Tony Smith

Hegel conceptualized the capitalist economy as a system of needs, with commodities and money serving as means to human ends. While anticipating Marx’s criticisms of certain tendencies in capitalism, Hegel insisted that higher-order institutions, especially those of the modern state, could put them out of play and establish a reconciliation of universality, particularity, and individuality warranting rational affirmation. Hegel, however, failed to comprehend the emergence of capital as a dominant subject, subordinating human ends under its end. The structural coercion, domination, and exploitation inherent in the capital/wage labor relationship illustrate that point, as does the depoliticization of inherently political matters in capitalist market societies. The reconciliation of universality, particularity, and individuality Hegel endorsed requires a form of socialism incorporating deliberative democracy in local workplaces and communities, conjoined with representative bodies on regional, national, and ultimately global levels.

Arash Abazari's Hegel's Ontology of Power is a superb study of the relevance of Hegel's logic to Marx's theory. Hegel is often dismissed by Marxists as an ‘idealist’ denying the reality of the world, as if Hegel were Bishop Berkeley with a German accent.1 Abazari recognizes this is not the case: ‘(T)he logical categories are not self-standing, but shadow, or track, the empirical world’ (Abazari 2020: 7). But the world in its full actuality does not simply consist of the objects we sense or perceive. It is intrinsically intelligible, and its intelligibility can be comprehended only in thought. When it is, the ‘idealist’ thesis of the identity (in difference) of thought and being holds. Anyone asserting a truth claim implicitly asserts this identity. In so far as Marx asserts that Capital comprehends the capitalist mode of production, he too is an ‘idealist’ in the Hegelian sense of the term.

The three volumes of Capital form an immensely complex work, including a variety of quite different sorts of texts. Marx’s systematic ordering of the essential determinations of capital, beginning in Volume I with relatively simple and abstract social forms and then proceeding step by step to ever more complex and concrete determinations provides a unifying thread. Many fundamental structures of the capitalist mode of production remained to be considered at the point where Marx left off in Volume III. At one point, at least, Marx planned to conclude his project with volumes on the state, foreign trade, and the world market and crisis (Marx 1973, 227, 264). This paper is devoted to two questions. Why exactly did Marx place the category of the world market at the very culmination of his systematic ordering? And what are the essential features of the social form referred to by this category? Before addressing these issues some further methodological remarks are in order.

The first part of this book (“Social Waste and Non-Commodity Waste, and the Individual Circuit of Capital”) will probably be of most interest to readers of this journal. The author argues that Marx’s formula for individual circuits of capital does not allow a fully adequate comprehension of capitalism. Marx discusses the initial money capital invested (M), the commodity inputs purchased with investment capital (C), the production process (P), the new commodities produced (C’), and the money appropriated from sales of those commodities (M’). Custers insists that two other elements must be included: the non-commodity waste produced in the course of commodity production, and the social waste that results when commodities have “negative use-values” (this occurs when their use inflicts net harm on society). He takes the pollution generated in the course of producing nuclear energy as the main example of non-commodity waste, while nuclear weapons provide the paradigmatic illustration of social waste. Custers adds symbols for these two phenomena (-W and =W, respectively) to Marx’s M-C-P-C’-M formula. The discussion of the profound environmental costs of each and every stage in the production of nuclear energy warrants special mention due to its clarity and comprehensiveness. Representatives of the nuclear industry and their allies are becoming increasingly emboldened to propose nuclear energy as the solution to global warming. Many of us suspect this is an insane idea. But it is important to know precisely why this..

The main argument in favor of neoliberalism is simple enough: individuals will freely exchange whenever mutual gains result. It follows that restricting trade and investment across borders both infringes liberty and prevents people from enjoying benefits. At this point an appeal is made to historical evidence: previously poor regions have lifted more people out of poverty at a faster rate than ever before in human history by opening up to trade and investment. Neoliberal theorists and policy makers conclude..

