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NEWS & LETTERS, April-May 2006Philosophic DialogueA look at Dunayevskaya's POWER OF NEGATIVITYby Anne Fairchild Pomeroy Editor's note: This essay by Anne Pomeroy, professor of philosophy at Stockton College, can be found in the online journal CULTURAL LOGIC. We publish excerpts of it and invite your responses. For the complete text, see: http://eserver.org/clogic/2004/pomeroy.html * * * In Raya Dunayevskaya's THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY: SELECTED WRITINGS ON THE DIALECIC IN HEGEL AND MARX (PON), the editors, Peter Hudis and Kevin Anderson, pull together a vast array of her letters, communications, articles, and speeches concentrating on the Hegelian Absolute Idea. The collection traces the progress of Dunayevskaya’s interest in Hegel from its preliminary stages to what can only be described as her ultimate passion. She is nothing if not intense in her conviction that it was time to resurrect Hegel for Marx and contemporary Marxism. The Hegelian Idea was one whose time had come. How firmly Dunayevskaya believed this is betrayed by the tone of urgency and frustration revealed in so many of the writings in this collection. She so clearly feels she is on to something and yet seems unable to be heard properly on the subject. Perhaps Dunayevskaya’s announcement of the necessity of the Hegelian Absolute came too soon--too soon for what she calls the post-Marx Marxists who were too captivated by the new critical theory, too soon for a political landscape still laboring under the misconception that Soviet Communism had proved the wrong-headedness of Marxism, too soon for the diverse and factional mass movements that saw in one another only competitors vying for their slice of a very small pie. TIMELINESS OF HEGEL Or perhaps in some sense it was too late. Perhaps the extant interpretations of Hegel (and of Marx, for that matter) simply precluded the openness necessary to hear her plea. Perhaps other voices had already captured the attention of Marxists. After all, Kojeve was already lecturing in France on Hegel's PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND in the late 1930s. Regardless, Dunayevskaya herself was, for a period of over 30 years, communicating the urgency of a return to Hegel. In one of her letters to Herbert Marcuse, she accuses him of thinking that she is obsessed by Hegel’s Absolute Idea; if such an accusation was made it may indeed have been largely correct.(1) But we would do well to remember that those who appear to harbor “irrational” obsessions today often prove to be tomorrow’s visionaries. In other words, I believe that Dunayevskaya may have had good reason for her “obsession.” But the difficulty with this collection of writings is that the enormous quantity of material is not systematically linked. I do not believe this to be the fault of the editors. What is clear is that Dunayevskaya herself was still in the process of drawing the disparate pieces of her analysis together. Although she did treat the subject at some length in PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: FROM HEGEL TO SARTRE AND FROM MARX TO MAO, there is new material here which requires consideration and integration. In PON, we are left, then, with a fascinating landscape of provocative fragments which I think require a more systematic restructuring in order to make clear the connections between them. What seems to me especially necessary is to get Dunayevskaya’s Hegel back to Marx--in other words, to close the circle and, in so doing, to connect the pieces into a solid edifice. How much Dunayevskaya herself would approve of the reconstruction I undertake I cannot know. I suspect that I may, in the final analysis, emphasize the immanence of the Idea more than she would care to. But this and other features will remain open to debate. 'WHY MARX, WHY NOW?' The title of this essay, “Why Marx, Why Now?” clearly plays on the question that opened PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION--“Why Hegel? Why Now?” And it is meant to indicate the contention of my work here: that we do not really understand Hegel for Marx until we return to Marx. In other words, the two questions elide. In Hegel, Dunayevskaya found the answers to her questions about the nature of the revolution and what is to come in or as the post-revolutionary epoch. But I believe that this takes us right back to Marx--to a real understanding of the meaning of his call for the abolition of wage labor. Those who have read Dunayevskaya’s other work will recognize that this entails connecting together the material on labor from her MARXISM AND FREEDOM with the material on Marx and Hegel in PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION. In the final analysis then, I think that PON is not really about Hegel but about Marx in the worst (or best) way. For the way in which Dunayevskaya is capable of reading Hegel and particularly the end of Hegel's LOGIC is premised upon her understanding of Marx, of the unity of the Marxian corpus, of the imperatives of concerned praxis for the present and the vision of a future in which real freedom and hence real humanity is truly realized. The driving premise of PON is that post-Marx Marxists have gone terribly awry in their rejection of Hegel’s idealism. She says, “we needn’t prove the materialism of Hegel [as Lenin was trying to do] but rather the idealism of Marx.” She circles around a single still point. The object of her obsession is the last paragraph of Hegel’s SCIENCE OF LOGIC, and she returns to it again and again. This paragraph is, she maintains, essential to understanding what Marx meant by revolution, what comes after the first revolution, the negation of negation, the new beginning, the realization of freedom. In his PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS Lenin believed he had discovered in Hegel’s Logic a capitulation to materialism in the transition to Nature indicated at the end of the section on the Absolute Idea. But Dunayevskaya insists that he needed to read on in order to understand Marx fully. Especially important, she believes, are the lines