Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy 1009304801, 9781009304801

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KARL MARX AND THE ACTUALIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY

It is indisputable that Marx began his intellectual trajectory as a philosopher, but it is often thought that he subsequently turned away from philosophy. In this book, Christoph Schuringa proposes a radically different reading of Marx’s intellectual project and demonstrates that from his earliest writings his aim was the ‘actualization’ of philosophy. Marx, he argues, should be understood not as turning away from philosophy, but as seeking to make philosophy a practical force in the world. By analysing a series of texts from across Marx’s output, Schuringa shows that Marx progressively overcame what he called ‘self-sufficient philosophy’, not in order to leave philosophy behind but to bring it into its own. This involves a major reinterpretation of Marx’s relationship to his ancestors Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, and shows that philosophy, as it actualizes itself, far from being merely a body of philosophical doctrine, figures as an instrument of the revolution.   is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London. He has published widely on the history of philosophy and on Marx and Marxism, and is editor of the Hegel Bulletin.

KARL MARX AND THE ACTUALIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY CHRISTOPH SCHURINGA Northeastern University London

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge  , United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York,  , USA  Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne,  , Australia –, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India  Penang Road, #-/, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore  Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ : ./ © Christoph Schuringa  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. When citing this work, please include a reference to the DOI ./ First published  A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : Schuringa, Christoph, author. : Karl Marx and the actualization of philosophy / Christoph Schuringa, Northeastern University London. : Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, . | Includes bibliographical references and index. :   (print) |   (ebook) |   (hardback) |   (paperback) |   (epub) : : Marx, Karl, -. | Philosophy. :  .   (print) |  . (ebook) |  .–dc/eng/ LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/  ---- Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Holly

Contents

Acknowledgements

page viii 

Introduction  Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy



 Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics



 Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic



 Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts



 From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism



 Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis



 Capital: Dialectic



 Actualizing Philosophy



Bibliography Index

 

vii

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to a number of friends and colleagues for stimulating and challenging conversation that has enlivened and sustained the project carried out here. Michael Thompson played a crucial role initiating me into the great works of Marx at a time when my interest was still nascent, during a research stay at the University of Pittsburgh. Conversations with Martin McIvor, begun over outdoor coffees near Waterloo Station in London during the COVID- pandemic, have been a source of continual delight and sustenance. The friendship and luminous insight of Alec Hinshelwood will have left their traces in whatever is good in this book; in any case much of my thinking has been shaped in response to his critical urgings. I am thankful to Adrian Haddock for hosting an excellent workshop on the manuscript that became this book at Universität Leipzig, and to Anna Lena Weyand, Dawa Ometto and Alec Hinshelwood for their insightful critical remarks. The following provided helpful comments on various versions of material that went into the book: Andrew Chitty, Peter Dews, Alexander Douglas, Stephen Houlgate, Thomas Khurana, James Kreines, Karen Ng, Peter Osborne, Robert Stern, Martijn Wallage, Vanessa Wills and Magnus Møller Ziegler. Benedict Seymour and Maximilian Tegtmeyer took the trouble to read the entire manuscript and offered acute comments. Where I have not taken them into account, I hope they will forgive my obstinacy. Thanks are due to Wiley for permission to reuse material previously published as ‘Thought and Reality in Marx’s Early Writings on Ancient Greek Philosophy’ in European Journal of Philosophy . (), and Springer for permission to reuse parts of ‘Gattungswesen and Universality’, published in Luca Corti and Johannes-Georg Schu¨lein (eds.), Life, Organisms, and Human Nature: New Perspectives on Classical German Philosophy (). Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda graciously allowed me to reuse material published as ‘Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ in Crisis and Critique . (). viii

Acknowledgements

ix

It is easy to take for granted the staff of the British Library, the descendant of the institution in which Marx himself carried out his most important work. I would like to thank them for their work, on which I have been almost absurdly reliant. Northeastern University London granted me a semester of research leave that freed up the time required for me to complete this book. The process of seeing the book from proposal to finished product was made extremely smooth by Hilary Gaskin and Abi Sears at Cambridge University Press. My sincere thanks to them both, to Stephanie Sakson for her peerless copyediting and to Balamuthukumaran Pasupathy for expertly overseeing the production process. I extend warm thanks to the two external readers consulted by the Press for their incisive, detailed and helpful reports. Last but the very opposite of least, without the unending support, wit and encouragement of my wonderful wife Holly none of this would have come to fruition. This book is for her.

Introduction

It has been thought that Marx’s intellectual project, culminating in the unfinished torso of Capital, is one that seeks to leave philosophy behind. It has also been thought, by contrast, that Marx sought to turn philosophy into something quite different from itself (a new and unprecedented ‘science’). It has been debated whether Marx is successful or unsuccessful in the moving away from, or beyond, philosophy that he allegedly attempts. Perhaps, it has been thought, despite Marx’s efforts to free himself from philosophy, vestiges of philosophy remain. In this book I argue that Marx’s project must be understood in a different way. It is not that Marx sought to abandon philosophy, but that he sought to actualize philosophy. To actualize philosophy is not to leave it behind, or to turn it into something else, but to make it for the first time into what it is. This book is an interpretation of Marx’s project of the actualization of philosophy. As such an interpretation, its task is to trace this project from his first announcement of it (in his early writings on ancient Greek philosophy) to his later work, and to show how he works progressively to make good on the injunction that philosophy shall be actualized. I argue that it is in Capital that we can finally see philosophy actualized along the lines he had been calling for from the first. That Marx’s great mature text does not contain philosophical doctrines, or argue from any set of philosophical principles, is a reflection of – rather than a challenge to – the status of the work as actualizing philosophy. For philosophy as the mere providing of doctrines or foundational principles is philosophy falling short of its actualization. To say that it is Marx who actualizes philosophy is to say that he not only stands in a line of philosophers, with Aristotle, Kant and Hegel as his predecessors. It is to propose that we should read him as advancing beyond those predecessors as a philosopher: his work constitutes a philosophical advance on these illustrious precursors. That is a general claim about 



Introduction

Marx’s relationship to previous philosophers. On a more specific front, the reading of Marx’s relationship to Hegel contained in what follows diverges sharply from what we tend to read about that relationship: Marx’s critique of Hegel, it will turn out, is far more radical than recent literature has accustomed us to think. Recent literature has both overplayed Hegel’s supposed anticipations of Marx and underplayed the depth of Marx’s critique of Hegel. If it is right that Marx shows us what it is to actualize philosophy, then a further consequence is that his project is of importance to our own time. Philosophy, in its mainstream, today finds itself grappling with the question of its ‘application’ to the ‘real’ world. Marx shows us that, and how, this question about ‘application’ is misplaced: for philosophy, actualized, the question of application does not so much as arise, since philosophy, actualized (or better, in its actualization), does not stand apart from the world in the manner presupposed by talk of ‘application’. Elsewhere in contemporary philosophy, outside its mainstream, a revival of absolute idealism – echoing Hegel – is being pursued. Another way this book can be understood is as advocating, in our own time, the actualization of this absolute idealist philosophy. As I try to show in this book, it is a short road from Hegel’s conception of philosophy to philosophy’s actualization, even if the travelling of this short road effects a dramatic transformation in what philosophy looks like. Likewise for the absolute idealism of today and its actualization. The actualization of philosophy will show itself to be the freeing of philosophy from constraints that it has imposed on itself, contrary to its own concept. For its own concept tells philosophy that it is not limited in terms of subject matter. Nor is it limited to a contemplative mode. To say that philosophy is not limited in terms of subject matter is to say that its subject matter suffers no delimitation, and so philosophy has no subject matter at all. As philosophy is actualized, then, the impression will – quite rightly and understandably – result that philosophy has evaporated, that philosophy is now nothing. But this was true of philosophy all along; its failure to let itself be thus nothing (or, to put it another way, everything) was a constraint it imposed on itself in contravention of its own concept. It follows that as philosophy is actualized, it will articulate itself into a host of exercises of enquiry, each of them susceptible of specific delineation in terms of its characteristic concerns, which will carry forward philosophy’s work. It will be the work of enquiry, and the specifically delineable topics of the enquiries, that will render philosophy other than nothing. Among these enquiries will be the critique of political economy, such as Marx

Rupture, Abandonment, Actualization



practised in his own later work. There will be countless others. This is as it should be. For philosophy is human thinking in its totality: comprehension as such. ‘Comprehension’ is here to be thought of not as involving a limitation to merely contemplative absorption, but as encompassing the object of practical thought; indeed, comprehension of the object of practical thought will count as comprehension κατ’ ἐξοχήν. A primary task for this book is to habituate us to a conceptual world that is foreign to us, but in which Marx was at home. Chief among the concepts to which we are to become reaccustomed are those of philosophy and actualization themselves. The effect of this exercise of conceptual relearning will be unsettling, given the world within which we are asking these questions: questions previously asked about Marx’s relationship to philosophy, and the answers given to them, will themselves start to look highly questionable. But it is not merely unsettling. It will also start to show that it is not that these questions are without meaning or urgency, but that their significance becomes apparent if we see them in the light of philosophy’s demand for its own actualization. It is by no means misplaced or silly to wonder whether Marx broke with philosophy, either by leaving it or by transforming it, for what Marx intends to do with philosophy does indeed involve a drastic change to received philosophy. The change, however, has the effect not of abandoning or transfiguring philosophy, but of bringing it into its own.

Rupture, Abandonment, Actualization Lacking the idea of actualization, we are bound to read Marx’s project in terms of a rupture with philosophy or an abandonment of philosophy. This is in keeping with Marx’s tendency, from about  onwards, to speak in pejorative terms of ‘philosophy’ and ‘philosophers’. According to Louis Althusser, Marx effects an ‘epistemological rupture’. Prior to the rupture, Marx is a philosopher: he subscribes to a Feuerbachian ‘humanism’. By means of the rupture, Marx brings into being a science that is entirely new and that could not have been foreseen from within any previously existing framework. (We might characterize this notion in terms of the putative new Marxian science resulting from a ‘paradigm shift’; to use this vocabulary would be apt, since Althusser’s notion of rupture shares with Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm shift a common ancestry in the work of Alexandre Koyré and Gaston Bachelard.) 

Althusser, ‘From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy’, in Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital.



Introduction

According to Daniel Brudney, Marx attempts to ‘leave philosophy’. As in Althusser’s story, in Brudney’s story Marx begins as a philosopher. But he comes to reject what Brudney takes to be an essential feature of philosophy: its making of ‘normative’ claims. Marx therefore attempts to leave philosophy in order to found a value-free science, a science free of such claims. But, despite his best efforts, Marx does not manage to extricate himself entirely from the business of making normative claims. He must somehow convince us, for instance, that alienation is a bad thing. That conviction can only be secured by means of normative claims. And so Marx fails to leave philosophy. Both Althusser and Brudney, in their very different ways, remain innocent of the conception of philosophy that Marx is working with, and thereby fail to see how it can be that Marx regards himself as bringing philosophy into its own. Althusser and Brudney are each of them right to notice a profound shift in Marx’s thinking. But this shift is to be characterized not in terms of an attempted rupture (successful, Althusser thinks) or abandonment (unsuccessful, Brudney thinks), but in terms of the coming into effect of the actualization that Marx had from the first been calling for. This involves no transformation in Marx’s conception of philosophy, or of his commitment to philosophy. For his conception of philosophy had implied from the start that it require its own actualization. What gets left behind, in the wake of philosophy’s actualization, is a deficient incarnation of philosophy that does not live up to its name – and it is at this deficient philosophy that Marx’s vituperative remarks about ‘philosophers’ are directed. By contrast with both Althusser and Brudney, Carol C. Gould argues that Marx was ‘a great systematic philosopher in the tradition of Aristotle, Kant and Hegel’. She adds that ‘Marx’s philosophical system is distinctive in that he develops it as a framework for his concrete social theory and his critique of political economy.’ Thereby, Gould continues, Marx’s work stands revealed as ‘a radical transformation of traditional philosophy’, a transformation ‘accomplished by means of Marx’s striking synthesis of  



Brudney, Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy. Brudney’s framing indicates that he does not begin from the conception of philosophy that Marx assumes (and is common to his predecessors Aristotle, Kant and Hegel). That conception does not feature a fact–value dichotomy of the kind that underlies Brudney’s experiencing of ‘normativity’ as a special feature attaching to a subset of philosophical claims. The point is made forcefully by Dieter Henrich when he writes: ‘There is certainly a transformation [Wandlung] in Karl Marx’s development. Nevertheless his path remained the same in unbroken continuity – indeed so much so that this transformation and its result must be understood as the consequence of his starting point’ (Henrich, ‘Karl Marx als Schu¨ler Hegels’, ).

Rupture, Abandonment, Actualization



systematic philosophy and social theory’. I agree with Gould that Marx transforms traditional philosophy – and that it is the philosophy of Aristotle, Kant and Hegel that he transforms. If I am right, however, the transformation is not to be understood as effected through a synthesis, as Gould has it, of philosophy with something else. It is the actualization of philosophy itself – Marx’s work in what is aptly called ‘social theory’ is not something added to this with which it is to be synthesized, but a constituent part of it. It may seem strange to say that Marx first makes philosophy into what it is. We do not tend to think in such terms. There is what something is; it is that, or it is not. And so philosophy before Marx – that is, what went under the name ‘philosophy’ in the centuries before he wrote – either is or is not philosophy, or is better or worse philosophy. This way of thinking allows in the question: When did Marx (or anyone else) first, then, ‘actualize’ philosophy? The way Marx thinks about actualization, however, blocks this question. Actualization is not a process: it is not a kinesis, but an energeia. That is, it does not follow a trajectory and thereby come to completion; its activity is ever-present. Accordingly, it is not that once upon a time philosophy was non-actual, awaiting its actualization at some later time. This will be relevant, too, when we consider what Marx has to say about the human being. There is something that we are as human beings that, he thinks, we fall short of if we are ruled by capital. This is not a claim about a state that we might achieve in future, but about an everpresent truth.  





Gould, Marx’s Social Ontology, xi. The case of Marx’s relationship to Kant is more complex than that of his relationship to Aristotle and Hegel. Marx read both Aristotle and Hegel extremely thoroughly. For his close engagement with Aristotle, see Carlo Natali, ‘Aristotele in Marx’ and ‘K. Marx lettore della Politica e dell’Etica Nicomachea (–)’. When Marx writes to his father that during an illness he ‘got to know Hegel from beginning to end’ (MEGA III.: /MECW : ), this is less of an exaggeration than might be assumed; he continued, from then on, an intense engagement with Hegel, documented in Chapters  and  below. It is less clear that Marx had deep first-hand familiarity with Kant’s texts. For a creative attempt to bring Kant and Marx into interplay, see Karatani, Transcritique. Kantian readings of Marx have often been associated with the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein, which caused a split within Marxist politics. See, however, the work of the most gifted of the Austro-Marxists, Max Adler. A sample from Adler, Kant und der Marxismus, available in English translation is Adler, ‘The Relation of Marxism to Classical German Philosophy’. See also Della Volpe, Logic as a Positive Science, and Colletti, Marxism and Hegel. I touch on some of the issues involved in Chapter  below. Compare seeing. There is not a process that follows upon my opening my eyes that terminates in a seeing. Seeing is an activity that is ever-present if I have my eyes open, if I am looking, if my ocular equipment is in order, and so on. For an excellent treatment of the distinction between energeia and kinesis in Aristotle, see Kosman, The Activity of Being. Theodor Adorno thus makes a category mistake when he says that the moment for philosophy’s actualization has been ‘missed’ (Negative Dialectics, ). There is no such moment.



Introduction

Philosophy It can be seen how it can be that Marx does not seek to break with philosophy – in either the way that Althusser proposes or the way that Brudney proposes – and that his transformation of philosophy is not a synthesis (as Gould proposes) but the actualization of philosophy, if we consider the conception of philosophy that Marx takes for granted. On this conception, philosophy has no subject matter, and is not a field of enquiry alongside or among others. It does not have a topic, in the way that, for instance, physics has a topic: nature. Philosophy, instead, is not some science among others, but science as such (‘the science’, or ‘science u¨berhaupt’). Philosophy, being the total science, cannot be some part of reality, since a part of reality cannot comprehend the whole of reality. It must instead be, somehow, all of reality. This is not, of course, equivalent to the (absurd) idea that a collection of philosophical doctrines or statements exhausts the contents of reality. Marx’s proposal to actualize philosophy is, then, the proposal for philosophy to free itself from a constriction through which it fails to be what it is. One of Marx’s most often quoted statements, the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, reads as follows: ‘The philosophers have thus far merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.’ The present book as a whole can be read as an exegesis of this statement. It might be thought, and the Thesis has often been read this way, that Marx here rejects philosophy, in favour of something else that will serve to change the world. Marx would seem to draw a contrast between what has been done in the past – by philosophers – and what is to happen henceforth. Since what the philosophers did fell foul of ‘the point’, one 







Ju¨rgen Habermas recalls that this is the traditional conception of philosophy in the European tradition (see ‘Wozu noch Philosophie?’ () in Philosophisch-politische Profile). This conception has recently been revived by Rödl, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity. Étienne Balibar has proposed that the mature Marx’s work is to be understood as opening out onto a field of multiple ‘philosophies’ (The Philosophy of Marx). This cannot be right if it is right, as I maintain here, that philosophy is total. If philosophy is total, so is philosophy actualized total. This rules out the idea of multiple philosophies. Hegel, the paradigmatic defender of this conception, nevertheless fell foul of his own prescription, as will be elaborated in the body of this work. Adorno puts the point as follows: ‘Hegel, despite his doctrine of the absolute spirit in which he included philosophy, knew philosophy as a mere element of reality, an activity in the division of labour, and thus restricted it’ (Negative Dialectics, ). A familiar version of the Thesis (a revision by Friedrich Engels) inserts the word ‘however’ (aber) as follows: ‘The philosophers have thus far merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it’ (Engels’s addition italicized). The introduction of the contrastive term ‘however’ seems to suggest more strongly than does Marx’s original version that changing the world involves a distancing from philosophy. Marx’s original and Engels’s revision can be compared at MEGA IV.:  (Marx) and I.:  (Engels); MECW :  (Marx) and :  (Engels).

Marx and Hegel



might presume that, according to Marx, some approach other than philosophy is now to be employed. But what Marx advocates is not the rejection of philosophy; it is the actualization of philosophy. In the light of philosophy actualized, mere interpretation of the world will show up as deficient. The deficiency lies not in philosophy, Marx thinks, but in philosophy as it has been practised thus far. To read the Eleventh Thesis in this way is to render intelligible Marx’s idea that, henceforth, philosophy shall be ‘praxis’. It has been widely recognized that praxis is of crucial importance, in some way to be specified, to Marx’s thought. It is striking, however, if one surveys the literature on Marx, just how much difficulty there has been arriving at a clear determination of what this means. It would seem highly desirable for Marx’s thought to be, somehow, intimately connected with, or orientated toward, praxis, since it is evident that he is invested in a project of radical social transformation. What understanding Marx’s project as the actualization of philosophy makes possible is a recognition that praxis is, for him, not a further add-on. Philosophy – that is, philosophy actualized – is practical; philosophy as contemplation is a privative, deficient falling away from this. It is not possible coherently to conceive of philosophy as theory, self-sufficient in itself, ‘standing over against’ the world. For there is no vantage point from which such a ‘sideways on’ conception of the relation between thought and reality could make sense. One way this can be described is as making good on Kant’s claims about the ‘primacy of the practical’. The ultimate vocation of thought is that it shall set itself to work (that it shall actualize itself, we may say) not in mere thought, but in the goal-directed action characteristic of intelligent, self-conscious beings – what we might call ‘thinking action’. This does not imply, of course, that philosophy (or thought) is never theoretical, but only that for it to be theoretical is for it to restrict itself.

Marx and Hegel I will consider in detail in the body of this work Marx’s relationship to the tradition against the background of which his effort to actualize philosophy 



Marx’s project of the actualization of philosophy thus opens up a gap between what will turn out to have been, as we might put it, ‘mere philosophy’ and philosophy in its actualization. From The German Ideology onwards, Marx will mark out such ‘mere philosophy’ as (putatively) ‘self-sufficient philosophy’ (selbstständige Philosophie); see, e.g., MEGA I.: /MECW : . Kant in numerous places distinguishes between theoretical philosophy (whose object is what is) and practical philosophy (whose object is what is to be). See the especially pregnant formulation in the Jäsche Logic: ‘Alles läuft zuletzt auf das Practische hinaus’ (‘Everything ultimately tends towards the practical’). [G. B. Jäsche,] Immanuel Kant’s Logik, /Kant, Lectures on Logic, .



Introduction

must be understood, and in particular the work of Aristotle and Hegel. Marx’s relations to this tradition are multifarious and deep-rooted. Here I want to make some general remarks about the relationship between Hegel and Marx, and the light in which the present study casts this relationship. It is well-known that Marx was deeply indebted to Hegel. Marx, indeed, continued to speak appreciatively of Hegel long after this had become deeply unfashionable. The present work takes Marx’s debt to Hegel extremely seriously. It, however, casts the relationship in a different light from what has become customary, since it takes Marx’s critique of Hegel to be more fundamental and radical than is often thought. Unfortunately Marx’s relationship to Hegel is often cast in simplistic terms, in terms of an ‘inversion’. Marx himself says that in Hegel the dialectic is ‘standing on its head’ (steht bei ihm auf dem Kopf). It is customary to go on to add the suggestion, on Marx’s behalf, that Hegel’s dialectic be ‘turned off its head, and placed on its feet’. The source of this commonly quoted addition, however, is not Marx, but Engels. That idea nicely fits the contrast between an idealism (‘on its head’) in Hegel and a materialism (‘on its feet’) in Marx. But it is a mistake to think that the contrast between Hegel and Marx can be captured in terms of a simple inversion. For one thing, as Althusser writes, ‘it is clear that to turn an object right round changes neither its nature nor its content by virtue merely of a rotation!’ For another thing, Marx himself goes on to specify not that Hegel’s dialectic must be ‘turned the right way up’, but that it must be turned inside out (Man muß sie umstu¨lpen), ‘in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell’. The image here is of a more complex procedure, as befits the problem that Marx has set himself. It is not at all obvious by what operation an idealist dialectic might be transformed into materialist dialectic, or what the supposed materialist dialectic that results from the inversion could look like. Hegel inherits from Kant 



  

See, in particular, the well-known remarks in the  Postface to the second edition of Capital, Vol. , where he speaks of Hegel as ‘that great thinker’ (K  (): /C : ). (The second edition bears the date  on its title page, even though the Postface was not written, and the book printed, until .) In the  Postface (K  (): /C : ). Marx is echoing a trope in Hegel, according to which philosophy makes us walk on our heads, or takes us into an ‘inverted world’. For a classic treatment, see Gadamer, ‘Hegel’s “Inverted World”’. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (MEGA I.: /MECW : ). Althusser, ‘On the Young Marx’, in For Marx, . See Fulda, ‘Thesen zur Dialektik als Darstellungsmethode’.

Marx and Hegel



the idea that dialectic engenders contradictions in thought. What happens to the contradictions of idealist dialectic as they become contradictions of materialist dialectic? Should this be understood as the conversion of contradictions in thought to contradictions in reality? How, then, is the idea of contradictions in reality even to be understood? Issues such as these, which prompt in turn the question of what is to be understood by ‘contradiction’ in the first place, were raised with admirable straightforwardness and thoroughness by German and Italian scholars in the s, but have since then found themselves buried under the vastly sophisticated edifice of subsequent literature. It now takes considerable determination to recover the appropriate naïveté on which such questioning thrived. I have said that this book takes Marx’s critique of Hegel to be more fundamental and radical than is often thought. This needs elaboration. When, in the s, authors such as Michael Theunissen, Manfred Frank or Lucio Colletti approached Hegel with a view to grappling with the difficult question of dialectic, they to varying degrees had the question of Marx’s dialectic in mind. Today the situation is different. Hegel has, in the meantime, undergone an extensive rehabilitation. Excuses need no longer be made for Hegel. Hegel had previously seemed to be an absurdly extravagant metaphysician, but could now be regarded as merely rendering more rigorous Kant’s project of ‘deducing’ the categories that are the conditions of possibility of experience. This rehabilitation is now often combined with the idea that Hegel was a social critic of a powerful kind – an idea already promoted by Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse earlier in the twentieth century. This means that it has now become standard to read Hegel’s defence of liberal monarchy coloured by medievalizing elements as if it offered – incredibly enough – a radical social theory anticipating Marx. Marx is thus left effectively no room to advance beyond Hegel. Part of the remit of this book is to help restore an earlier orthodoxy about Hegel. For all his radical impulses (especially in earlier work), it must be 







See especially Horstmann (ed.), Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels (); Fulda, Horstmann and Theunissen, Kritische Darstellung der Metaphysik (); Della Volpe, Logic as a Positive Science; Colletti, Marxism and Hegel; Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, ‘L’uso del termine “opposizione”’. As Henrich points out in his  lecture ‘Karl Marx als Schu¨ler Hegels’, it was often thought by earlier generations that the Hegelian origins of Marx’s thinking presented a problem to be sorted out in advance of a proper assessment of Marx, not a virtue or a source of intellectual credibility. To ‘deduce’ for Kant means to justify; this sense is carried over into Hegel’s approach, even as Hegel seeks to make dialectic systematic, in such a way as to render an understanding of ‘deduction’ as ‘inference’ appropriate for capturing his procedure. See Lukács, The Young Hegel, which (remarkably) portrayed Hegel as an atheist; Marcuse, Reason and Revolution. For critical commentary, see Colletti, Marxism and Hegel.



Introduction

recognized that for Hegel philosophy is retrospective and self-sufficient in ways that Marx will contest. If we fail to recognize this, we will struggle to understand not only Marx’s critique, but also Hegel himself. Too often, defenders of Hegel have slid from a justified resistance to readings of his political thought as jingoistically celebrating the Prussian state to a failure to acknowledge his explicit restriction of political philosophy to the retrospective exercise of recognizing the rational in the actual. As I argue in this book, Marx takes himself not just to criticize Hegel on details. Marx holds Hegel’s overall philosophical approach to be flawed. His conception of dialectic does not live up to its own remit: it collapses under its own weight, and finds itself in a situation analogous to that of diairesis, or Platonic ‘division’. It follows from this that projects attempting to ‘map’ Hegel’s Logic onto Capital are mistaken. In Capital Marx presents us with a correction of Hegelian dialectic, not a version of it.

Marx and the Young Hegelians In this work I take Marx’s critique of Hegel seriously. As a consequence, Marx emerges as, in some sense, a better Hegelian than any other of the Young Hegelians among whom he cut his intellectual teeth. For Marx grasps Hegel’s project at its roots as other Young Hegelians do not. Hegel aims at the unity of concept and actuality, but at the same time clings to a conception of philosophy as contemplative. Marx’s project of the actualization of philosophy seizes this nerve in Hegel. By contrast, a Young Hegelian such as Bruno Bauer appears to depart fairly radically from Hegel. Bauer replaces the Hegelian ‘Absolute Idea’ (roughly speaking, God) with human self-consciousness. His series of critiques of the Bible therefore take on a startling aspect. Where God had seemed to be the subject, now it is human beings. Bauer, however, imports the internal tension in Hegel’s commitments: the aspiration to the unity of concept and actuality, on the one hand, and a contemplative conception of philosophy, on the other. 

 

It has become customary to suggest that it is a questionable choice on Marx’s part to read Hegel in a ‘Neo-Platonic’ vein. (For a recent instance, see Abazari, Hegel’s Ontology of Power, .) In this book I try to redress the shift towards reading Hegel as if he were already Marx by taking seriously Marx’s reasons for reading Hegel as akin to a Neo-Platonist. Feuerbach, not without reason, called Hegel ‘the German Proclus’ (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, §; GW : /FB: ). For an elaboration of this point, see Henrich, ‘Karl Marx als Schu¨ler Hegels’. Bauer, Kritik der Geschichte der Offenbarung: Die Religion des alten Testamentes (); Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (); Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (–).

Marx and the Young Hegelians



For Bauer, the work of philosophy remains mere theory, carried out independently of activity in the world. The present study, in its defence of Marx’s project of the actualization of philosophy and his execution of it, works closely with Marx’s texts. It deliberately avoids a thematic approach widely adopted elsewhere. Such an approach encourages the idea that Marx offers us, for instance, a theory of ‘alienation’. But Marx does not present us with an array of theories, as if he were doing mere philosophy; he theorizes, but his theorizing is, from his introduction to radical socialism by Friedrich Engels in  on, driven by his overall practical project. While driven principally by engagement with primary texts, the book also builds on the large body of scholarship on Marx and the Young Hegelians. Given the thesis that it defends, however, it makes use of this scholarship in a way that points in the opposite direction to that in which much of that work tends. It is right that Marx shaped his views through close engagement with Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner, Moses Hess, Friedrich Engels and others. And his articulation of the actualization of philosophy can only be understood if the manner in which he works through what he takes from these thinkers is understood. But the literature has the general effect of reducing Marx’s stature by inflating his debts to other thinkers. This study, by contrast, seeks to bring out Marx’s superior originality and importance compared with each of these others, and to reveal him as a thinker of even greater range and power than he has often been acknowledged to be. A related feature of much literature on Marx is a tendency to understand him as passing through a series of stages. There is a Bauerian stage, followed by a Feuerbachian stage, and so on. I avoid reading Marx in this way. It is highly implausible, for one thing, that Marx was ever a convinced ‘Bauerian’, or even a convinced ‘Feuerbachian’ (although he did, for a time, overtly present himself as the latter). For another thing, Marx saw the instability in these positions; and this explains why he never held firmly onto any of them. Instead, I read Marx as progressing through an evershifting landscape, ‘settling accounts’ (to use his own phrase) with a vast array of influences as he goes. It is, accordingly, far more important to analyse the ways in which Marx, in a text such as the Paris Manuscripts, 

A particularly sophisticated example of the tendency that I resist is Gareth Stedman Jones’s biography, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. Stedman Jones’s tendency to downplay Marx’s originality, and to place him firmly within a nineteenth-century context that is foreign to us, serves to cut us off from the idea that Marx might continue to be relevant today.



Introduction

both adopts Feuerbachian ideas and already signals tensions with those ideas resulting from their inadequacies, than it is to try to pin down just what position he held at any one time. Marx’s thinking was constantly caught up in movement; there are no such fixed positions to be isolated and identified as we trace the development of his thought.

Marx’s Theory of History Throughout its treatment of Marx’s actualization of philosophy, this book will abstract away from Marx’s theory of history. This may seem not merely peculiar, but even perverse, since it will emerge that for Marx the work of philosophy, as it is actualized, is historical through and through. As a result, this book itself will appear deeply un-Marxist, and will even seem to perpetuate the project of self-sufficient philosophy that it aims to represent Marx as condemning. The character of the present study is, however, programmatic. It is a creature of an inevitably absurd type: a prolegomenon to a reading of Marx. If the claims presented here are to be accepted, then philosophers ought to follow Marx and carry out detailed historical investigations of the kind he himself pursued, to the exclusion of the promulgation of philosophical doctrines characteristic of traditional philosophy. But such work is not carried out in this book. There is another reason, however, for leaving Marx’s claims about history outside the scope of the present study. Marx believed that a study of history bears out that the economic-social formation distinctive of each historical epoch contained the seeds of the next. He also believed that in each historical epoch the remains of the preceding epoch were detectable. (Hence his comment that the anatomy of the human is a key to the anatomy of the ape.) These claims are too large to be evaluated here; they merit a separate study. The viability of the overall project of Capital does, however, crucially hinge on them. For Marx’s purposes, it had better be true that the envisioned proletarian seizure of the means of production built up by the capitalists will give birth to communist society – that is, a society that builds on capitalism rather than falls back behind it into tyranny. If Marx’s claims about history cannot be maintained, there will need to be some other reason than that which Marx provides for thinking this credible. To settle such matters would involve extraordinarily detailed and meticulous historical investigation of the kind that Marx helped, more than anyone, to promote. It is important to mention these matters here, 

MEGA II.: /MECW : .

The Actualization of Philosophy in the Here and Now



even though they cannot be treated in the present work, since it is one of the – for philosophers, sobering – lessons of the actualization of philosophy that the scrutiny of historical claims is something that philosophy, despite what it has traditionally told itself, cannot excuse itself from. Note that the large reservation entered here about Marx’s theory does not amount to a nervousness about a supposed historical determinism, whatever the object of such nervousness is meant to be. Instead, it is a reservation about a substantive claim Marx makes about the manner in which one social formation gives rise to the next. If that claim is, quite generally, true of the past, it will be true of the future; the question of whether it is true of the past is a substantive historical question. Mere philosophers are not in a position to solve it.

The Actualization of Philosophy in the Here and Now Philosophy today continually faces the question of its own ‘application’. How can philosophy make itself, or show itself to be, ‘applicable’ to the ‘real world’? To ask this question is already to have gone wrong. If philosophy is thought of the illimitable object, there is nothing for it to be other than thought as such. Philosophy is, then, our thought, the thinking of the worldly agents that we are. One might want to insist that philosophy is a delimited activity, among other thought-involving activities. But this is a mistake. There is no principled distinction to be made between thinking activities, other than in terms of their objects. And these objects cannot be anything other than specifications of the one, illimitable object of thought as such. The failure that underlies the question of philosophy’s ‘application’ is that of remaining stuck in a contemplative conception of philosophy, according to which philosophy stands over against the world, attempting to vindicate its credentials for (what is then thought of as) entry into the world. The aim should, instead, be to give the very obvious fact that we are already in the world its due. Much of what goes under the name of philosophy today is splintered into a seemingly unmanageable array of special enquiries. This splintering results from an abrogation of the thought that philosophy – or, equivalently, thought – is a unity. In contrast to these trends, Sebastian Rödl has articulated a defence of what he calls ‘absolute idealism’. Rödl’s absolute  

This very obvious fact is thematized in the work of the early Heidegger (Being and Time) and the later Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations). Rödl, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity.



Introduction

idealism, like the doctrine that Hegel propounds under that name, produces an irresolvable dualism. This is the dualism between a universal subject, on one side, and human individuals, on the other. Rödl’s absolute idealism sets up the thinker as divine. This book can be read as an offer to read Rödl’s absolute idealism in light of the way in which it falls short of the actualization that philosophy demands of itself. Anyone who takes seriously the idea of the actualization of philosophy will inevitably want to know what such actualization shall now look like. It is in our world that philosophy is to be actualized. And that is a world in which we live our lives through the perversion of capital in ways that Marx’s work brings home. The proper and serious question must be faced whether it really can be carried out, and in a way that does not bring with it the horrors committed under the banner of official Marxism in the twentieth century. My reading of the mature Marx, if it is correct, generates both a promise and a warning. Since this reading involves Marx’s actualization of philosophy generating specific claims, capable of truth or falsity, it promises to specify the path to be followed to communism. For the same reason, Marx’s claims run the risk of being wrong. Marx’s claims are not automatically correct – not even if one retreats to some supposed sufficiently general level. This is a lesson that needs to be relearned today by those who declare themselves in favour of Marx.

Outline of the Argument In Chapter , I begin from Marx’s calls for the ‘actualization of philosophy’ in his earliest writings (his Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy and his Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophies of Nature). I show that Marx at this stage already recognizes the problematic nature of two opposing approaches to the ‘immediate realization’ of philosophy that he finds in his environment – that of the ‘liberal party’ and that of ‘positive philosophy’. The liberal party seeks to change the world by means of critique, but finds itself impotent to effect change; positive philosophers affect a stance of mere recording of the world as it is, but find that their attempt at mere receptivity turns over into critique. What underlies these two tendencies, and their dialectical turning over into each other (critique turns over into passivity; passivity turns over into critique), is a picture of the relation of thought to reality that must be overcome. Overcoming this picture points the way to what the genuine actualization of philosophy will look like, by which the oscillation between the attempts at immediate realization will be stilled.

Outline of the Argument



In Chapters  and , I turn to Marx’s unpublished Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. This is an important text that has been understudied. In Chapter , I outline the argument that Marx mounts against Hegel in his attempts to clarify his divergence from him by means of the examination of a stretch of a specific text – a series of paragraphs in Philosophy of Right dealing with the state. Here it is important that Marx’s critique of Hegel thinks along with Hegel insofar as Marx endorses the aspiration to arrive at an organic theory of the state. In Chapter , I examine Marx’s complaint that Hegel’s procedures in the Philosophy of Right are philosophically defective. Marx underwrites, again, Hegel’s aspiration to deliver the ‘logic of the state’. But, he claims, Hegel fails. Hegel has set out to provide a self-generating logic that, at the same time, is the logic of empirical reality. But, among other problems, for such a self-generating logic to show itself to be the logic of empirical reality involves it, in contravention of its own supposed methodology, in reaching out over itself into empirical reality in order to secure the specific logical ‘transitions’ in play. So, in effect, Hegel’s self-generating logic replicates the defects of Plato’s ‘method of division’ (diairesis) pointed out by Aristotle. Thus far, Marx has been showing how it is that Hegel’s philosophy fails to be its own actualization. This philosophy sets itself the task of being the unity of concept and actuality, but remains trapped in the concept. In Chapter , I examine Marx’s so-called Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of  (the ‘Paris Manuscripts’). This is, again, an unpublished text. The text represents a complex theoretical situation. On the one hand, Marx here takes himself to be guided by what he regards as Feuerbach’s ‘theoretical revolution’, through which Hegel’s philosophy is converted from an idealism into an anthropologism. According to Feuerbach’s supposed, self-proclaimed revolutionizing of Hegel’s philosophy, ‘the human’ takes the place of the Idea, and the subject– object relation is conceived of as the human–nature relation. At the same time there is an insistence that human beings are not just one universal subject but are distinct, embodied individuals. Marx takes on this unstable set of thoughts with a strenuous enthusiasm. He combines what he takes on from Feuerbach, however, with a newfound occupation with radical socialism and communism. This imports into the picture he takes over from Feuerbach a historical dimension inspired by his reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology that challenges the ahistoricism in Feuerbach.  

A significant exception to this neglect is the work of Galvano Della Volpe and his students. Hegel says that the Idea is the unity of concept and actuality in the course of The Science of Logic’s treatment of Dasein (TWA : /SL: ).



Introduction

In Chapter , I examine a series of texts in which Marx works to wrest himself free from the structure common to absolute idealism and Feuerbach’s ‘absolute anthropologism’ (to borrow Louis Althusser’s phrase). Throughout these texts (The Holy Family, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy) Marx, in part in collaboration with Engels, works to challenge the supposed ‘self-sufficiency’ of philosophy. In The German Ideology this challenge starts to transcend the framework that idealism and anthropologism share, by working out what has become known as ‘historical materialism’. Marx thereby joins together what Feuerbach had found himself forced to hold apart: history and materialism. Through historical materialism, Marx has managed to recover the Hegelian dialectic (extruded by Feuerbach in his inversion of idealism into anthropologism) and imbue it with its genuinely historical character, as Hegel had not been able to. Marx now, then, puts himself in a position to make good on the actualization of philosophy. Through the development of historical materialism, Marx will start to work out how to deliver the ‘specific logic of the specific object’ he had already advocated in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. There is an irony in this development, in that it is only in Capital, a work dealing with a constricted subject matter that seems to have little to do with philosophy as traditionally conceived, that Marx manages to open out philosophy. The work, to be sure, restricts itself to the topic of capitalism. The restriction in topic is not, however, a restriction of philosophy itself. As philosophy actualizes itself, it is to make good on its claim to articulate itself into special sciences, pursuing highly distinct topics. Furthermore, it may well be that if Marx had not been held back by ill health and by the exigencies of participation in the communist movement, he would have carried his work in other branches of science further than he did. In Chapters  and  I examine a strand of argument extracted from Capital Volume . This pair of chapters echoes the structure of the earlier pair, Chapters  and . I begin, in Chapter , by exhibiting the strand of argument, in part to exemplify Marx’s manner of arguing. It is important, here, to see that Marx really does mount an argument that he has traditionally been understood as making, although more recent interpretations have suggested that such traditional readings are excessively naïve. This argument concerns the actual working of the capitalist system. It is not merely a critique of bourgeois economic categories, although it is also that. In Chapter  I show that what Marx is doing, when he argues in the way I have outlined in Chapter , is, by his lights, genuine dialectic – to be

Outline of the Argument



contrasted with Hegel’s failed attempt at dialectic. The dialectic is driven by ‘real contradictions’; at the same time, it at every turn respects the Principle of Non-Contradiction. As is true of this strand of philosophy in its actualization and of any other, practice drives theory. What drives the theory is the overthrow of capitalism – the genuine historical movement on which, Marx thinks, the proletariat is embarked. In the final chapter, I consider the relevance of Marx’s project of the actualization of philosophy for our own time. Philosophy, in our time, would seem to need to justify itself by demonstrating how it can be applied to reality (the so-called real world). To engage in such justification is to have failed to grasp what philosophy is. Philosophy is not some discipline among others, defined by its restricted subject matter. It has no such subject matter. Neither is it a mere canon of reasoning, for philosophy itself understands. The power of philosophy is precisely that, when it does not suffer the constriction of setting itself apart from the world, it is our thinking without limit.

 

Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

It is in his earliest philosophical writings, Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy and Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, that Marx first speaks of the actualization of philosophy. In the Notebooks, the idea is presented by means of the colourful image of the ‘carnival of philosophy’ that must ensue when philosophy ‘has sealed itself off to form a consummate, total world’. In the Difference, Marx speaks both of the Realisirung (realization) and of the Verwirklichung (actualization) of philosophy. The context is a highly original project in the history of ancient philosophy that is closely tied to Hegel’s version of that history but seeks to make a significant advance beyond it. The focal interest of this chapter will be Marx’s mobilization, and extremely subtle discussion, of the notion of the ‘actualization of philosophy’ itself, which occurs in a long endnote to the Difference. It will take some time to work up to that discussion. Although the endnote has survived, the chapter to which it was attached has been lost. Since the endnote discusses the intellectual situation of Marx’s own time but was clearly intended to bring out an analogy with the ancient context with which the body of the text itself dealt, interpretation of it – in particular in relation to Marx’s larger project in the Difference – has to remain conjectural. This issue is connected to a larger set of problems concerning the interpretation of the Difference and the Notebooks that were preparatory to it. Marx considerably narrowed his project from the Notebooks to the Difference. And in the Difference, it seems hard to discern whether Marx endorses or rejects the philosophy of Epicurus, and similarly hard to discern whether he is writing as an idealist or a materialist. These issues

 

I cite the Notebooks as follows: MEGA IV.: –/MECW : –. I cite the Difference as follows: MEGA I.: –/MECW : –. MEGA IV.: –/MECW : .



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy



have bedevilled commentators. Part of the interest of Marx’s project, however, is that he neither endorses nor rejects the philosophy of Epicurus outright; rather, he praises Epicurus for accomplishing an insight while condemning his failure to hold onto it. Again, in presenting a thoroughly idealist working-out of the basic idea of atomism, he is seeking to overcome the dichotomy between idealism and materialism. Once it is understood that Marx pursues this (by the lights of commentators) unexpected approach, much greater sense can be made of the overall project of the Difference. In other ways, however, it remains a perplexing text, not least because it has not come down to us fully intact. Marx’s discussion of the actualization of philosophy in these texts still takes an immature form. Nevertheless, it is important that Marx’s concern to actualize philosophy is not something that can be said to emerge at some later moment, as if actualization were a kind of rupture, but accompanies him from his very first philosophical writings. To insist on this is not to suggest that these early works contain a premonition of the method or doctrines of the later Marx, as has been suggested by commentators; precisely not. There is much disagreement in the scholarly literature on what Marx is up to in these texts. There is widespread agreement, however, that Marx’s choice of topic is prompted by an analogy between his own conjuncture in the history of philosophy and a conjuncture in the history of ancient philosophy. The idea here is that the Epicureans (and also the Stoics and Sceptics) stood in a relation to Aristotle analogous to the relation in which the successors of Hegel stood to Hegel. Aristotle had produced a ‘total’ philosophy that could not be further developed: it could just be elaborated further (as Theophrastus extended Aristotle’s biological research within the framework his master had set out). Similarly with Hegel. This meant that Hegel’s successors, like Aristotle’s, were faced with an existential question concerning how to carry on in the face of such a ‘total’ philosophy. It is 





As Martin McIvor has commented, the Difference ‘has given rise to an extraordinarily diverse array of differing interpretations, one might even say, a near-exhaustive matrix of just about every logical possibility’ (‘The Young Marx and German Idealism’, ). Gary Browning claims that ‘Marx’s mature explanation of capital follows a course charted in the dissertation’s discussion of Democritus and Epicurus’ (‘Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation’, ). Others are concerned to claim that Marx’s doctoral dissertation already contains a materialism associated with his later work. According to John L. Stanley, ‘the various critics have all underestimated the materialism of the dissertation’ (Mainlining Marx, ); John Bellamy Foster speaks of Marx’s ‘own emerging materialist outlook’ (Marx’s Ecology, ). Versions of this story are told in, e.g., Sannwald, Marx und die Antike; McLellan, Marx Before Marxism; Rosen, Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx; Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism.



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

often said that Marx took over this problematic from a group of Hegel’s successors called the ‘Young Hegelians’, in particular Bruno Bauer, and that the Difference is an exercise in Bauer’s ‘philosophy of selfconsciousness’. But there has been little effort to spell out how exactly what Marx is doing constitutes a contribution to such a Bauerian ‘philosophy of self-consciousness’. It is also sometimes said that Hellenistic philosophy was important for Bauer himself. But there seems, on closer examination, to be little evidence of sustained engagement with Epicurus by Bauer or other Young Hegelians except for a passing reference in Marx’s friend Carl Friedrich Köppen’s book on Frederick the Great (a book Marx cites in the Foreword to the Difference). For Marx, what is ultimately instructive about Epicurus are his failures in light of his far-reaching vision. Epicurus has it within his grasp to show how philosophy could actualize itself as it emerges from a nodal point in which it is held together as a concrete totality (as had been in the case in Aristotle). Instead, he retreats into subjectivity. We do not know what Marx said in the missing chapter to which the crucial endnote I will discuss in this chapter was attached. But what becomes apparent from an attentive reading of that endnote is that Marx already, at this stage, recognized that whereas the attempts at ‘immediate realization’ to which a nodal point inevitably gives rise remain caught in a ceaseless dialectic, the genuine actualization of philosophy involves overcoming the thought–world dichotomy itself.

Marx’s Project in the Notebooks and Difference Marx’s work in the Difference lays sufficient claim to originality and importance as a mere academic exercise, dealing with, as he says, a ‘heretofore unsolved problem in the history of Greek philosophy’ – that of the relation 



‘A more profound indication of their [the Hellenistic systems’] connection with Greek life can be found in the essay of my friend Köppen, Friedrich der Grosse und seine Widersacher’ (MEGA I.: / MECW : ). It is often pointed out that Köppen’s book is dedicated to Marx, in order to emphasize its apparent importance for the project of the Difference. Köppen’s commentary on Epicurean philosophy, however, seems to be confined to the following statement: ‘Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism are the nerve-muscles [Nerven-Muskel] and intestinal systems [Eingeweidesysteme] of the ancient organism, whose immediate, natural unity conditioned the beauty and virtue of antiquity, and fell apart with the perishing of the latter’ (Friedrich der Grosse, ). MEGA I.: /MECW : . There is a pseudo-question in the vicinity here, namely, whether Marx intended his study of Greek philosophy to be a scholarly exercise or a contribution to a contemporary debate (as if these options were exclusive). It is admittedly frustrating that, in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle in which Marx comments on his motivations for the project, there is a lacuna

Marx’s Project in the Notebooks and Difference



between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. Marx, however, has far more in his sights than this relatively narrow problem. In the Foreword to the Difference he speaks of a larger project, never carried out, that would ‘present in detail the cycle of Epicurean, Stoic and Sceptic philosophy in their relation to the whole of Greek speculation’. There is a narrowing of focus from the preparatory Notebooks to the text of the Difference. This narrowing is not that from Marx’s announced wider project taking in all three Hellenistic schools to the topic of the Difference, as is sometimes claimed. The Notebooks were themselves already narrowed to Epicurean philosophy: the surviving notebooks all bear ‘Epikuräische Philosophie’ on their title pages in Marx’s hand (except Notebooks V and VI, whose title pages are lost), and contain little mention of Stoicism and Scepticism. The narrowing from the topic of the Notebooks to that of the Difference, as Marx points out in the text of the Difference, is from a wider consideration of Epicurus and his relation to previous Greek philosophy, as in the Notebooks, to an examination of this relation by means of the ‘microscopic’ examination of the difference between his philosophy of nature and that of his ancestor Democritus. The texts are fragmentary in a number of ways that are salient to their interpretation. The version of the Difference that has come down to us is not the text that Marx submitted in absentia as his doctoral dissertation to the University of Jena in April , but a fair copy in an unknown hand (with corrections in Marx’s hand) from which two chapters of part  are missing. Judging by their titles, these missing chapters made an important contribution to the overall argument – chapter : ‘General Difference in Principle Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature’; chapter : ‘Result’. (The endnotes to these chapters have, however, survived.) In the case of the Notebooks, it would appear that the seven notebooks that have



 

just where the apparently crucial word would have been: ‘[Later] philosophy – Epicurus (him in particular), Stoa, and Scepticism – [I] had made the object of special study, but more out of . . . than philosophical interest’ (Marx to Lassalle,  December , MEGA III.: /MECW : ). However, whatever else Marx’s interest was in the project, his philosophical analysis of ancient Greek philosophy is crucial in realizing it. MEGA I.: /MECW : . He again speaks of a project encompassing all three Hellenistic schools in a draft preface for a planned (but never executed) publication of the Difference: ‘The treatise that I herewith submit to the public is an old piece of work and was originally intended as part of a comprehensive exposition of Epicurean, Stoic, and Sceptic philosophy’ (MEGA I.: / MECW : ). See, e.g., Markovits, Marx dans le jardin d’Épicure, . The Appendix mentioned in the Foreword to the Difference (MEGA I.: /MECW : ) and on its contents page (MEGA I.: /MECW : ) is also missing, although endnotes to Part I of the Appendix (which consisted of two Parts) have survived.



