無法逃離的“后黑格爾主義”辯證法

2023-08-23 14:13 作者:team_alpha 0人讀過 | 我要投稿

No Escape from the "Post-Hegelian" Dialectic

Author(s): Michael Williams

Source: Science & Society , Fall, 2000, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Fall, 2000), pp. 357-365

通信

馬克思、黑格爾與辯證法：研討會

編者按：本節(jié)的三篇通信是由約翰·羅森塔爾的《逃離黑格爾》(S&S, Fall 1999)所發(fā)起的研討會的第一部分。另外兩篇評論，連同羅森塔爾對這五篇文章的回復，將發(fā)表在我們的2000-2001冬季刊上。

無法逃離的“后黑格爾主義”辯證法

????????一、羅森塔爾的觀點

????????對于羅森塔爾來說，在黑格爾那里并不存在辯證方法，黑格爾將邏輯范疇無條理地映射到經(jīng)驗世界上。對于黑格爾來說，普遍是實在的，同時，特殊并非如此(1999, 5-6)。他的辯證法是“似是而非的”，應(yīng)當只包含內(nèi)部矛盾驅(qū)動的內(nèi)在發(fā)展，而任何孤立的概念，在其有限性中，都會展現(xiàn)出這樣的內(nèi)部矛盾。因此，它的概念把握活動要求其過渡到另一個概念，在這個新概念中，矛盾得到了解決，以此類推，直到抵達無限性，而這一無限性的所有先前概念現(xiàn)在都被表明其是從屬規(guī)定的環(huán)節(jié)(1999, 8-10)。

????????羅森塔爾主張，馬克思[1973 (1857-8)]以“圣安東尼奧的姿態(tài)”克服了用黑格爾主義圖式再次開始他的論證的吸引力，從而逃離了黑格爾的“倒錯的神秘化”。這里的一個關(guān)鍵事例就是馬克思嘗試構(gòu)建一個從作為價值的一般等價形式的貨幣到作為自我擴張的價值的辯證推導，但這一嘗試并未成功。即使馬克思完全恰當?shù)剡\用了黑格爾的神秘主義——甚至是在《資本論》中也是如此——來詳細闡述價值與貨幣的“現(xiàn)實范疇”的獨特本體論，學者們也可能會因這一運用而誤入歧途。但羅森塔爾主張，這些“黑格爾式的”（原文如此）公式并沒有起到論證的作用。價值形式——以貨幣的形式獨立地顯現(xiàn)出來——只是恰巧表現(xiàn)出了與黑格爾形而上學的“客觀性本身”（概念）(the Concept)的相似性，且這一相似性是誤導性的。雖然貨幣作為交換價值的“實在的普遍”社會化身是看似合理的，但這樣的實在的自然普遍，例如，在各種各樣實際的具體動物之外的“動物”("Animal")并不存在。貨幣對于馬克思來說并非“絕對的一般”("the absolute Universal")，而僅僅只是“所有作為交換價值的商品的類的”相對“普遍性”(Rosenthal, 1999, 3-5)。

????????羅森塔爾認為，黑格爾馬克思主義嘗試將唯物辯證法從黑格爾的唯心主義形而上學的修正中拯救出來，這實際上只是單純地用“物質(zhì)唯心主義”("idealism of matter")取代黑格爾的唯心主義(1998, Chapter 7)。在這一過程中，黑格爾所認為的“實在的矛盾”遭到了庸俗化，成為了有限者的不可避免的轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝的純粹表達，體現(xiàn)為變化的必然性。實在的思想主體仍是意識與存在之間的消極中介，就像在黑格爾的一神論唯心主義中的一樣——只是流動的方向在這里被顛倒了。這種“動態(tài)歷史主義”，對于羅森塔爾來說，馬克思的歷史主義是本質(zhì)的而非方法論的。

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????????二、更深入地解讀黑格爾

????????在把握概念與社會對象的連續(xù)性的方面上，“新”黑格爾馬克思主義與查爾斯·泰勒(1)擺脫思想與對象之間詳盡的、給定的和規(guī)定的中介形式——比如休謨或洛克的“感官印象/感官知覺/感性知覺”(“sense impressions”)、康德對奎因“命題”的形式超驗范疇(formal transcendent categories)——的長期努力是一致的(Taylor, 1997)。如果意識與存在的二分法是無法維持的，那么任何實在的社會對象都會因其有限性而不完全符合其抽象概念這一點就不是什么可怕的“唯心主義”原罪，而是任何承認“近似”真理的認識論（任何非神論方法論都必須如此）的一種常見現(xiàn)象。黑格爾設(shè)法解決這些復雜性的嘗試并不能被簡單地還原為“絕對唯心主義”。與其說黑格爾主張“哲學創(chuàng)造了經(jīng)驗現(xiàn)實”(“philosophy creates empirical reality”)，不如解讀為黑格爾僅僅主張哲學“創(chuàng)造了它自己的內(nèi)容”(“creates its own content”)——“對思考的思考”(“thinking about thinking”)。因此，在邏輯學中，這個“絕對的形式在其自身就具有它的內(nèi)容或?qū)嵲谛浴?strong>內(nèi)容無非是絕對形式的這樣一些規(guī)定……” (Hegel, 1969, 592, 著重為羅森塔爾添加) (2)。

