DIALECTICAL HENRI LEFEBVRE Preface by Stefan Kipfer Translated by John Sturrock MATERIALISM DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM Dialectical Materialism Henri Lefebvre Preface by Stefan Kipfer Translated by John Sturrock IN UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS NE MINNEAPOLIS SO LONDON iTA Originally published in French as Le Materialisme dialectique. Copyright 1940 by Presses Universitaires de France. This English translation was first published in 1968. Copyright 1968 by Jonathan Cape Ltd. Reprinted by arrangement with Jonathan Cape Ltd. First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2009 Preface copyright 2009 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press III Third A venue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Lefebvre, Henri, 1901-1991. Dialectical materialism I Henri Lefebvre; Preface by Stefan Kipfer; Translated by John Sturrock. p. cm. Distinctive title: Materialisme dialectique Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8166-5618-9 (pb : alk. paper) I. Dialectical materialism. I. Title. II. Title: Materialisme dialectique. B809.8.L34132009 146' .32-dc22 2009004874 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 16 15 14 13 12 II 10 09 10 987654321 The life of the Spirit is not that life which shrinks from death and seeks to keep itself clear of all corruption, but rather the life which endures the presence of death within itself and preserves itself alive within death. HEG EL, The Phenomenology of Mind Contents TRANSLATOR 'S NOTE ix CODE TO REFEREN CES xi PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION Xlll Stefan Kipfer Dialectical Materialism Foreword to the Fifth Edition I. THE DIALECTICAL CONTRADICTION 9 A critique of Hegel's dialectic 34 Historical materialism 48 Dialectical materialism 67 U nity of the doctrine 88 II. THE PRODUCTION OF MAN 102 Analysis of the Product I07 The activities of integration II2 The controlled sector and the uncontrolled sector 120 Physical determinism 129 Social determinism 133 The total man 136 Towards the total content 154 SELECTED BIBLIO GRAPHY 157 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE Professor Lefebvre's text contains many references to the writings of Hegel and Marx, and where pos­ sible the source of these is given in the form of a note in the text itself. Since the original French edition of Le Materialisme dialectique refers only to specific works, and not to specific editions of these works, and since also Professor Lefebvre's own papers relating to the book were destroyed during the I939- 45 war, we have simply carried over the references as they are given in the French edition from which the translation was made. ix CODE TO RE FE RE NCES Hegel: ED =Erste Druckschriften E =Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (tr. Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences) GP =Geschichte der Philosophie (tr. History of Philosophy) P = Phanomenologie des Geistes (tr. The Phenomenology of Mind) PR =PhiIosophie des Rechts (tr. The Philosophy of Right) WL = Wissenschaft der Logik (tr. Science of Logic) Marx: DI =Die deutsche Ideologie (tr. German Ideology) HF =Die heilige Familie (tr. The Holy Family) K =Das Kapital (tr. Capital) KPO=Zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie (tr.Critique of Political Economy) M = Okonomische-philosophische Manu­ skripte (1844, 1857-8) Man=Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (tr. The Communist Manifesto) MP = La Misere de la philosophie (tr. The Poverty of Philosophy) N = Nachlass xi PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION Stefan Kipfer By the time Dialectical Materialism was published in 1939, Henri Lefebvre had already lived through twenty rich years of intellectual and political engagement.! In the 1920s, after arriving in Paris from Aix-en-Provence to study philosophy at the Sorbonne, Lefebvre joined a proto-existentialist student group (Jeunes Philosophes) and critically engaged works by Schelling, Proust, Pascal, Nietzsche, and his two main university teachers (Maurice Blondel and Leon Brunschvicg). Influenced by rebellious avant-gardes and some of their expo­ nents-Dada (Tristan Tzara) and Surrealism (Andre Breton) -Lefebvre became politically active. He faced mili tary confinement after protesting the French army's campaign against the Moroccan Rif in 1925 and joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1928. He subse­ quently developed his understanding of Marx and Hegel in debates with his fellow travelers (Breton, Jean Wahl, Paul Nizan, Norbert Guterman, Georges Politzer) in such journals as La Revue Marxiste and Avant-Paste. Of great intellectual importance was Lefebvre's col- I For more details on this period, see Remi