A World to Win

by Sven-Eric Liedman

  Without a doubt, we can establish that if Marx’s ideas of the complex unity derived any real support from the organism model, it was not through biology but through idealistic philosophy. Or, to be precise: if Marx claimed, against the mechanistically inspired conceptions of Ricardo, Mills, and others about the relationship between various economic categories, that there was an organic connection between these categories, we must seek his inspiration not in the development of biological theory but in philosophical speculations about the organic and the inorganic.

  Once Marx had marked off his conception against those of Mills and Ricardo, he was eager to also quickly mark it off from Hegel’s. After the commentary on the intricate relationship between production and consumption, he added that ‘nothing is simpler for a Hegelian than to posit production and consumption as identical’.18 Further on in the text, he clarifies his own conception on the relationship between the various economic categories – production, distribution, exchange and consumption – thus: they are not ‘identical, but that they are all elements of a totality, differences within a unity’.19

  He holds the concept of totality in common with Hegel against the empirically-minded political economists. But it is the concept of identity that he turns against Hegel. We will soon see what this means. It is clear that his conception of the totality strikes a discordant note with the idea of the organism developed in idealistic philosophy. There, each part is subordinate to the totality; each part serves the purpose of the totality. In this world of ideas, the organism constitutes a single – though constantly changing – harmonious unity. But Hegel’s concept of the totality, which consists of much more than the organic even in this wide sense, is also built on a more complex (and complicated) concept of identity than is suggested by the idea that the parts are harmoniously arranged in – or, rather, fused into – the totality. Marx’s polemic must be placed in this broader context.

  Hegel started from the idea that everything is subject to change, and thereby that everything is part of a restless process of development. In such a process, the totality is formed by parts that are opposed to each other, but these totalities are temporary and are burst asunder, to be superseded by new, more complex totalities. Marx’s conception of the growth, establishment, and dissolution of the various relations of production seems to be a very particular application of this idea of development. But Marx was not of the same opinion as Hegel: Hegel had perceived the relationship between the parts in the totality incorrectly and in a speculative fashion, he said.20

  In his work, Hegel tried to find a simple and uncomplicated starting point that constitutes the beginning of the endless, increasingly complex processes of development. In The Phenomenology of Spirit from 1807, in which he followed the path of knowledge, he started from the sensuously immediate; on the other hand, in The Science of Logic – published between 1812 and 1816 – he started from the completely indeterminate Being. But no matter what starting point is chosen, something else is always left out. Whatever Etwas (‘Something’) is taken as the subject of the investigation, ein Anderes (‘an Other’) is always ignored. But then this Other becomes a problem, and above all the relationship between the one (the Something) and the Other becomes in principle an insoluble difficulty. Both phenomena must therefore be incorporated into the same totality. But this totality further excludes other phenomena, which in turn must be included. There is still a contradiction between the parts included in the first unity: they do not cease to be a ‘Something’ and an ‘Other’ in their union.

  This is a description of a theoretical process, a process of knowledge; but Hegel had a fundamentally idealist conception of the universe and asserted that every real development had the same course of events. The path of knowledge is also that of reality. For now, Marx’s criticism of Hegel does not apply to his idealism but to the relationship between the parts – the moments – in the totality. We must get a better grip on Hegel’s idea before we can understand what it is Marx was criticizing.

  The opposing pair of abstract-concrete has a key role in Hegel, as it does in Marx. The simple starting point is always abstract, because it excludes ‘the Other’. The unity of ‘Something’ and ‘the Other’ is concrete in relation to the moments included: the abstraction means that the concrete is broken down into its component parts. Marx’s use of these terms does not differ from Hegel’s. In the Grundrisse, Marx says: ‘The concrete is concrete because it is a synthesis of many determinations, thus a unity of the diverse.’ The words are simpler, but the content is much the same.

  The difference between Hegel and Marx lies in their views on the relationship between the abstract determinations that are included in the concrete totality. Above all, Hegel uses the word Reflexion (reflection). He therefore opens the way for his fundamental conception that there is an agreement between the ideal and the real, idea and reality. In the first place, reflection is a moment in the intellectual process: it is the analysis of a totality, and thus a process of abstraction. But it is not just any analysis. The one moment is regarded in its state of opposition to the other; the totality is kept in mind, but the moments are nonetheless kept separate.

  Reflexion does not only have the meaning of ‘consideration’; it also designates a phenomenon of light, just as it does in everyday language: mirroring. Hegel makes use of this double meaning. The moment in a totality is broken down not only through a thought process; it also reflects itself and the other moments. It is in this mirroring that the unity of the totality is apparent for reflection.

