Marx vs. Hegel on state and civil society
Scott Johnson
sjohn at cp.duluth.mn.us
Tue, 12 Aug 1997 00:51:14 -0500
DAVID DUQUETTE wrote to the Hegel-L list:
Hegel would have just as much difficulty trying to convince various
"post-moderns" that the instituions of society provide truly mediating
functions as he does with Marx. Of course, the post-moderns also have a
problem with Marx to the extent that he also expected a type of
universality to prevail (eventually), the universality of relations of
productions that are socialized in conformity with the socialization of
the forces of production, the latter of which has already been taking
place in modernity. There is a sense in which the future society of
free
associated producers is "post-modern" in that it marks a radical break
with modernity in its being a classless and stateless society. Indeed,
it marks a break from all previous historical forms that have been based
upon the division of labor.
So just what is the unity-in-difference in the Marxist utopia? The
unity
is found precisely in the abolition of traditional forms of the division
of labor, resulting in a radically egalitarian society where relations
of
power either no longer exist or are formed in such a way that social
domination of any sort is no longer possible. The differences
within the unity are perhaps found in the increased diversity within
each
human being's life (recall Marx's comment in the German Ideology about
individuals becoming free to engage in a variety of activities), which
perhaps would allow for an increased diversity in the ways that
individuals relate to others. The basic idea seems to be that
individuals are finally in a position to decide about this, not class
based social institutions. Of course, this all presupposes a society in
some substantial way liberated from scarcity as well as many of the
other
historic problems of life.
It is perhaps one of the ironies of Marx's critique that while it
displays
a cynicism about the ability of modern insitutions to deal with human
problems in a fully ethical way, it presupposes a tremendous optimism
about the possiblity of a future so radically different from the
present.
I wonder how many of the real post-modernists who deny universality are
former Marxists who, in light of what has passed, could not continue to
hold onto that view of the future. Wouldn't they, in Nietzsche's sense,
be giving way to a sort of nihilism of "resentiment" in discovering
their
self-delusion, and nonetheless continuing to reject things as they are,
to
despise the present. In contrast, Hegel's advice that we take the world
as it is, and not as it "ought to be," sounds not like apologetics for
the
status quo but a reconciliation that has pragmatic value and appeals to
common sense.
SCOTT:
This was a very interesting post; all the more so since it intersects
with a discussion I've been involved in on another list
(frankfurt-school). I must differ with you when you say that Hegel
counsels us to "take the world as it is." This isn't quite right. It
seems to me that what Hegel wants us to see is that our very criticism
of the "status quo" is a part of it, that the standards we hold the
present up to are derived from the present. In doing so we "take the
world as it is" insofar as we recognize the institutional and practical
basis of these ideas and impulses and recognize them as valuable on that
basis, recognize in them our own critical images. Rather than write off
the status quo *in toto* and create problems related to the basis of our
critique, the possibility of such radical change, the epistemological
position of the critic, etc, we take up explicitly that part of the
present that our critical impulses represent. What a *Phenomenology*
does is recover the course of reflection which ends in our own thoughts
and practices, so that instead of seeing them as merely inherited we see
instead the rational core of them, a rational core which is manifested
foremost in our own critical, reflective activity. The practice of
theory can explicitly acknowledge itself AS a rational practice, one
that is (unlike other conceptions of rationality at the time) socially
and historically situated yet also one we identify with. The possiblity
of a final merging of theory and practice depends on whether Hegel is
right or not that a threshhold has been crossed with his own theory --
and I in fact believe that a threshhold has been crossed with Hegel.
This passage from your post stood out for me, David:
The differences
within the unity are perhaps found in the increased diversity within
each
human being's life (recall Marx's comment in the German Ideology about
individuals becoming free to engage in a variety of activities), which
perhaps would allow for an increased diversity in the ways that
individuals relate to others. The basic idea seems to be that
individuals are finally in a position to decide about this, not class
based social institutions.