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

come down to us represent Marx’s earliest work on ancient philosophy, in which he begins to develop his approach to Epicurus through a combination of excerpts and reflections of his own. These can be dated to the period early  to early . But this leaves another year until Marx submits his dissertation to the University of Jena, during which period it seems likely he produced further notebooks that are now lost (including, at the very least, material on Democritus similar in nature to the preparatory material on Epicurus contained in the Notebooks that we see reworked in the Difference). A further important consideration is that we know that Marx in the period for which notebooks are lacking was working on a study of Hegel’s Logic. This may help to explain the considerable development that occurs from the Notebooks to the Difference: in the latter text, we are presented with a dialectical reading of Epicurus’ atomism that goes beyond anything found in the Notebooks. Nevertheless, an assessment of the precise nature of Marx’s engagement with Hegel’s Logic in this period has to remain conjectural. For this reason, my approach will be to connect Marx’s reading of Epicurus’ atomism with Hegel’s Logic only in a general way, rather than attempting to ‘map’ it onto specific stretches of the Logic. What is clearer than its relation to Hegel’s Logic is the relation Marx’s texts bear to Hegel’s history of philosophy. According to Hegel, the two primary ‘determinations’ of Epicurus’ philosophy are, first, his systematicity and, second, the prime importance he gives to the sophos (sage). Marx, as we shall see, follows Hegel closely in – unusually – regarding Epicurus as a systematic philosopher. In this he opposes the idea that Epicurus was a syncretic philosopher whose thought merely threw together Democritean physics and Cyrenaic morality. The idea, however, is that examining Epicurus in this Hegelian spirit will allow Marx to accord him a higher value than Hegel does. Again, Marx takes seriously the role of the sophos: the Notebooks, as we shall see, contain attempts to trace the history of the sophos back to the beginning of Greek thought with Thales. Concern with the sophos is restricted, however, to the Notebooks; it lies outside the ‘microscopic’ treatment afforded by the Difference.  



See the commentary at MEGA IV.: . Bauer to Marx,  December , MEGA III.: . Whenever I leave mentions of Hegel’s Logic capitalized but unitalicized, I intend to refer, indifferently, to the two parallel expositions of this part of the system that he provides (his magnum opus The Science of Logic (–), and the first part of his Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (first edition ) – likewise entitled Science of Logic). Marx here follows Hegel in opposition to the more widely held view of Heinrich Ritter, Christian August Brandis and Friedrich Schleiermacher (see the commentary at MEGA I.: , and the references there).

Hegel and Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy



Hegel and Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy Before turning to the reconstruction of Epicurus’ philosophy, and of its advances over that of Democritus, which forms the main focus of the extant texts, we need to consider Marx’s more general treatment of the history of ancient Greek philosophy. This general treatment is heavily indebted to Hegel. Marx is explicit about his high esteem for Hegel’s history of philosophy, ‘from which alone the history of philosophy can in general be dated’. Throughout the Notebooks and the Difference a primary concern of Marx’s is to revise and improve on Hegel’s history of ancient Greek philosophy. Effectively, Marx, first, wants to take Hegel at his word when he claims that the entirety of the history of philosophy can be rationally comprehended as the unfolding of the Idea. He will, he thinks, implement this approach more rigorously than Hegel himself had done. In so doing, he will demonstrate how Epicurus’ philosophy can be read as a proper conceptual development of the philosophy that preceded him (i.e., of Plato and Aristotle), rather than as a falling back behind Plato and Aristotle into a mixture of Democritean and Cyrenaic elements. Second, Marx will take seriously Hegel’s notion that there are ‘nodal points’ (Knotenpunkte) in the history of philosophy. In these nodal points the strands constituted by previous philosophies, previously held apart (or kept, in Hegel’s terminology, ‘abstract’), are held together in a concrete unity. He will seek to explain the phenomenon of Hellenistic philosophy (and, analogously, that of post-Hegelian philosophy) in terms of what must issue from such nodal points. To turn first to Marx’s general appropriation of Hegel’s approach, we see this reflected both in methodological commitments expressed in the Notebooks and in extended passages in which he gives his own markedly Hegelian narrative of the development of ancient Greek philosophy. On the methodological side, in Notebook VII Marx makes clear that the task of historians of philosophy is to extract the conceptual development that drives philosophy, purifying this of its external manifestations: Philosophical historiography is not concerned either with comprehending the personality, be it even the spiritual personality of the philosopher as, in   

MEGA I.: –/MECW : –. Marx was familiar with Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy as published by his student Michelet in  (Vols.  and ) and  (Vol. ). Cf. MEGA I.: /MECW : .



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy a manner of speaking, the focus and the image of his system, and still less with indulging in psychological hair-splitting and point-scoring. Its concern is to distinguish in each system the determinations themselves, the actual crystallizations pervading the whole system, from the proofs, the justifications in argument, the self-presentation of the philosophers as they know themselves; to distinguish the silent, persevering mole of real philosophical knowledge from the voluble, exoteric, variously behaving phenomenological consciousness of the subject which is the vessel and motive force of those elaborations.

In two passages in the Notebooks, Marx sketches his own version of such an account for the history of ancient Greek philosophy as a whole. The first such passage, in Notebook II, interrupts Marx’s excerpts from Plutarch on Epicurus and provides a long historical digression on the role of the sophos (‘sage’) in Greek philosophy. A shorter historical passage, which takes up again some of the elements of the Notebook II passage, occurs in Notebook V. Marx’s history of ancient philosophy as outlined in Notebook II charts the fortunes of nous, which was at first immersed in substance, before managing to detach itself, and finally becoming hypostatized in its own right. In the beginning, philosophers were immersed in the substance of the cosmos and the substance of ethical life. For them nous was nothing but an oracle of nature. They were ‘unreflective, naïve’, ‘living trustfully within ethical reality’. The Pythagoreans, who had ‘number’ as their ‘principle’, developed an inner life, but remained intermediate between this new ideality and philosophers’ previous sheer trustful immersion in the ethical community. But with Anaxagoras, ideality became the supreme principle as nous took on its own reality, becoming the ‘non ens of the natural’. This reversal, still only potential in Anaxagoras, is fully realized in the Sophists and in Socrates. ‘Now it is ideality itself which, in its immediate form, that of subjective spirit, becomes the principle of philosophy.’ Whereas the earlier sages absorbed substance into themselves (including ethical and political reality), ‘it is now, on the contrary, ideality itself, pure abstraction which has come to be for itself, that appears in face of substance; subjectivity, which establishes itself as the principle of  



 MEGA IV.: /MECW : . MEGA IV.: –/MECW : –. MEGA IV.: –/MECW : –. The editors of MEGA have convincingly argued that MEW (which is followed in this respect by MECW) reversed the order of Notebooks V and VI, which lack title pages. I here follow the order established in MEGA.  MEGA IV.: /MECW : . MEGA IV.: /MECW : .

Hegel and Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy



philosophy’. Substance now, as Marx puts it, ‘loses itself in the subject’, as exemplified by Socrates. Socrates is concerned with determination of the good, as well as determination of what is, but this determining remains abstract. When in Plato this determination becomes concrete, it is, however, evacuated into a separate realm, the realm of the Forms, ‘hovering over’ the world. ‘The determination of this world and its organisation in itself is therefore to the philosopher himself a beyond, the motion has been removed from this world.’ Marx now quotes Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s Forms as motionless, but still requiring something to set them in motion. The Notebook V passage resumes, in more compressed form, a portion of the narrative of the Notebook II passage, including specific textual resonances. Notebook V reprises the idea in Notebook II about nous taking on its own life in Anaxagoras, becoming ‘objective in the daimon of Socrates’ and then ‘ideal’ in Plato, so that ‘νοῦς expands itself into a realm of ideas’. What is new in Notebook V is the importance ascribed to the Hegelian thesis that the development of philosophy involves, at certain junctures, Knotenpunkte (‘nodal points’). At such nodal points, the usual development – the succession of philosophical systems – is interrupted, because a range of positions, previously only put forward severally and in an abstract manner, come to be held together in a concrete unity. Hegel himself had given Plato’s philosophy as a chief example of such a comingtogether of previous philosophies in a Knotenpunkt: Plato’s dialogues are not to be considered as if their aim were to put forward a variety of philosophies, nor as if Plato’s were an eclectic philosophy that emerges from them; it forms rather the node [Knoten] in which these abstract and one-sided principles have become truly united in a concrete fashion. In the general representation of the history of philosophy, . . . such points of union, in which the true is concrete, must occur in the onward course of philosophical development.. . . It is in this way that Plato’s philosophy shows itself to be a totality of the Idea: his contains the principles of others in itself.

While Hegel here focuses on Plato, the point should be interpreted as applying to Plato and Aristotle together as the most ‘speculative’     

 MEGA IV.: /MECW : . MEGA IV.: /MECW : .  MEGA IV.: /MECW : . Aristotle, Metaphysics Α , b. Compare, e.g., the ‘non ens of the natural’ at MEGA IV.: /MECW :  and the ‘not-being of the world’ at MEGA IV.: /MECW : . MEGA IV.: /MECW : . Hegel, Werke : –/LHP II: – (translation modified).



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

philosophers of antiquity. For Hegel, it is a mistake to think of Plato and Aristotle as ‘opposed’; in Aristotle, Plato’s speculative philosophy is raised to its highest power. Hegel contends that Epicurus’ philosophy must be understood as a falling back behind the Knotenpunkt constituted by the speculative philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Marx offers a different reading. Taking seriously the idea that the Knotenpunkt is a concrete totality, Marx takes it that this totality requires its own ‘release’ back into the world. Thereby it gives rise to something new rather than a mere reversion to the Knotenpunkt’s ancestors. According to Marx, Epicureanism, Stoicism and Scepticism together go to constitute the ‘philosophy of self-consciousness’ that issues from the Knotenpunkt. In the Difference he assures us that ‘these systems in their totality form the complete structure of self-consciousness’ – a claim he never makes good on. Marx lends considerable importance to the notion of Knotenpunkte in the Notebook V passage. He draws an explicit parallel between the Knotenpunkt constituted by the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, in ancient philosophy, and that of Hegel, in his own time. As he simply puts it: ‘The same now with Hegel’s [philosophy].’ The notion of the Knotenpunkt explains, he says, not only ‘how after Aristotle a Zeno [of Citium], an Epicurus, even a Sextus Empiricus could appear’ (i.e., a Stoic, an Epicurean and a Sceptic) but also how ‘after Hegel[,] attempts, most of them abysmally indigent, could be made by more recent philosophers’. At the Knotenpunkt, ‘philosophy, which has expanded itself into a world [die zur Welt sich erweitert hat], turns itself against the world of appearance’. Marx notes that there is something inherently paradoxical about  

 

 Hegel, Werke : /LHP II: –. MEGA I.: /MECW : . The passage is plausibly taken, judging by Marx’s effort to translate this portion of his own text into Latin, to be a draft passage for the dissertation that Marx had planned to submit in Berlin before settling on the plan of submitting it in Jena, where it could be examined in absentia (see Marx’s correspondence with Bauer, MEGA III.: ). In Berlin, unlike Jena, a Latin dissertation was necessary (and the oral defence was also required to be in part in Latin). In the Latin passage (omitted from MECW), Marx connects this notion of Knotenpunkte in the history of philosophy with that of Knotenlinien (‘nodal lines’) exploited by Hegel in the passage on ‘Measure’ in his Science of Logic (‘a Hegelio “Knotenlinien” dicta’, MEGA IV.: ). It is difficult to decipher, from this cursory allusion in a draft text, how exactly Marx envisaged the connection between Knotenpunkte and Knotenlinien. But he makes the allusion to Hegel’s logic of ‘Measure’ explicit when he goes on to write: ‘He who does not acknowledge this historical necessity must be consistent and deny that men can live at all after a total philosophy, or he must hold that the dialectic of measure as such is the highest category of the self-knowing spirit’ and fall into ‘measureless pretension’ (MEGA IV.: /MECW : –). Note that the logic of Measure is the culmination of Hegel’s Doctrine of Being; to regard it as the ‘highest category’ is effectively to block the transition to the Doctrine of Essence.  MEGA IV.: /MECW : . MEGA IV.: /MECW : . MEGA IV.: /MECW : .

Marx’s Dialectical Reading of Epicurus’ Atomism



the idea of philosophy ‘expanding itself’ to be a world, for, fully expanded, it must then take itself to be the world, that is, all of reality – and that reality must include its own relation to philosophy within it. As a result it splits itself into multiple manifestations; in an evocative image Marx employs, what results is the ‘carnival of philosophy’ (Fastnachtszeit der Philosophie), in which philosophy must ‘wear character masks’. We will turn below to Marx’s handling of this paradox and to the question of how, precisely, philosophy is conceived of here as, so to speak, confronting the world, when we consider the further development of this theme in the important endnote to the Difference. For now, it is clear that Epicureanism (among other philosophies) emerges from the Knotenpunkt so as to release what is tied up in it. Marx already signals in the Notebooks that the emergence from a Knotenpunkt can issue in misfortune as well as fortune. Misfortune is indeed what resulted in the post-Aristotelian case. On the whole, Hellenistic philosophy is an ‘unhappy and iron epoch’ (a reference to the last of Hesiod’s ‘Five Ages of Man’): ‘the spirit of the time, the spiritual monad, sated in itself, ideally formed in all aspects in itself, is not allowed to recognize any reality which has come to being without it’. There is a fortunate element within this misfortune: ‘the subjective form, the modality in which philosophy, as subjective consciousness, stands to reality’. But although philosophy is here rendered practical, its practicality is deficient, since it takes the form of a retreat from the world: ‘the moth, when the universal sun has gone down, seeks the lamplight of the private individual’. We will turn below to the specific account Marx gives of the combination of fortune and misfortune in Epicurus’ thought. What we have seen, for now, is that Marx’s offer to improve on Hegel’s history of ancient philosophy relies on his taking seriously Hegel’s own conception of Knotenpunkte.

Marx’s Dialectical Reading of Epicurus’ Atomism In order to get clearer on the place of Epicurus in Marx’s historical narrative and, relatedly, the senses in which he intends to extol Epicurus, on the one hand, and to criticize him, on the other, we must attempt to reconstruct Marx’s dialectical reading of Epicurus’ atomism. As we will see, Marx’s own stance on Epicurus emerges directly from this reading. 

MEGA IV.: /MECW : .



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

In Notebook I, we see Marx beginning his study of Epicurus, unsurprisingly, with excerpts from Diogenes Laertius, whose Lives of the Eminent Philosophers provides the largest extant bulk of quotation from Epicurus’ writings. From there on he excerpts Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch, Lucretius, Seneca, Stobaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Cicero. Whereas Marx can still write in Notebook IV that ‘it goes without saying that but little use can be made of Lucretius’, he soon comes to see Lucretius as the most philosophically insightful source on Epicurus’ philosophy. Marx’s reading, not least due to the emphasis it puts on the ‘swerve’ (clinamen) of the atom, for which Lucretius is the principal source, will be distinctively Lucretian in flavour. (This is one way in which Marx’s reading of Epicurus diverges from that of Hegel, who makes no use of Lucretius in interpreting Epicurus. ) In part  of the Difference, Marx is concerned to show, contra a received view that he finds in the ancient sources, that Epicurus is no mere plagiarist of Democritus’ atomism. According to Marx, the two philosophers are opposed on a range of fundamental issues. Democritus is an empiricist sceptic, Epicurus a dogmatist. For Democritus sense perceptions are subjective, for Epicurus they are objective. Democritus restlessly searches for causes, where Epicurus retreats into tranquillity. For Democritus, everything happens of necessity, whereas Epicurus allows for chance. Part  of the Difference sets out Epicurus’ philosophy of nature in detail, so as to show how it advances beyond that of Democritus. Here Marx elaborates his distinctively dialectical reading of Epicurus. Epicurus’ atomism is portrayed as a dialectical working out of Democritus’ basic idea (so as to produce an appreciation of that idea of which Democritus himself remains completely innocent). This interpretation is, as Elizabeth Asmis 

 



 

It has been noted that Marx does an extraordinarily impressive job working with ancient materials first-hand. See the appreciative remarks from two leading Epicurus scholars of different periods: Bailey, ‘Karl Marx on Greek Atomism’, and Asmis, ‘Tribute to a Hero’. MEGA IV.: /MECW : . See, e.g., the following comments in the Notebooks: ‘Lucretius, fresh, keen, poetic master of the world, differs from Plutarch, who covers his paltry ego with the snow and ice of morality’; ‘We shall also see how infinitely more philosophically Lucretius grasps Epicurus than does Plutarch’ (MEGA IV.: /MECW : , ). The only sources we have for the swerve are Lucretius and Cicero. See Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, .–. For Cicero, see the texts cited by Marx (On the Nature of the Gods, On the Highest Goods and Evils, On Fate) in the notes to part , chapter , of the Difference, MEGA I.: –/ MECW : –. MEGA I.: /MECW : . See the excellent outline of these contrasts in Asmis, ‘Tribute to a Hero’. As Asmis points out, modern scholars tend to agree with Marx on the first contrast, but not on the other two.

Marx’s Dialectical Reading of Epicurus’ Atomism



says, ‘entirely new’, but Hegelian in character. In what follows I offer a basic outline of Marx’s Hegelian reading of Epicurus’ atomism. Although Marx owes a clear debt to Hegel’s Logic, I will not attempt to map my reading onto any specific stretch of the Logic. Marx’s reading is dialectical, in the following sense: it integrates the three movements of the atom (fall, swerve, and repulsion) by showing their dialectical interconnection. By contrast, Democritus’ account is presented by Marx as providing a mere aggregate of atomic movements, without any account of their interdependence. The dialectic begins from the basic thesis of atomism. This thesis states that two things exist: atoms and the void. Thus the thesis, as it stands, says nothing more about the distinctness of the atom than its being not-void. But as such (as merely not-void), the atom lacks all determinacy. (To put it another way, the atom is not yet what it claims to be – a singular item – for there is nothing to distinguish it from the void.) The atom has so far been conceived as a mere point; it has not been ascribed extension or any other determinate characteristic. The determinacy that it thus far lacks it gains in its first movement: falling. By falling it ceases to be a mere point and becomes a line. The fall is a movement, but a movement, Marx says, of ‘non-self-sufficiency’ (Unselbstständigkeit). And so the line that the atom now is still falls short of the determinacy and distinctness promised in its concept. The picture thus far is one of all atoms falling in just the same way, without true ‘independence’. In ancient discussions the problem here tends to be portrayed as that of the atoms never colliding (presumably since they all fall in perpendicular lines). On Marx’s reading, however, the problem seems to be that the fall still leaves the atom short of the determinacy that it claims to have. In order to gain this determinacy the atom requires a further movement, and this is the swerve (or deviation from the straight downward line). For this reason the swerve is the formal principle of the atom: it is what makes it, for the first time, an atom – a distinct entity with individuality. The individuality thus attained remains,  

The reading I will provide draws on those of Schafer (‘The Young Marx on Epicurus’) and Asmis (‘Tribute to a Hero’). For a case that the Doctrine of Essence is particularly important for Marx here, see McIvor, ‘The Young Marx and German Idealism’. The issue is complex, however. Hegel himself deals with atomism in his Doctrine of Being, and Marx’s account has resonances with Hegel’s treatment of Being at the very opening of the Logic. Furthermore, a too literal-minded mapping of Marx’s reading of Epicurus onto the Doctrine of Essence would involve portraying Epicurus as a philosopher breaking through into the Doctrine of the Concept in a way that raises difficult questions about the status of his predecessors, Plato and Aristotle – who then have to figure (contra the stated views of both Hegel and Marx) as philosophers of Essence.



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

however, merely abstract individuality. It is only in the final movement – repulsion – that the abstractness of its individuality is overcome, and the atom is fully actualized (is fully what it is). By uniting within itself the materiality of the atom (enshrined in its fall) and its form (enshrined in the swerve), the movement of repulsion produces the ‘first form of self-consciousness’. The dualism between form and matter (and between concept and existence) that has plagued the dialectic thus far is overcome. The atom is fully what it is: an independent, ‘self-conscious’ individual. This reading of Epicurus’ atomism has a number of remarkable features. First, it treats the swerve as an integral part of the doctrine, as opposed to a questionable add-on. Second, it explains the difference between Democritus and Epicurus in systematic terms. It is not merely that Epicurus adds the swerve to Democritus’ two movements (fall and repulsion), but that he produces a dialectically cogent, internally unified doctrine in place of Democritus’ mere assemblage of assertions. Third, the reading, while basically Hegelian in approach, and reflecting to a degree the way Hegel himself relates atomism to his own Logic (in particular to the Doctrine of Being), is strikingly novel in the way it integrates the Lucretian concept of the swerve, which plays no role in Hegel’s account of atomism. The most difficult, but also the most intriguing, feature of Marx’s reading of Epicurus’ atomism is that he both praises Epicurus for an insight that emerges from his thinking through his atomism to its final conclusion and condemns him for shrinking from this very insight. This claim plays a crucial role in the final chapter of the Difference, part , chapter . Here Marx carries the logic of this dialectical reading of atomism to its culminating point, in his treatment of Epicurus on the celestial bodies. He effectively, in presenting the celestial bodies as the highest actualization of the atom, reprises the dialectic of the atom already offered, in order to show what is ultimately at stake in it. He writes: ‘The atom is matter in the form of independence, of individuality, so to speak weight represented. But the heavenly bodies are the highest actuality of weight.’ In the celestial bodies, ‘all antinomies between form and matter, between  



 MEGA I.: /MECW : . See TWA : –/SL: –. MECW uses the translation ‘meteors’ for ta meteōra (‘the things above’). While the Letter to Pythocles (reproduced by Diogenes Laertius) that serves as Marx’s source for Epicurus’ views on this topic covers a range of heavenly phenomena – much wider than the translation ‘meteors’ would suggest and including (in our modern sense) ‘meteorological’ phenomena such as thunder and lightning – Marx’s interest in this chapter is in Epicurus’ account of the heavenly bodies specifically. MEGA I.: /MECW : .

Marx’s Dialectical Reading of Epicurus’ Atomism



concept and existence, which constituted the development of the atom, are resolved; in them all the determinations that had been required are actualized’. We saw in the dialectic of the atom, at each stage, that the atom was not what it purported to be. In other words, its existence did not match its concept; there was a disparity between form and matter. In the celestial bodies such mismatches are resolved, and thereby the atom is made actual. Each of the movements traced in the dialectic is present in the celestial bodies, without demanding further dialectical development. They one and all, as part of the system they together compose, ‘swerve from the straight line’ in a ‘system of repulsion and attraction’. As eternal, Marx thinks, they generate time out of themselves as ‘the form of their appearance’. (Marx had argued that time is the ‘form of appearance’ of the atom in part , chapter .) ‘The heavenly bodies are therefore the atoms become actual.’ Epicurus has here, according to Marx, achieved his greatest insight. However, his philosophy is marked by an ‘antinomy’. The two sides of this antinomy are the insight that Epicurus attains and the position that he nevertheless recoils to. Epicurus, in his ‘greatest contradiction’, blocks his own insight. He has glimpsed that the heavenly bodies eternally move in the same ways. But to admit this is to ascribe to them a divine status that he thinks engenders harmful mythmaking and superstition, which in turn will have deleterious consequences for humans’ prospects for attaining ataraxia (tranquillity). In order to prevent this, he instructs us to view the heavenly bodies as admitting of multiple explanations, and to eschew all efforts to fix on the one correct explanation. The key to Marx’s double-edged appraisal of Epicurus (praise for his insight, condemnation for his failure to embrace it) is the contrast between an adequate and an inadequate conception of self-consciousness. Epicurus, in the insight he attains, glimpses that the self-consciousness implicit in the atom, outlined in its efforts to realize itself through the dialectic of atomism, is in its actuality concrete. What Epicurus has glimpsed is that ‘matter, having received into itself individuality, form, as is the case with the heavenly bodies, has ceased to be abstract individuality; it has become concrete individuality, universality’. The concrete individuality of self 



 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . Marx’s reading of the multiple explicability thesis is evidently idiosyncratic. Epicurus can be much more straightforwardly read as claiming that, since settling on the one correct explanation is beyond our capacities, we ought to acknowledge that such a final settling of accounts is beyond our powers. Such recognition of our powers, and thus our resting content with having multiple explanations on the table, accords with the demands of ataraxia. On this, see Asmis, ‘Tribute to a Hero’. MEGA I.: /MECW : .



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

consciousness is a relational individuality: it has the individuality it does only in relation to other instances of itself. This echoes Hegel’s account of self-consciousness as inherently relational in the Phenomenology of Spirit. But Marx takes himself to reveal that Epicurus, in the end, recoils into conceiving self-consciousness as abstract individual self-consciousness; in his philosophy, in the end, ‘abstract-individual self-consciousness is posited as an absolute principle’. Epicurus had glimpsed that the celestial bodies offer an image of a system of entities whose independence is bound up with their interdependence: they are self-sufficient not in the sense of retreating into themselves but by their relating themselves to each other. This means that there is the promise in Epicurus of a picture of something akin to communism, resembling the picture that Marx provides us with in the Paris Manuscripts. This is a picture of a community of interdependent individuals – universal in their interdependence, and individual in their universality. The position that Epicurus recoils to, by contrast, is one that is, after all, content with individuality as retreat into the self. Marx’s own conception of self-consciousness remains merely implicit here. But whatever the interpretative difficulties over Marx’s own position, one thing that this discussion ought to have made clear is just why commentators have been pulled in opposite directions on the question of whether Marx is here an idealist or a materialist. Among Marx’s aims in the Difference is that of demonstrating that atomism – that materialist doctrine par excellence – is a philosophy of self-consciousness. This is brought out in a passage that Marx italicizes in its entirety, and in which he contrasts a deficient atomism (in the first sentence) with the fully thought-through atomism he advocates on behalf of Epicurus but which Epicurus could not quite bring himself to endorse (in the second sentence): Thus as long as nature as atom and appearance expresses individual selfconsciousness and its contradiction, the subjectivity of self-consciousness appears  

MEGA I.: /MECW : ; cf. MEGA I.: /MECW : ; MEGA I.: /MECW : . Marx may have been helped to arrive at this interpretation of Epicurus’ insight through his study of Leibniz’s version of atomism: monadology. In the months before submission of his dissertation (January–March ) Marx made a large set of excerpts from the writings of Leibniz (MEGA IV.: –). These excerpts have never, to my knowledge, been subjected to scholarly treatment. It would seem of particular interest that Marx heavily marks in the margin of his excerpts § of the Monadology. Jon Elster has argued that this passage was of importance for Marx in later work; see Elster, ‘Marx et Leibniz’. The monads are, like Epicurus’ atoms as Marx presents them, ideal atoms. Section  reads: ‘It is also necessary that each monad be different from each other. For there are never two beings in nature that are perfectly alike, two beings in which it is not possible to discover an internal difference, that is, one founded on an intrinsic denomination’ (Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, ).

The Liberal Party and Positive Philosophy



only in the form of matter itself. Where, on the other hand, nature becomes independent, self-consciousness reflects itself in itself, confronts nature in its [seiner ¼ self-consciousness’s] own shape as independent form.

The most basic tenet of materialism – the thesis of atoms and the void – has here come to speak the language of idealism. Only a poorly conceived atomism has self-consciousness appear ‘in the form of matter’. Where atomism is properly conceived, by contrast, self-consciousness confronts nature in its (self-consciousness’s) own shape. The individuality of selfconsciousness and the individuality of material atoms are a mirror of each other: in each, individuality requires interdependence.

The Liberal Party and Positive Philosophy There is no doubt that Marx saw a connection between Hellenistic philosophy and the intellectual situation of his own time. It is also evident that there is some connection, specifically, between Marx’s reading of Epicurus as a philosopher of self-consciousness and Bruno Bauer, who was concerned to advance what he himself called a ‘philosophy of self-consciousness’. Marx’s proximity to Bauer can, however, be exaggerated; in the literature it is often, misleadingly, treated as an identity. Instead, as I will argue here, Marx already at this stage recognizes what is problematic in Bauer’s approach. Furthermore, he wants to take on, and transcend, a problematic in which Bauer, among others, is caught up, as we shall see when we come to Marx’s subtle discussion of the relationship between a ‘liberal party’ and ‘positive philosophy’ – a relationship of ceaseless oscillation. 







MEGA I.: /MECW : . I have here comprehensively corrected the translation in MECW, which fails to interpret correctly the tracking of nouns by gendered pronouns in what is admittedly a very difficult passage. David McLellan goes so far as to say, of the Difference: ‘There are, indeed, passages of vivid writing, but they contain no ideas that are peculiar to Marx.’ And: ‘Finally, Marx’s view of the relation of theory and practice is precisely the same as Bauer’s’; ‘there is nothing at all in Marx’s dissertation that shows him to be other than an ordinary Young Hegelian with a close sympathy for some of Bauer’s ideas’ (The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, –). For an excellent account of the complex developing relationship between Marx and Bauer in the years –, see Kangal, ‘Marx’s “Bonn Notebooks” in Context’. It seems that Bauer acted as something like an informal dissertation advisor for Marx’s project. However, fissures appeared early on in their relationship. While Bauer and Marx were supposed to work on a co-authored project on the philosophy of religion, Marx’s contribution never materialized and Bauer went ahead to publish without him. By , Marx was highly critical of Bauer in ‘On the Jewish Question’, and by , The Holy Family (co-authored with Engels), was explicitly directed against ‘Bauer and consorts’. For a very perceptive analysis of the passage in question, see Theunissen, ‘Die Aufhebung des Idealismus’, –.



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

Marx’s enthusiastic talk of ‘human self-consciousness as the highest divinity’ in the Foreword to the Difference, and his (mitigated) praise of Epicurus as completing ‘the natural science of self-consciousness’ in its final section, can be linked, albeit in a loose way, to Bauer’s ‘philosophy of self-consciousness’. For Bauer, what this meant was the replacement of Hegel’s Absolute by human self-consciousness. Most significantly, Bauer in his books on the Bible felt enabled by this view to replace God with the totality of human self-consciousness, realizing itself in history. Bauer can be seen, however, to retreat into subjectivity in a way analogous to what Marx found problematic in Epicurus. For instance, in a letter to Marx of  March , Bauer tells Marx that ‘the terrorism of true theory must clear the field’. Thinking must carry out an act of self-purification. Once this self-purification, which takes place entirely on the side of thought, is complete, Bauer thinks, this will be sufficient to bring about the desired practical, political upheaval. As soon as the transformation of self-consciousness is complete, the revolution will take place, without any need for the involvement of the ‘masses’, for whom Bauer can barely disguise his contempt. Marx would appear to echo Bauer’s conception when he writes in the important endnote to the Difference: ‘But the practice of philosophy is itself theoretical. Critique is what measures the individual existence by the essence, the particular reality by the Idea.’ At the same time, Marx presents a picture of the ‘actualization’ of philosophy that seeks to overcome a situation of ceaseless oscillation that he diagnoses as existing between the ‘liberal party’ to which Bauer belongs, on the one hand, and ‘positive philosophy’, on the other. We have already considered the Notebook V passage on the ‘carnival of philosophy’. This passage (plausibly interpreted as a draft for Marx’s originally planned dissertation, to have been submitted to the University of Berlin) receives a further elaboration as endnote  to part , chapter , of the Difference. Both the Notebook V passage and the endnote deal  

  



MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . Mitigated because, as Marx says, this science has merely ‘abstract individuality’ as its ‘absolute principle’. (The way MECW breaks up Marx’s original sentence obscures this point.) MEGA III.: . For Bauer’s conception of intellectual self-purification as possessing revolutionary power, see Sass, ‘Bruno Bauer’s Critical Theory’. MEGA I.: /MECW : . Note that the MECW translation (emended here) incorrectly translates es in es ist as ‘it’; but this is not a pronoun, as the substantives (all feminine) in the previous sentence make clear. The endnote is not only closely related to the Notebook V passage in general thematic terms. There are also more specific commonalities, such as the parallel references to the ‘transparent kingdom of

The Liberal Party and Positive Philosophy



with what in the endnote gets called, by turns, the ‘realization’ (Realisirung) and ‘actualization’ (Verwirklichung) of philosophy. This is what issues from a Knotenpunkt. What is new in the endnote is that Marx now presents the realization of philosophy in his own time as ultimately producing a ‘double trend’, engendering a split into what he calls ‘the liberal party’, on the one side, and ‘positive philosophy’, on the other. For philosophy (grown to be an integrated, ‘total’ world of ideas, as in Plato and Aristotle) to actualize itself in the world, it must set itself in relation to the world. It can do this in two ways, as manifested in the split into a ‘liberal’ and ‘positive’ party: it can engage in a critique that measures the world against philosophy’s realm of ideas (as the liberal party does), or it can seek to rationalize what it finds in the world as already in line with itself (as the positive party does). Marx’s identification of the oscillatory conflict that ensues between these two tendencies is key to his diagnosis of the situation of contemporary philosophy. It has been assumed by some scholars that Marx simply identifies himself with the ‘liberal party’, and also (usually) that this liberal party is to be equated with the ‘Young Hegelians’. Neither assumption is correct, however. Marx, in dividing Hegelians into liberal and positive, and not into left and right, is drawing a distinction not in terms of doctrine but in terms of relation to the world. Again, the distinction between liberal and positive parties is supposed to capture not specific groups of individuals, but trends that Marx thinks of as more deeply rooted.

 





Amenthes’ (dem Durchsichtigen Reiche des Amenthes) at MEGA IV.: /MECW :  and to the ‘shadowy empire of Amenthes’ (dem Schattenreich des Amenthes) at MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . Zvi Rosen thinks Marx identifies himself completely with the liberal party. ‘The Liberal Party obviously symbolizes the Young Hegelians of whom Marx was part and therefore Marx identifies himself completely with it’ (Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx, ). Gary Browning writes: ‘Marx’s remarks on the break-up of the Hegelian school into two parties is elliptical, but he is by no means clearly endorsing the liberal party of Young Hegelians. While he appears sympathetic to Young Hegelian goals, he observes that a more rational standpoint requires a less contradictory relationship between theory and practice’ (‘Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation’, ). The gist of Browning’s point is correct, even if the assumption that the liberal party can be straightforwardly identified with the Young Hegelians is to be challenged. As Inge Taubert notes (‘Probleme der weltanschaulichen Entwicklung von Karl Marx’, ). Carlo Natali recognizes that Marx’s position among the Young Hegelians is a distinctive one and that he declines to fully take sides with the ‘Left’ against the ‘Right’ of the Hegelian movement (‘Aristotele in Marx’, ). Michael Theunissen rightly states that Marx ‘distances himself’ from both the liberal and positive parties (‘Die Aufhebung des Idealismus’, ). The editors of both MEGA and MECW associate the ‘liberal party’ straightforwardly with the Young Hegelians. More plausibly, they associate ‘positive philosophy’ with such figures as Joachim Sengler, Anton Gu¨nther, Franz Xaver von Baader, Christian Hermann Weisse, Immanuel



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

Marx certainly expresses greater affinity with the liberal party, which ‘achieves real advances [Fortschritten]’, whereas in the positive party ‘the madness appears as such’. Nonetheless he finds both approaches problematic. Each party, in fact, fails in that it ends up engaged in the task that the other has set itself. The liberal party finds that it has no critical bite against the world, because mere conceptual critique is powerless to impact the world in any way. It thus ends up impotent to do anything other than deliver a description of the status quo. The positive party, on the other hand, although it intends merely to describe the world, ends up, in showing up the many contradictions and deficiencies in the world – criticizing it. The importance of this passage is in the way in which it points beyond the explicit concerns of the Difference and elaborates a theme running through the Notebooks. Marx has seen, in a way that Bauer and others have not, a problematic that afflicts the attempt to think the relation between thought and reality. As soon as thought is conceived of as self-contained and sealed off from reality, it necessarily reveals itself as impotent in the face of reality. As Marx puts this, for philosophy to actualize itself in the world, the world must become philosophical, just as philosophy must become worldly.

Thought and Reality The texts we have been considering are fragmentary and in numerous places difficult to interpret. There is room for dispute as to just how to understand Marx’s argument, particularly when he is at his most ambitious (for instance, in his discussion of Epicurus on the celestial bodies). Nevertheless, there is a fundamental problematic that he has been concerned with throughout, running through his revision of Hegel’s history of ancient philosophy, his dialectical reading of Epicurus’ atomism and his assessment of his own intellectual context. This is the problematic of the relation of thought to reality.

 

Hermann Fichte and Carl Philipp Fischer (MEGA I.: ; MECW : ). Schelling cannot be considered a ‘positive philosopher’; his philosophy has both a negative and a positive ‘part’ (see Dews, Schelling’s Late Philosophy in Confrontation with Hegel). I thus have doubts about Theunissen’s assertion that, with his talk of ‘positive philosophy’, Marx ‘doubtless is also thinking of Schelling’s late philosophy’ (Theunissen, ‘Die Aufhebung des Idealismus’, ).  MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . I am not the first to suggest the importance of the question of the relationship of thought to reality for Marx in this period. See, in addition to the detailed exploration of this theme in Natali,

Thought and Reality



This problematic animates Marx through a series of questions that we have been considering in turn. If the Hegelian notion of Knotenpunkte in the history of philosophy is to be appropriated as Marx proposes, the question arises of just what it is for a Knotenpunkt to be ‘released’ so that philosophy can now ‘enter the world’. What does ‘entering’ the world mean? Again, what is the insight that Epicurus glimpses but then recoils from, and in what sense does his post-Knotenpunkt philosophy fail to enter the world? And how does Marx think that philosophy is to be actualized in such a way as to halt the oscillation between ‘liberal’ and ‘positive’ parties? These issues are connected. The fundamental problem is the same in each of the post-Knotenpunkt cases Marx is concerned with. What is salutary about the insight that Epicurus achieves (but then shrinks from) is that it overcomes the idea that thought is situated outside reality. Again, the oscillation between liberal and positive parties does away with a certain way of trying to get the relation between thought and reality into view. This oscillation dramatizes what happens when thought is characterized, erroneously, as something that stands in relation to reality. It is this misconception that generates the problems with each approach. The liberal party can make no dent on reality precisely because it is held back from seeing that the actualization of philosophy would have thought and reality no longer standing apart. And again the positive party’s attempts at mere description fail because its attempts to merely stand over against reality contemplatively fail. I adverted at the beginning of this chapter to the multiple temptations to see the early Marx texts under consideration here as prefiguring or pointing towards his mature intellectual project. On the whole these temptations are to be avoided. Marx’s project here is highly distinctive when compared with his later work. And Marx will certainly later have no truck with anything like a Hegelian reconstruction of Epicurus’ atomism. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suppose that these texts are highly formative for Marx in one important way. This is that he can here be seen to be wrestling his way towards an appreciation of what it would be for philosophy to be praxis (and thereby to overcome its restriction to a contemplative thought that has the defect of thinking of itself as standing over against reality). For Hegel, philosophy notoriously remains contemplative and retrospective. And Hegel’s successors had encountered difficulties – masterfully diagnosed by Marx in his account of the ‘liberal’ and ‘Aristotele in Marx’, the passing remark by Martina Thom: ‘At the centre of [Marx’s] interest stood problems of the relation of thought and being’ (Dr. Karl Marx, ).



Marx on the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy

‘positive’ parties in the Difference – developing a conception of the ‘actualization’ of philosophy that does not collapse into practical impotence of either a progressive variety (in the case of the ‘liberal party’) or a reactionary one (in the case of ‘positive philosophy’, whose efforts at mere description fail to be that and turn over into critique). Although Marx has not even begun to work this out in the Notebooks and Difference, he arguably has in his sights here a conception of the actualization of philosophy in which thought does not remain set over against reality, but which promises to turn philosophy itself into praxis by being no longer thought about the world, however radical in intent, but the thinking transformation of the world itself. The phrase ‘thinking transformation of the world’ should not suggest that the world is something given in advance, on which a process of transformation is carried out; the world’s shape, such as it is, waxes and wanes. Marx does not, in the Notebooks and Difference, prefigure his later doctrines or method in the ways some commentators have imagined. These texts are, nonetheless, crucial in setting him on the road he will subsequently travel. He will remain guided by the injunction to actualize philosophy. In so actualizing philosophy, what Marx will articulate is communism as the interdependence of individuals, of which the insight into the atoms that Epicurus shrinks from had offered an image. 

See, in particular, the closing words of the ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction’, which we will consider in Chapter .

 

Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

In the Notebooks and Difference, Marx had given the initial impetus to his project of the actualization of philosophy. He had signalled that this actualization had to overcome the oscillation he identified between the ‘liberal’ and ‘positive’ parties. But the way forward was not yet clear. At the time of his study of ancient Greek philosophy, Marx had still seen himself as extending Hegel’s project, at least in the history of philosophy. In the important endnote to the Difference in which the need to overcome the oscillation between liberal and positive parties is broached, Marx had begun by distancing himself from the common trope that Hegel had ‘accommodated’ himself to existing conditions. If it was found that Hegel’s work had reactionary tendencies that blocked the route to its own actualization, these were not to be located in a merely external, ‘moral’ desire to please the authorities. Instead, Hegel had to be taken seriously as ‘the Master, to whom the science was not something received, but something in the process of becoming, to whose uttermost periphery his own intellectual heart’s blood was pulsating’. The task of identifying what went wrong in Hegel amounted not to uncovering this or that accommodation to existing conditions, but to locating the roots of an ‘apparent accommodation’ in ‘an inadequacy or inadequate formulation of his principle itself’. In this dogged pursuit of what went wrong in the very principle of Hegel’s thought, Marx was a truer disciple of Hegel than any of his fellow Young Hegelians. In the wake of the Difference, Marx set out on a protracted critical engagement with Hegel. This critical engagement with Hegel is complex, seeking to engage not only with the details of Hegel’s social thought in the Philosophy of Right but also with his Logic. This is as it must be, since, as Marx recognizes, Hegel’s project in the Philosophy of Right is not some 

MEGA I.: /MECW : .





Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

add-on, or even some component of the total system of philosophy, but logical through and through. Scholars have generally failed to appreciate the shape of Marx’s project of a critique of Hegel in the years –. It is recognized that Marx subjects Hegel to critique in his long, unfinished and unpublished manuscript Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (hereafter CHPR), composed in , the surviving remains of a project that Marx was never able to bring to successful completion but to which he published an ‘Introduction’ in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbu¨cher (). It is also recognized that Marx engages in a fundamental critique of Hegel in the third of the Paris Manuscripts (composed in ). Contrary to what is often assumed, however, CHPR represents merely the tip of an iceberg of work on Hegel’s text that Marx carried out stretching back to early ; the remainder of that work is lost. It also has to be realized that Marx was engaged in a close study of Hegel’s Logic at this period, as his correspondence with Bauer bears out – and whose results we see in his surviving writings. It is true that Marx, having been awarded his doctorate, turned to practical affairs, taking up a career as a journalist. This did not involve a turning away from philosophical study, so that it would then seem to need explaining that he returned to philosophy with the intensive study of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right documented in CHPR. Having been awarded his doctorate in April , Marx left Berlin for his native Rhineland. There he set out to launch an academic career, preparing himself for his Habilitation and designing a course on logic. Presumably, what he intended to teach was closely related to Hegel’s Logic. He was to be aided in this by Bruno Bauer, who held a post at the University of Bonn where Marx was hoping to teach. The plan, however, came to nothing after Bauer was dismissed from his own post in March . In the meantime, Marx had secured a job writing for the newly founded Rheinische Zeitung.  

 



The ‘Introduction’, which features no direct discussion of Hegel but is of crucial importance for the theme of the actualization of philosophy, will be discussed in Chapter . For the correspondence with Bauer, see MEGA III.: –. Only Bauer’s side of the correspondence has survived. For recent work on Marx’s engagement with Hegel’s Logic at this period, see Barbour, ‘The Logic Question: Marx, Trendelenburg, and the Critique of Hegel’. See Marx’s well-known account of his career in the  Introduction to Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (MEGA II.: –/MECW : –). David Leopold offers to correct a standard narrative in writing that ‘the young Marx abandoned the concrete and empirical subject matter of his earlier journalism in favour of a close textual examination of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie’ (The Young Karl Marx, ). But there is really no need to think, and no indication in the documentary record, that Marx’s philosophical activity suffered any significant interruption. Sperber, Karl Marx, .

Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics



He began work for the paper in May  and on  October became its editor. Marx did not simply swap his hopes of an academic career, and his interventions in post-Hegelian philosophy, for a journalistic career. First of all, he actively pursued his academic work throughout . It would seem that his study of Hegel’s Logic, evidenced already in the Difference, continued. Moreover, his study of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is not confined to the composition of Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in ; his engagement with this text, in various forms, stretches from November  until January . It should also be remembered that Marx’s journalistic writings did not, in terms of subject matter, involve a total deviation from philosophy. A number of his articles are, in fact, lengthy philosophical essays. This chapter and the next, in each of which CHPR has a central place, should be regarded as a pair. CHPR is a crucial text that presents a set of complex but cogent arguments. It has been remarkably neglected in the literature. This is in part due to its unfinished and unpublished status and to problems of structure that Marx himself acknowledged. It will be shown, however, that it is possible to replace the slogans and summaries that dominate the literature with detailed exposition. The text will emerge as presenting an important set of arguments in Marx’s own voice, far removed from what it has too often been taken to be – a ‘marginal commentary’, or ‘a series of notes appended to, and interspersed with, extensive excerpts from the section of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie concerned with the state’. CHPR notoriously, and as Marx himself points out, fails to bring into any satisfactory unity a set of highly specific criticisms of Hegel’s picture of the state and a set of more general criticisms that strike at the heart of Hegel’s speculative philosophy. Marx makes his comments to this effect in the  Paris Manuscripts, seeking to explain the failure of his efforts to  

 

See the commentary at MEGA I.: . One exception is the chapter on CHPR in Leopold, The Young Karl Marx. The most extensive discussions are those of Galvano Della Volpe (Logic as a Positive Science) and those influenced by dellavolpeanismo, especially Mario Rossi (Da Hegel a Marx) and, less voluminously, Lucio Colletti (see especially ‘Marxism and the Dialectic’). A powerfully lucid overview of CHPR is given in Colletti’s introduction in Marx, Early Writings. See also the searching, but tantalizingly brief, treatment of CHPR in Theunissen, Sein und Schein, –. Some elements for a discussion of how Marx seeks to make good on Hegel’s defects, and the relation of this effort to Aristotle, are usefully covered in Depew, ‘The Polis Transfigured’. The text was first published in , MEGA I..: –. Leopold, The Young Karl Marx, , .



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

publish the Critique as announced in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbu¨cher: ‘While preparing it for publication, the intermingling of criticism directed only against speculation with criticism of the various subjects themselves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering the development of the argument and rendering comprehension difficult.’ In the present chapter, I examine the specific criticisms, leaving the more general issues for the next. As he sets out on the critique of Hegel in CHPR, Marx takes seriously Hegel’s aspiration to provide an organic picture of the state, as he had likewise done in his discussions of the state in his journalistic writings of . Quickly, however, Marx’s symptomatology of what goes wrong in Hegel leads him to a more general critique (examined in Chapter  below). It is not just that some of the ‘mediations’ by which Hegel attempts to demonstrate the unity of the state are suspect; the way Hegel goes about providing a logic of the state is fundamentally misguided. It is, importantly, not the idea of providing a logic of the state that is misguided; it is that Hegel’s way of doing so is not properly philosophical. Marx struggled to keep these dimensions (criticism of speculation, criticism of ‘the various subjects themselves’) apart in CHPR, and this is precisely because he saw that, while distinct, they also demanded unification. In this chapter I will treat Marx’s more specific criticisms as they emerge against the background of an appreciative stance on Hegel’s project of an organic account of the state, and in the next examine how they lead to his more general critique of Hegel’s very philosophical procedure. In doing so, we will begin from Hegel’s social thought in this chapter, and develop an appreciation of its relation to his Logic in the next.

Hegel’s Doctrine of the State We already saw in Chapter  that Hegel regarded his philosophy as ‘total’. We now need to understand how he was able to see it in this way. That will open up the problematic of this chapter and the next, which, together, are concerned with Hegel’s articulation of a social philosophy that is no mere add-on to his philosophy as a whole but, in some sense, its highest expression. Hegel, like others amongst Kant’s heirs, took his task to be that of providing a systematic philosophy. Philosophy had to be, if it was to live  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . For an excellent treatment of this shared project, and the various forms it took, see Franks, All or Nothing.

