Well: Have You Read And Fully Understood The Whole Of Hegel's Logic?

The above question is thrown into stark relief by Lenin's surprising and oft-quoted remark that not a single Marxist up until his day -- which must have included Engels, Dietzgen, Kautsky, Luxemburg, and Plekhanov -- actually understood Marx's Capital, since none of them had fully mastered Hegel's Logic!

{1}

Clearly, Lenin's aside raises serious questions of its own. If professional revolutionaries find Hegel's work impossibly difficult to comprehend (few in my experience bother to consult much of what Hegel wrote, let alone attempt to study the entire Logic -- but, which one (there were two!)?), is it credible that workers themselves can understand the whole of his Logic fully? In which case -- if Lenin is correct --, what chance is there that anyone (revolutionary or worker) will ever make head or tail of Marx's Capital?

Even worse, Lenin's comments suggest that only a tiny fraction (if that!) of revolutionaries have ever fully understood Marxism (or, at least Capital). Lenin is quite clear: only those Marxists who have "thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic" can claim to comprehend Capital; short of that they can't. Again, how many revolutionaries have thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic (let alone read it) since Lenin's day? Even professional philosophers find that work daunting.

Nevertheless, a far more serious and intractable question is the following: How would it be possible to decide if anyone has ever actually understood all of Hegel's Logic?

Plainly, we can't enquire of Hegel what the correct interpretation of his work is. Even Lenin himself failed to provide us with a comprehensive (or comprehensible) account of all of Hegel's Logic. And, as we know with regard to the interpretation of that other (but far less) obscure book -- The Bible --, it is always open for someone to claim that their interpretation is the correct one, while all the rest aren't, with no empirically viable way of deciding between them.

Of course, as we shall see, this is precisely what allows sectarians to impose their own brand orthodoxy on their corner of the militant market.

Indeed, buried in here somewhere is one of the main reasons for the ideological sectarianism that appears to be endemic in revolutionary Marxism; the Logic is to DM as The Bible is to Theology. In both of these books, a 'correct' interpretation functions as a test of orthodoxy; their use is both a source of mystification and a guarantor of righteousness.

[DM = Dialectical Materialism]

This being so, few among the rank-and-file will feel confident (or foolish) enough to question the theoretical deliverances made on their behalf by the likes of Stalin, Mao, Mandel, Healy, Pablo, Grant, Avakian -- or whoever.

Of course, few scientists would be foolish enough to make similar claims for any of the classics of science -- not even of Darwin's Origin or Newton's Principia --, that only if the latter were studied from end to end, and thoroughly understood, could an aspiring researcher/student claim to comprehend modern science. One guesses that only a minority of scientists have actually read all or most of the classics in their field, but that fact does not materially affect their work.

Now, even though revolutionary theory is different from other scientific disciplines, that does not mean that incomprehensible philosophical texts must be treated in such a theological way, with every word regarded as required reading, and every syllable understood, before initiation can begin. And yet, Lenin's aside indicates that this is exactly how Hegel's Logic should be viewed by the DM-faithful: only the correct understanding of this intractably obscure work -- in its entirety -- is sufficient to allow novice socialists to proceed to the next level and try to understand Marx's classic, and before they too can presume to spread the Good News.

Of course, this is all rather puzzling since Marx himself never claimed this of his own work. {2}

Notes

{1} In order to counter such ridiculous consequences, two comrades -- i.e., Woods and Grant [in Woods and Grant (1995), p.76] -- have argued that Lenin was deliberately exaggerating here. This is, of course, entirely possible, but it is certainly not the way Lenin has been interpreted by subsequent Marxists.

On this, note Andy Blunden's comments:

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=61&issue=105

Naturally, this passage of Lenin's helps account for something that would otherwise be inexplicable: the fascination that Hegel's Logic has exercised on prominent revolutionaries -- including STD's and OT's. If Lenin was merely exaggerating --, or that is how he had been perceived --, this would not have happened.

[STD = Stalinist Dialectician; OT = Orthodox Trotskyist.]

