The Dialectical Somersault

It is a commonly expressed statement that Karl Marx wanted to turn Hegels philosophical method on its head1, so that he, Marx, could represent history in the actual, truthful alignment to reality - a viewpoint of Materialist Dialectics. Historically speaking, in a short period of time, Marx became one of the most widely influential social theoreticians the world has known2, and his method of economic analysis brought the term Dialectics into the sphere of common, cross-discipline, everyday use. But the word Dialectic brings with it no small amount of historical baggage, as well as lingering modern confusions. In order to evaluate the ideas propounded by Marx, I find it useful to clarify this ever-shifting term, Dialectics, and apply it as a method of identifying Marx from within his own framework of an historical Material Dialectics and its proposed teleological End of History. Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) appropriated this word, and many of his ideas generally, via his study of the great German intellectual giant of his age, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), and Marx launched his critique against Hegels Philosophy of Right specifically. Written in 1843-1844, Marx laid down some of his own key themes and ideas in Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right. This is where Marx enters the historical dialogue of the philosophy that comes before him and begins making a standpoint of his own. And he was going for a total knock-out. In one short piece framed as a mere contribution to a critique of anothers work, Marx systematically
1

It appears this conception was popularized by Engels, and search for its origins found that it was often quoted, but rarely referenced from a source specifically within Marxs work. Here Engels is taking a single statement in Marxs 1873 afterword to Capital and making it into a universal. In his own critique of Hegel, whether in 1844 or 1873, Marx is far subtler and expresses more openly his great intellectual debt to Hegel than does Engels. (Anderson 1995, 14). 2 Classifying Marx is not a matter of simple agreements. For example, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics notes It has become fashionable to think that Karl Marx was not mainly an economist but instead integrated various disciplines economics, sociology, political science, history, and so on into his philosophy. But Mark Blaug, a noted historian of economic thought, points out that Marx wrote no more than a dozen pages on the concept of social class, the theory of the state, and the materialist conception of history while he wrote literally 10,000 pages on economics pure and simple. Janet Beales Kaidantizis. Karl Marx, Library of Economics and Liberty, accessed February 6, 2012. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Marx.html

DeLancett - 2 asserts his own foundations beginning with an outright denial of the truth and sanctity of religion. He instead claims that religion is created by society as an escape fantasy to ignore the truth of conditions in the world and that religion is like a drug, an opiate, a painkiller, and propagated as an inverted world consciousness.3 While Marx comments that he considers the critique of religion to be largely completed already as he wrote this4, it seems that such claims are still rather unsettling and shocking to the majority of the populace even a full century after Nietzsches famous declaration of the death of God. Marx then introduces the concepts, (which develop into his fundamental, essential dichotomy), of the proletariat as the class of workers which is opposed to and subjugated by the bourgeoisie capitalists. Marx associates a relation of necessity between the existence of the proletariat as a class and the existence of private property. He foreshadows his goals of revolution in one of the most disturbing passages: The criticism which deals with this subject-matter is criticism in a hand to fight; and in such a fight it is of no interest to know whether the adversary is of the same rank, is noble or interesting all that matters is to strike him. It is a question of denying the Germans an instant of illusion or resignation. The burdens must be made still more irksome by awakening a consciousness of it, and shame must be made more shameful still by rendering it public. Every sphere of German society must be depicted as the partie honteuse5 of German society; and these petrified social conditions must be made to dance by singing their own melody to them. The nation must be taught to be terrified of itself, in order to give it courage. In this way an imperious need of the German nation will be satisfied, and the needs of nations are themselves the final causes of their satisfaction.6 For me, this phrasing and mentality reeks of the totalitarian nightmare mindset that Germany became under Adolf Hitler far more than I have sensed in any reading of the two philosophers whom are so commonly implicated as providing the philosophical underpinnings of that fascism: Hegel & Nietzsche.

3 4

Karl Marx., Ed. Robert Tucker. Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right: Introduction, pg. 53-54 Ibid. pg. 53. 5 shameful part 6 Ibid., pg. 56.