Hegel’s Doctrine of the State



up to the title of philosophy at all, systematic, in that it had to form a complete, closed whole. It could secure its complete, closed status by being grounded in some ultimate principle. In the face of the difficulty of defending any such ultimate principle, Hegel made the ingenious innovation of aspiring to secure systematicity by making philosophy self-complete and self-closing, not by resting on a principle but by providing for its own closure from within. The lack of the need for any presupposed principle would now be the means of ensuring that there could be no loose ends threatening the claim to systematicity. Over time, Hegel arrived at a conception according to which logic – conceived as, at once, metaphysics – generates Realphilosophie (comprising a philosophy of nature and a philosophy of spirit) out of itself. In his mature phase, the system is given form in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (first published in ), divided into three parts: Logic, Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit. The Philosophy of Right (first published in ; hereafter PR) has a special place in Hegel’s output. It does not itself form a proper part of his system, but covers a stretch within the third part of his system (the stretch of his Philosophy of Spirit called ‘Objective Spirit’) and treats it in greater detail. Like the Encyclopaedia, the text was issued in the form of a textbook, to be elaborated upon orally in Hegel’s lectures (elaborations that have been handed down to us as Zusätze, or ‘additions’, in later editions). There has been considerable controversy over whether PR sought to provide a defence of the reactionary Prussian state. I will not attempt to enter this debate here. It is evident that the picture of the state that Hegel provides tends in a more conservative direction than his earlier work. It is also evident that the state he outlines bears similarities to the Prussian state of his time, but also important differences. What matters for our purposes is what type of treatment of the state Hegel intends to provide, and this he is clear about in the Preface to PR. Hegel is clear that his intention is to provide a theory of the rationality of the state: This treatise, . . . in so far as it deals with the science of the state, shall be nothing other than an attempt to comprehend and portray the state as an   

This is the date on the title page; de facto the work was published in . Marx had at his disposal an edition of PR that included the oral additions, similar to editions in use today. A chief impetus to this discussion was Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit (). An excellent overview of the subsequent controversy is provided by Michael Theunissen, ‘Die Verwirklichung der Vernunft’, an essay that also brings out well many of the complexities and ironies of this discussion.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics inherently rational entity. As a philosophical composition, it must distance itself as far as possible from the obligation to construct a state as it ought to be; such instruction as it may contain cannot be aimed at instructing the state on how it ought to be, but rather at showing how the state, the ethical universe [das sittliche Universum], should be recognized.

Hegel underlines that his purpose is not to build a prospective theory of how the state ought to be, but to recognize its rationality in the present. Through a transformation of the Aesopian saying ‘Here is Rhodes, jump here’, which relies on the similarity of ‘Rhodes’ (Ῥόδος) and ‘rose’ (ῥόδον) in Greek, he enjoins his readers: To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thereby to delight in the present – this rational insight is the reconciliation with actuality which philosophy grants to those who have received the inner call to comprehend, to preserve their subjective freedom in the realm of the substantial, and at the same time to stand with their subjective freedom not in a particular and contingent situation, but in what has being in and for itself.

Whatever Hegel precisely thought about the relationship between his philosophy of right and the Prussian state as it existed, his intention was to give an account of present arrangements insofar as they are rational. The match between the picture of the state and the actually existing Prussian state (both of which are a monarchy with an ‘estates constitution’) is close enough that we can take seriously Hegel’s claim to be examining the rationality of present arrangements – finding the rose in the cross of the present – and thereby affirming those arrangements (‘to delight in the present’). It follows from this endeavour to represent the rationality of the present that philosophy must be retrospective: When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.

The insistence on restricting philosophy to the retrospective contemplation in its attempts to exhibit the rational produces a tension in Hegel’s  





TWA : /PR: . The saying is directed at an athlete who brags that at Rhodes he made a jump that no Olympic victor could equal. A bystander who hears the brag calls his bluff by demanding: ‘Here is Rhodes, jump here.’ Hegel, TWA : –/PR: . In this passage Hegel additionally plays on the equivalence between the imperatives ‘jump!’ and ‘dance!’ (salta) in Latin in order to transform ‘Here is Rhodes, jump here’ into ‘Here is the rose, dance here.’ Hegel, TWA : /PR: .

Hegel’s Doctrine of the State



thought. The famous Doppelsatz (double sentence) that appears earlier in the Preface to PR states: What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational.

It has become a commonplace that this must not be misread as a simplistic assertion that whatever is rational is in existence, and that whatever is in existence is rational. Hegel’s notion of actuality differs from this, and is in need of careful specification. Nevertheless, however precisely the Doppelsatz is interpreted, the retrospective character that Hegel ascribes to philosophy prevents it from being true to the idea of the actualization of philosophy. Hegel claims to reveal the unity of concept and actuality but confines himself, in doing so, to a merely theoretical philosophy. Hegel studies what is, not what is to be. Within the framework of theoretical (contemplative) philosophy to which PR confines itself, its topic is nevertheless freedom. It will extol the state as the highest realization of freedom. Working up to this, PR begins from what Hegel takes to be initial appearances – that freedom is a matter of seizing hold of my environment and appropriating it to myself as I see fit. (This is ‘abstract right’.) Hegel develops this material dialectically, as follows. The conception of freedom as abstract right is inadequate, since abstract right presupposes ‘morality’ – an agent’s being able to stand behind their actions as a subject who can claim, and be in turn imputed, responsibility for them. But ‘morality’, it turns out, can exist only in the context of Sittlichkeit (standardly translated as ‘ethical life’, but more accurately as ‘custom’ or ‘mores’), a complex structure of social relations. Sittlichkeit, the crown of freedom, itself consists of a triad: the family (Sittlichkeit’s element of ‘naturalness’), civil society (a nexus of relations between subjects seeking their own ends in competition with one another: the ‘system of needs’) and the state. Only in the state is the ‘actuality of concrete freedom’ (PR §) attained. In other words, freedom presupposes participation in the state (and presupposed this all along, even as we were trying to think of abstract right or of morality as sufficient for freedom). The account that Hegel offers of such participation is complex, requiring a demonstration of the integration of the particular modes of the system of needs (i.e., of us as self  

Hegel, TWA : /PR: . Theunissen points out its theological import (in ‘Die Verwirklichung der Vernunft’). Michael Theunissen plausibly proposes (Sein und Schein, ) that the structure abstract right– morality–ethical life recalls the structure being–essence–concept in the Logic.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

seeking individuals) within the state, characterized by universality, by means of a series of crisscrossing ‘mediations’. Hegel’s account of the state is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the ‘internal constitution’ – the framework of some individual state. What Hegel offers here is essentially a defence of the idea that the various powers (Gewalten) of the state (the monarchical, executive and legislative powers) form an organic whole: these various powers are organically interconnected, mutually supporting each other and contributing to a joint life to which each is indispensable. The second treats of the ‘external constitution’, which is concerned with the relationship of a state to other states. Marx evidently set out to deal with all of Hegel’s account of the ‘internal constitution’, which occupies §§–. The manuscript, whose first few pages are lost, starts, however, with §, and tails off at §.

Marx’s Route to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Marx’s engagement with Hegel’s Philosophy of Right began earlier than is often thought. The composition of CHPR can be dated to March–August . It is highly likely, however, that the text of CHPR represents merely Marx’s most advanced attempt at material of this kind. He had written, in a letter to Arnold Ruge, as early as  March : ‘another essay, which I had likewise destined for the Deutsche Jahrbu¨cher, is a critique of Hegel’s natural right, in so far as it concerns the inner constitution. The core is the contestation of constitutional monarchy as a through and through self-contradictory and self-cancelling hybrid.’ The letter, which precedes the composition of CHPR by a full year, already indicates one of Marx’s chief targets in CHPR: Hegel’s defence of monarchy. But his journalistic writings of the period reveal that (at least in public) he still regarded Hegel’s overall project of an organic theory of the state sympathetically. It is important to correct the impression that Marx abandoned philosophy during his period as a journalist. His journalistic output itself contains sustained philosophical discussion. Two articles, in particular, stand out as 



This dating, originally proposed by David Ryazanov, is well corroborated at MEGA I.: –. It is therefore incorrect to state that CHPR was written on Marx’s honeymoon. Marx married Jenny von Westphalen on  June , following which the couple honeymooned for two weeks in southwestern Germany and Switzerland (see Sperber, Karl Marx, ). MEGA III.: /MECW : –. The full title of Hegel’s text is Elements of the Philosophy of Right, or Natural Law and Political Science in Outline. MECW mistranslates innere Verfassung, in the letter to Ruge, as ‘internal political system’, obscuring Marx’s clear announcement of his topic.

Marx’s Route to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right



substantial philosophical essays: ‘The Leading Article in No.  of the Kölnische Zeitung’ and ‘The Supplement to Nos.  and  of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung on the Commissions of the Estates in Prussia’. (Their titles reflect that they were responses to discussions in other newspapers.) In each of these texts, Marx proclaims the need for a genuinely organic state: Whereas the earlier philosophers of constitutional law [Staatsrechtslehrer] proceeded in their account of the formation of the state from the instincts, either of ambition or gregariousness, or even from reason, though not social reason, but the reason of the individual, the more ideal [ideellere] and profound view of the most recent philosophy proceeds from the idea of the whole. It looks on the state as the great organism, in which legal, moral, and political freedom must be realised, and in which the individual citizen in obeying the laws of the state only obeys the natural laws of his own reason, of human reason. In the living organism, all trace of the different elements as such has disappeared. The difference no longer consists in the separate existence of the various elements, but in the living movement of distinct functions, which are all inspired by one and the same life, so that the very difference between them does not exist ready-made prior to this life but, on the contrary, continually arises out of this life itself and as continually vanishes within it and becomes paralysed.

In keeping with these sentiments, Marx sets out on his engagement with Hegel in CHPR from a position of sympathy. Far from seeking simply to reject Hegel’s project, he is interested in thinking it through. Marx sums up his appreciation in the comment that ‘it is a great advance to treat the political state as an organism and therefore to look upon the variety of powers no longer as something [in]organic, but as a living and rational differentiation’. As we shall see, Marx’s critical working through of PR results in a critique of Hegel’s very project.

  





For a superb treatment of the journalistic writings, see McIvor, ‘Karl Marx’s Political Epistemology’, chapter . ‘The Leading Article in No.  of the Kölnische Zeitung’, Rheinische Zeitung No. ,  July , supplement; MEGA I.: /MECW : . ‘The Supplement to Nos.  and  of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung on the Commissions of the Estates in Prussia’, Rheinische Zeitung No. ,  December ; MEGA I.: /MECW : . Depew, ‘The Polis Transfigured’, helpfully emphasizes the sense in which what Marx offers is an immanent critique of PR. Depew does not recognize, however, the ways in which Marx’s purpose is to comprehensively overturn Hegel’s procedures. MEGA I.: /MECW : .



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

In this chapter, we will see how sceptical remarks that Marx enters at the beginning of CHPR concerning Hegel’s ability to provide an organic account of the state, as opposed to a mere assertion that the state must take an organic form accompanied by an all-purpose, unspecific notion of organism whose specific applicability to the state is not secured, lead him to question whether an account of the state is what is to be secured, as opposed to an account of human society. In the next chapter, we will see how Marx’s scepticism about Hegel’s ability to deliver an organic portrayal of the state develops into a critique of Hegel’s philosophical procedure in general. Marx, as we have seen, embarks on CHPR taking seriously Hegel’s idea of portraying the state as an organism. But he points out, first of all, that Hegel’s story about organism is completely all-purpose: the organism he is talking about may as well, as he says, be the solar system. For something to be an organism is for it to be composed of constituent parts (organs) that are such as to contribute to the life of the whole. It follows from this that the component parts that make up the political constitution are the organs of the state. But this does not tell us which organs these shall be. ‘No bridge has been built whereby one could pass from the general idea of the organism to the specific idea of the organism of the state or the political constitution, and no such bridge can ever be built.’ This is borne out when Hegel goes on to specify which organs the state shall have. These are the various powers (Gewalten): monarchy, executive and legislature. But he secures this only by means of a blatant non sequitur. He tells us that the state has organs, and that ‘thus’ the organs are the ones he specifies: This organism is the development of the Idea into its differences and their objective actuality. These different aspects are thus [so] the various powers with their corresponding tasks and functions, through which the universal continually produces itself.

Hegel inserts the word ‘thus’. This word serves not to mark an inference, but to mask an assertion. That the organs shall be powers of the kind Hegel will go on to describe has by no means been shown. What Hegel delivers, Marx thinks, is far from an organic depiction of the modern state. In fact, he renders us the great service, thanks to the accuracy of his description of modern institutions, and despite his intentions, of exhibiting the ‘contradictions’ inherent in the modern   

MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: –/MECW : . Marx himself emphasized this passage with a vertical line in the margin of the manuscript. PR §. Quoted and commented on, MEGA I.: –/MECW : –.

Monarchy and Democracy



state. Thus the virtue of Hegel’s pursuit of an organic picture of the state consists in this: it produces Hegel’s unwittingly acute inventory of the contradictions of the modern state – contradictions that Marx will come to see it as his work to overcome.

Monarchy and Democracy Among Marx’s specific criticisms of Hegel, his most striking argument in CHPR is his critique of Hegel’s defence of monarchy. Marx grants Hegel that there must be some final unifying power in which ‘the different powers are bound together into an individual unity’. The very idea of an organic state requires some unifying principle, after all. Marx also agrees with Hegel that this unifying power must reside in a subject. Hegel thinks that this power must reside in a hereditary monarch. Marx insists not only that Hegel’s argument is flawed, but that his premises imply a defence not of monarchy but of democracy – in the radical sense of popular power. The relevant subject is not the monarch, but we, the people. Marx’s argument is simple, but has far-reaching consequences. Hegel claims that the return to an individual subject, as the culmination of the state, marks ‘the immanent development of a science’. But this is unfounded. In fact, he thereby, first, returns to an impoverished conception of subjectivity and freedom (as arbitrary caprice). And second, the restriction to an individual (i.e., one single individual, distinct from all others) is illicit. As Marx comments: Hence, because subjectivity is actual only as subject and the subject is actual only as one, the personality of the state is actual only as one person. A fine



 

 

MEGA I.: /MECW : . In a sense, Marx is appreciative of Hegel’s accurate description of modern society, just as he is appreciative of his aspirations to deliver an organic account of the state. His appreciation of Hegel’s empirical accuracy is, however, laced with sarcasm; I struggle to see here ‘Marx’s commendation of Hegel’s insight into the modern social world’, as David Leopold does (The Young Karl Marx, ). MEGA I.: /MECW : , citing Hegel, PR §. See Williams, ‘Democracy’, in his Keywords for a genealogy of the concept ‘democracy’. Williams’s entry shows how the original Greek sense of dēmokratia (standardly translated into Latin as popularis potentia) was displaced by Alexander Hamilton and others, so that ‘democracy’ now meant a set of representative institutions. The founding fathers of the United States were thus able to attach the word ‘democracy’ to what drastically opposed dēmokratia in its original sense. MEGA I.: /MECW : , citing PR §R. For a demonstration why this ought to be a problem for Hegel, see M. B. Foster, The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel. See also my ‘Freedom and Hegel’s Theory of the State’.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics inference [Schluß]. Hegel might as well have concluded that because the individual human being is a unit, the human species is only a single human being.

On the contrary, according to Marx, ‘the person is only the actual idea of personality in its genus existence [in ihrem Gattungsdasein], as the persons’, plural, free from restriction. The ‘moment of decision’ is placed by Hegel in the hands of the ‘person’, restricted to the monarch. Importantly, this restriction is made not because Hegel cannot, by his own lights, allow in corporate persons: he is quite prepared to speak of a moralische Person, which has just this connotation, at PR §R. The problem is that in a corporate person, according to Hegel, although such a person may be ‘concrete in-itself’ (konkret in sich), personality can figure only as an abstract moment. But Marx finds Hegel’s response absurd: Why wrench the moment of decision away from the concrete body of the people, in order to lodge it in the hands of a monarch who is the embodiment of an abstraction, ‘monarchy’, and whose characteristic is subjective caprice? Furthermore, added to ‘the accident of the will – caprice’ is added ‘the accident of nature – birth’. For Hegel, it is crucial that the ‘naturalness’ of the monarch is secured by primogeniture, ignoring the fact that the ‘naturalness’ that comes with being a child of parents belongs to all human beings, and so fails to distinguish the monarch from anyone else. Hegel not only favours monarchy over democracy. He directly contests the notion of the ‘sovereignty of the people’. He calls this a ‘confused notion’, ‘rooted in the wild idea [wu¨ste Vorstellung] of the people’. But, again, this appears so only given Hegel’s unargued presuppositions. There is nothing inherently ‘wild’ in the ‘idea of the people’. The idea of the people is ‘wild’ only on the supposition that society is ordered by means of monarchy, not by itself. Hegel suggests that the people crumbles ‘in the face of the developed idea’, but Marx counters that monarchy will crumble in the face of a ‘developed idea’ of democracy. The ultimate simplicity of Marx’s argument comes to the fore when he states what democracy is. Where Hegel conceives a democratic constitution as privative with respect to monarchy, Marx finds it to be evident that the reverse is true: ‘democracy is the truth of monarchy; monarchy is not the truth of democracy’. Democracy is even the very genus ‘constitution’ (die Verfassungsgattung) itself, while monarchy is merely one species   

MEGA I.: /MECW : –. MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .



 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : , quoting PR §R.

The Estates and Representation



of this genus, and a defective one. This is because democracy, unlike monarchy, ‘can be understood through itself [aus sich selbst]’. For here ‘the constitution appears as what it is, a free product of man’. And since in it ‘the formal principle is at the same time the material principle’, ‘only democracy . . . is the true unity of the universal and the particular’. So democracy had, all along, provided for the unity that Hegel’s account of the state strains towards. If Marx is right that democracy is the genus ‘constitution’, understood through itself by the people, then Hegel’s troubles, in the section of PR on the legislature, about the revisability of the constitution are also helpfully dispensed with. The legislature can only implement the constitution, not revise it, Hegel first wants to insist, but he has to admit that, after all, the constitution does get revised from time to time (‘indirectly’). Marx’s democracy avoids this problem, since it is upfront that the constitution is the self-determination of the people. It is therefore, quite simply, the people who determine what the constitution is. This conception of democracy already brings with it the dissolution of the political state (i.e., the state as an institution, distinct from human society as such). This sets it off from both monarchy and republic, in both of which an internal bifurcation is generated in each human being, into a political human being and an unpolitical human being (the human being as private individual). We will return to this below.

The Estates and Representation Marx’s criticism of Hegel’s defence of monarchy is relatively straightforward. There is a place for subjectivity in the state, Marx agrees with Hegel. But its proper embodiment, contra Hegel, is not in a single individual thanks to a natural accident of birth, but in the people. His criticism of Hegel’s account of the executive is likewise relatively straightforward. Hegel makes of the executive a bureaucracy, having relegated the judiciary and the police to the sphere of civil society. It is above all the simplicity   



 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . Marx comments that here, as certain French radicals (the Saint-Simonians?) have realized, ‘the political state is annihilated [untergehe]’ (MEGA I.: /MECW : ). Throughout much of CHPR, Marx tends to suggest that he advocates the dissolution of the political state, specifically. But insofar as he maintains room for a state that is not political, this (it would appear) amounts to human society as such. For Marx’s rejection of republicanism, see MEGA I.: –/MECW : –.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

and formalism of Hegel’s treatment of the executive that Marx subjects to criticism. ‘What Hegel says about the “executive” does not deserve to be called a philosophical exposition. Most of the paragraphs could stand word for word in the Prussian Common Law. And yet, the administration proper [die eigentliche Administration] is the most difficult point of all in the exposition.’ The account remains merely formal in that the role of the bureaucracy is outlined entirely in terms of its being constrained from the top by ‘institutions of sovereignty working from above’ and by the ‘corporate institutions’ rights exercised from below’. By far the most difficult, and by far the longest, stretch of CHPR, by contrast, is Marx’s discussion of the legislature. It is here that Marx discusses in detail the complex set of mediations between the various powers of the state, and between civil society and the state, that are required in order for Hegel to make good on his claim to deliver an organic account of the state. Hegel himself relies here, in great part, on the role played by the estates in his overall picture of society, whose main treatment falls in the section on civil society; hence Marx frequently brings in discussion of that prior section of Hegel’s text. In an Addition to PR § that Marx quotes, Hegel is reported as saying: ‘The constitution is essentially a system of mediation.’ We will examine in detail in the next chapter what Hegel means here by mediation, and how this is grounded in his conception of logic (and, thereby, of the state) as a system of interrelated syllogisms. Suffice to say here that, for Hegel, the unity of the state is reliant on a series of interlocking relationships. In these interlocking relationships, the various members alternately play the role of ‘middle term’ and of ‘extremes’ as in a syllogism. Hegel’s picture will involve not just a set of mediations between monarch, executive and legislature. It will also ascribe a special mediating role to an element in his picture that straddles his threefold distinction of powers – the estates, which straddle civil society and the state. Hegel thereby aligns himself with those who favoured an ‘estates constitution’ over a representative constitution based on the principle of one person, one vote. The introduction of the ‘estates element’ into the constitution solves, in Hegel’s mind, a pressing problem: the mismatch between the amorphous, atomistic mass of civil society and the institutions of the state. The idea of addressing this mismatch is one that Marx applauds. But he also thinks the proposed solution must fail. One argument that Marx gives is  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .



MEGA I.: /MECW : –.

The Estates and Representation



historical. Hegel appeals to medieval society as an instance of equivalence between civil estates and political estates; but, Marx shows, this equivalence has ceased to exist. At other times Hegel does not argue for an equivalence, but attempts to establish a relation between civil society and the political state by means of the estates as a mediating ‘middle term’. Against these attempts Marx presents a battery of objections, showing that they are riven with inconsistency. Hegel’s motivation for favouring an ‘estates constitution’ is clear. He sees the potential for a rift between civil society and the state, and the risk that civil society will engender immiseration in a way that the state will not be able to correct for (a concern that comes out clearly in his earlier writings and lectures on the subject). The estates are meant to, in various ways, mediate between the state and civil society so as to heal this rift. Marx thinks, however, that Hegel’s treatment of the estates is salutary precisely because it shows up that the rift cannot be healed so long as the distinction between civil society and the state is maintained intact. In part, Hegel’s advocacy of an ‘estates element’ in the legislature rests on a deliberate attempt to recover part of the structure of medieval society. Medieval society was explicitly structured in terms of estates, having a different function from modern classes. And to this part of Hegel’s case Marx responds with historical arguments. Hegel’s thought is that a bridge can be built between the mass of selfseeking individuals that makes up civil society, on the one hand, and the state, on the other, thanks to an equivalence between the estates as they figure in the ‘estates element’ of the legislature (where members of the respective estates sit in an ‘estates assembly’) and the estates as they figure in civil society. In his discussion of the estates themselves, under the heading of civil society, Hegel writes: The infinitely varied means and their equally infinite and intertwined movements of reciprocal production and exchange converge, by virtue of the universality inherent in their content, and become differentiated into universal masses. In consequence, the whole complex evolves into particular systems of needs, with their corresponding means, varieties of work, modes of satisfaction, and theoretical and practical education – into systems to which individuals are assigned, i.e. into different estates.

  

See Taylor, Hegel, , citing Hegel’s – System der Sittlichkeit. These historical arguments rest on Marx’s reading in historical literature documented in the Kreuznach Notebooks (MEGA IV.). PR §.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

Civil society, then, contains a pre-existing arrangement of the apparently amorphous mass that makes it up into estates. Hegel’s historical argument, however, does not work, as Marx elaborately demonstrates: The identity Hegel is asserting was at its most complete, as he himself admits, in the Middle Ages. Here the estates of civil society as such and the estates in the political sense were identical. One can express the spirit of the Middle Ages in this way: The estates of civil society and the estates in the political sense were identical, because civil society was political society – because the organic principle of civil society was the principle of the state.

Marx catches Hegel himself admitting, in a Freudian slip of the pen, that the identity which obtained in the Middle Ages no longer obtains, since he admits that, while it formerly obtained in fact, it now obtains only in language: Language itself, says Hegel, expresses the identity of the estates of civil society with the estates in the political sense – a ‘unity’ ‘which moreover formerly prevailed in fact’, and which, one must conclude, now no longer prevails.

But even putting the historical argument to one side, Marx seeks to show that Hegel’s notion of the estates as ‘mediators’ cannot work. Hegel’s other argument relies not on the estates being identical across civil society and the state, but on the idea that they can play a special mediating role between the two. In the service of this claim, Hegel produces a dizzying array of mediations. As Marx writes: ‘In the “estates” all the contradictions of the modern state organisation coalesce. The estates are the “mediators” [“Mittler”] in all directions, because in all respects they are “hybrids” [“Mitteldinge”].’ To begin with, at PR §, Hegel says two things. The first, as Marx paraphrases it, is: ‘The monarchical power and the executive power are . . . legislative power.’ The monarchical power and executive power are here presented as moments of the legislative power. But the ‘estates element’ that is added to this is legislative power alone – legislative power in distinction from the monarchical and executive power. This is (as Marx goes on in his comments on §) because the estates element is a deputation of civil society to the state. As such, it must mediate between ‘matters of universal concern’, already taken care of by the executive, and the private interests of civil society. Its role is specifically to import the private interests of civil  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .

 

MEGA I.: /MECW : , referring to PR, §R. MEGA I.: /MECW :  (ellipsis in the original).

The Estates and Representation



society into the state. Just as the executive element represents the state to civil society, so the estates element represents civil society to the state. This cannot be, contrary to what Hegel is reported as maintaining in §A, anything but a matter of ‘transactions between two opposing wills’. Throughout, the estates must play the role of reconciling the government and the people, conceived always as a multitude or crowd. ‘But how the estates are to set about uniting in themselves two contradictory ways of thinking is not indicated. The estates are the posited contradiction of the state and civil society within the state. At the same time, they are the demand for the resolution of this contradiction.’ However Hegel thinks the resolution might work, it is essential for the tension which he presupposes that the people should be an amorphous mass or crowd that could not be thought of as self-organizing. The estates element is, at once, the people, as set over against the government (i.e., an extreme, opposing the government), but also the middle term that mediates between people and government. That which does the mediating here is, thus, itself one of the extremes being mediated between. The notion of mediation has here become unintelligible, since the distinction between what mediates and what is mediated is lost. But not only must the estates mediate between government and people. They must also mitigate the ‘extreme’ of the arbitrary power of the monarch. ‘They mediate to counter the isolation of the authority of the monarch as an extreme, partly by themselves becoming a part of the monarchical power, and partly by putting the executive into the position of an extreme.’ They thereby reduce the monarchy to a mere symbol or appearance of power. Furthermore, the executive element in the legislature and the estates element taken together form the middle term between the monarchy (one empirical, natural will) and the people (many empirical, natural wills). The executive does the mediating work in relation to the monarch; the estates do the mediating work in relation to the people. The executive emanates the monarch into a multi-branching circulation system; the estates element 

 



MEGA I.: /MECW : . In PR §A Hegel is reported by his students as saying: ‘The attitude of the government [Regierung] towards the Estates should not be essentially hostile, and the belief that this relationship is necessarily a hostile one is a sad mistake.’ Marx adds: ‘a sad truth’. MEGA I.: /MECW : . Marx writes: ‘Thus the estates element is () the extreme of the people [des Volkes] over against the government; but also () the middle term between people and government; or it is the anthesis within the people itself. The antithesis of government and people is mediated by the antithesis between estates and people’ (MEGA I.: –/MECW : ).  MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : –.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

condenses the people so that the monarch can deal with them en miniature. The executive is delegated by the monarch, the estates are delegated by civil society. But, Marx urges, the extremes do not really thereby confront each other. The executive diffuses the monarch; the estates element condenses the empirical universality of civil society into one committee of limited number. The only confrontation still possible is between the two representative agencies in question (the diffused monarch ¼ the executive element in the legislature; condensed civil society ¼ the estates element). But if we have thus far followed Hegel, what we now have is a confrontation within the legislature itself. Hegel recognizes this, but now proposes that this confrontation be mediated – by the estates element. But this makes no sense. As Marx comments, this is ‘rather the existence of contradiction than of mediation’. What is perplexing throughout Hegel’s handling of the mediations would seem to be symptomatic. It would seem that any entity in this system can, in the same breath, be an extreme and the mediator between itself and another extreme. ‘In the legislature, the monarch had therefore to constitute the middle term between the executive and the estates element; but the executive is the middle term between him and the estates element, and the estates element is the middle term between him and civil society.’ All of the elements here are ‘Janus-faced’, simultaneously playing the role of extreme and middle term in the very same relationship. Marx satirizes this as follows: ‘As if a man were to step between two fighting men and then again one of the fighting men were to step between the mediator and the fighting man.’ We have not yet seen why Hegel should think himself entitled to such a dance of extremes and middle terms, and why he is not, even by his own lights, so entitled. For that we need to bring in Marx’s principled critique of this procedure, as we will do in the next chapter. For now, we have seen Marx expose the lengths to which Hegel goes to provide the desired unification of elements. This is the beginning of his diagnosis of the fundamental problem that Hegel lays bare. The rift between civil society and state just cannot be healed while the type of institutions Hegel envisages are in play. It is they that produce the need for a seemingly endless and dizzying array of mediations. Marx makes this explicit when he contrasts the problematic picture of society that Hegel has so accurately captured, based on the separation of  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: –/MECW : .



MEGA I.: /MECW : .  MEGA I.: /MECW : .

The Estates and Representation



political state and civil society, with an alternative that he endorses. The following passage presents first the problematic picture (‘Either . . .’), followed by Marx’s alternative (‘Or, conversely . . .’): Either: separation of political state and civil society takes place, in which case all cannot individually share in the legislative power. The political state is a phenomenon separated from civil society. On the one hand, civil society would abandon itself [sich selbst aufgeben] if all were legislators; on the other, the political state, which confronts civil society, can tolerate it only in a form appropriate to the scale [Maaßstab] of the political state. Or it is precisely the participation of civil society in the political state through delegates that is the expression of their separation and of their merely dualistic unity. Or, conversely: civil society is actual political society. In this case, it is nonsense to raise a demand which has arisen only from the notion of the political state as a phenomenon separated from civil society, which has arisen only from the theological notion of the political state. In this situation the significance of the legislative power as a representative power completely disappears. The legislative power is representation here in the sense in which every function is representative – in the sense in which, e.g., the shoemaker, insofar as he satisfies a social need, is my representative, in which every particular social activity as a Gattung-activity merely represents the Gattung, i.e., an attribute of my own nature, and in which every person is the representative of every other. He is here a representative [Repräsentant] not because of something else which he represents but because of what he is and does.

The picture that Marx favours here is a radical one. We might call it ‘absolute representation’, for here representation is of each by each. The crucial idea is that each person ‘is here a representative not because of something else which he represents but because of what he is and does’. There is no need for any predetermined representative institutions to do the work of representation. This might be described as the actualization of civil society as the state (and Marx sometimes so describes it), or (as he does here) as the actualization of the state as civil society. Either way, the distinction between civil society and state is abolished. Any sense in which the ‘state’ remains in play, then, is not that of the political state – that of a separate institution. The ‘state’ (if this term is to continue to be employed) can now only be: human society as such.



MEGA I.: /MECW : . I leave Gattung (which may be rendered ‘genus’ or ‘species’) and cognate terms untranslated; I set out reasons for doing so in Chapter .



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

Hegel had posed a dilemma for himself: either civil society participates in deliberation on universal affairs of the state through delegates or all do so as individuals. The latter had seemed impossible, because not all could sit in the assembly. Marx’s radical picture offers to sweep away the dilemma. All can participate, since there is no need for an assembly. This picture of absolute representation is a radicalization of the view on representation that Marx had espoused in his journalistic writings of : In general, to be represented [Vertreten werden] is something passive; only what is material, spiritless, unable to rely on itself, imperilled, requires to be represented; but no element of the state should be material, spiritless, unable to rely on itself, imperilled. Representation must not be conceived as the representation of something that is not the people itself, but only as the people’s self-representation [Selbstvertretung], as a state action which, not being its sole, exceptional state action, is distinguished from other expressions of its state life merely by the universality of its content. Representation must not be regarded as a concession to defenceless weakness, to impotence, but rather as the self-assured vitality of the supreme force [die selbstgewisse Lebendigkeit der höchsten Kraft].

The self-representation insisted on in the  text has now explicitly become a kind of representation that, the state having been abolished, is no longer representation. Accordingly, Hegel’s picture of the state must now, for Marx, give way to a picture of society. As state and civil society are dissolved in tandem, electoral reform will reach its apogee, and that is to say its dissolution, in absolute representation. There will no longer be voting, nor will there be the rights-bearers of civil society. ‘Electoral reform within the abstract political state is therefore the demand for its dissolution, but also for the dissolution of civil society.’

The Bifurcation of the Individual CHPR is throughout concerned with the tension between civil society and the state. In one passage Marx brings out the way in which this tension produces an internal bifurcation in each member of society: The general law here appears in the individual. Civil society and state are separated. Hence the citizen of the state is also separated from the citizen as

  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . ‘The Supplement to Nos.  and ’; MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .

The Bifurcation of the Individual



the member of civil society. He must therefore effect a fundamental division [wesentliche Diremtion] with himself.

This theme of inner bifurcation is developed in ‘On the Jewish Question’, composed in late  and published in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbu¨cher in . There Marx diagnoses an internal bifurcation that afflicts each member of society as, on the one hand, a private citizen (member of civil society) and, on the other, a political being subject to the state. Part  of Marx’s essay responds to Bruno Bauer’s Die Judenfrage. Bauer claims in that text that demands for Jewish emancipation cannot be met in a state such as Germany. Germany is a Christian state, and as such all it can offer to Jews are privileges (exemptions with respect to religious observance), and these it already offers to them. True emancipation, according to Bauer, would be emancipation from religion. But since Christianity is a higher religion than Judaism, Jews would need to become Christians first. Then everyone can be emancipated from religion, in an atheist state. Marx focuses on a structural aspect of Bauer’s response that shows it, he thinks, to be fundamentally flawed. It is not merely a question, Marx says, of who is to be emancipated and who emancipates, but of what kind of emancipation is in question. Bauer’s concern, he takes it, has been with political emancipation. Now, the political emancipation of Jews or Christians, Marx says, would be the emancipation of the state from Judaism or Christianity; that would occur when the state no longer recognizes itself as a religious state, but comes to see itself as a political state. Marx shares with Bauer the assessment that this has not yet happened in Germany. Things are different, however, in France and the United States, where there is a political, non-religious state. (An effect of this, Marx points out, that can be seen very clearly in the United States is that religion thereby becomes a private matter, leading to a proliferation of different religious sects.) But Marx now offers a critique of political emancipation, in such a way, he says, as to make the Jewish question into ‘the general question of our time’. If we consider what political emancipation achieves in those countries in which there is a political state, such as France and the United States, what we find is that the state becomes the locus of the Gattungsleben of the human in contrast to their material life. The individual leads two lives: a ‘heavenly’ political, communal life and an ‘earthly’ private, bourgeois life. 

MEGA I.: /MECW : .



MEGA I.: –/MECW : –.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Politics

The individual is thus bifurcated into a generalized entity as citoyen (as subject to the state) and a particular entity as bourgeois (as a private individual in pursuit of egoistic gain in a system of needs). This situation, for Marx, further serves as an indictment of the conception that drives the various French bills of rights (, , ). What appear in these bills of rights as the universal rights of man in fact turn out to apply to the private realm of the bourgeois. Political emancipation is a significant step forward, and in fact the highest form of emancipation possible, Marx thought, under the circumstances and arrangements then prevailing. Marx’s diagnosis of where it remains defective is highly instructive, however, in underscoring how keen he is to avert the threat of bifurcation. Political democracy, he points out, retains something religious insofar as it regards the human as such as the highest being, and not these individual humans here. What is needed is for the gap between the communal (manifested by the citoyen) and the individual (manifested by the bourgeois) to be closed. It is only then that human emancipation will become possible. Marx sets out the desideratum as follows in the closing paragraph of part  of ‘On the Jewish Question’: Only when the actual individual human being takes the abstract citizen [Staatsbu¨rger] into himself and as an individual human being has become a Gattungswesen in his empirical life, in his individual work, in his individual relationships, only when the human being has recognized and organized his ‘forces propres’ as social forces so that social force is no longer separated from him in the form of political force, only then will human emancipation be accomplished.

It is crucial to Marx’s point about the way in which the French revolution falls short of this that here l’homme (the universal human being) would appear to be on the scene. The repeated invocation of the term l’homme would suggest so. But what are presented as the droits de l’homme are actually only rights of the bourgeois (the rights of individuals to dispose of the property they own as they see fit, and so on). So the French Revolution conception serves to camouflage that human emancipation has not yet come on the scene. It is only when citoyen and bourgeois are unified so as to constitute the true homme, Marx thinks, that there can be real human emancipation (and not human emancipation in name only). L’homme, as presented in the bills of rights, despite the appearance of universality, is a mere individual bifurcated from their universality. This 

MEGA I.: –/MECW : .

The Bifurcation of the Individual



distracts from the real significance of the expression ‘l’homme’, by using that very expression. The real significance of l’homme, by contrast, is that of the individual in their very universality. Marx will give a fuller picture of the universality promised in the idea of l’homme in his ‘Notes on James Mill’ from , to be considered in Chapter . We have already seen, however, the shape of the solution that Marx envisages to the problem of bifurcation: it must be that the universality in question reaches down (so to speak) into the character of the individual as individual. As it does so, mediation will be of each individual by each, without the need for the powers of the state as a measure for keeping civil society in check.

 

Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

In the previous chapter we examined Marx’s symptomatology of what goes wrong in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Our focus was on what Marx in his retrospective remarks on Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in the Paris Manuscripts called ‘criticism of the various subjects’ – in particular, his criticisms of specific ‘mediations’ in Hegel’s exposition. In this chapter our focus will be on what Marx in his retrospective comments in the Manuscripts called ‘criticism directed only against speculation’ – that is, his more fundamental criticisms of Hegel’s very philosophical procedure. Working, in large part, with CHPR as our main text, we will then be able to illuminate the long critical discussion of Hegel in the third Paris Manuscript by means of it. CHPR, as we observed in the previous chapter, has been neglected to a remarkable extent. This is particularly unfortunate since in that text Marx mounts a series of substantive arguments that demonstrate the depth of his critique of Hegel. Once these arguments are appreciated, and their continuity with the Paris Manuscripts and with still later work understood, it becomes clear that Marx seeks to challenge whether Hegel’s approach can so much as be considered a proper instance of dialectic. Pursuing these more fundamental arguments in CHPR, we will be working in the opposite direction to that which has driven much recent work on Marx. The point is not to ‘re-Hegelianize’ Marx. The Hegelianization of Marx has been a dominant tendency in Marx scholarship at least as far back as Lukács and Marcuse. While many have endeavoured to shore up Marx’s philosophical credentials by Hegelianizing him, Marx himself argues forcefully in CHPR that Hegel fails precisely as a philosopher. It is not that we must imbue Marx with   

MEGA I.: /MECW : . I borrow the term from Shoikhedbrod, ‘Re-Hegelianizing Marx on Rights’. Lukács, History and Class-Consciousness; Marcuse, Reason and Revolution.



Inversion and Mysticism



philosophical kudos by means of an appeal to Hegel. Instead, we should recognize that Marx offers, in the face of Hegel, to give us philosophy for the first time – something that Hegel has, despite his best efforts, failed to deliver. CHPR, as we have seen, is far from a set of marginal annotations on Hegel’s philosophy. It is a sustained argument to the effect that Hegel fails to live up to the title of philosopher. Hegel, Marx says, fails to maintain the philosophical standpoint: ‘in expounding the legislature Hegel everywhere falls back from the philosophical standpoint to that other standpoint where the matter is not dealt with in its own terms’. What is to be criticized in Hegel’s efforts is, for Marx, not the aspiration to give a logic of the state. That is a perfectly good aspiration. Instead, Hegel’s execution of this task is to be shown to be inadequate: The truly philosophical criticism of the present state constitution not only shows up contradictions as existing; it explains them, it comprehends their genesis, their necessity. It considers them in their specific significance. But this comprehending [Dieß Begreifen] does not consist, as Hegel imagines, in recognising the features of the logical concept everywhere, but in grasping the specific logic of the specific object [Gegenstandes].

It is with an examination of this inadequacy that this chapter will be concerned.

Inversion and Mysticism It is a commonplace that Marx, having found Hegel’s dialectic ‘standing on its head’, endeavoured to turn it ‘the right way up’. The image of inversion appears twice in CHPR, and Marx harks back to it in the famous Afterword to the second edition of Capital Volume . In CHPR Marx says that in Hegel’s text ‘the true way [der wahre Weg] is stood on its 





MEGA I.: /MECW : . Cf. Marx’s insistence on a philosophical standpoint, in opposition to what he takes to be Hegel’s standpoint (MEGA I.: /MECW : –): ‘One is not looking at election philosophically, i.e., in its specific character, if one takes it at once in relation to the monarchical or executive power.’ MEGA I.: /MECW : . Cf.: ‘[Hegel’s] philosophical labour consists not in thinking embodying itself in political determinations, but in the evaporation of the existing political determinations into abstract thoughts. Not the logic of the matter, but the matter of logic is the philosophical moment. Logic does not [here] serve as proof of the state, but the state as proof of logic’ (MEGA I.: /MECW : ). And again, Hegel ‘reproaches ordinary consciousness for not being content with this logical satisfaction, and for wanting to see logic transformed into true objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit] rather than actuality dissolve into logic by arbitrary [willku¨hrliche] abstraction’ (MEGA I.: /MECW : ). For further discussion of the passage in the Afterword, see Chapter  below.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

head’, and speaks of Hegel as one ‘who inverts everything [der alles umkehrt]’. More fully: The true way is stood on its head. The simplest thing becomes the most complicated, and the most complicated the simplest. What ought to be the starting point becomes a mystical outcome, and what ought to be the rational outcome becomes a mystical starting point. Hegel, who inverts everything, turns the executive power into the representative, into the emanation, of the monarch.

It is evident here that Marx thinks the ‘inversion’ in question results from a tendency that he calls ‘mysticism’. But what does he mean by ‘mysticism’? We have seen Marx, in the previous chapter, target specific ‘mediations’ in Hegel’s exposition. We have so far left in suspense the question of what Hegel’s procedure is, and how Marx’s symptomatology bears out his more general criticism of that procedure. ‘Mysticism’ is Marx’s general name for what is wrong with the procedure. The accusation of ‘mysticism’ is easily misunderstood. Marx is not simply attacking what he takes to be the mistiness of idealist metaphysics. He does not, indeed, argue directly against idealism, or declare himself in favour of an opposing view (say, ‘materialism’). Instead, as we have seen him already do in the Difference and as we will see him do more decisively in our discussion in the next chapter of the Paris Manuscripts, he seeks to undermine the very dichotomy between idealism and materialism. Nor is his complaint just an objection to an ‘apriorism’ (the attempt to settle empirical matters by a priori means) or an ‘emanationism’ (the production of reality by the Idea) that he finds in Hegel. Such charges have a place in Marx’s critique, but they flow from a more fundamental point. Marx does not simply oppose Hegel’s idealism, apriorism or emanationism; he seeks to show that Hegel’s logical procedure is as such unsound. In criticizing individual mediations in Hegel’s exposition, Marx alleged that his arguments for monarchy involve ad hoc or illicit moves. The tendency to arbitrariness or sleight of hand, Marx thinks, is indicative of a wider problem. Hegel can too easily, it seems, appeal to the Logic as already containing just those mediations he needs for his argument to work. The requisite mediations seem to be ‘predestined by the “nature of the concept”, sealed in the sacred registers of the Santa Casa (of the Logic)’.   

 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .  MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . The reference to the ‘Santa Casa’ is to a prison in Madrid used by the Inquisition. It features as such in Schiller’s Don Carlos, perhaps Marx’s immediate reference.

Hegel’s Logical Procedure



It would seem that Hegel somehow entitles himself to put the logical cart before the real horse. We have not yet seen how he is able to do so. One way to formulate Marx’s objection is in terms of a ‘reversal of subject and predicate’. Marx’s criticism is a version of a criticism that Feuerbach makes in just these terms, although Marx elaborates the point in a manner distinct from that of Feuerbach. The logical Idea gets to be the subject, instead of real human beings or other components of reality. Since the logical Idea is articulated into concepts, not into things, what this brings with it is a hypostatization of those concepts: predicates get to play the role of subjects. For example, monarchy, rather than the monarch, gets to play the role of subject. The monarch, in turn, gets to reappear as the predicate of this predicate. As a result, reality now looks like the mere appearance of what’s really real: the Idea. In order to understand why Marx thinks this situation must necessarily result from Hegel’s logical procedure, we must consider that procedure itself, and Marx’s attack on it.

Hegel’s Logical Procedure As already noted in the previous chapter, Hegel does not think of his Realphilosophie (to which his Philosophy of Right belongs) as an add-on to his Logic. He takes his Realphilosophie to be permeated by his Logic, to be the proper unfolding of his logical categories in their dialectical interrelation. Despite this, discussion of PR in Hegel scholarship has tended to shy away from taking seriously the logical structure of that work. Anglophone scholarship has tended to play down, or dismiss, its claims to logical status, attempting to ignore them in an effort to concentrate on the substantive doctrines of the work. Among German-speaking scholars, too, the logical structure of PR has tended to be neglected, with the notable exception of 



Feuerbach tends to put this (as Marx does not) in terms of the rectification of speculative philosophy that will result when this reversal is, in turn, reversed. See his Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy: ‘The method of the reformative critique of speculative philosophy as such does not differ from that already used in the Philosophy of Religion. We need only turn the predicate into the subject and thus as subject into object and principle – that is, only reverse speculative philosophy. In this way, we have the unconcealed, pure, and untarnished truth’ (GW : / FB: ). This attitude is articulated in particularly stark form by Allen Wood, who dispenses with any felt requirement to consider the logical structure of PR with the comment: ‘Hegel totally failed in his attempt to canonize speculative logic as the only proper form of philosophical thinking’ (Hegel’s Ethical Thought, ). See, however, Arash Abazari’s recent comments about the integral importance of Hegel’s Logic to PR (Hegel’s Ontology of Power, ).



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

essays by Dieter Henrich, Michael Wolff and (more recently) Klaus Vieweg. Henrich’s discussion is particularly useful for our purposes. Henrich provides a lucid overview of Hegel’s claim that PR is structured as a set of interrelated syllogisms. He combines this with an appreciation of the Platonic basis of Hegel’s conception and with a set of acerbic remarks about Marx’s failure to appreciate what Hegel was doing. This is useful, since I want to exploit Henrich’s perceptive remarks about the Platonic basis of Hegel’s procedure in order to show that Marx, contrary to Henrich’s aspersions, bases his critique precisely on his appreciation of what is problematic about this. Hegel’s Logic is not concerned with formal logic (although a discussion of formal logic falls within its remit). It is intended to be an articulation of thought as such, something equivalent (as Hegel sees things) to an articulation of being as such; it is, in this sense, a logic that is at once a metaphysics. What matters for our purposes is that the Logic as a whole should be for Hegel the articulation of the Idea. The Idea generates all difference, whose principle of unity it is. This unity is achieved through an activity performed by the Idea, and it is this activity that must be conceived in terms of syllogism. Hegel’s striving for such a Vereinigungsphilosophie (‘philosophy of unification’) was in his own mind directly modelled on Plato’s Timaeus, where Plato, as Henrich puts it, ‘had suggested an approach that also allowed the different moments as such to be conceptualized within a completed unity, one that could no longer be transcended in turn by any further postulated unity and would thus prevent the monistic idea from falling back into something merely indeterminate’. Now, ‘the kind of complete union that Plato [and, following him, Hegel] had in mind cannot be accomplished by a single syllogistic thought (syn-logism). For all syllogisms depend on the concepts that function as middle terms (mediis terminis).’ A syllogism purports to secure its conclusion by means of the mediation of its ‘middle term’. To give an example:

Therefore    

All swans are birds. All birds are animals. All swans are animals.

Henrich, ‘Logical Form and Real Totality’; Wolff, ‘Hegel’s Organicist Theory of the State’; Vieweg, ‘The State as a System of Three Syllogisms’. Henrich, ‘Logical Form and Real Totality’, –. Henrich, ‘Logical Form and Real Totality’, . Henrich, ‘Logical Form and Real Totality’, .

Hegel’s Logical Procedure



The syllogism has three terms – in this case, ‘swan’, ‘bird’ and ‘animal’. The term that appears in both premises of the syllogism (in this case, ‘bird’), is the ‘middle term’. The other two terms (in this case, ‘swan’ and ‘animal’) are the ‘extremes’. We can now explicate Hegel’s idea of moving through a series of three syllogisms as follows. To make things easier, we can use ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ as placeholders for the three terms of the syllogism. And we can abstract away from the ‘all’ that figures in this particular version of the syllogism, as well as stripping out the verb. Our example above then looks like this:

Therefore

A – B. B – C. A – C.

We can envisage a series of syllogisms in which the middle term shifts in the following way. We begin with A – B – C, as above. (Here B is the middle term, mediating between the extremes A and C.) We then move to the ‘next’ syllogism, beginning with B, the next term along: B – C – A. Or, more fully:

Therefore

B – C. C – A. B – A.

We carry out that procedure one more time, yielding C – A – B. Or, more fully:

Therefore

C – A. A – B. C – B.