For example, not only do we find a Trotskyist of the stature of Raya Dunayevskaya writing several books in the futile attempt to comprehend Hegel's Logic, we witness her reiterating this famous claim (albeit watered down a tad):

And, this is what Bertell Ollman had to say:

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/a_ch03.php

Furthermore, it is worth noting that Lenin himself admitted that he found certain parts of Hegel's Logic impossibly obscure, or just plain nonsense. [Cf., Lenin (1961), pp.103, 108, 117, 229.]

Hence, if correct, this would mean that even Lenin did not understand Capital!

Notice that Lenin did not refer to just 99.9% of Hegel's Logic, but the "whole" of it.

Finally, there is no evidence that Marx himself made this claim about his own work -- nor is there any that he had ever thoroughly studied and thoroughly understood Hegel's Logic. This either means that the Logic is largely irrelevant to any student of Capital, or Marx did not understand his own book! On this see Note {2} below

{2} Marx certainly laid down no such preconditions for understanding his work. In fact, if anything he tended to play down Hegel's influence. However, so deep has Lenin's myth sunk into the collective Dialectical Mind that that particular comment will elicit immediate disbelief. But it is nonetheless true for all that. And this is why:

Marx himself pointed out that the relevance of Hegel's Philosophy could be summarised in a few printers' sheets:

Needless to say, Marx never supplied his readers with such a précis. From this we may perhaps draw the conclusion that in the end Marx did not think Hegel's method was all that significant. So, despite all the millions of words he committed to paper, he did not consider it important enough to write out these relatively few pages. Meanwhile, and in contrast, Marx spent a whole year of his life banging on about Karl Vogt, but still he could not be bothered with this 'vitally important' summary. [This obscure work of Marx's has so far been deemed unfit to publish on the Marx Internet Archive, so poor is it.]

Even had Marx done so, it would still have meant that only a tiny fraction of Hegel's work is relevant to understanding Capital: a few pages!

Attentive readers too will have noticed that Marx says he encountered Hegel's Logic by "accident"; this hardly suggests he was a constant or avid reader of that work. Indeed, he did not even possess his own copy of Hegel's Logic and had to be given one as a present by Freiligrath!

Much has been made of certain references to Hegel in Marx's later work. However, a close reading of these reveals a picture that is different from the standard one retailed by DM-apologists. The scattered remarks about Hegelian Philosophy (outside his analysis of Hegel's political ideas) found in Marx's published works are inconclusive. [More details in the full Essay.]

Marx himself declared:

His use of the word "coquetted" also suggests Hegel's Logic had only a superficial influence, merely confined to certain "modes of expression", and limited to just a few sections of his great work. And as far as Marx "openly" avowing himself a pupil of Hegel, he pointedly put this in the past tense:

This is hardly a ringing endorsement, and is equivocal at best; Marx does not say he is now a pupil of Hegel, but that he once was. Of course, it might still have been the case that he was such when the above was written, but there is nothing here to suggest that Marx viewed the link between his own and Hegel's work as Lenin did.

Woods and Grant note that Lenin argued that Marx did leave behind a his own version of Hegel's Logic, namely Das Kapital [Woods and Grant (1995), p.76.] but Marx's own words (that he merely "coquetted" with Hegelian terminology) shows that this is more than an "exaggeration" on Lenin's part, it's a fabrication.

Finally, it could be argued that the Grundrisse (i.e., Marx (1973)) is living disproof of much of the above. Well, it would have been had Marx seen fit to publish it, but he didn't, and so it isn't.

But he did publish this:

So, whatever it was that happened to Marx's thinking between the writing of the Grundrisse and Das Kapital, it clearly changed his view of Hegel's Logic -- to such an extent that its phraseology merely became something with he wished to "coquette". In that case, Lenin should have said:


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This is an exceprt from my latest Essay "The Politics Of Metaphysics; Dialectical Materialism: An Alien-Class Theory"; more details and references can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_01.htm

R:

Whilst I'm with you in rejecting Lenin's casual exageration (sounds like the old rascal is just pulling rank!), I don't find the above argument very persuasive. Marx promised to do many important tasks which he never delivered on, such as a systematic analysis of social class and the political state.

There is evidence, even in the material you cite above, that Marx thought that he had deduced the rational kernal of Hegel's logic and that it was an important stage in arriving at historical materialism and further developing its analysis of the social world.

