This is an erudite, lucid and well-structured study of Marxism and its relationship with the philosophy of Hegel andCRITIQUE:
Hegel's Influence on Marx
This is an erudite, lucid and well-structured study of Marxism and its relationship with the philosophy of Hegel and subsequent Marxist and other philosophers who were influenced by Hegel's Idealism and/or Marx's Materialism.
Some of the subject matter was covered by Marcuse's "Reason and Revolution", although, oddly, Callinicos doesn't mention it.
As with Marcuse's work, I was tempted to ask whether it aimed to develop and define an Hegelian Marxism, or a Marxist Hegelianism.
This is not the only goal of Callinicos' work. The second half of the book contains a useful analysis of trends in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language. Callinicos clearly has an interest in Continental Philosophy in its own right, no matter what the relationship with Marxism.
He also identifies that critical theory (as Horkheimer renamed Marxism) had become detached from the proletariat by the Second World War and the experience of American consumerism in exile.
My own view has been that Marxism was distracted and compromised by the growing concentration on culture, ideology and language, and the diminution of focus on economics and politics (i.e., the immediate arena of the class struggle).
Callinicos says in the course of his discussion of Adorno:
"The reduction of reality in all its concreteness and variety to the expressions of the Absolute reflects the process of abstraction at work in reality itself, the transformation of concrete, useful labours into abstract social labour inherent in the exchange of commodities.
"Critical theory must, therefore, preserve a moment of abstraction, of reflection, not allowing the concept of the totality to disintegrate, if it is to fulfil its role of understanding, and demystifying reality."
The Repudiation of Philosophy
In the Introduction, Callinicos quotes Marx (and Marx and Engels) on philosophy:
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
"Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love."
Despite this scepticism about the value of philosophy (Callinicos refers to it as a "repudiation" of philosophy), and Marx's far more specific critique of Hegel's philosophy, Marx's "Capital" was heavily indebted to Hegel's dialectic. It was fundamental to Marx and Engel's concepts of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
Hegel's Dialectic
Callinicos describes Hegel's dialectic in these terms (This is an amalgam of various quotes and comments that I have assembled; I haven't sought to differentiate material written by Hegel and Marx as opposed to Callinicos):
"Its starting point is the original dumb unity of Being, the most basic of categories, whose complete lack of any specific quality...renders it identical to Nothing.
"But the self-negation of Being is also the means through which it acquires a determinate content.
"For Hegel, negation does not simply cancel that which it negates, it is, rather, determinate negation, which absorbs the cancelled category within a new unity, providing the impulse to move from one category to another.
"It is only, moreover, by virtue of negation that Being acquires a content; the definite shape and character possessed by any entity depends upon the contrast between it and what it is not, the barrier it sets up between itself and others.
"The differentiation of Being is also its self-estrangement.
"All things are contradictory in themselves, and negativity...is the inherent pulsation of self-movement and liveliness...
"Determinate negation does not simply introduce difference into the original unity of Being...negation, as the negation of the negation, breaks down the barriers between the determinations that have evolved in the sphere of Essence, bringing to consciousness their inner unity...
"This structure reveals the pattern through which the Absolute Idea alienates itself in the external realm of nature before attaining full consciousness of itself in Absolute Spirit."
Callinicos quotes Lukacs:
"Since consciousness is not the knowledge of an opposed object, but is the self-consciousness of the object, the act of consciousness overthrows the objective form of its object."
Paraphrasing Hegel
The Hegel police squad warns you not to paraphrase Hegel, because you will inevitably miss some of the nuances of his thought, and therefore get it wrong (or differ from the views of the Hegel police).
Nevertheless, below is an attempt to make sense of Hegel's dialectic in more accessible terms:(1)
A single Being, entity or consciousness perceives another entity in the outside world or reality, by grasping it and dragging it into its own consciousness.
The negation does not cancel out the other entity. Instead, it combines elements of it with its own consciousness. The process of negation negates the negation, so that the consciousness of the original Being is now an aggregate of the two that consists of elements of both entities.
This enlarged consciousness also forms part of the Absolute Idea or Absolute Spirit. Thus, all consciousnesses have collectively imported all of external reality (i.e., the whole world) into the Absolute Idea or Absolute Spirit. Some believe that this Absolute Spirit corresponds with God. This is where Hegel is at his most Idealistic.
Marx criticises Hegel's idealist version of the dialectic as an inversion of thought and reality, as the creation of an "upside-down world".
He states that Hegel is walking on his head, instead of on his feet:
"What I had to do was turn Hegel from his head back to his feet, so that we can start walking again."
In the words of Callinicos -
"Hegel's dialectical method reduces empirical objects to mere semblances of genuine existence, incarnations of the Absolute..."
"The transcendence of contradictions in Hegel's Absolute serves to conceal the real contradictions constitutive of existing society, notably that between civil society and the political State."
Dialectical Materialism
Callinicos also argues that "Marx's later Hegelianism is primarily methodological."
In other words, he sought to utilise some aspects of Hegel's dialectical method, without adopting its idealistic elements. Instead, he adopted a materialist approach.
"I...openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.
"With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell."
By inverting the components of Hegel's dialectic and walking on his feet, Marx undertook to reveal the contradictions of existing society.
"[The] premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises...the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions of their life."
Marx also introduced the concepts of the forces of production and the relations of production.
The forces of production are "the specific technical organisation of the labour-process".
On the other hand, the relations of production are "the social relations based on class antagonism".
The combined forces and mode of production (the base) lay the foundation for the superstructure.
This is not an economic determinist process. It doesn't argue that the base inevitably causes the superstructure to exist. Instead, it posits that a particular stage of superstructure cannot exist, unless a prerequisite level of base already exists. By way of analogy, cyber culture could not exist without computers, the world wide web and the internet.
The emphasis on the relations of production highlights the relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. From an historical point of view, this highlights the class struggle, and the aim of the proletariat to escape its role in capitalism.
Callinicos argues that "the introduction of the concept of relations of production set exploitation, social conflict, and struggle at the centre of Marx's account of historical development. It thus provided the theoretical foundation of the opening words of the Communist Manifesto: 'the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.'"
In other words, it was the foundation of what would become known as historical materialism. Callinicos concludes that -
"History is only intelligible as the self-realisation of man."
This concerns the material conditions under which mankind lives and works.
Inevitability and Determinism.
Historical materialism is supposed to move (or trend) towards the self-realisation of man. This might make sense as an application of dialectical materialism.
However, to the extent that the self-realisation of man involves the proletariat achieving both victory over the bourgeoisie, and a state of communism, I question whether there is anything in either dialectical materialism or historical materialism that makes it inevitable that humanity will arrive at a state of communism.
In other words, is the expectation that humanity will arrive at a state of communism no more than wishful thinking, or possibly even a self-fulfilling prophesy, determined by neither philosophy nor science? Unfortunately, Callinicos doesn't cast any light on this issue, presumably because he is committed to the cause and the outcome.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Unfortunately, GoodReads deleted all of my notes, reviews and writings on Hegel (as well as many other reviews and creative works) when they removed the My Writings section of my profile.
SOUNDTRACK: (view spoiler)[ Alex Callinicos - "What Marx learned from Hegel"