(Another iteration of the procedure takes us back to the syllogism we started from: A – B – C.) A further salient feature of Hegel’s triad of syllogisms is that they involve the shifting of the moments of universality, particularity and individuality. We can thus write the succession of three syllogisms as follows (as Hegel does in his stand-alone Science of Logic): P – U – I, U – I – P, I – P – U. A passage in the Encyclopaedia Logic concerning the threefold syllogism uses the state as an example: 

In the Encyclopaedia Logic, the order is: I – P – U, U – I – P, P – U – I. For discussion of this difference, see Wolff, ‘Hegel’s Organicist Theory of the State’,  n. .



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic It is only through the nature of this con-cluding [Zusammenschließens], or through this triad of syllogisms with the same terms, that a whole is truly understood in its organisation. Like the solar system, so in the practical sphere, for instance, the state is a system of three syllogisms. () The individual (the person) concludes himself through his particularity (the physical and spiritual needs, which when further developed on their own account give rise to civil society) with the universal (society, right, law, government). () The will or the activity of the individuals is the mediating [term] that gives satisfaction to their needs in the context of society, right, etc., and provides fulfilment and actualisation to society, right, etc. () But it is the universal (state, government, right) that is the substantial middle term within which the individuals and their satisfaction have and preserve their full reality, mediation, and subsistence. Precisely because the mediation concludes each of these determinations with the other extreme, each of them concludes itself with itself in this way or produces itself; and this production is its self-preservation.

Henrich thinks, unaccountably, that ‘because Marx never explicitly questions the status of causal analysis’ he fails to understand that Hegel’s ‘“syn-logistic” system of mediations’ is in play in his exposition of the state. There is, however, ample evidence that Marx is not only aware of the system of syllogistic mediation by which Hegel is operating, but gives sustained attention to it in his critique. Henrich falls prey to a simplistic notion of ‘reversal’ and ‘turning upside down’ when he complains as follows about Marx: ‘A theory that was originally intended as a reversal of Hegel’s position that would preserve the inner formal features of Hegel’s own analyses thus ends up, instead, as a systematic distortion of the latter.’ Henrich is here flatly wrong. Marx nowhere offers to reverse Hegel’s position in a way that preserves the ‘inner formal features’ of Hegel’s exposition. He instead questions the inner structure of Hegel’s account on the basis of a principled opposition to Hegel’s methodology. This principled opposition springs from a rejection of the Platonizing tendencies in Hegel that Henrich aptly and accurately identifies.

 



EL §R; TWA : /EL: –. Henrich, ‘Logical Form and Real Totality’, , . Henrich never makes clear why he thinks Marx ‘never explicitly questions the status of causal analysis’. Perhaps he thinks Marx remains merely a Verstandesphilosoph, or philosopher of the understanding, innocent of the speculative philosophy of Vernunft (reason); but this would seem remarkable given Henrich’s own portrayal of Marx as grappling with the core of Hegel’s thought in his earlier lecture ‘Karl Marx als Schu¨ler Hegels’. Henrich, ‘Logical Form and Real Totality’, . The simplistic notion is, again, one that Henrich himself had earlier warned against (‘Karl Marx als Schu¨ler Hegels’, ).

Hegel’s Logical Procedure



As we have seen in the previous chapter, Marx pokes fun at Hegel’s mediations. It must not be thought, however, that Marx seeks merely to satirize Hegel (although he does so). Marx thinks that the whole syllogistic procedure that produces these mediations must be questioned. He comments: ‘It is strange that Hegel, who reduces this absurdity of mediation to its abstract, logical, and therefore unadulterated, unshakeable expression, describes it at the same time as the speculative mystery of logic, as the rational relationship, as the syllogism of reason [Vernunftschluß].’ An indication of what goes wrong is that Hegel, in mobilizing his logic, gives the impression that extremes ipso facto, in virtue of being extremes, require mediation (and can be mediated). But surely, Marx insists, there is that which does not permit mediation. Marx writes, of extremes, that ‘the one does not have in its own bosom the longing for, the need for, the anticipation of the other’. Even if there is such a thing as the mediation of extremes, nonetheless, Marx insists, ‘real extremes’ exist. ‘Real extremes [Wirkliche Extreme] cannot be mediated precisely because they are real extremes. Nor do they require mediation, for they are opposed in essence.’ And that is not all. It is not just that Hegel disallows the possibility of real extremes, by presuming that whatever pair of extremes you take, a mediation can be found locked away in advance in the Logic. The other side of the coin is, as Marx goes on, that ‘Hegel treats universality and individuality [Einzelnheit], the abstract elements of the syllogism, as actual opposites.’ Marx calls this ‘the basic dualism of his logic’. This makes clear a specific sense in which Marx is accusing Hegel of inversion. Opposition is denied in reality, dissolved by the unity that logic provides, but it reappears – as it must – as internal to that unificatory logic itself. We can now start to see the depth of Marx’s criticism of ‘mysticism’. It is not merely that Hegel inverts subject and predicate, or that he makes logic do the real work. The very conception of logic in play is one that Marx thinks needs to be overturned. Ultimately, this conception of logic   



 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . Cf. MEGA I.: /MECW : : ‘One may say that in his exposition of the syllogism of reason [des Vernunftschlusses] the whole transcendence and mystical dualism of his system is made apparent. The middle term is the wooden iron, the concealed opposition between universality and individuality [Einzelnheit].’ Marx’s approach here – that of seeking to overturn Hegel’s logic – indicates that readings which have him simply react to Hegel by beginning from the ‘positive’ (as what stands over against the ideal) cannot be right. A reading which, however subtle it may be in other ways, erroneously aligns Marx with such an approach (associated with Feuerbach) is that of Manfred Frank. (See Frank, Der unendliche Mangel an Sein.)



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

is Platonic. Marx had already written in the Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy: In expounding definite questions of morality, religion, or even natural philosophy, as in Timaeus, Plato sees that his negative interpretation of the Absolute is not sufficient; here it is not enough to sink everything in the one dark night in which, according to Hegel, all cows are black; at this point Plato has recourse to the positive interpretation of the Absolute, and its essential form, which has its basis in itself, is myth and allegory. Where the Absolute stands on one side, and limited positive reality on the other, and the positive must all the same be preserved, there this positive becomes the medium through which absolute light shines, the absolute light breaks up into a fabulous play of colours, and the finite, the positive, points to something other than itself, has in it a soul, to which this husk is an object of wonder; the world has become a world of myths. Every shape is a riddle. This has recurred in recent times, determined by a similar law.

Hegel’s mystification, as Marx intimates here, can be compared to Plato’s collapse into myth. Gilles Deleuze has alleged that Plato collapses into myth because of the inherent deficiencies of the form he gives to dialectic: that of diairesis (‘division’). Arguably, Hegel’s dialectic suffers deficiencies structurally analogous to those of Platonic diairesis. In order to see why this is, we must first turn to Plato. We shall do so through Hegel’s exposition of Plato in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy.

Hegel’s Plato For Hegel, philosophy is the dialectical self-generation of the Idea. Hegel himself identifies the project of securing philosophy as self-generation of the Idea with Plato in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. The first of the three sections he devotes to Plato is entitled ‘Dialectic’. Here he intends to show that Plato was the first to raise philosophy to the level of speculation. Plato’s ‘speculative dialectic’ is ‘the most interesting, but also the most difficult part of his work – so that one ordinarily does not become acquainted with it in studying Plato’s writings’. Plato’s

  

 MEGA IV.: –/MECW : . Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, . This strategy means that I need not settle the question here of what Plato himself thought. TWA : /LHP II: . (Where I do not, below, provide references to Haldane and Simson’s translation, this is because their version deviates too substantially from the material presented in TWA, which closely follows the text as published in Werke vol. . The version in Werke, as discussed in Chapter , is that to which Marx had access.)

Hegel’s Plato



achievement was not without deficiency, but its overall shape was that of rendering philosophy speculative. Hegel finds there to be two forms of dialectic in Plato’s dialogues. The first corresponds to an ordinary conception of dialectic, widely shared in Plato’s time, for instance, among the Sophists – ‘the art of confusing representations or even concepts, in order to demonstrate their nothingness, so that its result is merely negative’. This is made use of by Plato in some of the dialogues, to confuse and disrupt the idea that the representations of the understanding are adequate to reality. In these dialogues the discussion remains unresolved, aporetic. Hegel calls this ‘negative dialectic’. It is to be contrasted with the ‘concept of true dialectic’. This ‘true dialectic’ is pursued in a small number of later dialogues, principal among them Parmenides, Sophist and Philebus, in which the confusion is resolved by means of speculation. ‘The concept of true dialectic is that it demonstrates the necessary movement of pure concepts, without thereby resolving them into nothing, but rather the result is that they are this movement and (the result simply expressed) the universal is the unity of such opposed [entgegengesetzten] concepts.’ Plato, according to Hegel, does not attain full consciousness that such is the nature of dialectic; nonetheless, such dialectic can be found to be operative in his work. Plato raises us above the understanding, into the realm of reason. This is an ideal realm, in which the representations of the understanding are shown up as illusory. ‘Contrasted with merely external reality, it is rather the ideal that is the most real, and it was Plato who perceived that it was the only real, for he characterized the universal or thought as the true, in opposition to the sensuous.’ The aim of many of the dialogues is to show that the individual is to be regarded not as many, but as universal (das Allgemeine). This universal Plato calls ‘the Idea’ (εἶδος), which can be translated as ‘genus’ or ‘species’ (Gattung, Art). The beautiful, the true, the good are Gattung. Plato seeks to determine this universal (diesem Allgemeinen eine Bestimmung zu geben). This begins from the insight that the sensuous, that which immediately is, things as they appear, is nothing 

  

See especially the qualifications entered at TWA : . Plato’s dialectic is ‘oft bloß räsonierend’ (‘often merely ratiocinative’); ‘andererseits ist Platon selbst gegen diese nur räsonierende Dialektik gerichtet, aber man sieht, daß es nicht ohne Schwierigkeit ist; es macht ihm Mu¨he, den Unterschied gehörig hervorzuheben’ (‘on the other hand Plato directs himself against this merely ratiocinative dialectic, but one sees that this does not occur without difficulty; it costs him exertion to hold onto it consistently’).    TWA : . TWA : . TWA : . TWA : /LHP II: –. TWA : /LHP II: . ‘Das Schöne, das Wahre, Gute fu¨r sich selbst ist Gattung.’ TWA : .



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

true, since the things change, and are determined by what is other, not by themselves. Each such thing is only relative to another; it is another as much as it is itself; it is contradiction and unresolved contradiction. It is against this form of the finite, in particular, that Plato’s dialectic is directed. ‘Dialectic in this higher determination is truly Platonic dialectic.’ It demonstrates ‘the unification of the oppositions [Gegensätze] that have destroyed themselves [die sich vernichtet haben]’. It is ‘the contemplation of pure thoughts in and for themselves’ in their movement. Examples of such pure thoughts are ‘being and not-being (τὸ ὄν, τὸ οὐκ ὄν), the one and the many, the infinite (unlimited) and the finite (limited)’. The movement is the movement of the Idea, which ‘is the universal, but as what is self-determining and concrete in itself [in sich]’. The Idea is ‘unity of these differences; and in this way it is determined Idea’. Hegel cites Sophist, Philebus and Parmenides as paradigms of Plato’s ‘true dialectic’. I will here focus on Sophist and Parmenides. In Sophist Plato investigates the pure concepts or ideas (εἴδη, species) of motion and rest, identity and otherness, being and not-being. Here he proves, against Parmenides, that not-being is; that the simple, self-identical participates in otherness, that the one participates in the many. Plato determines the universal so that the true is the unity of the one and the many, being and not-being. He ‘is interested in demonstrating not-being as an essential determination of being’. ‘This bringing together of the diverse – being and not-being, one and many, etc. – so that we are not simply passing from one to the other: this is what is most inner and what is truly great in Plato’s philosophy.’ It is Parmenides, however, which according to Hegel provides the fullest example of ‘true dialectic’. He calls it ‘that most famous masterpiece of

  

   TWA : . TWA : . TWA : . TWA : .   TWA : . TWA : –. TWA : . TWA : . In mounting his argument, Hegel relies on an unusual translation of Sophist c. Hegel reads the Eleatic Stranger as delivering on his promise of a ‘thing that is both difficult and at the same time beautiful’ as follows: ‘What is difficult and true is to show that that which is the other (ἕτερον) is the same, and what is the same (ταὐτὸν ὄν) is another, and this in one and the same respect; similarly, that in virtue of the one having occurred to them (i.e. to the same, being another, and to the other, being the same), they are also shown to have the other determination (ἐκείνῃ καὶ κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνο ὅ φησι τούτῳ – alternative reading τοῦτο – πεπονθέναι πότερον).’ (This is my translation of Hegel’s German rendition.) Compare Nicholas P. White’s translation (Plato, Complete Works): ‘When he says that what’s different is the same in a certain way or that what’s the same is different in a certain way, we should understand just what way he means, and the precise respect in which he’s saying that the thing is the same or different.’

Diairesis and Dialectic



Platonic dialectic’. He thus stands in direct opposition to those who regard this dialogue as presenting merely an exercise in dialectical juggling. Parmenides is ‘truly the pure Platonic doctrine of the Forms’. According to this doctrine, the movement of pure thoughts ‘consists in their making themselves the other of themselves, and thus showing that only their unity is what is truly justified’. It shows that ‘when we take determinations such as [“the many is”] by themselves, each one is turned round into the opposite of itself’. The closing words of Parmenides are not aporetic, but the summation of this doctrine: ‘whether the one is or is not, it and the other [Ideas] both are and are not, and both appear and do not appear all things in all ways, both in relation to themselves and in relation to each other’. According to Hegel, then, the result of Parmenides is speculative thought, in which all the opposites pass into each other. Admittedly, even in Parmenides Plato leaves something out. Even here, he operates with multiple Ideas (such as the Good and the Beautiful). This manifold of Ideas is not ‘developed’, but simply asserted. What Plato falls short of is the realization that the Ideas must be developed from one source: the Idea. As Hegel assures Plato: ‘But there is only one Idea.’

Diairesis and Dialectic Plato’s thought, then, on Hegel’s reading, is characterized by unity, and by the self-movement of thought. The Idea generates out of itself all of the dialectical oppositions studied in Parmenides. But what is the principle of generation? Plato gives to his method the name diairesis (‘division’), and introduces it in Phaedrus. Prime instances of its use are Sophist and Philebus, late  

  

TWA : /LHP II: . In support of his view, Hegel aptly cites Parmenides’ statement to Socrates: ‘And, in a word, concerning whatever you might ever hypothesize as being or as not being or as having any other property, you must examine the consequences for the thing you hypothesize in relation to itself and in relation to each one of the others, whichever you select, and in relation to several of them and to all of them in the same way; and, in turn, you must examine the others, both in relation to themselves and in relation to whatever other thing you select on each occasion, whether what you hypothesize you hypothesize as being or as not being. All this you must do if, after completing your training, you are to achieve a full view of the truth.’ Plato, Parmenides, b–c. Hegel quotes this passage at TWA : /LHP II: . ‘Dieser Dialog ist eigentlich die reine Ideenlehre Platons.’ TWA : .   TWA : /LHP II: . TWA : /LHP II: –. Plato, Parmenides, c. TWA : .



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

dialogues in which what Hegel regards as Plato’s ‘true dialectic’ comes into its own. The method of division seeks to arrive at determinate categories by a process of iterated bifurcations. The participants in Sophist, for instance, are engaged in a hunt for the sophist. The process of hunting, or narrowing down until the sophist is finally ‘trapped’, proceeds by beginning from a genus that is to be ‘divided’ into species. For instance, the sophist is to be distinguished from the philosopher by identifying a differentia that serves to mark him off from this other species of knowledgeable arguer. A narrowing down takes place through a series of two-way divisions. Once the sophist has been isolated, the hunt is complete. All kinds of obscurities surround the method of division. As S. Marc Cohen has summed up the problem: ‘Our main difficulty with Plato’s method of division is that we don’t know what is being divided or what it is being divided into.’ What is clear, however, is that it is meant to involve a process of ever greater specification through which a set of conceptual relations gets articulated. And whatever the obscurities about what is being divided or what it is divided into, we can see that an objection posed by Aristotle will have purchase. Aristotle urges that the method is question-begging: ‘what it ought to prove, it begs, and it always deduces something more general than the attribute in question’. This is because, in order for any individual division to be carried out, a more general concept than those issuing from the division must be invoked. To put it in syllogistic terms, as Aristotle does, a middle term is required that is more general than the method of division can justify. ‘In demonstrations, when there is a need to deduce something that belongs, the middle term through which the deduction is formed must always be inferior to and not comprehend the first of the extremes. But division has a contrary intention; for it takes the universal as middle.’ Aristotle gives as an example a hunt for the ‘human’, where division is used to place the human in the category of either mortal or immortal animal. To effect the division, the ‘animal’ must be divided into ‘mortal’ and ‘immortal’. But division itself cannot determine into which category ‘human’ is to be placed. To place ‘human’ in the category ‘mortal’ is simply to presuppose what we were supposed to show. (The same, clearly, would be true if we 



For a treatment of Plato’s method of division, Aristotle’s critique of it, and its relation to Aristotelian syllogism, see the superb PhD dissertation by Justin Vlasits, ‘Platonic Division and the Origins of Aristotelian Logic’. See also the classic papers by Moravcsik, ‘Plato’s Method of Division’ and Cohen, ‘Plato’s Method of Division’.  Cohen, ‘Plato’s Method of Division’, . Aristotle, Prior Analytics I , a.

The Critique of Hegel in the Paris Manuscripts



placed ‘human’ in the category of ‘immortal’.) The issue is that the work of division can only be done by invoking a concept that illicitly reaches over the act of division itself; there is no way for the division itself to produce such a concept. This objection indicates that division cannot even so much as get off the ground. A further objection that connects directly to Marx’s concerns in CHPR considers just what would be needed to rectify this inability. Insofar as we do divide ‘animal’ such as to find a place for ‘human’ under ‘mortal’, we are helping ourselves to empirical considerations. Instead of pure selfdivision, we base the division on an observation concerning humans: they die. This is, Marx thinks, the way in which Hegel must be proceeding in PR, contrary to his own statements. It is no accident that Plato falls back into mythmaking. The Idea cannot generate difference out of itself. So the differences that Plato takes himself to generate must, in reality, be produced in some other way. Gilles Deleuze suggests that in Plato difference is accounted for by ‘ranking’ – an ordering that imports an external principle and does not proceed from within itself. Such ranking (amphisbētēsis), Deleuze urges, takes the place of true opposition (antiphasis). Hegel sees the need for a dialectic that makes use of antiphasis. But Hegel’s dialectic, similarly, cannot work. Its commitment to the Idea generating difference out of itself lands it with the same methodological problem as Plato, despite the aspiration to build in true opposition (antiphasis). The commitment to antiphasis is illusory, since it rests on the assumption that all extremes are such as to figure in a syllogism. But Hegel does not provide a ground for ruling out real extremes. As a result, Hegel’s project necessarily fails. It is not possible to provide a logic of empirical reality if this is to occur by the Idea generating the distinctions in empirical reality out of itself. For in order to achieve (the semblance of ) the differentiation in empirical reality, it must help itself to (by its own lights illicit) recourse to that empirical reality.

The Critique of Hegel in the Paris Manuscripts The understanding that we have developed of the nature of Marx’s fundamental criticism of Hegel’s logical procedure as manifested in PR 



See Della Volpe, Logic as a Positive Science, : ‘the empirical genera become mere occasions or symbols of the (preconceived) tauto-heterology’. Cf. ibid., , where Della Volpe speaks of the ‘illegitimate recourse to experience’ needed in order for diairesis to work. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition,  (correcting the transliteration of Greek in the English translation).



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

allows us to illuminate the critique of Hegel that Marx will offer in the Paris Manuscripts. This critique has often been assumed to be concerned with Hegel’s aprioristic and emanationist appeal to logic, as if Marx wanted merely to cast out Hegel’s philosophical procedure, thinking himself to have a better alternative approach that simply begins from empirical reality. The interest of Marx’s critique is, however, precisely that he seeks not merely to throw off Hegel’s philosophical approach, but to subject it to a fundamental critique that takes it at its word. This then clears the way for his own approach – one that seeks to make good on Hegel’s claims to give us the philosophy of human reality. We will restrict ourselves here to Marx’s critique. Marx’s critical discussion of Hegel in the Third Manuscript is focused on the Phenomenology of Spirit, which is there described as the ‘birthplace of the Hegelian philosophy’. The Phenomenology is characterized as rightly giving a central place to labour, negativity and estrangement. As such it contains great critical potential. Indeed insofar as it is genuinely critical, it ‘often anticipates far later development’. Nonetheless, ‘despite its thoroughly negative and critical appearance’ and the ‘genuine criticism’ that it contains, ‘there is already latent in the Phenomenology as a germ, a potentiality, a secret, the uncritical positivism and the equally uncritical idealism of Hegel’s later works – that philosophical dissolution and restoration of the existing empirical world [der vorhandnen Empirie]’. The claim that Hegel’s mature works involve an ‘uncritical positivism’ and ‘equally uncritical idealism’ might seem very surprising. Let us see how, Marx thinks, it follows from the failure of Hegel’s (in principle) admirable attempt to make labour and negativity the ‘moving principle’ of his dialectic. The Phenomenology occupies a distinctive position in Hegel’s output. It is intended as an introduction to his system, effected by means of a ‘science of the experience of consciousness in its appearance’. Its aim is to 



 

Strange to say, there is a dearth of literature on Marx’s critique of Hegel’s dialectic in the Paris Manuscripts. Discussions of the Manuscripts tend to focus on the themes of alienation and speciesbeing – even in more wide-ranging treatments such as Brudney, Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy or Leopold, The Young Karl Marx. See, however, Wagenknecht, Vom Kopf auf die Fu¨ße? MEGA I.: /MECW : . The discussion of Hegel is designated in Marx’s projected Preface to the text towards which the Manuscripts are working as ‘the concluding chapter of this work’ (MECW : ). This ‘concluding chapter’ is distributed through the Third Manuscript, interspersed with other material. Marx, through his own system of cross-referencing, clearly indicates that this text constitutes one continuous whole.  MEGA I.: /MECW : –. MEGA I.: /MECW : –. I will not here discuss the complex issue of the relationship of Phenomenology to system, and the manner in which the Phenomenology, at a certain point in its composition process, comes to figure for Hegel as already covering the ground of the system as well as continuing to serve as a vestibule to

The Critique of Hegel in the Paris Manuscripts



raise ‘natural consciousness’ to the speculative standpoint. The experience of consciousness is marked by its intentional structure: consciousness is such as to have an object. Its apparently most straightforward object is the sensory manifold. Accordingly, the Phenomenology begins from the ‘shape of consciousness’ that Hegel calls ‘sense-certainty’. The idea of a science of the experience of consciousness is that of tracing the development of consciousness through a succession of shapes or configurations (Gestalten). Each shape comes to grief thanks to a deficiency that is shown up from within – a deficiency that is such as to provide for its own remedy in the shape of consciousness that now follows. The labour in which consciousness is engaged is entirely negative; it is a ‘way of despair’. For it is only through the elimination of all deficiency that it will be revealed that consciousness has become adequate to its object. As it becomes adequate to its object, it attains ‘absolute knowledge’. This is the final shape of consciousness, that which constitutes the speculative standpoint. Here we are in the realm of philosophy (Logic). In the Phenomenology, according to Marx, ‘there lie concealed all the elements of criticism, already prepared and elaborated in a manner often rising far above the Hegelian standpoint’. Nonetheless, its criticism is ‘hidden criticism, still unclear to itself [sich selbst noch unklare] and mystifying’. For, as it ‘depicts the human’s estrangement, . . . the human appears only as mind’. What is admirable about the Phenomenology is that it has ‘the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle’. It is in this way that Hegel is able to ‘conceive the self-creation of the human as a process, conceive objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation’. To grasp the human’s self-creation in this way is to grasp ‘labour’ and to ‘comprehend the objective human – true, because actual [wirklichen] human – as the outcome of the human’s own labour’. Hegel’s conception of the human’s self-alienation as labour is, however, deficient. This deficiency results from Hegel’s inability to conceive labour as anything other than abstract, mental labour. This, in turn, results in the further deficiency that Hegel’s ‘negation of the negation’, which aspires to be, in turn, affirmation, fails to realize this aspiration.

  

that system. (Again, in its final shape, the project overreaches that of merely a science of the experience of consciousness in its appearance.) For an excellent discussion, see Fulda, Das Problem einer Einleitung in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik. Phänomenologie des Geistes, /Phenomenologyof Spirit, }.  MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .  MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: –/MECW : –.



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

For the reasons that Marx articulated in detail in CHPR, Hegel cannot aspire to produce anything other than the movement of pure thoughts characteristic of Plato’s dialectic. The claim that the movement Hegelian philosophy aspires to produce reaches out beyond itself into reality is never made good on. ‘The human character of nature and of the nature created by history – the human’s products – appears in the form that they are products of abstract mind and as such, therefore, phases of mind – thoughtentities.’ Again, what results is ‘the movement of abstract thoughts no longer directed outwards but proceeding now only within its own self: that is to say, the dialectic of pure thought is the result’. It follows from this that Hegel’s ‘negation of the negation’ cannot be what it sets out to be: In Hegel, therefore, the negation of the negation is not the confirmation of the true essence, effected precisely through negation of the pseudo-essence. With him the negation of the negation is the confirmation of the pseudoessence, or of the self-estranged essence in its denial; or it is the denial of this pseudo-essence as an objective being dwelling outside the human and independent of him, and its transformation into the subject.

The problem here – that the pure movement of thoughts cannot manage to reach outside itself – shows up throughout Hegel’s PR and the Realphilosophie of which it forms a part. Each ‘sublation’ (or dialectical transition), insofar as it is possible at all, can only be a merely mental transaction. Marx thinks this not because he takes it to be obvious that Hegel’s transitions are merely logical, or because Hegel espouses a dubious idealism. He thinks this because the dialectic Hegel proposes collapses into diairesis, and this blocks Hegel’s proposed way of articulating the logic of reality. As a result, merely mental sublations mistake themselves for real sublations: this act of superseding is a transcending of a conceptual entity; thus, private property as a concept is transcended in the concept of morality. And because thought imagines itself to be directly the other of itself, to be sensuous reality – and therefore takes its own action for sensuous, real action – this superseding in thought, which leaves its object in existence in the real world, believes that it has really overcome it.

The problem does not merely show up at each individual sublation, however. It shows up at a deeper structural level at the transition between Hegel’s Logic and his Realphilosophie. Logic must give rise to Nature:  

 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .  MEGA I.: –/MECW : –. MEGA I.: –/MECW : .

The Critique of Hegel in the Paris Manuscripts



The absolute idea, the abstract idea, which ‘considered with regard to its unity with itself is intuiting’ (Hegel, Encyclopaedia, . . . §), and which (loc. cit.) ‘in its own absolute truth resolves to let the moment of its particularity or of initial characterisation and other-being, the immediate idea, as its reflection, go forth freely from itself as nature’ (loc. cit.), this whole idea which behaves in such a strange and bizarre way, and which has given the Hegelians such terrible headaches, is from beginning to end nothing else but abstraction (i.e., the abstract thinker), which, made wise by experience and enlightened concerning its truth, resolves under various (false and themselves still abstract) conditions to abandon itself and to replace its nothingness, generality and indeterminateness by its other-being, the particular, and the determinate; resolves to let nature, which it held hidden in itself only as an abstraction, as a thought-entity, go forth freely from itself.

As Marx sums this up, ‘This entire transition from logic to natural philosophy is nothing else but the transition – so difficult to effect for the abstract thinker, who therefore describes it in such a far-fetched way – from abstracting to intuiting. The mystical feeling which drives the philosopher forward from abstract thinking to intuiting is boredom – the longing for a content.’ Nature, as a result, is – whatever Hegel may say to the contrary – just as impoverished as thought. What we are promised, Marx says, is externality (Äusserlichkeit) ‘as the world of sense which manifests itself [sich äussernde] and is accessible to the light, to the man endowed with senses’. What we instead get ‘is to be taken . . . in the sense of alienation, of a mistake, a defect, which ought not to be. For what is true is still the idea. Nature is only the form of the idea’s other being.’ This is highly significant, since it gives the lie to the idea that the Idea finds itself confronted by nature as something external to itself; no real sense can be made of that if there is nothing to secure nature’s supposedly distinctive externality. It is, effectively, more of the same. We are now in a position to understand Marx’s remarkable claim that Hegel is to be accused of an ‘uncritical positivism’ and an ‘equally uncritical idealism’. It would seem surprising that Hegel, that ‘foe of immediacy’ as Wilfrid Sellars called him, could be accused of positivism. Does he not, if anything, stack everything so that the positive can only be got at by means of the Idea? What Marx has in mind is that there are in Hegel a positivism and an idealism that are two sides of the same coin. His idealism   

 MEGA I.: –/MECW : –. MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . This is the issue to which Kant’s ‘Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection’ is directed (Critique of Pure Reason, A/B–A/B).



Marx’s Critique of Hegel: Logic

is an uncritical self-generation of concepts – a diairesis that cannot coherently provide a principle for the array of conceptual determination it tries to produce. This can be redescribed as an uncritical positivism, since we are thereby equipped with nothing to restrain the positive. There is no friction between the conceptual and what it is supposedly responsive to. Marx then – to bring together the various strands of this chapter – takes himself to have struck at the heart of Hegelian philosophy. It is, as a result, out of the question that he will take over from Hegel anything resembling Hegelian dialectic, whatever inversion it may have been put through. His whole effort has been to go beyond the general tendency of Young Hegelianism to preserve Hegel’s philosophical framework and attempt to push ahead within that framework, on the basis that what seemed objectionable in Hegel was the result of his ‘accommodation’ to existent conditions. Marx had already resisted explanations of Hegel’s regressive tendencies in terms of ‘accommodation’ in the Difference. And he now concludes in the Paris Manuscripts: ‘There can . . . no longer be any question about an act of accommodation on Hegel’s part vis-à-vis religion, the state, etc., since this lie is the lie of his principle.’ We must therefore beware efforts to Hegelianize Marx. Instead of trying to rediscover the radical Hegel (extending the efforts initiated by Lukács and by Marcuse) we must recover Marx’s radical critique of Hegel. Otherwise, we risk exposing ourselves to just the criticism that Marx acutely levels at certain self-avowedly ‘radical’ Hegelians of his day, in his projected Preface to the text towards which the Manuscripts are working: Eventually, however, whenever discoveries (such as Feuerbach’s) are made regarding the nature of his own philosophic presuppositions, the critical theologian partly makes it appear as if he were the one who had accomplished this, producing that appearance by taking the results of these discoveries and, without being able to develop them, hurling them in the form of catchphrases [Stichworten] at writers still caught in the confines of philosophy. He partly even manages to acquire a sense of his own superiority to such discoveries by asserting in a mysterious way and in a veiled, malicious and sceptical fashion elements of the Hegelian dialectic which he still finds lacking in the criticism of that dialectic (which have not yet been  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . It is true, of course, that there are radical elements in the young Hegel, and it is these that Lukács and Marcuse attempt to exploit. Marx is also aware of this, and extols the critical potential of the Phenomenology of Spirit in the Paris Manuscripts. What needs remembering, however, is that radical elements in the younger Hegel do not secure the radicality of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole. Marx, indeed, will insist that this radicality can only be captured by leaving the framework of Hegel’s thought behind altogether.

The Critique of Hegel in the Paris Manuscripts



critically served up to him for his use) against such criticism.. . . For to the theological critic it seems quite natural that everything has to be done by philosophy, so that he can chatter away about purity, resoluteness, and quite critical criticism; and he fancies himself the true conqueror [Ueberwinder] of philosophy whenever he happens to feel some moment in Hegel to be lacking in Feuerbach.

We must cease trying to find some mediation to be lacking in Marx, as if we were still in the orbit of Hegelian philosophy. If, as I have suggested here, his critique of Hegel’s logical procedure succeeds, this game can no longer be played. 

This passage was marked for deletion with a crayon in the manuscript. It is reproduced at MEGA I.:  as a variant. It is printed at MECW : , but does not appear in Livingstone’s translation (EW).

 

Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

We have already considered, in the previous chapter, Marx’s critique of Hegel in the third of the so-called Paris Manuscripts. I now want to work towards a more general examination of this text, composed in Paris in  and also known as Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, as a whole. This is another incomplete text. Again, the text was not published until . The Manuscripts constitute a transitional text, in which Marx is at work on a set of internal tensions in his thinking. Marx here works with a picture from Feuerbach. Feuerbach carries over the absolute idealist subject–object even while announcing a ‘reform’ of the absolute idealist philosophy. That is to say, the picture carries over the absolute idealist conviction that a universal subject has as its correlate a universal object. It modifies the absolute idealist version of the picture by putting in place of subject and object, respectively, human and nature. Effectively, Feuerbach materializes the picture; Marx likes to speak of what results as, at one and the same time, humanism and naturalism. There is a peculiarity, of course, that results from Feuerbach’s transformation of the subject–object. Human beings, although placed on the side of the ‘subject’ in the picture, are also part of nature. In keeping with this Feuerbach also insists, quite understandably, on the character of humans as embodied individuals. This stands in tension with the idea of a universal subject, in 

The Manuscripts consist of three notebooks dating from the period between late May/early June and August . The Second Manuscript survives only as two sheets; the bulk of this manuscript is lost. The Third Manuscript consists largely of additions to passages in the Second Manuscript that have been lost. In the Third Manuscript, in particular, texts concerning different topics are often interspersed, with Marx himself indicating where texts that have been interrupted have their continuation, through an elaborate system of cross-references. MEGA prints the material twice, once in the order in which it appears in Marx’s notebooks (Erste Wiedergabe) and once in their ‘logical order’ – an ordering to which Marx himself draws attention (Zweite Wiedergabe). MEGA page references when citing the Paris Manuscripts in this book are to the Zweite Wiedergabe throughout. (MECW prints the material according to its logical order, largely corresponding to that of the Zweite Wiedergabe.)



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts



ways that Feuerbach lacks the means to resolve. Feuerbach asserts the embodied individuality of the human repeatedly and insistently, but he has no theoretical resources to account for it; his ‘reform’ of Hegelianism leaves the human peculiarly abstract, lacking in cultural and historical determinacy. Marx, in taking his cue from Feuerbach, both remains within the problematic that keeps the picture static and abstract, and starts to work to reintroduce the historical and cultural dimension that Feuerbach had stripped out from Hegel. Marx takes over from Feuerbach the idea that the human is the universal subject that has nature as its universal object. He brings this out by, on numerous occasions in the Manuscripts, equating humanism and naturalism. This can seem strange to today’s readers of the text, as if Marx espoused two theoretical positions, called humanism and naturalism, between which he had discovered an equivalence. This is not how things stand: Marx nowhere advances humanism or naturalism as an independently ascertainable theoretical doctrine. Instead, he equates them from the start. Indeed, he does something more startling than that. He says that a version of communism (the one he here promotes) is ‘as fully carried through naturalism ¼ humanism and as fully carried through humanism ¼ naturalism’. This involves a decisive step towards the actualization of philosophy. For communism is not a thesis but an actual historical movement in progress. Here the picture is that of the actualization of the subject–object that Marx had already been calling for in the Difference. Continuing the theme announced there that the dichotomy between idealism and materialism was, in such actualization, to be overcome, he says in the Manuscripts that ‘naturalism or humanism carried through’ is the ‘unifying truth’ of idealism and materialism. By contrast with Feuerbach, then, Marx sees a way to bring history back into the picture, in the form of the actual history of human beings – a history that has as a recent phase the communist movement as a movement of human beings. Not only that, but he works to render viable Feuerbach’s mere assertions about the embodied individuality of human beings. On the one hand, in keeping with Feuerbach’s abstract picture, nature appears as the ‘inorganic body’ of the human as such. But Marx also wants to make good on the idea of human beings as living individuals that 

This should already make apparent that the Marx of  should not be interpreted as espousing a ‘humanism’ if this is a foundational position from which he intends to build ‘up’. Humanism is always coeval with naturalism. Awareness of this is clearer in Louis Althusser’s For Marx (which criticizes Marx’s early position) than it is in Erich Fromm’s Marx’s Concept of Man (which extols Marx’s supposed humanism in this period).



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

are, each of them, a unity of thinking and sensing powers. Following the cue provided by Aristotle’s De anima, a text Marx had studied in detail, he reminds us that the form of a living being qua living being (its psuchē, or ‘soul’) is a unity of powers – of what Marx calls Wesenskräfte, or ‘essential powers’. Aristotle, in the final stages of his treatment of rational soul in De anima, recoils from ascribing to the human’s essential powers the unity characteristic of soul as form of a living being, which he had been happy to ascribe to all other forms of living being. Instead, he relents, and allows that thought is separable from our other powers. Where Aristotle suffers a failure of nerve, Marx follows through. Although the overall theoretical situation of the Manuscripts remains unstable, and Marx’s insights sometimes jostle with the remnants of problems bequeathed by Feuerbach, Marx is pushing through in the direction of an articulation of the actualization of philosophy that has our thought figure in a unity that is the unity of embodied individuals acting in history (or, more accurately, making their history). The Hegelian restriction on the actualization of philosophy with which Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right had been concerned is beginning to be lifted. And we are on the way to, although we have not yet arrived at, an articulation of the centrality of human history in this.

Actualization of Philosophy in ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction’ It will help to set the scene for our examination of the Paris Manuscripts if we first consider another text, ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’. Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, examined in Chapters  and , remained unfinished and unpublished, for reasons we have seen. He did, however, publish an Introduction to a project bearing that title in  in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbu¨cher. The Introduction introduces an updated project, relative to the large-scale fragment that constitutes CHPR. As becomes evident from the Introduction itself, the non-existent text that it introduces must have been conceived as having far greater scope than a critique of Hegel’s paragraphs on the state such as is found in CHPR as it has come down to us. The Introduction makes no direct reference to Hegel, but discusses the state of German philosophy and its relation to political reality. In doing so, it gives further specificity to the idea of the actualization of philosophy found in the Difference. The condition of Germany, Marx points out, is characterized by a mismatch between the stage of its political and that of its philosophical

Actualization in ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’



development. German philosophy acts as if the political advances made in France had likewise already been accomplished in Germany, but in Germany these advances have been accomplished not in reality but only in thought. In this context, Marx considers the approaches of two contrasting ‘parties’ active in the German context, and criticizes them both. The ‘practical political party’ demands the ‘negation of philosophy’. It seeks to make headway with political reform without recourse to philosophy. Marx counters that philosophy cannot be simply done away with. ‘You cannot supersede philosophy without actualizing it.’ The other party, the ‘theoretical political party’, represented largely by Young Hegelian philosophers, makes the opposite mistake. It thinks, as we saw in considering Bruno Bauer’s ‘terrorism of true theory’ in Chapter , that philosophy itself can do the political work required. Its mantra is: think the right thoughts, and the revolution will ensue. But this (for reasons we are already familiar with) cannot be done. For this would be to think that philosophy as it is is enough for political transformation to ensue. Such philosophy, however, must be superseded (aufgehoben) in order to provide for its own actualization. As Marx characterizes the theoretical political party’s mistake: ‘It thought it could actualize philosophy without superseding it.’ So, Marx implies: you cannot actualize philosophy without superseding it. You cannot supersede philosophy without actualizing it; you cannot actualize philosophy without superseding it. Marx’s insistence on the interdependence of the actualization and supersession (Aufhebung) of philosophy is important. Thus far, he has not altered his stance on the need for the actualization of philosophy, announced in the Difference. That such actualization depends on the supersession of philosophy further serves to emphasize that philosophy as merely standing over against the world cannot do the work of its own actualization. What Marx is not doing in the  Introduction is abandoning his earlier call for the actualization of philosophy, in favour of a new demand for philosophy’s ‘ongoing supersession’. Philosophy is not to be left behind or abandoned. Instead, the idea of the interdependence of supersession and actualization is that of philosophy’s self-confirmation as a transcending of philosophy unactualized. As philosophy is raised to praxis, philosophy as mere theory is shown up  

 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . This is the reading offered by Osborne, ‘The Carnival of Philosophy’, –. Osborne’s presentation of this reading is subtle and anchored in a searching analysis of Marx’s texts. Nevertheless, it seems that it cannot be right. For the supersession to be sustained, it must have some principle. But what principle can this be? And what keeps philosophy in the picture, so that it is available for continued supersession?



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

as a privative version of philosophy actualized (or, better – since there is not some end state that is philosophy’s having attained its actualization – philosophy in its actualization; or, better still, philosophy actualizing itself). Part of Marx’s complaint against the ‘theoretical political party originating from philosophy’ is that what they are trying to do can, in fact, ‘be obtained only by the negation of hitherto existing philosophy, of philosophy as philosophy’. It is very well known that the note on which the Introduction ends introduces something distinctly new in Marx’s texts: Philosophy cannot actualize itself [kann sich nicht verwirklichen] without the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot be abolished without the actualization of philosophy [ohne die Verwirklichung der Philosophie].

Here, again, we have an interdependence, with the actualization of philosophy appearing on both sides of the interdependence. But what appears on the opposite side to the actualization of philosophy is something new: the abolition (Aufhebung) of the proletariat. It is in the  Introduction that Marx first speaks of the proletariat as a class that can play the role of the universal class thanks to the depth of its immiseration. Communism (which is the movement that abolishes the proletariat) and the actualization of philosophy shall now be one.

Gattungswesen In turning to the Paris Manuscripts, we should first try to attain conceptual clarity about Marx’s concept of Gattungswesen (usually translated ‘species-being’). This is standardly interpreted as a conception of the ‘human essence’ with a ‘normative’ import. The essence holds up a standard for human life, from which we can see that workers under capitalism are made to deviate, since they suffer ‘alienation’ from their Gattungswesen, the deepest of various interrelated forms of alienation that such workers suffer. It is often thought mysterious how our human essence could dictate any such thing. To see how these expectations about what Marx does with Gattungswesen deviate from his actual handling of that concept, it is useful to begin from a passage in which he mobilizes it. 



MEGA I.: /MECW : . MECW’s translation of Philosophie als Philosophie as ‘philosophy as such’ obscures the restriction that Marx has in mind. He is thinking of mere philosophy: philosophy restricted to philosophical doctrine or theorizing, as opposed to philosophy’s own actualization. MEGA I.: /MECW : . It is unfortunate that MECW renders verwirklichen as ‘make a reality’ in this and the previously quoted passages, thus obscuring the idea of the actualization of philosophy. Rodney Livingstone’s ‘realize’ is nearer the mark (EW: , ).

Gattungswesen



Marx writes, in the First Manuscript: Der Mensch ist ein Gattungswesen, nicht nur indem er praktisch und theoretisch die Gattung, sowohl seine eigne als die der u¨brigen Dinge zu seinem Gegenstand macht, sondern – und dieß ist nur ein andrer Ausdruck fu¨r dieselbe Sache – sondern auch indem er sich zu sich selbst als der gegenwärtigen, lebendigen Gattung verhält, indem er sich zu sich als einem universellen, darum freien Wesen verhält.

I translate this as follows, from here on adopting the practice of leaving the word ‘Gattung’ and cognates untranslated and unitalicized, and treating them as if they were words in the English language: The human is a Gattungswesen, not only since he practically and theoretically makes the Gattung, both his own and that of all remaining things, his object, but – and this is merely a different expression for the same thing – since he relates himself to himself as the present, living Gattung, since he relates himself to himself as a universal and therefore free being.

The term ‘Gattungswesen’ functions in two ways in German. First, Wesen means ‘essence’; and so ‘Gattungswesen’ can designate the essence of the human. But a Wesen is also a being or creature; and so each human is a Gattungswesen. (Note also that it so happens that in German the plural and singular are identical: we may speak of a Gattungswesen, and of many Gattungswesen.) Marx’s claim can be spelled out in terms of either of the two ways the word may be used. I participate in an essence (in Gattungswesen); I, this one here, am a Gattungswesen. I translate der Mensch by ‘the human’. Traditionally, the sexist term ‘man’ has been used in English to function as der Mensch does in German and ho anthrōpos in Greek. (I have preserved the sexist pronoun ‘he’, as tracking Marx’s use of er.) It is important to understand the logical function of the subject, introduced by the definite article, in this sentence. The logical form of the sentence having der Mensch as its subject is that of what Michael Thompson has called a ‘natural-historical judgement’. I do not say that the sentence is a natural-historical judgement, as Thompson  



MEGA I.: . Cf. Rodney Livingstone’s translation: ‘Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the species – both his own and those of other things – his object, but also – and this is simply another way of saying the same thing – because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being’ (EW: ). My surmise is that Livingstone’s translation choices have, in a number of ways, been responsible for various problematic interpretative trends I go on to discuss, in particular the language of ‘looking upon’. Thompson, Life and Action, part .



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

understands this, although it may well be; I only say, for present purposes, that it has this logical form. It is important to appreciate what is distinctive of judgements of this form. ‘The human’ here does not figure as a stand-in for some individual human being, nor does it capture the totality of human beings, nor even some statistically selected sample of human beings, but the human being as bearer of a life-form. Compare naturalhistorical judgements such as: ‘The bobcat breeds in spring.’ If true, this is true of the bobcat, no matter how many bobcats there are, or whatever climatic or other circumstances obtain. Note that there is no question of a plural term here occupying the place of the subject: Marx does not say that human beings are Gattungswesen. The subject of the natural-historical judgement is not a collectivity, containing the many humans. What does Marx mean by saying that the human, qua Gattungswesen, is a universal being? Marx’s claim remains enigmatic if we understand being a Gattungswesen in a way that has seemed natural to many, that is, in terms of membership of a species amongst other species – sometimes, specifically, of a biological species amongst other biological species. Such readings encounter difficulties that stem from their failure to recognize the lineage of the concept Gattung from Hegel through Feuerbach to Marx. Although commentators often acknowledge that Marx’s use of the concept Gattungswesen is indebted to Feuerbach, they tend to confine their attention to The Essence of Christianity. As I will show, however, Feuerbach’s use of it in that text needs to be understood by reference to its Hegelian lineage. That lineage is made manifest in two texts by a younger Feuerbach, thinking in an ultraHegelian mode, that we will examine below. It is a not unreasonable supposition that being a Gattungswesen is a matter of membership of a species. On that supposition, Marx’s further claims about the Gattungswesen may seem to require interpretation as features, or consequences, of such membership. So, for instance, the freedom and universality he talks about would then seemingly have to be understood as trappings of the species-membership in question. The seeming naturalness of this supposition may be in part underwritten by the standard English translation of ‘Gattungswesen’ as ‘speciesbeing’. But this is by no means the whole story. It is right that it can often be more appropriate to translate the pair of terms Gattung and Art as ‘genus’ and ‘species’, respectively, and some have advocated that we should translate ‘Gattungswesen’ as ‘genus-being’. One issue with this is that the 

E.g., Skempton, Alienation After Derrida; Khurana, ‘Genus-Being: On Marx’s Dialectical Naturalism’. See also French translations as être générique (e.g., Toàn, ‘Note sur le concept de “Gattungswesen”’, and the writings of Louis Althusser).

Gattungswesen



suggestion simply comes too late; ‘species-being’ is now the accepted translation throughout the literature on Marx. Another is that ‘genus’ and ‘species’, in Marx’s conceptual world, are relative terms: the generality of some given species gets to be fixed with respect to some greater or higher generality – that of a genus. And a genus can be specified as a species of another, higher, genus. This inherits an ancient usage; the modern conception of ‘species’ was not yet available, nor was the associated German word Spezies, distinct from the pair Gattung and Art. That Marx does not have a fixed notion of Gattung in mind as translatable by ‘genus’ and not by ‘species’ is confirmed when he writes, employing the Latin word species: ‘In der Art der Lebensthätigkeit liegt der ganze Charakter einer species, ihr Gattungscharakter’ (‘The entire character of a species, its Gattungcharacter, lies in its kind of life-activity’). Clearly, Marx here treats ‘character of a species’ as synonymous with ‘Gattungscharakter’. The philosophical difficulty that has seemed to present itself to some interpreters of Marx, and that I want to bring out here, cannot be resolved by reflection on terminology. Such terminological reflection can, however, prime us for what I want to go on to show: that the generality of Gattung is not what we assume it to be if we think in terms of an all-too-familiar conception of species. Commentators often observe that Marx, in telling us that the human is a Gattungswesen, is telling us both that human beings are characterized by belonging to a kind (to the Gattung in question), and also that this kind to which we belong is something like an essence from which certain consequences flow about how we ought to be. The relevant Gattung, that is, not only brings out something that we have in common but also, in some sense, sets a standard for what it is for us to do well. Some have raised issues about how to unify what seem like a ‘descriptive’ and a ‘normative’ dimension here, but I will set this to one side. What I want to bring out instead is a structural issue that can be revealed, and does indeed reveal itself in the literature, whichever of the two dimensions is in question. Adam Schaff distinguishes between the two dimensions, exhibiting the issue to which I want to draw attention along both dimensions: What matters here above all is to draw a line between two meanings of the phrase ‘species-being’: First, one stresses that man belongs to a biological species as a specimen sharing some general characteristics with all other  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . Commentators who have concentrated on the second dimension include Leopold and Brudney. Leopold writes: ‘That Marx uses human nature as an evaluative standard – to define human emancipation and criticise the modern social world – is readily apparent’ (The Young Karl Marx, ). See Brudney, Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy.