EDIT: In evidence this is what Marx has to say about his dialectical method:

I wish he'd written those few pages on the 'rational kernel'. It would have saved us from a lot of pointless philosophising.

This is,

a. False. While it is true that the Capital's first chapter is indeed written in a way that purposefully mimicks Hegel's style, Marx himself considered it a joke (possibly, it was a way to show professional Hegelian phylosophers that they couldn't mess with him arguing his ignorance of Hegelianism - something like Prokofiev's Classical Symphony). Also, Das Kapital was written with the intention to be an accessible reading (though some could argue that German is not the most proper languate to do so). It did become a nasty habit of professional Marxist phylosophers to make grand statements about the difficulties of reading the Capital, but this is no more sound than fishermen exaggerating the dificulties of fishing, to look more important in the eyes of laymen.

b. Coherent with Lenin's "theory" of "proletarian counsciousness" coming from outside the class, via the contribution of defroqué petty bourgeois intelectuals.

Quote:

Originally posted by Rosa Liechtenstein+--> (Rosa Liechtenstein)Nevertheless, a far more serious and intractable question is the following: How would it be possible to decide if anyone has ever actually understood all of Hegel's Logic?[/b]

Obvious: they understood Hegel's Logic if they agree with Lenin's interpretation of it; otherwise...

Quote:

Originally posted by Rosa Liechtenstein Indeed, buried in here somewhere is one of the main reasons for the ideological sectarianism that appears to be endemic in revolutionary Marxism; the Logic is to D[ialectical] M[aterialism] as The Bible is to Theology. In both of these books, a 'correct' interpretation functions as a test of orthodoxy; their use is both a source of mystification and a guarantor of righteousness.

True, but, as your reference to the Bible shows, this is by no means exclusive of dialectical materialism; it is a general trait of intelectual works that aspire to be embodied by human organisations; or, perhaps more correctly, of human organisations that intend to embody intelectual accomplishments.

Quote:

Rosa Liechtenstein

Quote:

@ Of course, few scientists would be foolish enough to make similar claims for any of the classics of science -- not even of Darwin's Origin or Newton's Principia --, that only if the latter were studied from end to end, and thoroughly understood, could an aspiring researcher/student claim to comprehend modern science. One guesses that only a minority of scientists have actually read all or most of the classics in their field, but that fact does not materially affect their work.

True, but "science", as an organisational phenomenon, is elitist by definition. The masses aren't called into it as producers (at best, yes, as consumers); the layman can believe practically anything about scientists (and there are ideological agencies that in fact promote the weirdest myths about them), without that having any practical effect in science (be it science as an organisation, a method, a practice, whatever). It is quite possible that the layman sees science as a secular religion (part of the "creationist" polemic against evolution is based in such misunderstandment). It doesn't matter; laymen are, by definition, not scientists. Such difference cannot be acknowledged in a democratic mass movement, in which all participants are insiders.

Quote:

Rosa Liechtenstein

True, but this does not address the origin of Leninism, which is not Hegel, nor the Bible, but Blanqui. While Lenin was probably very honest in his idea that understanding Hegel was essential for a revolutionary, the fact remains that such idea points immediately to a self-anointed revolutionary clique, separate from the masses.

Revolutionary theory is not just only different from "other scientific disciplines": its specifical difference it that it requires the erasing of the line dividing "scientists" and "laymen" (still the best text to explain that is in Plato's Protagoras, in which the old sophist retells the tale of the division of skills among human beings by Prometheus).

I like the idea of Stalinism as a Sexually Transmitted Disease, and of Trotskyism as something Off Topic...

Z:

I am aware of this quotation; so I do not know why you quoted it at me. It is exceptionally badly written, and makes little sense: "because it lets nothing impose upon it..."; what does that mean?

You will also note that Marx has to anthropomorphise 'the dialectic' to make this passage work. Not very impressive.

But worse, the dialectic cannot be a scandal to the bourgeoisis, since they invented it (Hegel was not a worker). Even in its Hegelian form, it encompassed change, in the way Marx says.

And, since it has no rational form, it can 'abominate' no one.

