Re: AUT: Re: hegelian stuff

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris,
I'm about to catch a plane and spend the day traveling, but will respond
to this as soon as I can.
H.

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, cwright wrote:

> Harry said:
> > > Of course, it is worth noting, again and again, that Marx was also
> indebted
> > > to the Old Man, and any acqauintance with Hegel will make it clear that
> many
> > > of Marx's categories bear the imprint of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
> and
> > > The Logic.
> >
> > Absolutely true. The real issue is the kind of "imprint" one finds. In
> > other words how Marx adopted and used Hegels concepts and whether there
> > are radical differences. I used to use Hegel in teaching Marx but later
> > decided it was more useful to use Marx to critique Hegel.
> >
> Indeed, this is where the meat is, so to speak.  I do not think that one can
> read Marx as simply adopting Hegel's dialectic, but at the same time, his
> idea of dialectic as negation and critique permeats all of it, hence also a
> rigorous critique of Hegel's limitations.  I think that Hegel is important
> both for reading Marx and to grapple with Marx's critique of Hegel as the
> culmination of the limits of bourgeois philosophy (and of philosophy
> itself.)
>
> > > The people who claim that Marx dumped Hegel in his later years
> > > have a political-ideological axe to grind because Hegel's influence is
> all
> > > over each section of Capital and the books on Surplus Value, as well as
> the
> > > Grundrisse (which makes Negri's fondness for the Grundrisse particularly
> > > hilarious and ironic) and other smaller works.
> >
> > Again the issue is what is meant by "dumped". Althusser argued Marx
> > dumped the Hegelian analysis of alienation of the 1844 Manuscripts but not
> > that Marx dumped the dialectic. How could he when he himself was a born
> > again diamatician. Negri's fondness for the Grundrisse (1857) as opposed
> > to Capital (1867) is explained in his book Marx Beyond Marx and has
> > nothing to do with the absence or presence of Hegel in either. The
> > traditional orthodox left always leaned heavily on Capital, even before
> > Althusser's "rereading" and Negri found in the Grundrisse
> > formulations that provided opportunities to counterpose a very different
> > reading of Marx. When he lectured at Althusser's seminar it also provided
> > a rhetorical way to avoid a direct attack on his host's version of Marxism
> > while launching a wide-ranging indirect attack.
>
> "Diamat" could not be further from Marx's notion of dialectic than anything.
> Marx did not, except at his weakest moments, propose dialectics as a new
> system of thought, but rather as a mode of critique, of negation.  It is
> this that Althusser and Negri share in common, and it is the basis of both
> of their rejections of Hegel.
> >
> > > As John Holloway puts it in
> > > his new book, we are not dialecticians because we are materialists, but
> > > materialists because we are dialecticians.  This was certainly true of
> Marx.
> >
> > Whatever that means. Cute but opaque.
>
> I do not find it opaque, in so far as John expresses the content of it quite
> clearly.  Marx's critique of previous materialisms is important here.  His
> critique that previous materialism did not grapple with social life as
> dynamic met with his critique of Hegel as treating social dynamic as largely
> in our heads (the resolution of contradiction was a
> philosophical/theoretical resoluton in Hegel), whereas for Marx it is a
> social/practical resolution: social transformation.  The latter is a
> 'materialist' position.
>
> > > Now, one can level of a critique of those categories, but as with Negri,
> one
> > > wonders what is actually left of Marx's critique.
> >
> > Look, the anti-dialectical tradition to which Negri has attached himself,
> > so to speak, is one that sees capital itself as a social system that
> > imposes dialectical relations on people. (This is my forumulation.)
>
> I think that this is very useful.  I don;t think that Marx saw the social
> relations imposed by capital as dialectical, and therefore revolution would
> undo dialectics.  IMO (and that's an opinion), dialectic was a mode of
> critique of capitalist social relations, of its limitations, weaknesses and
> contradictions.  Dialectic in Marx expresses the power of the working class,
> not simply capital's imposition.  The refusal of dialectic is the refusal of
> working class power, not only of capital's power.  Dialectic is critique and
> negation, not affirmation and recuperation.
>
> > Capital imposes exploitation and endless work and alienation and endless