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts specimens of this species; and second, one emphasizes that man possesses a certain model of what man should be like, which is a result of his own reflection on the properties and tasks of his own species – a model which is a source of the norms of human conduct as a ‘species-being’, that is, a being which fits in with a certain model or stereotype of man (the ‘essence’ of man).

Schaff is perhaps unusual in stating explicitly that, when it comes to the first dimension, the conception of species he is operating with is a ‘biological’ one (although many other interpreters’ assumptions seem to be best made sense of on a biological conception of Gattung). Having conceived Gattung in this way, Schaff lands us with two problems – one along each dimension. Along the first dimension, individual human beings must somehow come to recognize or ascertain that they belong to the species they belong to. Along the second dimension, each individual human being must, further, engage in a process of reflection ‘on the properties and tasks of his own species’, in order to discover the standards for human conduct. This raises a set of epistemological issues about how the individual negotiates this mediation with the species to which the individual belongs. Although Schaff brings out the issue particularly starkly, it can be seen to recur in the literature. John Plamenatz asks: ‘What was it that Marx had in mind when he called man a species-being?’ In response, he tells us that Marx ‘appears to have used the term in two senses, of which one at least is clear’. Here is Plamenatz’s first sense: ‘Man is a species-being in the sense that he is aware of himself as a being of a certain kind; he is conscious of his humanity, of what is common to him with other men.’ This is akin to Schaff’s first sense. Plamenatz directs us towards the second sense, which he finds more difficult to understand, by pointing to Marx’s remark that ‘“man is a species-being . . . in the sense that he makes the community . . . his object both practically and theoretically”’. The word translated here as ‘community’ is Gattung. So for Plamenatz the dual problem is that individual human beings, on the one hand, must recognize themselves to belong to a species, by seeing what they have in common with other members of the species, and, on the other hand, must come to see something general (the entire ‘community’, in the translation Plamenatz quotes) as their ‘object’. Plamenatz understandably finds this idea difficult, given his conception of membership of a   

Schaff, Marxism and the Human Individual, –. Plamenatz, Karl Marx’s Philosophy of Man, . Plamenatz, Karl Marx’s Philosophy of Man, .

Gattungswesen



Gattung, and he proceeds to give a tentative reconstruction of what Marx may have meant by considering ways in which some individual might come to be ‘aware of himself as a member of a community’. A further difficulty shows up in Joseph O’Malley’s reading: To say that man is a species-being is to say that he can apprehend in thought not only his own individual self, but also his own species-character, his own essential nature. Human consciousness differs from animal consciousness by reason of the fact that it includes an awareness of the self as being a member of a species, as sharing a common nature with others, as being one kind of being among other kinds of beings. Human consciousness thus includes, among other capacities, the ability to define and to classify, and therefore to be scientific.

When O’Malley tells us that human consciousness ‘includes an awareness of the self as being a member of a species’, that is so far like Schaff and Plamenatz. But when he writes that human consciousness ‘thus’ includes the ability to define and to classify, the non sequitur is evident. That non sequitur again shows up that something must be amiss with Marx’s conception of Gattungswesen if the general line of interpretation found in Schaff, Plamenatz and O’Malley is correct. The general problematic that these commentators experience as emerging from Marx’s handling of Gattungswesen is exhibited particularly clearly in Allen Wood’s reflections on the supposed issue of how our universal capacities get established: For both Feuerbach and Marx, the human being’s species being is bound up very closely with the fact of our own self-consciousness, as well as with our characteristically human intellectual abilities. Feuerbach believes that it is our consciousness of our own species nature which makes it possible for us to be conscious of the species nature of other things, and hence that our species being is the foundation of our ability to form universal concepts. There are some passages in Marx which may be read as endorsing this thesis. Neither philosopher, however, presents any real argument in favor of the thesis, and I confess that I see no way in which one could be made out. Prima facie, in fact, the truth would seem to be just the opposite, that it is the human ability to form universal concepts which makes it possible for people to know themselves as members of a species.

The argument that Wood demands is one that could only be needed on the assumption that the self-conscious universality of Gattungswesen is  

Plamenatz, Karl Marx’s Philosophy of Man, . Wood, Karl Marx, .



O’Malley, ‘Introduction’, xli.



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

something that an individual Gattungswesen has first to ascertain, and that this is something independent of the capacity for universal thought. That assumption is mistaken, as can be illuminated by careful attention to the concept as it is handed down from Hegel, through Feuerbach, to Marx. In his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel presents nature as a hierarchical scala naturae, culminating in the animal organism. All living beings engage in the Gattungsprozess. This process of self-reproduction takes different forms according to the form of life. But it is in the highest form of animal, the human being, that the Gattungsprozess is fully realized. Here the animal becomes, Hegel says, for-itself ‘the Gattung’: that is to say, the Gattungsprozess produces individuals who not only belong to some Gattung or other, but are ‘the Gattung’ as such. To say this is to say that the animal has now achieved universality. In this, it is revealed that ‘spirit is the truth of nature’. Nature has returned to its own ‘absolute prius’: spirit. We can work up to Marx’s handling of Gattung through an examination of Feuerbach’s two earliest texts, his dissertation De ratione, una, universali, infinita () and his Gedanken u¨ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit (Thoughts on Death and Immortality, ), since here Hegel’s conception of the Gattung is brought into particularly stark focus. I do not claim that Marx was directly influenced by Feuerbach’s earliest writings. There was, for some time, heated debate as to when Feuerbach turned away from Hegel, and whether he had even ever been a Hegelian at all. The evidence is clear, however, that in the dissertation Feuerbach thinks of 

 





I have concentrated here on some instances from the Anglophone literature that I take to bring out something more widespread. I do not mean to imply that there exists no corrective to these tendencies, even within the Anglophone literature. An example of such a corrective is Gould, Marx’s Social Ontology.  PN § and PM §. PM §. Both reprinted in Feuerbach, GW . De ratione has not been translated into English; where I quote the text, translations are my own. An English translation of Thoughts on Death and Immortality exists, by James A. Massey (), but is too loose to be usable for scholarly purposes. We know that Marx read Feuerbach’s Vorläufige Thesen, Grundsätze and Wesen des Christentums. We also know that he read Hegel extremely thoroughly, so the kind of Hegelian conception that Feuerbach crystallizes would have been familiar to him as the background to Feuerbach’s talk of Gattungswesen in the texts that he did read. According to Marx Wartofsky, ‘the earliest discussion of this concept [Gattungswesen], in the form in which it becomes central for Feuerbach[,] occurs . . . in Philosophy and Christianity’ (Wartofsky, Feuerbach, ). This text Wartofsky calls Feuerbach’s ‘last defense of Hegel’ (Feuerbach, ). It is perhaps more accurate to say that Philosophy and Christianity is a transitional text with respect to Feuerbach’s conception of Gattungswesen. Here Feuerbach still locates the Gattung-character of humans in the power of thought, but there is the beginning of the idea that something more than sheer engagement in thought is required of human individuals in order to make good on this Gattung-character. Simon Rawidowicz gives conclusive arguments for regarding Feuerbach as a devoted Hegelian at the time of the composition of the dissertation (Ludwig Feuerbachs Philosophie). He is followed in this by Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach and by Wartofsky, Feuerbach. Earlier readers and editors of Feuerbach’s work such as Wilhelm Bolin and Friedrich Jodl had played down Feuerbach’s

Gattungswesen



himself as thoroughly, and orthodoxly, Hegelian. Feuerbach had attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin in the s, and sent him a copy of the dissertation, accompanied by a letter overflowing with praise for his former professor. Hegel’s own works are appealed to at philosophically crucial points in the dissertation. The dissertation is written in Latin. The Latin terms that Feuerbach uses as equivalents for Gattung and Art, as these terms figure in Hegel’s texts, are genus and species, respectively. The dissertation makes a series of interconnected claims about the nature of reason. Reason is said to be (as the title announces) una, universali, infinita – one, universal and infinite. Its unity is manifested in its universality. As a sensible being, I have a particular character distinct from yours (as is true of animals in general). But qua rational being, I am not distinct from you. As a thinking being, I do not have a character distinct from yours. For what I think is available to be thought by you, and when we both think it what we think is the same. As Feuerbach pointedly puts it, ‘in thinking, I myself am the human genus, not the individual human that I am in so far as I feel, live, and act, and not a particular human being (this or that one), but no one’. As thinking, I am: no one. How is thought to be understood? Feuerbach claims that it is to be understood in terms of a genus–species relation. Namely, thought is the self-articulation of consciousness (the genus) into cognitions shaped by individual thought-determinations (species). Consciousness, qua genus, remains always the same, as it articulates itself into individual cognitions. Furthermore, consciousness (following Hegel) is self-consciousness: One can rightly call consciousness a genus. As relation to itself it is the original relation, through which alone cognition can come into being. It is present no less in its thinking about itself than in cognition and it is ongoing and uninterrupted, true to itself and the same in all its cognitions and thoughtdeterminations. And cognition, by contrast, in so far as it relates only to determinate and finite things . . . must be called a species of consciousness.

  

Hegelianism as much as possible, in an attempt to secure the absoluteness of his originality. This anti-Hegelian strain in readings of Feuerbach continues to be found in non-specialized treatments of Feuerbach. There are, of course, grounds to take seriously the idea that Feuerbach harboured doubts about Hegel even as he was writing the doctoral dissertation. This is evidenced by the ‘Doubts’ of / reprinted in FB. Feuerbach to Hegel,  November , GW : –. Feuerbach, De ratione, § (GW : ): ‘cogitans ipse sum genus humanum non singularis homo, qualis sum, quum sentio, vivo, ago, neque certus quidam homo (hic vel ille) sed nemo’. Feuerbach, De ratione, § (GW : ). Feuerbach here draws for support directly on the following passage from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which he footnotes: ‘Denn die vielen Kategorien sind Arten der reinen Kategorie, heißt, sie ist noch ihre Gattung oder Wesen, nicht ihnen entgegengesetzt.



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

What we are, then, is thinking beings: as such (as what we really are) we are genus. We are all one. The genus–species model is used by Feuerbach not just for understanding the way in which individual cognitions fall under the genus thought. A similar picture applies to living nature, in which the various species (Arten) fall under (what is ultimately appropriately called) ‘the genus’. Here the genus, as for Hegel, does not exist other than through the generation and passing away of individuals. Any genus is mere form in relation to the individuals that belong to it. Thus it is at the point of death that the individual is most truly its genus. There is a genus, however, in whom this Gattungsprozess is fully realized as it is not elsewhere. This is the human. Here the individual, we might say, is one with its genus. For it, the genus is present not just at death but throughout the lives of the individuals (in thought). Two components of this picture come out particularly clearly in Feuerbach’s text of , Thoughts on Death and Immortality. In this work Feuerbach argues that there is no such thing as individual immortality. It is not wrong to say that the human mind survives bodily death, but this is to be conceived as a dissolution back into the genus; there is no individual survival. The first component that is particularly clear in Thoughts is the notion that the Gattung contains within itself a hierarchy of ‘stages, levels, and kinds of life’. Feuerbach now emphasizes the second component: that nature itself is to be conceived as Gattung – ‘the earth is also a universal, infinite, meaningful measure’ and ‘terrestrial nature is the universal Gattung of all life, the Gattung that has developed all the possible modes of life as they exist on the earth’. Not only is nature the Gattung; no possible forms of life are left out. So there are two sides to the universality of the Gattung: subject is universal, object is universal. Feuerbach maintains this view even in Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie (). Here, despite all his differences with Hegel, Feuerbach can still write:



Aber sie sind schon das Zweydeutige, welches zugleich das Andersseyn gegen die reine Kategorie in seiner Vielheit an sich hat. Sie widersprechen ihr durch diese Vielheit in der That, und die reine Einheit muß sie an sich aufheben, wodurch sie sich als negative Einheit der Unterschiede constituirt’ (Phänomenologie des Geistes, –.) This is } in Michael Inwood’s translation: ‘For to say that the many categories are species of the pure category means that this latter is still their genus or essence, not opposed to them. But they are already something ambiguous, which at the same time has in itself otherness in its plurality in contrast to the pure category. In fact, they contradict the pure category by this plurality, and the pure unity must sublate them in itself, thereby constituting itself as negative unity of the differences.’  Feuerbach, De ratione, § (GW : ). Feuerbach, Gedanken (GW : ).

Gattungswesen



Human form cannot be regarded as limited and finite, because even if it were so the artistic-creative spirit could easily remove the limits and conjure up a higher form from it. The human form is rather the genus of the manifold animal species; it no longer exists as species in man, but as genus. The being of man is no longer a particular and subjective, but a universal being, for the human has the whole universe as the object of his drive for knowledge. And only a cosmopolitan being can have the cosmos as its object.

It is only in light of the fuller picture that we now have in view that we can really appreciate what is in play in Feuerbach’s conception of the human being as Gattungswesen in the much-cited passages from the Introduction to The Essence of Christianity. We can now see, in particular, why Feuerbach claims there that a human being ‘can put himself in the place of another’, and why ‘science is the consciousness of genera’. Four aspects of Feuerbach’s conception of Gattungswesen as set out here are crucial. One is the idea that there are different species of animals, but that there is one Gattung which stands at the apex of the hierarchy of animals (itself the top tier of a scala naturae), namely, the human. This Gattung, since only it is a full realization of what it is to be a Gattung (by being that Gattung for-itself as well as in-itself, that is, by being selfconscious), can properly be said to be the Gattung. Second, there are two sides to the Gattung, and thereby two sides to its universality. Both subject (us) and object (nature) are Gattung. Without this conception of the Gattung as two-sided, we would be unable to understand what Marx will go on to make of this idea: namely, that the totality of nature is our inorganic body. Third, it is only when we appreciate the conception of Gattungswesen manifested in early Feuerbach that we can see why Marx takes universality to be prior to the individuals that bear it. Universality is not to be arrived at through a process of recognition, or any other transaction carried out by individual bearers amongst themselves. Rather, to understand what the human being is is already to understand it as universal (and free). Fourth, there is a feature prominent in the Feuerbachian exposition that marks it out from Hegel’s own presentation. This can serve as a reason for focusing on the early Feuerbach, rather than going back to Hegel’s texts, even though Marx knew these texts well, and it is unlikely that he ever read  

Feuerbach, GW : /FB . Feuerbach, GW : , /The Essence of Christianity, . (Eliot’s translation has ‘Science is the cognisance of species’.)



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

Feuerbach’s Thoughts (and vanishingly unlikely that he could have read De ratione). Feuerbach consistently interprets Hegel as claiming that what constitutes human universality is located in the realm of thought. Feuerbach thereby develops a thesis that is certainly present in Hegel, to the effect that reason or thought is the mark of the human and that it lifts us out of nature into the realm of universality, but emphasizes the idea of the independence of what constitutes the human Gattung from the material reality of the organism in a way that Hegel does not. (Hegel, in his treatment of Geist in Encyclopaedia III, spends a great deal of time reminding us of the material embodiment of geistig beings.) Feuerbach thereby prizes apart thought-like universality from embodied individuality in a manner that he subsequently has trouble repairing.

Humanism ¼ Naturalism Feuerbach’s ultra-Hegelianism leaves him with an unbridgeable dualism. Thought, on the one side, is cut off from the sensible, on the other. It is evident that Feuerbach experienced this dualism, since in a series of writings reacting against Hegel – writings that deeply impressed Marx – he now set out to give the material reality of the entire human being its due. It is as if Feuerbach were attempting to repair our integrity. Much of what he does in order to effect this anti-Hegelian reaction, however, takes the form of assertion rather than argument; Althusser aptly characterizes Feuerbach’s texts from this period as ‘philosophical manifestoes’. Feuerbach announces, in his Preliminary Theses, a ‘new philosophy’, and tells us that its ‘name’ is ‘man’. He tells us that ‘he who directs his speculation towards finding a particular realistic principle of philosophy’ is oblivious of a ‘beautiful, green meadow’ that had all along been lying all about him. This meadow ‘is nature and man, for both belong together [denn beide gehören zusammen]. Behold nature, behold man! Here, before your eyes, are the mysteries of philosophy.’ How is this new, naturalized subject–object, that is, human–nature, to be conceived? And what provides for its unity? Feuerbach simply asserts, in Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, §: ‘The unity of thought and being has meaning and truth only if man is comprehended as the ground and subject of this unity. Only a real being [reales Wesen] cognizes real things; only where thought is not  

 See Feuerbach, Manifestes philosophiques, ed. Louis Althusser. GW : /FB: –.  Feuerbach is alluding to a passage in Goethe’s Faust I, ll. –. GW : /FB: .

Humanism ¼ Naturalism



subject for itself, but the predicate of an actual being, is it not separated [getrennt] from being.’ Feuerbach’s claims have the ring of plausibility. How could anything but a real being cognize real things? On the other hand, it is left unclear just how it can be that nature is the object for the human; the claim does not have the self-evidence that attaches to the claim that the object of thought is the object for the thinking subject. Sometimes Feuerbach says that nature is the basis of the human, as in Principles §: ‘The new philosophy makes man, including nature as the basis of man, the exclusive, universal, and highest object of philosophy; it makes anthropology, including physiology, the universal science.’ Again, he struggles to provide for the individuality of human beings other than by mere assertion. He asserts (Principles, §): ‘The essence of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man with man [in der Einheit des Menschen mit dem Menschen] – a unity, however, that rests on the reality of the distinction between I and You.’ Marx writes that Feuerbach’s writings are ‘the only writings since Hegel’s Phenomenology and Logic to contain a real theoretical revolution’. Only Feuerbach has given any indication of wanting to put Hegel’s dialectic through its paces and question it at its foundation. ‘Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror [Ueberwinder] of the old philosophy.’ His principal achievements, according to Marx, are () to have shown that philosophy is ‘nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought’; () to have established ‘true materialism’ and ‘real science’, ‘by making the social relationship of “man to man” the basic principle of the theory’; and () to have opposed to the negation of the negation ‘the self-supporting positive, positively based on itself’. Marx takes over from Feuerbach the promising image of human–nature as subject–object. We humans remain, as for Feuerbach, universal animals. Marx, soon after introducing the concept of Gattungswesen in the First Manuscript, goes on to solidify the sense in which we are Gattungswesen by drawing a contrast with other animals. There are similarities, but also a categorical contrast. All animals, including us, live on nature, but we    

§ in the first edition; GW : –/FB: .  § in the first edition; GW : /FB: . § in the first edition; GW : /FB: .  MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: –/MECW : . These differences, and their implications, are well discussed by Depew, ‘Aristotle’s De anima and Marx’s Theory of Man’ and by Mulhall, ‘Species-Being, Teleology and Individuality’.



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

humans do so in a markedly different way. The animal is immediately one with nature: it is ‘immediately one with its life activity’. The human, by contrast, ‘makes his life activity itself the object of his will and his consciousness. He has conscious life activity’. Similarly, all animals produce things. But the other animals ‘produce one-sidedly’, whereas we ‘produce universally’. More broadly, ‘the life of the species [Gattungsleben], both in the human and in animals, consists physically in the fact that the human (like the animal) lives on inorganic nature; and as the human is more universal than the animal, the more universal also is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives’. Note that, since only we are universal, Marx designates only us as Gattungswesen. He says of other animals that they have a Gattungsleben, and a Gattungscharakter, but not that they are Gattungswesen. In the Third Manuscript, Marx goes beyond Feuerbach’s own formulations by writing that the human is not merely a natural being: he is a human natural being. That is to say, he is a being for himself. Therefore he is a Gattungswesen, and has to confirm and manifest himself as such both in his being and in his knowing. Therefore, human objects are not natural objects as they immediately present themselves, and neither is human sense as it immediately is – as it is objectively – human sensibility, human objectivity. Neither nature objectively nor nature subjectively is directly given in a form adequate to the human being.

And again: Society is the complete essential oneness [Wesenseinheit] of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the accomplished [durchgefu¨hrte] naturalism of man and the accomplished humanism of nature.

In his perhaps most startling formulation, Marx brings a communism into the picture, and specifies this communism by means of reference to naturalism and humanism as follows: ‘This communism, as completed naturalism ¼ humanism, as completed humanism ¼ naturalism.’ It is this communism that, Marx says, affords a way of overcoming the dichotomy between idealism and materialism – something at which he was already at work, as we have seen, in the Difference:    

 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . This passage is, uncharacteristically , badly mangled by the MECW translators; for a better rendition, see EW: . MEGA I.: /MECW : . (This passage is marked for deletion in the manuscript.)  MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .

Humanism ¼ Naturalism



We see here, how naturalism or humanism carried through [der durchgefu¨hrte Naturalismus oder Humanismus] is distinguished from idealism as well as from materialism and is at the same time their unifying truth.

Marx, presumably, entitles himself to the claim that a fully carried through naturalism is humanism, and vice versa, on the basis that the human, as universal subject, has the totality of nature for her object. The communism that Marx endorses is, importantly, not a position, but a political movement. And it is to be distinguished, he says, from other, less developed forms of communism – first, a communism that is ‘still political in nature – democratic or despotic’, and, second, a communism that ‘with the abolition of the state, yet still incomplete’, remains ‘affected by private property’. In other words, this communism is an advance on a mere sharing out of goods within political structures, and on an abolition of private property that replicates its structure by merely redistributing property throughout the population. And yet even this communism (which may be equated with what Marx later in the same manuscript calls ‘communism as such’) ‘is not the goal of human development, the form [Gestalt] of human society’. This has confounded interpreters. Is Marx here, then, after all, talking about ‘crude communism’? The text, however, is clear. Such communism is an advance on crude communism. It is the ‘necessary form [Gestalt] and dynamic principle of the immediate future’, but it is not an end state. Marx will still take this view in the ‘Konvolut zu Feuerbach’ (part of the complex of texts known as The German Ideology). What this communism designates is not a position, and not an end state to be reached. It is an energeia. In elaborating the idea that nature is objective for us as the universal subject that we are, Marx writes that nature is our ‘inorganic body’. This is easily misinterpreted, if ‘nature’ is taken too narrowly, as signifying   





 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: –/MECW : . See MECW :  n. . Marx consistently throughout the Manuscripts equates ‘crude communism‘ with mere abolition of private property. This involves a mere collapse into primitive conditions: ‘How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it’ (MEGA I.: /MECW : ). MEGA I.: /MECW : . The comment, written in Marx’s hand and emphasized by a vertical marginal line, reads: ‘Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality is to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present stage of things.’ See Butler, ‘The Inorganic Body in the Early Marx’.



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

merely the ‘environment’, as this is conceived of in ecology. Nature suffers no such restriction in Marx’s thinking: it is the reality that our sensuous Wesenskräfte, in principle, lay hold of and work on in its entirety. To say that nature is our inorganic body is to say that the entirety of nature is object for us. (Marx notices, of course, that we are a part of nature too – of organic nature.) This might be thought to land the Marx of the Manuscripts with an anthropocentrism. Arguably, however, that charge fails to appreciate the generality of nature, as well as of the human, with which Marx is working. Marx’s picture is not one that has the entirety of nature, in all its details and component parts, under the control of humans. It is not as if there is nothing in nature that eludes our grip. Instead, the picture is that all of nature is, in principle, workable by us. Nature does not depend on us, nor do we permeate it. It certainly is not simply there for our exploitation, just because, for Marx, the human being is the objective being. We do not need to think such things in order to say what Marx says: that nature is the objective, universal object of objective, universal beings such as we are.

Our Wesenskräfte An aspect of the Third Manuscript that has been insufficiently discussed is Marx’s prominent development there of the idea of Wesenskräfte, or ‘essential powers’. It is his picture here of the human being as a living individual who is subject to a living form or ‘soul’ that allows him to make inroads against Feuerbach’s abstract conception of the human being. In the background is Aristotle’s treatment of life in De anima, a text Marx studied in detail, as is borne out by his translation of large parts of it. The topic of De anima – psuchē, or ‘soul’ – is the form of a living being qua living. In other words, the work sets out to provide a series of answers to the question, asked of a living being: In virtue of what is this being a living being? Aristotle moves through a succession of different answers, as we ascend a scala naturae. Powers are added as we move up, from plant to animal, and from animal to human. As powers are added, the powers belonging to the lower forms are integrated with those that have been added, and thereby changed. Vegetative life has perception and   

This constriction leads to the complaints in Clark, ‘Marx’s Inorganic Body’. Butler considers this charge at length in ‘The Inorganic Body in the Early Marx’. MEGA IV.: –. See Depew, ‘Aristotle’s De anima and Marx’s Theory of Man’, for a reading of the Paris Manuscripts in the light of Marx’s study of Aristotle.

Our Wesenskräfte



nutrition. As, for example, locomotion is (in the animal) added to the powers of perception and nutrition, it figures in a unity of powers together with perception and nutrition. But as these ‘lower’ powers figure in the animal, they are ‘no longer’ vegetative powers, but animal powers. As Aristotle reaches the apex of his scala, with the human, he shrinks from his own commitment to integrate the powers of this form of life in a unity. The nous that is added is said to be ‘separable, unaffectable, and unmixed’. This opens up the possibility of Averroism – the idea that mind is (at least in part) something separate from us individual human beings in which we participate. Feuerbach’s ultra-Hegelianism is one instance of how one might fall prey to Averroism. Marx remains true to the commitment where Aristotle finds himself unable so to remain. He insists on the unity of our – thinking and sensing – Wesenskräfte. Our sensing powers are raised to universality, and in being so raised they are one with our thinking power. Marx modulates this idea in various ways, including by pointing out that in us, as self-conscious, rational beings, the senses are capable of certain forms of refinement. Correspondingly, they can suffer a coarsening, under certain conditions, into something akin to an animal state. Of our sensing powers he writes: ‘It is obvious that the human eye enjoys things in a way different from the crude, non-human eye; the human ear different from the crude ear, etc.’ Marx thinks that the proletarian worker under capitalism is liable to suffer a reduction of their human senses to crude, merely animal senses. Furthermore, as Marx writes in the First Manuscript: It is only when the objective world becomes everywhere for the human in society the world of the human’s essential powers – human reality, and for that reason the reality of his own essential powers – that all objects become for him the objectification of himself, become objects which confirm and realise his individuality, become his objects: that is, man himself becomes the object.. . . Thus the human is affirmed in the objective world not only in the act of thinking, but with all his senses.

 

 

For an explanation of the idea that the ‘lower’ powers are integrated into a new unity in higher forms of soul, see the ‘transformativist’ reading offered by Boyle, ‘Essentially Rational Animals’. Aristotle, De anima, III , b–. The interpretation of this passage is extremely controversial; the text is often supposed to be corrupt at this point. I here only indicate one way it may be read. This is, importantly for the present argument, how Marx himself read it, as his own translation (interspersed with Greek terms left untranslated) of De anima bears out: ‘Und dieser νοῦς ist trennbar, χωριστὸς, ἀμιγὴς, unvermischt, ἀπαθὴς, τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὢν ἐνέργεια’ (MEGA IV.: ). See Aquinas Against the Averroists: On There Being Only One Intellect, ed. Ralph McInerny. MEGA I.: –/MECW : .



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts

Contrast Marx’s depiction of what Hegel offers: The appropriation of the human’s essential powers, which have become objects – indeed, alien objects – is . . . in the first place only an appropriation occurring in consciousness, in pure thought, i.e., in abstraction: it is the appropriation of these objects as thoughts and as movements of thought.

Despite the critical appearance of Hegel’s philosophy, it remains, as it must, caught up in the movement of thought, merely. For Hegel what we are is, in the end, thinkers. What he therefore cannot see is that ‘the history of industry and the established objective existence of industry are the opened book [das aufgeschlagne Buch] of the human’s essential powers, are human psychology sensuously present before us [die sinnlich vorliegende menschliche Psychologie]’. It is thinking beings that are thus industrious: the thinking, sensing beings that we are. Our thinking power does not stand apart from the rest of our ‘psychology’; their psuchē, as Aristotle ought to have had it, is one. In the Third Manuscript, Marx’s elaboration of the interdependence of naturalism and humanism in terms of our objectivity as sensuous/thinking Gattungswesen promises an advance beyond Feuerbach’s presentation of this idea. Marx, by picturing us as individuals whose form is the unity of our Wesenskräfte, is able to make plausible that it is as embodied human individuals that we occupy the place of the subject in the materialized subject–object. Marx assures us that the human is ‘directly a natural being’, and that to say that the human is such a ‘corporeal, living, real, sensuous, objective being full of natural vigour is to say that he has real, sensuous objects as the object of his being or of his life’. And this is because: To be objective, natural and sensuous, and at the same time to have object, nature and sense outside oneself, or oneself to be object, nature and sense for a third party, is one and the same thing.

And: A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object; i.e., it is not objectively related. Its being is not objective. A non-objective being is a non-being.

We are self-conscious, free, that is, universal beings. As such, our activity is that which works on nature as our universal object, as the sensuous individuals we are.  

MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .

 

MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .

Universality and Individuality



Universality and Individuality Marx presents our Wesenskräfte as at once individual and social. This fits Aristotle’s conception of psuchē as the form of a living being qua living being. A living being is an individual of a certain kind, living a life (just one life, its life, characteristic of the kind of life the bearers of this life form live). This life is lived through other such individuals. Marx articulates the way in which my interdependent relations with other individuals of my kind constitute my life as an individual: The senses and mind of other human beings have become my own appropriation. Besides these direct organs, therefore, social organs develop in the form of society; thus, for instance, activity in direct association with others, etc., has become an organ for the expression of my own life [meiner Lebensäusserung], and a mode of appropriating human life.

What I am is a social being. As such, I am not internally bifurcated. My universality is not lodged in one part of me, my particularity in another. I am, as this unity of Wesenskräfte, universal all the way through. But I am also an individual. It could not be otherwise, since my Wesenskräfte are those of an individual; they are what they are only in my interaction with other individuals, and – through them – with nature. It is in my very individuality that I am a universal being. In the third Paris Manuscript, Marx repeats his warning, familiar from ‘On the Jewish Question’, that ‘above all we must avoid postulating “society” again as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual’. He now says: ‘the individual is the social being’. The individual is social in her very individuality, since her individual life and her Gattung-life (the human Gattung-life, that of a Gattungswesen) are one:





  



Stephen Mulhall aptly writes: ‘the most economical and insightful way of summing up [Marx’s] conception of . . . species-being is to say that the human species is the one whose members are (capable of becoming) individuals’ (‘Species-Being, Teleology and Individuality’, ). MECW :  and EW:  write ‘enjoyment’ here, following MEW : , where Geist in the manuscript is erroneously transcribed as Genuß. The error is significant, since it obscures that Marx here reiterates the unity of thinking and sensuous Wesenskräfte. MEGA I.: /MECW : –. Of course, it must be constantly kept in mind that capitalism precisely disrupts this, so as to bifurcate me. This is what Hegel aims at when he calls Geist an instance of the ‘concrete universal’ (PM §). See Chitty, ‘Species-Being and Capital’, for the suggestion that Marx’s treatment of Gattungswesen can be understood in terms of Hegel’s treatment of concrete universality. See also my ‘Hegel on Spirited Animals’, for Hegel’s conception of Geist as concrete universal. MEGA I.: /MECW : .



Humanism and Naturalism in the Paris Manuscripts The individual life and the Gattung-life of the human are not different, however much – and this is inevitable – the mode of existence of the individual is a more particular or more general mode of the Gattung-life, or the Gattung-life is a more particular or more general individual life.

The entire picture we have been considering is compressed by Marx into the following remarks interspersed with his excerpts from James Mill, from a period slightly later than the Paris Manuscripts: Since human nature [das menschliche Wesen] is the true community [das wahre Gemeinwesen] of human beings, by manifesting their nature human beings create, produce, the human community, the social entity, which is no abstract universal power opposed to the single individual, but is the essential nature of each individual, his own activity, his own life, his own spirit, his own wealth. Hence this true community does not come into being through reflection, it appears owing to the need and egoism of individuals, i.e., it is produced directly by their life activity itself.. . . Human beings, not as an abstraction, but as real, living, particular individuals, are this entity [i.e., this community].

Each human being, universal Gattungswesen that she is, is an individual. For what it is to engage in Gattung-activity of the kind that belongs to a self-conscious, universal being is to engage in activity that distinguishes us from each other. This brings out that the Gattung is not something to which we are subject, which governs us as individuals (as the readings by Schaff, Plamenatz, O’Malley and Wood that we considered invite us to suppose). To be the Gattungswesen we are is to live the – thinking and sensuous – lives that we do. We can theorize it if we wish, and Marx does so. But its reality is that of our thought – and that is, of philosophy – actualized. In Marx’s formulations of such actualization in the Paris Manuscripts, the individuality of the human continues to jostle with an abstract schema of the subject–object. He has not yet elaborated the means by which he will alleviate the abstraction, and bring the subject–object fully into the realm of individuality: history. There are, however, already premonitions of the need to bring history – the real life of living individuals – into the picture. He writes, in the Third Manuscript:

   

MEGA I.: /MECW : . For the dating to summer/autumn , see MEGA IV.: –. MEGA IV.: /MECW : –. This might be considered as making good on Marx’s efforts to present the celestial bodies – as Epicurus glimpsed them – as a system of interdependent individuals. See Chapter .

Universality and Individuality



We see how subjectivity and objectivity, spiritualism and materialism, activity and suffering, lose their antithetical character, and thus their existence as such antitheses only within the framework of society;

The passage enclosed in < > was marked for deletion by Marx. Its insistence on the comprehension of the subject through the history of living human beings, however, comes to the fore in the texts we will explore in the next chapter. Marx will then be able to make palpable just how (mere) philosophy could not solve the antitheses he lists, and how reconceiving the problem as a ‘real problem of life’ points the way to its solution.

 

From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

The Paris Manuscripts have at their centre an instability. Marx was there operating within a Feuerbachian framework. This framework attempts to invert the Hegelian subject–object in its entirety, from an idealist subject– object to a materialist subject–object. It suffers, however, a curious failure in this very attempt. The failure mimics the strange logic of Feuerbach’s inversion of Christianity. By making God nothing other than the projection of the human being, Feuerbach has difficulty explaining how the human is not then divine. Similarly, in claiming, through a mere declaration, to materialize the subject–object, Feuerbach leaves himself open to the charge that the subject is just as abstract, and disconnected from embodied living beings, as it was on the idealist conception he sought to overturn. Feuerbach asserts that the human is not abstract, but material, sensuous and made up of a nexus of individuals – individuals who stand in I–Thou relations to each other. He is, however, at a loss to explain how these individuals do not melt back into his universal subject. Feuerbach took himself to have carried out a theoretical revolution, by means of which he instituted a ‘new philosophy’. In the Paris Manuscripts Marx still went along with this: he said there that only Feuerbach had carried out a true theoretical revolution. But what Feuerbach had really carried out is an inversion of Hegel, without being able to provide an indication of how this inversion matters – an announcement of an inversion supplemented by assertions about the human. In the Paris Manuscripts Marx was already subjecting the Feuerbachian framework, for which he there evinced such enthusiasm, to a disturbance, a disturbance that is engendered by a reinjection of that in Hegel which had vanished in Feuerbach: history and labour. Already in the Manuscripts there appears, in Althusser’s words, ‘the intervention of Hegel in 

For an insistence on the ‘reality of the distinction between “I” and “You”’, see Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, § (§ in the first edition); GW : /FB: .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism



Feuerbach’. Hegel had understood human beings as labouring beings, producing themselves and their world, even if he had treated their labour as ultimately mental labour. In this chapter I examine a series of texts in which Marx (in part, in association with Engels) works through the insufficiencies in the Feuerbachian framework, and takes on the task of dealing with the instabilities present in the Paris Manuscripts. These texts are The Holy Family, jointly authored with Engels during  and published in ; the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, jotted down by Marx sometime between April and June  in Brussels; The German Ideology, a complex of texts jointly authored with Engels between  and , intended for publication but abandoned; and The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx’s critique of PierreJoseph Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty (), published in . The Holy Family endorses ‘real humanism’. Marx still insists that this is a materialism that has been ‘perfected by the work of speculation itself’: that is, the line of the Paris Manuscripts is still maintained, according to which Feuerbach had carried out a theoretical revolution. Here it is said that, within speculation itself (i.e., in Feuerbach’s work), idealism has given way to ‘materialism coinciding with humanism’. The actual Feuerbach is, indeed, defended against what ‘critical critics’ (Bruno Bauer ‘and consorts’) make of him. Those critical critics, however, are subjected to a sustained onslaught. Throughout, they are accused of operating with an illicit conception of philosophy as self-sufficient, which allows them to speak as if Criticism itself, not real human beings, is the agent of history, and that all that matters takes place in the ‘mind’ of Criticism itself. In the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, however, Marx points out problems with Feuerbach’s materialism. His materialism remains receptive, it is now claimed, unable to do justice to human activity. It is in The German Ideology that Marx and Engels break decisively with Feuerbach. The critique of ‘self-sufficient philosophy’ is carried over from the critique of ‘critical criticism’ in The Holy Family. Attempts to demonstrate the unity of human and nature are cast aside. The supposed question of ‘the relation of man to nature’, we are told, ‘crumbles of itself when we understand that the celebrated “unity of man with nature” has always existed in industry and has existed in varying forms in every epoch according to the lesser or greater development of industry’. Seeing things this way offers a way to join together what Feuerbach holds apart.  

Althusser, The Humanist Controversy, . MEGA I.: /MECW : –.



HF: /MECW : .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

Feuerbach failed to join together history and materialism. But human beings are historical beings: they make themselves in history. The Poverty of Philosophy, directed in its entirety against Proudhon, expands on the theme of the illusion of a self-sufficient philosophy. Proudhon, among other mistakes, makes the mistake of thinking that a self-moving dialectic can be applied to, and mobilized in, political economy. But not just this. It is not just that such theoreticians as Proudhon are to be criticized for their flawed attempt at theory (flawed because mired in the fantasy of self-sufficiency). Such theory is also counterposed by an image of theory that Marx can endorse. Marx sees theoreticians arising who, by contrast with Proudhon, ‘no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece’. These theoreticians are proletarian, and their proletarian theory is to take the place of the self-sufficient philosophy propounded by bourgeois thinkers.

Critique of Critical Criticism The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Critique: Against Bruno Bauer and Consorts, co-authored by Marx and Engels, is a sustained polemic against Bruno and Edgar Bauer and other authors who contributed to the shortlived Bauerian journal Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung: Monatsschrift, which came out in twelve issues between December  and October . Although a joint work, each section of The Holy Family is authored by one of either Marx or Engels, with the author specified on the contents page. The basic theoretical orientation is the same as that of the Paris Manuscripts. The very opening words of the text’s Foreword are a declaration in favour of der reale Humanismus (‘real humanism’). This is the Feuerbachian position (if that unstable concoction can be called a position) to which Marx had declared his allegiance in the Paris Manuscripts. It is a real, that is, non-ideal humanism. It is the humanism that equals naturalism, and is at the same time the humanism of real individual humans, as the text of the Foreword goes on to declare. It is said that Feuerbach carried out a theoretical revolution through which the dichotomy between idealism and materialism is overcome. Thus Engels writes: ‘After the old   

MP: /MECW : . This is not to be confused with other (long-running) journals with the name Allgemeine LiteraturZeitung.  HF: /MECW : . HF: /MECW : .



Critique of Critical Criticism

antithesis between spiritualism and materialism has been fought out on all sides and overcome once for all by Feuerbach, “Criticism” again makes a basic dogma of it in its most loathsome form and gives the victory to the “Christian-Germanic spirit”.’ At the same time, it is said, in a variation of the terminology in the Paris Manuscripts, that materialism coincides with humanism. (In the Manuscripts it had been naturalism that coincided with humanism.) The idealism of Hegel, Marx writes, ‘will for ever succumb to materialism, perfected by the work of speculation itself and coinciding with humanism’. Here he goes on to say that ‘just as Feuerbach is the representative of materialism coinciding with humanism in the theoretical domain, French and English socialism and communism represent materialism coinciding with humanism in the practical domain’. Marx now spells out how he thinks Feuerbach has overcome a duality in Hegel. He writes that in Hegel there are ‘three elements, Spinoza’s Substance, Fichte’s Self-Consciousness and Hegel’s necessarily antagonistic unity of the two, the Absolute Spirit.’ This specifies precisely the task that, in the Paris Manuscripts, he takes Feuerbach to have accomplished, since ‘the first element is metaphysically disguised [travestirte] nature separated from man; the second is metaphysically disguised spirit separated from nature; the third is the metaphysically disguised unity of both, real man and the real human species’. The human and nature, then, remain separated in Hegel; their unity can only be presented in a ‘metaphysically disguised’ manner. Now, whereas Strauss and Bauer each ‘represents only one side of his [Hegel’s] system’, Marx here still says that Feuerbach ‘completed and criticised Hegel from Hegel’s point of view by resolving the metaphysical Absolute Spirit into “real man on the basis of nature”’, and was ‘the first to complete the criticism of religion by sketching in a grand and masterly manner the basic features of the criticism of Hegel’s speculation and hence of all metaphysics’. He is still, then, engaging in wishful thinking when it comes to shoring up Feuerbach’s claims; it is simply incredible that Feuerbach carried out the ‘revolution’ he took himself to have carried out. The statement of what is at stake in what Feuerbach attempts to accomplish is, however, instructive. The main conceit of The Holy Family, which runs through it as a tirelessly repeated theme, and is given every possible polemical inflection, is that ‘critical critics’ such as Bauer operate with an opposition between ‘critical criticism’ itself and ‘the Mass’. ‘Critical criticism’ is thought of by  

HF: /MECW : . HF: /MECW : .

 

HF: –/MECW : . HF: –/MECW : .



HF: /MECW : .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

Bauer and associates, absurdly, as itself the driver of history. As Marx and Engels never tire of satirizing, it is as if ‘critical criticism’ itself occupies this role and does this work, not the critical critics. So they repeatedly employ the satirical conceit that it is ‘critical criticism’ that has written the texts contained in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, and not the critical critics. Despite the satire, the point is a serious one, hinging on a Feuerbachian accusation, that of the inversion of subject and predicate. Critical criticism is given the role of subject, with ‘the Mass’ as its predicate. It is supposed to be obvious that the inversion is absurd: Marx and Engels invite us to recognize that the ‘Mass’ is a body of actual human beings, whereas critical criticism is an abstract category, and to laugh, along with them, at the conceit of the critical critics. The ‘Mass’, as the term is employed in The Holy Family, stands for ordinary people, for whom critical critics express contempt, but also for the material reality from which the critical critics cut themselves off by retreating to the ideal realm they take themselves to inhabit. Throughout The Holy Family, Marx and Engels set themselves in opposition to the critical critics’ elevation of critical criticism and their attribution of the work of history to critical criticism by taking the side of the Mass. Thus, for example, the critical critics’ history of materialism in early modern philosophy is countered with a ‘brief outline of its ordinary, mass-type [massenhafte] history’. This move remains reactive: Marx and Engels do not yet have their own ‘mass-type’ (i.e., materialist) history with which to counter the productions of the critical critics. Insofar as they have theoretical grounds for favouring such a history, these are still simply Feuerbach’s. But, as we saw, Feuerbach simply asserts the primacy of individual, sensuous human beings. When critical critics are criticized on the grounds that ‘Critical Criticism is in all respects below the level already attained by German theoretical development’, this is a reference to the advance allegedly made by Feuerbach. Marx and Engels therefore deem it necessary to ‘assert in contrast to it, the already achieved results as such’ (i.e., Feuerbach’s results). Discussion of this development is something, they explicitly state, they will refrain from in this work. And they will, at some future date, present their own ‘positive view and thereby our positive attitude to the more recent philosophical and social doctrines’. It is unsurprising that they defer such a presentation to a future occasion, since they as yet lack the conception of history that can carry through their endorsement of Feuerbachian doctrine vis-à-vis the critical critics. 

HF: /MECW : .



HF: iv/MECW : .



HF: iv/MECW : .

Critique of Critical Criticism



An interconnected series of objections is launched against the critical critics. Critical critics install themselves (or, rather, critical criticism) as the agent of history, with the Mass as a brake on history that must be everywhere overcome. Relatedly, critical criticism takes itself, Engels writes, to be ‘self-sufficient, and complete and perfect in itself’. As a result of this, it faces the absurdity that it cannot even ‘recognise the base Mass in all its mass-like mass nature’, so that it is unable to carry out its task, which is ‘precisely to redeem the Mass from its mass nature’. History, meanwhile, ‘becomes a person apart, a metaphysical subject of which the real human individuals are merely the bearers’. Bauer thus draws the conclusion that the Mass is the enemy of historical progress. As Marx quotes him: ‘in the mass, not somewhere else, as its former liberal spokesmen believed, is the true enemy of the spirit to be found’. Bauer goes on: ‘The Spirit now knows where to look for its only adversary – in the self-deception and the pithlessness of the Mass’. Hegel, for all his faults, at least had the decency to take a step back from real history, with his conceit of a ‘speculative, esoteric history’ that develops ‘within empirical, exoteric history’. But Bauer is portrayed by Marx as having the audacity to ‘proclaim Criticism to be the Absolute Spirit and himself to be Criticism’. He ‘consciously plays the part of the World Spirit in opposition to the mass of the rest of mankind; he enters into a contemporary dramatic relation with that mass; he invents and executes history with a purpose and after mature reflection’. Even the ‘act of transforming society’ is ‘reduced to the cerebral activity of Critical Criticism’. Throughout The Holy Family, the authors relentlessly juxtapose, as against the ‘critical’ versions of events they contest, an alternative story in terms of the actions of real, material individuals. One of the finest passages in the book is one by Marx on the topic of love. In a spirit of gleeful irony, Marx avails himself of the need to remind his reader, contra the claims of self-sufficient philosophy, that ‘the passion of love is incapable of having an interest in internal development because it cannot be construed a priori, because its development is a real one which takes place in the world of the senses and between real individuals’. Love can here  

 

  HF: /MECW : . HF: /MECW : . HF: /MECW : . HF: /MECW : , quoting Bauer, ‘Über die Judenfrage’, in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, . Although HF places the phrase ‘as its former liberal spokesmen believed’ outside the quotation, it is in fact, remarkably, part of what Bauer himself said: ‘In der Masse – nicht anderwärts – wie ihre fru¨heren liberalen Wortfu¨hrer meinen – ist der wahre Feind des Geistes zu suchen.’  HF: /MECW : , quoting Bauer, ‘Über die Judenfrage’, . HF: /MECW : .  HF: /MECW : . HF: /MECW : .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

stand for Marx’s overall picture of human relationships as presupposing our embodied individuality. ‘What Critical Criticism combats here,’ he writes, ‘is not merely love but everything living, everything which is immediate, every sensuous experience, any and every real experience.’ The Holy Family is particularly instructive, and remains so today, for its criticism of a certain stance according to which thought itself does the work of transforming the world, in its opposition to, and withdrawal from, material reality. What goes wrong in critical criticism is brought out particularly starkly in Marx and Engels’s treatment of the critical critics’ own professed claims to have declared themselves against philosophy, and of the role that their self-understanding as having taken on Feuerbach’s insights plays in this. The critical critics, as Engels writes, declare that philosophy has been ‘dealt with’, now to be treated as ‘outright an ally of the “Mass”’, so that critical criticism ‘breaks out in Pythian frenzy against philosophy’. The text they draw on for these purposes, and which they read only a few months earlier, Feuerbach’s Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, is the ‘concealed cauldron whose fumes inspire the frenzy of Absolute Criticism’s victory-intoxicated head’. Critical criticism now rejects ‘the “simple concept”, the terminology, the whole mode of thought of philosophy, indeed, the whole of philosophy’, putting in its place ‘the “real wealth of human relations”, the “immense content of history”, the “significance of man”, etc. “The mystery of the system” is declared to be “revealed”.’ But these categories were ones that Feuerbach had, Engels points out, ‘long ago annihilated’ (vernichtet). Again, this shows up that critical criticism can do nothing but ‘invent new categories’; it thus takes it as its task to ‘transform man himself into a category and into the principle of a whole series of categories’. But ‘history does nothing’; history itself is no agent. Instead, ‘history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims’. Although the authors of The Holy Family have not yet begun to sketch their own picture of history, we have been given a preview of that picture. It will be driven not by concepts, but by human beings.

Critique of Feuerbach In the Paris Manuscripts and The Holy Family, the illusion of a Feuerbachian revolution, a revolution that had never actually taken place,  

 HF: /MECW : . HF: –/MECW : . HF: , /MECW : .



HF: /MECW : .

Critique of Feuerbach



was maintained. In the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, jotted down in Brussels in spring/summer , Marx disabuses himself of the illusion, and his own intellectual revolution by which he casts off Feuerbach starts to take place. The Theses have the appearance of a set of cursory annotations. They nonetheless crystallize a far-reaching critical interrogation of Feuerbach, striking at the Feuerbachian framework itself. In the Sixth Thesis, Marx still employs the terminology of the ‘human essence’, but he produces a dissonance with its Feuerbachian connotations by insisting that this essence should be understood as ‘the ensemble of social relations’. And, as Althusser wrote in a version of his unpublished  text ‘The Humanist Controversy’, ‘the couple constituted by the categories Subject–Object is . . . no longer originary’. That is, the ‘speculary’ relation of subject to object, subject reflecting object and object reflecting subject, no longer plays a foundational role as it had in the Paris Manuscripts. History, which already began to assert itself in the Manuscripts, now intrudes sufficiently to disrupt ‘the Feuerbachian couple “Subject ¼ Object”’; what Marx now does, as Althusser puts it, is to ‘set the Hegelian dialectic to work on the Feuerbachian concepts of Subject and Object themselves’. I will here give a brief overview of Theses –, which announce Marx’s main themes. Theses – can be read largely as elaborating the themes introduced in the earlier Theses. In Thesis , Feuerbach’s materialism (along with all previous materialisms) is now indicted for being merely passive or contemplative. Because Feuerbach takes ‘the theoretical attitude’ as ‘the only genuinely human attitude’, he cannot help but hand over the human’s active side to idealism as its property. His materialism is therefore incomplete, and in a crucial respect: it cannot make sense of the human being as agent. This means that Feuerbach is unable to ‘grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity’. Feuerbach not only lumbers his own view with an internal inconsistency (it is forced to be half-materialist, halfidealist) and hands over practice to the idealists. Things are worse, Marx claims, since ‘the question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question’ (Thesis ). Marx’s claim here involves an extraordinary reorientation of traditional philosophy. There is, he claims, no way of settling whether thought is objective by reflection on the matter; thought’s objectivity must  

Althusser, The Humanist Controversy, . MEGA IV.: /MECW : .



