Introduction [to Capitalism, Alienation and Critique]

Introduction [to Capitalism, Alienation and Critique] [[i.e. to my next book, Asger Sørensen: Capitalism, Alienation and Critique. Studies in Economy and Dialectics (Vol. I of Dialectics, Deontology and Democracy (DDD)), NSU Press, forthcoming. Content Preface Introduction Presentation Interlude: Arguing for Classical Critical Theory. Horkheimer, Marcuse et al. Part one: Economy 1. An Alternative Agenda for Political Economy. Durkheim et al. 2. From Restricted Economics to General Economy – and Back. Bataille Part two: Dialectics 3. On the Contribution of Dialectics. Plato et al. 4. Totalizing Negativity and Change. Bataille 5. From Ontology to Epistemology. Tong, Mao and Hegel 6. Critique presupposes Alienation. Hegel 7. On the Way to Liberation. Marcuse Postscript: Continuing the Critique of Capitalism and Political Economy Acknowledgements - thus consisting of the present introduction, a presentation (of DDD I-III); an interlude (“Arguing for Classical Critical Theory”), Part one: Economy (chap 1, “Value, Business and Globalisation - Sketching a critical conceptual framework”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 39, No. 1-2, 2002, pp. 161-67; and chap 2, “On a Universal Scale. Economy in Bataille’s General Economy”, Philosophy of Social Criticism, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2012, pp. 169-97) and Part two: Dialectics (chap 3, “Dialectics - a commentary to Singer: "Global business and the dialectic"”, Human Systems Management, Vol. 21, 2003, pp. 267-69); chap 4, “The Inner Experience of Living Matter. Bataille and dialectics”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2007, pp. 597-615; chap 5, “Contradictions are Theoretical, neither Material nor Practical. On Dialectics in Tong, Mao and Hegel”, Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 46, 2011, pp. 37-59; chap 6, “Not Work, but Alienation and Education. Bildung in Hegel’s Phenomenology”, Hegel-Studien, Vol. 49, 2015, pp. 57-88, 2015; and chap 7, “The Role of Dialectics in Critical Theory. Marcuse Revisited” in Terry Maley (ed.): Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, Halifax: Fernwood, forthcoming); and a postscript (“Continuing the Critique of Capitalism and Political Economy”)), all of which can be encountered at my academica.edu homepage, some of them in unpublished versions.]] It all begins with an experience. It can be the experience of pity, rage or anger, or anxiety, all of them the result of being confronted with human degradation and suffering, and wondering how this can be possible, knowing very well that often sufficient resources are ready at hand, and realizing that a lot of people, maybe even most people, know about this, but somehow they nevertheless prefer to turn the blind eye to all the mess, or simply give up, probably precisely because they cannot cope with experiencing social reality after all. Or, alternatively, it can be an experience of the kind that engenders for the individual self such joy or desire, or just pleasure, that everything else does not seem to matter, creating an enthusiasm so overwhelming that it, however, also tends to make one private, insensitive or just careless in relation to one’s surroundings, indifferent to whether they are in pain or not, simply being satisfied with how things are developing for oneself. The point is that ignorance or misrecognition, being just preoccupied with oneself, whatever its roots and flavour, can become habitual, and that this is a threat to social relations and thus to the coherence of society. This problem is well recognized and discussed in various forms of social critique, among them the kind of Critical theory I was raised with intellectually, both recently by Axel Honneth and originally decades ago by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, the latter two being preoccupied with the authoritarian coldness and the lack of compassion demonstrated by the bourgeois persona. This, however, was never just a matter of personal traits or qualities. Instead of just thinking in terms of psychology, one has to pass from social psychology to sociology and social philosophy. As indicated by the qualification ‘bourgeois’ some societies are more prone to engender personal coldness than others, i.e. some societies either demand or provoke more self-centred ignorance than others. Capitalist class societies are surely to be expected to fall in the former category, allowing, stimulating and actively fostering difference, inequality, exploitation and ultimately real material poverty, alienating lots of people from the society they are supposed to feel part of by the all too visible examples of blatant injustice. The outset is thus real experiences of real injustice and alienation. Of course these realities are perceived, as all experiences are, but they are perceived as real, i.e. as having a real material impact, both on the subjects perceiving the injustices, thus feeling sad or outraged, and also on the objects, i.e. human beings, first being treated unfairly or even indecently, having to give up in despair their work, house, or even their food, then surviving on the mercy of class society, gradually loosing self-respect and will power, i.e. the strength to fight for your own dignity, eventually becoming degraded in a way that makes them less to be pitied than disgusted