Marx on the ‘Marx-Hegel Relation’

John Rosenthal
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John Rosenthal: Colorado College

Chapter 2 in The Myth of Dialectics, 1998, pp 7-17 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract For the moment, let us stay with the crude formulation of our problem and simply pose the question: what exactly is ‘Hegelian’ in the discourse of Capital! Now, it could be suspected that a philosopher might be of some use here. And indeed for academic philosophers, the Hegelian legacy in Capital has been a matter of great concern: it has been their very, so to speak, professional justification for considering Capital - and, more often than not, also their alibi for not considering it too closely. The prolonged debate in the philosophical literature over the so-called ‘Marx-Hegel relation’ has hinged upon the respective conceptions of ‘dialectical method’ elaborated by the two authors and supposedly adhered to in their works. In the oft-cited 1873 ‘Afterword’ to the second German edition of Capital, Marx himself lent his authority to such an orientation by all at once: proclaiming ‘his’ ‘dialectical method’ the ‘direct opposite’ of Hegel’s; stressing that he had, nonetheless, acknowledged himself to be a ‘pupil’ of ‘that great thinker’; criticizing the ‘mystification’ to which ‘the dialectic’ is subject in Hegel’s treatment; yet praising Hegel as regardless ‘the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner’; and glibly dismissing his own utilization of a Hegelian ‘mode of expression’ - namely, ‘here and there in the chapter on value theory’ - as mere ‘coquetry’ (CI, 102-3/27).

Keywords: Productive Force; Intended Object; Rational Kernel; Academic Philosopher; Dialectical Method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37184-2_2

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230371842_2

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