DeLancett - 3 The most interesting thing about this specific work brings us closer to the task created by and inherited from Hegel. Hegels Historical Dialectic was a vast metanarrative of the entirety of history explained as an ever-changing process - a dialectical process - which reached toward a teleological end of history when and where the goal of nature is then completed. In his Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right: Introduction, Marx claims: It is the task of history, therefore, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, is to unmask human self-alienation in its secular form now that it has been unmasked in its sacred form. Thus the criticism of heaven is transformed into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.7 In this philosophical move, Marx recasts the entire interpretation of history from the framework of his specific philosophical thesis the dynamic dialectical struggle between a) the powerful rulers of material surplus conditions and b) the oppressed and alienated workers that are subject to these material conditions while at the exact same time telling his reader that philosophy is in the service of history. Is philosophy in the service of history? Or, perhaps, is history, (and the way that we tell it and imagine it), more so at the whim of the current philosophy? These types of internal contradictions can help us look at what this mystifying term Dialectics has meant throughout its own history. The closest use of the term to Marx was of course Hegel, whom he wanted to turn on his head. Hegel, himself, had created a new vision of the dialectical process which, in his own time, had swept the carpet out from under the long accepted authority of Aristotles deductive syllogistic logics footing. Aristotle had tried to bring his teacher Platos form of Dialectics down from the heavens in much the same way as Marx became a materialist antithesis to Hegels thesis of the teleological spiritualization of matter8. Plato himself is framed as having used his method of

7 8

Ibid., pg. 54. Hegels combination of an Idealistic Historical Dialetics, in itself, can obviously be seen as a synthesis of Platos Ideal Forms and Aristotles teleology.

DeLancett - 4 internal dialogue Dialectics to eternalize an other-world of perfect forms beyond the dynamic Dialectics of Heraclitus and his all-encompassing change and flux philosophy of impermanence, which in itself can be likened to the Far Eastern ideas of the Tao.9 It is no wonder that this term may be a bit confusing in all of its passing, changing forms. While this may seem to be a silly childs game of ever-reversing rebuttals, it is essential for our understanding of our own contemporary positions within the historical philosophical dialogue. Though rarely explicated upon from within the American/British analytic tradition, the hostility or receptivity to dialectics is one of the things that divides twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy from the socalled continental tradition10 a divide that favors dialectical methods in order to even recognize it exists. The highly influential Austo-British philosopher of science and economics, Karl Popper, (19021994), provides an acute example of the tension between these divided perspectives. Though Popper was early on in life a member and faithful Marxist supporter of the Social Democratic Workers Party of Austria11, he later harshly and repeatedly criticized the contradictory nature of the dialectical method: The whole development of dialectic should be a warning against the dangers inherent in philosophical system-building. It should remind us that philosophy should not be made a basis for any sort of scientific system and that philosophers should be much more modest in their claims. One task which they can fulfill quite usefully is the study of the critical methods of science.12

History: Dialectics has its origins in ancient society, both among the Chinese and the Greeks, where thinkers sought to understand Nature as a whole, and saw that everything is fluid, constantly changing, coming into being and passing away. It th th was only when the piecemeal method of observing Nature in bits and pieces, practiced in Western thinking in the 17 and 18 century, had accumulated enough positive knowledge for the interconnections, the transitions, the genesis of things to become comprehensible, that conditions became ripe for modern dialectics to make its appearance. It was Hegel who was able to sum up this picture of universal interconnection and mutability of things in a system of Logic which is the foundation of what we today call Dialectics. (Encyclopedia of Marxism - "Dialectics" n.d.) See also Taoism at same source. 10 Quotation from Wikipedia, Dialectic, no author attributed, last modified Feb. 7, 2012 (Accessed Feb. 11, 2012). 11 Information from Wikipedia, Karl Popper, no author attributed, last modified Feb. 7, 2012 (Accessed Feb. 11, 2012). 12 Karl Popper quotation from Wikipedia, Dialectic, referenced as sourced from Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge *New York, NY: Basic Books, 1962+p. 335. (Accessed Feb. 11, 2012).

DeLancett - 5 This is clearly more than a simple logical dispute13, as Popper goes on in The Open Society and its Enemies to radically attack Hegelian Dialectics as encouraging totalitarian modes of thought, supporting might makes right historicism and having undermined and eventually lowered the traditional standards of intellectual responsibility and honesty.14 The nature of Dialectics is thought to be among the most contentious issues in Marxist philosophy specifically as well. Tony Smith writes in Dialectical Social Theory and its Critics that many thinkers reject both dialectical social theory in general and the Hegelian legacy in Marxism in particularHostility to dialectics is now shared by most Marxists and post-Marxists.15 This seems to be a strange predicament considering Materialist Dialectics is often presented as the basis of Marxist theory16, and some rather respected sources, such as the Columbia History of Western Philosophy, present Dialectics as the basis for most Western philosophical thought development in general.17