by those having had the fortune to be able to maintain and refine their humane tastes and appetites. Hence, I will insist that injustice and alienation are something all too real in capitalist society. In other words: The misdeeds of capitalism are the truth taken for granted beforehand. Wealth is unevenly distributed, this is not due to any kind of merit or desert, and there nothing noble about poverty and misery. However, it is a source of both comfort and hope that some people, in spite of all the hardship experienced, for some of them even in generations, manage to uphold themselves morally as well as aesthetically. It is for this reason it is still worth criticizing capitalism. Capitalism produce injustice and alienation by appealing to the what is less than human, thus corrupting and holding down that in human beings which ought to be nurtured. Those glimpses of humanity, however, in spite of all, reminds us that humanity has survived as potentially human since its outset long before history, and therefore it is reasonable to continue fighting for its further and maybe even full realization. It is simply part of being human. * It is sentiments such as these that have motivated the reflections that are presented in this book, even if they may seem rather diverse. What they express is a horizon that today might best be called a kind of cultural Marxism. Such a horizon was widespread among scholars in the 20th century up until at least my generation, resulting in the belief that perceptions and experiences as those just referred to are to be understood, at least partly, as a consequence of and thus characteristic of a particular economic system with a logic that has a specific historical birth and therefore, as a specific historical formation, it may also be imagined to be overcome and eventually thus disappear. This cultural Marxism may be understood in the same sense one speaks of cultural Christianity or Islam, i.e. communities sharing commonplaces and presuppositions even without having read the Holy Scriptures, and even if some of the members are very critical about the commonplaces in question. Defining traits of this shared cultural horizon is a special sensitivity to socially inflicted human suffering, a strong emphasis on the importance of the material aspects of what Charles Taylor as called “ordinary life” Charles Taylor: Sources of the Self, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1989, p. zxz., i.e. trivial down-to-earth issues such as work and economy, as well the presupposed historicity of our current societal predicaments. What it takes for granted that this whole through dialectics can be understood as one system, and therefore that the actual social injustice encountered in the present society should not be considered as merely arbitrary. It is assumed that what is human made, may also be changed, namely through concerned and coordinated efforts by human beings, i.e. through politics. Therefore it is worth to consider and discuss our current societal situation, hence conducting social and political analysis as well as criticism to enable us to change our conditions in a reasonable way, i.e. through some kind of social democracy involving the population at large, i.e. also ordinary people, so to say. However, within this cultural horizon politics is to be understood in a rather broad sense, being open to all kinds of activities, parliamentary as well as extra parliamentary, governmental as well as non-governmental, including such practices that today would often be labelled as terrorism, seeing in radical revolts the possible germs for the hoped for revolutionary change. Within this broadly defined cultural horizon one finds various strands of Critical Theory, each emphasizing different aspects of human reality thus perceived. Ever since I started working on these matters I have taken for granted the pervasive influence of the material living conditions forced upon us, though not thinking of it as totally determining the content and thus the possibilities of human consciousness. Assuming thus the possibility in some sense of freedom in both thought and action, I have nevertheless constantly been interested in the dynamics and causal logic of capitalist economy as a system, and many have been the cases where I have simply referred to these matters as part of a critique of some ideology, be that ethical, political, or educational. For some recent examples, see Asger Sørensen, "The Law of Peoples in the Age of Empire: The Post-Modern Resurgence of the Ideology of Just War," Journal of the Philosophy of International Law 6, no. 1 (2015); Asger Sørensen, "Cosmopolitan Democracy and the State. Reflections on the Need for Ideals and Imagination," Journal of Constitutionalism & Human Rights 3-4, no. 8 (2015). Asger Sørensen, "Cosmopolitanism - Not a 'Major Ideology', but still an Ideology," Philosophy & Social Criticism 42, no. 2 (2016). These texts will be included in Politics, Education and Peace, i.e. the book that forms volume III of the present work, Dialectics, Deontology and Democracy, hereafter referred to as DDD. Parallel with such studies I have therefore also from time to time tried to dig a little deeper into the substance of the capitalist system, and within a horizon as the aforementioned, at least two elements are crucial, economics and dialectics. Compiled in this book are thus