegel's philosophy, revolutionary in character, delivered the death-blow to metaphysics. That is to the reasoning of things and their mental images, ideas in isolation, to be considered apart from each other; rigid, fixed objects of investigation given once for all. Not that this method of reasoning was not necessary for its time but for Hegel everything was in continual motion and change form its lowest to its highest form. Consequently truth - the business of philosophy - in Hegels hands was no longer an aggregate of finished dogmatic statements, but lay in the process of apprehending the long historical development of the universe as a whole. Not only knowledge of philosophy but every kind of knowledge inclusive also of practical affairs. Thus, the highest and most complex existences can be traced back to the lowest and simplest. The highest form of religion, for example, is nothing more than the refined reproductions of the crude superstitions of the savages. As also with the history of man as they first emerged from the animal world to make their entry into history: still half animal, brutal, helpless to the forces of nature and consequently as poor as the animals and hardly more productive - a situation whereby a certain equality in the conditions of existence prevailed. With the process of time the natural division of labor within the family developed the process of production so that the power of man could now produce more than was necessary for its mere maintenance. As surplus production grew the first division of labor - slavery - was made possible. Brutal and savage as it may seem, due no doubt to the fact that man sprang from the beasts, none the less progressive in that without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science: without slavery no Roman Empire and without these as a basis, no modern Europe. "We should never forget," writes Engels (Anti-Duhring), 'that our whole economic, political and intellectual development has as its presupposition a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognized. In this sense we are entitled to say: without the slavery of antiquity, no modern socialism." So we see that for Hegel all historical systems are transitory stages in an endless course of development of human society from the lowest to the highest. Each stage necessary and therefore justified for the time as well as conditions to which it owes its origin. However, in the face of higher conditions developing gradually within the womb of the old society it loses its validity and justification, giving way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish.
This, dialectical philosophy, by virtue of viewing everything in motion and change, dissolves all conceptions of final and absolute truths, as also of absolute states of humanity corresponding to it. For dialectics nothing is final, absolute or sacred. Everything has its transitory character in an uninterrupted process of becoming and passing away of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the reflection of this process in the thinking brain. Not as though the special sciences were not correct in keeping to their own special principles; but, in the last resort when we attempt - as is the business of philosophy to attempt - to see all these spheres of existence in their relation to one another, we must regard nature as revealing its secret meaning only to and in man. We must find the "key to the secret of man's nature in the highest energies of his moral and intellectual life." In this latter statement Hegel reveals his philosophy as idealist. That is, on the basic question of all philosophy, the relation of thinking to being Hegel placed thought as primary and being secondary. Consequently for Hegel the real world is its thought-content which makes the world a gradual realization of the absolute idea: which absolute idea has existed somewhere from eternity independent of the world and before the world's existence. Thus the Hegelian system through its idealist standpoint contains the dogmatic content of absolute truth which places it in contradiction to its dialectical process which dissolves all conceptions of final absolute truths! "However much Hegel, especially in his Logic emphasized that this eternal truth is nothing but the logical, that is, the historical process itself", writes Engels, "he nevertheless finds himself compelled to supply the process with an end, just because he has to bring his system to a termination at some point or other. In his Logic he can make this end a beginning again, since here, the point of conclusion, the absolute ideal - which is only absolute in so far as he has absolutely nothing to say about it - 'alienates', that is transforms itself into nature and comes to it again later in the mind, that is in thought and history." (Ludwig Feuerbach). And so we find the revolutionary side of Hegel's philosophy smothered by his absolute idea. This did not detract, however, from developing out of the system a wealth of thought which astounds to this present day.
Hegel's philosophy influenced the minds of leading thinkers of the 19th century including those of Marx and Engels. During his lifetime he enjoyed immense fame and for almost thirty years after his death his philosophy received universal acknowledgment. Bertrand Russell noted that at 'the end of the 19th century leading philosophers in America and Britain were Hegelian". Then came a quick reaction which is noted by Karl Marx in the Afterword to the Second German edition of his work Capital:
"The mystifying side of the Hegelian dialectic I criticized thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of 'Das Kapital', it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre, who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time treated Spinoza, i.e. as a dead dog'. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel's hand, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell".
The explanation for this boycott attitude to Hegel can be sought in the revolutionary struggles of the working in France and central Europe commencing in 1848 and culminating in the first working class quest for power in the Paris Commune (1871). Since then the development of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the working class - its successes as well as defeats - is developing within the womb of capitalism the challenging force of socialism, forcing society to lose its validity and justification and so make way for this higher stage. This will undoubtedly revive interest in Hegel's philosophy among workers' leaders as also among the educated. But as regards the latter, their interests will be as Hegel explains in the process of change, turned to its opposite, from that of keen interest to that of blasting it for their own protection.
