20. Ibid., §245, p. 267.
21. Ibid., §245, p. 267.
22. Ibid., §245, p. 267.
23. Ibid., §246, p. 267.
24. Ibid., §248, p. 269. In his important book Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, Frederick Neuhouser has highlighted the contradiction in Hegel’s account of civil society from a different angle, focusing on the problem of colonialism (see pp. 173–174). Despite his careful and insightful analysis, however, Neuhouser does not address the problem of the formation of a rabble, which arguably reveals the deepest structural defect in the market economy of civil society and contradicts the possibility of an actual institutional rationality on either a national or an international level. Furthermore, Neuhouser does not link the contradiction that Hegel reveals in the production of social wealth to Marx’s analysis of the dynamic of capitalist wage labor. As I argue, the implications of §245 in the Philosophy of Right should be the starting point for an immanent Marxian critique of Hegel’s political philosophy. Marx himself fails to see the resources for an immanent critique in Hegel’s account of civil society, since Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is restricted to a commentary on Hegel’s analysis of the state in §261–313 of the Philosophy of Right. Marx thereby disregards how Hegel himself discovers the contradiction in the capitalist production of wealth in the preceding section on civil society and especially in §245. Indeed, Marx’s entire critique of capitalism can be seen as the systematic elaboration of the implications of §245 of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
25. Yanis Varoufakis is thus right on target when he underlines that Marx should be read as pursuing the implications of “Hegel’s fantastic idea that no one is free as long as one is in chains.” See Varoufakis, “Introduction,” in The Communist Manifesto, p. xxvii.
26. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 245.
27. Ibid.
28. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 5, chapter 5.
29. Ibid. Marx quotes these passages in Capital, vol. 1, p. 151.
30. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 152.
31. Ibid., p. 275.
32. For an excellent analysis of the difference between Marx and earlier socialist writers on this point, see William Roberts, Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital. Roberts’s deeply insightful reading of Capital appeared toward the end of my work on this book, but I hope to engage it on another occasion.
33. Mill, On Liberty, p. 12.
34. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 358–365.
35. The two most influential works for the marginalist revolution of neoclassical economics are William Stanley Jevons’s The Theory of Political Economy and Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics. Both Jevons and Menger take issue with the labor theory of value, which they assume is also the theory held by Marx. The neoclassical critique of Marx’s supposed labor theory of value and his alleged “price theory” is developed by Eugen Böhm-Bawerk in his classic essay, “Karl Marx and the Close of His System.”
36. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 128.
37. Moishe Postone is the one who has come closest to the right analysis of the question of value in Marx, and my own work is indebted to Postone’s seminal book Time, Labor, and Social Domination. Yet, while Postone rightly emphasizes that the measure of value under capitalism is historically specific, he conflates the historically specific measure of value under capitalism with the category of “value” per se. According to Postone, the overcoming of capitalism requires the abolition of value rather than a revaluation of value. Thus, Postone does not reach what I call the fourth level of the analysis of the economy. It makes no sense to call for the abolition of the category of value per se, since the category of value is a condition of intelligibility for any form of economic and spiritual life. To explain why the measure of value under capitalism is self-contradictory, we must explain why capitalism entails that we treat the negative measure of value as though it were the positive measure of value. Such an explanation is possible only if we proceed from the fourth level of the analysis of economy, which allows us to grasp the conditions for a value to be intelligible as a value (the positive measure of value) and a cost to be intelligible as a cost (the negative measure of value).
38. See Marx, Grundrisse, pp. 704–709. The significance of these pages in the Grundrisse was first highlighted by Postone in his important essay “Necessity, Labor, and Time.” I address the stakes of the difference between my account and Postone’s in chapter 6. The development of my argument has benefited from conversations with Jensen Suther, who first brought my attention to the question of “free time” in Marx and Postone.
39. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 958.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., p. 959.
42. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 706.
43. Ibid., p. 705.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., p. 708.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., p. 706.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 708.
51. Ibid., p. 706.
52. Ibid., p. 705.
53. Ibid.
54. See Marx, “The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution,” p. 523.
55. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, p. 532.
56. Ibid., p. 537.
57. Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, p. 35.
6. DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
1. Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State, p. 87.
2. Ibid., p. 88.
3. See Postone, “Necessity, Labor, and Time: A Reinterpretation of the Marxian Critique of Capitalism,” as well as Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination.
