Re: Lenin, Hegel

["Ricardo Duchesne" <RDUCHESN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date sent:      Wed, 08 Oct 1997 08:40:46 -0400
> Send reply to:  lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> From:           Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To:             Paul Zarembka <zarembka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, burgess@xxxxxxxxxxx,
>                 pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:        Lenin, Hegel

Louis writes:

> The importance of Lenin's study of Hegel should be obvious given this
> context. When Lenin battled Bogdanov's empiro-criticism in 1908, he invoked
> a version of Marxist philosophy that was rather schematic, to be generous
> about it. The polemics are a rather stultifying version of dialectical
> materialism that fits right in with official Stalinist philosophy and
> politics.
>
> When WWI began, Lenin was shocked to see the Socialist parliamentarians
> vote for war credits. He wanted to understand why Karl Kautsky, the most
> respected thinker of Social Democracy, would jump on the chauvinist
> bandwagon. Thus he devoted himself to a study of Hegel. His notebooks on
> Hegel run into hundreds of pages and they are the subject of Anderson's book.
>
> I myself am a little skeptical about the need to study Hegel. I took a
> seminar on Hegel in graduate school in 1967 and read "Phenomenology of
> Spirit." Not a bad book, but a bit long-winded.
>
> When I read Marx a few months later as part of my indoctrination into
> American Trotskyism, I found that there was just enough Hegel there to give
> the whole thing the power that it needed to understand change and process.
> Hegel without tears, so to speak. So I have never really understood the
> Hegel fetish of CLR James, Raya Duneskaya and their disciples.
>


I think you are quite right about Lenin's 1908 book, yet your
dismissive remarks about Hegel are have the same tone as Lenin's own
closed-minded approach to the then current criticisms of
materialism. It is worth
remembering too that Lenin never abandoned his materialism however
much dialectics he may have added to it.  ricardo









> At 10:25 PM 10/7/97 EST, zarembka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >Addressed to: burgess@xxxxxxxxxxx
> >              pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> >** Reply to note from burgess@xxxxxxxxxxx Tue, 7 Oct 1997 14:38:38 -0700
> (PDT)
> >>
> >> I just happened to skim through Kevin Anderson's _Lenin, Hegel, and
> >> Western Marxism (U of Ill. Press, 1995) who argues Lenin's position in
> >> his 1908 Empirocriticism shifted by 1914 when he re-read Hegel to try to
> >> come to grips with Social Democracy's support for war. Thus the
> >> Philosphical Notebooks are Lenin's more mature view on such questions,
> >> and Andersons also tries to illustrate this in later debates like over
> >> trade unions. Anderson suggests Stalinism has upheld Lenin in 1908
> >> and suppressed his later and more nuanced, dialectical approach. Engels
> >> also gets a few boots.
> >
> >Bill, I haven't seen the Anderson work (have others?), but it sounds
> >curious.  Why would Stalinism promote 1908 Lenin except as part of the
> >Lenin cult it wanted? just as it used Marx when useful.  Paul
> >
> >
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