seven chapters, two on economy and five on dialectics. * All the main chapters are written independently of each other as standalone articles, each having its special occasion, not being thought of as possible elements of a book like this. They are presented in their original form, revised only linguistically, hence with no changes in order to achieve consistency in the arguments. In principle they can therefore be read in the same way. One way or the other, you will be introduced to various aspects of Capitalism, Alienation and Critique. However, as indicated, the two parts, i.e. economy and dialectics, are not coincidental. They may have emerged intuitively, but in hindsight I take them to constitute two crucial elements in the generational horizon, each referring a main constituent of Marx’ thought, i.e. on the one hand Adam Smith, Ricardo et al., on the other Hegel. Thus, economy and dialectics may be said to define the constellation of texts presented here. In each of the parts the texts are compiled such as to make it possible to read them as a continuous philosophical reflection developing themes along the way. Uneven as they are in size, in both two parts the texts are thus ordered chronologically according to when the basic research was in fact carried out, and thus the order the basic conclusions were reached, disregarding when the texts were revised and eventually published. For further details on the origins of the texts, e.g. where they were first published, see the chapter on Acknowledgements in the back of the book. This ordering of the parts reveals another fact they have in common. Both of the articles introducing the two parts thus takes as their point of departure the two major subject disciplines taught at business schools, i.e. economics and organizational studies. Hence, it is somewhat ironic that, with the horizon just described, the first place to accept me in academia after the Ph.D. was the Copenhagen Business School (CBS). This being the original context, the two texts are both somehow submissive to the realities of business, allowing the philosophical concepts to be used mainly as tools for purposes ultimately foreign to them. What they reveal, however, is also a certain asymmetry. What I learned at the CBS was that it was in fact much easier for the business world to relate to a left wing agenda of political economy than to philosophy proper. With leftists one can negotiate, making the disagreement a matter of money and power, whereas philosophers have an agenda that is even more provoking, not recognizing the priority of individualized needs, desires and greed, thus delegitimizing business activity as such. Hence to business taking a genuine interest in metaphysics and thus dialectics is even more incommensurable, incomprehensible and thus provocative than diverging on issues concerning political economy. Allowing myself to be defined by dialectics even more than by economy, ultimately a business school could not cater me. Gradually my reflections on both the issues grew out of the business context, For my reflections upon leaving, see Asger Sørensen: “FLØK in memoriam”, Studietidsskriftet Hvorfor, no. 3, spring 2009, p. 86-97. having today found an appropriate setting at the School of Education at Aarhus University (AU). Still, the generosity of the business world, always willing to take a chance for the sake of profit, gave me the opportunity to continue and develop my philosophical investigations, thus ultimately being able to provide concepts for wider uses than merely market competition and capitalist exploitation. This is what I offer here. Hence in one sense this compilation is a collage, and from time to time I have even considered it a bricolage, i.e. a pastime hobby project or a daydream, the idea of which I would play with in order to escape all the more serious burdens ready at hand in the daily work as a philosopher of education. However, by making the compilation a real project, somehow a logic and a line of thought has emerged that I hope to reconstruct to appear as persuasive as I today think it is. One element of this reconstruction has been presented above, namely the list of content, demonstrating a line of thought by a sequence of post hoc mutually adjusted titles. A second element is the present introduction, the reading of which I hope have already given you an idea of the project, thus preparing you for what is to come. Hence, having completed the introduction, I hope that you will be eager to continue reading the chapters, and that this will eventually confirm the mooding that I have attempted here. * Compiling these philosophical works under the title Capitalism, Alienation and Critique, and thus making a case for identifying myself with Critical Theory in the sense mentioned above, have made me realize that there is an important element although mostly absent, but still taken for granted in the main chapters, namely the very idea of Critical Theory. Before the main articles in the compilation, I have therefore squeezed in an, admittedly rather long, interlude about what I take to be the basic presupposition of my work compiled here, i.e. the classical idea of Critical Theory, arguing that it should not distance itself too far from the basic approach of the first generation, with all the philosophical and political radicalism this implies. The reason for both the absence