Here are my notes from a meeting I did last month at Marxism 2012. Videos of many of the meetings are online - check them out here: http://www.youtube.com/user/swpTvUk
You probably won’t be
surprised to hear that one of the themes of this meeting is going to be
contradiction.
In that spirit, I’d like
to begin by contradicting Lenin.
Lenin famously suggested
that it is impossible to understand Marx’s Capital,
and by implication it’s impossible to understand the Marxist method, without
having read and fully understood all of Hegel’s Science of Logic.
Now, of course, I should
point out that Lenin is making an important point in a characteristically
hyperbolic way. He’s arguing that Hegel’s ideas are central to Marxism - that
if we lose sight of Hegel we risk losing sight of the fundamentals of Marxism
itself. He’s right.
Nonetheless, I think we
should take up Lenin’s point as a kind of challenge. I think it is possible,
even in the space of a short meeting like this, to grasp the dialectic, and
therefore the fundamentals of the Marxist method, even if you know nothing
about it at the moment.
Some of you may already
have a good idea what the dialectic is all about, but I’m not going to assume
any knowledge at all.
The funny thing is, even
if you haven’t the faintest idea what the dialectic is, I bet you’ve used
dialectical reasoning to think through a tricky argument. Conversely, you’ll
have encountered people deploying very undialectical thinking - and you might
have instinctively realised that they were approaching the argument the wrong
way, but couldn’t necessarily put your finger on why.
Marx’s magnum opus, Capital, is often cited as the supreme
application of the dialectical method. The trouble is that Marx never fully
explains the methodology behind it, except in often quite cryptic asides and
footnotes. The dialectical method is implicit in the whole of Capital, but it would have been easier
if Marx had spelled it out more clearly. As with some many topics Marx intended
to write an explanation of his dialectic method, but, rather selfishly, he died
before getting around to it.
In this meeting, I’m
going to try to make Marx’s method explicit. In the process, I’m going to try
to make you all conscious of the kind of thought and reasoning that you might
previously have applied unconsciously.
Dialogue and the dialectic
The word “dialectic” comes
from the word “dialogue”. Dialogue of course simply means a conversation
between two or more people.
But in ancient Greek
philosophy the word acquired a more expansive meaning. The clashing of two
opposed points of view was seem as the way of getting to the truth. No single
viewpoint could be entirely trusted - instead the process of debate between
different perspectives was thought to lead to the truth.
This is why many ancient
Greek philosophers were also playwrights. Their plays used dialogue to explore
philosophical arguments, while their philosophic tracts were often similarly
structured as a contrived conversation between opposing points of view.
It’s a familiar idea to
all of us that in a debate contradictions arise between different points of
view and that - potentially - a more sophisticated understanding can result
from this clash of ideas.
The dialectical method
takes this notion much, much further. The dialectic, as developed by Marx and
Engels, suggests that the clashing of contradictions can be observed not only
in the evolution of ideas but also in social institutions like the economy and
the state, and in the flow of history.
At the heart of the
dialectic is motion, change,
development. For a long time thinkers proceeded
from the assumption that the world was made up of static objects, fixed ideas, unchanging social
structures. A tree is just a tree; human beings have always fallen in love and
fallen out with each other; the free market is eternal.
The dialectic reminds us
that everything is in motion - everything is historical, everything has a past and has a future, both of
which are different to the present. The tree was
once an acorn and will one day wither and decay; the kinds of relationships
human beings have with each other have changed radically in different
historical situations; capitalism arose because of the action of human beings
in particular historical circumstances - and could be abolished by a similar
process. Understood through the dialectic, a “moment” is both a single point in
time and a snapshot of a longer history.
If I had to some up the
dialectic in a couple of sentences, I'd say this: the dialectic is the logic of
change through contradiction. It is the theory of the processes involved in single
totality in other words, one system or one particular state of affairs
changing into another on the basis of its internal contradictions, of the
opposing forces at work within it.
It is most significant
as a method for understanding social change, change in human society.
If you've heard anything
about dialectic you might have heard these expressions before: totality (which
I've just mentioned), the unity of opposites, the negation of the negation, the
change from quantity into quality,
Those phrases sounds
like meaningless jargon - but don't be put off. The dialectic is not a way of
sounding clever in academic seminars, nor is it an obscure dogma. Everyone can
understand and apply it.
