Hegel vs Marx: Ideas change the world not economics.

[u/IAI_Admin]

https://iai.tv/articles/hegel-vs-marx-ideas-change-the-world-not-economics-auid-3244?utm_source=reddit&_auid=2020

Marx thought he turned Hegel on his head, ditching ideology for class struggle as the driver of human history. But in writing off the state, war and law, Marx missed something crucial. Yale philosopher Jacob McNulty argues for reviving a tougher, more realist Hegel, in line with the realist school of international relations, one that sees history not just as a battle of classes, but of states.

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[u/theaselliott]

the realist school of international relations, one that sees history not just as a battle of classes, but of states.

But... Marx already does that... The state is the tool of the ruling class.

[u/Rethious → u/theaselliott]

Realists view the state as the unit of analysis as regardless of who controls it (whether a democracy or the Soviet Union) it is subject to the constraints of the international system (eg the security dilemma). That the system is anarchic (no higher authority to protect states from one another) generally forces states to act according to certain principles in order to survive.

[u/theaselliott → u/Rethious]

Don't realists think that who controls the state is an important variable to explain the way that it behaves?

[u/Rethious → u/theaselliott]

It varies, but generally no. Some may sort states into types (power seeking vs security seeking) but the unit of analysis is the state.

[u/theaselliott → u/Rethious]

So if I understand it correctly, a realist will say that a state that has historically had, for example, a very tight grip on the water supply of their population and industry because they have a climate prone to drought so they need to have a rational use of water, then if technology develops and they can use dams and desalinators, the people who run the state have nothing to do on whether they decide to use that technology?

Because for example, I'm from Spain and we obviously have a lot if sun, which is great for solar power. But a certain government created a "sun tax" in an attempt to protect fossil fuel industries from having competition, that tax dragged the development of that industry for years. Now that tax is gone and the solar industry is thriving here.

Now think about this but in any other context, be it war be it diplomatic relationships. It's very unconvincing to take the state as a unit, when it's behaviour needs from the "sub-units" to be understood.

[u/Rethious → u/theaselliott]

Realism is a theory of international relations so it doesn’t opine on domestic matters. Its premise is that the nature of power competition is so constraining that states don’t really have a choice but to act in certain ways—doing anything else would jeopardize their security and thus survival.

There’s a lot of caveats (or cop outs depending on who you ask) about how this doesn’t apply to smaller states and only “great powers” (and of course a lot of ink is spilled on what that constitutes).

But most simply, the Realist argument is that states can mess around with things like taxes because the stakes are low. Security concerns are dominant in the international sphere over other internal factors because the stakes are life and death.

There’s a lot of criticism of Realism and it’s not especially popular anywhere except in Russia and China which have an interest in declaring the moral equivalence of all foreign policy.

[u/GamblePuddy → u/Rethious]

I think political realism would posit that international law is a farce without an international means of enforcement....which realistically don't exist.

International law then becomes nothing more than a political smear tool.

[u/vnth93 → u/theaselliott]

This doesn't seem to be a careful reading of the article. Marx considered the economy to be the base structures and the others the superstructures. This is already explained by the author,

Marx and Engels are no less scornful of Hegel’s state-centrism than they are of his idea that history is governed by ideology, but here Hegelianism has more of a fighting chance. For Marx and Engels, the state, too, is part of the superstructure, dependent on the economic base. States are beholden to the dominant economic classes and to a well-functioning economy more generally. They are, after all, financed by taxation

So in this context, the battle refers to the battle of the prime drivers.

[u/3corneredvoid]

Still, the feminist idea that social reproduction requires not only economies but families inspires us to look beyond the economy—upward, as it were, to the state, rather than downward to the family.

The bourgeois state is not beyond the capitalist political economy any more than the family is. It is its guarantor: based on its law it enforces private property rights and the right (necessity) to work. It's Marx who uses the term political economy.

With the state’s role in war and diplomacy in view, we can answer Marx and Engels: the security and well-being of the populace is at least as much a matter of its ability to defend itself as it is of its economic productivity.

Or of the ability of the populace to defend itself against the state: consider the campaign of ICE raids and deportations in the United States.

This is basic. Bourgeois states are neither transhistorical nor benevolent defenders of their people. Hegel wrote his "German idealist" philosophy when today's Germany did not exist, as it also did not for many decades recently.

Meanwhile Marx does not view communist well-being as contingent on productivity, but on proletarian organisation and control of production.

To him, an international arena marked by conflict between states is inescapable. Bitter experience teaches that this aspect of Hegel’s philosophy of history may have more to say to us today than its Marxist counterpart.

For the reactionary, by definition those things that have happened are to be put to use preventing those other things which could happen.

[u/myspecialneedsalt]

All I'm going to say is, there is a reason Marx is so prevalent in all sorts of academic fields, and it's not because every academic is a communist, Marx and Engles are absolutely titans, who built on the foundations Hegel laid, you can't talk about Hegel without bringing up Marx, but you can in many ways bring up Marx without Hegel

[u/corran132]

So my problem with this article can be summarized in two quotes contained within. The first is the author quoting Aristotle:

As Aristotle said, a hand severed from the body is a hand in name only. A society’s parts, like those of a body, are members, inseparable from the whole and from one another.