13

Charles Taylor accuses Popper of exploiting his worldwide fame as an epistemologist to diminish the importance of th philosophers of the 20 century continental tradition. According to Taylor, Poppers criticisms are completely baseless, but they are received with an attention and respect that Poppers intrinsic worth hardly merits. William W. Bartley defended Popper against such allegations: Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted their intellectual careers. The gulf between Poppers way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology. - Quotation from Wikipedia, Karl Popper, no author attributed, last modified Feb. 7, 2012 (Accessed Feb. 11, 2012). Internal quotations cited as: Charles Taylor. Overcoming Epistemology Philosophical Arguments *Harvard University Press, 1995}. And William W. Bartley. The Philosophy of Karl Popper Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel, Vol. 6 (1976), p. 463-494. 14 th Karl Popper quotation from Wikipedia, Dialectic, referenced as sourced from The Open Society and its Enemies 5 ed., vol. 2 [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966]p. 395. (Accessed Feb. 11, 2012). 15 Tony Smith. Dialectical Social Theory and its Critics: From Hegel to Analytical Marxism and Postmodernism [New York, NY: SUNY Press, 1993] p. 2. 16 The materialist dialectic is the theoretical foundation of Marxism (while being communist is the practice of Marxism). (Encyclopedia of Marxism - "Dialectical Materialism" n.d.) 17 The history of philosophy does not, however, describe a simple linear progression from Plato to Aristotle to our present intellectual situationThese new problems and new proposed solutions provide new lenses for studying and interpreting the past, and this revised version of the past then provides some new ways of looking at the present. Obvious examples of this dialectical role of philosophy in history can be seen in what happened when Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheistic religious views replaced pagan onesAgain, something like this has also happened during the last three centuries as the new science became the dominant explanatory way of accounting for our experiences. (Columbia University 1999, xix). See also (Gibbons 2010).

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Dialectical Dance
Combinations wholes and not wholes, concurring differing, concordant discordant, from all things one and from one all things. - Heraclitus18 Heraclitus was thus universally esteemed a deep philosopher and even was decried as such. Here we see land; there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic. - Hegel19 Now that weve glimpsed the scope of what is at stake in the consideration of this confusing term Dialectics we can proceed to examine it more thoroughly and hopefully unfold its meanings. Since Hegel seems to be blamed for everything, lets start with him in a roundabout way. Hegel considered the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, (535-475 B.C.E.) to be the original discoverer of the dialectic method20. Heraclitus is conjectured to have proposed everything to be generating and changing through the conflict of opposites. Yet he held there is something unchangeable in generation and change the law, or Logos, from which a harmony - through conflict - arises.21 Heraclitus, one of the very first recognized philosophers in the Western tradition, sought to grasp the dynamic aspect of the eternally ever-changing of things in the development of nature. Heraclituss ideas of absolute continual flux certainly faced opposition as well. Zeno of Elea, (490-430 B.C.E.), following Parmenides line of thinking, opposed the views of Heraclitus and the contemporary elemental ontology philosophies by absolutely denying the possibility of any change. Aristotle considered Zeno to be the founder of the dialectic. Zenos method is the art of dispute through question and answer, whereby one refutes his opponent by exposing contradictions in him,

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(Barnes 2002, 71) (Hegel n.d.). Note: This is the same lecture that Heidegger quotes from in the footnote below. 20 According to Hegel, Heraclitus is the first to recognize the dialectic as a principle, thereby surpassing and advancing beyond Parmenides. Hegel clarifies: Being, as Parmenides thinks it, is the one, the first; the second is becoming by this determination, does he (Heraclitus) go further. This is the first concrete, the absolute in which the opposed are unitedfor the first time is the philosophical idea in its speculative form encountered. Hegel thus rests the power of his interpretation of Heraclitus on the statements in which the dialectical, the unity, and the unification of contradictions come to language. (Heidegger 1958). 21 (Historical Review n.d.)