MEGA IV.: /MECW : .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

prove itself in practice – and that is, in human history. Since Feuerbach lacks the appropriate grasp of practice – which ought to be, by his own lights, materialist – he also cannot secure the objectivity of our thought. And so his subject–object collapses. The theme of the internal inconsistency of Feuerbach’s framework takes a concretely social turn in Thesis . Feuerbach’s ostensibly materialist doctrine has it that human beings are subject to, and influenced by, circumstances and by how they are brought up or educated (erzogen). But, in failing to recognize that human beings themselves do the work of changing the circumstances in question, and themselves do the bringing up or educating, Feuerbach’s position produces a bifurcation. The human being is made to play the role of both influencer and influenced; the latter role is split off from the former as the merely passive receptacle of the former. But his split between material influencer and what is materially influenced must be, somehow, located within the human being. Taking the bifurcation seriously has the effect that we are invited to imagine human beings somehow reaching over themselves in order to do the changing of circumstances and the educating – circumstances and education to which they are then, nonetheless, subject as if they had not, after all, been humanly produced. As Marx puts it, ‘this doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is raised above it [society]’. But, of course, it cannot be anything but the same humans who do the changing and educating, on the one hand, and are changed and educated, on the other. They do so without what the bifurcation, absurdly, requires: their reaching out of themselves, over the top of society, and back into themselves, in order to accomplish this. The complaint of Thesis  is that Feuerbach ought to have gone further than he does in his diagnosis of religion as self-alienation, or the projection outward of a divine other as rooted in the human predicament. He stops short of investigating the ‘intrinsic contradictoriness’ of the human predicament that is itself responsible for producing the alienation, a contradictoriness that must ‘itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionised in practice’. Thesis , however, takes us back to the theme of Thesis , and to Marx’s tackling of Feuerbach’s materialism at its roots. Feuerbach, having arrived at a general dissatisfaction with mere abstract thought, plays up the importance of the sensuous side of the human: the side of Anschauung. This is admirable enough. But Feuerbach’s  

MEGA IV.: /MECW : . MEGA IV.: /MECW : . The MECW translators faced a difficult task in translating Anschauung here. The result they produce – ‘[sensuous] contemplation’ – is confusing. They are

Critique of Feuerbach



aspiration to give our sensuous side its due cannot be made good on, given his own resources, since he is unable to conceive the sensuousness (Sinnlichkeit) involved as ‘practical, humanly-sensuous activity’. Marx thinks, as we have seen in the previous chapter, to be able to do better than Feuerbach here, through his story of the human being as a unity of Wesenskräfte, no mere aggregate of thinking and sensing. The sequence of the first six theses reaches its climax in Thesis . Here Marx attacks head-on Feuerbach’s conception of the human as Gattung. For Feuerbach, Marx alleges, the human essence is an ‘abstractum inherent in each individual’ ([ein] dem einzelnen Individuum inwohnendes Abstractum). He is wrong in this, Marx claims. Marx is still willing to talk in Feuerbach’s terms of ‘the human essence’, but counters that it is no abstractum, but is, ‘in its actuality’ (in seiner Wirklichkeit) the (concrete) ‘ensemble of social relations’ (ensemble der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse). Feuerbach finds himself forced to ‘abstract from the historical process’, presupposing ‘an abstract – isolated – human individual’, and to conceive the human essence as Gattung, and that is as ‘an inner, mute generality binding the individuals together naturally’. It is not immediately obvious what Marx means by saying that, for Feuerbach, the individuals are only bound together ‘naturally’; perhaps Marx thinks that Feuerbach is forced to think of them as held together merely naturally – in virtue of their supposedly ahistorical essence – and not (by contrast) historically. It is Marx, after all, who inherits from Feuerbach the conception of the Gattung as a generality transcending our natural embodiment, and is precisely accusing him (in this very Thesis) of rendering it an abstractum. Marx’s mention of the ‘historical process’, and the requirement Feuerbach places on himself to abstract from it, signals something crucial.

  

clearly aware that Marx intends the connotations of Anschauung as Kant uses the word (standardly translated into English as ‘intuition’, in keeping with Kant’s tendency to pair Anschauung with the Latin term intuitio). Anschauung is what the faculty of sensibility obtains for experience, receptively. Hence the translators’ insertion of ‘sensuous’ in square brackets; but this jars with ‘contemplation’. There is a helpful discussion of associated substantive issues in Vaccarino Bremner, ‘The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity’. I continue to leave the German word Gattung untranslated, and to treat it as if it were a word in the English language by leaving it unitalicized, for the reasons given in the previous chapter. MEGA IV.: –/MECW : . Norman Geras, in his study of this sentence from the Sixth Thesis, claimed that Marx does not here break with the concept of ‘human nature’ (Marx and Human Nature). The debate Geras contributes to is a pseudo-debate. The theoretical situation in the Theses on Feuerbach is unstable; it ultimately gives way to an altered employment of the concept ‘human’, which does and does not break with more traditional concepts of human nature. I will briefly visit the issue of how the human figures in Marx’s later work in Chapter .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

A general theme of the Theses is the character of the human being as practical, not merely passively contemplative, and the resulting importance of ‘“revolutionary”, . . . “practical-critical”, activity’ (Thesis ), or ‘revolutionary practice’ (Thesis ). For now, Marx’s juxtaposition of Feuerbach’s abstract humans subject to the Gattung with his own practical, sensuous agents remains a mere stance. It will be the opening up of the suggestion that we must be treated as historical agents, making ‘real’ history (not contributing to the imagined history generated by would-be self-sufficient philosophy) that will allow Marx to advance from a mere antiFeuerbachian posture to the development of a positive approach that throws off self-sufficient philosophy and works to actualize philosophy. He will then be starting to make good on what he announces as an imperative in Thesis : to progress beyond the mere interpretation of the world that self-sufficient philosophy has occupied itself with, and instead to change it.

Historical Materialism The complex of texts known as The German Ideology consists of a set of drafts written by Marx and Engels between October  and April/ May . Their original intention in producing these drafts was to work towards the publication of two issues of a planned journal to have been edited by Marx and Engels together with Moses Hess. The first issue was to have contained a critique of Young Hegelian philosophy, the second a critique of ‘true socialism’. Parts of the latter component of the project did make it into print, but the publication of the journal was abandoned and the manuscripts were left to, as Marx later put it, the ‘gnawing criticism of the mice’. Unlike those that compose The Holy Family, the texts that together make up The German Ideology cannot be identified as the work of Marx or of Engels individually. The production process of the latter project was more genuinely collaborative. What has come down to us largely takes the form of manuscripts with text confined to a left-hand column, with the remainder of the page left blank for the potential insertion of corrections, emendations or additions. This left-hand column of text contains fair copy in Engels’s hand (likely of text originally, at least in large part, written by Marx). Corrections entered in the otherwise blank, right-hand column are in Marx’s hand.  

MEGA IV.: , /MECW : , . MEGA II.: /MECW : .



MEGA I.: .

Historical Materialism



The large bulk of surviving manuscripts contributing to the projected first part of the project tackles, in turn, in heavily polemical fashion, Feuerbach, ‘Saint Bruno’ (i.e., Bruno Bauer) and ‘Saint Max’ (i.e., Max Stirner, also sometimes called ‘Saint Sancho’ after Sancho Panza). The section on Stirner is extraordinarily convoluted, even by the standards of Marx and Engels’s polemical writings. As well as coming in for ridicule, however, Stirner is utilized strategically against Feuerbach. As against Feuerbach’s talk of Gattung, which Stirner subjects to biting critique, Stirner himself advocates an extreme and histrionic individualism that Marx and Engels do not even remotely contemplate endorsing. Nonetheless, the critique of Feuerbach is crucial for them, since they see that Stirner exposes a fundamental problem with Feuerbach’s conception. Namely, Feuerbach can give no convincing story about my relationship as the human individual I am to my Gattung – to my humanity. Much of The German Ideology continues the theme of The Holy Family of attacking a selbstständige, or ‘self-sufficient’, philosophy, which fancies that the work of philosophy is carried out in the conceptual realm. So in a draft preface Marx writes: ‘Let us revolt against this rule of concepts.’ He continues: ‘These innocent and child-like fancies are the kernel of the modern Young-Hegelian philosophy, which not only is received by the German public with horror and awe, but is announced by our philosophic heroes with the solemn consciousness of its world-shattering danger and criminal ruthlessness.’ Marx goes on to declare that the aim of the projected first volume of the project is that of ‘uncloaking these sheep, who take themselves and are taken for wolves’. Not only are the sheep’s notions of their own ‘criminal ruthlessness’ ridiculously misplaced. They themselves are, and cannot be anything other than, receptacles of the ideology of the class to which they belong: ‘their bleating merely imitates in a philosophic form the conceptions of the German middle class’; all their ‘boasting’, in the end, ‘only mirrors the wretchedness of the real conditions in Germany’. In another fragment, the authors write that ‘German criticism has, right up to its latest efforts, never left the realm of philosophy’. Their critical   

Peter Osborne makes an eloquent case for the significance of this mobilization of Stirner for the purposes of a critique of Feuerbach. See Osborne, ‘The Carnival of Philosophy’, . MEGA I.: /MECW : –. MEGA I.: –/MECW : –. As with much of the complex of manuscripts known as The German Ideology, this manuscript is a fair copy in the hand of Engels (in the left-hand column), with corrections by Marx in the (otherwise blank) right-hand column. It is therefore quite possible that Engels is here (for the most part, or even entirely) providing a fair copy of a previous draft in Marx’s hand.



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

work is, all of it, ‘supposed to have taken place in the realm of pure thought’, and continues to move within the parameters set by Hegelianism. Because of their confinement within pure thought, these Hegelians – even if they are Young Hegelians – have taken on the task merely of fighting against illusions within consciousness. As a result, ‘in spite of their allegedly “world-shattering” phrases’, they turn out to be ‘the staunchest conservatives’. It is not merely that these philosophers satisfy themselves with the fantasy of self-sufficient thought; the very idea of investigating ‘the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the connection of their criticism with their own material surroundings’, does not even occur to them. This is, in part, because they think themselves already to have historical reality at their disposal – namely, one that they have produced philosophically. Echoing a note already sounded in The Holy Family, the authors of the German Ideology tell us that if one consults these ‘producers of “the concept”’, these ‘theorists, ideologists and philosophers’, one finds that, according to them, ‘the philosophers, the thinkers as such, have at all times been dominant in history: a conclusion, as we see, already expressed by Hegel’. What is new in The German Ideology, relative to The Holy Family, is that the authors now not only counterpose to the ‘critical critics’ or ‘ideologists’ a ‘Mass-type history’ as a polemical conceit, but start to build such a history in earnest. Key to such a history is that it does not rely on the prior establishment of philosophical foundations; such a history is, so to speak, already ‘within reach’. When Marx and Engels famously write that the ‘premises’ or ‘presuppositions’ (Voraussetzungen) from which they begin are ‘the real individuals’, by contrast with ‘capricious premises’ or ‘dogmas’, they are effectively saying that they do not begin from premises, in any philosophical sense, at all. They begin from within human life. The so-called premises or presuppositions that human beings are ‘can be established in a purely empirical way [sind . . . auf rein empirischem Wege  

 



MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . This claim is borne out also in political terms. It is well-known that Bauer became a right-winger. Feuerbach had some notions of participating in political life. Having been elected to parliament in Frankfurt in , however, he did not find himself disposed to participate. Stirner was, already, by the time Marx and Engels were composing The German Ideology, an extreme right-wing individualist libertarian. MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: –/MECW : –. See a similar statement in The Poverty of Philosophy: ‘Thus, for Hegel, all that has happened and is still happening is only just what is happening in his own mind [dans son propre raisonnement]. Thus the philosophy of history is nothing but the history of philosophy, of his own philosophy’ (MP: /MECW : ). MEGA I.: /MECW : .

Historical Materialism



konstatirbar]’. There is no need to begin from an abstract theory to the effect that the human is distinct from the animal through a specific difference. These humans themselves ‘begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their material life.’ To proceed in this way, tracing human beings’ self-production in history, is to evince what has become known as ‘historical materialism’. Proceeding in this way, recourse is no longer needed to Feuerbach’s considerations about the interdependence of human and nature. Feuerbach now joins the Bauerians as a target of critique. The supposed question of ‘the relation of man to nature’ ‘crumbles of itself when we understand that the celebrated “unity of man with nature” has always existed in industry and has existed in varying forms in every epoch according to the lesser or greater development of industry’. The insight of the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ is now deployed, to the effect that Feuerbach fails to conceive man as ‘sensuous activity’, and has an overly theoretical conception of man which means he does not ‘conceive of men . . . in their given social connection’, so that he ‘never arrives at the actually existing, active men, but stops at the abstraction “man”’. Historical materialism is a correction of Feuerbach, in that it succeeds in joining together what Feuerbach could only hold apart. ‘As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist.’ Hegel had recognized that the human is a historical being who, in some sense, makes themself in history. He could not do justice do this idea, because his whole philosophical procedure was that of self-sufficient conceptual generation and selfcompletion. Ironically, Hegel’s position is ultimately an ahistoricist eternalism that tries to build history into itself. As he puts it in one place, ‘philosophical world history’ is ‘the spirit which is eternally present to itself and for which there is no past’. Feuerbach does no better when he takes on Hegel’s subject–object wholesale and declares that it shall now be materialized. This means that the making of themselves that human beings perform in history can feature just as little in Feuerbach’s picture as in Hegel’s: his Gattung may call itself ‘material’, but suffers just the same    

 MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .  MEGA I.: /MECW : , . MEGA I.: /MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : . Hegel, Vorlesungen u¨ber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Band I: Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, /Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History, .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

inertness as Hegel’s subject insofar as it is called upon to step out of the realm of self-completing thought. To be a communist is to be a certain kind of historical agent. As Marx emphasizes in The German Ideology, communism ‘is for us not a condition that is to be achieved, or an ideal to which actuality is to be directed’, but ‘the actual movement that abolishes [aufhebt] the current condition’. Accordingly, Feuerbach is to be criticized when he calls himself a communist. He tries to ‘change the word “communist”, which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolutionary party, into a mere category’. Feuerbach ‘merely wants to produce a correct consciousness about an existing fact; whereas for the real communist it is a question of overthrowing the existing state of things’. Have Marx and Engels now supplanted Feuerbachianism with an empiricism or a positivism? It certainly might seem so. In one fragment (from June/July ), they write: In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here it is a matter of ascending from earth to heaven. That is to say, . . . of . . . setting out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real lifeprocess demonstrating the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the brains of men are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable [konstatirbaren] and bound to material premises [Voraussetzungen].

And: Where speculation ends, where real life starts, there consequently begins real, positive science, the expounding of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty phrases about consciousness end, and real knowledge has to take their place. When the reality is described, self-sufficient philosophy [die selbstständige Philosophie] loses its medium of existence.

The Holy Family and The German Ideology, together, may have provided persuasive arguments against die selbstständige Philosophie. But what can ‘real, positive science’ be, other than positivism? Historical materialism is not, however, positivism or empiricism. ‘Positivism’ and ‘empiricism’ may be taken to mean many things. ‘Positivism’ might be thought to stand for the philosophie positive   

MEGA I.: /MECW : . In the manuscript this passage is in Marx’s hand, in the right-hand column of the text.  MEGA I.: , /MECW : , . MEGA I.: –/MECW : . MEGA I.: /MECW : .

Historical Materialism



expounded by Auguste Comte in the decade before Marx launched his intellectual career, with its doctrinal commitments about the nature of science as asymptotically aiming at the truth. ‘Empiricism’ might be associated with the epistemological doctrines of John Locke or David Hume, according to which the ultimate sources of human knowledge are in sense perception. One might imagine Marx and Engels as embarked on a (sociological) science that was grounded in some doctrinal commitment or other. Such doctrinal commitments might be thought of as comparable to Comte’s doctrines on the nature of science; or they might be a version, restricted to one form of enquiry, of Locke or Hume’s general principle about admissible sources of knowledge. It is immediately clear, however, that Marx and Engels intend something very different from any such approaches in taking ‘human individuals’ as their ‘premises’ and engaging in the history of their actions. There are no methodological strictures – for better or worse – on what sort of scientific structure will result, or on how those actions are to be known (such as that they are to be read off from what is empirically ‘observable’). Instead, it is taken that what it is to engage in such history is perfectly obvious, since making such history is what we do in our everyday lives. The German Ideology contains some of the sharpest remarks about philosophy and philosophers in the entire Marx–Engels corpus. Famously, we read that ‘philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love’. This should not be read, however, as a wholesale rejection of philosophy. What it brings out is just how dramatic a difference philosophy’s actualization makes. Whereas mere philosophy remains onanism, philosophy actualized, which makes good on the claim to study the actual world, is intercourse. Peter Osborne, who likewise warns against reading The German Ideology as a positivist text, interprets Marx and Engels’s invocation of ‘real human individuals’ as their ‘premises’ as establishing ‘the ontological primacy of productive activity’, which is in turn ‘to be understood as an empirically verifiable, historical fact’. This, however, sounds still too much like philosophical doctrine. If I am right, Marx and Engels do not have a theory that could accord productive activity ‘ontological primacy’. Nor are they concerned with ‘empirical verification’ of such productive activity.  

 MEGA I.: /MECW : . Osborne, ‘The Carnival of Philosophy’, . Where Marx and Engels write konstatiren, as they do in the texts quoted above, it is a dispensable interpretative choice to translate this as ‘verify’ (as the MECW translators do). The language of verification imports the idea of taking up a passive stance to something given to one from outside; but one can konstatiren, or establish, something without taking up such a stance.



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

As philosophy is actualized in ‘historical materialism’ (which, we should remind ourselves, is not a doctrine), such concerns fall away. To think that there is an issue about how we assure ourselves that we really are the active historical agents we are is to have suffered a failure of nerve, and succumbed to the strictures of mere philosophy.

Against Pseudo-Hegelianism, for Proletarian Theory In , Marx published Misère de la philosophie (The Poverty of Philosophy), a vociferous polemic against the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s La Philosophie de la misère (The Philosophy of Poverty). It is a text that has, or ought to have, a resonance in our time. The use of Hegel that Proudhon makes, and for which Marx relentlessly criticizes him, comes unnervingly close to what we find among today’s Hegelianizing Marxists. In some sense, Proudhon’s project looks like it might be close to Marx’s own, in that he seeks to bring together German philosophy with political economy. Marx thinks, however, that Proudhon’s approach is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. It is in large part for this reason that it is salutary to attend to Marx’s criticisms of him: they provide us, I suggest, with a good guide to how not to read Marx’s own work. In chapter , Marx outlines Proudhon’s arguments. Those arguments follow the pattern of the ‘transubstantiation’ of one concept into another. In other words, we are in the realm of a self-generating, selfsufficient dialectic. Marx contrasts this with genuine political economy, such as that of Ricardo: Ricardo shows us the real movement of bourgeois production, which constitutes value. M. Proudhon, leaving this real movement out of account, ‘fumes and frets’ in order to invent new processes and to achieve the reorganisation of the world on a would-be new formula, which formula is no more than the theoretical expression of the real movement which exists and which is so well described by Ricardo.

Not only is Proudhon’s approach misguided, by trying to come up with a ‘new formula’, ahead of an examination of the actual economic system, but it is superfluous, as is shown by Ricardo having already achieved what Proudhon takes trouble to set the scene for by Hegelian, self-sufficient means. In chapter , Marx examines Proudhon’s method. This consists of masking a failure on the part of political economists by means of the 

MP: /MECW : .



MP: /MECW : .

Against Pseudo-Hegelianism, for Proletarian Theory



superposition of a quasi-Hegelianism. ‘Economists express the relations of bourgeois production, the division of labour, credit, money, etc., as fixed, immutable, eternal categories.’ Economists do not investigate how these relations themselves are produced. Neither does Proudhon. What he does, instead, is to ‘frighten the French by flinging quasi-Hegelian phrases at them’. The Hegelianization of political economy that Proudhon attempts is ultimately only quasi-Hegelian, since it is the external imposition of phrases borrowed from Hegel on a subject-matter, and nothing like the methodologically thoroughgoing attempts at a rigorous conceptual unfolding characteristic of Hegel himself. It results not in an investigation of the production of the economic relations, but in a sort of intellectual Ersatz, seeking to exhibit their mutual engendering as a mere movement in thought. For the most part, Marx is interested in criticizing Proudhon’s quasiHegelianism, as a particularly hopeless project that entirely fails to illuminate its subject matter. But he is also led back, in the course of this critique, to a consideration of Hegel’s philosophy itself. It ought not to surprise that ‘everything, in the final abstraction – for we have here an abstraction, and not an analysis – presents itself as a logical category [se présente à l’état de catégorie logique]’. For, if you abstract away all of a thing’s concrete features, you do indeed – unsurprisingly – end up with something entirely abstract. And, Marx writes mockingly, once reason ‘has managed to posit itself as a thesis, this thesis, this thought, opposed to itself, splits up into two contradictory thoughts – the positive and the negative, the yes and the no. The struggle between these two antagonistic elements comprised in the antithesis constitutes the dialectical movement’. From Proudhon’s point of view, it is just a matter of applying this entirely formal method to political economy. ‘Apply this method to the categories of political economy, and you have the logic and metaphysics of political economy, or, in other words, you have the economic categories that everybody knows translated into a little-known language which makes them look as if they had newly blossomed forth in an intellect of pure reason.’ The Poverty of Philosophy contains, then, a vivid critique of Proudhon’s quasi-Hegelianism, and a set of lessons for others tempted to such quasiHegelianism. Just as important, however, is its critique of political economists as mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie, and the contrast Marx draws between them and a new kind of ‘theoreticians’ he sees rising up. Marx  

MP: /MECW : . MP: /MECW : .

 

MP: /MECW : . MP: /MECW : .



MP: /MECW : .



From Mere Philosophy to Historical Materialism

mocks the ideological entrapment of the political economists by their bourgeois class interests by alleging that, for them, there are only two kinds of institutions, artificial and natural. As he specifies, ‘the institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions’. The institutions governing bourgeois society are eternal. Thus one reaches the (absurd) conclusion that ‘there has been history, but there is no longer any’. Marx claims, however, that these apologists for a bourgeois order assumed to be natural and eternal are to be supplanted by another kind of theoretician – the ‘theoreticians [théoriciens] of the proletarian class’. Marx draws a crucial contrast, for our purposes. Such theoreticians (i.e., socialists and communists), where ‘the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class’, are ‘merely utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise systems and go in search of a regenerating science [une science régénératrice]’. But ‘in the measure that history moves forward’, and the proletariat becomes politicized, such theoreticians no longer have a need to ‘seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece [s’en faire l’organe]’. They are the conscious mouthpieces of the proletariat, where the political economists are, in large part, unconscious mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie. Their work is empirical in just the sense in which the historical materialism articulated in The German Ideology claims to be empirical. They do not have to carry out any special study, posterior to having isolated a set of suitably empirical sources: they have merely to ‘take note of what is happening before their eyes’. Their observation of what is happening is already part of their living activity, as proletarians. They have merely to become articulate about this living activity as they experience (or, more properly, live) it. 

MP: /MECW : .



MP: –/MECW : .

 

Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

So far we have considered a series of texts in which philosophy itself was explicitly thematized, and Marx was concerned with his relationship to the philosophical tradition. That is not so in the case of Capital Volume . That work was published in , twenty years after the publication of the last work we have considered, The Poverty of Philosophy. I will argue in this chapter and the next, however, that Capital Volume  counts as a prime exemplar in Marx’s output of the actualization of philosophy. That may seem surprising, given that this does not seem to be a work of philosophy at all, but of something else: as Marx announces in his subtitle, ‘critique of political economy’. But here philosophy no longer appears in the guise of self-sufficiency. Instead, it is here the work of the historical movement, communism. I focus here on Capital Volume , rather than the (never completed) project of Capital as a whole. This is partly for the simple reason that Marx himself managed to publish Volume , and to produce several subsequent published revisions of it, whereas it was left to Engels to assemble Volume  (published in ) and Volume  (published in ) on the basis of manuscripts left by Marx on his death. There is also the pragmatic reason that what I can offer here is, in any case, at best a sketch of a part of the project, and Volume  is massive enough in scope to make even a sketch of a part of its argument a considerable challenge. For reasons connected with the interpretation I wish to defend, I skip ahead to the ‘finished’ form of Capital Volume , rather than lingering over the mass of manuscripts Marx produced in the decade leading up to its publication. I do so with little apology, since I do not wish to privilege Marx’s ‘Grundrisse face’, to 

The sense in which Capital remained unfinished can, however, be exaggerated. The greater bulk of the material on which Engels based his editions of Vols.  and  was completed before Marx published Vol. . Although that material was in an unfinished and unpolished state, the architecture of the final theory was largely in place, down to a fine level of detail.





Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

use E. P. Thompson’s expression, but his ‘Capital face’ – the face he himself was prepared to show to the world. Reading Capital Volume  as actualizing philosophy turns out to have the consequence (perhaps paradoxically) that the text appears closer to how a set of more traditional readings understood it, readings that have been displaced by others that have brought new levels of philosophical sophistication. There is, accordingly, a deliberate gear change in the present chapter from those that have preceded it, in an attempt to highlight the possibility of a reading at ‘face value’. Marx, it had long seemed, intended Capital as an aid to the proletarian revolution that he saw coming, a text to be placed in the hands of the workers. Its work would seem to be that of illuminating the ‘unavoidable’ (unvermeidlich) historical movement presaged in The Communist Manifesto. Whatever the difficulties surrounding the ‘popularization’ of its arguments, essentially Marx’s explanation of the system called ‘capitalism’ was to serve the proletariat in its role as agent of that system’s impending overthrow. Capital, it long seemed, presents an argument that reveals capitalism to be a historically specific, inherently unstable system kept going by a relentless drive to profitmaking whose satisfaction is reliant throughout on the exploitation of workers. In mounting this argument, the text would seem to offer a far-reaching correction to the political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and in doing so to present economic claims and predictions of its own. Earlier readers, both inside and outside Marxist–Leninist regimes, were generally happy to find these features in the work. More recently, it has come to seem necessary to read the work differently. The older ways of reading the work now seem to many too naïve, and to call for displacement by a more sophisticated approach. Various factors are in play here. The apparent argument of Capital involves a commitment to a version of the labour theory of value, according to which the value of commodities consists of the labour embodied in them. But the marginalist revolution in economics that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century allegedly discredited this theory. It is now usual simply (implicitly or explicitly) to accept that the marginalist revolution did, in fact, discredit the theory. A variety of responses are then employed. One kind of response consists in suggesting that nothing in Marx hinges on the labour theory of value, even

 

E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory,  and passim. Manifest der kommunistischen Partei, /MECW : : ‘What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally unavoidable.’

Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis



if he himself did hold (a version of ) it. Another strategy, perhaps now more dominant, is to deny that Marx held any version of that theory in the first place. One permutation of this strategy insists that Marx did not hold the labour theory of value but only something more sophisticated than that: a ‘value-form theory’. This strategy involves reading Marx’s declarative sentences in which he says such things as that commodities embody socially necessary labour as only seeming to say such things, or as not really intended in the declarative mood at all, to be understood only in terms of some wider context, or in yet some other way. Often connected with the idea that Marx does not really endorse some version of the labour theory of value, even though he seems to do so, is the idea that it is naïve to read Capital as stating economic doctrines. Marx might seem to offer such doctrines, which he might seem to be placing in the hands of the proletariat as explanations of the functioning of capitalism. But we should, sophisticated readers insist, attend to the subtitle of Capital, according to which the work is engaged in a critique of political economy. Now a critique of political economy, we are reminded, is not political economy. Really what Marx is doing is not economics, but ‘critical theory’, subjecting a whole field to critique, somewhat as Kant offers a critique of metaphysics. Contrary to appearances, Marx does not place arguments involving economic doctrines into the hands of the proletariat so as to help them overthrow capitalism, but rather pursues an enquiry into the conditions of the possibility of capitalism’s ideology,

 



This is the strategy adopted by G. A. Cohen, ‘The Labor Theory of Value’. Those who pursue this strategy derive their approach from I. I. Rubin. Rubin himself, however, did not deny that Marx held a labour theory of value. Rubin does write that ‘the complete dialectical ground of Marx’s theory of value can only be given on the basis of his theory of commodity fetishism which analyzes the general structure of the commodity economy. Only after one finds the basis of Marx’s theory of value does it become clear what Marx says in the famous first chapter of Capital’ (Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, ). And: ‘It is more accurate to express the theory of value inversely: in the commodity-capitalist economy, production-work relations among people necessarily acquire the form of the value of things, and can appear only in this material form; social labor can only be expressed in value’ (). Søren Mau is right to insist that Marx ‘firmly rejects economistic conceptions of the economy – that is, the idea that the economy is an ontologically separate sphere of society governed by its own distinctive “economic” logic or rationality’, and that for Marx ‘“the economy” is social through and through’ (Mute Compulsion, ). But it does not follow that, as Mau goes on to claim, ‘Marx’s critique of political economy is not an alternative or a critical political economy, but rather a critique of the entire theoretical (or ideological field) of political economy’ (ibid., ; emphasis added). Marx’s economics is a restitution of what economics should always have been – a social science, encompassing production just as much as purchase, sale, distribution, investment, and so on, as an interconnected web of human activities.



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

political economy. Sophisticated readers of Marx who give the impression that the work is, after all, closer to traditional philosophy than its apparent status as an instrument of proletarian revolution would have suggested, often emphasize the set of drafts for Capital known as the Grundrisse (‘Outlines’), in which there is more widespread use of Hegelian language. (In Capital, as Marx himself says, he merely ‘coquettes’ with Hegelian formulations.) I will return to this issue in Chapter , where I suggest that we should agree with Marx that his moving beyond Hegelian forms of exposition, as he does in Capital, should be regarded as the achievement he takes it to be. In this chapter I try to show, in line with what more traditional, now unfashionable readings suppose, that Capital mounts an argument that speaks about how things function economically in capitalism, and whose remit is to aid the proletarian revolution. What he has to say will not take the form of economic doctrines of the kind that classical and neoclassical economics serve up, shored up by an ahistorical model of the economy, but it nonetheless seeks to speak about how things work, not merely to engage in the critique of a framework. It matters whether what Marx has to say about how things function economically is true. If what he says about this is false, his argument cannot work. This is important since Marx’s faith that the revolution they are intended to support will occur is based on this argument. It is not an exercise in mere philosophy, to be conducted in abstraction from the revolution. Since my aim is merely to exhibit that Marx argues in this way, I will limit myself to an overall line of argument that can be found in Volume . Importantly, ‘argument’ does not here mean a deductive procedure conforming to an abstractly pre-established formula. It does mean a 

 

See Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination, which interprets Marx as offering a ‘critical theory’. Of course, it is correct that Marx offers to perform a critique of ideology, and this might be all that is meant by ‘critical theory’. But Marx thinks this can be done more straightforwardly than readers like Postone allow, and, importantly, without a retreat into self-sufficient philosophy. K  (): /C : . Among the more traditional readings I have in mind are those of Maurice Dobb and Paul Sweezy. See, especially, Dobb, Political Economy and Capitalism; Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development. It is worth pointing out that Dobb and Sweezy, as well as reading Marx in a more literal, less ‘philosophically’ sophisticated way, also enter corrections of the theory on Marx’s behalf. (Lucio Colletti makes just this point about Dobb and Sweezy in ‘A Political and Philosophical Interview’, .) Far from pointing in opposite directions, the points about Dobb’s and Sweezy’s relatively straightforward fidelity to what Marx seems to be saying, on the one hand, and their willingness to revise Marx, on the other, are related. It is precisely because they do not offer a reading of Marx as requiring a retreat to a higher level of philosophical meta-speculation, at which the details of Marx’s theory become irrelevant, that they experience the revision of Marx’s theory so as to render it correct as being of importance.

Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis



cumulative exercise in rational persuasion, such as we are familiar with in everyday life. There are many ways through Capital; here I focus on just one, in the spirit of providing prolegomena to a reading of the work. The argument I trace in this chapter takes us from the production of value to exploitation to the contradictions of large-scale industry. It is the argument by which Marx seeks to make it palpable to the proletariat that the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is in their hands. In the course of setting it out, it will become clear that Marx invokes (his version of ) the labour theory of value. I will not try to defend that theory here. What is offered here is deliberately a sketch. Of course, a far more sophisticated analysis could be given of the argument I have chosen to outline. And far more of Marx’s overall argument in Volume  could be drawn in. But the outline of an argument offered in this chapter should be sufficient to make various things clear. First, it should already make clear that Marx’s argument does not take the form of a Hegelian unfolding of concepts, but that of the specification, by careful analysis, of a historically specific reality. In Chapter  I will try to show that the argument accords with what Marx thinks is dialectic in the true sense, by contrast with a mere dialectic of concepts, such as Hegel manages to achieve. Second, it should also be clear, just from the exposition of the argument, that it does not make, or rest on, prior ‘normative’ claims (claims about what ought to be the case). Marx’s claims, for instance, that the production of surplus-value in capitalism involves the exploitation of workers do not rest on some prior grounding claim about the need not to exploit human beings. Third, it should be clear that the argument performs a bouleversement of classical political economy. But it performs this not by being merely a critique of the concepts and/or arguments of classical political economy. Instead, it is an intervention that at the same time effects a transformation of that field. To give a crucial example, Marx transforms classical political economy by deploying into it the concept of labour power, which was present to the mind of David Ricardo, according to Marx, only ‘unconsciously’. Although the exposition that follows should make these things clear, I will turn in Chapter  to a closer examination of the methodology at work in Capital Volume . The decision to present exposition first, and  

For an excellent historical exploration of the labour theory of value, culminating in a discussion and defence of a Marxian such theory, see Meek, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value. Furthermore, I purposely exclude some of the most difficult questions, such as Marx’s understanding of the contradiction between the forces and relations of production. Such questions merit detailed treatment of a kind that cannot be contemplated here.



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

only then a methodological explanation, is deliberate. First, it is important to demonstrate that Volume  contains such arguments as the one outlined in this chapter. We need to see this in order to recognize that it is not a treatise in Hegelian dialectic, however modified, that treats economic doctrines from some meta-standpoint, rather than engaging in first-order economic argumentation. Marx does not retreat to selbstständige Philosophie. Second, Marx is insistent that his methodology – that of spelling out ‘the specific logic of the specific object’ – is not one that can be specified in advance of a working-through of concrete content. Specifically, there is no hope of spelling out what ‘dialectic’ is for Marx without doing some – preferably by working through his text, but at the very least through the kind of rehearsal of some part of the argument as is attempted here. In this chapter and the next, I adopt a policy of making only sparse reference to the vast secondary literature on Marx. This is in order to demonstrate the possibility of what will be inevitably considered by many a worryingly naïve reading of Marx. I attempt to demonstrate this possibility not merely as an alternative to other, sophisticated readings. The aim is to show that Marx, when read in the more straightforward way that he invites but that commentators try to warn us against, presents an argument of just the kind one would expect as philosophy is actualized and freed of its pretensions to self-sufficiency – an argument that does not first establish philosophical principles as its basis, but that goes straight to work, immersing itself in an examination of the society in which we live.

Capital and Philosophy The best way to appreciate what Capital accomplishes is to get straight into its argument. I will say a few things first, however, in favour of the notion that Capital presents an argument, and to set aside certain expectations about ways in which it might be philosophy. Capital, it is worth reminding ourselves, is not a work that sets out, let alone solves, philosophical problems. (Philosophers, when they read it, can be tempted to think, or assume, so.) It does not set up some philosophical standpoint, and then work its way into its topic from there. There is no methodological ground-clearing, nothing of the form of: I perform a Copernican revolution, which shall be substantiated in the following argument. Instead, it is simply: here is an argument. The authors of The German Ideology, who were still concerned with combatting self-sufficient philosophy, felt the need to proclaim that they started from ‘real individual

Capital and Philosophy



human beings’ as Voraussetzungen (‘premises’ or ‘presuppositions’), that is, that they began from human life and not from theoretical doctrines. In Capital, this rhetoric drops out. This is precisely what we should expect as philosophy is actualized. In Capital historical materialism comes into its own, as actual historical work. Concept and actuality are one; thought ‘enters’ the world. This is so precisely thanks to the notion of a ‘speculary’ subject–object relation having been overcome, including in its (ultimately inconsistent, unintelligible) guise of insisting on ‘real, individual human beings’ as subject. Capital is certainly about something narrower than the object of philosophy. It suffers a limit, the limit of its topic. It is about the economic system called capitalism, and not about certain other things. This stands to reason; thinking cannot be about everything, all at once. Furthermore, Marx did not intend to restrict himself to the economic work contained in Capital; he lived in constant hope of completing a larger project into which it was to have been incorporated. The work, however, does not suffer a limit as philosophy. Hegel’s philosophy had, contrary to its own concept, suffered a limit as philosophy. This is an impossibility, since philosophy has no limit, just as its object has no limit. Thus Hegel is guilty of a dereliction of the philosophy to which he aspires. He had claimed for his philosophy that it was to be the unity of concept and actuality, but in attempting to make good on this claim, found himself limiting himself to the selfgeneration of the concept (and that is, to an impossibility). In Capital, Marx makes good on Hegel’s claim on behalf of philosophy that it shall be the unity of concept and actuality, without Hegel’s shrinking back into the (imagined) self-sufficiency of the concept. This does not make Capital a work of philosophy: precisely not. For philosophy to answer to its concept – that is, to its claim to be the unity of concept and actuality – is for it to actualize itself. And as it actualizes itself it casts off the form of mere philosophy. It now figures as nothing other than thinking, in its actuality. That Capital is thinking in its actuality can be recognized in its function as a tool of the revolution: its explications and arguments are to be placed in the hands of the proletariat and thereby act to advance the revolution. It is a work of theory that ‘begins from’, we might say, what the workers know and what the workers strive for. The workers know their own humanity and their own labouring creativity, even if they systematically have it reflected back to them in ‘alienated’ form. They already strive to 

Bekker, Marx’ philosophische Entwicklung, .



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

free themselves from exploitation. Neither their knowledge nor their striving is something they first need to be convinced of: they are already at work employing their knowledge in their already active striving. (This is the literal ‘already’ of real historical action, not the logical ‘always already’ of the philosophers.) What Capital does not ‘begin from’ is a theory of the human, or a theory of alienation, much less a theory of justice or right. Philosophers (i.e., mere philosophers) might demand, when all is said and done, to know what grounds Marx’s discourse in Capital. What makes his claims scientific, if that is what they are supposed to be? What are the canons of reasoning relied on? Marx does not offer any such grounding. The canons of reasoning are simply the canons of reasoning. These are operative in all sciences. There is no work for philosophers (or anyone else) to do to ground the sciences, to demonstrate why good reasoning is good reasoning. Louis Althusser, curiously, entitles his opening contribution to Reading Capital ‘From Capital to Marx’s Philosophy’. The inclusion of ‘philosophy’ in his title is indicative of where his approach will lead him. He characterizes the ‘epistemological break’ that he thinks Marx effects in  (although this break is not instantaneously completed but lasts a long time) as the opening up of not one but two new sciences: a new historical science, ‘historical materialism’, and a new philosophical science, ‘dialectical materialism’. This leads Althusser into talk of the production of theoretical knowledge, or ‘theoretical production’, that strays into unintelligibility. It is, for Althusser, as if Marx were capable of producing an ontology of the production of theories: a bit of self-sufficient philosophy about the workings of philosophy. There is a reason why Althusser becomes unintelligible here. There cannot be any such distinct philosophical science for Marx: as philosophy is actualized, it renders itself true to its concept, and thereby becomes no science of its own at all, but thought, or knowledge, or science as such.

The Commodity, Use-value, Exchange-value Anyone who undertakes to read Capital finds that Marx presents, in the volume that he managed to bring to completion, an extremely careful and   

Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital. See Althusser, The Humanist Controversy, : ‘the break is never anything more than the beginning of an event of very long duration which, in a sense, never ends’. Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, .

The Commodity, Use-value, Exchange-value



patient argument. The argument proceeds analytically. It begins from an abstraction: the commodity, as abstracted from production, distribution, exchange and consumption, and thereby abstracted also from the complex interaction of different capitals. That abstraction, however, contains enough concreteness to get Marx’s argument going, an argument that he describes as an ‘analysis’, since it involves the unpacking of the abstraction from which he begins. Marx’s argument proceeds very slowly, and didactically. Often there are multiple attempts to explicate the same point, until (he hopes) the reader finally ‘gets’ it. Often the tone is ironic or jocular. In the opening chapters, which are, by comparison with later chapters, relatively difficult to master (although their supreme difficulty is often exaggerated), there are long stretches in which Marx is trying to engender in the reader a sense of mystery at, say, the very fact that a commodity can ‘go to market’ and exchange itself against another commodity. It is important to understand the spirit in which Marx lingers over a series of mysteries and perplexities. He does so because he wants us to appreciate the supposedly mysterious character of capitalist exchange, but precisely not because he wants to engender in us a sense of mystery or to raise us to an esoteric standpoint from which to comprehend these mysteries. The text is demanding, not because it contains difficult to understand arguments operating with an esoteric ‘dialectical’ methodology – expecting the reader to raise themself above the level of ordinary understanding – but because it requires the reader to read in a state of constant suspense, attaining understanding only gradually. Understanding can only come gradually, partly because the topic under discussion is a highly complex social system, and partly because this system comprehensively presents itself to us as possessing an uncanny unfamiliarity, even though we are at home in it. We begin, then, with ‘the commodity’. The exposition is certainly not the easiest imaginable for the reader: ‘beginnings are always difficult in all sciences’. It takes, instead, the form that Marx regards as 

  

As Derek Sayer rightly points out, ‘Marx’s arguments are frequently both difficult and involved, but much as a rule hangs on precisely their complexities’ (Marx’s Method, x). Even though I agree with Sayer, I plead guilty to grossly oversimplifying Marx’s arguments in a way that he, in his book, refrains from. Marx calls the argument an ‘analysis’ at, among many other places, K  (): /C : . Still less should we read Marx’s argumentative ruses as reflecting the pattern of his own thought. As he repeatedly emphasized, the order of presentation differs from the order of research. K  (): v/C : . Citations from Capital Vol.  refer to the last edition Marx himself oversaw (the third edition of ), unless there is a reason not to (i.e., where the first or second edition differs from the third).



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

methodologically most defensible. We begin there because a striking and central feature of capitalist society that can be read off from its surface is that it appears as ‘an immense collection of commodities’. If we pick out some one commodity from this immense collection, and train our eye on it, we find that it is ‘at first sight an obvious [selbstverständliches], trivial thing’. Analysis, however, shows it to be ‘a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’. What is obvious about it, and what is strange about it? Commodities are ‘obvious’ in that they are, typically, everyday objects of a familiar kind, such as coats, or quantities of linen. They are the kinds of things that, in our society, can be bought or sold on the market. What is ‘strange’ about them comes into the open if we consider their behaviour as items for exchange in the market. Marx tells us, following Smith and Ricardo, that a commodity has a dual character. Each commodity possesses both a ‘use-value’ and an ‘exchange-value’. The commodity’s use-value is simply its utility or usefulness. Something is not a commodity unless it is useful in supplying some human want. That want can be anything from basic to sophisticated. A coat supplies the basic need for warmth; it may also supply more complex human needs, such as the need for stylishness. It is on account of their use-value that commodities are exchanged in the market. Their use-value is thus closely connected to their exchange-value. Exchangevalue is that on account of which a commodity can be exchanged for (x amount of ) another commodity. A commodity does not possess exchangevalue on its own, but only in relation to some other commodity. In chapter , Marx sets out the view that value, of which exchange-value is the ‘form of appearance’, has its source in human labour: A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the ‘valueforming substance’, the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc.

This labour-time is socially necessary, abstract labour-time (‘abstract’ because we are here abstracting from what is being produced and how). Marx states that ‘the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labourtime socially necessary for its production’, is ‘what exclusively determines the magnitude of the value of any article’. He quotes his own 

K  (): /C : .



K  (): /C : .



K  (): /C : .

The Commodity, Use-value, Exchange-value



Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: ‘As exchange-values, all commodities are merely definite quantities of congealed labour-time.’ This is no argument for the labour theory of value, but it is a clear statement of the theory. Insofar as a commodity possesses use-value, it embodies concrete labour. So a coat, considered as a garment to be worn, contains the weaving and sewing that have gone into it. Insofar as a commodity possesses exchangevalue (exchangeability on the market against other commodities), it embodies abstract labour. Abstract labour is labour considered without specification of the particular labouring activity involved. An easy way to think of this is as a pool of labour possessed by the group of human beings who make up a society. The needs of the individual human beings are met by the performance of labour. In the type of society under consideration – commodity-producing or capitalist society – individual human beings as a rule do not perform labour to satisfy their own needs, but feed labour into a pool. The dual character of the commodity (as both use-value and exchangevalue) reappears in the ‘form’ of the commodity. As use-values, commodities possess a ‘natural form’. As exchange-values, commodities possess ‘value form’. Marx now offers to do something that bourgeois political economists such as Smith and Ricardo have, he says, ‘not even tried’: to explain the ‘genesis’ of the money-form. He goes to some lengths to show that the ‘mystery’ of the money-form can already be appreciated if we just consider how it is that one commodity is exchanged for another. For commodity A to exchange with commodity B, one of the two must take on what Marx calls the ‘equivalent form’, the other the ‘relative form’. It does not matter which commodity takes on which form. If a coat is exchanged for twenty yards of linen, one of the two must take on the role of acting as the equivalent of the other. For instance, the twenty yards of linen could take on the role of the equivalent. Then the other commodity, the coat, takes on the role of ‘relative form’. Of course, this whole scenario – in which two commodities are competing for which gets to have the ‘relative’, which the ‘equivalent’ form – is highly unrealistic, and Marx sketches it only for didactic purposes. He does so in order to proceed to the point that the equivalent form can be ‘expanded’ so that twenty  

 K  (): /C : . K  (): /C : . As he states explicitly: ‘Hence the mysteriousness of the equivalent form, which only impinges on the crude bourgeois vision of the political economist when it confronts him in its fully developed shape, that of money’ (K  (): /C : ). ‘He does not suspect that even the simplest expression of value, such as  yards of linen ¼  coat, already presents the riddle of the equivalent form for us to solve’ (K  (): /C : ).



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

yards of linen (say) come to stand as the equivalent of a whole array of commodities (a coat, ten pounds of tea, forty pounds of coffee, etc.). Again, it is arbitrary which commodity does so; what is important is the principle that thereby makes everything that comes into the circle of exchange into a bearer of the ‘relative form’. So long as it remains arbitrary which commodity does so, different commodities will (so to speak) ‘compete’ for the role of equivalent form. Eventually, this leads to the establishment, in an actual society, of some one single commodity as the equivalent form for all others. This is money. Money will usually be a precious metal. Exchange consists of two ‘antithetical’ (entgegengesetzte) phases. That is to say, each participant in the (highly stylized, simplified) market under consideration occupies a dual role, that of seller and buyer. And each sale is also a purchase. Or, using ‘C’ for commodity and ‘M’ for money, each C– M is also M–C. The whole process can itself be viewed in two ways. The participant in the market can be seen as entering the marketplace with a commodity. Then the process can be represented as: C–M–C. Or the participant in the market can be seen as entering the marketplace with money. Then the process can be represented as: M–C–M. It is definitive of the capitalist that she is one who enters the marketplace with money. So we are now in a position to begin an analysis of the capitalist’s activity (profitmaking). The capitalist advances money, with the intent of exiting the exchange with more money: M–C–M0 . She then repeats the process with the money she now has (M0 ), and conducts another round. We might write these successive rounds M0 –C–M00 , M00 –C–M000 , and so on. The capitalist finds herself in luck. There is a commodity she can buy at its value, just as she buys everything else at its value (as is being assumed throughout the argument of Volume ), but which has the distinctive property of producing more value than it contains. This is labour-power. The capitalist must certainly pay the worker enough in order for him to stay alive and remain capable of exerting himself. But, in a working day, the worker produces more than the value required to replenish his labour power for the next day. The extra (‘surplus’) labour that the worker performs, on top of the necessary labour, the capitalist does not pay for, but leaves unremunerated. It is unpaid labour.   

K  (): /C : . In Vol.  Marx limits himself to an analysis of how the capitalist extracts surplus-value from the process; his theory of profit proper is reserved for Vol. . ‘What was really decisive for him [the capitalist] was the specific use-value which this commodity possesses of being a source not only of value, but of more value than it has itself’ (K  (): /C : –).