The dialectic helps us
to unravel the most complex problems - why at certain moments, such as in the
transition from feudalism to capitalism, history radically reconstitutes
itself. But is also helps us to figure out more humdrum problems - how can we
stop the cuts, how do we build strike action.
This is the first
meeting in the course: a rough guide to the Marxist method.
In this meeting I’m
going to mention the labour process but not fully explain Marx’s understanding
of work. I’ll touch on alienation but only in passing. I’m going to highlight
the significance of the dialectic for understanding history, but by no means
give a full account of historical materialism.
In other words, you’ll
have to stay the course if you want to get a full grounding in the Marxist
method - of which this meeting is simply laying the foundations.
I think the easiest way
to get to grips the dialectic is to briefly look at how it emerged so - I’m
going to start by briefly explaining how the philosopher Hegel developed the
dialectic in the early 19th century.
I’ll then move on to
explain how Karl Marx and Freiderich Engels adopted, but also radically
altered, Hegel’s method as a basis for his revolutionary critique of
capitalism.
Finally, I’ll try to
draw these threads together by showing why the dialectical method is the
keystone for the Marxist method of grasping the contradictions of capitalist
society.
In the beginning, there was Hegel
The German philosopher
GWF Hegel was born at the climax of the Enlightenment movement in Europe .
Intellectuals associated
with the Enlightenment championed science over superstition, toleration over
tyranny, education over ignorance.
Enlightenment ideas grew
from the revolutionary advances in science and technology made in the 17th
and 18th centuries. Craft manufacture and trading were boosted by huge
improvements in dying, metallurgy and navigation, while the increased use of
the printing press enabled new ideas to be disseminated like never before.
Accompanying
technological advance was the battle of ideas, as Enlightenment thinkers
argued, explicitly and implicitly, against feudal authority derived from God,
religion or tradition.
Hegel was perhaps the
last really important inheritor of the Enlightenment tradition. He was also its
most important critic, before Marx.
The French Revolution and German backwardness
The French Revolution begun
in 1789 was by far the most important event in Hegel’s lifetime. It profoundly
shaped his worldview.
This was one of the
crucial transitions in human history. French industry, technology and science
had advanced to the stage where it was probably only surpassed in England and
parts of Holland. The French word for the captains of this new industry was –
the bourgeoisie.
But this economic
advancement was not matched by political change. The absolute monarchy of King
Louis 16th, had, like his predecessors, made efforts to appease the rising bourgeoisie,
but had also to contend with the formidable power of the old aristocracy. For
years society continued in this way, with the bourgeoisie driving society
forward but remaining evicted from political power by the entrenched feudal
order. But eventually thousands of subtle changes in the economy built into a
tidal wave. Revolution became the most viable way to clear the way for further
capitalist development.
Before I move on I want
to draw your attention to two points about the description I've just offered,
because it wasn't just something I copied from Wikipedia. It's an example of a
dialectical analysis.
1. As
economic forces advance, old social and political relations, that had once been
quite adequate, become a fetter (or constraint) on a society's further
development.
2. A
gradual build up of small changes leads to a sudden, dramatic overall transformation
– a tipping point.
More on both of those
points later.
So, the French
Revolution swept aside the remnants of feudalism that had hampered the further
development of capitalism. This was not merely the transition to a new form of
class society; it was seen as the triumph of freedom and rationality. With
copies of Rousseau’s books in their hands, the Jacobins were putting the ideas
of the Enlightenment into practice.
Hegel was delighted by
the French Revolution and never lost faith with it, even in the days of
Napoleon and long after.
But Hegel didn't live in
France – he lived in what is now modern Germany, but what was then a collection
of petty principalities in the centre of Europe.
The various mini-states
in the Rhineland, Saxony and so on, had only puny fragments of the kind of
mighty industry developing in England and France. Consequently, the
bourgeoisie, the class of capitalists, was small and impotent.
It's true, the German
nobility sponsored a large number of universities, which were home to a growing
class of young intellectuals and students. But though many of these thinkers
had received a first rate education, they lacked the power to use these fine
ideas to improve their backward countries. Instead they were forced to act as
servants to feudal masters who were actually quite poor compared to their
English or French cousins, and were sometimes even illiterate.
So, for Hegel and his
German contemporaries, the material ability to bring about the radical change
being enacted in the French Revolution was manifestly absent.
It was this state of
affairs that later lead Marx famously to quip that the Germans achieved in
thought what others achieved in reality.
