Christopher J.

Ar thur The Hegel-Marx Connection

In a review in a recent issue of this journal, Tony Smith takes the opportunity to criticise the notion that an instructive homology exists between Hegels Idea and Marxs Capital.1 I would like to make this the occasion for some brief comments on the homology thesis. The thesis is spelt out by Smith as follows:
While Marx did indeed reject Hegels idealist metaphysics, this is hardly the end of the matter. For Hegels framework turns out to be a quite accurate representation of the role of capital in capitalist society. Hegels Idea is a rei ed abstraction, a production of human thought that takes on an alien power over and above human subjects. Similarly, capital is a real abstraction, a product of collective social labour that becomes an alien power over its producers. In this sense Hegels logic of the Idea is not simply a philoso-phical mistake to be rejected. It provides a key to grasping the alienated logic of capital; the two logics are homologous.2
1 2

Smith 2001. Smith 2001, p. 218.

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This is a not unfair characterisation of my paper From the Critique of Hegel to the Critique of Capital.3 But it is only a partial account of the homology thesis. Below I argue there are three levels to this, of which the just stated version corresponds to number (ii). First, let me reply to Smiths criticism. He cites from Hegel a passage including the words the free subject arrives at its independent right:
World history is concerned with nothing but to create . . . a reconciliation in which the free subject is not submerged in the objective existence of spirit but arrives at its independent right, and at the same time absolute spirit achieves the pure objective unity of its absolute right. 4

He continues:
In the ontological structure of capital described by defenders of the homology thesis, capital enjoys objective existence as a power that achieves the pure objective unity of its absolute right by subsuming every nook and cranny of the social world under the imperatives of valorisation. But this is not at all a structure in which the free subject . . . arrives at its independent right. In so far as working men and women are subsumed under the alien power of capital as opposed to engaged in acts of self-emancipation from that alien power they are instead submerged in the objective existence of capital. Such a state of affairs cannot be af rmed from the standpoint expressed in the above passage.5

This criticism misses the mark because it con ates the two sides of the homology instead of recognising that the parallelism must be rigorous. Hegels position is that the modern state incarnates the Idea so that Spirit has actualised itself, and therewith the freedom of humans is guaranteed. The homology substitutes for every term of this the appropriate equivalents in the logic of capital. Thus, the modern economy incarnates the Idea of capital so that the spirit of capitalism has taken possession of social production such that the freedom of capital is guaranteed, both in the objectivity of capital-in-general and the independent right of individual capitals. It follows, not only that the logical homology has nothing to do with Hegels substantive concern for human

3 4 5

Arthur 2000. Smith 2001, p. 219. Ibid.

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freedom, it requires that human freedom be reduced to that of choosing between alternatives prescribed by capital itself. Thus, contrary to Smith, this state of affairs can precisely be af rmed from the standpoint of the Hegel passage cited by him: all that is necessary is to read free subject as individual enterprise, and to demonstrate that, as a legal person, the corporation is uncontaminated by heterogeneous interests but is concerned solely with its own ends, and that the system allows it the freedom under the law to make investments and pro ts on the basis of the universality of the value-form. It would be absurd to suppose the homology thesis would carry over into its domain Hegels substantive concerns, since the homology is purely logical and used to illuminate a different social substance. Smiths belief that Hegels concern for human freedom could be the basis for a critique of capitalism may or may not be mistaken, but it is irrelevant to the claimed fruitfulness of reading capital as itself an Idea with its universal, particular, and individual shapes. Indeed, the real trouble with the homology thesis is that it may lead to a pessimistic view of the one-dimensionality of bourgeois society, insofar as it seems to require that human subjectivity be entirely colonised by capital. There are two possible ways to deal with this. For Tom Sekine and Rob Albritton,6 this is dealt with methodologically, by allowing the rei catory tendencies of capital to be completed in theory so that the pure concept of capital be produced, and then by bringing in anti-systemic struggle at a more concrete level of analysis. In my approach, struggle is constitutive of capital, the resistance of the exploited is always present, potentially at least, and therefore capital constitutes itself only through continually negating this its negation. So far from being a quali cation of the homology thesis, I see this as part of it; for Hegel always insists that spirit wins its freedom only through the labour of the negative. The Achilles heel of capital is that it itself necessarily creates this obstacle to its free movement because it cannot accumulate without exploiting labour. Now I want to show there are three levels of the homology thesis. (i) Even a completely orthodox Hegelian might be persuaded that capital does have the logical form of an Idea as they understand it, of a self-actualising universal. What would follow would be a revision of