????????“辯證矛盾”可以超越而不否定形式邏輯矛盾。這并非對無矛盾律的違背，因為它可以被一致地描述(Bhaskar, 1983)。這也并非對物理規(guī)律的違背，因為它試圖把握住體系中而非位于該體系中的對象的任何孤立概念的結(jié)構(gòu)性張力(structural tension)。黑格爾的辯證法在試圖包含矛盾概念的同時，也試圖包含它們的更具體的存在條件，在其中，抽象矛盾的兩極被揭示為單個實在社會對象的對立必要謂詞。因此，他從“矛盾”到“對立”的轉(zhuǎn)變可以解讀為系統(tǒng)辯證敘述的一部分，而非疏忽或故弄玄虛。他的“相當無趣的雙關(guān)語”也許可以被重構(gòu)為對從抽象到不那么抽象的轉(zhuǎn)變的論證。

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????????三、從黑格爾到馬克思

????????羅森塔爾主張，黑格爾為馬克思提供了“一套非常適合于理解貨幣作為價值的‘一般等價形式’的語言公式” (1999, 15)，這一主張無疑是方法論的。雖然《資本論》中的表述要好得多，但《政治經(jīng)濟學批判大綱》中從貨幣到資本的“推導”或許并不能成為似是而非的黑格爾主義死胡同的例證。價值與使用價值之間的抽象矛盾被具體化為它們作為商品的必要謂詞的對立存在，意味著貨幣的出現(xiàn)。這并非對剩余價值的解釋（當然，資本建立在剩余勞動之上），而是對個別資本的系統(tǒng)性強制動機的描述，作為對“資本”范疇的描述。貨幣在概念上的出現(xiàn)是為了超越理論上的分散化經(jīng)濟中商品交換的問題；但作為沒有使用價值的純粹的價值，賺取作為資本的貨幣的唯一合理的動機就是價值增殖（因為“貨幣唯一能夠發(fā)生的變化就是數(shù)量上的變化”——Rosenthal, 1999, 20）。若是沒有馬克思從貨幣到資本的發(fā)展，沿著這一路徑，積累的驅(qū)動力就只能表現(xiàn)為守財奴的非理性戀物癖。

????????不同于Rosenthal (1999, 18)的觀點，從貨幣到資本的辯證發(fā)展，就像其他任何發(fā)展一樣，需要的不僅僅是內(nèi)部的驅(qū)動，也需要作為一定量貨幣的資本的顯而易見的經(jīng)驗存在作為外部參照。同樣的，從外部將“一般的經(jīng)濟事實——剩余價值的實現(xiàn)”(1999, 23)引入辯證敘述也是完全合理的，因為這一點將在隨后由在勞動力發(fā)展為商品的過程中簡單貨幣普遍商品交換與生產(chǎn)的復雜性來解釋。然而，當馬克思引入資本時，他并沒有從概念發(fā)展的“外部”引入“直觀可感知的”野獸(1999, 31)。相反，這一“一般的經(jīng)濟事實”由政治經(jīng)濟學家們的調(diào)查、資本主義經(jīng)濟個體的日常意識以及馬克思他自己根據(jù)他對商品、價值和貨幣的論述而對以上這些的反思所中介。

????????羅森塔爾提出指控，將資本作為貨幣發(fā)展的最終形式的推導將“它所宣稱的東西”神秘化(1999, 21-2)，這就引發(fā)了一個問題，它所宣稱的東西到底是什么。對于羅森塔爾來說，它似乎就是貨幣本身。但更合理的說法是，它就是資本主義貨幣。他認為(1999, 4ff)，貨幣商品就是那種代表了所有具體種類商品的“共同‘本質(zhì)’”的特殊，即交換價值。但貨幣特殊的本體論在于它的準自主的實在的存在本身，這一點甚至超越了黃金。對于羅森塔爾來說，從貨幣到資本的運動包含了現(xiàn)實歷史的“具體的社會生產(chǎn)關(guān)系”，而不僅僅是單純的貨幣流通中的社會生產(chǎn)關(guān)系（特別是勞動力作為商品的出現(xiàn)）。我認為這完全就是一種概念發(fā)展，旨在從（以羅森塔爾在其他地方極力推薦的方式提出的）現(xiàn)實范疇的角度來把握住已充分發(fā)展的資本主義中的社會關(guān)系。羅森塔爾在馬克思對給定的相關(guān)現(xiàn)象的可能性條件的（合理）發(fā)展與黑格爾（似是而非的）概念推導(1999, 32 and 20n)之間劃出一條清晰的分界線(open clear blue water)的嘗試是沒有說服力的。

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????????四、后黑格爾主義辯證方法

????????在馬克思成熟時期的政治經(jīng)濟學和他早期對黑格爾的批判中，我們都可以從中發(fā)現(xiàn)一種“體系”概念辯證法。對于黑格爾來說，現(xiàn)實就是合理的。馬克思將資產(chǎn)階級社會現(xiàn)實視作一個由有意識的個人所組成的在歷史上和在地理上特定的動態(tài)的自我再生產(chǎn)的（盡管可能是轉(zhuǎn)瞬即逝的）相互聯(lián)系的自動體系(intransitive system)。這一體系只有通過從感性現(xiàn)實到“實踐概念”——這些概念影響并構(gòu)成了日常實踐的必要條件——的“先驗的”辯證抽象才能得到認知。