> > circuits of sameness that bind the resistance to that imposition into
> > itself (into contradiction). To the degree that it is successful it
> > reduces the inevitable antagonism to mere contradiction that functions as
> > a motor of the capitalist dialectic, of its own movement. The
> > anti-dialectical moment of this analysis is the perception that
> > in successful working class struggle the resistance or antagonism ruptures
> > the binding and thus ruptures the dialectic. Moreover the resistance or
> > antagonism is not merely negative but includes the kind of positive
> > creativity that Marx saw in living labor (but we can generalize far beyond
> > it) that creates new, non-dialectical ways of being, i.e., ways of being
> > not involving the creation/subordination of antagonism into contradiction.
>
> > > Werner Bonefeld has an
> > > insightful set of comments on non-dialectical Marxism in one of the back
> > > issues of Common Sense where he discusses structuralism and
> autonomism(sic).
> >
> > If this is the piece I think it is, I think it was awful. He gave it at a
> > CSE conference in England and I rebutted it there. I was asked to write
> > up my rebuttal for Commonsence but never got around to it --mainly I
> > think because in debate I found Werner impermeable to argument, so
> > repeating myself, once again, in print seemed useless-- so they
> > published his piece independently. As you can see in Commonsense, in
> > John's writings, and in the Open Marxism collections we share a perception
> > of the self-activity of the working class but those who associate
> > themselves with "Open Marxism" as a perpective have an attachment to such
> > things as dialectics that we do not share at all.
> >
> Maybe it's time to lay it out, since the discussion is not simply with
> Werner Bonefeld.
> >
> > > For example, without any explicit reference to dialectics, Mariarosa
> Dalla
> > > Costa, Selma James and Leopoldina Fortunadi formulated a very powerful
> > > critique of Marx's own limited understanding of the relation of
> reproduction
> > > to production in Capital.  that failure meant a failure to grasp the
> > > centrality of women's struggles to the rest of the working class and
> > > housework as surplus-value producing and socially capitalist labor, but
> in a
> > > different way from waged labor.  Harry Cleaver talks about it a bit, but
> > > does not take it as far as Fortunadi, for example, who develops a
> systematic
> > > critique of Marx based on a close-reading and critique of Capital and
> > > Theories of Surplus Value.  Good critique, but does it really hit the
> mark?
> > > Not sure yet myself, but it is the most important stuff I have read
> because
> > > of its vast political implications which have been seriously
> > > under-appreciated.
> >
> > Mariarosa, Selma and Silvia Federici's work in the wages for housework
> > movement is, as far as I am concerned, an indispensible extension or
> > complement to Marx's own work (and involves some critique of him for not
> > having worked through much of what they have understood). But Silvia
> > disassociated herself from Fortunati for both theoretical and political
> > reasons that she may or may not ever speak to directly. As opposed to
> > Fortunati's book I would recommend, as was done here recently by someone
> > else, Silvia's Caliban and her other writings which continue and elaborate
> > the wfh insights. I'm not sure what "take it as far as Fortunati" means.
> > But the wfh insight that housework can reduce the value of labor power to
> > capital and thus increase surplus value has been central to my own
> > analysis for over a quarter of a century. It was for that that I
> > elaborated the "circuit of the reproduction of labor power" to complement
> > Marx's circuits of money, commodity and productive capital and facilitate
> > an exposition of the interelationship between unwaged and waged work in
> > capitalism. I began that within the context of teaching, extended it in
> > the analysis of public health and subsequently my students have done so in
> > the case of peasant unwaged work and struggle in Mexico and Nigeria.
>
> Harry, I did not mean that you did not work from a similar critique, but
> that Fortunadi worked that critique out in a full book, instead of a
> section, and in relation to all of Marx's later major works.  That is what
> makes it valuable over and above your work, but not necessarily against it.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>
>
>
>
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>

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Harry Cleaver
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