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NEWS & LETTERS, February-March 2006Philosophic DialogueDunayevskaya's POWER OF NEGATIVITY: a critiqueEditor's note: The following review of Raya Dunayevskaya's THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY: SELECTED WRITINGS ON THE DIALECTIC IN HEGEL AND MARX (edited and Introduced by Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson, Lexington Books, 2002) by Chris Arthur appeared last year in the journal STUDIES IN MARXISM. We publish Arthur's review along with a response by Kevin B. Anderson. The next issue of N&L will contain Arthur's response to Anderson and Anderson's rejoinder. * * * by Chris Arthur, author of THE NEW DIALECTIC AND MARX'S Capital Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-1987) was an original Marxist thinker and activist. She once served as Trotsky’s secretary; but, together with C. L. R. James, she broke with mainstream Trotskyism, and developed a theory of state-capitalism supposed to comprehend Roosevelt, Hitler, and Stalin. She and James took up the study of Hegel’s LOGIC, following in the footsteps of Lenin in 1915. Having broken also with James, from the mid-'50s she developed her own self-styled "Marxist-Humanism." She was one of the first to study Marx’s 1844 MANUSCRIPTS, and Lenin’s philosophical notebooks. Indeed she had to translate both for herself since English language versions were still lacking. The first fruit of this work was her pathbreaking MARXISM AND FREEDOM (1958). Digging still deeper into Hegel, she wrote PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION (1973), and many other books and articles. The volume before us, THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY, is a selection from her numerous letters, notebooks, and articles, on the dialectic in Hegel and Marx, written in her inimitable lapel-grabbing style. It should be said straightaway that this is not for the beginner. But for those already acquainted with Raya Dunayevskaya through one or more of her works, it provides fascinating background on the development of her thought. The editors contribute a lucid introduction. However, they begin with the claim that the current return to Marx is characterised by "relative silence on Hegel and the dialectic." This is simply not true. Besides the book by Moishe Postone, which they do mention, there is a burgeoning "new dialectic" (as I once termed it in a review), marked by an interest in Hegel’s logic as the key to the "systematic dialectic" required to come to grips with Marx’s CAPITAL. For example the following Marxists have all in various ways appropriated the dialectic: R. Albritton; C. J. Arthur; J. Banaji; R. Bhaskar; M. Eldred; I. Fraser; I. Hunt; M. Lebowitz; J. McCarney; P. Murray; S. Sayers; B. Ollman; M. Postone; 0. Reuten; T. Sekine; A. Shamsavari; F. C. Shortall; T. Smith; H. Williams; L. Wilde; M. Williams. In Dunayevskaya’s own time she had few interlocutors outside her own small circle; but this book includes letters to Marcuse, Fromm, G. A. Kelly, and others. Indeed Marcuse posed sharply the question which Dunayevskaya’s appropriation of Hegel raises: why, he asked, did she need Hegel’ s Absolute Idea? Why translate Marxism into Hegelian idiom when she could speak the original language? (p. 104). In the end I do not think she had an answer to that. This is because she fails to think through Hegel’s problematic in its own terms, and systematically relate it to Marx’s. Instead she uses Hegel externally, persistently picking up some figure, or mere phrase, ripping it out of context, and incorporating it within her own agenda (which largely concerns such questions as revolutionary agency, organization, and the new society--or "what happens the day after?"). Often this serves well enough to make a telling point, but not essentially. A typical example is her drawing on Hegel’s move from the Absolute Idea to the Realphilosophie in order to speak about the advent of socialism. The two topics have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. What might have been relevant to the meaning of revolution would be a study of Hegel’s philosophy of history and his claim the modern state embodies the Idea of Freedom. Another example is the slogan (wielded liberally) she picked up from Lenin’s notes on Hegel’s LOGIC, viz "subjectivity = freedom" (Lenin, COLLECTED WORKS, Vol. 38, p. 164). In the context of a transition in the LOGIC this makes some sort of sense because it is the freedom of thought that is at issue there, and especially the ability of thought