????????對這樣一種體系的辯證敘述試圖為不同層次上的社會范疇之間的復雜體系性的相互聯(lián)系提供一種非隨意性的解釋，并希望最終能夠?qū)⒔?jīng)驗理解為具體。對出現(xiàn)的抽象矛盾的依次超越，通過實踐抽象的結(jié)果的有效性的理論實踐提供了一次系統(tǒng)性的檢驗。持續(xù)存在且未被否定(3)的矛盾被表明其是單個對象——這一對象就是循環(huán)再生產(chǎn)和潛在改造的根源——必然統(tǒng)一的環(huán)節(jié)之間的現(xiàn)實對立。未能得到體系性整合的元素（家務(wù)勞動者、國家工作者、封建殘余、前喻形式(pre-figurative forms)(4)）將體系性地處于從屬地位（家務(wù)勞動的商品化趨勢與應(yīng)對分散與異化的資產(chǎn)階級主體的家庭部門的顯然不可還原的核心）(Williams, 2001)。另一方面，在羅森塔爾的描述中(1999, 19)，劃分不同個體、種和類的特征表現(xiàn)為一種通過歸納概括過程而實現(xiàn)的隨意分類，而他自己已經(jīng)在其他地方(1998, 49, 54, 57-60, 164)批判過，這只不過是單純的“經(jīng)驗抽象”。

????????不同于黑格爾的所謂主張，即辯證理性（內(nèi)在性）存在一個單一的整體方法(Rosenthal, 1999, 9-10)，一種務(wù)實的后黑格爾馬克思主義方法能夠使多種論證形式共存于它的體系性敘述中(參見Rosen, 1984, ch.3)。黑格爾似乎在處理從矛盾到對立再到超越的運動中并沒有提及抽象層次之間的跳躍，而體系辯證法則明確地關(guān)注著從最抽象到具體之間的運動。這樣一個相互聯(lián)系的有意識的社會存在所組成的自我再生產(chǎn)體系的概念使我們能夠合理地將內(nèi)在性與目的論合為一體：范疇的充分性將根據(jù)體系性自我再生產(chǎn)的必要性來判斷。更重要的是，社會科學的必要性要求我們通過參照不容忽視的經(jīng)驗現(xiàn)實來評估我們的概念的充分性——在任何抽象層次上。它與形式邏輯貧困的本體論承諾——這個世界中的對象獨立于思想且相互獨立的對象——的充實化有關(guān)，以便能夠處理體系性的社會關(guān)系。因此，無論是黑格爾所認為的神秘的自我運動的“理念”，還是由辯證唯物主義所顛倒的神秘的自我運動的客觀性，都是無效的。思想和對象必然是統(tǒng)一的（當然是在政治經(jīng)濟學領(lǐng)域中）?？陀^東西（當我們能夠處理它時）被確定為存在于那里的東西與我們將其概念化的體系性嘗試的交集。社會客觀性被主體的體系性行動所再生產(chǎn)和改造，它本身也受到了它所提供的約束和機會的主體間（日常中且或多或少“科學的”）概念化的影響。社會個體通過實踐再生產(chǎn)和改造社會現(xiàn)實。這種不可避免的“存在于社會環(huán)境中的方式”（泰勒）意味著政治經(jīng)濟學是不可還原的反思性。社會客觀性是由概念聯(lián)系在一起的，這些概念在日常意識（時代精神）中的多種表現(xiàn)形式參與了社會現(xiàn)實（實踐）的再生產(chǎn)和改造。

????????體系性敘述的起點并非什么絕對“理念”，而是從被把握的經(jīng)驗中抽象出來的結(jié)果，實際上，這就是從預先存在的“日?！被蚋g接的“概念化”（對于Reuten and Williams, 1989來說，這就是“價值形式”；對于Marx, 1974 [1887]來說，這就是商品形式）。概念圖景永遠是試探性的、臨時的、可替代的、不全面的并且處在修正之中的。抽象與體系性敘述的過程永無止境地重復著，驅(qū)動這一過程的是對重要的、顯然具有體系必要性的要素的研究，這些要素的存在條件似乎受到了威脅：它們實際上是必要的嗎？如果是，這一體系是否在退化？還是在轉(zhuǎn)變？(Reuten and Williams, 1989, Part 6)盡管第二卷和第三卷具有未完成的性質(zhì)，而且在一些地方，不可避免地引誘讀者猜測敘述的結(jié)果，但直到第三卷，這種將經(jīng)驗作為具體的理解才最終暫時確立。黑格爾的正面貢獻是對感性經(jīng)驗的絕對給定性的質(zhì)疑，其依據(jù)是概念必然先于感知。他從當時的科學和社會科學發(fā)現(xiàn)出發(fā)，開始了他自己的哲學(Smith, 1999;? 1998;? 參見Williams, 2001)，Smith引用的這段話清晰地證明了這一點：

????????“哲學的發(fā)展應(yīng)歸功于經(jīng)驗……經(jīng)驗科學并不停留在對于現(xiàn)象的個別性的知覺上，而是發(fā)現(xiàn)普遍的規(guī)定、種類和規(guī)律，從而以思維的方式給哲學加工了材料。這樣，經(jīng)驗科學就準備了特殊東西的那種內(nèi)容，以便這種內(nèi)容能夠被吸收到哲學中……經(jīng)驗科學也因此而包含著對思維的迫切要求，以便把自身發(fā)展為這種具體的規(guī)定。在經(jīng)驗內(nèi)容中，思維揚棄那依然粘附的直接性與給予的材料，吸收這種內(nèi)容同時也就是思維基于其自身的發(fā)展。因此，哲學的發(fā)展實歸功于經(jīng)驗科學。” (Hegel, 1975 [1830], 112.)(5)

