Brian Hamilton-Vise

Hegel’s critique of capitalism

Herbert Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution is proving to be a fantastic read. His explanation of Hegel’s thought is clearer than I would have thought possible–a really exemplary piece of secondary literature in all respects, actually–and he’s particularly good at laying waste to the ‘ahistorical historicist’ caricature of Hegel. That is, although Hegel is fiercely concerned with history and historical development in his philosophy, he’s commonly criticized for ‘idealizing’ history to an absurd degree, leaving concrete reality and history behind and just treating the ideas of reality and history. But Marcuse shows how profoundly concrete and empirical Hegel’s concepts are, even when most seemingly abstract. And he treats Hegel’s political writings right alongside his more ‘purely’ philosophical ones, so it becomes perfectly apparent that both belong to the same line of thought.

Most surprising to me has been the discovery of just how much in Marx is just a repetition of Hegel. (Having fallen victim to the ahistoricist caricature, I assumed Hegel’s main contribution was just the idea of alienation, understood mostly without reference to sociology.) But witness this critique of his own economic situation–forget all I’ve just said, and you’ll think you’re reading something from Capital:

bq. The individual is subject to the complete confusion and hazard of the whole. A mass of the population is condemned to the stupefying, unhealthy and insecure labor of factories, manufactories, mines, and so on. Whole branches of industry which supported a large bulk of the population suddenly fold up because the mode changes or because the values of their products fall on account of new inventions in other countries or for other reasons. Whole masses are thus abandoned to helpless poverty. The conflicts between vast wealth and vast poverty steps forth, a poverty unable to improve its condition. Wealth becomes … a predominant power. Its accumulation takes place party by chance, partly through the general mode of distribution…. Acquisition develops into a many-sided system which ramifies into fields from which smaller business cannot profit. The utmost abstractness of labor reaches into the most individual types of work and continues to widen its sphere. This inequality of wealth and poverty, this need and necessity turn into the utmost dismemberment of will, inner rebellion and hatred.

7 May 2009 | Comments (0)
Tags: G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx