Rethinking dialectic in the 21st century: interpretation, method and scientific inquiry

Abstract

This paper offers a rethinking of the concept of ‘dialectic’ in Marxist theory. It is often argued that in the work of Marx and Engels, ‘dialectic’ is a concept not explicitly defined. The lack of clarity has given rise to various interpretations that can be broadly distinguished into two currents: one current deals with dialectic in every part of reality and the other is concerned with dialectic as a method in Marx’s Capital. We explain that the main differences between the two currents are traced to Marx’s and Engels’ different understandings of dialectic. Accordingly, we attempt to clarify what constitutes dialectic as a method of scientific inquiry. Thus, the paper argues that dialectic as a method of scientific inquiry exists exclusively as systematic dialectic. From this point of view, its applicability is limited and linked to the specificity and stage of development of the given subject matter. Upon this theoretical argument, issues such as the dialectics of nature, the logic of Capital, ontologism and so forth, are discussed.

Keywords:

• Marx's Method
• Hegel
• Systematic Dialectics
• Logic of Capital
• Science of Logic
• Speculative Method

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Notes

1 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976 [1867]), p. 102.

2 Κarl Marx and Frederick Engels, ‘Letters. January 1856–December 1859’ in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Collected Works, Vol. 40 (New York: International Publishers, 1983), p. 249.

3 Vladimir Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, Collected Works, Vol. 38 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 180, 317.

4 See Brady Bowman, Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity (New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 2.

5 Georg Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline. Part 1, Science of Logic, translated by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1817]), p. 128.

6 Georg Hegel, The Science of Logic, translated by George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1813–1832]), p. 832.

7 Georg Hegel, Lectures on Logic. Berlin, 1831 (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 73.

8 See Stephen Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006), pp. 42–53.

9 Hegel, Lectures on Logic, op. cit., p. 73.

10 Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, op. cit., pp. 72, 295.

11 Ibid., p. 58.

12 Κarl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism, Against Bruno Bauer and Company, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 4 (New York: International Publishers, 1975 [1844]), p. 137.

13 Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 6 (New York: International Publishers, 1976 [1847]), pp. 163–164.

14 Martin G. Kalin, ‘Marx Against Metaphysics’, Metaphilosophy, 10:3/4 (1979), pp. 306–314.

15 Kalin aptly stresses that Marx’s complaint against Hegel in particular, and philosophy in general, is that no scientific knowledge can exist insofar as it remains tied to the ambition to uncover the very principles of reality (Kalin, op. cit., pp. 308–309). In this sense, Marx sees concrete science as the sublation of philosophy and metaphysics. Kalin, op. cit., pp. 308–309. See also Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, op. cit., p. 161.

16 For Hegel, speculative philosophy is the genuine metaphysics. Hegel, The Science of Logic, op. cit., pp. 9, 42.

17 K. Kangal, ‘Engels’ Intentions in Dialectics of Nature’, Science & Society, 83:2 (2019), pp. 215–243.

18 Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 25 (New York: International Publishers, 1987 [1878]), p. 131.

19 Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, in Marx and Engels Collected Works. Vol. 25 (New York: International Publishers, 1987 [1925]), p. 356. As we already noted, Engels ascribes to metaphysics a very particular meaning, in particular that of the metaphysics of the understanding.

20 Engels, Anti-Dühring, op. cit., p. 22.

21 Kangal, op. cit., pp. 225–227.

22 Engels, Anti-Dühring, op. cit., p. 21.

23 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, op. cit., p. 341.

24 Engels, Anti-Dühring, op. cit., p. 22.

25 Ibid., p. 21.

26 Ibid., p. 21.

27 Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, translated by M. Nicolaus (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973 [1857–1858]), p. 100.

28 Ibid., pp. 100–101.

29 Cf. Evald Ilyenkov, The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital (New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2008), pp. 135–149.

30 Periklis Pavlidis, ‘Critical Thinking as Dialectics: A Hegelian–Marxist Approach’, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 8:2 (2010), pp. 74–102.

31 Hegel, The Science of Logic, op. cit., p. 701.

32 See G. Reuten, ‘An Outline of the Systematic-Dialectical Method: Scientific and Political Significance’ in Fred Moseley and Tony Smith (eds) Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Logic. A Reexamination (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 246–268.

