Philosophy and Revolution ALSO BY RAYA DUN A YEVSKAY A Marxism and Freedom-from 1776 until Today Philosophy and Revolution From Hegel to Sartre, and from Marx to Mao RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA SECOND EDITION WITH NEW INTRODUCTION BY AUTHOR HUMANITIES PRESS: NEW JERSEY HARVESTER PRESS: SUSSEX Copyright © 1973 by Raya Dunayevskaya Copyright © 1982 by Raya Dunayevskaya for the New Introduction Reprinted with New Introduction in 1982 in the United States of America by Humanities Press and in England by Harvester Press by arrangement with the author. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dunayevskaya, Raya. Philosophy and revolution. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Revolutions and socialism-History. I. Title. HX550.R48D86 1982 335.4'11 "82-1079 ISBN 0-391-02648-8 AACRZ England ISBN 0-7108-0303-6 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA . When the narrow bourgeois form has been peeled away, what is wealth, if not the universality of needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive powers, etc., of ·indi­ viduals, produced in universal exchange? What, if not the full development of human contml over the forces of nature -those of his own nature as well as those of so-called "nature"? What, if not the absolute elaboration of his creative dispositions, without imy preconditions other than antecedent historical evolution tt}hich makes the totality of this evolution-i.e. the evolution of all human powers as such, unmeasured by any previously established yardstick­ au end in itself? What is this, if not a situation where man does not reproduce himself in any determined form, but produces his totality? Where he does not seek to remain something formed by the past, but is in the absolute move­ ment of b�coming? KARL MARX Acknowledgments I thank the following for permission to quote from their publi­ cations: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, for quotations from G. W. F. Hegel, Phenommology of Mind, translated by J. B. Baillie, and Science of Logic, translated by W. H. Johnston aad L. G. Struthers; George Braziller, Inc., New' York, for quotations from Jean­ Paul Sartre, Situations, translated by Benita Eisler; Basic Books, Inc., New York, for quotations from Jean Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, translated and edited by John O'Neill; Clarendon Press, Oxford, for quotations from Hegel's Logic and Philosophy of Mind, translated by William Wallace; Phi­ losophy of Nature, translated by A. V. Miller; and Nikolay Valen­ tinov, Encounters With Lenin; Collier Books, New York, for quotations from J. N. Findlay, The Philosophy of Hegel: An Introduction and Re-Examination; Columbia University Press, New York, for quotations from David Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science; Doubleday, New York, for quotations from Socialist Human­ i.sm, edited by Erich Fromm; Walter Kaufmann, Hegel, a Re- vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS interpretation, Texts and Commentary; and Leszek Kolakowski, Alienation of Reason; Grove Press, Inc., New York, for quotations from Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, translated by Bobbye Ortiz; and Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated by Constance Farrington; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, for quotations from Trotsky's Diary in Exile, 1935; and Simon Kuznets, Postwar Economic Growth; copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard University; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, for quotations from Karl Lowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought; Humanities Press, Inc., New York, for quotations from Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, translated by E. S. Haldane and Francis H. Simson; International Publishers, New York, for quotations from V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volumes VIII and X; and Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, edited by Eric Hobs­ bawm, translated by Jack Cohen; Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago, for quotations from Karl Marx, Capital, Volumes 1-111, translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling; and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, translated by N. I. Stone; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, for quotations from Jean­ Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, translated by Hazel E. Barnes; Merlin Press, London, for quotations from Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, translated by Rodney Living­ ston; Monthly Review Press, New York, for quotations from Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?; New Left Books, London, for quotations from Louis Alt­ husser, Reading Capital, translated by Ben Brewster; and Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy, translated by Fred Halliday; News & Letters, Detroit, for quotations from American Civili­ zation on Trial, Black Masses as Vanguard; Black, Brown and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix Red, The Movement for Freedom among Bwck, Chicano and