DeLancett - 7 while examining his assertions.22 Aristotles syllogistic logic foundations are often accused of tautology, and this is at its root an unwillingness to accept that change is real. Socrates (470-399 B.C.E.) is perhaps the most famous purveyor of the idea of the dialectic. He sought truth rather than merely the art of sophistry, of persuasion towards one relativistic interpretive opinion over another. In Platos dialogues he is shown in attempts to find truth by guiding his unknowingly ignorant participants from the particular to universal conclusions. By starting with particular definitions of abstract terms like Justice, Piety, or Beauty we see Socrates expose the contradictions in what we take to be simple, pragmatic definitions of how these ideas appear to us in life. Socrates is always pointing beyond the word, beyond the instance, to indicate a higher reality of not merely abstraction, but pure essence of that which is in question. Plato, (427-347 B.C.E.), doesnt just point. He takes what his teacher, Socrates, may have been pointing at, and considers that to be the only True Reality. Everything else is just shadows and illusions and mimicry of the perfect forms of the Ideas. He called his method of cognition of Ideas the dialecticIn the cognition of Ideas, there are two directions: .. division of the generic concepts into specific concepts(and)synthesizing the concepts of individual things, aiming at the supreme concept. Among the two methods, the direction of synthesis corresponds to Socrates dialectic; the direction of division is most typically Platos. Thus, when we refer to Platos dialectic, we usually mean the method of division.23 Socrates believed we could reach Truth by rational discussion, but Platos dialectic involves as series of internal dialogue a self-questioning and self-answering method of classifying concepts within ones own mind.24

22 23

Ibid. Ibid. 24 Ibid.

DeLancett - 8 Aristotle, a pupil of Plato, thought somewhat differently and systematized his brand of thinking which was dominant for about 2,000 years. Aristotle, (384-322 B.C.E.) believed that true knowledge had to be obtained from logical proof the deductive method of realizing the particulars as deduced from the universal. Of course, the problem inherent in this thinking is that whatever one takes to be the universal will determine in course all possible particulars. Unfortunately, to this day, most logicians seem to be unwilling to recognize this fundamental circular issue. Hegel is not an easy figure to approach lightly, and the intense division between his interpreters makes it all that more difficult. He does, after all, represent a dividing line in the philosophical sand affecting the postures of all contemporary approaches. What makes dialectical thinking so difficult to explain is that it can only be seen in practice. It is not a method or a set of principles, like Aristotles, which can simply be stated and then applied to whatever subject matter one chooses. 25 From what I have briefly gathered in this Dialectical adventure, Hegels Dialectics are analyses of the categories or grammar of the cyclical, or spiraling, nature of thought processes. It seems that Hegel sought to show how these types of internal structures are also evident in historical events which unfold toward a teleological perfection of Nature: Hegelian philosophy rejects any notion of transcendence; it is a rigorous philosophical attempt to remain on the ground of immanence and not leave it. There is no question of another world; there is no thing-in-itself, no transcendence. And yet human thought is not trapped in its own finitude; it surpasses itself and what it reveals or manifests is Being itself. Thus it is not a case of man expressing Being more or less adequately; it is Being itself which finds expression and testament in man. Philosophy, as Absolute Knowledge, is this very expression, and the philosophy of philosophy is simply the consciousness of the function of philosophy to express Being.26

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(Spencer 1992) (Hyppolite 1969, 170)

DeLancett - 9 Spencer and Krauze in Hegel for Beginners asks us to think of these structural elements as the interrelated ones of a whole architecture or even better, a fractal architecture.27 Hegel is said to have never28 used the triadic terms: Thesis Antithesis Synthesis (which becomes the next) Thesis, to describe his notion of the dialectical process, and yet it seems to be the most common approach to understanding his approach. Hegel formulated a Science of Logic with a dynamic power of negation (in its ability to reveal contradictions within almost any category or identity)29 flowing through a triadic structure form: Hegels contradiction does not simply mean a mechanical denial or opposition. Indeed, he challenges the classical notion of self-identity, A=A, or A not = non-A. By negation or contradiction, Hegel means a wide variety of relations difference, opposition, reflection or relation. It can indicate the mere insufficiency of a category or its incoherence.30 These contradictions can appear through divisions of Being, Essence and Concept/Notion as differing levels of interrelation and self-contradiction. The interconnection of concepts, and thus of the words expressing them, into a SYSTEM is a central function of Hegels dialectical method.31 Hegels aim is to show how every stage, phase, moment is only partial, and therefore partially untrue only the whole is true, but the whole is manifested within and through each part, stage, process in a manner of both overcoming and preserving which emerges as a higher rational unity.32 Hegel viewed this dialectical