Worse still, we have Marx's other words that tell us he merely 'coquetted' 'here and there' with Hegel's 'terminology'.

So, the alleged 'rational' form amounted to no more than a few terms 'coquetted' with 'here and there'.

Hence, when I excise Hegel from Marxism, we are not going to miss much.

LH: OT was in fact a shortening of OTT (Orthodox Trotskyist Theorist) I used elsewhere in my Essays, so its not a play on 'Off Topic' but on 'Over The Top'.

The rest of what you say I cannot comment on since it is not intergral to points I wished to make, whatever else I made of them (except, in the full essay, I solve the problem you raise, about 'revolutionary consciousness' coming 'from the outside', and I do so in a way that is consistent with Leninism -- and, I disagree that Lenin is a Blanquist).

Why?

Luís Henrique

LH:

Well, I do not wnat to get dragged into political discussion, so I must let this one go.

However read Hal Draper oin this:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/drap...myth/index.htm

Rosa, I don't think it is possible to avoid a political discussion about the points you raised in the OP without avoiding any meaningful discussion. After all, your contention is not just that Lenin was wrong in his appreciation of the importance of Hegel's Logic, but that such mistake has had profound consequences on the politics of the left.

My position is that the consequences you point are due to Lenin's substitutionist theory of an external vanguard, not of Lenin's overappreciation of Hegel (and that, indeed, Lenin's overappreciation of Hegel is also a consequence of Lenin's substitutionism).

So, while I agree with you that Lenin's hyperbole about Marxist ignorance about Marxism is harmful, I don't believe a critique of it, in itself, is enough to get rid of the nasty consequences of "Leninism" in the left.

Luís Henrique

LH: I am well aware of this tired old allegation; I just do not wish to debate it.

Fine; to me, this ends this discussion also.

Luís Henrique

LH:

What discussion....??

In fact, this may well be the real question.

To phrase it in a better way, I am going back to the Golden Calf; I didn't like the new tables.

Luís Henrique

LH:

Er....????

Rosa you completely miss the point of Lenin's comment on Hegel's "Logic". The point was that no one could really understand the depth and gravity of Marx's breakthrough in "Capital" without fully understanding Hegel because "Capital" was a radical rupture with Hegelian dialectics. You have to understand the thing being ruptured from in order to understand the rupture. Stop taking things so literally.

Hegelian dialectics and the Marxist dialectic are two radically different things.

I would add that your inability to understand a work doesn't make it invalid or untrue, it is not grounds for its rejection. Frankly it is grounds for a rejection of your analysis of the subject that you flat out admit to not knowing what you're talking about, i.e. Hegel's Logic is "nonsense" because you don't understand it.

By this measure what else is nonsense? I would imagine it to be everything in the world you "don't get".

Repeater:

I deny this, and I challenge you to prove otherwise. [This point has been thrashed out several times on earlier threads.]

I note that Marx disgrees with you, and with Lenin; he said he merely 'coquetted' with Hegelian terminology in Capital.

That is what we are constantly told, but once again, I deny this.

I claim that no one can understand Hegel's Logic (just as no one can comprehend the Christian Trinity -- the two doctrines in fact hale from the same source in mystical Greek Hermeticism), nor 'materialist dialectics' (or if they can, they have kept this secret to themsleves for over 100 years), so that puts me in good company.

Well, you should try to avoid making stuff up; I set up my site to explain in extensive detail why I say the things I do.

I have also summarised my ideas on earlier threads.

All you have said, I have heard literally hundreds of times; it gets very tedious....

I'm just throwing this out there not as any critique on the material but of your response of: Maybe this is your fault in being unclear or ignoring legitimate points of view.

Bretty:

That is a possibility, I cannot deny that.

So, to back up your theory, I suggest read all those posts (plus my published Essays, all 600,000 words), locate any lack of clarity (or the other things you say), and I'll rectify it as soon as I can, if I am to blame -- or if I haven't already corrected it myself somewhere else.

[However, here's a much easier task for you: choose any randomly selected section of Hegel's 'Logic', and make that clear. Until then, such accusations against me, or failings on my part in ths regard, must pall into insignificance.]

Deal?

Your positions are laughable.