and the return is my somehow troubled relationship to the mainstream tradition of Critical Theory. Originally I was presented to Horkheimer’s “Traditional and Critical Theory” as well as Jürgen Habermas’ “Knowledge and Human Interest” already in my first semester as a philosophy student on the University of Copenhagen in 1980. Early in my career, i.e. as a post graduate student in the mid-1980s, I wrote on Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectics of Enlightenment, including Habermas and Honneth’s attempts to get beyond its aporias, and that made a lasting impression on me. Still, the impression was initially one of horror and disbelief, not being willing to accept the conclusions of the radical critique of civilization, but being already somehow enrolled in Critical Theory, thus finding the logic of history and socialization so compelling that I did not see any way out of it. For an inside account of the strong impression that could be left by the said Dialectics in those days, see an account of the director of the Frankfurt Institute in the 1990s: Helmut Dubiel: “Die Streit um der Erbschaft der kritischen Theorie” in Dubiel: Ungewiβheit und Politik, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, p. 230-247. Reading Georges Bataille became my escape and the subject of my first dissertation, subtitled Bataille in the light of Hegel, Marx et al., i.e. Critical Theory. See my dissertation for the Danish mag.art. degree, Asger Sørensen, Suverænitet. Bataille set i lyset af Hegel, Marx & Co. (Københavns Universitet, 1992). See also chap. 3 in Asger Sørensen. I lyset af Bataille – politisk filosofiske studier Rævens sorte bibliotek. Edited by Johannes Sohlmann (København: Politisk Revy, 2012)., which was originally published in 1994, summarizing the main argument of the dissertation. Not being convinced that Habermas’ communicative paradigm provided an answer to the worries caused by the said Dialectics, I still continued in my work to refer to Horkheimer and Habermas, but did not pursue Critical Theory per se. Instead it was through Bataille that I investigated into the two generational pillars, i.e. economy and dialectics, as can be seen in both part one and two. Bataille was a kind of a crossbred illegitimate child incorporating in his thinking various intellectual traditions, some of which I already could relate to when I discovered him, namely the French Hegelianism stemming from Kojève, as well as psychoanalysis, Dadaism and surrealism. It was only much later I returned to the infamous Dialectics of Enlightenment, having allowed myself to be commissioned to write a comprehensive introduction to Critical Theory. See Asger Sørensen. "Kritisk teori." Chap. 6 In Videnskabsteori: i statskundskab, sociologi og forvaltning, edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, and Peter Nedergaard, 168-195 (København: Hans Reitzel, 2010). This became an opportunity to look more closely into the basic matters again that settled a lot of issues, making me more at ease with classical Critical Theory and stimulating my recent studies of Herbert Marcuse. Most of my original work on these matters was carried out in Danish. Addressing now an international audience, what I am reconstructing in the interlude is therefore somehow an anachronism, i.e. an idea of Critical Theory that could be held around 30 years ago, but that I must admit that I still hold dear. Hence the interlude is the most recently written text in the compilation, but that means that when it comes to basic textual studies of classical Critical Theory there is a slip from the middle of the 1980s until rather recently. Thus passing from the interlude to part one or two, on the one hand means leaping forward around 15 years, i.e. from say 1986 until 2001, when chapter one and three were in fact written. On the other hand, it also means moving 15 years backwards, namely from the time of completing the present interlude, i.e. now in 2016, and back to 2001. Thus the studies presented in the compilation in fact stretches over more than three decades, going back to when I first entered the university. However, the actual research and the writing of the first four chapters only dates back to my time at CBS, whereas the last three chapters are all the fruits of the generosity of my present employer AU, just as is the rest of the book. * Making the compilation a project another thing struck me, namely the unevenness mentioned earlier, i.e. that as a work on Capitalism, Alienation and Critique it did not give the critique of political economy the space that I actually think it deserves. Realizing this, I gave myself the privilege to write a postscript attempting to offer a follow up on part one, providing some contemporary critical perspectives on political economy, thus trying to make up for my neglect so far regarding these basic issues that I hold as constitutive for Critical Theory, and hoping that it will eventually be only the first of such attempts. Further, the present compilation is planned as volume one out of three, together assembling a wide selection of my studies in practical philosophy and planned to be unified as a trilogy under the title Dialectics, Deontology and Democracy. Studies in Practical Philosophy. Hence, before the interlude on Critical Theory, i.e. immediately after the introduction, I will present the comprehensive idea behind