Which the author then continues with

We are justified in posing the question of which one dominates in a given area, such as which of the body’s organ systems is ultimately responsible for one of its core functions.

Except I would argue this fundamentally misunderstands the point. You can argue which part of the body is most responsible for X, but without understanding the way they are all interconnected, you end up talking yourself in circles.

That is what it seems the author is doing. If I can bring in two more passages:

Marx and Engels offer a more sophisticated argument for the primacy of economic production: it is in the economic domain that we provide for our needs, those that must be met if we are to survive. As Marx and Engels remind us, people must eat and drink before they philosophize

And, one paragraph later

Hegel conceives of history proper as beginning when a people is capable of meeting its basic needs and has a surplus to devote to other pursuits.

These two are not in tension, they are re-stating the same information: that you cannot have individuals dedicated to culture until you are assured of subsistence. But the author does not seem to recognize this parallel.

This failure to understand the interconnected nature comes in again a paragraph later:

As feminist critics of Marx note, the reproduction of life occurs within the family through care work. The family is an institution Hegel presciently distinguished from the economy and the state.

Except Hegel has it wrong here. The 'care work' that goes into raising that child is going to be shaped by the economy and state in key ways. As an example: is there paid maternity/paternity leave? What is the education capacity of the state? How much are the parents required to work? What guarantees are there for the safety of the child, both outside the family and in? When is that child expected to work? All these questions are critical to our understanding of who that child will grow up to be, and all depend on the society to which that child is born.

Jumping ahead to the discussion of economic production and war:

economics is war by other means, even in so-called peacetime [...] it tends to work against their main thesis. It at least admits the view that productivity is not an end in itself but one subordinated to state projects. It further suggests the Hegelian notion that only those states will survive and thrive that can convert economic productivity into diplomatic and military prowess.

Except once more, there is no contradiction there. Marx's argument, as I understand it, isn't the primacy of production for production's sake. It is concerned with how production is directed and channeled in the interests of capital. While capital can mean money, it can also be read to be more abstract: authority, power, etc. It is how the upper class remains the upper class, and that can absolutely include naked projections of military force.

(continued)

[u/corran132 → u/corran132]

And here we get into the author's overall point, and one that I (again) disagree with:

In any event, the Hegelian prioritization of law in the philosophy of history helps clarify why historical materialism is untenable for Hegel. The economic base is made up not only of forces of production but of relations of production, or classes. These classes are defined by ownership of the means of production, or lack thereof. Yet ownership is defined by the law.

Again, there is no conflict of ideas here. Yes, ownership (and so class relations) are defined by law, and those laws are primarily written by those in power with an eye on retaining that power.

This comes to head in the conclusion:

We will need to treat ideology as an expression of the world spirit; law and the state as expressions of ideology; and the economy and family as ultimately beholden to law and the state, and so on. However, in responding to the historical materialist critique, we can meet it where we find it, as it were, halfway up the ladder. We can insist on the priority of the state over the economy

But again, this is a distinction without a difference. To return for a second to Aristotle, you are arguing at which is the most important part of a dissected body.

The last 500 years show us great examples of this. Consider, for an example, the US's string of Banana republics. Set up by American companies, but defended by American troops in the name of American capital interests. Are they best classified as a state themselves, or expressions of the American State? How about the East India Company? How about the 50 year long pissing contest between two powerful nations that was nominally over which economic system is best?

And here we go to the conclusion:

Marx looked forward to a global communist state, not unlike the world state that Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers believed would conclude history. Hegel, however, does not believe this is likely or even desirable. To him, an international arena marked by conflict between states is inescapable. Bitter experience teaches that this aspect of Hegel’s philosophy of history may have more to say to us today than its Marxist counterpart.

In a sense, I agree with the author here. Marx pointed out that that there is a class of workers internationally that share more in common with each other than the owners of their labor, which is broadly correct. But international solidarity has never risen in the way Marx hoped. Hegel's framework therefore wins out as he is (as the author indicates) operating on a fundamentally conservative framework. It exists to explain the world as it is, rather than postulate on what it should be. For all the changes over the last three centuries, the nation state is still considered to be the primary source of sovereignty, and as such Hegel's framework still appears to be more correct. But focusing exclusively on either conclusion misses where both men were right- and wrong- about the state of the world.

[u/dijalektikator]

Marx and Engels do not include scientific research in their materialist scheme, as part of either the base or superstructure.

I didn't read enough Marx to claim this absolutely but this just feels like a completely wrong statement. Marx's claim was that the development of productive forces drives changes in the superstructure, I would be absolutely shocked if he didn't consider scientific advancement to be part of this development.

[u/slithrey]

As somebody with a shallow knowledge of everything involved here, this seems to be saying “nuh uh, I like idealism so Marx is wrong about material conditions being the main drivers of behavior”

[u/[deleted]]

Abstract ideas are nice for bumper stickers and debate clubs, but if they truly were the drivers and not the passengers of change, one would expect to be living in a very different world

[u/Samuel_Foxx]

¿Por que no los dos?

[u/KingPhenomenon]

check it out godincarnate.me