But just to show that your own arguments carry with them their disproof I will return to your quote of Marx:

First of all you claim that Marx only accidently passed over Hegel's Logic, but the quote clearly shows that Marx had "another look" by accident. Obviously meaning that he had viewed it before, in what context and to what depth is not known. But considering Marx's early entanglements with the Young and Left Hegelians, I think it is fair to assume that Marx understood Hegel, and thus his claim to recognize the difference between the "rational aspect" of the method and the mystified Hegelian form of it, i.e. dialectics, should not be merely glossed over. See, it is in fact here in this seperation between the two, which Marx explicitly recognizes, that your use of this quote to back up the idea that there is no difference, let alone that Hegel is incomprehensible, becomes a joke.

Your attempt to claim that Hegelianism is incomprehensible, and your comparison in that respect to Christianity as another example also shows a trenchant anti-theory and philistinism, a simple refusal to think. First of all, that something is mystified and untrue does not make it incomprehensible. And in this respect I would say that Hegel is fully comprehensible, as is Christianity, as is any ideology when viewed from an objective and materialist point of view. Your claim to the contrary leaves us in a situation where all ideology is out of bounds for investigation, even criticism, an irony which I tried to press on you by explaining how unscientific it is to claim to criticize something which is apparently uncriticizable (incomprehensible) according to you. Your defense being that no one can understand it at all, even as you show us two quotes, one from Marx and one from Lenin, which claim the opposite. Let it be said further that there are thousands of people who are experts in Hegel's philosophy throughout modern and contemporary times. If the burden of proof is on someone, in this discussion, I think it should be on you to show how it is that all these people who claim to understand Hegel are somehow deluded. Of course this would require that you understand something of Hegel, again an amusing irony. A simple categorical answer will not suffice as it really doesn't answer the question. Unfortunately this is exactly what your argument amounts to, i.e. a circular argument defining something as incomprehensible in order to prove that it's incomprehensible. This is what makes your 600,000 words a giant waste of time.

Now I'm sure your frustration with abstract thought comes by you honestly, but the demand that highly abstract thought should somehow be easy to access is illegitimate. Sometimes ideas are difficult and all ideas have different interpretations and viewpoints engaged in them. This is basic science and in fact what keeps it going as a social engagement with knowledge. If there was only one way of viewing things and no disagreements over them, if there were no wrong ideas or bad ideas, how would we come to correct ideas? Even mathematics has multiple points of view over such things as Set Theory, just as Physics has an apparently insurmountable contradiction at the base of its modern theory. The demand in any of these cases for one simple answer that wraps up and puts to rest all questions is an immature and idealist demand, and your reaction to this reality is simply denial. That is why I asked you what else was on your list of the incomprehensible, because if the threshhold is a nice two or three page essay, there are alot of ideas out their which would remain incomprehensible to you. But the real issue, and what this discussion illucidates, is that you're not dealing with Dialectics or Hegel as a legitimate set of ideas from the very outset of your "investigation". This is apriorism. That is, coming to a conclusion before you make an investigation, and it is very much connected to your circular logic. This is shown in relation to these other ideas, because if you put the same demands on other high levels of theory you would by necessity have to reject them, but you don't reject these out of hand. The only reason must be that you're applying a different set of categories in your interaction with them.

Let me just point out this last irony in your absurdist project:

I love that you make this claim, and rightfully so, and then turn around and demand that someone read all 600,000 of your words before they can engage in a discussion or understand your positions. Your methods and positions are a caricature of critical thinking, and as such they are crystal clear in their idiocy, in their narrowness and subjectivity. There is definately no need to read anything your "great mind" has put forward beyond a very small sampling of your posts here and a few of your essays to know that you're wrong.

I think Bretty is correct in suggesting that the problem with your rejection of criticisms of yourself on the basis of how often you hear them is pretty problematic and suggests something of a dogmatist.

Repeater (once more, I have heard/read this sort of stuff oh so many times -- do you dialecticians have to learn it by rote? Somehow, your title seems oddly apposite: Repeater 138; add a zero, and that is nearly the number of times I've heard this tired old stuff):

Marx did not own his own copy of Hegel's 'Logic', and had to be given one by Freiligrath.

