CH. 13 Hegel and Marx

Question 1

Hegel

Answer 1

HEGEL – Belongs to a tradition in philosophy characterized by the construction of grand systems of thought, vast worldviews that attempt to grasp the whole of reality in every significant aspect.

• The core of Hegel’s system is ABSOLUTE IDEALISM – The doctrine that the universe is an objective reality consisting of ideas in the universal mind.
• SPIRIT or ABSOLUTE – This Spirit (which has also been called God) is not merely the sum of all human minds and their ideas; it is certainly that, but everything else as well.
  
  • Spirit is all, but it is also at the same time distinct from humanity, with its own self-awareness and its own plans to be worked out through the actions and thinking of human beings.
    
    • Spirit is a spiritual organism encompassing the whole universe, evolving and developing according to its own internal principles toward its destiny.
• Hegel’s view is a form of PANENTHEISM – The view that God is in every part of the universe (as in pantheism) but is also more than the universe, just as cells in an organism constitute the organism yet are not identical with it (the organism is more than a collection of its cells).

ABSOLUTE IDEALISM – The doctrine that the universe is an objective reality consisting of ideas in the universal mind.

PANENTHEISM – The view that God is in every part of the universe but is also more than the universe.

Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy:

• Spirit is not to be considered only as individual, finite, consciousness, but as that Spirit which is universal and concrete within itself.
  
  • This progression is not one that takes its course through the thought of an individual and exhibits itself in a single consciousness, for it shows itself to be universal Spirit presenting itself in the history of the world.

Hegel sees the history of the world as the continual development of Spirit toward greater self-consciousness and rationality, greater cognizance of itself as a free, self-determining being.

• The ultimate goal and final stage of this cosmic development is total self-consciousness and self-knowledge. This final moment is the culmination of history; it is the goal toward which the world inevitably progresses.
  
  • As individuals and nations become increasingly aware of themselves and their freedom, Spirit—the whole of existence—also achieves greater self-consciousness and progresses further along the path to the final objective.

HEGEL:

• His most important and influential books are The Phenomenology of Mind (or The Phenomenology of Spirit), The Science of Logic, and The Philosophy of Right.
• He became the most important thinker of nineteenth-century Germany and the biggest philosophical influence on Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels.

Hegel holds that both Spirit and humanity move toward ultimate self-consciousness through stages of history, through epochs that unfold by logical and historical necessity.

• He thinks he knows the repeating pattern of development that history embodies.
• DIALECTIC and it always goes like this:
  
  • First there is a historical starting point (The THESIS),..
  • …which eventually produces a state of affairs directly opposed to it (The ANTITHESIS)…
  • …and the conflict yields a new situation (The SYNTHESIS)…
  • …Then the pattern repeats, beginning with the synthesis as the new thesis.
    
    • Thus Hegel believes that the repeating cycle is rational and inevitable and that history is going in a positive direction —that is, there is continual progress toward a better future.

“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”

—G. W. F. Hegel

Question 2

Marx

Answer 2

KARL MARX (1818-1883):

• Marx accepted Hegel’s view that history unfolds in stages according to a rational pattern and that this pattern takes the form of Hegel’s dialectic (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis).
• He agreed with Hegel’s optimistic view that history is a story of human progress; there are winners and losers in history, but the overall trend points to a positive end.
  
  • But Marx parted ways with Hegel on his idealism. Hegel thought the forces that guide history are essentially spiritual; history advances as Spirit strives toward self-consciousness and freedom.
  • But for Marx history is the result of the material conditions of society (principally economic and social conditions). From this odd blend of Hegelian views and Marx’s brand of materialism came socialism.

SOCIALISM – the political and economic doctrine that the means of production (property, factories, businesses) should be owned or controlled by the people, either communally or through the state.

• Socialism can accommodate liberal democratic forms of government and can even retain some elements of market capitalism.

COMMUNISM – A term broadly synonymous with socialism but associated with nominally Marxist countries such as the Soviet Union in the twentieth century – Usually implies socialism within a totalitarian system.

The GUIDING PRINCIPLE of SOCIALISM is EQUALITY:

• The wealth of society should be shared by all.
• The ideal distribution of goods: : usually follows the classic formula laid down by Marx, the father of modern socialism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
  
  • People should do work that fits their abilities, and they should reap rewards that match their needs.

​CAPITALISM – A socioeconomic system in which wealth goes to anyone who can acquire it in a free marketplace.

• Means of production accrue to fewer people through the workings of a free market.

SOCIALIST SYSTEM – Wealth is controlled by the state, which allocates it for the good of the people generally.

Marx thinks that what drives philosophy, history, society, law, government, and morality is economics.

• It is the dominant system of economics in every age, he says, that determines how society is structured and how history will go.
• A society’s system of economics is defined by its means of production—by its economic and technological ways of meeting people’s physical and social needs.
• The means of production, Marx says, shape social relationships, class structure, technological tools, and political and philosophical ideas.
• Those who own and control the means of production make up the dominant class, possess most of the wealth, wield most of the political power, and exploit the lower class.
  
