Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study

Historical Materialism #246

by Kevin B. Anderson

This first full-length treatment of Lenin's studies of Hegel presents Lenin as a major figure in Hegelian Marxism, providing a more nuanced portrait of his work than that of either official Marxist-Leninism or most Western accounts.
       "With impressive argumentation
        and wide-ranging scholarship, Anderson presents us with a Lenin that no
        one seriously interested in current debates over the relevance of Marxist
        theory to socialist practice can afford to miss." -- Bertell Ollman,
        author of Dialectical Investigations
      "An important contribution
        to grasping the conceptual roots of Marxist theory and practice."
        -- Tom Rockmore, author of Hegel's Circular Epistomology
      "Today Lenin looks like
        he did little more than prepare the way for Stalin. You will find the
        opposite view in this novel study. . . . I recommend the book to anyone
        seriously interested in Russia and revolution." -- George Uri Fischer,
        author of The Soviet System and Modern Society
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Kevin B. Anderson is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with courtesy appointments in Feminist Studies and Political Science. He is the author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism (1995), Foucault and the Iranian Revolution (with Janet Afary, 2005), and Marx at the Margins (2010/2016). Among his edited volumes are the Rosa Luxemburg Reader (with Peter Hudis, 2004) and the Dunayevskaya-Marcuse-Fromm Correspondence (with Russell Rockwell, 2012). He writes regularly for New Politics, The International Marxist-Humanist, and Jacobin on Marxism and on international politics and radical movements in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

Reviews

[Michael A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The argument in this book is that during Lenin's engagement with Hegel's Science of Logic in 1914-1915, Lenin broke away from his "crude" materialism of his 1908 book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (crude as it is used in this book seems to me to mean "undialectical" or "mechanistic") and developed a more robust dialectical materialism that helped shape his theorizing on imperialism, the state and party, and national liberation (his 'dialectics of revolution' in general) with the caveat that his organizational theory of the vanguard party was still "lagging behind" and not quite "updated" with the Hegelian/dialectical insights he obtained through his study. A result of this Hegelian "leap" is that he is closer theoretically to the Hegelian Marxists of Western Marxism, viz. Lukacs, Lefebvre, Marcuse, and especially Dunayevskaya (who, it is argued, seems to be the only Marxist who really has had a sustained and serious engagement with the relationship between Lenin and Hegel [at least at the time of that writing, so 1995 or so], as others like Althusser tend to deny or seriously distance the two) rather than the "Eastern" (i.e. Soviet) Marxists, viz. Trotsky, Plekhanov, Stalin, Bogdanov. That is, it is argued that Lenin is really the first "Hegelian Marxist", at least since Marx.

The evidence and argument of the book is hard to deny - it really does appear to be the case that Lenin's thinking was influenced heavily by Hegel after these engagements. There is a presupposition latent, though, which is that the dialectic is really what makes Marxism 'powerful' (I use the term loosely - but there is an implicit sense that Marxism only has explanatory force through the dialectic, if one doesn't understand and fully grasp the dialectic, one doesn't really understand what's going on). Now, I don't disagree with this per se, as I rather like Hegel! But the perspective this study is being presented is from a Humanist Hegelian Marxist perspective, and I do feel like these presuppositions aren't altogether justified, as much of the criticisms evoked against Marxists is that their materialisms are "crude", without exactly detailing why this is an issue (other than that they "don't understand the dialectic"...) Perhaps this is just beyond the scope of the study, but the fundamental orientation of the book is axiomatically imposed rather than philosophically justified. Which is fine, if you are willing to accept the general thrust of the orientation!

Overall, I really enjoyed this text, though. The writing is very clear considering the subject matter, and I felt like I got a lot out of it, and it was, for the most part, compellingly narrated. Hard to get much better on an academic subject that could easily have been dry and boring.

[Imran Rasid]

When i started reading Hegel few years back i am truly convinced that dialectics, as a way of thinking, as a set of gestures, as series of operatives, is KEY to understanding much of what happened today in both theoretical and practical level. I am glad that the Hegelian legacy was embraced by those within the Marxist tradtions, including Lenin, i.e the subject of this book. It is rather amusing to note that not many Marxist scholars/activist today acknowledged Hegelian influences on Lenin's thinking, which stems from the study period in between December 1915 until mid 1915. Within those period Lenin engaged in a close study of Hegel's Science of Logic, another underrated text from Hegel, to understand better the notion of Dialectics. His study notes wer later compiled and published under the heading Philosophical Notebook. While the notes itself is messy and filled with long dwindled quotations from Hegel, Kevin's book able to organize and contextualize it within a broader evolution of Lenin's thinking. The presentation of his ideas are clear and detailed, and the arrangement ent of chapters was easy to follow. Although you migh need some background of Hegelian logic to appreciate some of the discussion in the book. Overall, a good read.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty interesting book, but there are no revelatory moments of philosophical insight. In short, at the outbreak of WWI, Lenin - usually known for his Political Savvy - retreated to privation, to read Hegel's logic. He emerged a phoenix. In this book Anderson details how Lenin understood Hegel, and began to break with second international/Engelsian Marxism. Despite my respect for Engels, his influence on Marxism has always been negative. Lenin began to develop the thought process now known as Western Marxism from his readings of Hegel, and Lukacs grabbed the torch from Lenin's hand and ran the rest of the marathon. So interesting book if you're interested in a very narrow topic: Lenin's reading of Hegel.

That said, Anderson as an actual writer deserves 5 stars, and I intend to purchase his other books on Marxism.