The vitalising power of ideas
As with so many of
Marx's aphorisms, it is an even more accurate a description than you might at
first imagine.
For the German speaking
middle classes, with very little prospect of taking control of the material
infrastructure of their society, it must have been very attractive to think that
society could be transformed purely by the power of powerful ideas.
This is exactly what
they came to believe. And none of them expressed this idealism more powerfully
than Hegel.
In April 1795 Hegel
wrote a letter to his friend and fellow philosopher Schelling. The letter is
worth quoting at length, because it drives to heart of Hegel’s outlook. It
makes explicit the connection between the revolution in ideas and the
revolution in society:
I believe that there is no better sign
of the times than the fact that mankind as such is being represented with so
much reverence, it is proof that the halo which has surrounded the heads of the
oppressors and gods of the earth has disappeared. The philosophers demonstrate
this dignity [of man]; the people will learn to feel it and will not merely
demand their rights, which have been trampled in the dust, but will themselves
take and appropriate them...With the spreading of the ideas about how things
should be, there will disappear the indolence of those who always sit tight and
take everything as it is. The vitalizing power of ideas even if they still have
some limitation...will raise the spirits.
This passage conveys one
of the enduring themes of Hegel’s philosophy.
If you wanted to start a
political party based on Hegel's philosophy at this time – the “New Young
Hegelians” perhaps – you ought to take as your main slogan these words: “the
vitalizing power of ideas”.
Hegel, then, was an
idealist.
But he didn't just have
his head in the clouds. In this passage, Hegel is arguing that there is a
relationship between the real world and ideas.
But, in opposition to
Kant, Hegel nevertheless insists on that there is a real world that thought can
know. He sees thought and reality as opposites (a unity of opposites), he does
not dissolve one into the other.
Hegel’s method: the Master-Slave dialectic
What crystallises from
Hegel’s writing is a new philosophical method - the dialectic. This method is
perhaps most succinctly described in a well known section in his book,
Phenomenology of Spirit, called the dialectic of lordship and bondage - better
known as the Master-Slave dialectic.
In this section, Hegel
shows how the condition of servitude contains within it the latent possibility
of liberation.
Hegel introduces the
bondsman simply as one who “lives in fear of the lord.”
The lord and the
bondsman are “two unequal and opposed...shapes of consciousness.”
The lord is the
independent consciousness who exists for himself. The bondsman only exists to
fulfil the needs of the lord.
But while the lord only
gains a “fleeting” satisfaction from consuming the fruits of another’s labour,
the bondsman, by contrast, achieves a growing consciousness of his own powers
through the work that he does for the lord.
Hegel’s description
prefigures Marx’s conception of the significance of work:
...in fashioning the thing, he becomes
aware that...he himself exists essentially and actually in his own right...the
bondsman realises that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have
only an alienated existence that he acquires a mind of his own.
Although the bondsman
was originally bound to perform alienated labour for the lord, through the
process of performing that work he discovers a “mind of his own”, realising a
higher form of consciousness.
The different stages of
the process conform to the classic Hegelian triad: thesis, antithesis,
synthesis.
The first stage is the
lord’s dominance over the bondsman. The second is the bondman's labour on the
object. The conflict between these two terms leads to the emergence of a new
consciousness in the bondsman.
Or, to put it another
way, the bondsman and lord form a contradictory totality, a unity of opposites.
The final part – the new
consciousness of the bondsman – is the part referred to in dialectics as “the
negation of the negation.” Don't be put off by that phrase if you're not
familiar with it. It's still very simple: the bondsman's work on the object
negated the lord’s domination over him; the new consciousness he then achieves
is the negation of that negation.
It's just like in a
conversation or a dialogue – the first person puts an argument, the second
negates it with a contrary argument; the first person doesn't simply repeat
themselves (in an ideal scenario), they develop their argument in relation to
what the second person: the negation must be negated.
The Master-Slave
dialectic confirms both the revolutionary implications of Hegel’s approach and
its idealism.
Hegel sees the road to
human development running through work. He also depicts the advance of
consciousness going through the mind of the servant, not the master.
But we should note: only
the bondsman's consciousness has been transformed, not his actual relation to
the lord.
If any of you have ever
tried this yourselves, you'll know the limits. Saying to your tyrannical boss:
I've gone home and had a really good think, and it strikes me that the relation
is irrational and unfair...well you're unlikely to effect a transformation in
the social relations in society, although you might liberate yourself from that
particular job.