33 Hegel, The Science of Logic, op. cit., pp. 706–707.

34 Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique, op. cit., pp. 100–101.

35 Ilyenkov, The Dialectics of the Abstract, op. cit., M. Meaney, Capital as Organic Unity (Dordrecht; London: Springer Science & Business Media, 2002), S. Tombazos, Time in Marx. The Categories of Time in Marx’s Capital (Leiden/Boston, MA: Brill, 2014), Viktor Vazjulin, Die Logik Des ‘Kapitals’ von Karl Marx (Norderstedt: Books on Demand GmbH, 2006).

36 Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique, op. cit., pp. 100–101. Meaney stresses that “most classical political economists used the synthetic method in their exposition of the system of capitalist production” Meaney, op. cit., p. 171. See also G. Reuten and M. Williams, Value-Form and the State the Tendencies of Accumulation and the Determination of Economic Policy in Capitalist Society (London/New York: Routledge, 1989), 19n p. 17.

37 Hiroshi Ushida, Marx’s Grundrisse and Hegel’s Logic (London; New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 19.

38 Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique, op. cit., p. 101.

39 Meaney notes that ‘the “scientifically correct method” is for Marx an a priori synthesis and not a general deduction … ’. M. Meaney, ‘Capital Breeds: Interest-Bearing Capital as Purely Abstract Form’ in Fred. Moseley and Tony Smith (eds) Marx's Capital and Hegel's Logic. A Reexamination (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), p. 45. Although we share the content of Meaney’s argument, we suggest that, in Grudrisse, the ‘scientifically correct method’ refers in a contradictory way to both synthetic and dialectical cognition.

40 For Marx’s plan in Grundrisse see also M. Musto, ‘History, Production and Method in the 1857 “Introduction”’ in Marcello Musto (ed) Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later (London; New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 3–32.

41 A. Deborin, ‘Hegel and Dialectical Materialism’ 1929, https://www.marxists.org/archive/deborin/1929/hegel-arx.htmorg/Deborin.pdf.

42 Ibid.

43 V. Oittinen, ‘Ontologism in Soviet Philosophy: Some Remarks’, Studies in East European Thought, 73 (2021), pp. 205–217. Oittinen quotes Mareev who claims that conceptions of dialectic such as Diamat are ontological and more or less similar to the metaphysics of Wolff. Oittinen notes that the problem ‘is not so much ontology itself, which is a legitimate branch of philosophical inquiry, but “ontologism”, which I already defined as the view that ontology has priority over gnoseology’ (Oittinen, op. cit., p. 207. In my view, ontology has no place in a modern dialectical epistemology. The very concept is charged with metaphysical content and is associated with the inquiry of the first and universal principles that pertain to all existence. To my view, ontology is not a ‘legitimate branch’ even when mediated by gnoseology. Previously, I stressed that Marx rejects the possibility of knowing the general principles of all things. In this regard, true knowledge is always concrete, namely knowledge of concrete spatio-temporal objects. One could argue that this also constitutes an ontology. However, in contemporary theory ‘science’ is the appropriate term for the study of the laws of concrete spatio-temporal objects. On this matter see also G. Ninos, ‘The significance of the relation of the logical and the historical in Ilyenkov's approach to dialectics’, Stud East Eur Thought (2023), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-023-09601-6

44 For a detail discussion of the Soviet philosophical debate see David Bakhurst, Consciousness and Revolution in the Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

45 R. Bellofiore, M. Campbell, R. Fineschi, P. Murray, B. Ollman, are also central figures in the debate on systematic dialectics.

46 A. Levant and V. Oittinen, ‘Foreword’ in Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen (eds) Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. vii–xii.

47 Another important Soviet thinkers included in the discussion concerning the logic of Capital are L. Mankovsky, S. Mareev, Z. Orudzhev, M. Rozental and V. Tipukhin. M. Dafermos, ‘Rethinking the Relationship Between Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Science of Logic: The Tradition of Creative Soviet Marxism’, Capital & Class, 46:1 (2022), pp. 77–93.

48 Christopher J. Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 64–68.

49 Vazjulin, op. cit.;·Jindrich Zelený, The Logic of Marx (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1980);·Thomas Sekine, The Dialectic of Capital (2 Vols.). A Study of the Inner Logic of Capitalism (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020).

50 Vazjulin, op. cit.

51 Sekine, op. cit., p. 120.

52 Ιbid., p. 24.

53 Christopher J. Arthur, ‘Against the Logical-Historical Method: Dialectical Derivation versus Linear Logic’ in Fred Moseley and Martha Campbell (eds) New Investigations of Marx’s Method (New York: Humanity Books, 1997), pp. 9–37; Tony Smith, The Logic of Marx’s Capital: Replies to Hegelian Criticisms (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).

54 Christopher J. Arthur, ‘Hegel’s Logic and Marx’s Capital’ in Fred Moseley (ed), Marx’s Method in Capital. A Reexamination (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), p. 86. On the same subject, Reuten and Murray claim that systematic dialectics should be clearly distinguished from the historical dialectic. G. Reuten, ‘The Difficult Labor of a Theory of Social Value: Metaphors and Systematic Dialectics at the Beginning of Marx’s Capital’ in Fred Moseley (ed), Marx’s Method in Capital. A Reexamination (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), pp. 89–113;·P. Murray, ‘Things Fall Apart: Historical and Systematic Dialectics and the Critique of Political Economy’ in Robert Albritton and John Simoulidis (eds), New Dialectics and Political Economy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 150–172.

55 Bertell Ollman, Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), p. 187.

56 Evald Ilyenkov, Intelligent Materialism: Essays on Hegel and Dialectics, edited and translated by Pavlov Evgeni (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018), p. 41.

57 Vazjulin, op. cit., p. 48;·Smith, The Logic of Marx’s Capital, op. cit., pp. 57–59.

58 Martha Campbell, ‘The Commodity as “Characteristic Form”’ in Ron Blackwell, Jaspal Chatha, and Edward J. Nell (eds) Economics as Worldly Philosophy: Essays in Political and Historical Economics in Honour of Robert L. Heilbroner (Houndmills; Basingstoke; Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), p. 297. Also Ushida, op. cit., p. 25.

59 Cf. Reuten, ‘The Difficult Labor of a Theory of Social Value’, op. cit., pp. 90–95.

60 Sekine, op. cit., p. 22.

61 J. Banaji, ‘From the Commodity to Capital: Hegel’s Dialectic in Marx’s Capital’ in Diane Diane Elson (ed) Value: The Representation of Labour in Capitalism (London; New York: Verso, 2015), pp. 28–61;·Campbell, op. cit., pp. 282–296; Meaney, op. cit. 2002, pp. 15–20.

62 Vazjulin, op. cit., pp. 188–189; Sekine, op. cit., pp. 185–190.

63 G. Ninos, ‘A Methodological Interpretation of the Circuits of Capital’, Capital & Class (2023), https://doi.org/10.1177/03098168221145853.

64 Vazjulin, op. cit., p. 34.

65 Hegel’s Science of Logic is divided into two main parts, the objective and subjective logic. The οbjective logic contains the doctrine of Being and the doctrine of Essence while the subjective logic contains the doctrine of the Concept.

