Hegelian Marxism

HEGELIAN MARXISM The Uses of Hegel’s Philosophy in Marxist Theory from Georg Lukács to Slavoj Žižek Anders Bartonek & Anders Burman (eds.) SÖDERTÖRN PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES The series is attached to Philosophy at Södertörn University. Published in the series are essays as well as anthologies, with a particular emphasis on the continental tradition, understood in its broadest sense, from German idealism to phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory and contemporary French philosophy. The commission of the series is to provide a platform for the promotion of timely and innovative philosophical research. Contributions to the series are published in English or Swedish. Cover image: Os vermelhos, (22 x 28.5 cm, acrylic on paper), Laercio Redondo, 2017. HEGELIAN MARXISM SÖDERTÖRN PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 22 2018 Hegelian Marxism The Uses of Hegel’s Philosophy in Marxist Theory from Georg Lukács to Slavoj Žižek Edited by Anders Bartonek & Anders Burman SÖDERTÖRN PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 22 Södertörns högskola (Södertörn University) The Library SE-141 89 Huddinge www.sh.se/publications © The authors Cover image: Os vermelhos, (22 x 28.5 cm, acrylic on paper), Laercio Redondo, 2017. Cover: Jonathan Robson Graphic form: Per Lindblom & Jonathan Robson Printed by Elanders, Stockholm 2018 Södertörn Philosophical Studies 22 ISSN 1651-6834 Södertörn Academic Studies 75 ISSN 1650-433X ISBN 978-91-88663-50-4 (print) ISBN 978-91-88663-51-1 (digital) Contents Introduction....................................................................................................................................7 ANDERS BARTONEK & ANDERS BURMAN Back to Hegel! Georg Lukács, Dialectics, and Hegelian Marxism .........................................17 ANDERS BURMAN Karl Korsch: To Make the Right Marx Visible through Hegel ...............................................35 ANDERS BARTONEK Hegelian Dialectics and Soviet Marxism (from Vladimir Lenin to Evald Ilyenkov)...........61 ELENA MAREEVA & SERGEI MAREEV Herbert Marcuse: No Dialectics, No Critique...........................................................................81 ANDERS BARTONEK The Necessary Fetishism of the Work of Art...........................................................................107 SVEN-OLOV WALLENSTEIN Theodor W. Adorno: With Hegel Against Capitalism ..........................................................127 ANDERS BARTONEK The Revisionist Within: Unity and Unilateralism in Hegelian Marxism and Beyond .....151 DAVID PAYNE A Lacanian Hegelianism: Slavoj Žižek’s (Mis-)Reading of Hegel........................................185 ANDERS BURMAN Authors........................................................................................................................................199 Index............................................................................................................................................201 Introduction Anders Bartonek & Anders Burman “It is impossible fully to grasp Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chap- ter, if you have not studied through and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, none of the Marxists for the past half century have understood Marx!!”1 In this famous aphorism, written in his posthumously published Philosophical Notebooks, Vladimir Lenin stresses the importance of Hegelian logic and dialectics on Marx’s thinking. When the future Soviet leader made this claim in 1916, one year before the Russian Revolution, his immediate critical concern was with the understanding of Marx that had been allowed to perpetuate within the Second International, a highly con- ventional and system oriented interpretation to which Lenin was vehemently opposed. Given Lenin’s remarks about the significance of Hegel, it seems ironic, then, that the importance of the relationship between Hegelian philosophy and Marxist theory was increasingly underplayed in the official Marxist-Leninism of the Soviet Union, which dogmatically asserted itself after Lenin’s death in 1924. Similar to the Second International, the theorists and interpreters of state authorized Soviet Marxism placed exclusive emphasis on the connections between Marx and Engels, rather than reading Marx in light of Hegel. From the 1920s onwards, the question of Hegelian philosophy’s vital influence on Marx as well as to contemporary Marxism was instead inves- tigated with a greater intensity by a number of theorists in, above all, central Europe. One of the basic assumptions of this book is that there are reasons to regard and treat these quite diverse thinkers as Hegelian Marxists. The Hungarian philosopher and aesthetician Georg Lukács and the German 1 Vladimir Lenin, “Abstract of Hegel’s Science of Logic”, Collected Works, vol. 38 (Mos- cow: Progress, 1963), p. 180. 