Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 20:03:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-TH: MARX, HEGEL, & MASTER-SLAVE DIALECTIC


At 09:24 PM 9/20/97 +0100, James Heartfield wrote:
>Well, Arthur is a great Hegel-Marx scholar so it would be foolhardy to
>disagree, but I think there is something of the master-slave dialectic
>in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. 

Which is what Arthur explicitly denies.  But I haven't done my homework, so
I'm staying out of it.

>I was looking at Kojeve's treatment of the Master-slave dialectic
>recently and was struck by the fact that the persistence of the
>categories of self-other (which are the substance of the master-slave
>dialectic, or its logical re-working) in contemporary social theory
>(existentialism, varieties of pomo) must say something about Hegel's
>premature resolution of the master-slave dialectic with the emergence of
>liberal capitalism and the end of feudalism (to impose alien categories
>on Hegel). 

This is fascinating!

Why, if the interaction of self and other describe relations
>of serfdom and lordship, should they seem so evocative in discussion of
>contemporary relations of the sexes, first and third world, child and
>adult etc etc? Surely categories developed to encapsulate one discrete
>epoch ought not to have any hold on another.

Fascinating.  So what do you make of Fanon?

>Tempted by Axel Honneth's (rather conservative, but well written) book
>The Struggle For Recognition 

Can you expand?  This book has been recommended to me, but I haven't read it.

>  Well, I suggest that Hegel's categories of lordhsip and
>bondage, and the dialectic that operateds between them is not as it
>purports to be a discussion of lordship and bondage, but one of Capital
>and Labour, fetishistically relocated into a mythical past. 

Again, most fascinating.

>The reason
>that they seem to have explanatory power, is because - even if they do
>not announce themselves as such, they are categories developed in the
>analysis of capitalist society. 

And so have explanatory power when projected into more specific sets of
modern social relations-- colonialism, racism, etc.? 

Yours in fascination,
Mr. Spock



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