May 17, 1949
Dear J:
I've been thinking of some points to be included in the letter to Marcuse,1 and it seems to me that to follow Lenin through his Philosophic Notebooks, the decade 1913-1923, should be held on to firmly for the one red thread that runs through his great activity in that period as well as through his notebooks is the actualization of the "dialectic proper" as the disintegration of the order and its categories on the one hand and the self-activity of the masses and creation of a new social order on the other hand. The Logic to him is the theory of knowledge which sees
(l) the necessary connection objective tie-up of all sides of a given phenomena, and(2) the immanent emergence of difference or the union of the objective logic of evolution and the struggle of differences of polarity
We can practically follow him step by step and see how he applied these keys of the dialectic to his study of Imperialism. His study of the objective situation is connected with his study of the phenomenological reflection of this phenomenon in:
Hobson's Imperialism (1902)2Hilferding's Finance Capital (1910)3
Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital (1913)4
(Although the latter is not included in his books on Imperialism5, we know from his notebooks on Rosa's work6 that he had that in mind & in fact his remark that her eclectic approach to the phenomenon of imperialism had so bewildered her as to lead her to a revision of Marx assumes added significance now).
These three, from the social liberal Hobson to the revolutionist Luxemburg and including the centrist Hilferding fail to grasp the quintessential, and that is that it is the concentration of production which led to monopoly (out of which imperialism was born) & Lenin stresses that these are the "steps in the rise of finance-capital and the notion contained in the term".7 (My emphasis). That is to say, Hilferding by giving finance capital the predominance has failed to show how the financial oligarchy arose, just as the Narodniki8 had failed to show how surplus value was realized and thus both remain in the market, rather than sticking to production both in its expansion and in its concentration. To Lenin, however, who saw the totality of all sides of imperialism, imperialism emerged from capitalism in general, but capitalism at a stage "when its essential qualities became transformed into their opposites". And Lenin does not stop here, but adds "when features of higher social stage" arise. And precisely because he saw the affirmation in the negation (and who, which class, was to affirm it) he was not bewildered by the oppositeness of monopoly and competition; on the contrary he saw that the former did not drive out the latter "but coexists over it".9
Emergence of difference, furthermore, is not only in object, but in subject - relation of the two fundamental tendencies in the workingclass. In fact the dialectic proper meant grasp of the contradiction in essence, and the division of the proletariat itself into an aristocracy of labor and the mass in general.10 To fail thus to connect policy with economics meant the the 2nd International in its Resolutions in 1912 had not advanced one step beyond Hilferding's economic study, and this point Lenin makes at the very start, in the prefatory note to his book.11
This must seem very repetitious to you since I am not saying anything we did not already know, but I am trying to say it from a new angle - to connect what was new in his Imperialism with his conclusion that none of the Marxists had understood Capital and particularly saw its first chapter for it is impossible to understand that without comprehension of the whole of Hegel's Logic.12 It seems to me that what Lenin means by that is that no one had seen imperialism "growing out of" capitalism, specifically, the concentration of production "out of which" was born monopoly any more than they had been aware of the unity of opposites in the commodity (Lenin seems never to tire of repeating that the germ contains all the contradictions of the fully developed capitalism, and he even compares the commodity containing in embryo all the contradictions with the first simple generalization containing the basis of logic). The form of value, where Marx "flirted" with the dialectic is full of one thing manifesting itself as its opposite: use value appears as its opposite, value: concrete labor as its opposite, abstract labor; private labor as its opposite, social labor; and this constant transition of one into the other creating ever deeper contradictions and antagonisms out of which new relations are born.13
What Lenin seems to be saying is that with the Marxists of the past half century the repetition that the fetishistic form of a product of labor as a commodity hides the social relations of men was a mere ritual and because of that they, in their age, failed to see the the fetishistic form of appearance of the concentration of production as monopoly-capital on which imperialism was built hid the socialisation of labor and hence imperialism as "the eve of the revolution".14 Because they failed to grasp this they separated politics from economics.