this project, thus introducing systematically some common substance in the work collected under the said title. Ultimately, however an introduction must of course introduce more directly to the work that is collected in a volume such as this. Having now explained the genealogical logic of the present volume, I will therefore present briefly the sequence of works that are supposed to constitute the first element of this unity. * The presentation of the trilogy thus explains the basic idea of the title, Dialectics, Deontology and Democracy as pointing to three different, but equally valid, obligatory and necessary ways of relating to social reality, the first through dialectics, stimulating critique and imagination as to how things could be different, the second through deontology as recognizing the duties of being human, but precisely therefore also questioning various claims to validity, and finally the third through democracy realizing that social reality ultimately only consists in human practice and therefore we can change things to the better, if we really want to. No that it is easy though, but it is our duty as human beings. The interlude argues to maintain Critical Theory in its most classical version, i.e. as the program for critical social science proposed by Horkheimer and Marcuse, allowing philosophy to play a crucial role for science as a political practice. Science must describe the truth, but social science cannot describe the truth of society, since the true society, and thus freedom, justice and equality, has still not been realized. Critical Theory thus makes a case for science to engage in emancipatory activities that can be considered liberating theoretically as well as practically. In a capitalist society, the truth of which is injustice and alienation, theory must be critical rather than affirmative, but dialectical thinking means the possibility to point beyond critique. Unfortunately the pessimist philosophy of history proposed in Dialectics of Enlightenment seems to have overwhelmed not just its authors, but also later generations of Critical Theorist. Against Habermas I argue that the proposed communicative paradigm is neither necessary, nor fortunate for Critical Theory. Communicative action is not likely to succeed with a prior gain of consciousness that critique of political economy provides very well, and the dichotomy of instrumental and communicative action weakens the link to the critique of political economy and thus the possibility of a radical and transformative critique of capitalist society. Being almost a contemporary with Honneth I admit that he conveys very well the sentiments caused by the reading of the Dialectics. Still, against Honneth it is argued that reducing Critical Theory to social philosophy may maintain the critique as radical and material, pointing the life being damaged by capitalist modernity, but it nevertheless threatens to make the critique politically impotent due to its very radicality, thus being incapable of pointing beyond the existing social order. The seven main chapters are, as mentioned, divided into two parts, Economy and Dialectics, both being introduced by articles written on the business school, one offering a conceptual reflection on value in economy, the other discussing dialectics prompted by an interest in organisational issues. Within the cultural horizon mentioned above, one can say that I depart from an ambition to understand the dynamics of globalized capitalist economy in terms of political philosophy, but then turn to a more classical philosophical ambition, namely to look into the very idea of dialectics as a crucial element in knowing the truth of society, i.e. both understanding and criticizing the current social order, as well as developing emancipatory and liberating proposals. In the first part, chapter one is on the one hand true to the cultural Marxism described above, demonstrating sympathy for the riots and protests against capitalist globalization that took place by the end of the last millennium. Still, on the other hand, after an interlude hailing the basics of Critical Theory, arguing for the continued relevance of the positivist tradition of Durkhiem et al. may seem a strange place to begin the critique of political economy. For me, however, due to my long detour over Bataille, this became the possible point of departure for a research project that could accommodate both the business settings and the traditional ambitions of the cultural Marxism, i.e. a normative exploration and critique of political economy. The argument departs from the fact that value is a basic concept in economics, ethics and sociology. Locke made labour the source of value, whereas Smith referred to an ideal exchange and Kant specified that commodities only have a market price, no intrinsic value. I then distinguish between two modern concepts of value: one that is economic, trying to explain value in terms of utility, interest or preferences; and one that is ideal, values to be ends in themselves. On this basis, Durkheim constructed his theory of value, which was elaborated by his followers Mauss and Bouglé, and further by Bataille. Their line of thought provides a comprehensive concept of value that can insist on the necessity of value creation in both an economic and a social sense. Employing further developments of this tradition makes it possible