Marx's Capital and Hegel's Logic: A Reexamination

Historical Materialism #64

by Fred Moseley (Editor), Tony Smith (Editor)

This book provides a wide-ranging and in-depth reappraisal of the relation between Marx’s economic theory in Capital and Hegel’s Logic by leading Marxian economists and philosophers from around the world. The subjects dealt with systematic dialectics, the New Dialectics, materialism vs. idealism, Marx’s ‘inversion’ of Hegel, Hegel’s Concept logic (universality-particularity-singularity), Hegel’s Essence logic (essence-appearance), Marx’s levels of abstraction of capital in general and competition, and capital as Hegelian Subject.

Originally presented at the 22nd annual meeting of the International Symposium on Marxian Theory in August 2011, the papers in this volume feature contributions from economists and philosophers.

Contributors include Chris Arthur, Riccardo Bellofiore, Roberto Fineschi, Gastón Caligaris, Igor Hanzel, Juan Iñigo Carrera, Mark Meaney, Fred Moseley, Patrick Murray, Geert Reuten, Mario Robles, Tony Smith, and Guido Starosta

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 1 out of 5]

In all the articles that are published here there is nothing new about the dialectic method or other inquiries about Marx's Capital.

Skip this.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book of a dozen chapters with the same number of authors about Marx's use of Hegel's dialectical logic in Capital.

The New Dialectics is different from the old Marxian dialectics (or Diamat), which was concerned primarily with the influence of Hegel on Marx's theory of history, and the eventual triumph of socialism. The New Dialectics, by contrast, is concerned mainly with the influence of Hegel's logic on Marx's theory in Capital of capitalism, as a given historically specific society; hence it is also called 'systematic dialectics' (as opposed to 'historical dialectics'). Different authors have different interpretations of Hegel's logic and systematic dialectics, but they all agree that Hegel's logic is important for understanding Marx's theory in Capital. The aim of this book is to contribute to this new line of research.

And more:

It is well known that Marx interpreted Hegel's logic as idealist (following the general interpretation of Hegel's logic at the time, especially Feuerbach), and he claimed that he 'inverted' Hegel's logic in his own theory (in the Postface to the second German edition of Capital):

"My dialectical logic is, in its foundation, not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms into an independent subject, under the name of 'the Idea', is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only the external appearance of the idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought...

The mystification which the dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell."

As could be expected the chapters are of varying and uneven interest, though none were bad per se. The one I found most interesting was by Ricardo Bellofiore:

But the other half of the story is that Hegel is relevant for Marx not in spite of, but rather because of his idealist ontology: 'capital is a very peculiar object, grounded in a process of real abstraction in exchange in much the same way as Hegel's dissolution and reconstruction of reality is predicated on the abstractive power of thought. It is in this sense that it may be shown that there is a connection between Hegel's "infinite" and Marx's "capital"'. The isomorphism between Hegel's logic and the actuality of capital is valid, and – Arthur concludes the homology with the Idea is precisely a reason for criticising it as an inverted reality where self-moving abstractions have the upper hand over human beings.

In short, I found Bellofiore's chapter most the agreeable to my own reading of Marx.

Overall I found the various and often contradictory positions of each chapter productive. Context is everything, and that is exactly what I found in this work.