That that was not only on the part of Kautsky with his theory of ultra-imperialism and "preference" of political methods but even of revolutionists and Marxists such as Bukharin and Trotsky is best seen from the trade union debate.15 (Forgive this violent jump from WWI to 1920; these are but rough notes and I am trying to follow through the major "discoveries" of Lenin's dialectics, rather than following the historic course). His constant, almost tiresome reiteration, of the superiority of politics over economics seems to me to say that so long as a class state exists politics is the truth of economics.
Since truth, in turn, is a process which includes life, knowledge (including practice of man) and absolute idea, or notion plus reality, the relationship of politics, or the activity of the proletariat, to economics, or the activity of the objective forces, is that of man transcending nature; or the activity of the workers "to a man" leading to the birth of social man. That is why he paid so much attention in his notes to the section, The Idea, in Hegel's Logic, stressing that the best of the dialectic is there. His profound grasp of subjectivity in the objective, and the objectivity of the subjective is seen best of course in the State and Revolution where the proletariat "to a man" runs the economy, makes the revolution, transforms the ideal into the real and puts an end to the ordered chaos of capitalists, and later fights the bureaucracy in his own workers state to protect the workers from its state.
Perhaps it would be well to concisely sum up all his references to Capital in order to show what he saw in it as he read Hegel that he had not seen before:
a) first reference (p. 8) is to Capital as "not a mere universal" but containing "full wealth of particulars".16
b) secondly (p. 32) he refuses to separate the "purely logical" from the "mere historical" and points to the fact that the two must coincide as do "induction and deduction in Capital". It is there too he notes that the continuation of the work of Hegel and Marx "must consist in the dialectical working out of the history of human thought, science and technique".17
c) his reference to value (p. 45) as to true abstraction higher than the "sensuality" of supply and demand.18
d) in the section on the Universal, Particular and Individual he says (p. 48) his historical analysis is reminiscent of Marx's imitation of Hegel in Ch.I.19
e) in dealing with the true significance of the Logic Lenin notes that "Marx has applied the dialectic of Hegel" to political economy. (It is here he says simple value contains all contradictions of capitalist, and simplest generalizes "signifies the ever-deepening knowledge of the objective world connection).20
f) On p. 50 is the quotation we always use as to no Marxist understanding Capital who has not understood Logic.21
g) On p. 66 he deals with the fact that practice in Hegel is "a link in the analysis of the process of cognition & precisely as a transition to the objective ('absolute', according to Hegel) truth. Marx, consequently, clings to Hegel, introducing the criteria of practice into the theory of knowledge: cf. Theses on Feuerbach".22
h) finally (p. 82) are the references to Marx leaving us the logic of Capital, and logic, dialectic and the theory of knowledge being one and the same.23
Now the relationship of Lenin to Plekhanov,24 beginning with 1914, is as the relationship of Marx to Feuerbach, no more, and also no less.
You have no doubt noted that beginning with 1914 in his essay on Marx25 and ending in 1923 with his letter to the editor of Under the Banner of Marxism26 Lenin seems to separate philosophic materialism from dialectics; regarding the former he gives credit not only to Plekhanov but also to Chernyshevsky27 and to the present (1923) editors of Under the Banner of Marxism who are not Communist but are materialists. No doubt in part this division is due to the backwardness of the Russian peasant who has to be broken from religion (idealism) on very elementary levels; and in part it is due to being true to his past (not subjectively but objectively, as Hegel rose from Kant and we from Trotskyism). This, then, also creates for us a bridge to the totally new, and we can make our philosophic leap by showing that on the question of dialectics he gives credit to no one but Hegel himself and Marx and the dialectic to him is the theory of knowledge.
Please forgive this disorganized form of putting down my thoughts; since we are not together, cohesion of expression is not possible until I actually see an outline of what you propose to write. One more thing must be included, and that is developing the connection between WWII and the liberation movement on the one hand and the appearance in 1943 of Marcuse's Reason and Revolution28 on the other hand; and the end of WWI and total collapse of the old categories and our appearance with Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks.
From the practical point of view the letter should begin with the fact that Philip E. Mosely of the Russian Institute of Columbia University having suggested I write him, and also somewhere bring in the names of Roman Jacobson and Mayer Schapiro with whom I have discussed the project, and finally Dr. Grace Chin Lee as my collaborator on the German, or however you wish to introduce her.29
Tomorrow I shall finally get around to typing you a copy of the draft we made out when I was in NY.