66 Vazjulin, op. cit.; cf. Sekine, op. cit.

67 In spite of the differences between Vazjulin’s and Sekine’s analysis of Capital, their approaches are very close concerning the correspondence of Capital’s basic structure to the structure of Hegel’s Science of Logic. An important difference is that Vazjulin considers that Capital’s three volumes correspond to the objective logic of the Science of Logic, while Sekine considers that the subjective logic or doctrine of the concept corresponds to the chapters of the third volume dealing with profit, rent and interests. In my approach, I align more with Vazjulin’s analysis of the logical structure of Capital. However, I should admit that the question of the correspondence between the structure of Capital and the Hegelian categories is a very controversial subject matter. Furthermore, I contend that any attempt to compare the categories one by one between Marx's Capital and Hegel's Science of Logic is inherently limited and reductionist. In my view, the categorical comparison between the two works serves a preliminary function, aiming to underscore the share elements of the dialectical method. Nevertheless, the absolutization of this comparison neglects the inherent intertwining of method with the content. Consequently, the comparative caterorical juxtaposition between the two works gains significance only for revealing their methodological affinities, but ultimately, this conception of correspondence shoud be overcome. See also P. Murray, ‘The Secret of Capital’s Self-Valorisation “Laid Bare”: How Hegel Helped Marx to Overturn Ricardo’s Theory of Profit’ in Fred Moseley and Tony Smith (eds) Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Logic. A Reexamination (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 189–213;·Reuten, ‘An Outline of the Systematic-Dialectical Method’, op. cit.; T. Smith, ‘Hegel, Marx and the Comprehension of Capitalism’ in Fred Moseley and Tony Smith (eds) Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Logic. A Reexamination (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 17–40.

68 Meaney aptly notes that ‘although the synthetic method attains to the ‘self-related determinateness’ of a concrete whole, this form of cognition is still an external one for both Hegel and Marx’. Meaney, op. cit. 2002, p. 175.

69 Hegel, The Science of Logic, op. cit. p. 707.

70 Meany, op. cit., 2014, p. 46.

71 Ilyenkov, The Dialectics of the Abstract, op. cit., p. 194.

72 See Hegel, The Science of Logic, op. cit., p. 746.

73 Vazjulin, op. cit., pp. 236–237.

74 Meaney, op. cit., 2014, p. 48.

75 Ilyenkov, The Dialectics of the Abstract, op. cit., p. 175.

76 Ibid., pp. 194–201.

77 Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique, op. cit., p. 101.

78 Tombazos, op. cit., p. 161.

79 Meaney, op. cit., 2014, pp. 10, 44;·Vazjulin, op. cit., p. 29.

80 Zelený, op. cit., p. 113.

81 Vazjulin, op. cit., p. 74.

82 Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital, op. cit., p. 70. In other words, the form of presentation appears as if the object’s parts produce one another. That’s why Marx distinguishes the method of presentation from that of inquiry. Marx, Capital, op. cit., p. 102. On this subject see also Reuten’s important analysis on the distinction between pre-systemetic research and systematic dialectics. Reuten, ‘An Outline of the Systematic-Dialectical Method’, op. cit., pp. 246–253.

83 Reuten, ‘An Outline of the Systematic-Dialectical Method’, op. cit., p. 245.

84 Tony Smith, ‘Marx's Capital and Hegelian Dialectical Logic’, in Fred Moseley (ed), Marx's Method in Capital. A Reexamination. (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993), p. 27.

85 Cf. Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value. Volume IV of Capital. Part 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1963 [1861–1863]), pp. 43–45.

86 Vazjulin, op. cit.

87 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 3 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991 [1894]), p. 275.

88 Meaney, op. cit., 2014, pp. 43–49.

89 Sekine aptly notes that Marx’s method in Capital cannot be reduced to the three fundamental laws of dialectic, “instead it forms a self-contained logical system’. Sekine, op. cit., p. 10.

90 Frederick Engels, Letters, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 49 (New York: International Publishers, 2001), p. 287.

91 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, op. cit., p. 357.

92 From this perspective, the endless debate on Dialectics of Nature can be revisited. The discussion of dialectic in nature presupposes the following question: What kind of dialectic? The abstract dialectical element or the method of systematic dialectic?

93 See Arthur, ‘Hegel’s Logic and Marx’s Capital’, op. cit.; Ilyenkov, Intelligent Materialism, op. cit.; Sekine, The Dialectic of Capital, op. cit.; Smith 1993; Vazjulin, op. cit.; Zelený, op. cit.

94 This is why Arthur explains that the systematic dialectic examines the conceptual articulation of the object’s inner aspects. Arthur, The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital, op. cit., p. 75. See also Smith 1993.

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Giannis Ninos

Giannis Ninos is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ioannina and a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His interests include dialectics, epistemology, contemporary social theory, political economy, sociology, digital studies and philosophy and history of science. He recently published the article ‘A methodological interpretation of the circuits of capital’ in Capital & Class. Email: [email protected]