Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 10:27:38 +1000 From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> Subject: More ont he master-slave dialectic was Re: BHA: <fwd> Fukuyama: The At 09:23 11/10/01 +0100, you wrote: >to claim victory now already is imho both unscientific rhetoric >and a dangerous illusion; indeed, it all sounds very nietzschean, >but a Nietzsche at the worst ;-) > >jan My post on Bhaskar's remarks about Fukuyama's Nietzscheanism sank alas without a trace. But the central concern is still there. Is Fukuyama reading the master-slave dialectic in an Hegelian or a Nietzschean way? Moreover did Hegel himself refuse to accept the full implications of the master-slave dialectic and opt for a vision which had not the slave as the agent of history but rather as a partner with the master in a unity based on mutual forgiveness and reconciliation? What follows is a piece I wrote earlier and elsewhere on the master-slave dialectic: The master-slave dialectic: Three approaches The master-slave trope is itself a complex figure that has been variously interpreted. Within the Marxist tradition perhaps the most influential interpretation has been that of Alexandre Kojeve. For Kojeve the master was the capitalist and the slave the worker. Moreover he read Hegel as saying that the slave eventually won the struggle with the master because she found herself through the creative process of work (Kojeve, 1969: 45-52). There is an alternative reading of the master-slave dialectic that is associated with Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche. Deleuze rejects 'personalist' readings of the dialectic that would assign direct social roles to the master and the slave (cited in Hardt, 1993: 32-45). He insists that the master-slave trope refers not to the working class and the capitalists but to the abstract process of the development of logic. For Deleuze the master is the hero of the piece because her being is bound up with direct negation of reality through the unmediated exercise of her power. The master consumes and thus immediately negates while the slave delays this process by work (ibid). Deleuze's support for the master is presumably influenced by Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power, the exercise of which was a good (Hollingdale, 1986: 231). There is also a strong element in Deleuze's thought of what Bhaskar terms 'ontological monovalence', that is, a purely positive account of being. The slave's power is not being exercised therefore it cannot be real (Hardt, 1993: 35). From a critical realist perspective the slave's power can be a transfactual tendency and nevertheless real. A third reading of the master-slave dialectic is offered by Roy Bhaskar one that is generally closer to Kojeve's than Deleuze's. However we should be cautious here. Bhaskar makes a distinction between what he terms the dialectics of reconciliation and those of emancipation. This distinction is linked to the Hegelian concept of Unhappy Consciousness. Within this the slave can either indulge in the . . . (i) introjective internalization of the master's viewpoint or aspirations or ideology and/or (ii) the projective duplication of what the slave, lacking the imaginary world of religion (Kantian 'rational faith') finds in fantasy, film or soap in a surrogate compensatory existence (Bhaskar, 1994: 154). So the slave's path to emancipation is not as simple as Kojeve seems to suggest. After all 'Arbeit mach frei' does indeed have many resonances other than simply 'work will make us free'. For Kojeve the slave's work on the world laid the basis of a consciousness that would liberate her from the master. For Bhaskar, however, there is a tendency within the slave to seek reconciliation and accommodation with the master rather than to embrace emancipation. There are two elements of this process. Firstly that of mutual forgiveness between the master and the slave mediated through ethical life or sittlichkeit. Secondly, mutual recognition mediated through a constitutional state (Bhaskar, 1993: 334). Extrapolating from this to the actual labor-capital relationship it is arguable that there is within the labour movement a tendency to seek accommodation with capital and to work for "common" goals rather than the abolition of the labour -capital distinction. This is, of course, a controversial matter and literally much blood has been spilt over the issues involved. But for the purposes of my argument I would suggest that there is within the labour movement a tendency that seeks reconciliation through reform and that which seeks the negation of the capital-labour relationship through revolutionary change. There is also a crucial differentiation within labour between those who manage the system - union officials, labor politicians, and those who are managed, that is rank and file trade unionists. In terms of the master-slave dialectic we have the capitalist as master, the trade union official as the slave who is the master of other slaves - the worker. Bhaskar argues that corresponding to these different social positions we have different ideologies. For the master there is the ideology of emotivism. This in its simple form is ethical subjectivism, which says "x is good, because I like x". In the real world this most often takes the form of "these redundancies are necessary, because they are in the national interest". For the slave who is the master of other slaves there is the ideology of decisionism. Here the bureaucrat sees her task as implementing the decisions of the powerful or the master. This is the terrain of 'There Is No Alternative'. Objections or even the questioning of the premises on which the decisions are made tend to be regarded as irrational, unhelpful or even malicious. The third layer, the slave has personalism as her ideology. This is the viewpoint that takes . . . hold of the concrete singular, denudes him or her of their concreteness, tells them they ought implies that they can and must, quite irrespective of their abilities needs and wants. It then blames them, and, if the misdemeanour is great enough, punishes them (Bhaskar, 1993: 366). References Bhaskar, R., Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, London: Verso, 1993 _________, Plato Etc, London: Verso, 1994 Hardt, M., Giles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 Hollingdale, R. J., A Nietzsche Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. Kojeve, A., Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969. --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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