Warmest greetings to Connie and Nobby.
1 Herbert Marcuse was one of the leading figures in the Frankfurt School. His Reason and Revolution (1941) was the first major English-language text on Hegel and his influence on Marx. Its publication played a role in the Johnson Forest Tendency's delving into the Hegelian roots of Marxism. The JFT hoped to engage Marcuse in a discussion on Hegel, Lenin and dialectics, with a view to the JFT publishing a book on the topic. This contact does not appear to have been made before the break-up of the JFT. After the break-up, Dunayevskaya engaged in extensive correspondence (1954-1978) with Marcuse, on a variety of topics, including on Hegel and dialectics. (Copies of these letters can be accessed on the Raya Dunayevskaya Archive.
2 John A. Hobson, Imperialism, A Study, (1902). Hobson (1858-1940), was an English journalist who wrote extensively on British Imperialism.
3 Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development, (1910). Hilferding (1877-1941), was a significant figure in the German Social Democratic Party prior to World War I. He took a pacifist stance on the War.
4 Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913). Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), was a major figure in Second International. She was one of the few major figures in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) who actively opposed World War I as an imperialist war. She broke with the SPD over its leadership's stance on the War. Her major work on Marx and political economy, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), was influential amongst her Marxist contemporaries, but was criticised by Lenin.
5 'his books on Imperialism' appears to be a reference to Lenin's preparatory notebooks, Notebooks on Imperialism, rather than the book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916), and other related writings. Lenin's Notebooks on Imperialism were written 1912-1916, were published posthumously in 1938 in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia, No.~9.
6 It is not clear what Dunayevskaya had in mind when she referred to Lenin's 'notebooks on Rosa's work'. There are two pieces by Lenin on Luxemburg's Accummulation of Capital on the MIA. 'Comments of V I Lenin concerning Rosa Luxemburg's book Accumulation of Capital' (1913) and 'Rosa Luxemburg's Unsuccessful Addition to Marx's Theory' (1913).
7 The Lenin quote appears to be a reference to Chapter 3: Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy of Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916). Near the beginning of the chapter Lenin says (in the wording of the English translation on the MIA).
"The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry - such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept".
8 The Narodniks were a revolutionary tendency in Tsarist Russia who believed that Russia did not have to develop to socialism via capitalism and viewed the peasantry as a revolutionary class who could overthrow Tsarism.
9 The quotes in the last three sentences of this paragraph appear to be from 'Chapter 7: Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism', of Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916). In part of the opening paragraph of the chapter Lenin says (in the wording of the English translation on the MIA).
"... But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, ["when its essential qualities became transformed into their opposites"] when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system ["when features of higher social stage"] had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres... At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, ["but coexists over it"]" (The italicised text, inside parenthesis, are the respective translation into English by Dunayevskaya).
10 'the division of the proletariat itself into an aristocracy of labor and the mass in general' appears to be a reference to Lenin's Preface to the German and French editions of Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916). In Section V of the Preface Lenin argued:
"The international split of the entire working-class movement is now quite evident (the Second and the Third Internationals)... As this pamphlet shows, capitalism has now singled out a handful... of exceptionally rich and powerful states which plunder the whole world simply by "clipping coupons."... out of such enormous superprofits... it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the "advanced" countries are doing... This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois... is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism".
11 In the Preface to the German and French editions of Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916), Section III, he criticises the Manifesto of the International Socialist (i.e. Second International) Congress at Basel, (1912).
12 See Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1542.
13 The reference to the "form of value" appears to be a reference to Section 3 of Chapter 1 of Marx's Capital: Volume One, (1867).
14 The 'eve of revolution' quote appears to be a reference to Chapter Two of Lenin's The State and Revolution, (1917). The first section of Chapter Two is titled 'The Eve of Revolution' (referring to the revolutions of 1848-52). At the end of the second section of the chapter Lenin said:
"Imperialism - the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, of the development of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism - has clearly shown an unprecedented growth in its bureaucratic and military apparatus in connection with the intensification of repressive measures against the proletariat both in the monarchical and in the freest, republican countries. World history is now undoubtedly leading, on an incomparably larger scale than in 1852, to the "concentration of all the forces" of the proletarian revolution on the "destruction" of the state machine. What the proletariat will put in its place is suggested by the highly instructive material furnished by the Paris Commune."