Labour-power and Exploitation



This unpaid labour constitutes the source of the surplus-value that is precisely what motivates the capitalist to advance her money on labourpower in the first place. It is this feature that explains the difference, apparently a matter of ‘magic’, between C–M–C and M–C–M.

Labour-power and Exploitation It turns out that human labour-power is the whole secret of capitalism. The fundamental principle of capitalism is the exploitation of labourpower. Labour-power is not the same as labour, for labour-power is a commodity that a worker can herself sell on the market, whereas labour is not. To try to sell labour on the market is an impossibility, because it would have to be congealed in a commodity, but it cannot be congealed in a commodity without already having been used up. Labour is the substance of commodities, but not itself a commodity. Notably, labour-power is created under distinctively capitalist conditions, and only under those conditions. Prior to capitalism there is no such commodity to be bought and sold; prior to capitalism, workers are not accorded the dignity of founding their working life on a free and fair exchange of a commodity they have at their disposal, but simply have their labour extorted from them. Capitalism, the creator of labour-power, at the same time works hard to avoid recognizing its existence, instead ensuring that it actively confuses labour-power with labour. For it is important to capitalism to maintain the appearance that whatever it is that the worker sells to the capitalist is remunerated at its value. Marx divides the capital that the capitalist lays out into constant capital, c (laid out on the means of production) and variable capital, v (laid out on labour-power). The process of production generates surplus-value, s. So, for example, c might be £ and v might be £; the capitalist lays out £ + £ (¼ £ in total). He might generate a surplus value (s) of £. The rate of exploitation, Marx tells us, is s/v, not (as bourgeois economists imagine) s/(c + v). That is, the rate of exploitation is expressed as the ratio of the surplus-value to the mass of labour-power in which the capitalist has invested, not as the ratio of the surplus-value to the totality of the capital they have laid out. So, in the example we have considered, the rate of exploitation is / (¼ %), not / (¼ %).  

 K  (): /C : . K  (): /C : . K  (): –/C : –.



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

It is worth pointing out that Marx nowhere employs a moral argument. In Capital, Marx often strikes a tone of indignation. He is often satirical. He is clearly on the side of the worker and directs his ire (and sometimes ridicule) at the capitalist. Nevertheless, he never seeks to demonstrate that exploitation is a bad thing, or to provide an argument as to why it should be avoided. He merely exhibits the ‘rate’ or ‘degree’ of exploitation. Note that he uses the term Exploitation, to which he assigns a technical meaning, throughout this argument. (Marx uses Ausbeutung when a more ordinary sense, with a negative charge, is intended.) Labour-power creates more value than it contains. The capitalist takes this added value, without remunerating the worker for it. Marx schematizes this by dividing the working day into that part in which necessary labour is carried out, and that part in which surplus labour is carried out. (Of course, these are merely proportions, not actual stretches of an individual day; the two kinds of labour could be thought of as being carried out concurrently; or, alternatively, the proportions might just as well be thought of as parts of the week, or of any stretch of time not exceeding that for which the worker is paid a wage.) The capitalist seeks to configure the working-day, as far as possible, so that the greatest possible amount of time is given to surplus labour, and the least possible amount of time to necessary labour. That is, the maximum amount of time is to be given, from the capitalist’s point of view, to what Marx also calls unpaid labour. (There is a natural limit to this; the worker must be paid enough to stay alive, so not all their labour can be unpaid.) Of course, it appears as if the worker is paid in full for their labour. In his treatment of wages, Marx returns us to how things appear ‘on the surface of bourgeois society’. It would seem that the worker’s labour is simply what they sold as a commodity, of their own free will. Here it crucially matters that ‘the value of labour’ is an ‘irrational expression’. Really we should speak of their selling their labour-power, for then we are able to see that the worker is only remunerated for a part of this, the rest of the time working for free. But their labour seems then to be just the labour they do, and capitalist and worker agree that the worker is paid for that. The capitalist has different means of intensifying the extraction of surplus-value. Surplus-value obtained by lengthening the working day Marx calls ‘absolute surplus-value’. Surplus-value obtained by shortening  

The use of the term Ausbeutung becomes much more frequent in Marx’s text after K  (): , as he begins to discuss concrete working conditions. See, e.g., , , , , –.  K  (): Achtes Kapitel/C : chapter . K  (): /C : .

Expropriation of the Expropriators



the necessary labour-time he calls ‘relative surplus-value’. Shortening of the necessary labour time is achieved by the increase of efficiency in production, in particular through cooperation, through the division of labour, and by the use of machinery. Machinery, contrary to what bourgeois economists might be inclined to say, does not simply alleviate the intensity of work. Competition means that as one producer introduces labour-saving machinery, so will another. As the use of machinery is resultantly intensified across an industry, the worker’s condition becomes ever more that of the addendum of a mere part of a machine; at the same time, the worker is increasingly thrown around from one industry to another. As an effect of workers being flung around in this way, a vast ‘reserve army’ of workers, unemployed for much of the time, is created.

Expropriation of the Expropriators So far we have seen Marx arguing that labour is the source of the value of commodities in exchange; that the worker is only apparently remunerated in full for the commodity that they are forced to sell, their labour-power, and in the measure that the worker is unremunerated they are exploited; and that large-scale industry further tends to intensify exploitation and creates a ‘reserve army’. Much further detail will need to be supplied – and awaits Volumes  and  – before we have a full picture of capitalism’s tendency to tear itself apart. But what we have already by the end of Volume  is the argument that the expropriators will finally be expropriated. We have begun from the surface level of the capitalist system, with the analysis of the commodity. Marx has explained what we see at the surface of the commodity in terms of the system of exchange. That system meets the needs of members of society in a highly specific way, by exchanging, by means of the money-form, commodities corresponding to determinate quantities of socially necessary labour embodied in them. We are invited to see this system at work. As we take up the invitation, and inspect the system, we find that its expansionist character, without which it could not exist, relies on the exploitation of one commodity in particular – the labour-power which the worker sells to the capitalist. The different tactics employed in its exploitation lead to (Marx thinks, inexorably) more and more serious contradictions in the system, and thereby to crisis. As the crisis reaches a certain level, the opportunity is put into the hands of the 

K  (): /C : .



K  ():  ff./C :  ff.



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

exploited workers to seize the means of production. Everything is ready: a highly articulated industrial system based on the division of labour. All that is needed is for the ownership of the means of production to be transferred, and that is effected through a seizure of power. This argument follows a smooth trajectory, at no point of which a premise needs to be entered from outside the analysis of the capitalist system (say, a normative principle, or some considerations about justice or rights) in order to put in place the final step: that the workers shall seize the means of production. If there is a difficulty with the argument, it is not any such potential lacuna. The difficulty with the argument will be the same as for any rational argument. It might just not work: its analysis of capitalism might fail, if crucial claims it makes are false. There is a tendency not to read Marx according to the usual standards of argument – both among enthusiasts and among detractors. For some among the enthusiasts, this has been because for them Marxism presents itself as a religion, whose tenets cannot be questioned, on pain of excommunication or worse. For others, it has been because it is imagined that Marx takes up some special standpoint, such as that of a ‘critical theory’, that means he is not putting forward, in his own name, an argument about how society works. But he is putting forth such an argument, in actualizing philosophy as he does, that is, in rationally articulating the workings of human history. If the argument fails, we must try to correct it. And if that can’t be done, it should be abandoned.

Labour Theory of Value There have been tremendous efforts to ‘save’ Marx from the labour theory of value: the theory that the value of a commodity (the principle of its exchangeability) is itself explained by the labour time ‘embodied’ in it. This is despite the fact that Marx himself states this theory numerous times in his own voice. A very common misconception is that Marx attempts to prove his labour theory of value in chapter  of Capital Volume . Eugen BöhmBawerk’s enormously influential critique of Marx’s labour theory of value 

An interestingly different approach is that taken by Joan Robinson. According to Robinson, Marx’s argument to the effect that labour-power is not remunerated at its value, and the whole theory of value on which it relies, is ‘metaphysical’. For her, the term ‘metaphysical’ is equivalent to ‘ideological’, thanks to a hard-hitting non-cognitivism. She concludes that ‘logically it is a mere rigmarole of words, but for Marx it was a flood of illumination and for latter-day Marxists, a source of inspiration’ (Economic Philosophy, ).

Labour Theory of Value



rests on identifying such a proof in the opening chapter of Capital. Böhm-Bawerk has light work showing the proof to be a bad proof. That is because there is no attempt at such a proof in this chapter. Marx was writing before the marginal revolution. He therefore did not feel any great pressure to include arguments against the view that value is constituted by marginal utility. But he was perfectly familiar with the general view that value is constituted by utility. He could have, as R. L. Meek has suggested, pointed out that utility is not a directly measurable quantity, and that utility can only be regarded as an ‘independent determining factor’ by illicitly identifying desire and satisfaction. Some have argued that Marx holds not a ‘labour theory of value’ but a ‘value theory of labour’. This is false. He may well hold a ‘value theory of labour’; he thinks that, in capitalism, labour is inherently constituted as productive of value. But even then it is not right that he rejects the labour theory of value. It will have been noticed that in setting out a central strand of argument from Capital Volume  above I did not discuss Marx’s account of commodity fetishism. This is not because this is not important. It does not, however, drive the argument that I have wanted to isolate. The theory of commodity fetishism depends on the analysis of commodities as embodying human labour and as exchanging by means of the money-form. Marx notes that the exchange of commodities by means of the money-form produces a peculiar effect. The effect is, at once, to produce ‘thingly [sachliche] relations between persons and social relations between things’. Marx puts the point more fully when he says: The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things. Hence it also reflects the social relation of the producers to the sum total of labour as a social relation between objects, a relation which exists apart from and outside the producers.      

Böhm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His System, chapter . This point has been made independently by I. I. Rubin (Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, ) and by R. L. Meek (Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, –). Meek, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, –. The originator of this inversion is Diane Elson, in ‘The Value Theory of Labour’. A recent devotee of Elson’s inversion is Roberts, in Marx’s Inferno. K  (): /C : . The Fowkes translation incomprehensibly inserts ‘[dinglich]’ here, even though all the German editions of K  (, , , ) have sachliche Verhältnisse. K  (): /C : –.



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

These observations are crucial to Marx’s evocation of life ruled by commodity production. They do not displace the labour theory of value.

The Human In the Paris Manuscripts, Marx was guided by a conception of the subject– object with the human as subject. In The German Ideology it was proposed to begin from real, embodied individual human beings as Voraussetzungen (premises, presuppositions or starting points). In Capital, notably, the notion of installing the human as universal subject, or of beginning from the human, drops out entirely. There is no more talk of Gattungswesen, not even in the guise of the ‘ensemble of social relations’ (as in the Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach). Already in the Paris Manuscripts, the claims about the human essence presented were not theoretical claims; they were not supposed to confront us with something it could have made sense to suppose we might not have known. There was, however, an inelegance here: these claims could very easily look like theoretical claims, and have often been taken to be such. In The German Ideology, speaking of real, individual human beings as ‘premises’ or ‘presuppositions’ helped to put further obstacles in the way of a reading in terms of a theoretical appeal to the human as foundational. In Capital, however, a more elegant solution is achieved. No reference is made to the human as such, or to human individuals; instead, it is left implicit that the text is concerned with, and addressed to, the universal subject that is moving history forward. The human subject steps into the foreground of Capital at junctures where Marx recalls to our attention that human beings are labouring beings, whose labour is the ‘metabolism between human and nature, and therefore human life’. Continuing the line maintained in earlier writings, he tells us: Labour is . . . a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his activity, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes [verändert] his own nature. He develops the potentialities slumbering within nature, and subjects the play of its forces to his own sovereign power.



K  (): /C : .



K  (): –/C : .

The Human



These claims do not hinge on any ‘humanism’, if that means a theory of what the human essentially is. It is known to us, if we are human, what our characteristic activity is, and the ways in which it is skewed through our objectification – and the concomitant personification of the commodity – are something to which our attention can be drawn, not something first to be discovered through the enquiry conducted in Capital. Marx does not need to operate with a theory of ‘the human being’ in Capital. He shows how a specific social formation, that of capitalism, turns human beings into objects and personifies commodities. And he urges that human beings will experience this as intolerable – sufficiently so that they will engage themselves in overthrowing the conditions that engender this state of affairs. It is true that Marx expects from his readers agreement about what is intolerable, and this relies on what one might call the commitments that are at the heart of being human, understood and endorsed by all those who are human. These commitments cannot be given a philosophical articulation, except as they appear in the project that goes under the name of the actualization of philosophy, since they are the shape of human action as such. Marx does not attempt to give them any such separate articulation. Marx’s ‘humanism’, if one wants to attribute such a thing to him in his mature work, takes the form of recognizing that the attempt to articulate what our humanity consists in is to have already failed by the lights of that very humanism itself. If one wishes, Marx’s argument in Capital could be put in terms of the subject–object translated, in Feuerbachian fashion, into human–nature. Georg Lukács does this, when he insists that what ‘constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought’ is ‘the point of view of totality’. The ‘category of totality’ Lukács glosses as ‘the all-pervasive supremacy of the whole over the parts’. This stands opposed to the ‘atomisation of society’ produced by capitalism. Lukács tells us that for Marxism ‘there is nothing but a single, unified – dialectical and historical – science of the evolution of society as a totality’, and furthermore that the ‘category of totality . . . determines not only the object of knowledge but also the subject’. The subject pole of Lukács’s totality is the proletariat. Lukács’s reading brings a crucial problem to the fore. By insisting on the continued operation of the idea of a universal subject–object even in Capital, he brings out how this comes into conflict with Marx’s thoroughgoing insistence that human beings are historically constituted. Marx has 

Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, .



Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, .



Capital: Value, Labour-power, Exploitation, Crisis

the resources to make good on the idea that the human is historically constituted, as Hegel does not, since his history is real, empirical history, and not what selbstständige Philosophie has pre-emptively generated to stand in for it. This opens Marx up to the prospect of an unceasing enquiry. What is still to be done in order for the human to constitute herself? That is no failing, but an achievement on Marx’s part, reflecting that this question is a question for the human as such. That the question should be silenced by Hegel, and that Lukács should import this silencing into his theory of proletarian activity, marks a failure to measure up to the human.

 

Capital: Dialectic

In the previous chapter, I set out an argument extracted from Capital Volume . This argument manifests the specific logic of the specific object with which that text is concerned. It remains, in the present chapter, to demonstrate the negative point that Marx does not engage in a purportedly all-purpose, self-generating dialectic, and the positive point that his dialectic is true dialectic as Hegel’s is not. Capital does not engage in a dialectic of concepts, with concepts generated out of each other. Multiple schools of interpretation have found themselves reverting to this conception, including those calling themselves ‘value-form’ theorists (Reichelt and Backhaus), upholders of the ‘homology thesis’ (Arthur) and those who read Capital as a ‘critical theory’ (Postone). Marx himself unequivocally rejects such an approach, not only in a text already examined (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right), but also in preparatory work for Capital (the Grundrisse) and in a commentary written after the publication of Capital Volume  (the ‘Notes on Wagner’). Not only that. As I will show in this chapter, Marx proceeds in an evidently quite different way. He seeks to provide, in Capital, the ‘specific logic of the specific object’ of which he had spoken in CHPR. This logic is dialectical. Since it is not a self-generated logic (in keeping with Marx’s correction of Hegelian dialectic), it is to be traced in the work itself. Such a tracing will show how, in particular, contradiction figures in Marx’s approach. It does not do so uniformly: not every contradiction, it turns out, is alike. Across the differences, the Principle of Non-Contradiction is 

Reichelt, Zur logischen Struktur des Kapitalbegriffs bei Karl Marx; Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform; Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital; Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination. Postone says that his task is ‘rethinking the central categories of [Marx’s] critique of political economy’ (). For a criticism of the ‘homology thesis’, see Lange, ‘The Critique of Political Economy and the “New Dialectic”’. Again, there cannot be something like a ‘method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete’ in Marx’s Capital, as Ilyenkov maintains (The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital).





Capital: Dialectic

operative throughout; for Marx there is no level at which this principle is suspended or overturned. The exposition of the contradictions in Capital Volume  that follows below is throughout heavily indebted to Carlo Natali’s unparalleled study of the problem of what Marx means by ‘contradiction’ in that text. Natali records at the end of his detailed examination of the many interpretations of what ‘contradiction’ means in Marx the ‘paradoxical result’ that ‘many, almost all’ such interpretations ‘appear to be correct, and are useful in clarifying some particular use of the term, or some nuance of it’. This result ought not to surprise, if one considers that, just as Marx does not operate with a pre-prepared dialectical method, specifiable at least in outline in advance of its employment, neither is his dialectic driven by a pre-set notion of ‘contradiction’.

Contradiction in Hegel It is a striking feature of the literature on Hegel that resolute attempts to get clear on his treatment of contradiction (or his various ways of treating contradiction) have been scarce, relative to the evident importance of the topic. There have, however, been some specific concerted efforts to do so. These have exhibited a general pattern of taking a few significant strides forward, only to run out of steam or fall into despair. It is indeed a daunting topic. The theme of dialectic in Hegel (and to a lesser extent Marx), and the associated issue of contradiction, was opened up by a German group of scholars (Michael Theunissen, Hans Friedrich Fulda, Dieter Henrich and Rolf-Peter Horstmann) in the s. It was similarly opened up in Italy, beginning somewhat earlier, by Galvano Della Volpe

 



Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, . A curious side-effect of the tendency to assume that Marx is methodologically indebted to Hegel, and that the sense in which the logic in Capital is Hegelian has to be understood in entirely general terms, is that it is little recognized that Marx, in a quite straightforward way, endorses some of the specific ‘dialectical laws’ that Hegel advances in his Science of Logic. Thus Marx speaks of ‘the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel, in his Logic, that at a certain point merely quantitative differences pass over by a dialectical inversion into qualitative distinctions’, and supports this point with examples from chemistry (K  (): /C : –). Such claims are often considered an embarrassment; it is customary to insist that it is only downstream, in Engels and Lenin, that we find endorsements of such specific dialectical laws. Again, as Allen Wood writes, the claim ‘that Marx does not follow Engels in applying dialectical categories to nature . . . has no basis whatever in Marx’s texts’ (Wood, Karl Marx, ). Horstmann (ed.), Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels.

Contradiction in Hegel



and his students. In Italy, the question of Marx’s dialectic loomed large in these discussions. In the Anglophone literature, there have been distinct contributions to the topic of contradiction in Hegel. But everywhere the results remain inconclusive, and the debate in a state of confusion. There are at least two particularly difficult issues. The first is that Hegel both says of his logic as such that it is dialectical, and thus ‘driven’ by contradiction throughout, and assigns the topic of contradiction a specific place within this logic (the ‘Doctrine of Essence’). The assignment of contradiction to its specific place in the Doctrine of Essence means that it appears, as well as in the role of overall driver of dialectic, as one ‘moment’ in that dialectic itself, preceded by ‘opposition’ and giving way to ‘ground’. The second issue is that (not unrelatedly) it has seemed extremely difficult to say, one way or the other, whether Hegel endorses the Principle of Non-Contradiction. It will turn out that Marx is free of these particular difficulties. He has no use for Hegel’s claim that thought is as such, overall, dialectical in the kind of generalizing way Hegel requires; instead, contradiction, for him, figures in a way analogous (insofar as an analogy with Hegel’s procedures holds at all) to what we find in Hegel’s Doctrine of Essence and not to Hegel’s overall claims about the character of speculation as dialectical through and through. And again, Marx avoids the second difficulty we find with Hegel in that Marx leaves no room for doubt that he endorses the Principle of Non-Contradiction. But it will be helpful first to sketch in some of the Hegelian difficulties in order to appreciate what difference it makes that Marx does not face them. So, first, Hegel notoriously characterizes his logic as such (indeed philosophy as such) as dialectical all the way through. In the Introduction to The Science of Logic he writes: ‘That which enables the concept to advance itself is the already mentioned negative which it possesses within itself; it is this which constitutes the genuine dialectical element.’ And a little further on: ‘It is in this dialectic [In diesem Dialektischen] as it is here understood, that is,   



Della Volpe, Logic as a Positive Science. The most important follower (and later detractor) of Della Volpe is Lucio Colletti. Pippin, ‘Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Problem of Contradiction’; de Boer, ‘Hegel’s Account of Contradiction in the Science of Logic Reconsidered’; Longuenesse, Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics. Michael Inwood has written that Hegel ‘certainly seems to reject the principle of non-contradiction’, but that he (Inwood) cannot find a single instance of a ‘decent Aristotelian contradiction’ (i.e., a proper violation of the principle) anywhere in Hegel (Inwood, ‘“A Perfect Contradiction”’, , ). According to Robert Brandom, Hegel, ‘far from rejecting the law of noncontradiction, . . . radicalizes it, and places it at the very center of his thought’ (Tales of the Mighty Dead, ). Some (notably Graham Priest) have read Hegel as endorsing dialetheism, according to which there are at least some true contradictions (see, e.g., Priest, In Contradiction, –). TWA : /SL: .



Capital: Dialectic

in the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists. It is the most important aspect of dialectic, but for thinking which is as yet unpractised and unfree it is the most difficult.’ Notably, Hegel operates with a distinction between the understanding and reason. But he does not think that reason has the task of resolving contradictions at the level of the understanding. Instead, like Kant, he thinks that reason is dialectical, that is, productive of contradictions. Spirit, which he says is the highest form of reason, contains within itself both the determinations of the finite and the infinite, and is ‘self-contradictory, self-dissolving’ (ein in sich selbst Widersprechendes, ein sich Auflösendes). Reason, then, is productive of contradiction all the way through, even if there is also a specific place assigned to contradiction in the Doctrine of Essence (something to which we will return). We can see why, second, it should be difficult to say whether Hegel endorses, or denies, the Principle of Non-Contradiction. In the Doctrine of Essence, he introduces the term ‘Principle of Contradiction’ in a way that suggests he uses it, in keeping with a standard practice, as an alternative name for the Principle of Non-Contradiction. He writes: ‘The other expression of the law of identity, A cannot at the same time be A and not-A, has a negative form; it is called the law of contradiction.’ (We can pass over the peculiarity that Hegel seems to put ‘A’ in both subject and predicate position.) What is striking is that, while here Hegel seems to take the principle in the standard sense, he then goes on to enunciate a different principle, which Karin de Boer calls his ‘Principle of Self-Contradiction’. He writes: If, now, the first determinations of reflection, namely, identity, difference and opposition, have been put in the form of a law, still more should the determination into which they pass as their truth, namely, contradiction, be grasped and enunciated as a law: everything is inherently contradictory, and in the sense that this law in contrast to the others expresses rather the truth and the essential nature of things.. . . But it is one of the fundamental prejudices of logic as hitherto understood and of ordinary thinking, that contradiction is not so characteristically essential and immanent a determination as identity; but in fact, if it were a question of grading the two determinations and they had to be kept separate, then contradiction would have to be taken as the profounder determination and more characteristic of essence.

  

  TWA : /SL: . TWA : /SL: . TWA : /SL: .  TWA : /SL: . Boer, ‘Hegel’s Account of Contradiction in the Science of Logic’, . TWA : –/SL: .

Contradiction in Hegel



There are all sorts of things that might be said about how to understand Hegel here. Perhaps he endorses the Principle of Non-Contradiction for certain contexts or discourses, and not others; perhaps his statement that ‘everything is inherently contradictory’, correctly understood, does not touch the Principle at all. For our purposes, all that is relevant is that Hegel lands himself with a complex issue, thanks to his claim that reason is inherently contradictory. For Marx, things stand differently. He chastises John Stuart Mill for lacking all sense of ‘the Hegelian “contradiction”, the source of all dialectic’. In doing so, however, he has not committed himself to characterizing reason as dialectical all the way through, in such a way as to put the Principle of Non-Contradiction in question. The reason for this is that Marx does not commit himself to holding any self-standing theory of logic, as Hegel does. He is sympathetic to what he finds in Hegel’s theory. In Capital, we do indeed see, along lines similar to what we find in the Doctrine of Essence, the development of oppositions into contradictions, and instances of Hegel’s principle that ‘contradiction resolves itself’. But Marx does not need to say that opposition develops into contradiction, quite generally. He also does not need to say that contradiction resolves itself, quite generally. This is just as well. Recall that Hegel’s approach to dialectic that underwrites such claims – effectively claims about the selfmovement of logic – collapses into diairesis, with all the latter’s problems. Neither is Marx committed to anything equivalent to Hegel’s ‘Absolute Idea’, the inner sanctum of contradiction to which all contradictions return in order to be resolved. Marx is not a speculative philosopher. Neither does he invert speculation, as Feuerbach attempts to do. Selfreturn is not an issue for him. Marxists have often felt themselves on the back foot when it comes to the issue of contradiction. Hegel might seem to say extraordinary things about contradiction, such as that ‘everything is inherently contradictory’. But Marx seems to say, according to a dominant line of argument, something truly outrageous. He says not merely that there are contradictions in thought, but that there are ‘real contradictions’ or contradictions in reality. (This is already outrageous enough, even without maintaining, as dialectical materialists do, that all of reality consists of real contradictions,

 

  K  ():  n. /C :  n. . TWA : /SL: . See Chapter  above. The idea that Marx does have an equivalent, and that this equivalent is, of all things, capital, is, it ought to be clear, a grotesque perversion of what Marx is concerned to show in Capital.



Capital: Dialectic

that reality is contradictory ‘all the way through’.) Real contradictions seem to be impossible in a special way that contradictions in thought are not. It is then supposed that we had better protect Marx from saying that there are contradictions in reality, and downgrade his statements to claims about ‘oppositions’ in reality, on an analogy with opposing forces in nature. But the sense that Marx has got himself in trouble here, and the attempt to save him, rest on a confusion. As we shall see, the salient distinction is not between contradictions ‘in reality’ and contradictions ‘in thought’, but between those that are resolvable and those that are not.

Self-generating Dialectic In the passage in the ‘Doctrine of Essence’ of his Science of Logic where contradiction finds its proper place, Hegel presents a self-moving dialectical sequence: identity–difference–opposition–contradiction. Some have supposed that the opening of Capital is like this: a self-moving dialectical sequence in which an identity gives way to a difference, and so on. Below I will show that Marx does not argue in this way, by re-examining the argument outlined in Chapter . But first, we should already be able to see, on the basis of his own methodological statements, that Marx cannot take himself to be arguing this way. We have already seen (in Chapter  above) that Marx was opposed to the possibility of a self-generating dialectic in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. There he had insisted that Hegel’s dialectic was defective, and not properly philosophical, in that it failed to provide the specific logic of the specific object – and so no logical treatment of that object at all. This critique is not confined to CHPR. It is carried over into Grundrisse, and is reiterated, after the publication of Capital Volume , in the ‘Notes on Wagner’. The Grundrisse have been exploited by many Hegelian-inclined interpreters of Marx. It is true that the Grundrisse contain many more Hegelian formulations than the reworking of its material that Marx carried out in Capital. This might seem to work in favour of Hegelian interpretations of 



Lucio Colletti rightly points out that for the advocates of dialectical materialism, ‘contradiction is a precondition for any possible reality’. Dialectical materialist readers thus take Marx to espouse a materialist transposition of Hegel’s claim that ‘everything is contradictory’ (Colletti, ‘Marxism and the Dialectic’, ). Mao’s famous essay ‘On Contradiction’ begins from a muddle. Its opening statement reads: ‘The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.’ (Mao, ‘On Contradiction’, ) TWA : –/SL: –.

Self-generating Dialectic



Marx, including those that want to suggest that, working in the background of Capital, there is a more Hegelian logic than the surface of that work would seem to suggest. But Grundrisse not only contains Hegelian formulations. In that very text Marx records his concrete efforts to free himself of those Hegelian formulations, precisely insofar as they seem to suggest a self-generating dialectic. The editors of the  Dietz edition of the Grundrisse do us the service of bringing this out very precisely. Marx offers the following important remark, enclosed in parentheses, in the ‘Chapter on Money’: It will later be necessary, before leaving this question, to correct the idealist manner of presentation which makes it appear as if it were merely a matter of the definitions of concepts and the dialectic of these concepts. Above all the phrase: the product (or activity) becomes a commodity; the commodity becomes exchange value; the exchange value becomes money.

As the Dietz editors point out, Marx is here commenting on earlier passages in the Grundrisse, anticipating their ‘correction’ at a later juncture. An example of one of the earlier passages is the following: Hence the process is simply this: the product becomes a commodity, i.e. a mere moment of exchange. The commodity is transformed into exchange value. In order to equate it with itself as exchange value, it is exchanged for a token which represents it as exchange value as such. As such symbolised exchange value, it can then be exchanged again in certain proportions with any other commodity. Through the product becoming a commodity and the commodity becoming exchange value, it acquires, first in our mind, a dual existence. This mental duplication proceeds (and must proceed) to the point where the commodity appears dual in actual exchange: as natural product on the one hand, as exchange value on the other. I.e. its exchange value acquires an existence materially separated from it.

The self-generating dialectic exhibited in this passage (‘product becomes a commodity’ etc.) likely underwent the correction to which Marx tells us he will subject it, as the Dietz editors point out, in the now missing part of the opening of the so-called Urtext of Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, following Marx’s first attempts to do so in the fragment ‘Value’. The fragment ‘Value’ already strongly prefigures the opening of both Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie and Capital, when Marx writes: ‘The first

  

 Cf. Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, . G : /MECW : .  Editorial matter at G : . G : /MECW : . For the resumption of the Urtext following the missing section see G : /MECW : .



Capital: Dialectic

category in which bourgeois wealth makes its appearance is that of the commodity.’ Carlo Natali points out that ‘those who are keen to emphasize the presence of Hegel’s dialectic in Marx will gladly refer to K [the  edition] rather than the other versions of the text’, and mentions in particular Backhaus. Of course, those who want Marx to be more Hegelian than how he puts himself across in his own revisions of his published texts will see his progressive shaking off of Hegelian formulations as moving in a retrograde direction. But if we take Marx at his word, it would seem that he thinks of himself as having progressed to his true aim in casting off such Hegelian formulations. This impression is confirmed by consulting Marx’s notes on Adolph Wagner’s Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie, in which he unequivocally voices his opposition to readings of his own text as driven by a selfgenerating dialectic (a dialectic of concepts), with reference specifically to the opening of Capital. Marx was commenting, soon after its publication, on the second edition of Wagner’s work (published in ), which contains extensive discussion of Capital Volume . He takes Wagner to task for numerous points in his interpretation. In the course of his commentary, Marx remarks that ‘it is the “natural striving” of a German economics professor to derive the economic category “value” from a “concept”’, and refers dismissively to ‘the “natural” professorial “striving” to derive the concept of value in general’. Of Wagner’s handling of his own account, Marx writes: All this is ‘drivel’ [‘Faseleien’]. De prime abord, I do not proceed from ‘concepts’, hence neither from the ‘concept of value’, and am therefore in no way concerned to ‘divide’ [‘einzuteilen’] it. What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the ‘commodity’. This I analyse, initially in the form in which it appears. Here I find that on the one hand in its natural form it is a thing for use, alias a use-value; on the other hand, a bearer of exchange-value, and from this point of view it is itself an ‘exchange-value’. Further analysis of the latter shows me that exchange-value is merely a ‘form of expression’, an independent way of presenting the value contained in the commodity, and then I start on the analysis of the latter.    

G : /MECW : . Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’,  n. . Cf. Backhaus, ‘Zur Dialektik der Wertform’. MEW : –/MECW : –. Again, cf. the excellent discussion by Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, . MEW : /MECW : –.

Opposition and Contradiction



After quoting the relevant passage in the second edition of Capital Volume , he then goes on: Thus I do not divide [teile] value [den Wert] into use-value and exchangevalue as opposites into which the abstraction ‘value’ splits up, but the concrete social form of the product of labour, the ‘commodity’, is on the one hand, use-value and on the other, ‘value’, not exchange-value, since the mere form of expression is not its own content.

Marx’s dialectic in Capital is not a self-movement of concepts. Relatedly, he does not have a pre-prepared, speculatively derived conception of contradiction to deploy. He makes this point, among other places, in a letter to Engels of  February , giving his reaction to Ferdinand Lassalle’s book Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos. Lassalle attempted to reconstruct Heraclitus’ philosophy in Hegelian terms. As with Proudhon’s ‘application’ of Hegelian dialectic to political economy, Marx takes a very dim view of Lassalle’s project, calling his book ‘a very silly concoction’ (ein sehr läppisches Machwerk). As he insists, ‘it is one thing for a critique to take a science to the point at which it admits of a dialectical presentation, and quite another to apply an abstract, ready-made system of logic to vague presentiments of just such a system’. Marx does not have a ‘dialectical method’, independent of any specific subject matter. As Jindřich Zelený has pointed out, he furthermore uses ‘contradiction’ in a range of senses. But while it is right that Marx does not have a monolithic conception of ‘contradiction’ that can be specified in advance, he is not simply equivocal when he employs the concept or the word: the various ways in which contradiction figures are linked. To see how they are linked requires working through the substantive material of the critique of capital, and of its associated ideology, classical political economy. (I will return to the relations between capital and its ideology below.)

Opposition and Contradiction Marx has seemed to many to be guilty of an especially scandalous claim: that there are contradictions in reality, not merely in thought. Various kinds of strategy to mitigate this apparent scandal invoke the distinction between opposition and contradiction. Reality, the idea goes, can tolerate  

 MEW : –/MECW : –. MEGA III.: , /MECW : , . Zelený, Die Wissenschaftslogik und ‘Das Kapital’, –.



Capital: Dialectic

opposition but not contradiction – and so Marx can be saved from error if what he appears to say are contradictions in reality are really oppositions. A distinction between opposition and contradiction is thematized by Kant, who speaks of Realopposition (or Realrepugnanz), as distinct from contradiction (Widerspruch). What constitutes a contradiction is the saying, at the same time, of a thing and that very thing’s negation. So contradictions are of the form ‘A and not-A’. By contrast, Realopposition does not have this relationship to negation. A Realopposition is of the form ‘A and B’. Real opposition can be thought of on the model of polar opposition. North and south poles oppose each other, but without contradiction. The distinction is important. A failure to observe it has led to a great deal of confusion in the literature on Marx. The ways in which it has been invoked in order to save Marx from scandal, however, themselves require scrutiny. According to Karl Korsch, when Marx seems to talk about contradictions he is really talking about real oppositions: ‘dialectical oppositions should be thought of not as counterposed assertions but as counterposed objects or, to use a Kantian expression, as “real repugnances”’. Galvano Della Volpe, in making a similar manoeuvre, exploits the idea that Realoppositionen can occur in reality (or ‘between things’), whereas Widerspru¨che cannot. Lucio Colletti, having at first followed Della Volpe, later gave up on the idea that Marx does not claim there to be contradictions in reality. He nevertheless sets it as a problem for Marx that he had better not say there are contradictions in reality, on pain of flouting the Principle of Non-Contradiction, and thereby undermining the claims to scientific status he enters on behalf of his work. The difference between a polar opposition or tension, on the one hand, and a contradiction, on the other, is easy to grasp. The distinction that those who advocate the strategies mentioned go on to invoke, however, between what is in reality and what is in thought is much less clear than is assumed. On a certain reading of ‘between things’, it is trivially true that, of course, there cannot be a contradiction between things. The things themselves do not say anything, so there can be no contradictio or Widerspruch. Proposing that such contradictions might occur between     

Kant, Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Ak. : –). Colletti, ‘Marxism and the Dialectic’, , . For substantiation, see the examples provided in Colletti, ‘Marxism and the Dialectic’. Karl Korsch, ‘Empirismus in der Hegelschen Philosophie’, as quoted in Colletti, ‘Marxism and the Dialectic’, . For Colletti’s later position, and his identification of this problem as a problem for Marx, see ‘Marxism and the Dialectic’.

Banal Contradictions



the properties of things, rather than the things themselves, does not help. For it is still ascriptions of properties that then produce contradiction, if at all, not the properties themselves. Neither is it clear that contradictions in thought are any more possible than contradictions in reality. Kant, for one, thinks it a hallmark of contradictions in thought that they are impossible: they are, he thinks, literally unthinkable. If you think you are thinking a contradiction, you do not know what you are thinking. Carlo Natali’s two searching and scholarly essays, one tracing Marx’s use of the term Widerspruch, and the other his use of the term Gegensatz, in Capital Volume , bear out that Marx really does think there are contradictions (Widerspru¨che) in reality. Marx often treats Widerspru¨che as developing out of Gegensätze. There is no sharp dividing line between the two; furthermore, there will be different levels or kinds of Widerspruch. The best approach to Marx’s handling of these concepts is to see how he himself proceeds, across actual stretches of argument. We will then see that, although he does not follow a set pattern, as Hegel does (identity– difference–opposition–contradiction), he does often seek to exhibit oppositions developing into contradictions. There are, for him, real contradictions. But reality is not expected simply to endure them: they demand resolution. Which are resolvable, and what their resolution will look like, requires specific investigation.

Banal Contradictions Marx frequently, throughout Capital Volume , accuses capitalists, their ideologues, and others of committing contradictions. Such are the platte Widerspru¨che (‘banal contradictions’) that he imputes to John Stuart Mill, when he writes that Mill ‘both copies Ricardo’s theory of profit, and annexes to it Senior’s “remuneration of abstinence”’. Since Senior affirms what Ricardo denies, Marx is accusing Mill of simultaneously holding p and not-p. Similarly, Marx accuses Andrew Ure of ‘blurt[ing] out the thoughtless contradictions of the brain of capital [des Kapitalhirns]’ when   



See, for a careful discussion, Newton, ‘Kant on Negation’. Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, ‘L’uso del termine “opposizione”’. Thus Natali can write in his later piece (on opposition) that ‘We thus see in Capital the development of identity into difference, and of that into opposition and contradiction’ (‘L’uso del termine “opposizione”’, ), without contradicting the point developed with subtlety in his earlier essay (on contradiction) that Marx does not adhere to a ‘fixed scheme’ (identity–difference– opposition–contradiction) (‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, –). K  ():  n. /C :  n. .



Capital: Dialectic

he claims that the development of machines benefits the workers, and also that it disadvantages the workers. In both cases the Principle of NonContradiction can be invoked and do its work in very short order. The banal contradictions of Mill and Ure are to be given up in light of the confusion (motivated or otherwise) that they manifest. Again, Marx speaks in chapter  of a contradictio in adjecto: ‘exchange value appears as something accidental and purely relative, and so an intrinsic exchange value as a contradictio in adjecto’. This is resolved fairly straightforwardly by seeing that exchange-value is not intrinsic, and does not need to be, because it is the phenomenal form of something intrinsic (namely, value). An intellectual error is cleared up by intellectual means.

Marx’s Dialectic in Capital The contradictions manifested by Mill and Ure, or those involved in the attempt to think of exchange-value as intrinsic, are easy to clear up, and they do not play a role in any dialectical progression. They are just to be eliminated. Nevertheless, even where things are not so straightforward, Marx’s concern, throughout, is to show how the contradictions he identifies are resolved. There are varying levels of complexity when it comes to how contradictions are to be resolved. Speculative philosophy plays no role. Marx, in didactic fashion, leads us through how contradictions arise, and how they are resolved. As he writes in Grundrisse: ‘These are the contradictions which cannot escape a simple, objective, impartial examination. How they are constantly transcended in production based on capital, yet constantly reproduced, and only forcibly transcended (although up to a certain point this transcendence appears merely as a smooth adjustment), is another question.’ When Marx encounters a contradiction, one general strategy he employs is to expand things so that the contradiction can be accounted for. It is not, however, a given that all contradictions can be accounted for. Capitalism is, ultimately, genuinely beset by contradiction. Within the dynamic system called ‘capitalism’, there are contradictions that do not admit of resolution. They are contradictions without which that system would not be the system that it is. They drive it forward. A contradiction is already planted in the very opposition between concrete and abstract labour, between private and social production. This contradiction  

K  (): /C : . K  (): /C : .

 

See Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, –. MEGA II/: /MECW : .

Marx’s Dialectic in Capital



ultimately ‘erupts’ into the crises that mark capitalism in its full concrete development. Capital begins from the dual character of the commodity as use-value and exchange-value. There is here no self-splitting out of an original identity. Identity does not produce difference, and from there opposition and contradiction. It is nevertheless true – and we must firmly hold onto the distinctness of this from the Hegelian self-splitting idea – that the commodity already contains in nuce an opposition that will become a contradiction as Marx develops his material. That the dual character of the commodity as use-value and exchange-value already harbours, incipiently, the greater contradictions to be developed later can only be properly appreciated retrospectively, when those greater contradictions are in view. The  and subsequent editions of Capital Volume  no longer speak of a ‘contradiction’ between use-value and exchange-value, as the closing paragraph of chapter  of the  edition had: The commodity is immediate unity of use-value and exchange-value, thus of two opposites. It is therefore an immediate contradiction. This contradiction must develop, as soon as the commodity is no longer, as until now, considered analytically, now from the point of view of use-value and now from the point of view of exchange-value, but is as a whole actually set into relation to other commodities. The actual relation of commodities to each other, however, is their process of exchange.

Marx, in subsequent editions, tempers his language, so that the relationship between use-value and exchange-value in the commodity is no longer called a ‘contradiction’, but is instead regarded as an inherent duality. It is right, however, that the duality of the commodity as use-value and exchange-value already forms the basis of a fundamental contradiction that Marx will start to articulate in chapter . In chapter , Marx further examines the duality of the commodity in terms of use-value and exchange-value. Use-value has an inherently individual character; a commodity’s use-value is the usefulness it possesses for human users. Exchange-value has an inherently social character; it can only  

Of course, Marx does not invent this distinction. He takes it over from Adam Smith and other classical political economists. K  (): : ‘Die Waare ist unmittelbare Einheit von Gebrauchswerth und Tauschwerth, also zweier Entgegengesetzten. Sie ist daher ein unmittelbarer Widerspruch. Dieser Widerspruch muss sich entwickeln, sobald sie nicht wie bisher analytisch bald unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Gebrauchswerths, bald unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Tauschwerths betrachtet, sondern als ein Ganzes wirklich auf andere Waaren bezogen wird. Die wirkliche Beziehung der Waaren aufeinander ist aber ihr Austauschprozess.’



Capital: Dialectic

show up in a total system of exchange with numerous participants. The opposition here between use-value and exchange-value is dramatized by Marx when he says that ‘commodities must be realized as values before they can be realized as use-values. On the other hand, they must stand the test as use-values [mu¨ssen . . . sich als Gebrauchswerthe bewähren] before they can be realized as values.’ Each participant in commodity exchange ‘wants’, we might say, their own commodity to function simply as general equivalent, while appropriating those commodities for which the participant exchanges it in their individual character as use-values. So far, this does not look too threatening; there is some make-believe in the idea that these opposing tendencies introduce a contradiction into the system. But Marx gets us closer to seeing a contradiction here when he states that ‘the same process cannot be simultaneously for all owners of commodities both exclusively individual and exclusively social and general’. The opposition here threatens to turn over into a contradiction, as when Marx emphasizes that something cannot be ‘both exclusively individual and exclusively social and general’. This looming contradiction is not resolved, however. It is pushed into the money-form. Marx is explicit in the opening chapters of Capital that there is no guarantee that the contradictions traced are, as in Hegel’s dialectic, ‘sublated’. In chapter , he writes: ‘We have seen that the exchange process of commodities involves [einschliesst] contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions.’ He continues: The development [Entwicklung] of the commodity does not sublate [hebt . . . auf] these contradictions, but provides the form within which they can move. This is in general the method by which real contradictions are resolved [sich . . . lösen]. It is e.g. a contradiction for a body constantly to fall towards another and at the same time constantly to fly away from it. The ellipse is one of the forms of motion in which this contradiction is both realized and resolved [sich eben so sehr verwirklicht als löst].

The analogy with the ellipse indicates that Marx does not think of real contradictions as being somehow absurd violations of the principles of reality nevertheless persisting in reality. The description of a planetary body as constantly falling towards its star but also constantly flying away from it is not incorrect, even if it harbours a contradiction. But it will continue to seem contradictory, Marx wants to say, only so long as the notion of its elliptical movement as both ‘realizing and resolving’ the contradiction between them remains elusive. 

K  (): /C : .



K  (): /C : .



K  (): –/C : .

Marx’s Dialectic in Capital



Providing real contradictions with ‘the form within which they can move’ does not mean that they are necessarily simply annulled as contradictions. A progressive argument that Marx mounts throughout Volume  is to the effect that certain contradictions, even as they are resolved, persist at another level. In chapter  (in the German editions, chapter , §) Marx presents us with a contradiction whose resolution comes only later, in chapter  (chapter  in the German editions). (Even then, that resolution will not be fully satisfactory.) The contradiction is: capital cannot spring from circulation; but also, it must spring from circulation. The solution is that surplus-value is generated from the purchase of labourpower (which indeed is, in one respect, outside circulation and, in another respect, inside circulation). There is here a classic (implicit) use of the Principle of Non-Contradiction as a means of generating the category required for the resolution of the contradiction. Marx provides the following declaration of the contradiction’s resolution: All the problems are resolved [gelöst], and the laws of commodity exchange have not been violated at all.. . . All this development, the transformation of capital into money by our capitalist, does and does not take place in the sphere of circulation, because this only initiates the process of valorization, which takes place in the sphere of production. And so ‘tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles’.

The conclusion is, of course, ironic. All is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The solution only opens up a further contradiction, that between ‘the social aim of valorization and the “narrow aim” of extracting profit from existing private capital’. As we take in more and more of how capitalism works, building out from the abstractions of an impossibly pared-down commodity exchange in the opening chapters, we move into a realm where contradiction gives rise to further contradiction. As we progressively move out of the realm of abstraction to take on more and more of the concrete operation of capitalism, we are at the same time moving into a domain in which appearances can come apart from the ‘real relations’. Marx repeatedly says that things may seem one way at the level of appearances, but will stand in a different light when we go to the level of the ‘real relations’. An example of this is his discussion of wages in chapter  (chapter  in the German editions), ‘The Transformation of the Value  

 Cf. Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, –. K  (): /C : –. Carandini, La struttura economica della società nelle opere di Marx, .



Capital: Dialectic

(and Respectively the Price) of Labour-Power into Wages’. At the phenomenal level, the wage appears as the ‘price of labour’. Something must have gone wrong here, however. The price of labour must depend on the value of labour. (Leaving to one side that Marx assumes for the purposes of Volume  that prices are equivalent to values, it must in any case be that the price relies on value.) But labour has no value. This is seen by imagining that someone brings their labour to market. In order for labour to figure on the market, that is, for it to be a commodity ripe for exchange, it must take on objective form. But labour that has taken on objective form is no longer labour: if it is embodied somewhere, it can no longer be set to work. The contradiction at the phenomenal level is resolved by science. This is because a scientific treatment shows that what the worker sells as a commodity on the market is not their labour but their labour-power. A series of contradictions is generated by capital’s production of surplusvalue out of variable capital only. The ‘law’, as Marx calls it, that ‘the masses of value and of surplus-value produced by different capitals . . . vary directly as the amounts of the variable components of these capitals, i.e. the parts which have been turned into living labour-power’, ‘clearly contradicts all experience based on appearances’. But not only is there a straightforward ‘contradiction’ (i.e., disagreement) between the law and appearances; the contradiction works its way through the capitalist system. In chapter  (chapter  in the German editions), ‘The Rate of SurplusValue’, when Marx distinguishes between two kinds of capital the capitalist invests, v (consisting of workers’ labour-power) and c (consisting of raw materials), there seems to be a contradiction even in stating the quantity of variable capital, for example, in the very phrase ‘£ variable capital’. To speak in such a way suggests that there is some fixed quantity of variable capital, that is, that the variable capital is not variable. How could £ of anything increase or decrease itself? But as the £ variable capital passes through the production process, it emerges as v + an increment of v (so as more than £). Unlike in the previous cases, it now becomes important to Marx to say that capitalism itself commits the contradiction. And that contradiction cannot be dispelled by simply explaining what is really going on, as opposed to appearances. As capital sees things, the whole process through which £ v passes is a ‘spontaneous, automatic movement’. It thinks of itself as capable of generating the increment, v0 . Marx says: ‘If, therefore, the formulation £ variable capital or self-valorizing value appears 

K  (): /C : .



Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, .

Marx’s Dialectic in Capital



contradictory, this merely expresses a contradiction immanent in capitalist production.’ Marx now wants to claim: capitalist production really is like this, really is contradictory. The contradiction, which can be expressed as  ¼  + x (where x 6¼ ), cannot be simply eliminated through an explanation. Instead, the offending item (the expression ‘£ v’) will have to be pursued through a further analysis of the capitalist system. What is it that makes it true that capitalism, so to speak, takes itself to perform a ‘spontaneous, automatic movement’ through which it can take itself to deploy a quantity that is at once constant and variable? We are now set on the course of tracing the contradictions that the capitalist system itself produces. Marx establishes a law according to which the mass of surplus-value is a function both of the number of workers and of the degree of exploitation of their labour-power. This implies, as he notes, that it should be possible, in order to maintain the mass of surplusvalue, to compensate for a reduction in the number of workers by an increase of the degree of exploitation of their labour-power, and vice versa. This law, which is, he thinks, perfectly correct, can be seen to wreak havoc where machinery has come into general use in industry. Machines, thanks to the efficiency they introduce, drive down the number of workers. In order to maintain the mass of surplus-value, the capitalist then needs to compensate for this reduction by exploiting the workers even harder. But there is a natural limit to this exploitation: the workers have a breaking point, at which they can no longer replenish their labour power. The capitalist tries to increase the working day as much as possible, but there are only so many hours in the day. The maximally exploited workers, turned into mere part-appendages of machines, now find themselves constantly expelled from one sphere of production, to be thrust into another (if they are lucky enough to find work). The further contradiction that this produces – an ever more specialized worker but also one who must constantly change their employment from one kind of machine-appendage to another kind of machineappendage – ‘bursts forth in the uninterrupted holocaust of the working class, in the most unrestrained squandering of labour energies and in the devastating effects of social anarchy’. 