And where did those class-based institutions come from if they did not
command (*NOT* DEmand) the alleigance of the people whose activity after
all constitutes society? It was the promise that the complex of ideas
and practices we call liberalism promised to maximize individual freedom
and minimize conflict. Civil society and the system of needs are
rational structures whose prime appeal is precisely that they define an
area of social interaction whose OBVERSE is a protected sphere of
individuality (activity, expression). Because there is such a strong
distiction between what is private and what is public, the pursuit of
"the good life" is merely a private matter -- left out of the domain of
"morality" which alone is a public matter. It is no coincidence that
Romanticism flourished as liberalism and a rights-based morality which
emphasized autonomy did. I wrote elsewhere:
"Romanticism carries within it a quite radical individualism, but the
demand for autonomy seems to be mitigated by the search for
reconciliation with living nature (not to mention the peculiar tendency
for the early Romantics to convert to Catholicism). Romanticism,
however, relies on the same ability of the modern individual to abstract
from his concrete social status which makes the autonomous moral self
possible. The autonomous individual is the common term between the
modern moral subject and the Romantic self."
The common term is the individual. Quoting myself again:
"On the one hand you have the development of civil society and the
system of need, and on the other the development of the modern
individual. And each feeds the other. The social institutions and
practices of the modern world related to these have thrived, and so also
a has a self-understanding, a historical and thus traditional set of
ideas which are intimately related to the problem of relativism. Now we
understand why the notion of right is so important. The individual
bearer of rights is no one in particular, and so is the modern
autonomous moral agent. The individual is free to pursue his subjective
goods (those which fall outside the domain of morality) without
interference--goods which have come to be defined in terms of the system
of needs.
We are socialized into the system of needs, and its provisions are the
scope and stuff of our individuality."
At the same time it seems that the subjective goods pursued are produced
by the individual himself, conjured out of seemingly nothing since the
individual is considered emancipated from any traditional conceptions of
good. I go on:
"Now, within the horizon of a concrete historical form of life, with its
orientation towards a subjective good, my identity and my wants, needs,
and desires, are formed as an orientation towards that good. But in the
modern world, emancipated from such provincial horizons, such moral
orientations are considered quaint. The liberated individual can pursue
his deepest inner strivings (which of course he sees himself as
producing from the within himself, since after all he is autonomous.)
But I argue that there is a concrete historical form of life here, one
that is not provincial, but almost universal. The substantive good it is
oriented towards is: the autonomous individual. Civil society and the
system of needs exist because there is one thing we agree on. Desire,
liberated from provinciality, is loosed on the system of needs. The
individual is given the comfortable illusion of absolute freedom and
autonomy while having his needs defined for him, in the sense that the
resources for his self-interpretation are something found. It doesn't
matter how he defines himself and what goods he orients himself to, he
can hardly fail to serve the new Moloch. But there is something else
about the liberation of desire, something that Hegel was on to: "What
the English call comfortable is something utterly inexhaustable; its
ramifications are infinite, for every comfort in turn reveals its less
comfortable
side, and the resulting inventions are endless. A need is therefore
created so much by those who experience it as those who seek to profit
from its emergence." [PR Sec. 191add.] All this partly explains why the
system of needs, as well as a strategic mode of relations appropriate to
it, has hypertrophied."
To get back to the passage I began with, liberalism HAS made possible a
flourishing of individual diversity and at the same time ground it in
the machine which was supposed to nurture it. The degree of individual
autonomy in the present world is unprecedented, and it is only because
this is so that the modern world has at the same time come to seem
inhospitable to individuality. As the old Funkadelic tune goes, "You
can't miss what you can't measure." Yet it is because of the conception
of individuality being realized that the world, paradoxically, really IS
becoming inhospitable.
--
---------------------------------------------------------
Scott Johnson
105 W. 1st St. #214 sjohn@cp.duluth.mn.us
Duluth, MN 55802 voice/fax (218) 722-1351
http://www.cp.duluth.mn.us/~sjohn/sjohn_on.html
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