Indian; The Free Speech Movement and the Negro Revolution; Notes on Women's Liberation: We Speak in Many Voices; and Workers Battle Automation; Oxford University Press, London, for quotations from Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed; The Prophet Unarmed; and The Prophet Outcast; Pantheon Books, New York, for quotations from Moshe Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle, translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith; Pathfinder Press, Inc., New York, for quotations from Leon Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program; My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography; Permanent Revolution; Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., New York, for quotations from Imre Nagy, Imre Nagy on Communism; and Leopold Sedar Senghor, On African Socialism; University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, for quotations from Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, translated by Max Eastman; University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, for quotations from Nicholas Lobkowicz, Theory and Practice: History of a Con­ cept from Aristotle to Marx. Contents INTRODUCTION XV NEW INTRODUCTION 1982 XX Part One. Why Hegel1 Why Now1 CHAPTER 1 Absolute Negativity as New Beginning The Ceaseless Movement of Ideas and of History 3 A. The Phenomenology of Mind, or Experiences of Consciousness 7 B. The Science of Logic, or Attitudes to Objectivity 18 C. The Philosophy of Mind: A Movement from Practice? 33 CHAPTER 2 A New Continent of Thought Marx's Historical Materialism and Its Inseparability from the Hegelian Dialectic 47 A. The 1840s: Birth of Historical Materialism 50 ) xii CONTENTS B. The 1850s: The Grurulri.sse, Then and Now 61 I. "'Progressi\·e Epochs of Social Formations" 64 2. The -Automaton"' and the Worker 68 C. The Ad,·entures of the Commodity �h� m CBAPTEB 3 The Shock of Recognition and the Philosophic Ambivalence of Lenin 95 Part Two. Alternatives Do"TBODUCTION On the Eve of World Warn Depression in theEconomy and in Thought 123 CHAPTER 4 Leon Trotsky as Theoretician 128 A. The Theory of Permanent ReYolution 130 B. The :Xature of the Russian Economy, or Making a Fixed Particular into a New Uni,·ersal 139 C. Leadership, Leadership 145 CHAPTER 5 The Thought of Mao T�tung 151 A. Discontinuities and Continuities 152 I. The Sino-So\-iet C<>nHict 152 2. That Crucial Year 1965 and "The Great Proletarian Cultural Rc\·olution," 1966-69 155 B. From Contradiction to Contradiction to Contradiction 160 C. Alienation and ReYolution 168 I. Hong Kong lnter\"iew 168 2. Sheng Wu-lien: The Challenge from the Left 176 CBAPTEB 6 Jean-Paul Sartre OutsiderLoo king In 188 A. 'The ProgressiYe-Regressive Method" 192 B. The Dialectic and the Fetish 197 CONTENTS xiii Part Three. Economic Reality and the Dialectics of Liberation CHAPTER 7 The African Revolutions and the World Economy 213 A. Neocolonialism and the Totality of the World Crisis 221 B. New Human Relations or Tragedies Like Biafra? 236 CHAPTER 8 State Capitalism and the East European Revolts 247 A. The Movement from Practice Is Itself a Form of Theory 250 B. Theory and Theory 255 C. Once Again, Praxis and the Quest for Universality 263 CHAPTER 9 New Passions and New Forces The Black Dimension, the Anti-Vietnam War Youth, Rank-and-File Labor, Women's Liberation 267 NOTES 293 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 343 INDEX 359 Introduction Because the transformation of reality is central to the Hegelian dialectic, Hegel's philosophy comes to life, over and over again, in all periods of crisis and transition, when a new historic turn­ ing point has been reached, when the established society is un­ dermined and a foundation is laid for a new social order. The fact that there was a record number of Hegel studies, Hegel publications, Hegel translations, and Hegel congresses in 1970, crisscrossing with celebrations of Lenin as a philoso­ pher, may have appeared to be pure coincidence: it was the two hundredth anniversary of Hegel's birth and the one hundredth of Lenin's. The brute fact, however, is the all­ pervasiveness of the world crisis-economic, political, racial, educational, philosophic, social. Not a single facet of life, prisons included, was not weighted down by the crisis-and its absolute opposite in thought. A passionate hunger for a philosophy of liberation erupted. Not many professors of philosophy may have related to the Soledad Brother who was shot down in 1971. But so deeply grounded is the black dimension in "absolute nega­ tivity," in the desire for new beginnings through the "syllo­ gistic" resolution of alienation, that George jackson's discovery XV xvi INTRODUcriON of the dialectic of liberation in that hellhole, San Quentin Prison, can by no means be brushed aside as "accidental," or as a Black Panther reduction of philosophy to such political Maoisms as "power comes out of the barrel of a gun." Hegel himself had, after all, lived during a turning point in world history as the Bastille was stormed and the Great French Revolution initiated as new an expanse in thought as in the freedom of people.