to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to criticize neo-liberalism, big business and the effects of globalisation, while at the same time defending the moral value of business, calling attention to the social quality of small concrete markets, and offering an affirmative sociological understanding of the anti-globalization protests. Chapter two analyses Bataille’s idea of a general economy in relation to political economy. In the first section I present the critical perspective on economy that is necessary in order to appreciate Bataille’s conception of general economy, i.e. the critique of Durkheim et al. The second section present the general economy, first considered in a macro-perspective, which comprises the whole of the universe, second in a micro-perspective, where the subjective aspect of economy is maintained as non-objectified desire and inner experience. In the third section I turn to the general economy as it was explicitly intended, namely as a political economy. First I argue that the suggestions that Bataille himself presents are apolitical in an ordinary sense of politics, and that this can be shown to be due to some conceptual slides between nature and society and between history and ontology. I then sketch some postmodern attempts to legitimize respectively capitalism and communism, which refer to the general economy, but argue finally that Bataille can escape both, since he maintains the important distinction between need and desire. Although Bataille’s conception of economy thus reminds us of aspects often overlooked by economy in an ordinary sense, it also contains some serious aporias, which means that it cannot constitute the theoretical basis of a new general political economy, as Bataille had hoped. This conclusion marks the outset of the postscript’s return to a more traditional critique of political economy, criticizing contemporary economics in relation to injustice and alienation. The second part introduces dialectics by chapter three, providing a short reply to a suggestion that dialectics could be useful for organization studies, providing means to understand ambiguities, contrasts, paradoxes, dilemmas and value-differences. As an answer to the implications of this suggestion, dialectics is presented in a very classical philosophical way, i.e. taking it all the way from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, emphasizing the aim of truth and the Hegelian idea in the Phenomenology of Spirit of substituting abstract scepticism with the determinate negation. It is emphasized that traditionally dialectics is not just one scheme of thought among others, providing convenient tools for analysis, but the one and only way to achieve true knowledge. The employment of dialectics would thus reveal the conflicts experienced in organisational studies to be merely apparent and in principle able to done away with by employing dialectics in a comprehensive sense, aiming at the truth of reality as a whole. Chapter four takes up the dialectical aspect in the work of Bataille that is often neglected. At the suggestion of Foucault and Derrida, Bataille is most often even taken to be a non-dialectical thinker. However, as I argue, Bataille worked intensely with Hegel’s ideas, his thought was expressed in Hegelian terms, and both his epistemology and ontology can be considered a determinate negation of Hegel’s position in the Phenomenology. This I argue, first, by analysing Bataille’s notions of the ‘inner experience’ of the consciousness, and, second, by showing how Bataille extends dialectics to the natural, non-human realm, even conceiving of the link between the human and non-human as dialectical in itself. However, once we see the dialectical nature of his theoretical stance, we are also struck by a conspicuous vagueness in his practical conception of where society ought to be going. Chapter five departs from a concept of dialectics held by Tong Shijun that can also be found in Mao’s writings and in classical Chinese philosophy, understanding dialectics as mainly practical and material. Having presented Mao’s idea of dialectics, I argue that Tong is ambivalent in his attitude to dialectics in this sense, and for this reason he recommends that Chinese philosophy focus more on formal logic. In contrast I argue that with another concept of dialectics, Tong can have dialectics without giving up on logic and epistemology. This argument is substantiated through an analysis of dialectics that discuss the different interpretations of Hegelian dialectics that can be found in the Marxist tradition, typically emphasizing an ontological idea of dialectical-material change. Instead I advocate the epistemological dialectics of the Phenomenology, leading consciousness from skepticism to the freedom achieved through alienation in Bildung, i.e. formation or education. In a final note, I dismiss the idea that this discussion is about Eastern versus Western philosophy and maintain that it is about politics, arguing that the vitalism often implied by dialectical materialism is too lenient on a capitalism ruled by chance. Chapter six offers an answer to some recent attempts to revive Hegel’s social and political thinking, combining Bildung with freedom as it is presented in the Philosophy of Law. However, making Bildung the explicit point of departure reveals Phenomenology to be the most relevant reference. Reading