to be self-reflexive. But does this mean freedom as such is subjectivity? Friendly commentators on Hegel deny he says that, citing the social philosophy which locates freedom in objective spirit. Unfriendly ones charge Hegel precisely with interiorizing all objectivity. Certainly Marx in 1844 and 1845 considers Hegel’s great mistake to have been developing subjectivity one-sidedly to the extent of conflating "objectivity" and "estrangement." Dunayevskaya’s position reminds me of Bruno Bauer. Indeed, more generally Dunayevskaya provides a "Young Hegelian" reading of Hegel as the philosopher of absolute negativity; moreover, as a post-Marx Marxist she provides also a Young Hegelian Marxism in which philosophy and revolution are equal partners. It is significant that the only major work of Marx’s that she does not cite is THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY. Although Dunayevskaya tries to be scholarly within the constraints of the materials available to her, she occasionally makes bizarre mistakes. a) A simple case is that of Marx’s 1861-63 manuscript, in which he decided to bring forward the treatment of rent, consigned in the six-book plan given in the Preface of the 1859 CONTRIBUTION, to a place following CAPITAL. Dunayevskaya inexcusably says that at this date Marx took the topic out of Vol. I of CAPITAL and held it back to Vol. III! (p. 130) It was never, ever, to be in Vol. I, where land was always to be "set at zero." Equally inexcusably the editors endorse this error (p. 135 note 7). b) A more complicated case is that of Hegel’s major triad (Logic/Nature/Spirit) discussed in three "syllogisms" at the end of his ECYCLOPAEDIA (paragraphs 575, 576, 577). Dunayevskaya makes a big thing about her claim that these were not in the original edition of the ECYCLOPAEDIA, and first appeared in the 1830 edition just before Hegel died in 1831 (see pp. 178, 195, 205, 330; plus an editorial endorsement p. 13 note 18; cf. also PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION, p. 39). But--alas-- these syllogisms were in the original edition of 1817! (paragraphs 475, 476, 477). They were unaccountably omitted in the (much larger) 1827 edition, where Hegel greatly expanded paragraph 574 (¶474 in 1817) and then threw in a passage from Aristotle to conclude. In the 1830 edition the paragraphs come back in (¶575-77) prior to the Aristotle quotation. (All three editions are now available in the GESAMMELTE WERKE.) It is the double appearance of these paragraphs that explains variation in citations from paragraph 575 of the sentence "Nature, standing between the Mind and its essence, sunders itself/them...." "Them" descends from the first edition (trennt sie) and "itself" (trennt sich) from the third. According to Dunayevskaya (p. 330), A. V. Miller wrote her saying he should have corrected Wallace’s translation from "itself" to "them"; but it is not clear if he knew Wallace’s source was the third edition, and, if he did, why he preferred the first here (although modern editors generally do). c) Finally a sin of omission. Dunayevskaya does her utmost, encouraged, by Lenin’s views, to see Hegel "stretching out a hand to materialism" in so far as Nature is included in his system. But when speaking excitedly about "Hegel’s Absolutes" she is silent on the fact that Hegel’s dialectics culminate with Absolute Idea, and with Absolute Spirit, but where the PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE is concerned it culminates--not with an Absolute, but--with death! Hardly an equal partner with the other spheres! Yet anyone writing such a philosophy of Nature today would surely recognize, not merely the need for the universal-field equation, but the universal at work in the ecological system, and prefer to "the selfish gene" the "Gaia hypothesis" of James Lovelock, as the self-sustaining Absolute. To conclude: Dunayevskaya is right to draw from Hegel the thought of "the power of negativity," just as she is right to read in Marx "the revolution in permanence." But what she lacks is a theoretical structure; all we get is the sticking together of discrepant elements. Sympathetic as I am to the project of illuminating Marx through a study of Hegel, Dunayevskaya’s work is an instance of how not to do it. * * * By Raya Dunayevskaya, two works on The Algebra of Revolution... The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx Philosophy & Revolution, from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao Each $24.95 ... To order, click here |
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