I decided to put a sub-title that is not in Hegel because Lenin keeps stressing the relationship of the theory of knowledge to actuality. It Is characteristic of Hegel that, where others would have considered that, with Essence, they have reached what is "behind" appearance, Hegel not only emphasizes the relationship of the two, but the one flowing out of the other on the way to a still further self-development:
Essence is midway between Being and Notion: it is the mean between them, and its movement constitutes the transition from Being to Notion ... Essence first shows into itself or is Reflection; next it appears; thirdly it manifests itself (Hegel, II, p. 17)
In a word, every stage, even unessential show, is not to be disregarded. Or, as Lenin explains Hegel's statement that "Show then is the phenomenon of skepticism" (Hegel, II., p. 22):
i.e. the unessential, seeming, superficial, vanishes more often, does not hold so "tightly", does not "sit so firmly" as "Essence". Approximately, the movement of a river -- the foam above and the deep currents below. But even the foam is an expression of essence! (Lenin, p. 130)
And again:
This N B. Hegel is for the "objective validity" (if it may be called that) of Semblance, "of that which is immediately given" (the expression that which is given is generally used by Hegel.) The more petty philosophers dispute whether essence or that which is immediately given should be taken as basis (Kant, Hume, all the Machists). Instead of or, Hegel puts and, explaining the concrete content of this "and". (Lenin, p. l34)
The profundity of Hegel lies precisely in this, that even when he dealt with what is unessential, what is mere show, he disclosed its objectivity. Appearance is a higher stage than show but at that point, too, we are yet to get to Essence. One of the most pregnant sentences in Essence is that, despite the distinctions and even oppositions between Appearance and Essence, the crucial is not the opposition between the two, but the fact that Essence, too, must appear. In a word, no stage can be "skipped". Each of the stages is a necessary "moment", an element of the very development of the essential, of the contradictory development. In Hegel, far from opposites never meeting, it is the ceaseless meeting of opposites that is the essential movement in life, in theory, in practice. Hegel has nothing but scorn for "the law of the excluded middle", whereupon Lenin comments:
Hegel says wittily -- is is said that there Is no third, There is a third in this thesis itself. A itself is the third, for A can be both +A and -A. "The Something thus is itself the third term which was supposed to be excluded." (Hegel, II, p. 65) -- This is shrewd and correct. Every concrete thing, every concrete something stands in multifarious and often contradictory relations to everything else, ergo it is itself and some Other. (Lenin, p. 138)
The real leap, as we have known for sometime and have constantly quoted, comes with the reading of the section on the Law of Contradiction:
Movement and "self-movement" (this NB! arbitrary (Independent), spontaneous, internally-necessary movement), "change", "movement and vitality", "the principle of all self-movement", "impulse" (Triev) to "movement" and to "activity" -- the opposite to "dead Being" -- who would believe that this is the core of "Hegelianism," of abstract and abstruse (ponderous, absurd?) Hegelianism?? This core has to be discovered, understood, rescued, laid bare, refined, which is precisely what Marx and Engels did, (Lenin, p. 141)
From now on, Lenin shows the highest appreciation of the idealism in dialectical philosophy. The thought has its own dialectic and what is crucial here is that Lenin is not merely saying: Let's read Hegel materialistically. Let's never forget that for Marxists, for revolutionaries, the highest contradiction is that between capital and labor, the class struggle. By now he has taken that for granted philosophically as well as in life, and, instead stresses that the idea of universal movement came first with Hegel, then in Marx and finally with Darwin:
The idea of universal movement and change (1813 Logic) was conjectured before its application to life end society. In regard to society it was proclaimed earlier (Communist Manifesto) than it was demonstrated in application to man (Origin of Species). (Lenin, p, 141)
He will not develop this thought, in full, until the third book which deals with Notion, and we, too, do not want to rush ahead. Instead, it is important to show how all the Stalinists and, later the Maoists revisions, centered precisely around contradiction. That is to say, the counter-part to their class compromisist actions in life was the revisions introduced into the Hegelian law of objective contradiction. By claiming that there no longer were any classes in "socialist lands", they concluded that "therefore" there were no contradictions. When Mao introduced the concept that there were no contradiction among "people", that in China, "therefore" what differences that there are can be handled by a "correct policy". The headlines throughout the world that he earned with that speech on how to handle contradictions among people, happened to have been uttered just as the first edition of Marxism and Freedom went to press and here is the footnote (#17) that I added:
The lowest of all today's sophists is the head of the Chinese Communist Party and State, Mao Tse-tung, who recently (June 18, 1957) caused a world sensation with his Speech, "On Contradiction", in which he proclaimed, "let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools of thought contend." Mao has ridden this single track, which he calls "Contradiction" ever since 1937. At that time, he directed his attack against "dogmatists" who refused to reduce all contradictions in the anti-Japanese struggle and submit to "the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek." In 1952, Mao introduced a new set of definitions into "Contradictions", this time applying it to those who opposed the Chinese Communist Party taking sole power in China. By June 18, 1957, after editing with a heavy hand the speech he delivered on February 27th to the Supreme State Conference, he reduced the struggle of class against class to a contradiction among "the people" while he became the champion, at one and the same time, of the philosophy of a hundred flowers blooming and one and only one Party, the Chinese Communist Party ruling. Outside of the exploitative class relations themselves, nothing so clearly exposed the new Chinese ruling class as their threadbare philosophy.