the famous dialectics of the master and the servant, it has been common to highlight how Hegel associates the working with an object conceptually with Bildung. However Hegel consistently fails to use the word ‘Bildung’ in this context. Instead, he uses ‘Bilden’. It might very well be that for Hegel the thing is formed according to the laborer’s idea, and that consciousness is formed through the work, but that does not mean that consciousness achieves Bildung. The most comprehensive philosophical reflections on Bildung in the Phenomenology are found in chapter VI, “The Spirit”. Here Bildung is closely intertwined with alienation, and in such a perspective freedom might not reconcile itself that easily, neither with reason nor with the state nor even with society. As acute alienation, being split and torn apart, Bildung becomes the condition for realizing and expressing the truth. This is the possibility of critique. Bildung is as a phenomenon not solely linked to the individual human being. Spirit is first of all realized as a people and a family, and as such spirit has political importance. Bildung, however, presupposes not only the experience of alienation, but also the expression of it. Language is thus a necessary condition for Bildung. Bildung requires higher education. A close reading of the account of Bildung in Hegel’s Phenomenology thus negate many interpretations of dialectics and philosophy of history in the slipstream of 20th century Marxism. Chapter seven argues that dialectics is indispensable for a Critical Theory aiming to provide a comprehensive critical understanding of modern capitalist society, taking as the prime example of such an understanding Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, the occasion being the 50th anniversary of its publication in 2014. As introduction three remarks are offered, the first on the importance of dialectics for my generation, the second on the way Marcuse understood it, and the third on his peculiar standing within Critical Theory. The main argument reconstructs Marcuse’s analysis of one-dimensional thought as the typical ideology encountered in late modernity, criticizing empiricism and ordinary language philosophy for their affirmation of the exiting social order. Instead Marcuse insist on employing the dialectics of Plato to enable contrasting appearance with reality and thus facilitate transgressing the former aiming for the latter. With Hegel dialectics remains critical, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of history, enabling now the negativity to suggest potentials for historical future. For Marcuse by dialectical thinking Critical Theory can thus carry the critique of capitalist society into the imagination of the a future of non-aggression in relation to both other human beings and the rest of nature, employing a reason that transgresses instrumental rationality and enables society to realize a technology of pacification instead of spending resources on destructive military technology. Marcuse thus connects dialectics, negativity and history, just as he offers an account of how dialectical thinking also entails the possibility of imagining liberation and an alternative way of being human. As a whole the argument presented here can be considered a continuation of the argument from the interlude about the importance of the original insights, thus claiming the necessity of dialectics for Critical Theory, and this last point also indicates why this volume bears both the super- and sub- title Dialectics. The postscript takes up the critique of political economy left at the end of part one, carrying the theoretical reflection on economy into the practical realities of 21st century globalized capitalism. As a critical theorist I take for granted that the material sufferings taking place all over the world do to a large extent have their cause in the economic system. I thus assume that there is something called capitalism that can be assessed as in general unjust, and that it can be understood as a human made system, thus in principle possible to change and outlive historically. Providing substance for such assumptions about economy, however, implies unveiling layers of ideology, all of which points in the direction of supporting the main pillars of capitalism, i.e. that the free market is for the good of everybody and that property must be private. I therefore present one of the main theoretical underpinnings of economics, the theory of competitive advantage and the critique of it as ideology. I also argue that we are facing an offensive with actors believing in what they are doing, although it is difficult to decide whether the stimulation of selfish greed is a political agenda or simply what it appears to be, i.e. outright egotism. Finally I go into some detail with the neoliberal critique of neoclassical economics that I take to be the biggest ideological challenge in the contemporary political struggle for social justice and political freedom. Assisted by monetarist economics neoliberalism has managed to create the material preconditions for its own relevance, i.e. the globalized capitalism constantly in the process of eliminating political, social and cultural restrictions, one of the results being a speculative financial market beyond imagination, and these material realities makes it difficult to fight capitalism. But we have to!