  There is a close connection between reflection and unity in Hegel’s thought. The law of identity, a=a, constitutes the height of abstraction, and does not help understand any change at all. A reflection that stopped at this purely tautological proposition of identity, Hegel argued, was an ‘external’ or ‘superficial’ (äussere) one. In a higher form of reflection, they become apparent as separate moments. This ‘determining’ reflection defines a phenomenon through marking it off from something else; this way, both ‘Something’ and ‘an Other’ are already kept within sight.

  But identity, like abstraction, is not a phenomenon that applies only to thought processes. The concept of identity is applicable to real objects to the same extent. In a real totality – any totality – the moments included are identical to each other and nonetheless separate.21 It is this conception of identity that Marx objects to.

  Totality, According to Marx

  It should be noticed that Hegel, in the above context, was discussing all-encompassing phenomena that are valid everywhere. Marx was occupied with a delimited theory. For Hegel, unity-creating reason raises itself above the various forms of reflection. With his philosophy, he chiefly wanted to solve the great speculative questions that were formulated in the idealistic tradition. He wanted to find the unity between Spirit and Nature. From the beginning, his conceptions of identity were formed in polemics against the ‘philosophy of identity’ of the Romantics and Schelling in particular, in which the natural and the spiritual fused together in a harmonious unity for philosophical thought.

  The totality Marx spoke about was that of material production. This difference is essential. But through confronting his own idea with Hegel’s, Marx – despite this limitation – would be faced with methodological and theoretical questions of unlimited scope. In the introduction to the Grundrisse, this opposition between the limited and the general is unresolved. He called the central section ‘The Method of Political Economy’. But how did it relate to other totalities? The question is left half open. When, six months after having written the introduction, the urge struck to write about the Hegelian method to the whole of its extent (although without completing the attempt), it can be imagined that this relation appeared to him in a much clearer light.

  But back in the introduction, he had drawn the key terms from Hegel: words such as ‘determination’, ‘totality’, ‘moment’, and so on were just as unknown or meaningless in the tradition of Smith, Ricardo, an
d Mill as they had been central to Hegel. When Marx said that the parts in the totality of material production were not identical, he naturally meant identical in the sense of the Hegelian dialectic. Hegel defined ‘moment’ (that is, moment in a totality) as something that was included in a totality with its opposite – something that was ‘ein Reflektiertes’. The moments in a totality mirror each other. They are subordinate to the higher unity of the totality. The idea that Marx brought out as his own is related to Hegel’s down to the details. He asserted the following:

  1.One of the moments, production, marks both itself and the other moments (production ‘greift über’ itself and the other parts; it dominates the totality, it is all-embracing). ‘A definite [mode of] production thus determines a definite [mode of] consumption, distribution, exchange and definite relations of these definite moments to one another.’

  2.Production is determined ‘in its one-sided form’ by the other moments. There is reciprocal action between all the moments.

  Marx added that the other moment, reciprocal action, was valid for every organic totality. It is impossible to determine if he was arguing that it was not applicable to the first moment. It can only be said that the traditional idealistic conception of organisms permitted no all-embracing or dominant moment.22

  Marx clarified his relationship to Hegel through the term ‘interaction’ itself. According to Hegel, the idea of reciprocal action was a further development of causality (‘a causes b’). When only causality is allowed for, the various quantities are regarded as only external in relation to each other – that is, they are not included in the same totality. Reciprocal action, on the other hand, means that they are no longer isolated from each other.

  But merely reciprocal action was no more the constituting factor of a totality for Hegel than it was for Marx. In the first part of his great System of Philosophy, Hegel explained that reciprocal action ‘stood on the threshold of the concept’, that is, not enough to characterize a totality. In that context, he cites an example that is of interest here because it is so concrete it can be compared with what Marx said about his object – namely, material production. It concerns the relationship between the character of a people on the one hand and their legislation on the other. It is a classic problem, founded in the language itself. Words such as ‘ethics’ and ‘morals’ have their origins in other words that really signify customs and traditions. But what was the relationship between the both of them now? Keeping to simple causality, we must decide that the one is the cause of the other. Either we say: What people usually do determines what is regarded as good and correct. Or: The prevailing morals determine my actions. Hegel refused both alternatives, maintaining that customs and morals mark each other reciprocally.

  It is thus a question of the same type of reciprocal action between moments in a totality that Marx spoke about. But there is one important difference. Marx maintained that there was reciprocal action among four different moments. Hegel generally never spoke about more than two quantities – ‘Something’ and ‘an Other’. As we have already seen, he defined Verhältnis as a mutual relation (Beziehung) between two sides, and Verhältnis is precisely his technical term for the relationship between the moments in a totality, whereas Beziehung had no specific meaning in his terminology, signifying relationships in general.

  The relationship between ‘Something’ and ‘an Other’ in Hegel is the relationship between the positive and its opposite; in general terms, the opposite is no more qualified as an opposite than as just ‘an Other’. This means that Hegel’s determination of the relationship (das Verhältnis) as a relationship between two – and only two – moments was of great significance for his dialectic.23 But Marx was experimenting with a unity that consisted of four moments. For that reason alone, his concept of totality became considerably much more complicated than Hegel’s.