The concrete that Lenin had in mind, the one that he refers most often to is Marx's Capital. He will soon be saying on the whole relationship of Ground to Condition, or the relationship of history to thought: "and purely logical elaboration? It coincides. It must coincide, as induction and deduction in Capital." (Lenin, p. 146)
The point is that Lenin, throughout this first section "Essence as Reflection in Itself", is stressing the critical importance of contradiction, without which it is absolutely impossible to understand any development. Anyone who blunts contradiction to either the point of mere difference or to not seeing the transition from one to the other has no conception of what Hegel means by negativity or the inherent self-movement:
NB1(1) Ordinary perception grasps the difference and the contradiction, but not the transition of one to the other, but this is the most important.(2) Intelligent reflection and mind. Refection grasps the contradiction, expresses it, brings things in relation to one another, compels the "concept to shine through the contradiction" but does not express the concept of things and their relation.(3) Thinking reason (Mind) sharpens the blunted difference of variety, the mere manifold of imagination, to the essential difference to Opposition. Only when the contradictions reach the peak does manifoldness become regular and lively in relation to the other -- acquire that negativity which is the inner pulsation of self-movement and life.
Again, the stress is both on life and thought. Hegel himself concludes the section not with the law of contradiction but with the movement from that first to Ground then to Condition, which could be translated as history itself. It is impossible to develop at length these quintessential points in so brief an outline. For the time being, it will have to suffice to stress two things. One, that Lenin here brought in, as we already quoted, the relationship between inductive and deductive method in Capital. And, two, to keep in mind that what Hegel is arguing for is the need to get rid of the concept of Ground as a sub-stratum and to know that when you have got rid of this concept of something being "behind" the immediate, the apparent, you have by no means gotten rid of the fact that the immediate, too, is the result of a mediating process. Hegel relentlessly restates his thesis that "The Fact Emerges Out of Ground." And that "When all the Conditions of a Fact are present, it enters into Existence." (Hegel II,p. 105) Whereupon Lenin comments:
Very good! What has the Absolute Idea and idealism to do with it? (Lenin, p. 147)
Also let us not forget that when Lenin referred to Capital, he at one and the same time, stressed what was great about Hegel's concept of Ground and Condition -- "The universal all-sided, vital connection of everything with everything and the reflection of this connection in human concepts." And then pointed to the direction in which both the work of Hegel and Marx must continue:
Continuation of the work of Hegel and Marx must consist in the dialectical elaboration of the history of human thought, science and technique: (Lenin, p. 146-147)
We are, first, now, in section 2, Appearance, which, in turn is divided into Existence, Appearance, and Essential Relation. Though we can, by no means, claim to have dealt with it in the few references we made to it in the first section, we nevertheless must here limit ourselves to but two questions, that of the Law of Appearance and the world of appearance. If you wish to practice dialectic by going off into your own analysis in the real world, let me give you a hint: Lenin's "playing down" of the importance of law is due "to his underlying critique of the economism; thus, on the one hand, he shows that law is the "enduring (the persisting) in appearances" but is not beyond appearance; and, on the other hand, that "Appearance is now richer than law." (Lenin, p. 152) Let Lenin sum it up for us:
The essence here is that both the world of appearances and the world in itself are moments of man's knowledge of nature, stages, alterations, or deepenings (of knowledge). The shifting of the world in itself further and further from the world of appearances -- that is what is so far still not to be seen in Hegel. N.B. Have not Hegel's "moments" of the concept the significance of "moments" of transition? (Lenin, p. 153)
The most exciting part in the Doctrine of Essence is Section III, Actuality, which Hegel defines as the "unity of Essence and Existence" (Hegel, II, p. 160) Unity is not, however, "synthesis"; it is the very apex of contradiction.