So, Hegel’s
contradiction is resolved only at the level of ideas. There has been a
revolution in thought, but not a revolution in social relations. Hegel’s
dialectic begins with the bondsman’s subservient consciousness to the lord and
ends with his consciousness being transformed. Material reality – the bondsman’s
labour on the object – is relegated to the mediating middle term.
Despite his radical
youth, Hegel ended up supported the Prussian state and its monarchy. This was
partly because in Hegel’s dialectic material reality was merely the stage
through which thought travelled on it’s path to greater understanding. The
“resolution” was not any real change, but merely the recognition that two
contradictory aspects of a concept could be reconciled into a fuller
understanding.
Thus Hegel argued that
there was no real contradiction between monarchy and civil society (i.e. the bourgeoisie and the free market), as long as they were mediated through a legislature,
some form of parliament.
Ultimately, Hegel's
idealist approach posed no threat to a reactionary state. Hegel’s dialectic had
a conservative outcome in which reality remains unchanged.
Marx and Engels’ dialectic
This is where we're
going to leave Hegel, and see how the dialectic was transformed by Marx.
Marx did with Hegel's
dialectic exactly what you would expect him to do: he inverted it.
Instead of beginning and
ending the dialectic with consciousness, Marx's dialectic begins and ends with
material reality.
Marx realised that Hegel’s
was a pseudo-dialectic. He realised that the material conditions of class society
– and especially of capitalism – gave rise to real material contradictions that
could not be resolved at the level of ideas.
Marx and Engels praised
Hegel for recognising the importance of work – the way human beings create and
recreate their own world through their labour. But where Hegel saw this as
exclusively timeless intellectual labour, Marx and Engels understood it is
material and historically-specific human labour.
A second important
influence on Marx's thinking was another German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach.
Feuerbach was a
materialist. He criticised Hegel, arguing that ideas – including the idea of
god – were a product of human activity taking place in the material world.
But there was a problem
with Feuerbach’s materialism. While he rejected god and religion, he viewed
human nature as something that did not change.
This is an argument that
we regularly encounter today – that people are just product of circumstances.
So, although he correctly rejected Hegel’s idealism,
Feuerbach had removed what was revolutionary in Hegel’s thought – the concept
that society and ideas were continually changing.
Marx agreed with
Feuerbach’s materialism, but was determined to preserve what was revolutionary
in Hegel's system.
Marx and Engels didn’t
simply substitute material reality for ideas - they think ideas are very
important! Changing ideas is the crucial middle term of the dialectic - that’s
why we’re here at Marxism. It’s crucial that material struggle is connected to
a transformation of ideas.
Importantly, Marx
recognised that humans don’t have a fixed nature.
Our nature is to labour on
the natural world to meet our needs, and because, unlike in animals, this is
done through conscious reflection, humans are capable of learning,
experimenting, and developing. At a certain point this development gives rise
to the production of a surplus and class divisions. We have a history driven by
culture, not just by biology.
From their dialectical materialist
standpoint, Marx and Engels argued that class society was driven forward by
class conflict.
Marx and Engels adapted
3 key parts of the dialectic from Hegel:
1.
the world is in a constant process of change
2.
the world is a totality
3.
that totality is internally contradictory
1. Motion (and quantity and quality)
I began the meeting by
saying that the dialectic treats everything as being in motion.
In mainstream thinking we
are encouraged to see everything as static - but in reality everything is
constantly changing. Some things change over a long period of time, other
rapidly.
From the standpoint of
human experience, the climate of the earth seems basically stable. The sun
rises and sets, the seasons come and go. These sequences seem to be circular -
but are in fact more like a spiral: the sun slowly ages, the climactic
conditions are slowly evolving. Every breath you take feels just the same as
the one before, but in reality you're one step closer to death.
But in truth climate
change under the influence of capitalism is likely to reach a tipping point.
All the individual emissions of CO2 will gradually build up until, all of
sudden, there will be a qualitative shift in our environment - runaway climate
change.
This is another aspect
of the dialectic - the relationship between quantity and quality.
If you blow up a
balloon, puff by puff you increase the quantity of air inside. Then all at once
it bursts. If you heat water one degree at a time, it will stay as water right
up to 100 degrees Celsius - when it suddenly transforms into steam. Quantitative
changes build up to a qualitative shift.
This process can be
observed in human society.