Then, as you note, he took another look 'by accident', which hardly suggests he was an avid reader. Next he felt he could sum Hegel up in a few pages. Hardly a ringing endorsement of Lenin's claim.

You undermine your own conclusions, I'm afraid.

I note the guesswork here.

In fact, as it now turns out, Marx misunderstood Hegel, since he got his ideas from a second-rate Hegel interpreter Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus; as I have pinned in the stciky section, this is the truth (disappointing as this might seem):

From: http://www.hegel.net/en/faq.htm#6.4

Bold emphasis added.

More details here:

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/ind...howtopic=51512

But, if Marx misunderstood Hegel, and if Lenin were right, then Marx could not have understood Capital!

Well, I think you have just swallowed the standard line.

That is up to you, but don't expect me to accept it on your say-so.

Marx was not God, he made a minor error. Fortunately, he did not incorporate much of that execrable Hermetic idealism in Capital; as he says;, he merely 'coquetted' with a few bits of jargon.

I note also that you ignore this; I would in your circumstances.

Once again, hardly a ringing endorsement of the line Lenin took.

Now you substitute fulmination for logic:

The evidence is against you, as I show at my site; the dialectic originates in the same set of concepts drawn from Neoplatonism and Hermetic Greek thought, as did the concepts that later went into the construction of triune god of Christianity.

Get over it.

Calling me names is not an argument; but it is probably the best one you have got -- so I expect even more.

And I am not against theory, just philosophical/mystical theory -- unlike, I might add, you and your dialectically-confused comrades.

The more scientific theory (backed up by evidence) the better, as far as I can see.

Well, I have read more commentaries on Hegel, and studies of his work than any human being should ever have to. I claim that all fail to make his ideas comprehensible.

The same, only more so, is true of the many hundreds of books and articles I have read on 'materialist dialectics', most of which were highly repetitive.

[I demonstrate this in excrutiating detail at my site; so with respect to your claim, as applied to 'materialist dialectics', this has already been done.]

If you know of a single book or article that makes either or both comprehensible, then please let me know. I have been looking for one (just one!) now for nigh on 30 years.

Unlike you, I tend to read stuff before I make ignorant comments like that.

Perhaps I should learn from you, and descend into mere abuse?

What do you think?

My present 'short-sighted' tactic of reading stuff first, if adopted by your good self, would at least save you from making crass comments like this:

No problems with abstract knowledge. I also have a degree in mathematics; you can't get more abstract than that.

However, I do have a problem with the empty abstractions of philosophy -- but you will never know the reasons why, since you are a little too scared to read my work -- hence all that pontification and brainless fulmination.

No worries; I can somehow live with your continued ignorance.

I deny this, and challenge you to show where and what that 'contradiction' is.

[Of course, if you are referring to wave/particle 'duality' I deny this is a contradiction.]

Example?

Fine, stay ignorant, as I have said.

I won't be losing much sleep as a result....

rocha
i think repeater is right. lenin was a human and he made mistakes, doesnot mean whatever he said and leninism was wrong. if you start from a position that you will hate dialectics no one can make you realise what you are missing. to the layman the theories of relativity are also incomprehensible, i guess going by your logic relativity is bull shit because most people do not comprehend it.... and yet if you spend enough time to master the theories of relativity and if you have the brains enough it seems logically consistent, does it not?
i think you should have a look at marx's preface to capital, where he admits that the for a beginer the starting is difficult as it is indeed in any science but once mastered his way of analysis becomes simple. additionally you might see john stachy's quote[the intellectual effort to master marxism is enpurmous but equally the effort so applied can never go waste] i suggest instead of reading your 60,000 word essay you should try and read up hegel...there are many aspects that you will find strikingly similar...even his errors will make you think as to why and how his thought process faltered..that is education in itself....
just because you dont undersatand dialectics doesnot mean its hog wash..
and about lenin. if he had confined himself to bull shit and writing 60,000 words of hig wash my dear rosa i think he would have been in your place and not the sucsessful leader of a revolution..
rosa rememeber how small you are in front of lenin...dont jump on a phrase of his and try out absurd projects.
read lenin. try to understand what he writes about and you will certainly be more benefittted..