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(Spencer 1992) To Fichte we owe the development of Kants notion of intellektuelle Anschauung (intellectual INTUITION), the frequent and seemingly indiscriminate use of setzen (to POSIT), and the triad thesis-antithesis-synthesis, often wrongly attributed to Hegel. (Inwood 1992, 12) 29 The Hegelian dialectic is similar to its Platonic predecessor, the Socratic dialogue, that is, a conversation between two human beings on some important subject like the nature of the good or the meaning of justice. Such discussions are resolved on the basis of the principle of contradiction: that is, the less self-contradictory side wins, or, if both are found in the course of the conversation to be self-contradictory, then a third position emerges free of the contradictions of the initial two. But this third position may itself contain new, unforeseen contradictions, thereby giving rise to yet another conversation and another resolution. (Fukuyama 1992, 61) 30 (Spencer 1992) Contemporary work in this direction is most evident to me in the works of Lakoff & Johnson in Metaphors We Live By and Women, Fire, & Dangerous Things. 31 (Inwood 1992, 13) 32 (Spencer 1992)

DeLancett - 10 process taking place not only on the level of internal thoughts and philosophical conversations, but also between societies and social-economic systems.33 Bertrand Russell, (1872 -1970), is considered to be one of the founders of analytic philosophy tradition, having led the British revolt against Idealism along with G. E. Moore. In Russells History of Western Philosophy he writes: Hegels Philosophy of History is important as a source of much evil, but (I think) of no good The Absolute Idea is pure thought thinking about pure thought. That is all that God does throughout the ages truly a professors God. Hegel goes on to say: This unity is consequently the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself There is no contrast of morals and politics, because States are not subject to ordinary moral laws. Such is Hegels doctrine of the State a doctrine which, if accepted, justifies every internal tyranny and every external aggression that can possibly be imagined Hegel uses freedom in a very peculiar sense. Freedom is the right to obey the police The Idea *zeitgeist+ is what Hegel happened to believe. The whole course of the universe is making it just such as Hegel thought it was. 34

Immanuel Kant, (1724-1804), the German intellectual giant upon which Hegel stood, had already postulated an end point to the process of history: The history of mankind can be seen, in the large, as the realization of Natures secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted state35 Hegel thought so also, and traced a thesis of the development of the History of the world as the progress of the consciousness of Freedom. As a defender of Hegel, Francis Fukuyama writes: The Universal History of mankind was nothing other than mans progressive rise to full rationality, and to a self-conscious awareness of how that rationality expresses itself in liberal self-government.Hegel was the philosopher of freedom, who saw the entire historical process culminating in the realization of freedom in concrete political and social institutions. Rather than being known as the champion of the state, Hegel could equally well be understood as the defender of civil society, that is, the philosopher who justified preservation of a large realm of private economic and political activity independent of the control of the state. This is certainly the way that Marx understood him, and why he attacked Hegel as an apologist for the bourgeoisie.36
33

34 35
36

(Fukuyama 1992, 61)

(G. W. F. Hegels Paradigmatic Revolution: Outline and Critique 2010) (Beck Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul- Sep. 1971), 418)
(Fukuyama 1992, 60)

DeLancett - 11 Fukuyama also points out that Hegel was not the first proposer of system of Universal History, but he was the first historicist philosopher, the first to propose an essential historical relativity of truth. This historical relativity of truth is what Karl Marx picks up on and runs with, leading us back to the original questions included and inherent in his early work Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right.: Is philosophy in the service of history? Or is our interpretation of history relative to our philosophical vantage point? Karl Marx claims that the history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. These contrasting viewpoints bring us to the heart of the nature of philosophical discourse and to an appropriate framework for thinking about Marxs theory about wage labor, self-alienation and competition.

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A brief outline of how I would like to continue this paper, though it will not fit within the scope of this assignment or timeframe: Develop Marxists points. Explore communist ideal. Contrast Platos Republic. Explore Alienation. Competition? Plato/Meritocracy/Alienates actors, poets, censorship. Discuss Marx/lumpenproletariat do these people become next oppressed class or will they naturally fall into line within a few generations? Is this reasonable to expect? Contrast William James lecture on human nature/conflict. Revisit Hegel Fukuyama (63?) Ideas of human nature/freedom. Question Marxs view of freedom. Discuss the end of history idea. Marxists reject idea of dialectic? Absurd. They cant justify a shift away from dialectics without using dialectical method. Insert Marx/Engels quotations describing dialectical history. Options other than viewing past via historicism? Look paltry, dont hold up. Laughable. What are these jokers thinking?