????????馬克思也是同樣，他并非是從未經(jīng)中介的給定經(jīng)驗出發(fā)，而是從他對政治經(jīng)濟學的提煉（總結(jié)在《剩余價值理論》中）出發(fā)，開始了《資本論》的敘述。否則，他怎么能決定哪些“經(jīng)濟現(xiàn)象”是“商品流通領(lǐng)域中所特有的”(Rosenthal, 1999, 26)？在何種意義上，高度間接和復雜的概念“商品”是直接“給定的”？接著，馬克思將通過政治經(jīng)濟學和日常意識所把握的經(jīng)驗體系化，以辯證敘述的方式在思想上將經(jīng)驗作為具體重構(gòu)。

????????貨幣，“其所有者社會關(guān)系的具體化指標”(Rosenthal, 1998, 53)，不能通過歸納其眾多表現(xiàn)形式得出，而只能通過在資本主義體系中體系性地定位其存在與職能得出。羅森塔爾本人簡潔的敘述非常清晰地引出了馬克思對貨幣、價值、商品和資本的體系性辯證解釋(1998, Parts II, IV)。他強有力地主張，普遍商品交換必需一種感性具體的貨幣形式來代表了全體系范圍中一般價值形式。雖然承認社會關(guān)系概念本身具有其內(nèi)涵但無外延，沒有獨立的經(jīng)驗存在，但他拒絕接受它們的外延是由它們在自我再生產(chǎn)的資本主義體系中的范疇定位所提供的。

????????體系辯證法是先驗的，這既是本體論上的——尋求現(xiàn)實的但感性上無法接近的關(guān)系、相互聯(lián)系、傾向和趨勢——也是認識論上的——假設(shè)這些就是社會對象可知性的條件。正如羅森塔爾所說，《資本論》全部三卷都是從給定的現(xiàn)象出發(fā)，詳盡闡述了自我再生產(chǎn)的資本主義體系的必要和充分條件，這完全是基于方法論預設(shè)的，即這種經(jīng)濟經(jīng)驗的條件包括“必須表現(xiàn)出某種系統(tǒng)性的內(nèi)在聯(lián)系與規(guī)律性”的“現(xiàn)象”的要求(Rosenthal, 1999, 29)。在這里，羅森塔爾(1999, 25ff)在馬克思的方法中正確地發(fā)現(xiàn)了康德的影響，但這一點并不妨礙馬克思的方法同時也是真正的“后黑格爾主義”。馬克思對康德方法上的了解似乎主要來自于他對黑格爾的解讀。奧托·鮑威爾很早之前就回答過了這一問題，“是什么把成熟的馬克思與黑格爾聯(lián)系在一起？”，并主張“對科學本質(zhì)的認識論反映……不僅僅是對事件的反映，而且還是‘思維著的頭腦的產(chǎn)物，這個頭腦用它所專有的方式掌握世界’(Marx, 1973 [1857-8], Introduction)(6)，這是注入了黑格爾的康德片斷——由馬克思在不了解康德的情況下用黑格爾的語言發(fā)展而來，但擺脫了黑格爾對康德的本體論的再解讀的影響”(1911, 189-190; 轉(zhuǎn)引自Rosdolsky, 1977 [1968], xiii, n. 3)(7)。

?????????

????????五、回到羅森塔爾

????????羅森塔爾的論證在文獻中的定位十分奇怪。盡管針對的是出現(xiàn)于二十世紀七十年代作為對“分析馬克思主義”的回應(yīng)的“新黑格爾馬克思主義”(1999, 1)，但他的批判只成功地針對了“舊”辯證唯物主義（“動態(tài)歷史主義”；Rosenthal, 1998, Chapter 3）。早在1942年，熊彼特就預見到了羅森塔爾對馬克思與“馬克思主義”唯物辯證法之間關(guān)系以及他的歷史主義的實質(zhì)而非方法論性質(zhì)的描述，并寫道：馬克思“因他的論點和黑格爾的論證間可以找到的某些形式上的類似之處而感到愉快。他喜歡證明他的黑格爾主義，喜歡用黑格爾的術(shù)語。但也僅止于此。他沒有在任何地方把實證科學出賣給形而上學……他的論證到處根據(jù)社會事實，他的一切命題的真正源泉，沒有一個導源于哲學領(lǐng)域”(1970 [1942], 9-10)(8)。盧卡奇早在1922年就抱怨過像羅森塔爾這樣的學者“將辯證法看作表面上的修飾裝飾”，并誤認為“馬克思”只在幾處“與黑格爾的概念‘調(diào)過情’”(1971)(9)。羅森塔爾(1998)奇怪地將盧卡奇，一個人道主義“西方馬克思主義”的早期學者，描述為他所批判的那種歷史主義馬克思主義的典型。

