From: Mr C Smith

Subject: Philosophy of Right and the Logic [MARX, FEUERBACH, HEGEL]

Dear Andy,

I hadn't intended to join in the discussion yet, because I am not really ready to say what I want to say. However, I shall respond as you ask, but briefly and inadequately.

I had seen the Cowling article referred to by Dumain, and I seem to remember that it had some interesting things in it. However, I want to ask just what are we talking about? I mean, what was Marx trying to do? Was he indeed trying to give a scientific account of bourgeois society, or an analysis of capitalism, or of history? If any of these were the case, we could go on to interrogate him about what method he was using, and then argue about whether it was a good one.

But he wasn't in that business at all. He was trying to grasp how humanity at that particular stage of social development could tackle the problems which had been uncovered by the work of Hegel and others. These were not, he insisted, problems for scientists or philosophers - their job was to try to explain the world in various ways - but problems for society as a whole. The answers were therefore not to be found in new theories, but in critical-revolutionary practice.

Marx's contribution was to criticise the methods and theories of other chaps, not because they had got things wrong (the quote you give from the CHPR hits this nail on the head: Hegel's description of the modern state is fine; Marx's conclusion is that both state and civil society must go!) but because critique in Marx's sense got to the core of the actual contradictions in the world.

Yes, I'm sure the Phil of R has a structure which is like that of the Logic. In fact, in the introductory paragraphs, Hegel tells us as much. (See especially paras 2, 31 and 32.) Hegel's criticism of the old forms of logic actually contains the skeleton of his conception of the social form in which he lived. The Phil of R puts flesh on this skeleton. Marx then finds that a) the state which Hegel correctly describes is not compatible with a human way of life; b) the logical structure of Hegel's description does not do what it claims, but tries to reconcile us with inhumanity; c) if the Phil of R is, as its author claims, a part of science, then science is itself part of that inhumanity.

The greatness of Hegel, as with the other main subject of Marx's critical work, Ricardo, is the honesty with which he uncovers the problems of civil society the state, refuses to pretend that he knows the answers, and leaves it at that. (The analogy with the later editions of Ricardo's Principles is striking.)

So I reject all assertions about Marx 'applying' a method, Hegelian or otherwise, if that refers to a pattern of argumentation. As, indeed, with Hegel himself, the method, if you must use the word, must come out of the innards of the subject-matter. So, while Marx regarded Hegel as his 'great master' and admired Feuerbach greatly, he was never a Hegelian, left, right or centre, nor was he ever a Feuerbachian.

Hegel cannot make a critique of political economy, because he effectively accepts all its basic conceptions of society. To see the entanglements in which this lands him, look at para 63 and the muddle which he gets into trying to derive exchange value from use value! This is a giant leap backwards from Aristotle's remarks on the same topic.

A bit more ...

Each of Hegel's works involves the 'discovery' that its subject-matter exhibits a certain logical structure. He contends that this shows that the object under investigation - history, the state, the history of philosophy, nature, art - is an aspect of the unfolding of Spirit, which becomes actual as the Idea. The dialectic cannot be separated as an ontology, from something called Hegel's 'idealism', explained as a bit of epistemology. Nor can 'the dialectical method' be set out as opposed to 'the system'. Each bit of the story is organically bound up with all the others, as the story of humanity's self-creation. This is the 'active side' which materialism - including that of Feuerbach - couldn't get hold of.

These remarks are very rough, but I'll try to do better later.

Best wishes,

Cyril