that follow: “The transition here therefore must be taken to mean that the Idea freely releases itself in absolute self-security and self-repose. By reason of this freedom the form of its determinateness also is utterly free--the externality of space and time which is absolutely for itself and without subjectivity” (PON, 72). “The self-determination in which alone the idea is, is to hear itself speak” (PON, 105). The difficulty lies in trying to fathom the totality of Dunayevskaya’s meaning. Often, at crucial moments, she will lapse into Hegelian terminology which, when one is attempting to clarify Hegel, can be singularly unhelpful. We need, therefore, to wash a bit of the abstraction off of this material and, more importantly, to make clear and explicit the structural integrity of the whole and, therefore, the rationality of the pos-ition. DIALECTICS AND MOVEMENT To understand and fully appreciate her accomplishment, it is crucial to recognize that, for her, the beating heart of Marxism is the dialectic. This is why she advocated and practiced a repeated return to Hegel. She hopes that by sending the post-Marx Marxists back to Hegel they will get the dialectic right and, in turn, finally get Marx right. But in order to understand why Dunayevskaya considered the dialectic to be of such importance it is necessary to recall the text that broke open her understanding of Marx: The 1844 MANUSCRIPTS. Certainly what Marx so appreciated in Hegel’s philosophy was that “the attempt to get to the ultimate. . .is not just Substance, that is, a static thing, but Subject, self-creative and developing. . .” (PON, 199). Marx’s focus, however, was not on Subject in the abstract but on the subject as human being and thus also on the human condition. In the 1844 MANUSCRIPTS Marx clearly articulates the role of the human subject as mediator of the social objectivity. The dialectical or historical materialism of Marx is captured here--human activity is the conscious mediation of settled objectivity to new objectivity. This particular presentation of human mediation is, in fact, the basis of the critique of capitalism in CAPITAL, Vol. I. It holds a place of prominence in the Preface to Marx's GRUNDRISSE and stands as the declaration of the nature of human labor opening the chapter on “The Labor Process and the Valorization Process” in CAPITAL, where Marx says, “Labor is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.” Marx goes on to indicate, however, that human labor is not like the activity of any other creature. The fundamental difference involves the engagement of ideas. “Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials. And this is a purpose he is conscious of...”(2) But this is the alteration upon Hegel: it is we (as concrete imaginative projective beings), not the Idea (as abstraction), who are the motive force, the efficient cause of the dialectical movement of the real/material world. Arguably Hegel himself might agree with this. Certainly he sees the human being enacting and realizing the Idea in or as history, but the difference seems to be one of emphasis. We are pushed, in the final analysis, to ask the question: Is the human being the agent of the Idea or is the Idea its own agent? The question is really about which conditions the other. This is not unimportant, as it reaches into the core of the matter--freedom itself. One must ultimately decide whether the human being is going to be posited as the medium of the Idea’s self-movement or whether human mediation is accomplished through the Idea. If the latter, then the human being is the ultimate subject as Marx would have it. Is this really what is implied in Hegel? I think not, and certainly Marx thought not. Marxism is “a philosophy of human activity” (PON, 129-130) and it is Marx’s focus on the human being, his humanism, that contains an insight not otherwise achieved. In it, he has gone beyond Hegel and has grasped the idealism as it is possessed, enacted, and known by the human being. What is strikingly interesting and appropriate is that Marx’s surpassing of Hegel on this matter is a simultaneous retention and is, therefore, a true sublation. For the Idea is no less present, even in some sense no less absolute, but now it is dialectically united with the material reality in human activity. FREEDOM AND FIRST NEGATION In order for there to be movement there must be change and in order for there to be change there must be negation. It is the presence of the idea in human consciousness that effects such negation. It is the presence of the idea in human consciousness that gives us our particular power of negation and hence of alteration, for through the idea I can consider formal reality freely. I can consider what is not yet the case by considering other formal possibilities. But what does this have to do with the analysis of labor in Marx? The real tragedy (and final injustice) of capitalism is the enslavement of the human idea. This is what Dunayevskaya saw so clearly. She understood that labor power is the human potential for creative alteration of the natural world. The political/economic analyses in Capital reveal that in the capitalist mode of social relations, the power of creativity which is made possible by the presence of the idea (as negation) in human consciousness is brought for sale on the market. This sale is an act of desperation. “Free” of means of production, “free” of commodities to either sell or to meet basic needs, the would-be capitalist laborer has no choice.(3) Labor power is sold but activated; it is “purposeful activity aimed at the production of use-values.”