????????1982年。Michael Rosen發(fā)表了一篇篇幅長達一本書的論證，認為由于“黑格爾辯證法的合理性……與黑格爾的絕對唯心主義緊密相關(guān)”，所以不存在可以提取的“可接受的、獨立的‘內(nèi)核’”(1984, ix)。他還對歧義的系統(tǒng)性濫用提出了與羅森塔爾相同的指控，“黑格爾在其哲學特有的含義上使用了許多非技術(shù)術(shù)語，同時保留了——且經(jīng)常利用——它們的非技術(shù)聯(lián)系”(1984, xi)。最近的一些與對馬克思主義的“新”黑格爾主義解讀相關(guān)的著作，包括我自己的以及與Geert Reuten合著的著作(Williams, 1988; Reuten and Williams, 1989)都遭到了完全的無視，或者僅僅在羅森塔爾(1998)著作的第十三章中被非常簡短地提及。在《迷思》與《逃離》之間的這段時間里，又出現(xiàn)了三篇由“新”黑格爾馬克思主義者發(fā)表的重要評論（即Arthur, 1999; Smith, 1999; Williams, 1999a）。其中的每一篇都提及了羅森塔爾對“辯證唯物主義”的人道馬克思主義批判的簡潔再現(xiàn)，以及他對“新”黑格爾馬克思主義的幾乎完全漠視。盡管《逃離》的視角從“舊”辯證唯物主義轉(zhuǎn)向了“新”辯證法，但后者依然有待羅森塔爾的重視。

Michael Williams

社會科學經(jīng)濟學系

人文社會科學學院

德蒙福特大學

Milton Keynes MK7 6HP

England

michael_j_williams@iname.com

????????譯者注：

????????(1) 查爾斯·泰勒是一位加拿大哲學家，其涉獵的范圍相當廣泛，是當代最有影響力的哲學家之一。

????????(2) 黑格爾，先剛譯，《邏輯學》II，《黑格爾著作集》第6卷，人民出版社，第216頁。

????????(3) 同樣，在英語語境中，“否定”(sublate)一詞時常是作為“揚棄”(Aufhebung)一詞的同義詞而使用的。另外請見《逃離黑格爾》一文中的譯者注(18)。

????????(4) 前喻是一種文化傳承方式，晚輩向前輩學習，前輩的過去就是晚輩的未來，文化變遷十分緩慢，大家庭為主要的家庭類型。這里明顯是代指某種前資本主義社會形式。這一套術(shù)語與概念最早由美國人類學家瑪格麗特·米德提出。

????????(5) 黑格爾，梁志學譯，《邏輯學》，《哲學全書·第一部分》，人民出版社，第45-6頁。

????????(6) 《馬克思恩格斯全集》中文第二版第30卷第43頁。

????????(7) 羅曼·羅斯多爾斯基，《馬克思〈資本論〉的形成》，山東人民出版社，作者序第3頁，譯文有改動。

????????(8) 約瑟夫·熊彼特，《資本主義、社會主義與民主》，商務(wù)印書館，1999年版，第16頁。

????????(9) 盧卡奇，《歷史與階級意識》，商務(wù)印書館，1999年版，第44頁。

References

????????Arthur, Christopher J. 1999. “New Hegel, New Marx.” Radical Philosophy, 93 (January/February).

????????Bauer, Otto. 1911. Der Kampf VI.

????????Bhaskar, Roy. 1983. “Dialectics.” Pp.122-9 in T. Bottomore, ed., A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.

????????Hegel, G. W. F. 1969. Science of Logic. London: Allen & Unwin.

????????——. 1975 (1830). The Science of Logic. The first part of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

????????Lukacs, Georgy. 1981. History and Class Consciousness. London: Merlin.

????????Marx, Karl. 1973 (1858-8). Grundrisse Harmondsworth: Penguin.

????????——. 1974 (1867). Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

????????Reuten, Geert, and Michael Williams. 1989. Value-Farm and the State: The Tendencies of Accumulation and the Determination of Economic Policy in Capitalist Society. London/New York: Routledge.

????????Rosdolsky, Roman. 1977 (1968). The Making of Marx's ‘Capital’. London: Pluto Press.

????????Rosen, Michael. 1984. Hegel's Dialectic and its Criticism. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

????????Rosenthal, John. 1998. The Myth of Dialectics: Reinterpreting the Marx-Hegel Relation. Basingstoke/New York: Macmillan/St. Martin's.

????????——. 1999. “The Escape from Hegel.” Science & Society, 63:3, 32.

????????Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1970 (1942). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Unwin University Books.

????????Smith, Tony. 1998. "Value Theory and Dialectics." Science & Society, 62:3.

????????——. 1999. “The Relevance of Systematic Dialectics to Marxist Thought: A Reply to Rosenthal." Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, 4 (Summer), 215-240.

????????Taylor, Charles. 1997. Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harcard University Press.

????????Williams, Michael, ed. 1988. Value, Social Form and the State. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

????????——. 2000. “Why Marx Neither Has nor Needs a Commodity Theory of Money.” Review of Political Economy, 12:4.

????????——. 2001. “Mysticism, Method and Money in the Marx-Hegel Dialectic.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, forthcoming.

MARX. HEGEL AND DIALECTICS: A SYMPOSIUM

Editor's Note: The three communications in this section are the first install- ment of a symposium inspired by John Rosenthal's "The Escape from Hegel" (S&S, Fall 1999). Two more contributions, together with Rosenthal's reply to all five, will appear in our Winter 2000-2001 issue.

Science & Society, Vol. 64, No. 3, Fall 2000, 357-365

NO ESCAPE FROM THE "POST-HEGELIAN" DIALECTIC

????????Rosenthal's Position

????????For Rosenthal, there is no dialectical method in Hegel, who incoherently projects logical categories onto the empirical world. For Hegel, universals are real and, concomitantly, particulars are not (1999, 5-6). His dialectic is "wildly specious," being supposed to implicate only immanent development driven by the internal contradiction that any concept taken in isolation, in its finitude, reveals. Its comprehension thus requires transition into another concept in which the contradiction is resolved, and so on until an infinitude is reached of which all earlier concepts are now revealed as sub- ordinate determining moments (1999, 8-10).