I want to add an
important caveat at this point - there is a crucial difference between dialectics
of nature of human society - human consciousness and human agency. Once water
in a kettle reaches 100 degrees it is certain that it will transform into steam.
If dozen workers in a workplace are threatened with the sack it is not certain either
that their colleagues will go on strike of that they will acquiesce - the
outcome will be shaped by the conscious activity of those involved.
But with this important
qualification the transformation of quantity into quality can be observed in
human society. Mark Duggan was hardly the first black man to die in police
custody - but his death proved to be the last straw, the last in a huge series
of police provocations that sparked last summer’s riots.
In Egypt the revolution seemed
to come out of nowhere - but look deeper into that society and you could see
that thousands of specific provocations from the dictatorship, the rising price
of food on the world market and the growing strike waves had built to fuel the
revolution.
A revolution seems
impossible until it actually happens, because small, discreet pressures in
society build and then suddenly explode.
2. Totality
Mainstream thought
encourages us to ignore the way that individual things are connected with the
rest of society.
For postmodernists in
universities and neoliberal politicians and economists, society is composes of
separate individuals, concepts and points of view, points of light in the dark,
which are only coincidentally connected and can't be understood in the
round.
Let’s return to the
example of last summer’s riots: the media tried to insist it was merely an
expression of “mindless criminality”, it couldn’t be explained. Infact there
were a whole series of interlocking causes - the scrapping of Educational Maintenance
Allowance, increases in tuition fees, high youth unemployment, and the
alienation that flows from all of these. Specific causes are anchored in the
totality of capitalist society at any given moment.
If the ruling class does
offer an explanation of problems in society, they typically imply the problem
is external. Alfred Marshall, a key
founder “neoclassical” economics suggested economic problems were caused by
“sun spots” - something so external to capitalism that it wasn’t even on planet
earth.
The current crisis is
often characterised as being caused by overbearing state intervention - or
conversely by a lack intervention in the market to stop the recklessness of
bankers. In other words, whatever problems are indentified they must lie
outside the free market, extrinsic to capitalism.
For Marxists the causes
of crisis are intrinsic to capitalism.
3. The unity of opposites
The dynamism of
capitalism, as a totality is, then, a result of it being a contradictory
totality.
At the heart of
capitalism’s morass of contradictions lies the relationship between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Bosses and workers form
a unity of opposites. The bourgeoisie bring the proletariat into existence -
the proletariat is the negation of the bourgeoisie. The workers’ dissolution of
capitalism is the negation of the negation, because the working class abolishes
itself, ultimately dissolving itself and the ruling class into a classless
society. This is the equivalent of Hegel’s synthesis - but the contradiction is
resolved in the material world, not merely in the mind.
As literary critic Terry
Eagleton argued at Marxism last year, the bourgeoisie is like a tragic hero, full
of boundless energy, but riven by internal flaws and contradictions that lead
to its own downfall.
Agency
None of this means that abolishing
of capitalism is easy or inevitable, because history of made by human beings.
As Marx famously put it, “Men [which we should edit to say “humans”] make their
own history, but they do not make it as they please”, they do not make it under
conditions of their own choosing.
Capitalism creates the
conditions for its own abolition, and the class capable of carrying it out -
but that doesn’t make the death of capitalism inevitable. It takes the
conscious action of human beings to make it a reality.
History turning on its heel
It is received wisdom to
imagine that change happens gradually and in a broadly linear fashion.
Disruptive events like revolutions are just that - disruptions to the otherwise
tranquil onward march of history.
This view, which is in
part a vulgarisation of Enlightenment ideas, is not true. You don’t need to
have read Hegel’s Science of Logic or
even any of Marx to know it’s not true. Whether it’s the chaos of the eurozone
crisis or the drama of the Egyptian Revolution, real life is constantly
providing examples of rapid shifts in reality, dizzying reversals, history turning
on its heel.
Rosa Luxemburg once
wrote:
...the vital core, the quintessence, of the entire
Marxist doctrine is the dialectical materialist method of social inquiry, a
method for which no phenomena, or principles, are fixed and unchanging, for
which there is no dogma, for which Mephistopheles’ comment, “reason turns to
madness, kindness to torment,” stands as a motto over the affairs of
human Society; and for which every historical “truth” is subject to a perpetual
and remorseless criticism by actual historical developments.
The dialectic gives us
the tools to explain the ceaseless movements of history - in order to change
its course.