7 ANDERS BARTONEK & ANDERS BURMAN theoretician Karl Korsch were pioneers in reexamining the relation between Hegel and Marx. From a variety of perspectives the present anthology addresses the theme of Hegelian Marxism. More specifically, it deals with how some Marxist thinkers, in different historical, political and intellectual contexts during the last century, have employed Hegel’s philosophy with the aim of developing and renewing Marxist theory. The principal focus is on a series of well- known theorists from Central and Eastern Europe. Besides Lukács and Korsch—and to some extent also Lenin—the articles included in this volume deal mainly with the thoughts of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Evald Ilyenkov and Slavoj Žižek; one text goes beyond the geographical focus of Central and Eastern Europe by high- lighting the Italian philosopher Lucio Colletti, who was nonetheless cri- tically engaged in exploring the extent of a (dis)connection between Hegel and Marx. The overall purpose of the book is to investigate if and to what extent these thinkers could be interpreted as Hegelian Marxists, and how they use the Hegelian philosophy with the intention to better understand their own current society as well as situate themselves in relation to orthodox forms of Marxism. Another purpose is to illuminate, from the perspective of intellectual history, how Hegelian Marxism has served as a significant po- litico-philosophical tradition, with its beginnings in the early twentieth century and reaching up to, and including, today.2 To speak of Hegelian Marxism in the singular is indeed a simplification. Still there is enough that unites many (if not all) of these thinkers that thereby justifies an ideal-typical classification of the vast majority of them as Hegelian Marxists. However, it should immediately be noted that the concept of Hegelian Marxism means different things in these theories, and in some cases the concept is not even used by the theoreticians themselves. Nor can it be claimed unequivocally that all of these thinkers are Hegelian Marxists, since some of them, for instance Adorno and Colletti, were critical of much of Hegel’s philosophy. All the same, many of the thinkers included in this volume use his highly complex and equivocal philosophy in an affir- 2 The book comprises both texts written within the research project “Hegelian Marxism”, which is funded by The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, and contributions based on presentations held at the international conference “From Marx to Hegel and Back to the Future”, in Stockholm, 25–27 February 2016. Both editors arranged the conference, alongside Victoria Fareld and Hannes Kuch, and we would like to express our gratitude to them. We would also like to thank David Payne for proofreading the entire manuscript. 8 INTRODUCTION mative way, often with the ambition of further developing Marxist theory in the direction of some kind of humanism. Hegel, who is usually viewed to be the most abstract of all thinkers, tends in this context to be used with the ambition of formulating a non-dogmatic, Marxist humanism. Historically speaking, Hegelian Marxism may be described as a radical intellectual tradition that from the interwar years onwards has played a pro- minent role in political theory and to some extent also in political practice, especially in Central Europe. With their Hegelian interpretation of Marx, often combined with a Marxist interpretation of Hegel, these thinkers are united in the ambition to formulate a critical position between—or rather beyond—the cautious reformism of Western European Social Democracy, on the one hand, and the inflexible dogmatism of Soviet communism, on the other. Against this background, another common trait of Hegelian Marxists can be perceived, namely that they all in different ways and in different historical contexts respond to what they viewed as the acute or permanent crisis of Marxism. Hegel’s philosophy was thus related to and integrated in Marxism as a way of coming to terms with some of the difficulties and blind-spots within the wider theory itself. For many of these thinkers, the underlying question is how is it the case that Marx’s (and Engels’) work remains insufficient, thus calling for supplementation from Hegel’s philosophy, in order to solve certain problems that are preventing Marxism from reaching its critical and emancipatory goals. Importantly, Hegel is here not only highlighted as a historical background figure and a source of inspir- ation for Marx, Engels and Marxism, rather he is explicitly used as a pre- cipitate for the renewal of Marxist theory. The point is that contemporary Marxism, according to many of these theorists, cannot do without an

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