????????Rosenthal argues that Marx [1973 (1857-8)], after "a St. Anthony-like struggle" against the temptation to re-cast his arguments in Hegelian schemata, almost escapes Hegel's "paralogical mystification." A key exemplar here is Marx's failed attempt to construct a dialectical derivation of capital as self-expanding value, from money as general equivalent form of value (Rosenthal, 1999, 15-17). Scholars may have been led astray by Marx’s entirely appropriate use, even in Capital, of Hegel’s mysticism to elaborate on the peculiar ontology of the "practical categories” of value and money. But Rosenthal claims, these "Hegeloid" (sic) formulae do no argumentative work. The value-form, manifest autonomously as money, just exhibits a misleading fortuitous similitude with Hegelian metaphysics’ objectivity as such (the Concept). While it is plausible that money exists as the “real universal” social incarnation of exchange values, there can be no such real natural universal as, for example, "Animal" existing alongside the plethora of actual specific animals. Money is not "the absolute Universal” for Marx, only the relative "universality of the class of all commodities as exchange-value” (Rosenthal, 1999, 3-5).

????????Hegelian Marxism, claims Rosenthal, tries unsuccessfully to extricate a materialist dialectical method from a rectification of Hegel’s idealist metaphysics that in fact just replaces Hegel’s idealism with an “idealism of matter” (1998, Chapter 7). In the process, Hegel’s putative “real contradiction” is banalized as a mere expression of the inevitable transience of the finite, manifest in the necessity of change. The real thinking subject remains a passive conduit between consciousness and being, as in Hegel’s theistic idealism – only the direction of flow is here reversed. Pace this “dynamic historicism,” for Rosenthal, Marx’s historicism is substantial not methodological.

?????????

????????Hegel Read More Empathetically

????????In grasping the continuity of concept and social object, “new” Hegelian Marxism is congruent with Charles Taylor’s long-term struggle to escape from exhaustive, given and prescriptive forms of mediation between thought and object, such as Hume’s or Locke’s “sense impressions,” Kant’s formal transcendent categories of Quine’s “propositions” (Taylor, 1997). If no dichotomy between consciousness and being can be sustained, then that the finiteness of any real social object makes it less than perfectly adequate to its abstract concept is not some terrible “idealist” sin, but rather a commonplace of any epistemology that admits of “approximate” truth (as any nontheistic methodology must). Hegel’s attempt to grapple with these complexities cannot simply be reduced to “absolute idealism.” Rather than saying that “philosophy creates empirical reality,” he can be read as claiming only that it “creates its own content” – “thinking about thinking.” Thus Logic, this “absolute form has in its own self its content or reality . . .? the content is simply and solely these determinations of the absolute form and nothing else” (Hegel, 1969, 592, emphasis added to a citation by Rosenthal).

????????“Dialectical contradiction” may transcend without negating formal logical contradiction. It is not in violation of the principle of non-contradiction since it can be consistently described (Bhaskar, 1983). It is not in violation of the laws of physics, since it attempts to grasp structural tension revealed in the? system, not in any isolated conception of an object that is to be located in that system. Hegel’s dialectic seeks to encompass contradictory concepts and at the same time their more concrete conditions of existence, in which the poles of the abstract contradiction are revealed as the contrary necessary predicates of a single real social object. His move from “contradiction” to “opposition” may thus be read as part of a systematic dialectical presentation, rather than as negligence or obscurantism. His “pedestrian pun-making” can, perhaps, be reconstructed as argumentative moves from the abstract to the less abstract.

?????????

????????From Hegel to Marx

????????Rosenthal’s claim that Hegel provided Marx “with a set of linguistic formulae perfectly suited to grasping the nature of money as the ‘general equivalent form’ of value” (1999, 15) is indubitably methodological. While much better formulated in Capital, the “derivation” of capital from money in the Grundrisse may not exemplify a specious Hegelian dead-end. The abstract contradiction between value and use-value is concretized as their antagonistic existence as necessary predicates of commodity, implying the emergence of money. This is not an explanation of the existence of surplus-value (which, of course, Capital bases on surplus labor) but rather a description of the systemically imposed motivation of individual capitals, writ large as a description of the category “capital.” Money emerges conceptually to transcend the problems of notional decentralized economic commodity exchange; but as pure value-without-use-value, the only rational motivation for acquiring money as capital is valorization (since “the only sort of variation of which money allows is a quantitative one” – Rosenthal, 1999, 20). Without Marx’s development from money to capital, along these lines, the drive to accumulation appear as the irrational fetish of the miser.

????????Pace Rosenthal (1999, 18), the dialectical development from money to capital, like any other, need not be driven solely immanently, but also by external reference to the apparent empirical existence of capital as a sum of money. Similarly, the extrinsic introduction into the dialectical presentation of “the mundane economic datum of realized surplus-value” (1999, 23) is perfectly legitimate, as that which is to be explained subsequently by the sophistication of simple monetary generalized commodity exchange and production in the development of labor-power as a commodity. Nevertheless, by the time Marx introduces capital, it is no “immediately perceptible” brute given (1999, 31) introduced from “outside” the conceptual development. Rather it has been mediated by the investigations of the political economists, the everyday consciousness of the agents of capitalism and Marx’s own reflections upon them, in the light of his discourse on commodities, value and money.