[Ioannis Drakos · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enthralling read which, with all the debate of "epistemological breaks" in great thinkers, has prompted a re-evaluation of my own thought more than any other work I have read in the last year. In fact, I have learned and called into question more in the past week and a half of reading this book than I have ever done.

The significance of Kevin B. Anderson's illumination of Lenin's groundbreaking yet still flawed Hegel studies, its influence on subsequent theories and currents in Marxism (most particularly as the foundation of Marxist-Humanism and the work of Raya Dunayevskaya), and its call for a greater critical appraisal of these notes for our time have resonated with me.

The debates brought up in this book surrounding the "2 camps" of philosophy, idealism and materialism; revolutionary subjectivity; cognition; thought and action; organization, and generally the meaning and significance of Hegelian dialectics for Marxism (and more) make this a highly valuable study worth frequently returning to.

I have never read a book this fast, a testament to the exciting character of its content and clear writing style of its author.

[Lawrence Cusipag · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exploration on Lenin's reading of Hegel's Science of Logic 1914-15. As well as its influence to thinkers during the 20th century such as Lukacs, Korsch, Dunayevskaya, James, Marcuse, Lefebvre, etc.

Definitely, worth reading for those who are interested in Marxism that is not 'scientistic', as Engels puts it.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptional study of Lenin's political and philosophical thought that sheds light on the promise and limits of Marxism before and after the Russian Revolution. The book benefits from Anderson's clear presentation of the stakes in Lenin's study of Hegel's Science of Logic including the state of Marxism on the eve of the first World War, Lenin's crisis of confidence that led him to a return to Hegel, and the implications for Lenin's theory of Imperialism and National Liberation movements as representative of the promise of a Hegelian Marxism.

The promise of Lenin's study of the Science of Logic, Anderson argues, can be found in two developments within a number of Lenin's published works and public statements following 1914. First, Lenin's evaluation of the dialectics of Imperialism and National Liberation opens up a new theoretical framework in opposition to the predominant theory of revolution for both the leadership of the Second International and the left critique as represented by Rosa Luxemburg. Lenin argues against predominant theories that dismiss colonial nationalist movements as a primitive stage of capitalism and instead argues that Imperialism reflects a dialectical advance from competitive industrial capital to monopoly finance capital that, in turn, creates a rift within working classes between the aristocracy of the proletariat in western European countries and nationalist resistance movements such as those in Ireland, Ukraine, Asian, African, and South American colonies. This has implications not only for how Marxists should understand and approach resistance movements, but also explains how Communist parties and the proletariat embraced nationalism over revolution on the eve of European-wide war in 1914.

The second insight of Lenin's study of Hegel derives from the first, and is reflected in Lenin's embrace of the Soviet worker councils as a strategy for the development of communism as an alternative to capitalism. This also is opposed to the Marxist leadership of the Second International as well as its left-wing critics. For Kautsky, Plekhanov, and the other leaders of the Second International, revolution would come through the seizure of government power and the institution of a communist state; for Luxemburg and left critics, the revolution would come from workers spontaneously revolting against the chains of their oppression. Lenin rejects both alternatives, arguing that the revolutionary potential of the proletariat of necessity requires an organizational structure, but that organizational structure cannot simply be a top-down statist approach. Merely seizing the reins of power is thus insufficient for the ushering in of communism.

The limits of Lenin's insights, here, come into stark contrast when he fails to address or even modify his own theory from What Is to Be Done where he argues for a vanguard party precisely because the proletariat is incapable of rising about trade unionism to achieve its own revolutionary potential. This failure has practical implications as well, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks faced counter-revolution and developed a militarized state apparatus that neither Lenin nor the Russian Communists ever abandoned. Though, in the early 1920's Lenin engaged in internal disputes over the new Russian state, he never grappled with vanguardism or its implications for a bureaucratized state.

Anderson's treatment of the full implications Lenin's Hegel Notebooks and the fallout for Communist parties and individual intellectuals in the decades following World War II provides a new appreciation for the dynamics of the history of communism as a political program and as a philosophical school of thought.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anderson is a protege of Raya Dunayevskaya, and here he follows her closely in arguing Lenin's philosophical transformation while reading Hegel's Science of Logic, as recorded in his detailed notebooks, after the crack up of the Second International. More specifically, he argues Lenin works out from his reading:

(1) self-development through contradiction
(2) leaps versus evolutionary gradualism
(3) the unity of opposites
(4) the transformation into opposite
(5) the unity of idealism and materialism,
(6) on many occasions, the centrality of subjectivity to dialectics
(7) the notion of action, practice, and will as being equally as important as, if not more important than, the theoretical idea
(8) cognition as both reflecting and shaping the world
(9) Hegel's concept of nature as related to materialism
(10) the critique of vulgar materialism, and
(11) at the end of his study, a bit on the negation of the negation

In other words Anderson shows how Lenin's dialectic matured and became far more nuanced then previously, and also how it impacted his later works, starting with Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Personally I find his argument quite compelling (though I was already quite compelled after reading Dunayevskaya's Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and From Marx to Mao). But I do also realize Lenin's views on Hegel have been a highly controversial subject since his death exactly 100 years ago this month, and Anderson's perspective is probably as far into the Hegelian camp as you can go. So, that means more reading is required (well, at least for me).

[Chris Gilligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extensively researched book written by an author with a deep grounding in the philosophy of Hegel and an extensive knowledge of Lenin's thought and revolutionary activity. For my more extensive review see: https://bit.ly/3AVYy9D