15 The 'Trade Union debate' is a reference to a series of debates within the Communist Party of Russia, in 1920-1921, over the role of trade unions and workers democracy in the USSR. Trotsky and Bukharin argued for the trade unions to be under state control. This was the dominant position within the Party. Lenin argued against Trotsky and Bukharin (see e.g. Lenin, The Trade Unions. The Present Situation (1920), subtitled 'And Trotsky's Mistakes').
16 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1500.
17 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1524.
18 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1537.
19 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1540.
20 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1541.
21 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1542.
22 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1558.
Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, (1845). The Theses were a form of 'note to self', written by Marx, and were not published in his lifetime. Their first publication, (and the most widely available version), was in a slightly edited form, published as an appendix to Engels's Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886). Engels's translation has been criticised for being reductive, on the grounds that Engels, (in contrast to Marx), had a 'mechanical materialist' conception of dialectics. See here for a more recent translation of the Theses, one which attempts to keep faith with Marx's original.
For more on the differences between 'Marx's Marxism' and the 'Marxism' of Engels see e.g. Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxist-Humanism's relation to Marx's Humanism, Mamimilien Rubel The Legend of Marx, or "Engels the Founder", (2005). For a (short) book length discussion see: Terrell Carver, Engels: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press (2003).
23 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1574.
24 Georgi Velentinovich Plekhanov (1856-1918), was one of the founders of the first Marxist organisation in Russia (the Emancipation of Labour Group, founded 1883). He was a major intellectual influence on Lenin. He was a Marxist who took a serious interest in philosophy, including in Hegel's philosophy. Dunayevskaya appears to have been working on an English language translation of Plekhanov's essay 'The meaning of Hegel' (1891) around the time that she was translating Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks on Hegel. Her translation of Plekhanov's essay was published in the Socialist Workers' Party theoretical journal, Fourth International, in the April and May 1949 issues.
25Lenin, Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (written in 1914, published in 1915).
26 Under the Banner of Marxism was a Soviet theoretical journal, which began publication in 1922. Vagarshak Ter-Vaganyan was the first editor, 1922-23. The letter from Lenin, that Dunayevskaya appears to be referring to, is available on the MIA as 'On the Significance of Militant Materialism', (1923).
27 Nicholas Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) was a Russian revolutionary democrat and materialist philosopher, whose writings had some influence on Lenin.
28 Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (1941).
29 This list of people appear to have been suggested in order to bolster the academic credentials of the Johnson-Forest Tendency's proposed approach to Herbert Marcuse. In 1949 Marcuse was academically affiliated to The New School for Social Research (the title of the Frankfurt School that had relocated to Columbia University in New York). Professor Philip E. Mosely (1906-1972) was a leading American Sovietologist. He was a founder of the Russian Institute of Columbia University (Marcuse was also an academic at Columbia) and used the Institute to built up a cadre of fellow Sovietologists. According to the contemporary historian of the USSR, David C. Engerman, in 1948 Mosely 'called on the United States to restrain its conflicts with the Soviet Union, and hoped instead for "peace by mutual toleration"' (HUMANITIES, September/October 2009, Volume 30, Number 5). Roman Jacobson (1896-1982) was a Russian born linguist and literary theorist, who was initially a supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution, but became disillusioned with the USSR and moved to Prague in 1920. At the outbreak of the Second World War he fled Europe for the USA. From 1941 to 1949 he was a teacher at the New School. Mayer Schapiro (1904-1996) was a Russian born (in present day Lithuania) art historian who moved to the USA with his parents, as a child, in 1907. Schapiro spent his entire academic career at Columbia and lectured at the New School 1936-1952. Dr. Grace Chin Lee was the academic title of Grace Lee (Boggs) (1915-2015). Lee studied philosophy, as an undergraduate, at Columbia University. She went on to do a PhD, (on the American pragmatist, George Herbert Mead), at Bryn Mawr College, and gained her doctorate in 1940.