????????Rosenthal’s charge that deriving capital as the completion of the development of money mystifies the “ostensible subject matter” (1999, 21-2) raises the question as to what exactly that subject matter is. For Rosenthal it would seem to be money as such. But more plausibly, it is capitalist money. He argues (1999, 4ff) that the money commodity is the particular representing the “generic ‘essence’” of all the specific sets of commodities, que exchange value. But the peculiar ontology of money lies in its quasi-autonomous real existence as such, transcending even gold. For Rosenthal the move from money to capital involves the real-historical “coalescence of specific social relations of production” beyond those of simple monetary circulation (in particular the emergence of labor as a commodity). I see it as entirely a conceptual development intended to grasp the social relations of fully developed capitalism in terms of the practical categories that they throw up (in a manner highly recommended by Rosenthal elsewhere). Rosenthal’s attempt to open clear blue water between Marx’s (legitimate) development of the conditions of possibility of given relevant phenomena and Hegel’s (specious) conceptual derivations (1999, 32 and 20n) is unpersuasive.

?????????

????????A Post-Hegelian Dialectical Method

????????A “systematic” conceptual dialectic is discernible in both Marx’s mature political economy and his earlier critique of Hegel. For Hegel the real is rational. Marx posits bourgeois social reality as a historically and geographically specific dynamic self-reproducing (though potentially transient) interconnected, intransitive system of conscious individuals. It is accessible to cognition only via “transcendental” dialectical abstraction from sensuous reality to the “practical concepts” that inform and constitute the necessary conditions of everyday praxis.

????????The dialectical presentation of such a system attempts to provide a non-arbitrary account of the complex systemic interconnections of social categories at different levels of abstraction that can ultimately hope to grasp the empirical as the concrete. The sequential transcendence of emergent abstract contradiction provides a synthetic test by theoretical praxis of the validity of the results of practical abstraction. Persistent unsublated contradiction is posed as the real antagonism between necessarily united moments of a single object that is the source of cyclical reproduction and latent transformation. Elements that escape systemic integration (domestic labor, state labor, feudal hangovers, pre-figurative forms) are to be located in their systemic subordination (the tendential commodification of domestic labor and the apparently irreducible core of the domestic sector that copes with the fragmented and alienated bourgeois subject) (Williams, 2001). In Rosenthal’s account (1999, 19), on the other hand, the features that differentiate individuals, species and genera appear as an arbitrary classification by a process of inductive generalization that he himself has elsewhere (1998, 49, 54, 57-60, 164) castigated as mere “empirical abstraction.”

????????Pace Hegel’s alleged claim that there is a single monolithic mode of dialectical reason (immanence) (Rosenthal, 1999, 9-10), a pragmatic post-Hegelian Marxist method can allow a multitude of forms of argument in its systematic presentation (cf. Rosen, 1984, ch.3). While Hegel appears to deal with the movement from contradiction, to contrariety to transcendence without reference to shifts between levels of abstraction, systematic dialectics is concerned explicitly with movement from the most abstract to the concrete. The notion of a self-reproducing system of interconnected conscious social beings allows us to legitimately conflate immanence and teleology: the adequacy of categories is to be judged in terms of the imperatives of systemic self-reproduction. What is more, the social scientific imperative invites us to assess the adequacy of our concepts - at any level of abstraction - by reference also to pressing empirical reality. It involves the enrichment of formal logics impoverished ontological commitment only to a world of discrete objects independent of thought, so that it can handle systemic social relations. Thus neither the mysterious self-moving “idea” attributed to Hegel, nor the mysterious self-moving objectivity embraced by dialectical materialisms inversion is valid. Thought and object are necessarily unified (certainly in the domain of political economy). The objective (as we can deal with it) is determined as the intersection of what there is and our systematic attempts to conceptualize it. Social objectivity is reproduced and transformed by subjects’ systematic action, itself informed by their intersubjective (everyday and more or less “scientific”) conceptualization of the constraints and opportunities it offers Social agents reproduce and transform social reality through praxis. This unavoidable “way of being in the social world”(Taylor) implies that political economy is irreducibly reflexive Social objectivity is linked by concepts , in their manifold manifestation in everyday consciousness (zeitgeist) that participate in the reproduction and transformation of that social reality (praxis).

????????The starting point of systematic presentation is not some absolute “Idea,” but rather the result of abstraction from the empirical grasped, de facto, to the extent possible with pre-existing “everyday” or more mediated conceptualization (For Reuten and Williams, 1989, the “value-form”; for Marx, 1974 [1887], the commodity-form). Conceptual spectacles are forever tentative, provisional, fungible, non-exhaustive and subject to revision. The process of abstraction and systematic presentation repeats endlessly, driven by the investigation of significant and apparently systemically necessary elements whose conditions of existence seem threatened: are they in fact necessary? If so, is the system degenerating? Or transforming? (Reuten and Williams, 1989, Part 6). This grasping of the empirical as concrete is not even provisionally established until Volume III, despite the unfinished nature of Volumes II and III and the unavoided temptation to anticipate the results of the presentation in several places. Hegel’s positive contribution is to question the absolute givenness of sensible experience, on the grounds that conception necessarily precedes perception. He started his own philosophy with the then extant findings of science and social science (Smith, 1999; 1998; cf. Williams, 2001), as evidenced with crystal clarity by this passage cited by Smith:

????????Experience is the real author of growth and advance in philosophy. . . . the empirical sciences do not stop short at the mere observation of the individual features of a phenomenon. By the aid of thought, they are able to meet philosophy with material prepared for it, in the shape of general uniformities, i.e. laws, and classifications of the phenomena. When this done, the particular facts which they contain are ready to be received into philosophy. This . . . implies a certain compulsion on thought itself to proceed to these concrete specific truths. The reception into philosophy of these scientific material, now that thought has removed their immediacy and made them cease to be mere data, forms at the same time a development of thought out of itself. Philosophy, then, owes its development to the empirical sciences. (Hegel, 1975 [1830], 112.)