economists. According to Rosenberg, Milton Friedman's positive methodology is being supplanted by Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP). At any rate, the Kuhnian wave of the seventies is being swallowed up by the Lakatosian program. (Redman 142) There have been a number of attempts to comprehend mainstream (bourgeois) economics as a Lakatosian research program, or as a set of competing research programs. (Latsis, ed. passim; de Marchi and Blaug, eds.)i In contrast, the extent to which the Marxian study of capitalism can be interpreted from this perspective has hardly been explored.ii In the following sections some provisional steps in this direction will be taken. I shall first introduce a reading of Marx's Capital that emphasizes the systematic dialectic of economic categories unifying that work. I shall then ask whether we can arrive at a better understanding of Marx's systematic dialectic through considering how it contributes to a scientific research 1 program in Lakatos's sense of the term. Two other themes will arise along the way. Certain shortcomings in Lakatos's framework will be discussed. Also, a number of reasons for considering the Marxian research program superior to that of neoclassical economics will be mentioned. It should be stressed that the main topic of the present paper is the role of systematic dialectics in the Marxian research program. The other themes go far beyond the scope of single paper. Lakatos's work can be understood as a response to the dead-end of naive falsificationism. According to this simplistic methodology, theories are to be tested by deducing predictions from them and then determining whether the events predicted occur. If the predicted events do take place at some later time, this does not verify the validity of the theory. That would be to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent; there may be many other theories that also lead to the prediction in question. In contrast, if the predicted events do not take place, that is sufficient to falsify the proposed theory..

No one would dispute that it is impossible to understand the intellectual and political history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries without taking Karl Marx (1818-83) into account. Most believe, however, that Marx‘s legacy was buried once and for all in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. This consensus is mistaken. It would be foolish to assert that Marx anticipated the correct answer to every significant question facing us today. But it would be no less foolish to deny that Marx‘s work presents a powerful challenge to contemporary political philosophy.

Before getting to the matters at hand I would like to repeat once again how much I agree in general with Rosenthal‟s account of the bizarre ontology of money, the ultimate form of value.1 My own view remains that this agreement is far more important, theoretically and politically, than any disagreements we may have over the interpretation of Hegel.2 I would also like to note that if I were to respond to each of Rosenthal‟s complaints in adequate detail, the present piece would be longer than his response, which was quite long itself in comparison to my original review essay. Far better to stick to what I take to be the central issues, beginning with Hegel‟s attitude towards the material world.

In a world where exploitation and uneven development condemn billions to suffering, the proper understanding of the intellectual relationship between Hegel and Marx appears a small matter indeed. Marx‟s Capital, however, remains the single most important text for comprehending the system that generates this suffering. The question of the proper reading of this work thus remains important. Sooner or later this brings us to the Hegel/Marx question. In a recent article in Science and Society John Rosenthal forcefully argues that there is one and only one place where Hegelian themes play a role in Capital (Rosenthal 1999). In Rosenthal‟s view, Marx‟s description of the relationship between money and ordinary commodities deliberately echoes the relationship between universals and finite things in Hegel‟s system of idealism. The fact that Marx found this aspect of Hegel‟s thought useful is not at all to Hegel‟s credit. According to Rosenthal, Hegel‟s thought perversely grants abstractions priority over flesh and blood human subjects in a way that exactly parallels the way money, a “real abstraction,” perversely dominates social agents in capitalism. Apart from this, Rosenthal insists, Marx abandons his earlier experiments with Hegelian motifs in Capital. In specific, nothing like Hegelian dialectics can be found, a “methodology” based on bad puns and spurious reasoning. In order to justify this thesis Rosenthal attacks on two main fronts. First, he hopes to convince the reader that Hegel‟s use of the key terms “universality,” 1 “particularity,” and “individuality” is irredeemably flawed. Rosenthal complains that Hegel‟s term “universality” is systematically ambiguous, sometimes referring to the relatively more inclusive, on other occasions to the all-inclusive. The sense of the term “particularity” shifts in Hegel‟s writings between what is relatively unique (“bare” particularity) and what is relatively more determinate (“specificity”)..

Like most terms in social theory, the term "conservative" is profoundly ambiguous and contested. In the United States today the word is often applied to those who call for an absolute minimum of government interference in capitalist markets. In another meaning it refers to those who insist that social life should center on the preservation of a community’s traditions and cultural values. There is a deep tension between these two viewpoints. Capitalist markets left to themselves radically destabilize established communities, and so preserving cultural traditions and values requires political intervention in economic life. Given this ineluctable tension it is probably best not to use the same term to refer to both positions. In the present paper I shall refer to the former perspective, whose intellectual roots are found in the "classical liberalism" of John Locke and others, as "neoliberalism." The latter perspective will be referred to as "neoconservatism.".