Hess, Henri Lefebvre et l'aventure du siec1e (Paris: Metailie, 1988); Bud Burkhard, French Marxism between the Wars: Henri Lefebvre and the "Philosophies" (New York: Humanity, 2000); Stuart Elden, Understandin8 Henri Lefe­ bvre: Theory and the Possible (London: Continuum, 2004); Andy Mer­ rifield,Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2006). X111 DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM laborative work with Norbert Guterman, with whom he published generously commented translations of Hegel, Lenin's Hegel Notebooks, and Marx's early work, including the 1844 Manuscripts.1 These transla­ tion projects were key for the intellectual genesis not only of Dialectical Materialism2 but Hegelian Marxism in France more generally.3 Dialectical Materialism was the culmination of Lefebvre's interwar activities, which were brought to an end by World War II and the Resistance against the Vichy regime. In this can text, the book had to highligh t the tension-fraught relationship between Lefebvre and the rCF. Even though he served as a Communist munic­ ipal councilor in the mid-1930s, Lefebvre found him­ self still in the periphery of the rCF before the war (in comparison to roli tzer, for example). This was partly because, for Lefebvre, marxism was above all a dynamic movement of theory and practice, not a fixed doctrine and instrument for party strategy.4 Despite the identi­ cal title, Lefebvre's Dialectical Materialism is thus not to be confused with the Dialectical Materialism of the Comintern. Rather, it is best seen as an implicit but "pesky rejoinder to Joseph Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism. "5 In this article, which was I Morceaux choisis de Karl Marx (P aris: Gallimard, 1934); G. W. F. He8el: Morceaux choisis (P aris: Gallimard, 1938); Cahiers de U'nine sur la dialectique de He8el (Paris: Gallimard, 1938). 2 Two fragments of Dialectical Materialism were coauthored with Guterman and published in 1935 as "Qu'est-ce que la dialectique?" in Nouvelle Revue Fram;aise issues 264 and 265 (1935). See Burkhard, French Marxism between the Wars, 224, 232. 3 Elden, Understandin8 Henri Lefebvre, 68. 4 Hess, Henri Lefebvre et l'aventure du siec1e, 75-76. 5 Andy Merrifield, Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City (New York: Routledge, 2002), 76. XIV PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION published a year before Lefebvre's book, Stalin had declared dialectical materialism "the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist Party." ! Based on a narrow and schematic reading of Engels's Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dilhring, Stalin's dialectical materialism com­ bined a nominally dialectical philosophy of nature with a mechanical conception of materialism, com­ plete with a reflection theory of consciousness. Diamat was meant to furnish a "science of the history of soci­ ety" akin to the natural sciences (historical material­ ism) that could provide party leaders with an unerring approach to policy.2 Implicit as it was, Lefebvre's response to official par­ ty doctrine brought him "heat from party bigwigs and from sectarian dogmatists" for indulging in Hegelian idealism and neglecting the influence of French social­ ism and British political economy on the development of Marx's thought.3 Before publishing Dialectical Materialism, Lefebvre had already garnered criticism from other Communist intellectuals for some of his theoretical activities. Most controversial among these were Lefebvre's and Guterman's comments on Lenin's Hegel Notebooks, which demonstrated the importance of Hegel's dialectical method for Lenin.4 Both this exe­ gesis of Lenin and Dialectical Materialism underlined I Joseph Stalin, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism," The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Works, 1905-52, ed. Bruce Franklin (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972), 300. This article was origi­ nally published in 1938 as part of Stalin's History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 2 Stalin, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism," 312. 3 Merrifield, Metromarxism, 76; Michael Kelly, Modern French Marxism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 35-39. 4 Kevin Anderson, Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 87-97. xv DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM the continued if thoroughly transformed presence of Hegel in the mature works of Marx and Lenin. They had to ruffle feathers among party officials, both in France and in the Comintern, who were trained to believe, fol­ lowing Stalin's reduction of marxism to the doctrinaire diamat, that Marx, Engels, and Lenin had to be rigor­ ously shielded from the