[to be continued]
Dialectical Materialism - from Hegel to Marx
by TED TRIPP
HEGEL (1770-1831)
Hegel's philosophy, revolutionary in character, delivered the death-blow to metaphysics. That is to the reasoning of things and their mental images, ideas in isolation, to be considered apart from each other; rigid, fixed objects of investigation given once for all. Not that this method of reasoning was not necessary for its time but for Hegel everything was in continual motion and change form its lowest to its highest form. Consequently truth - the business of philosophy - in Hegels hands was no longer an aggregate of finished dogmatic statements, but lay in the process of apprehending the long historical development of the universe as a whole. Not only knowledge of philosophy but every kind of knowledge inclusive also of practical affairs. Thus, the highest and most complex existences can be traced back to the lowest and simplest. The highest form of religion, for example, is nothing more than the refined reproductions of the crude superstitions of the savages. As also with the history of man as they first emerged from the animal world to make their entry into history: still half animal, brutal, helpless to the forces of nature and consequently as poor as the animals and hardly more productive - a situation whereby a certain equality in the conditions of existence prevailed. With the process of time the natural division of labor within the family developed the process of production so that the power of man could now produce more than was necessary for its mere maintenance. As surplus production grew the first division of labor - slavery - was made possible. Brutal and savage as it may seem, due no doubt to the fact that man sprang from the beasts, none the less progressive in that without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science: without slavery no Roman Empire and without these as a basis, no modern Europe. "We should never forget," writes Engels (Anti-Duhring), 'that our whole economic, political and intellectual development has as its presupposition a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognized. In this sense we are entitled to say: without the slavery of antiquity, no modern socialism." So we see that for Hegel all historical systems are transitory stages in an endless course of development of human society from the lowest to the highest. Each stage necessary and therefore justified for the time as well as conditions to which it owes its origin. However, in the face of higher conditions developing gradually within the womb of the old society it loses its validity and justification, giving way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish.
This, dialectical philosophy, by virtue of viewing everything in motion and change, dissolves all conceptions of final and absolute truths, as also of absolute states of humanity corresponding to it. For dialectics nothing is final, absolute or sacred. Everything has its transitory character in an uninterrupted process of becoming and passing away of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the reflection of this process in the thinking brain. Not as though the special sciences were not correct in keeping to their own special principles; but, in the last resort when we attempt - as is the business of philosophy to attempt - to see all these spheres of existence in their relation to one another, we must regard nature as revealing its secret meaning only to and in man. We must find the "key to the secret of man's nature in the highest energies of his moral and intellectual life." In this latter statement Hegel reveals his philosophy as idealist. That is, on the basic question of all philosophy, the relation of thinking to being Hegel placed thought as primary and being secondary. Consequently for Hegel the real world is its thought-content which makes the world a gradual realization of the absolute idea: which absolute idea has existed somewhere from eternity independent of the world and before the world's existence. Thus the Hegelian system through its idealist standpoint contains the dogmatic content of absolute truth which places it in contradiction to its dialectical process which dissolves all conceptions of final absolute truths! "However much Hegel, especially in his Logic emphasized that this eternal truth is nothing but the logical, that is, the historical process itself", writes Engels, "he nevertheless finds himself compelled to supply the process with an end, just because he has to bring his system to a termination at some point or other. In his Logic he can make this end a beginning again, since here, the point of conclusion, the absolute ideal - which is only absolute in so far as he has absolutely nothing to say about it - 'alienates', that is transforms itself into nature and comes to it again later in the mind, that is in thought and history." (Ludwig Feuerbach). And so we find the revolutionary side of Hegel's philosophy smothered by his absolute idea. This did not detract, however, from developing out of the system a wealth of thought which astounds to this present day.
Hegel's philosophy influenced the minds of leading thinkers of the 19th century including those of Marx and Engels. During his lifetime he enjoyed immense fame and for almost thirty years after his death his philosophy received universal acknowledgment. Bertrand Russell noted that at 'the end of the 19th century leading philosophers in America and Britain were Hegelian". Then came a quick reaction which is noted by Karl Marx in the Afterword to the Second German edition of his work Capital:
"The mystifying side of the Hegelian dialectic I criticized thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of 'Das Kapital', it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre, who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time treated Spinoza, i.e. as a dead dog'. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectics suffers in Hegel's hand, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell".
The explanation for this boycott attitude to Hegel can be sought in the revolutionary struggles of the working in France and central Europe commencing in 1848 and culminating in the first working class quest for power in the Paris Commune (1871). Since then the development of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the working class - its successes as well as defeats - is developing within the womb of capitalism the challenging force of socialism, forcing society to lose its validity and justification and so make way for this higher stage. This will undoubtedly revive interest in Hegel's philosophy among workers' leaders as also among the educated. But as regards the latter, their interests will be as Hegel explains in the process of change, turned to its opposite, from that of keen interest to that of blasting it for their own protection.
[to be continued]
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