????????Marx too starts Capital, not with unmediated empirical givens, but with his distillation of political economy (summarized in Theories of Surplus Value). How else could he have decided which “economic phenomena . . . are proper to the sphere of commodity circulation” (Rosenthal, 1999, 26)? In what sense is the highly mediated and complex concept “commodity” immediately “given”? Marx then proceeds to systematize the empirical, as grasped so far by political economy and everyday consciousness, in a dialectical presentation aiming to reconstruct in thought the empirical as the concrete.

????????Money, “the reified index of the social relatedness of its possessors” (Rosenthal, 1998, 53), cannot be derived by induction from its many forms of expression, but only by systematically locating its existence and functionality within the bourgeois system. Marx’s systematic dialectical account of money, value, commodity and capital is brought out very clearly by Rosenthal’s own elegant presentation of it (1998, Parts II, IV). He argues persuasively that generalized commodity exchange necessitates a sensate-concrete money-form representing the (system-wide) universal value-form. While Rosenthal recognizes that concepts of social relations have in themselves intension but no extension, no discrete empirical existence, he refuses to accept that their extension is provided by their categorical location within the self-reproducing capitalist system.

????????Systematic dialectics is transcendental, both ontologically – in seeking real but sensuously inaccessible relations, interconnections, dispositions and tendencies – and epistemologically – in postulating these as a condition of the knowableness of social objects. As Rosenthal argues, from given phenomena the three volumes of Capital elaborate the conditions necessary and sufficient for a self-reproducing capitalist system, on the entirely methodological presupposition that such conditions of economic experience include the requirement that “phenomena . . . must exhibit a certain systematic interconnection and regularity” (Rosenthal, 1999, 29). The Kantian influence that Rosenthal (1999, 25ff), rightly, here finds in the Marxian method does not preclude it being also genuinely “post-Hegelian.” Marx’s knowledge of Kant’s ideas on method appears to derive largely from his reading of Hegel. Bauer long ago answered the question, “What connects the mature Marx with Hegel?,” with the claim that “the epistemological reflection on the essence of science . . . is not a mere reflection of events, but rather ‘a(chǎn) product of the thinking head which appropriates the world in the only way it can’ (Marx, 1973 [1857-8], Introduction), that is a piece of Kant, implanted in Hegel – developed by Marx without Kant’s knowledge, in Hegel’s language, but free from the ontological re-interpretation of Kant by Hegel” (1911, 189-190; cited in Rosdolosky, 1977 [1968], xiii, n. 3).

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????????Back to Rosenthal

????????The location of Rosenthal’s arguments in the literature is distinctly odd. Despite targeting the “new Hegelian Marxism” that emerged in the 1970s as a response to “Analytical Marxism” (1999, 1), his criticism impacts successfully only on “old” dialectical materialism (“dynamic historicism”; Rosenthal, 1998, Chapter 3). Schumpeter anticipated Rosenthal’s account of Marx’s relation to the “Marxist” materialist dialectic and of the substantial rather than methodological nature of his historicism as long ago as 1942, writing: Marx “enjoyed certain formal analogies which may be found between his and Hegel’s argument. He liked to testify to his Hegelianism and to use Hegelian phraseology. But this is all. Nowhere did he betray positive science to metaphysics. . . . his argument . . . everywhere rests upon social fact, and the true sources of his propositions none of which lies in the domain of philosophy” (1970 [1942], 9-10). Lukacs complained as early as 1922 about Rosenthal-style scholars “regarding the dialectic as a superficial stylistic ornament” and believing “that Marx had ‘flirted’ with Hegelian concepts” in only a few places (1971). Rosenthal (1998) oddly characterizes Lukacs, surely a germinal scholar of humanist “Western Marxism,” as an exemplar of the historicist Marxism that he criticizes.

????????In 1982. Michael Rosen published a book-length argument that no “acceptable, independent ‘kernel’” could be extracted since “the rationality of Hegel’s dialectics is . . . inextricably linked to Hegel’s Absolute Idealism” (1984, ix). He also makes the same charge of systematic abuse of ambiguity as Rosenthal, “that Hegel uses many non-technical terms in a sense specific to his philosophy, while retaining – and often playing on – their non-technical associations” (1984, xi). More recently, the work of “new” Hegelian interpretations of Marxism, including my own work with Geert Reuten (Williams, 1988; Reuten and Williams, 1989) are completely ignored, or are given but the briefest mention in Chapter 13 of Rosenthal (1998). In the period intervening between that book and the present paper, three significant reviews have appeared by “new” Hegelian Marxists (viz. Arthur, 1999; Smith, 1999; Williams, 1999a). Each mentions Rosenthal’s elegant reprise of the humanist Marxist critique of “dialectical materialism” and his almost complete lack of engagement with “new” Hegelian Marxism. Notwithstanding the shift in aim in the present paper from the “old” dialectical materialism, the “new” dialectics still awaits Rosenthal’s serious attention.

Michael Williams

Department of Economics and Social Science

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

De Montfort University