The greatness of Hegel is that he wrote Logic freed from anything concrete and yet it contains the essence of all concrete. Thus, if you are an economist, a Marxist economist, think of Actuality as capitalist crises and you will discern some absolutely magnificent developments and truths and think it couldn't possibly mean anything else. But if you think of philosophic terms, say like a Marcuse, the concrete that preoccupies you is that you are finally freed from being enmeshed in phenomena, tied only to "observable facts", are capable of grasping reality as a totality and you would be just as right as when you thought Actuality applied only to capitalist crises.
When you'll be flying on your own, and will have to trace a development, be it in literature, the self-determination of nations, or a general strike, you will at once recognize that the conflict is no longer a question only of opposition between the existent and the as yet non-existent forces, but between two co-existing antagonistic forces that simply cannot continue to co-exist endlessly. And of course you'll be right -- and in all fields.
The point is that you simply cannot limit the "uses of this self-movement through contradiction." Lenin himself began to free himself from all residue of taking the empiric fact as the actual. You see Actuality first as contingency, then substance and when you come to cause and think you "really" get it this time, Hegel first tells you that effect and cause are not poles apart at all. Let us therefore follow Lenin and note also that at this point he goes back to the "Smaller Logic" where "the same thing is expounded very often more clearly, with concrete examples" (Lenin, p. 157) and he quotes from it (p. 262) the paragraph on Possibility:
Whether a thing is possible or impossible depends altogether on the subject matter: that is, on the sum total of the elements in Actuality which, as it opens itself out, discloses itself to be Necessity. (Hegel, p. 262) Lenin comments: "The sum-total of the elements in Actuality, which in its unfolding discloses itself to be a Necessity. The unfolding of the sum-total of moments of actuality NB = essence of dialectical cognition." (Lenin, pp. 157-158)
(One thing is sure, it is much easier to read the "Smaller Logic" than the Science of Logic and you now deserve to make it a bit easier for yourself, so start reading, especially the section on Actuality.)
Lenin singles out the expression, "necessity is blind only insofar as it is not understood." When Lenin reaches the section analysing the relationship of Substantiality to Causality, he sums it up in two ways:
On the one hand, knowledge of matter must be deepened to knowledge (to the concept) of Substance in order to find the causes of phenomena. On the other hand, the actual cognition of the cause is the deepening of knowledge from the externality of phenomena to the Substance. Two types of examples should explain this: 1) from the history of natural science, and 2) from the history of philosophy. More exactly; it is not "examples" that should be here -- comparison is not proof -- but the quintessence of the history of both the one and the other + the history of technique. (Lenin, p. 159)
And again:
When one reads Hegel on causality, it appears strange at first glance that he dwells so relatively lightly on this theme, beloved of the Kantians. Why? Because, indeed, for him causality is only one of the determinations of Universal connection, which he had already covered earlier, in his entire exposition, much more deeply and all-sidedly: always and from the very outset emphasising this connection, the reciprocal transitions, etc., etc. It would be very instructive to compare the "birth-pangs" of neoempiricism (respective "physical idealism") with the solutions or rather with the dialectical method of Hegel. (Lenin, p. 162)
You can actually feel Lenin bursting forth, on his own, prepared to engage the real world as he approaches the end of the Doctrine of Essence and Hegel states that Book III, the Doctrine of the Notion, is "the realm of Subjectivity or of Freedom" (Hegel, II, p. 205), Lenin writes joyously!
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NB Freedom - Subjectivity ("or") End, Consciousness, Endeavour NB. |
(Lenin, p. 164)
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1 I have used my own translation (M&F p. 331) because the "official" translation (Lenin, p. 143) uses here non-philosophic terminology in the question of perception, reflection and mind. There are other places it is equally "loose" in its translation but for uniformity's sake, I have used their translation generally.