Date: Wed, 10 Aug 1994 07:42:09 -0500 (EST)
From: eugeneh <eugeneh-AT-HUMANITIES1.COHUMS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Hegel/Marx



     Phil:
     
     You seem to assume that everything Marx wrote forms a seamless 
     totality and moreover that such a totality necessarily takes a 
     Hegelian form (from which one would then "extract" a Marxist content). 
     The economic critique certainly does have a life outside Hegelian 
     teleologism: I agree with Althusser that Marx's writings are not a 
     seamless totality, and that one can (should) "weed out"the Hegelianism 
     -- particularly the philosophy of history, which is NOT logically 
     related to the economic analysis (as much as the old man may have 
     wished it to be, especially early in his career).  It may be that such 
     "weeding out" indeed gives the critique a "new form" -- so be it (even 
     though I'm not convinced it had a truly Hegelian form in the first 
     place).
     
     One can (and should) accept the LTV as a critique of capitalism 
     *without* imagining that e.g.cyclical crises will necessarily and 
     automatically lead to the collapse of capitalism and the end of class 
     society.  The LTV as I understand it has nothing to do with a Hegelian 
     totality -- unlike some other interesting Marxist problematics (such 
     as base-superstructure) which do seem to retain a Hegelian flavor.

     Gene

Phils wrote:

      Gene says that we should keep the political-economic kernel but 
throw away the Hegelian shell of Marxist theory. My organic metaphors 
don't fully state the problem with this view, which is that the 
political-economic content has no life independent of its Hegelian form. 
To extract the content, you have to restate it, and that restatement 
gives it a new form. I know that you have argued strenuously, Gene, that 
the LTV is a valuable basis for critique, but what kind of critique is 
this? Doesn't it reinstate the Hegelian totality which you claim to 
reject?

Phil "Many Faces" Goldstein
     


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