See Arthur 2002.

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the thematisation of civil society. In the Philosophy of Right, it is said the universal appears there only as necessity, a counter- nality springing from the actions of subjects but transcending them, because civil society gives too much scope to particularity. Now, this necessity would be seen to be capitals freedom, which obtains only through imposing on humans an alien purpose. Note that, in this perspective, capital would have no logical defect in itself. A true Hegelian would have to admire it as such, just as a true biologist admires the shark as a perfect killing machine. The problem would be the substantive con ict between capitals freedom and ours. Then, the true Hegelian would have to become a socialist. (ii) A second level of the homology would not be acceptable to the true Hegelian, because it argues that Hegels philosophy prioritises a hypostasised system of abstraction over the concrete wealth of reality, both natural and social. Here, the homology is with the way capital prioritises the accumulation of abstract wealth (value) over the concrete richness of use-value, the value-form dialectic develops the conquest of use-value. Both systems, that of Hegels philosophy and that of capital, are criticised as inversions of material reality. (iii) If there is a homology in the critique of this logicism at the general level just mentioned, is there a homology at the level of the consequences it has for individuals? I believe so. First, with regard to Hegel: as Smith should know, the free subject with its independent right appears in Hegel only as an abstraction of itself. As an apologist for bourgeois values, Hegel presents rights and freedoms only of the bourgeois subject and largely ignores the concrete material inequalities that make such rights hollow for the many; his endorsement of wage-labour is a glaring example of his legalistic conception of freedom.7 Moreover, this is not due to some empirical accommodation as the Young Hegelians thought. Marx acutely noted that there must be something wrong with the principle that allows it. And there is. For Hegel, the truth of everything is an abstraction of itself. This is his idealist method: to abstract from reality its logical forms, and then to present reality as ful lling them; the material content

See Chapter 8 of Arthur 1986.

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gures only as the bearer of the logic, for example, the monarch represents the individuality of the State. Now, what of the homologous order? What of its free subjects, the many capitals? Insofar as a uniform rate of pro t obtains, which rewards all capitals equally, including those of even the most parasitic sectors, then again important material differences are abstracted from, centrally the key role played by the labours of industrial capitals producing surplus-value at the coal face so to speak. Material differences in this respect (including different compositions of capital) are ignored by capital-in-general in the formalism of its universal recognition of all sorts of capitals as equally worthy. The notorious transformation problem is not primarily the site of an aporia in theory; it springs from an objective hiatus in the ontology of capital, the place where the ideal form of self-positing value collides with the material content of the capital relation. Because of the inversion [Verkehrung] inherent to it, capital is unable to take the measure of its own ground. It becomes literally deranged [Verrckt], and exists in a state of denial. I suppose Smith will not accept (ii) and (iii) but I do not see why he could not accept (i).

References
Arthur, Christopher J. 1986, Dialectics of Labour: Marx and his Relation to Hegel, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Arthur, Christopher J. 2000, From the Critique of Hegel to the Critique of Capital, in The Hegel-Marx Connection, edited by Tony Burns and Ian Fraser, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Arthur, Christopher J. 2002, Review of Dialectics and Deconstruction in Political Economy by Robert Albritton, Historical Materialism, 10, 1: 2517. Smith, Tony 2001, Review of Hegel and History by Joe McCarney, Historical Materialism, 9: 21725.

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