  • Their ideas—political, philosophical, or social are the ruling ideas. The rest of the people own no property and occupy the lowest rungs of society, selling their labor to the ruling class, the property owners. The two camps, then, are forever at odds.

MARX maintains that this pattern of opposition—this class struggle repeats itself throughout history via Hegel’s dialectic process.

• He thinks the dialectic struggle in modern times is between those who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie, or capitalists) and those who do not (the proletariat).
  
  • ​The bourgeoisie are few but own all the factories and other means of production (thesis);
  • the proletariat are many but own nothing, serving only as workers in the capitalist system (antithesis).
    
    • To increase their profits, the bourgeoisie hire more and more workers but pay them less and less, replacing workers with machines whenever possible.
    • The workers’ wages decline, more become unemployed, and their exploitation by the capitalists continues. As their situation worsens, Marx observes, they have an increased sense of alienation: they are no longer valued as persons, for they have become mere cogs in the capitalist machinery; and they can no longer take pride in their work, for it has been downgraded into mindless assembly-line motions.
    • But ultimately the success of the bourgeoisie proves to be their undoing. They produce, as Marx says, their own gravediggers. They unwittingly create a large, poor, angry proletarian class that has had enough of capitalism and the woes that come with it.
  • A proletarian revolution sweeps the old order away and eventually ushers in a classless society (synthesis) in which the means of production belong to everyone, and wealth is shared equally among equals.

CRITICISM of SOCIALISM:

• A frequent criticism of socialism is that a distribution of goods according to needs and abilities would require coercion by the state.
  
  • For socialism to work, people must be forced to do the jobs that match their skills, not the jobs they prefer. And they must be compelled to accept the benefits (monetary or otherwise) that match their needs, not the benefits they most desire.
• Critics also accuse socialist systems of providing no incentive for people to excel at their jobs.
  
  • Under socialism, people are rewarded according to their needs, not by how well or how hard they work. So what inducement is there to be more ambitious or efficient?
• Marx conveyed his views over many years and in several writings, the best-known being the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), which he coauthored with his colleague Friedrich Engels:
• The modern bourgeois [capitalist] society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
• This epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms.
  
  • Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat.…

Many countries have developed a large middle class that doesn’t seem to fit into Marx’s two-class scheme. Is this fact a counterexample to his theory?

• NOTE – Yes. Though there is still a degradation in power and class. – TJB
• The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
  
  • Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
• Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
  
  • All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.
• The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.
  
  • It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production: it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.…
    
    • But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons—the modern working class—the proletarians.

7. Marx lists the many technological and civic innovations brought about by capitalism, things that seem beneficial to society. Do they counterbalance the many bad things about capitalism that Marx details?

• NOTE – Yes. They point out a problem with communism – that it provides no motivation to excel. – TJB

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the simplest, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack that is required of him.

• But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production.
• More, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion, the burden of toil also increases.

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers.

• Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.

• The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level.
  
  • What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.…

In this sense the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

• We, communists, have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquired property as the fruit of a man’s own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity, and dependence.
  
  • The charges against communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint are not deserving of serious examination.
  • NOTE – Says who? Addresses critics by declaring they simply aren’t serious. – TJB
• Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production.
• And are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state.
8. Equal liability of all labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so-called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.

• If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!

Question 3

Einstein on Socialism

Answer 3

Einstein on Socialism:

• Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all.

Do you agree with Einstein’s argument for socialism? Why or why not?

• NOTE – It seems that, under his own definition of how society should run, Einstein would never have received the education necessary to come up with the ideas he came up with. Socialism breeds mediocrity. – TJB

Question 4

Is the United States a Socialist Country?

Answer 4

Is the United States a Socialist Country?

• Welfare programs are examples not of socialism but of welfare liberalism. So even though the United States may have some socialist elements (such as partial ownership and control of the banking industry), it’s not predominantly socialistand calling it that would be an exaggeration.

Question 5

REVIEW NOTES

Answer 5

HEGEL:

• Biggest philosophical influence on Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels.
• Core of Hegel’s system is his ABSOLUTE IDEALISM, the doctrine that the universe is an objective reality consisting of ideas in the universal mind, what Hegel calls Spirit or Absolute.
• Hegel sees the history of the world as the continual development of Spirit toward greater self-consciousness and rationality, greater cognizance of itself as a free, self-determining being.

MARX:

• SOCIALISM – The political and economic doctrine that the means of production (property, factories, businesses) should be owned or controlled by the people, either communally or through the state.
• Guiding principle of the socialist view is equality: the wealth of society should be shared by all. The ideal distribution of goods usually follows Marx’s formula: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
• Marx thinks that what drives philosophy, history, society, law, government, and morality is economics. It is the dominant system of economics in every age that determines how society is structured and how history will go.
• Marx says that class struggle repeats itself throughout history via Hegel’s dialectic process. He thinks the dialectic struggle in modern times is between those who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie, or capitalists) and those who do not (the proletariat).
• Marx holds that the bourgeoisie produce their own gravediggers. They unwittingly create a large, poor, angry proletarian class that has had enough of capitalism and the woes that come with it. A proletarian revolution sweeps the old order away and eventually ushers in a classless society.