4. See Jameson, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army.
5. Postone, “Necessity, Labor, and Time,” p. 779.
6. Ibid., p. 778.
7. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, pp. 5–6.
8. Ibid., p. 128.
9. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 257.
10. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 173.
11. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 959.
12. Rawls, The Law of People, p. 107n33.
13. Ibid.
14. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren,” p. 199.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 201.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., p. 196.
19. Ibid.
20. Calnitsky, “Debating Basic Income,” p. 3.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 4.
24. Ibid., p. 18.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., p. 6.
27. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 571.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., p. 570.
30. Ibid., p. 10.
31. See Marx, Capital, vol. 3, chaps. 13–15, pp. 317–375.
32. Ibid., pp. 318–320.
33. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 124.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., p. 125.
36. Ibid., p. 130.
37. Ibid., p. 127.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., p. 124.
40. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” p. 78.
41. Ibid., p. 79.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., p. 78.
44. Ibid., p. 80.
45. Ibid.
46. Hayek, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History of Ideas, p. 10.
47. Ibid., p. 63. For an excellent critical analysis of Hayek’s notion of the spontaneously formed order of the market, see Bernard E. Harcourt, The Illusion of Free Markets.
48. Ibid., p. 78.
49. Ibid., p. 86.
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br /> 50. Ibid., p. 88.
51. Ibid., p. 87.
52. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, p. 124.
53. Ibid., p. 126.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. For Hayek’s most comprehensive philosophical articulation of freedom in terms of liberty, see his book The Constitution of Liberty.
57. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, p. 615.
58. Adorno, “Free Time,” 169.
59. Ibid., 171.
60. Ibid., 175.
61. Ibid., 168.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., 169.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., 170.
66. Ibid., 168.
67. Ibid., 169.
68. See, for example, Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and his Grundrisse, p. 705.
69. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 105.
70. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 79–174; and Michel Henry, Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality. The term “overabundance” is coined by Henry (pp. 198, 298, 305).
71. Adorno, “Something’s Missing: A Discussion between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing,” p. 10.
72. Ibid., p. 8.
73. Ibid., p. 10.
74. Adorno, in Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?,” p. 36.
75. Ibid.
76. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 203.
77. See, for example, ibid., p. 207.
78. Adorno, “Free Time,” p. 171.
79. Ibid., p. 172.
80. Ibid., p. 171.
81. My account of boredom is indebted to Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of boredom in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. In a forthcoming work, I will show that the three forms of boredom that Heidegger elucidates are constitutive conditions for being a person and leading a free life.
82. Adorno, in Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?,” p. 35.
83. Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 157.
84. Ibid.
85. The insight that pure being is nothing—that pure light would be pure darkness, that pure life would be pure death—is one of the fundamental lessons of Hegel’s logic. The reason we cannot grasp light without darkness—or life without death—is not because of any cognitive limitation on our part but because the idea of pure light or pure life is unintelligible. There cannot even in principle be light without darkness (or life without death). Only in “light determined through darkness”—only in “illuminated darkness”—can we see anything and make sense of anything (Hegel, Science of Logic, p. 69). While Adorno often addresses Hegel’s philosophy, he denies the implications of Hegel’s dialectical logic. According to Adorno, “dialectics is the ontology of the wrong state of things. The right state of things would be free of it” (Negative Dialectics, p. 11). This claim is an instructive example of how Adorno conflates conditions of intelligibility with historically specific conditions. If dialectical logic merely reflects “the wrong state of things,” then Adorno is committed to the view that the impossibility of pure being, pure light, and pure life is a lamentable restriction—the “wrong” condition to which we unfortunately are subjected—rather than a condition of intelligibility. Conversely, if “the right state of things” is defined as being “free” from dialectical conditions of intelligibility, then the right state of things for Adorno would be pure being: light without darkness and life without death. This is what I call Adorno’s “religious” understanding of finitude as a negative limitation that blocks us from the absolute. As we will see, Hegel diagnoses this religious understanding of finitude as “the unhappy consciousness,” which is an apt description of the pathos of Adorno’s philosophy.
86. Ibid., p. 247.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid.
90. Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” p. 53.
91. Ibid., p. 54.
92. Ibid., p. 53.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
CONCLUSION: OUR ONLY LIFE
1. See Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign, p. 288. See also David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From “Solo” to Memphis.
2. See Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, p. 289.
3. King, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, p. 5.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., pp. 5–6.