(4) As a result, this power to produce, to mediate, to alter reality by enacting the alteration of form originally “seen” only ideally, is purchased and put to use realizing products, commodities--ultimately realizing only one thing--surplus-value, capital. REVOLUTION AND SECOND NEGATION The first negation is the first revolution. For Dunayevskaya this was the negation enacted in the Russian revolution. This is a “no” to capitalism and manifests itself as the mere negation of the institution. In it, the worker carries out a revolution by a negation of her status in the capitalist system. Here the worker says “I am not wage labor.” But this initial negation is merely preliminary and has no direction. This is because it is not yet self-conscious. The negation of the negation occurs when this act of self-determination “hears itself speak” (PON, 105). The revolutionary truly hears herself denying her status as capitalist labor and, for the first time, understands its meaning. What does it mean to say that I am not wage labor? It involves a recognition of the positive content of the original negation. By hearing her own self-determination in the “no” to capitalism, the revolutionary recognizes herself as the Subject of revolution: the one who can say no--the mediator, the free subject of the movement itself. It is one thing to say that a condition is unwanted but it is quite another to understand the power involved in the ability to both think and enact the alteration of the unwanted. What is unleashed then is creativity itself. The second negativity involves the human being (humanity) hearing its act of self-determination as such. It is, therefore, a very special kind of consciousness. A coming to self-consciousness. As the recognition of the inadequacy of mere negation, as the recognition of the positivity of the act of negation itself as negativity, it entails humanity’s self-consciousness as revolutionary. It is revolutionary being (human being) thinking itself. Here then is the ontology that I think reaches back to Dunayevskaya’s earliest understanding of Marxist humanism. The second negation is the negation of the form of social relations that is capitalism and, because the specific operation of capitalism involves the enslavement of the negation itself (the creative power of the human being), the negation of the negation is the real return of the human being to herself, the "freedom of freedom" if you will and thus the ultimate humanism. The becoming of the Absolute Idea is, therefore, the liberation of human being. Negation is, therefore, absolute because, to quote Hegel, contradiction is the “root of all movement and life, and it is only insofar as it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity” (PON, 61). Or, to bring it back to Marx, “there is nothing immutable but the abstraction of the movement--mors immortalis.”(5) If indeed all is movement, and if indeed the contradiction is the source of the movement, and if further the human being is the self-determined source of the negativity that can serve as contradiction to any actuality, then humanity is, in this sense, absolute. Therefore, the Idea that is freedom, even operating as it always must on the level of the particular, is still absolute. CONCLUSIONS If what I have said regarding PON is correct, then there are several immediate benefits to be derived from following Dunayevskaya’s lead on the Hegel-Marx connection: 1. We obtain a better and more nuanced understanding of Hegel. Dunayevskaya allows us to understand that the Absolute Idea as a new beginning is entirely consistent with the Hegelian project. We are urged to see that we need not give up on Hegel because of the abstraction of his idealism. Marx certainly never did. He understood that we could not give up on Hegel, the true philosopher of movement, but that we could locate his Absolute Idea not in a transcendent space as an ideal principle driving its actualization with as much iron determinism as any scientific materialism, but rather as humanity’s self-consciousness as the source of the new society. 2. We obtain a better and more nuanced understanding of Marx. Dunayevskaya’s reintroduction of Hegel provides the only adequate understanding of the historical or dialectical materialism. Any uncritical positing of a vulgar determinism is out of the question. 3. We obtain a better and more nuanced understanding of revolution. Dunayevskaya insists that we pay attention to Hegel, that we probe the LOGIC and the PHENOMENOLOGY again and again so that we can comprehend that revolution is not a mere violent negation of the extant but a coming to consciousness of our own being human--not a party-line dictating the activities of its members but the unity of our thought and action which is the new society. It is clear that we do not yet hear ourselves speak the first revolution. We are still trying to think the dialectic and our thought in this regard is still so inadequate as to need to be brought back to it again and again. We are still trying to speak the dialectic and because we are still trying to speak it we have yet to hear ourselves speak. There are stirrings of course. This Dunayevskaya saw clearly. There is discontent clearly evidenced in mass movements (PON, 245). There are ongoing struggles across the globe--struggles against. We do not yet hear what these struggles reveal about the creative power of the working class. And until such time as we do, we will not yet have realized the revolution and ushered in the revolution in permanence. But this realization takes us beyond Dunayevskaya because it leads us to see as primary the issue of how such consciousness is elicited. We need to battle for the coming-to-be of human consciousness and this battle will not be easy. Clearly capitalists have become aware of the importance of reproducing an ideology of disempowerment which could, on the view I have sketched out above, only be called an anti-humanism. We must respond in kind. It is a struggle for our shared future. -------- Notes 1. Raya Dunayevskaya, THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY: SELECTED WRITINGS ON THE DIALECIC IN HEGEL AND MARX, eds. Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), ref. p. 129. 2. Karl Marx, CAPITAL: A CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, Vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), pp. 283, 284. 3. For the description of this double freedom of the worker see Marx, CAPITAL, pp. 272-3. 4. Marx, CAPITAL, p. 290. 5. Karl Marx, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY, trans., H Quelch (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 119. |
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