On the Social Implications and Context of the Hegelian Dialectic

Abstract

Marxist interpreters of Hegel have often viewed his thought as a kind of antechamber leading beyond itself into more resplendent world of their own set of truths. The Italian Hegelian, Raffaello Franchini, has charged his Marxist contemporaries with making Hegel serve as a John Baptist to Marx. Although this metaphor may not be without merit, an even more apt comparison can be made between Marxists reading Hegel and early Christians perusing Old Testament for clues about advent of Christ. Marx himself had already spoken of need for a radical revision of Hegel, for interpreting forces of struggle present in human affairs from standpoint of men's material needs and not, as Hegel had supposedly done, from vantage point of an absolute reflecting on its own creation.2 These efforts at correcting Hegel have been enthusiastically carried forward both by communist functionaries in Eastern Europe and by Marx's latter-day disciples in Western universities. Where Hegel wrote of being or essence, such reinterpreters see neither a category of logic nor a predicate of absolute consciousness but rather result of material condition of a specific age. Where Hegel described alienation of absolute from its own hidden self, Marxist reinterpreters substitute self-estranged working class in a capitalist society. Where dialectic referred to conceptual polarities, they invoke their higher historical consciousness and give priority to material forces and social interests. Finally, where Hegel wrote of the mediation and overcoming [Vermittlung und Aufhebung] of conflicts, his Marxist reformers choose to find justifications for violent revolution.3