6. See Reed, “Black Particularity Reconsidered,” p. 77.
7. King, Where Do We Go from Here, p. 6.
8. King, “Next Stop: The North,” p. 189.
9. King, quoted in David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, p. 540.
10. King, “A New Sense of Direction,” transcript available at www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/4960.
11. King, The Trumpet of Conscience, p. 16.
12. Ibid.
13. See Terry, “Requiem for a Dream: The Problem-Space of Black Power,” pp. 290–324. See also King’s own account of his organizing work in Chicago in The Trumpet of Conscience, pp. 55–61.
14. See Terry, “Requiem for a Dream: The Problem-Space of Black Power.”
15. For analyses of King’s Poor People’s Campaign as a class movement, see Honey, Going Down Jericho Road; Douglas Sturm, “Martin Luther King, Jr. as Democratic Socialist”; and Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
16. King, quoted in Adam Fairclough, “Was Martin Luther King a Marxist?”
17. King, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 537.
18. Ibid., p. 562.
19. King, quoted in Fairclough, “Was Martin Luther King a Marxist?,” p. 120.
20. King, Where Do We Go from Here?, p. 250.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 250.
23. Carl Wendell Hines, quoted in Vincent Gordon Harding, “Beyond Amnesia: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Future of America.”
24. Hosea Williams, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 625.
25. King, “I Have a Dream,” p. 217.
26. Ibid. For a lucid and valuable account of how King sought to radicalize the established historical conceptions of freedom that he inherited, see Richard H. King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom, chapters 4 and 5.
27. King, “I Have a Dream,” p. 217.
28. King, Stride Toward Freedom, p. 77.
29. King, “I Have a Dream,” p. 217.
30. King, “The Other America,” p. 164.
31. Ibid., pp. 164–165.
32. Ibid., p. 165.
33. Ibid., p. 157.
34. Ibid., p. 156.
35. Ibid., pp. 156–157.
36. King, “I am in one of those houses of labor to which I come not to criticize, but to praise,” p. 51.
37. Ibid.
38. Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution, p. 3.
39. Ibid.
40. King, “A Time to Break Silence,” p. 240.
41. King, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 71.
42. King, “Hammer on Civil Rights,” p. 169.
43. King, Where Do We Go from Here, p. 142.
44. King, quoted in Fairclough, “Was Martin Luther King a Marxist?,” p. 123.
45. King, “A Time to Break Silence,” p. 240.
46. The episode with the tape recorder is documented in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, pp. 591–592.
47. Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” p. 145.
48
. Marx, “For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing,” p. 13.
49. Ibid., p. 14.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., p. 15.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. King, Strength to Love, p. 100.
55. Ibid., p. 101.
56. Ibid., p. 128.
57. Ibid., p. 129.
58. See John J. Ansbro, Martin Luther King, Jr.: Nonviolent Strategies and Tactics for Social Change, p. 122.
59. For a superb account of Hegel’s life and the historical context of his work, see Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography.
60. Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 54.
61. For the best account of how Kant’s practical philosophy fundamentally transforms the philosophical problem of freedom by proceeding from a first-person standpoint, see Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, chapters 3 and 4, as well as chapter 13 of Korsgaard’s Creating the Kingdom of Ends.
62. In his Science of Logic, Hegel makes clear that Kant’s notion of self-consciousness (“apperception”) is of crucial importance for his own thinking (see in particular Science of Logic, p. 515). This claim is at the center of Pippin’s systematic reconstruction of Hegel’s thinking, which was pioneered in Pippin’s Hegel’s Idealism. The most radical and important articulation of Pippin’s argument regarding self-consciousness can be found in his Hegel on Self-Consciousness.
63. For Hegel’s account of the relation between Enlightenment and Faith, see §§526–595 of his Phenomenology of Spirit. I am indebted to Robert Brandom’s profound analysis of these parts of the Phenomenology; see Brandom, A Spirit of Trust, part 5, pp. 78–109.
64. For an illuminating account of Ella Baker and the feminist branches of the civil rights movement, see Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. For a nuanced and incisive analysis of King’s gender politics, see Shatema Threadcract and Brandon M. Terry, “Gender Trouble: Manhood, Inclusion, and Justice.”
65. For Hegel’s reading of the incarnation, see §§748–787 of his Phenomenology of Spirit, as well as the concluding chapter on “Absolute Knowing” (§§788–808). See also the concluding remarks on the Crucifixion in Hegel’s early text Faith and Knowledge, pp. 190–191.
66. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §451.
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