‘Erscheint die Formel  l. variables Kapital oder sich verwerthender Werth daher widerspruchsvoll, so dru¨ckt sie nur einen der kapitalistischen Produktion immanenten Widerspruch aus.’ K  (): /C : –. K  (): /C : .



Capital: Dialectic

Ultimately, Marx thinks, capitalism as a system will burst itself apart, thanks to the latent contradiction that has been present from the beginning of his exposition and that we have seen developing. The proletariat are both thrown around from branch to branch as the increasingly partial bits of worker attached to machinery that they have become, and grow in numbers, leading to an increase in unemployment; thereby a revolutionary situation is produced. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production which has flourished alongside and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument [kapitalistischen Hu¨lle]. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

Marx goes on immediately to put this in terms of the ‘negation of the negation’, an expression that has evidently taken on a very different sense to that which Hegel gives it. For Hegel, the negation of the negation is the Idea’s self-return – having had to externalize itself as nature – in the form of spirit. For Marx, it is the revolutionary seizure of humanity’s common property from a property-owning class, brought on by the development of the social patterns of property-owning society itself: Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a natural process, its own negation. This is the negation of the negation. It does not re-establish private property, but it does indeed establish individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: namely co-operation and the possession in common of the land and the means of production produced by labour itself.

As a matter of historical fact, the negation constituted by capitalism has not, in fact, since Marx’s day, been negated as Marx predicted. Capitalism has continued producing crisis after crisis, without the integument being burst asunder. This does not invalidate Marx’s approach to his subject matter. What distinguishes him from Hegel is that Marx relies on the Principle of Non-Contradiction as a heuristic for the resolution of contradictions. He does not have, like Hegel, a guarantee up his sleeve from the start that all contradictions shall be resolved. Indeed, it is not guaranteed, however utopian the notes struck at the culmination of Capital Volume , that the society that capitalism gives way to will be without contradiction.



K  (): /C : .



K  (): /C : .

Consciousness of Contradiction



Consciousness of Contradiction We have seen that Marx does not have one univocal picture of contradiction. Instead, his picture is a subtle and complex one, produced by the analysis of social reality itself. A further area of subtlety in Marx’s treatment is that he sometimes says, as well as saying that some contradiction is inherent to capital, that a contradiction might be conscious on the part of capital (i.e., capitalists, and often also bourgeois political economists as their apologists). The subtleties here interact with the subtleties on the front of levels of contradiction (contradictions that are merely on the surface, contradictions between surface and real relations, contradictions as features of the dynamic system itself ). It is obvious that when Mill is accused of a ‘banal contradiction’ he is precisely not being accused of consciousness of the contradiction. Since the contradiction lies entirely on the surface, Mill would (on pain of intellectual perversity) immediately recognize the contradiction if brought to his attention. (He might, of course, find ways to deny that he had really said that p and not-p, but that is another matter.) Ure’s malady is perhaps more difficult to cure since, Marx says, he is not saying anything of his own, but divulging the ‘thoughtless contradictions of the brain of capital’. Marx, however, in many places attributes consciousness (or lack of it) of contradiction to capitalists themselves, and to two kinds of ideologues of capitalism: political economists and vulgar economists. There are often differences between these three types. Sometimes Marx in an ironical mode suggests that the capitalist is well aware of what he is up to, for example, as we follow ‘Moneybags’ into the factory, a ‘very Eden of the innate rights of man’, the ‘exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham’. When it turns out that the capitalist, by hiring labour-power, gets more value than was paid for, Marx sardonically writes: ‘Our capitalist foresaw this situation, and that was the cause of his laughter.’ Sometimes he says that he considers capitalists only as ‘capital personified’. And so, as he treats them, their self-consciousness is as the ‘brain of capital’ (Kapitalhirn). The beliefs held by individual capitalists as personifications of capital can also come to be held by the workers, thanks to the lack    

Here, again, I draw heavily on Natali, ‘L’uso del termine “contraddizione”’, including the examples from Marx’s text that Natali adduces. K  (): /C : . K  (): /C : –. ‘Moneybags’ is the translation favoured by Moore and Aveling (MECW ). Fowkes writes, more correctly, ‘the owner of money’ (C : ).  K  (): /C : . K  (): /C : .



Capital: Dialectic

of a counternarrative, challenging what the capitalists tell them, that the workers might avail themselves of. In Volume , Marx writes: ‘The actual difference in magnitude between profit and surplus-value in the various spheres of production (and not merely between rate of profit and rate of surplus-value) now completely conceals the true nature and origin of profit, not only for the capitalist, who has here a particular interest in deceiving himself, but also for the worker.’ Political economists are the sophisticated ideologues, or apologists, of capital. While they often strain towards explaining things in terms of the real relations, their entrapment within bourgeois ideology prevents them from doing so. Marx writes: ‘Political economy stumbles approximatively onto the true state of affairs, without, however, consciously formulating it. It cannot do so as long as it remains in its bourgeois skin.’ Or, giving a specific example, he tells us that the formula for the rate of surplus-value (s/v) is ‘worked out in classical political economy in substance, but not in a conscious form’. While political economists at least strive to get at the real relations, vulgar economists experience less need to interpose anything between capitalism’s self-conception and their defence of it. So Marx writes in the notes collected as Theories of Surplus-Value: ‘The vulgar economist in fact does nothing but translate the   of the capitalists who are caught up in competition into seemingly more theoretical language and seeks to build up a justification of these notions.’ We saw that sometimes there is a contradiction at the level of the phenomena that can be explained at the level of real relations. Where that is so, a theory might contradict itself by attempting to ‘link phenomenal forms in an immediate way, without indicating the mediations that take place at the level of essence’. Here classical political economists continue to dwell in the contradiction, since they prevent themselves from getting to the real relations, even if incipiently they know that something is wrong. They remain ‘unconscious’ of the ‘result of [their] own analysis’ and continue in their ‘uncritical acceptance of the categories “value of labour”, “natural price of labour”, etc.’. This suits the vulgar economists well; the political economists hereby offer a ‘secure base of operations’ to ‘vulgar economists who, in their shallowness, make it a principle to worship appearances only’.   

  K .: /C : . K  (): /C : . K  (): /C : . MEGA II.: –/MECW : . The small capitals signal Marx’s use of an English expression. K  (): /C : . Cf. C : – (where there is again a contrast with the ‘school of Ricardo’): ‘Vulgar economics, which like the Bourbons “has really learnt nothing”, relies here as

Critique of Political Economy



Some contradictions remain utterly hidden to the political economists (and a fortiori to vulgar economists). An example is the contradiction immanent in the use of machines in industry. To admit the contradictions here, if Marx is right, is to comprehend the system itself as productive of crisis. And that the political economist must never admit, since this is to destroy his field of study: for the political economist took himself to be studying not one historical phenomenon that will eventually cease to be, but the workings of the economy as such.

Critique of Political Economy By considering the ways in which Marx thinks political economists are or are not conscious of their ideological blind spots, we have arrived at the fundamental and much-discussed question of what Marx intends by ‘critique of political economy’. This is a complex issue. All I can do here is to suggest some outlines for how to understand what Marx does under that heading. It cannot be, although many have maintained this, that he is attacking the entire framework of classical political economy. Marx takes over many of its concepts and arguments. Not least, he takes over the labour theory of value and mobilizes a version of it for his own purposes. Nonetheless, it matters that the ways in which classical political economy goes wrong are, on a large scale, a matter of ideology. So the ways in which Marx diverges from Ricardo in particular, as the political economist to whom he is closest, will not be a matter of straightforward disagreement. It would take a vast study to document Marx’s divergences from Ricardo, and seek to understand what is at stake in a range of different cases. Nevertheless, it can be stated in advance that what Marx means by a critique of political economy is precisely not the carrying out of an abstractly definable project, on the lines of something like Kant’s critiques. It is salutary to dwell on the contrast, since Kant’s notion of the critique of a field is well-defined, and quite clearly amenable to an abstract statement. Kant’s aim in subjecting some field to a critique is to establish the conditions of the possibility of that field. Kant does so in order to vindicate the field’s claims to scientific maturity. He does so in dubious cases, such as metaphysics. It is not obvious that metaphysics is a mature science, by contrast with, say, geometry. But Kant thinks it is possible to deliver a

elsewhere on the mere semblance as opposed to the law which regulates and determines the phenomena.’



Capital: Dialectic

vindication of metaphysics, just as it is possible to vindicate geometry. Of course, the result of a Kantian critique might be a failure to vindicate: it might turn out that the claims of a field to be a mature science could not be upheld. Marx is doing nothing resembling such a Kantian project. In fact, he provides a very precise statement of his procedure, in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle of  February . Marx writes: ‘The work I am presently concerned with is a critique of economic categories or,   , a critical exposition of the system of the bourgeois economy. It is at once an exposition [Darstellung] of the system and by means of the exposition a critique thereof.’ Marx states unequivocally that it is by exhibiting, or presenting, the system of political economy, in its received bourgeois form, that he takes himself to be carrying out a critique of it. This leaves open the questions raised above, about just how Marx’s divergences from political economists such as Ricardo are to be categorized. To what extent are they empirical disagreements? To what extent are they methodological? And so on. What we should expect here is that the disagreements will not be of one kind only. As Marx actualizes philosophy, it is notable that his discussions of political economy do not remain confined to the critique of the theoretical field, or indeed to meta-discussion. He advances economic claims of his own. He tells us, for instance, how to calculate the rate of exploitation, and predicts that the capitalist integument will be burst asunder. This is what we should expect as philosophy is actualized. Philosophy actualized has no pretensions to Selbstständigkeit: it does the work of thought without having first taken back a step in which it validates itself. Insofar as it does step back from its own first-order thinking, it does not retreat into some special discipline: it steps back just as I step back from my own first-order planning of an activity when I reflect more generally on the goals I am attempting to achieve in carrying out the series of steps that constitute the activity. It is no accident that, in this, Marx shows himself to be alike to Aristotle, that ‘great investigator’. Marx notes rightly that Aristotle was an innovator in the field of economics, from whom the distinction between use-value and exchange-value ultimately derives. In his work examining the functioning of living organisms, Aristotle was not afraid to get his hands dirty cutting them open.

 

MEGA III.: /MECW : . The small capitals signal Marx’s use of an English expression.  K  (): /C : . See Leroi, The Lagoon.

Method



Method We have been led back, again, to the most general questions about Marx’s method. Marx himself distinguished between his method of investigation and his method of presentation. I am concerned here exclusively with the latter, which Marx says exhibits ‘the real movement’. And, as he also says, ‘if this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is now reflected back in the ideas, then it may appear as if we have before us an a priori construction’. It bears emphasizing, again, that Marx does not lack a method of presentation – far from it. Nevertheless, an abstract statement of this method is not possible. The single means of grasping Marx’s method is to join him in the work he does in Capital. Of course, our task is not the same as Marx’s was in producing the work: we merely retrace its path, whereas Marx’s task was to find the path in the first place, having carried out the extensive empirical work on which the possibility of finding it rests. There is a temptation to try to reconstruct Marx’s method on the basis of comments he makes in the Introduction to Grundrisse. It is quickly seen, however, that what Marx does in Capital does not conform, in terms of either planned content or execution, to the task that he had set himself in Grundrisse. This is not surprising, since Marx’s methodology cannot be delineated ahead of its employment. Although this in some sense also true of Hegel, it is true in a much fuller sense of Marx. Hegel notoriously expended effort writing prefaces to his philosophical books filled with declarations about the impossibility of prefaces to philosophical books. Nevertheless, one could give someone an idea of Hegel’s general way of proceeding by giving indicative examples of how some ‘shape of consciousness’ (in the Phenomenology) or some category (in the Logic) comes to grief at its own hands and provides for its own ‘sublation’. One would thereby have given a sketch of how things will, in some quite general way, look if one were to follow through Hegel’s entire dialectical trajectory in one of these works. This is not possible in the case of Capital. There is no set way in which contradictions develop in the material studied in Capital. One has to grasp the subject matter in order to see what is contradictory, and how it is so. This is related to the point that Marx nowhere countenances the idea that the Principle of Non-Contradiction might be contravened: what shows up as contradictory, in Capital, does so precisely against the background of a firm grasp of that principle. 

K  (): /C :  (emphasis added).



Capital: Dialectic

Marx made his dialectic historical, as Hegel aimed, but failed, to do. To have succeeded in this is to have taken on a heavy burden. Marx had better be right that his historical arguments are correct. He not only makes specific historical claims. He also derives from them a quite general claim: that the features of each society or social formation are, in some manner, carried over into the society that succeeds it. If it is not true, quite generally, that history proceeds by the kinds of class revolutions he has sought to document, then it remains to be seen whether capitalist ‘society’ will really give birth to society proper, without the achievements of capitalist society being squandered, overturned, or in other ways lost. He needs to be right that the seizure of the means of production as they exist in capitalist society does not lead to Hobbes’s ‘Warre of every one against every one’. If Marx has not shown this, it is entirely conceivable that his argument, as it stands, leaves open the possibility of horrors on a par with those unleashed by political leaders who called themselves Marxists in the twentieth century.

 

Actualizing Philosophy

In this concluding chapter, I want to take stock of what has been learned in the previous chapters, relate what we have explored to features of the philosophical tradition, and consider where this situates things in terms of the present conjuncture. I have worked, throughout, with a certain conception of philosophy, that which Marx inherited from Hegel. According to this conception, philosophy is the thought of the illimitable object. In Marx’s time, and in particular in the s when Marx cut his philosophical teeth, it was common to accept this conception, and to regard ‘the Hegelian philosophy’ as a stand-in for philosophy as such. That is understandable. It really did seem to many that Hegel had substantiated his claim that a systematic philosophy of the kind he proposed, that did not appeal to some exterior grounding but claimed to ground itself, and that was ‘encyclopaedic’ in that it encompassed the entire circle of knowledge, was what philosophy as such aspired to be. Hegel’s claim that this is the proper form of philosophy is, of course, widely contested today. Here I will try to do three things. First, I will try to substantiate the claim that if philosophy is anything at all (or, to put it another way, if philosophy is possible at all) it must be the thinking of the illimitable object, as Hegel proposes. And this means that the scope of philosophy is nothing other than that of thinking as such. Second, I will argue that, in our time as in Marx’s, philosophy is to actualize itself. That this is so in our time, just as it was in his, if it is true, is trivially so, since philosophy’s actualization, and the demand for it, are not temporally locatable. The actualization of philosophy is not an event, a happening that might or might not occur. And to see that philosophy is to actualize itself is to disarm the supposed requirement on philosophy to justify its own ability to ‘apply’ itself to reality (‘the real world’). Thinking is already, just as such, ‘in possession’ of the world. Third, I will try to show that the actualization of philosophy is prior to mere philosophy, in the following sense. 



Actualizing Philosophy

We cannot get to the actualization of philosophy by first carrying out exercises of mere philosophy, in order to proceed to the actualization of philosophy from there. It is only in light of the actualization of philosophy that mere philosophy can show up as what it is: a deficient falling away what philosophy is. It follows from this that something we cannot do is to give examples of mere philosophy, by contrast with examples of actualized philosophy. There can be no enumeration of failures and successes, on the pattern of: Descartes did not manage to actualize philosophy, Kierkegaard did. The actualization of philosophy is all around us. Again, there would be a category mistake in asking at what point in time philosophy got actualized. It never did. What we can give examples of is local instances of the actualization of philosophy. This is can be compared with giving local instances of communism. We do not live in communist society. A fully communist society is something deeply unknown to us. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote, the ‘practical realization of socialism’ is something that ‘lies completely hidden in the mists of the future’. But communism (or living communistically) is not something utterly unknown. The kind of mutual life of human beings, for and through each other, which communism generalizes is there to be experienced and known, if only intermittently and imperfectly, in our own society. Similarly, when we exercise our power of thought without shrinking back into a restriction to contemplation, we actualize philosophy.

The Illimitability of the Object of Philosophy Philosophy presents itself as a form or kind of enquiry. In the university, it is one discipline among others. It is natural enough, then, to ask what it enquires into, or, to put it another way, what its object is. Philosophy would seem to enquire into very many things: the nature of truth, the nature of being, the good, the beautiful, the nature of enquiry itself, and so on. Does it then just have an irreducible multitude of objects? Or does it, after all, have a single object in which these multiple objects are bound together? Hegel makes explicit a traditional picture of philosophy, inherited from Plato and Aristotle, according to which philosophy has no specific object. 

Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’, in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, . For a development of the point that socialism is unknown to us, see Cornell, ‘Rosa Luxemburg’s Ethical Feminism’. As Cornell puts it, ‘Luxemburg was well aware that all of us who have lived under capitalism have no real idea of what socialism can and will look like’ ().

The Illimitability of the Object of Philosophy



Rather, it is rational enquiry as such. It is related to other sciences not by being one science among many. Instead, philosophy is science as such, or just science. Its relationship to sciences such as physics is that of science as such – or just science – to special sciences. Science as such finds itself articulating itself into these special sciences as its constituent parts. Thus, for instance, Aristotle pursues biology in great detail not as an adjunct to his ‘properly’ philosophical work, but as one department of that work. Plato found it necessary, in his own context, to argue the case for philosophy – philosophy conceived as science as such – against the background of a dominant intellectual current of his time: that of naturalism. His predecessors were, predominantly, phusiologoi (students of nature) who engaged in explanation of the natural order in terms of its putative principle or principles. Some of these predecessors had room for a divine intelligence (‘God’), others not. But notwithstanding this, in the words of Gregory Vlastos, ‘what unites these men . . . is that for all of them nature remains the inviolate all-inclusive principle of explanation’. To Plato’s contemporaries, the desirability and even possibility of philosophy, as opposed to the kind of investigation of nature they had been accustomed to by the phusiologoi, did not seem obvious. Enquiry of the kind Plato defended had to be shored up against the rival claims of naturalists. Lloyd P. Gerson has argued at length that Plato’s upholding of philosophy should be understood against the backdrop of a dominant naturalism that can be called, insofar as ‘philosophy’ is what Plato himself stands for, ‘antiphilosophical’. The way we have been educated into philosophy makes this seem like an extraordinary claim; we, standing where we do, take Plato’s ascendancy in the Greek intellectual world for granted, thanks to the status the Platonic conception of enquiry acquired in the wake of Plato’s achievement. But Plato overturned a consensus, one that has reasserted itself in our time. As Gerson writes, ‘contemporary Naturalism has its historical roots in the philosophical positions that Plato explicitly rejects in the dialogues’. Plato tells us that philosophy is not concerned with nature, merely, but with the supremely real (τὸ παντελῶς ὄν), which is intelligible in character and has the Idea of the Good as its paradigm. The opposition 



Physics is one among indefinitely many such special sciences. Science does not carve the special sciences ‘at the joints’; what one counts as a discrete special science depends on one’s interests as an enquirer, and can be wider or narrower as those interests dictate.  Vlastos, Plato’s Universe, . Gerson, Platonism and Naturalism, .



Actualizing Philosophy

of this conception to naturalism was absolute; Diogenes Laertius suggests that Plato’s opposition to Democritus’ atomism was so dogged that he did not deign to mention him once in his dialogues, ‘not even where it would be necessary to refute him’. More recently, forms of naturalism have come to dominate philosophy, not least thanks to the tremendous success of Galilean science. This has produced friction within philosophy. Naturalism seems to fall short of everything philosophy aspires to: it cannot assure itself of grasping the illimitable object of thought. In the twentieth century it became common for those experiencing the friction to bite a particularly hard bullet: naturalism was now espoused not as a competitor to philosophy, but as being philosophy. Ultimately, however, this is to have given up on philosophy. For to have given over philosophy to naturalism is to have given up all orientation that does not come from within the naturalist picture itself. And the naturalist picture cannot itself provide this: it cannot reach over itself in order to account for itself, but only issue further naturalistic claims. And there can be no half-way house: naturalism/philosophy is an either/or. It is crucial to Marx’s actualization of philosophy that it have as its base the conception of philosophy as directed at the illimitable object, common to Plato, Aristotle and Hegel. Without this Platonic insight, it would not be evident that philosophy is our thinking as such, without limit. It is only as philosophy is conceived in this way – to put it in Hegel’s terms, as unity of concept and actuality – that it admits of actualization at all. In naturalistic philosophy (supposing that there could be such a thing) there is nothing to actualize. It has already delimited itself as a special enquiry, a delimitation that must rest on dogma rather than on principle. No demand that it (to put it in the terms of Marx’s Difference) ‘enter the

 



Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, .; Diogenes makes the same point at .. This friction is well brought out in Nagel, Mind and Cosmos. Nagel inveighs against ‘a comprehensive, speculative world picture that is reached by extrapolation from some of the discoveries of biology, chemistry, and physics – a particular naturalistic Weltanschauung that postulates a hierarchical relation among the subjects of those sciences, and the completeness in principle of an explanation of everything in the universe through their unification’ (). The phusiologoi, given the level of sophistication of Greek natural science, were not in a position to make such comprehensive claims as the adherents of the would-be philosophical naturalism Nagel attacks, but modern naturalists’ Weltanschauung is a development of their basic orientation. Sebastian Gardner, in ‘The Limits of Naturalism and the Metaphysics of German Idealism’, mounts a persuasive argument to the effect that there can be no ‘soft naturalism’, intermediate between philosophy and naturalism.

Practical and Theoretical Philosophy



world’ could emerge, since it does not, in the first place, face the world as universal subject faces universal object.

Practical and Theoretical Philosophy It is, furthermore, crucial to the actualization of philosophy that philosophy show itself to be practical. A phrase by which this might be captured is Kant’s ‘primacy of the practical’ – although just what Kant himself meant by this is a complex issue. What we can take over from Kant, for our purposes, is the contrast between, on the one hand, theoretical (or speculative) reason as knowledge of what is and, on the other, practical reason as ‘prov[ing] its reality and that of its concepts by what it does [durch die Tat]’. To say that the practical has primacy, then, is to say that reason proves its reality by what it does, or that (to speak loosely) its ‘vocation’ is action; it is only secondarily knowledge of what is. It is notable that both Aristotle and Hegel, although each of them is tempted in the direction of a conception of philosophy according to which it is in the first place practical, settle, in the end, for a conception of it as in the first place theoretical. Aristotle sets up his Ethics as if the highest vocation of thought is practical. But, in the end, he performs a switch. It turns out that the best way to live one’s life is to devote it to contemplation. Aristotle had at first said that the good of each activity is ‘that for whose sake everything else is done’, and so ‘if there is an end for all that we do, this will be the good achievable by action’. The good, he stated early on in the Ethics, is ‘activity of soul in conformity with excellence, and if there are more than one excellence, in conformity with the best and most complete’. But he performs a switch, so that, in the end, as Jonathan Lear puts it, ‘a practical life, when it succeeds in its project, will be a contemplative life’. Despite his earlier claims that virtuous action was its own reward, Aristotle finds something to be dissatisfied with in a life that is merely the practical exercise of the excellences. He lures the hearers of his lectures instead with the promise of a retreat to pure self-sufficiency       

It may be worth recalling here that Marx never endorsed any kind of philosophical materialism or naturalism. Cf. Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx, chapter . See especially Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, book II, chapter II, §III. For discussion, see Gardner, ‘The Primacy of Practical Reason’. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Ak. :. For a penetrating, and psychoanalytically inflected, discussion, see Lear, Happiness, Death. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I , a–. Cf. Lear, Happiness, Death, . Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I , a. Cf. Lear, Happiness, Death, –. Lear, Happiness, Death, .



Actualizing Philosophy

that exceeds anything achievable in the practical life. As he states in the final book of Nicomachean Ethics, ‘If happiness is activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be that of the best thing in us.’ Contemplation (theoria) is paradigmatically of what is divine – the unchanging heavens; it turns out that the philosopher (who is, Aristotle thereby implies, the best kind of human) is able to live ‘in accordance with the best thing in us’. Such a life of contemplation involves, of course, the outsourcing of practical life to others. Aristotle addresses himself to hearers who are ‘well brought up’. In urging for them the contemplative life, it is implied that the entire system of needs will be extruded from this leisured class, to be picked up by others. It is pre-eminently slaves, who are the property of those with leisure, who act as the ‘tools’ needed to keep the contemplators going. Despite the essentially practical orientation of Hegel’s earliest work, in his mature system he makes the ‘Idea of the Good’ one aspect, along with the ‘Idea of the True’, of the ‘Idea of Cognition’. The Idea of the Good is made subordinate to the Idea of the True: it can ‘find its completion [ihre Ergänzung] only in the Idea of the True’. The ‘Absolute Idea’ that supersedes the ‘Idea of Cognition’, Hegel writes, ‘has shown itself to be the identity of the theoretical and the practical Idea’. In it, however, theory is predominant. Famously, at the culmination of the system in his Encyclopaedia presentation of it, Hegel quotes Aristotle’s Metaphysics Λ : ‘Thinking that is in itself is of what is best in itself; and the highest thinking is of the highest object.’ Hegel’s practical philosophy, such as it is, in the end takes on the guise of a recognition or recuperation of the rational in the actual. This is no accident. As Vittorio Hösle has written,  

   

 Lear, Happiness, Death, . Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X , b. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I , b: ‘any one who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just and, generally, about the subjects of political science must have been brought up in good habits’. See Aristotle, Politics I . TWA : /SL: . Miller’s translation is inaccurate: ‘the Idea of the good can therefore find its integration only in the Idea of the true’.  TWA : /SL: . Quoted at TWA : /PM: . Allen Wood writes that Hegel’s ‘restriction on the scope of “philosophy” or “philosophical science” does appear to entail that for Hegel “philosophy”, taking the word in the strict sense, cannot contain an ethics; in other words, in the strict sense of the word there can be no such thing as a “practical philosophy”’. Yet, on the very same page, Wood nevertheless assures us that ‘the Philosophy of Right must be looked at simultaneously in two ways: () as “philosophical science” . . .; and () as “practical philosophy”, an ethical and political theory on the basis of which conclusions can be drawn about how the world should be, including how social institutions and conditions should be

Practical and Theoretical Philosophy



‘It is easy to understand that Hegel’s theoreticist reinterpretation [theoretizistische Umdeutung] of practical philosophy is the only possible conception of this domain of philosophy on the basis of his system.’ His system had already provided for its own completion in the Absolute Idea. Philosophy cannot now step out from its own completion in order to reshape actuality; instead, it is confined to finding itself in actuality. The anxiety that underlies the retreat of both Aristotle and Hegel to the contemplative, in spite of their practically orientated starting points, might be brought out by considering an issue that affects not practical thought as such, but individual stretches of practical thought. The issue is brought out in Aristotle’s conception of the ‘practical syllogism’. Aristotle observed that some stretches of thought issue in action, rather than merely in more thought. He therefore thought it apt to say that the conclusion of a kind of syllogism – the practical syllogism – was itself an action. This is a confounding idea. A syllogism is an inference. It is clear how a thought can be inferred from other thoughts; but how can an action be inferred from other thoughts? Aristotle dramatizes the startling difference made by having the conclusion of an inference be an action by his use of the word ‘straightaway’ in his presentation of the practical syllogism in Movement of Animals: the two propositions result in a conclusion which is an action – for example, whenever one thinks that every man ought to walk, and that one is a man oneself, straightaway one walks; or that, in this case, no man should walk, one is a man: straightaway one remains at rest.. . . Again, I ought to create a good, a house is good: straightaway he makes a house. I need a covering, a coat is a covering: I need a coat. What I need I ought to make, I need a coat: I make a coat. And the conclusion ‘I must make a coat’ is an action.

It is difficult to hold onto the idea that the conclusion of a practical syllogism is an action, and not a thought (say, the thought: ‘I’ll do that then’). Sebastian Rödl has written: It is sometimes said that practical reasoning concludes that there is reason, or most reason, to do such-and-such. This is strictly nonsense. As a reason for doing something is something from which one may reason practically to

 

changed’ (Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, ). Recall what Hegel himself writes, in the Philosophy of Right: ‘As a philosophical composition, it must distance itself as far as possible from the obligation to construct a state as it ought to be; such instruction as it may contain cannot be aimed at instructing the state on how it ought to be, but rather at showing how the state, as the ethical universe, should be recognized’ (TWA : /PR: ).  Hösle, Hegels System,  (emphasis in the original). Aristotle, Movement of Animals, a. See the lucid discussion in Anscombe, Intention.



Actualizing Philosophy a conclusion, this describes practical reasoning as reasoning from a reason for doing something to the conclusion that there is reason to do it.

In order to remain true, in the face of such nonsense, to the idea that the conclusion of a practical syllogism is an action, Rödl proposes to capture this using the special notation ‘I * do A.’ The * marks the mystery of a conclusion’s being an action. Philosophers have tended, in discussing the difficulties of the practical syllogism, to focus on the issue of how the conclusion can really be necessitated by the premises, as is the case with a theoretical syllogism. Must I really make a coat? It seems possible to secure this only where there is what Anscombe calls an ‘insane’ premise, such as: Whenever you are cold, procure a covering. It might seem a good heuristic rule for those who suffer from the cold to get themselves a covering, but the injunction to do so in all cases is surely crazy overkill. This question is connected to the question of whether the conclusion can really be an action, and not a wish or intention captured by a thought – a wish or intention that might spur one to action. One might, however, look at the problem of the practical syllogism in an entirely different way. Formulation of our practical thought in terms of the practical syllogism is an attempt to capture how we act thinkingly by presenting our thinking action as reasoning from (nothing but) theoretical premises. If the vocation of our thought is practical, however, as Marx urges, we should come to see our thinking action in a different light. The practical syllogism cannot be a model for it. Instead, we should reason back from the character of thinking action to the insufficiency of a way of seeing things that models thought on theoretical knowledge. Marx is not particularly concerned with stretches of practical thought that individual agents engage in, everywhere producing action. His chief concern is with the collective practical thought – or to put things more naturally, collective action – that we call history. The work of Capital is such collective action. In the course of such action, thought is continually restricting itself to mere theory. Just as in order to realize one’s aims in stretches of individual practical thought, one must know what is going on, how things work, how they fit together, so in the case of that much greater action, history. It turns out that the work of practical thought   

 Rödl, Self-Consciousness, . Rödl, Self-Consciousness, . See McDowell, ‘Self-Consciousness in Acting’; Rödl, ‘The Practical Syllogism’. See Hinshelwood, ‘Representation in Action’, for an illuminating and substantial proposal to rethink the idea of thinking action (or what Hinshelwood calls ‘practical thought’).

‘Applying’ Philosophy



overwhelmingly, in the individual and in the historical case, constricts itself to the theoretical. But that does not give the lie to the primacy of the practical, or to the primarily practical character of thought. This can be illustrated using an example. When firefighters fight fires, they do not resort to a practical syllogism: ‘Firefighters fight fires; Here is a fire; I * fight this fire!’ Firefighters, when they enter burning buildings, fight the fires that they face. It is not as if they do so as mindless automata, but there is nonetheless nothing further requiring insertion between their entering burning buildings and their fighting fires. Theoretical thought, of course, enters into the firefighter’s mind. It does so in a quite different way from what regimentation into a ‘practical syllogism’ would suggest. The firefighter is constantly observing, reasoning. They must know what is going on. What this reflects is how practical thought articulates itself into theoretical thought. As it does so, a key difference between the two is made manifest. In its service of practical thought, theoretical thought articulates itself into distinct enquiries. In being thus served, practical thought, by contrast, remains one. Practical thought is about what to do, nothing else. It is difficult to know what to do, because it is difficult to know what is going on. But figuring out what to do is not reasoning from theoretical premises (much less, as the philosophers have puzzled over, having one’s action necessitated by theoretical premises).

‘Applying’ Philosophy Today, philosophers are constantly called upon to declare how their philosophical work can be ‘applied’. In response, philosophers even speak of ‘applied ethics’, as if the expression were other than pleonastic. This demand presupposes a conception of philosophy as ‘self-sufficient’, in the sense that Marx rejects. There can be, however, no self-sufficient philosophy: there is, to put it in the terms of Marx’s Difference, no way for philosophy to enter the world, if this is imagined as distinct from the world’s becoming philosophical. A startling effect of appreciating the actualization of philosophy, in the economic-academic landscape we inhabit, is that it offers a way of rendering true the commonplace that ‘everyone is a philosopher’. The commonplace is, on its usual banal reading, palpably false. On the banal  

The example was suggested by Anton Ford (who used it in a different context). Cf., to keep the analogy with Capital going, Marx’s relentless reading and studying in the British Museum.



Actualizing Philosophy

reading it means that there is no gap between philosophical theorizing as carried out in university departments and the concerns and interests of those outside. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which it is true that all human beings, everywhere, are already ‘doing philosophy’. For philosophy is merely human thought as such. We all go about our lives thinkingly. We are not accustomed to think about the actualization of potentials. But what is already there in all of us, so that the statement ‘everyone is a philosopher’ is rendered true, is that we do the work of philosophy, which is no other than the work of thought – or thinking. Philosophy is this, whether it is actualized or not. In that sense, there is nothing to be added in order to bring philosophy within our reach. And there is nothing it could be for philosophy to be applied to the world, for our own thinking life is already within our reach. This life, as everyone knows (although philosophers can forget this) already takes place in the world. What we think to do is what we do in the world; it is not as if we had first retreated into a mental realm evacuated from the world, in order then to set about our doing. There is an analogy here with communism. The analogy is helpful because communism is what Marx thinks life (or history) is. Recall that communism is a movement, as it is carried out by agents, not a doctrine. This movement has been coming into its own in history. Those who declare themselves in favour of communism often face the challenge of being asked how it can be brought about. The challenge can be answered by pointing out that communism is already here. Human life is already communist. And not merely potentially. Pockets of communism are actual in our lives. These pockets are not saved from imperfection, but they exist. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom is an example. It is at present still the case that someone who suffers injury or illness in the United Kingdom is seen to and cared for, according to need. Even though the system is in a state of decay, this happens. In terms of the experience of the agents directly involved, it is a straightforward example of communism in action. In still more everyday terms, familial relationships exhibit communistic features. Family members take care of each other’s needs without question. These relationships may be interfered with by the commodity form, but they are not so distorted as to lose their basically communistic character of mutual, unquestioning ministering to each other’s needs. 

Cf. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, .

Absolute Idealism and the Actualization of Philosophy



Absolute Idealism and the Actualization of Philosophy Most of academic philosophy continues to operate in the service of the ‘analytic’ paradigm, with its characteristic sympathy for the replacement of philosophy by naturalism, or of various forms of ‘poststructuralism’, with its attacks on subjectivity and objectivity. I want to draw attention here, however, to the emergence, outside these diverging mainstreams, of a revival of absolute idealism. Sebastian Rödl’s book Self-Consciousness and Objectivity carries the subtitle An Introduction to Absolute Idealism. Rödl shares with Hegel the idea that philosophy is absolute idealism. He takes this view, like Hegel, not because he takes absolute idealism to emerge victorious from a competition with rival philosophical views or approaches, on the basis of an evaluation of virtues and vices, or costs and benefits. There cannot be such evaluation, since there are no philosophical ‘views’. Philosophy, for Rödl as for Hegel, is science as such. It occupies (to use an admittedly gauche spatial metaphor) the entire domain of science, and so could not itself possibly be a ‘view’. It could not be otherwise, Rödl thinks, since philosophy is what he calls ‘the science without contrary’. It does not enter some set of claims that could, in principle, be denied. The special sciences do that; philosophy does not, on pain of collapsing into a pseudospecial science. Rödl does not seek to demonstrate the status of philosophy (or, interchangeably, absolute idealism) as the science as such (as he puts it, ‘the science u¨berhaupt’) by means of a self-closing dialectic, as does Hegel. Instead, he seeks to do so by means of a set of meditations on the selfevidence of the internality of ‘I think’ to any judgement. Rödl’s ‘I’ is the subject of thought as such, the correlate of the illimitable object. Rödl’s absolute idealism provides a breeding ground for the actualization of philosophy. Even though he does not make Feuerbach’s mistake of recoiling from idealism into advocacy of ‘naturalism’, there is nonetheless a parallel with the Feuerbach with and against whom Marx was working. Rödl shares with Feuerbach a conception of the I that encourages Averroism. The I is that of the thinker, a universal thinker not admitting of individuation. Feuerbach and Rödl share, further, a non-dialectical idealism standing in need of dialectical reactivation by means of history. What Marx signals is that Rödl’s absolute idealism can be overcome by being actualized, in the following way: the Averroistic conception of the 

Rödl, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, –.



Actualizing Philosophy

I as, in the words of G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘an angel distributed through many bodies’, is overcome through the reactivation of history as the history of real, human beings, not the non-history (because eternal selfreturn) of an abstractum (the ‘Absolute Idea’). Marx required Hegel’s absolute idealism as his field of operation, in order to make good on the unity of concept and actuality that Hegel promises and thereby actualize philosophy. Similarly, the actualization of philosophy today requires as its field of operation the restitution of philosophy as thought of the illimitable object, a restitution Rödl performs. There can be such actualization, again, just as was the case for Marx, only if we rediscover ourselves as historical beings. The history in question is not something to be discovered lying beyond our lives, but is our own collective living.

Exemplifying the Actualization of Philosophy If Marx is right about the actualization of philosophy, we should certainly not expect it to be exemplified in philosophy books. As philosophy is actualized, there will, of course, continue to be the study of philosophy in the form of book learning. That is all well and good. For one thing, there will be a demand to continue the study of the history of philosophy, as part of the history of our thinking, and so of our history. For another, book learning is a way for us to do our thinking, even if it is not identical with our thinking as such. As philosophy is actualized, it – philosophy – is something greater and fuller than book learning: it is the thinking pursuit of human life as such. Marx, in his mature work, made it known at every turn that the point of thinking is to act in the world. He tried not to miss opportunities to engage in the revolutionary action that he saw as the impending work of history (i.e., of collective thinking human action). There is, then, as is notorious, an irony in the spectacle of Marxists burying themselves in books. Today it is perhaps professional Marxists in the universities who are more immersed in theory than anyone else. The predicament of Marxists today is paradoxical. Practising what Marx criticizes as selbstständige Philosophie, they indulge in a fantasy that it was his life’s work to expose, across all the texts discussed in this book.  

Anscombe, ‘Has Mankind One Soul’. For a historical account of this development, see Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, chapter . The ‘second-order’ discourse that Marxism has become in the wake of such figures as Lukács and Korsch has created, Anderson writes, a ‘gulf for nearly fifty years between socialist thought and the soil of popular revolution’ ().

Exemplifying the Actualization of Philosophy



There is a danger in imagining that what is called for today, if we are to heed the call for philosophy’s actualization, is a continuation of what Marx himself specifically committed himself to, and which others attempted to carry out more concretely in his name – the struggle of the proletariat to seize the means of production. Our world is not that of the late nineteenth century, and a signal lesson we ought to take away from Marx is that history matters. As is often pointed out, in many ways Marx’s analysis is truer of today’s capital than of that of his own day; perhaps most obviously, capital’s global character is now far more in evidence than it was at the time Marx wrote. There are now hardly any parts of the world out of the way of capital’s global reach. In other ways, however, the structure of society is now radically different from anything Marx could have imagined. It is not even clear whether, today, to actualize philosophy is to attempt to rekindle the kind of social movements traditionally associated with communism, or to begin something quite different. The aim is, however, clear. It is the aim of communism itself, or the human living with which we are all familiar, even if manifest only in pockets of life as we have known it. 

For one thing, there is today no working-class movement recognizably sharing the form of that which Marx knew so well. For another, it is widely recognized that the category of rent – central to the feudal system of economic organization – is again becoming increasingly important, including in the digital sphere. Some even characterize these developments not as a transformation of capitalism, but as a displacement of capitalism by a new feudalism; see, e.g., Varoufakis, Technofeudalism.

Bibliography

Note on translations: quotations from English translations listed here have been tacitly emended where needed.

Primary Texts Aquinas Aquinas Against the Averroists: On There Being Only One Intellect, ed. Ralph McInerny (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, ).

Aristotle The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ).

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

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Index

Abazari, Arash, ,  Adler, Max,  Adorno, Theodor, – alienation, , –, , , ,  Althusser, Louis, –, , , , –, ,  amphisbētēsis,  Anaxagoras, – Anderson, Perry,  Anscombe, G. E. M., ,  antiphasis,  Aristotle, , , , –, , , , , , , –,  De anima, , – Metaphysics, ,  Movement of Animals,  Nicomachean Ethics, – Politics,  Prior Analytics,  Arthur, Christopher,  Asmis, Elizabeth, ,  ataraxia,  atomism, , , –, –,  Averroism, ,  Baader, Franz Xaver von,  Bachelard, Gaston,  Backhaus, Hans-Georg, ,  Bailey, Cyril,  Balibar, Étienne,  Barbour, Charles,  Bauer, Bruno, , , –, , , , , –, , – Bauer, Edgar,  Bekker, Konrad,  Bernstein, Eduard,  Boer, Karin de, – Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen,  Bolin, Wilhelm,  Boyle, Matthew,  Brandis, Christian August,  Brandom, Robert, 

Bremner, Sabina Vaccarino,  Browning, Gary, ,  Brudney, Daniel, , ,  Butler, Judith,  Carandini, Guido,  celestial bodies, –, ,  Chitty, Andrew,  Christianity, ,  Cicero,  civil society, , –, ,  Clark, John P.,  Clement of Alexandria,  Cohen, G. A.,  Cohen, S. Marc,  Colletti, Lucio, , , , , , ,  commodity, – communism, , , , , , –, , , , ,  Comte, Auguste,  concrete universal,  contradiction, , –, –,  Cornell, Drucilla,  Criticism, Critical, , , – Deleuze, Gilles, ,  Della Volpe, Galvano, , , , , , –,  democracy, –,  Democritus, –, , ,  Depew, David, , , ,  Dews, Peter,  diairesis (method of division), , , –, , ,  Diogenes Laertius, , ,  Dobb, Maurice,  economism,  Eliot, George,  Elson, Diane, 



Index Elster, Jon,  empiricism,  Engels, Friedrich, , ,  Epicureanism, –, – Epicurus, , , , , –, –, , –,  essential powers (Wesenskräfte), , –,  estates (Stände), , – exchange-value, – executive, , –, –,  exploitation,  expropriators, expropriation of,  Feuerbach, Ludwig, , , –, , –, –, , –, ,  Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy,  De ratione, una, universali, infinita, – Essence of Christianity, , ,  Philosophy and Christianity,  Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy, , ,  Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, , , , ,  Thoughts on Death and Immortality, ,  Fichte, Immanuel Hermann,  Fichte, Johann Gottlieb,  Fischer, Carl Philipp,  Ford, Anton,  Foster, John Bellamy,  Foster, Michael Beresford,  Frank, Manfred, ,  Franks, Paul,  Fromm, Erich,  Fulda, Hans Friedrich, , ,  Gadamer, Hans-Georg,  Gardner, Sebastian, – Gattungswesen, , –, –, , , –,  Geras, Norman,  Gerson, Lloyd P.,  Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust, I,  Gould, Carol C., ,  Gramsci, Antonio,  Gu¨nther, Anton,  Habermas, Ju¨rgen,  Haym, Rudolf,  Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, , –, , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , –, , , , –, , –, –,  Lectures on the History of Philosophy, –, , , , –



Lectures on the Philosophy of History,  Phenomenology of Spirit, , –, , ,  Philosophy of Nature,  Philosophy of Right, –, , , –, , ,  Philosophy of Spirit, , ,  Science of Logic, , , , –, –, –, , –,  Science of Logic (Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, I),  Heidegger, Martin,  Henrich, Dieter, , –, , ,  Hesiod,  Hess, Moses, ,  Hinshelwood, Alec,  history, – Hobbes, Thomas,  Horstmann, Rolf-Peter, ,  Hösle, Vittorio,  idealism, absolute, , , ,  Ilyenkov, Evald,  inorganic body,  Inwood, Michael,  Jodl, Friedrich,  Judaism,  Kamenka, Eugene,  Kangal, Kaan,  Kant, Immanuel, , , –, , , , –,  Critique of Practical Reason,  Critique of Pure Reason,  Jäsche Logic,  Karatani, Kojin,  Knotenpunkte (nodal points), , –, ,  Kołakowski, Leszek,  Köppen, Carl Friedrich,  Korsch, Karl, ,  Kosman, Aryeh,  Koyré, Alexandre,  Kuhn, Thomas,  labour-power, –, –,  Lange, Elena Louisa,  Lassalle, Ferdinand,  Lear, Jonathan,  legislature, , – Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm,  Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich,  Leopold, David, –, ,  liberal party, –,  Longuenesse, Béatrice, 



Index

love,  Lucretius,  Lukács, Georg, , , , ,  Luxemburg, Rosa,  Mao Tse-Tung,  Marcuse, Herbert, , ,  Markovits, Francine,  Marx, Jenny (née von Westphalen),  Marx, Karl Capital, Vol.  , , , – Capital, Vol.   Capital, Vol.  , ,  Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,  Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Urtext),  Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (CHPR), –, ,  Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction, , – Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, –, –, , , ,  Grundrisse, , , , ,  Kreuznach Notebooks,  Leading Article in No.  of the Kölnische Zeitung,  Marginal Notes on Adolph Wagner’s Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie, ,  Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, –, ,  Notes on James Mill,  On the Jewish Question, , –,  Paris Manuscripts, , –, –, –, –, ,  Poverty of Philosophy, , , – Supplement to Nos.  and  of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung on the Commissions of the Estates in Prussia, ,  Theories of Surplus-Value,  Theses on Feuerbach, , , –,  Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels German Ideology, , , , –, , ,  Holy Family, , –,  Manifesto of the Communist Party,  Mass, the, ,  Mau, Søren,  McDowell, John,  McIvor, Martin, , ,  McLellan, David, ,  Meek, R. L., ,  Mill, John Stuart, , ,  monarchy, , , –, –

Moravcsik, J. M. E.,  Mulhall, Stephen, ,  mysticism,  Nagel, Thomas,  Natali, Carlo, , , –, , , ,  National Health Service,  natural-historical judgement,  naturalism, – negation of the negation, ,  Newton, Alexandra,  nous, –,  O’Malley, Joseph, ,  opposition, real (Realopposition),  Osborne, Peter, , ,  philosophy, carnival of,  philosophy, self-sufficient (selbstständige Philosophie), , –, , , , , , ,  philosophy, total,  phusiologoi,  Pippin, Robert,  Plamenatz, John, –,  Plato, , –, , , , , , – Parmenides, – Philebus,  Sophist, –,  Timaeus, ,  Plutarch, ,  political economy, critique of, ,  positive philosophy, –,  positivism, , ,  Postone, Moishe, ,  Priest, Graham,  Principle of Non-Contradiction, , –, , , , ,  proletariat, , , –, , , ,  Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph,  Philosophy of Poverty, –,  Pythagoreans,  Rawidowicz, Simon,  Reichelt, Helmut,  representation, – Rheinische Zeitung,  Ricardo, David, , , , –, , – Ritter, Heinrich,  Roberts, William Clare,  Robinson, Joan,  Rödl, Sebastian, , , , – Rosen, Zvi, ,  Rossi, Mario, 

Index Rubin, I. I., ,  Ruge, Arnold,  Sannwald, Rudolf,  Sass, Hans-Martin,  Sayer, Derek,  Scepticism, –,  Schafer, Paul M.,  Schaff, Adam, –,  Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph,  Schleiermacher, Friedrich,  Schmidt, Alfred,  self-consciousness, philosophy of, , , – Seneca,  Sengler, Joachim,  Senior, Nassau William,  Sextus Empiricus, ,  Smith, Adam, , –,  Socrates, – Sophists,  sophos, ,  soul (psuchē), , , – Spinoza, Baruch,  Stanley, John L.,  state, , , –, –, –, , , ,  Stedman Jones, Gareth,  Stirner, Max, , – Stobaeus,  Stoicism, –,  Strauss, David Friedrich,  subject–object, –, –, , , , , , ,  subject and predicate, inversion of, ,  surplus-value, , –, –,  absolute,  relative, 



Sweezy, Paul,  swerve of the atom, – syllogism, – practical,  theoretical,  Taubert, Inge,  terrorism of true theory, ,  Theophrastus,  theoreticians of the proletarian class, – Theunissen, Michael, , , , , , ,  Thom, Martina,  Thompson, E. P.,  Thompson, Michael,  Ure, Andrew,  use-value, – value, labour theory of, –, , , –,  Varoufakis, Yanis,  Vieweg, Klaus,  Vlasits, Justin,  Vlastos, Gregory,  Wagenknecht, Sahra,  Wartofsky, Marx,  Weisse, Christian Hermann,  Wittgenstein, Ludwig,  Wolff, Michael, ,  Wood, Allen, , , , ,  Young Hegelians, –, , ,  Zelený, Jindřich,  Zeno of Citium, 