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Hegel's "Master-Slave
Dialectic" has, largely thanks to
the work of Kojève and Koyre
dominated much interpretation of
Hegel, even though it primarily
refers to one fairly small section
of Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit".
Since it describes the unfolding
of consciousness in labour, and
in a conflict between servant and
master, it is easy to infer a link
between the "lordship &
bondage" chapter and a Marxian
class politics, and this chapter
of Hegel's has come to occupy a
privileged position in interpretation
of Marx, particularly in the French
existentialist tradition. The grounds
for this privileging of the "master-slave
dialectic" are however, as
Chris Arthur shows, distinctly questionable,
and a simple alignment of Hegel
and Marx in such terms can be misleading
for interpretation of both Hegel
and Marx.
Critiques & Rejoinders for
"Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic
and a Myth of Marxology"
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a rejoinder
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Source: Originally published in the New Left Review,
November-December 1983, pp. 67–75.
Revised by the author for Marx Myths
& Legends. Used with permission
of New Left Review for
non-commercial, educational purposes
only, and no permission is granted
to reproduce the text.
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Many misunderstandings
have arisen from and about the structure
of Capital. One of these
is that Capital has an
historical structure beginning with
"Simple Commodity Production." As
Chris Arthur shows in this article,
Marx knows of no such mode of production.
Marx begins with the simplest relation
of capital and exhibits the relations
of capital by means of a logical,
not an historical structure.
Critiques & Rejoinders for
"The Myth of ‘Simple Commodity Production’"
Submit
a rejoinder
.............................................................................................
Source: Written
in February 2005 for "Marx
Myths & Legends". Covered
by the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Licence 2.0.
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Biographical information
Christopher J.
Arthur formerly taught philosophy
at the University of Sussex. He
is the author of Dialectics
of Labour: Marx and his Relation
to Hegel (1986, Basil Blackwell)
and The New Dialectic and Marx's
Capital (2002, Brill). He edited
and introduced: Marx and Engels,
The German Ideology (1970,
Lawrence & Wishart); Pashukanis,
E. B., Law and Marxism.
(1989, Pluto Press); Marx's
Capital: A Student Edition
(1992, Lawrence & Wishart);
Friedrich Engels: A Centenary
Appreciation (1996, Macmillan).
See also: Chris
Arthur's reviews for Radical Philosophy
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