The Limits to Hegel 26 March 2011. The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
Hegel and Marx
Passage from money to capital is clearly formuated in Hegelian terms: Substance and Subject
Oh here what does Žižek say but only the capital is the SUBJECT, as self-positing, self-mediating agent and AUTOMATIC subject, just wants more, more profit, just blindly repeats itself. What Hegel was no able to think was this weird unity dead blindly repetitive, conceptual self mediation and blind repetition.
When Marx describes the dance of capital, as the Hegel value of , but for Marx this is not the ultimate truth, the autonomy of this process, the self-generation of value is an ideological myth, it feeds on exploitation of workers and so on.
But we can say what Hegel describes here is not simply ideology, but its not also the brutal reality, it is something in-between the objective fantasy of capital. The ambiguous status of the reference to Hegel’s dialectic in Marx. there are two fundamentally different references: Grundrisse its the model of liberation, unity, reconciliation, subjectivy reconciled with substance.
Hegelian Dialectic in Capital not a model for process of liberation, but alienated capitalist reproduction, the big question here was the late Marx simply right? Lukacs is the model of the first reading, liberation, Hegel was right he just applied his dialectic matrix on wrong subject, replace Absolute Spirit with working class you got it, Adorno, dialectic is not dialectic of liberation but the very form of reproduction of alienated society. This idea that liberation will be a step OUT of dialectics. Dialectics is logic of alienated society. Ž says which should be much more DARING. Both Lukacs and Adorno is their reading of Hegel, is reconcilation is simply appropriation of the substance. If you really want to understand Hegel, you should see that reconcilation is not collective subject swallows reality, it is much more pessimistic mood.
DISGRACE one of the darkest novels that I know. It is not simple reaction of a deceived liberal to the new South Africa. But the final situation of the hero, this total loss, is maybe the closest we get to Hegelian reconciliation.
Maybe the way to go back to Hegel, is to ABANDON hyper idealist subjectivity reading where subject swallows everything, not its closer to Christian notion is that you get out of alienation not by overcoming it, you get out of alienation by redoubling it. The formula for me
The secrets of the Egyptians for us were secrets to the Egyptians themselves.
To go beyond Hegel, is to discover Hegelian dimension precisely in what Hegel was unable to grasp.
What Hegel could not have imagined is basic paradox of capitalist societies, is that you have formal legal equality, but that relationship of domination reproduces itself precisely under the form of equality. Domination that remains even when you abolish all direct forms of domination. In a modern democracy, certainly does not exclude the emergence of wealth and profound distinctions of rich and poor, there are still workers and managers, still profit and exploitation, but the new cultural equality, is infused with a powerful hatred of hierarchies and class caste distinctions, it is in our socieities permitted to be wealthy so long as the rich man is as vulgar as everyone else.
Possibility of a genuine reappropriation of HIGH culture.
To be continued …