  We do not know if this was a conscious departure from Hegel. For Hegel, it was fundamental that there were only two moments in a unity. His logic would simply not allow more. It is a consequence of his particular concept of identity – the one Marx repudiated. Hegel maintained that the mere discovery of reciprocal action between two moments – as in his example between customs and laws – does not permit us to comprehend (get an idea of) the totality in question. With that idea, both moments in a totality are coordinated into a totality. The contradiction between both is sublated, even if temporarily. Both sides in the reciprocal action are perceived as moments in the idea. With that idea, the interaction gains meaning. Hegel’s universe is full of meanings; reality is like a book that human reason is able to read.

  Since Marx did not find this totality necessary, or even possible to attain, he could incorporate four determinations into the same totality. In other words, he was not looking for the point at which the differences between the moments is dissolved. Instead, he was looking for a dominant or all-embracing moment, a moment that at one and the same time determines the others (and itself) and stands in a relationship of reciprocal action with them.

  This analysis in the Grundrisse lacks a counterpart in Capital. This makes the ‘Introduction’ exceptionally important. With its help, we can approach a question that will become important in the next chapter: Did Marx tone down the role of production in Capital, and instead attach relatively great importance to distribution, and thereby circulation and money?

  Economy and Philosophy

  Louis Althusser correctly emphasized that the difference between the dialectic of Hegel and of Marx is not only a difference between idealism and materialism, but also a difference in the views on the structure of the dialectic. On the other hand, Althusser’s thesis that Marx’s theory after the Theses on Feuerbach was fundamentally incompatible with Hegel’s philosophy is untenable.24 The dynamic and tension in Marx’s relationship to Hegel cannot be captured in such simple terms. It was neither caprice nor chance that drove Marx to once again take Hegel’s philosophy in hand in the late 1850s. Faced with the task of finally developing his original social theory, it was important for him to give an account of his own position in relation to both the thinker who once marked him and to the economists who were of topical interest in his time.

  He agreed with them all that one should begin with abstractions in the scientific treatment of an object. An older economic theory could start from the extremely complex or concrete – the population of a country, for example – but no real knowledge of the economic contexts could be gained on that path. It was therefore a crucial step when Smith ignored all concrete differences and simply took up labour as the starting point of his doctrine.

  But Smith and his followers, once they had found a valid abstraction, committed the mistake of believing that it would be valid in the same way – independent of all other relationships – throughout all of history. When they thus established that labour created all value, they assumed that labour would forever have the same character as it did in capitalist society. The threads could be drawn straight back into history from the present time, and they would always run in the same order among themselves.

  Hegel also started out from abstractions. Like Marx (but in contrast to the economists), he did not see this process as a purely formal operation in which the individual was inferred from the general. On the contrary, it was an innovative development where constantly new and varying content enriched the abstractions. The concrete results of an investigation could not be predicted with a set of abstractions.

  But Hegel also maintained that reality must be intellectual – or more correctly, ideal – in nature since knowledge could only be attained through an intellectual process. Marx ardently repudiated this. It is true that the path from the abstract to the concrete is taken in thought, at the same time as the concrete is what provides the best knowledge of reality. But this did not mean – as Hegel argued – that the concrete, as a result of scientific work, corresponded to a real development from something abstract to something concrete. The concrete in knowledge is a ‘conceptua
l totality’ that cannot be mistaken for the concrete in reality. The development from abstractions to the complex is not, as Hegel asserts, the path of reality. Marx devoted great energy to showing that economic development does not go from simpler to more complicated relationships. In other words, economic history did not proceed in a way that follows the path of developed economic theory from the abstract to the concrete.25

  In fact, with this demonstration Marx turned against Hegel as well as Smith, Ricardo, Mill, and the other economists. The latter had assumed that capitalist relations would be found throughout all of history – just in simpler and more primitive form the further back in time one looked. Hegel maintained that every development – therefore also historical ones – began with something simple and abstract in the same way as thinking or theory.

  But Marx still directed his main attack against Hegel. He was not just an idealist, he did not only see the real as an expression of thinking or the idea. His thinking on identity resulted in the idea of the unity between thought and actuality, the subjective and the objective, idea and reality. The limited criticism of Hegel’s conception of identity that Marx previously offered is broadened here to apply to the cardinal thought itself: the identity between theory and its subject. Hegel asserted that every totality is a unity (even if a transitory one) of the elements included. Marx said that this did not apply to the totality of material production. But now the perspective was being widened. He maintained that there was a certain degree of agreement between thinking and reality, but that this agreement could not be comprehended as an identity. Thinking and its objects fundamentally differ.