PHILOSOPHICAL CORRESPONDENCE ON LENIN'S <i>NOTEBOOKS ON HEGEL</i>

I am extremely happy in being able to send you the conclusion of Lenin's Notes on the Logic.¹ If you wrote your Notes on the Dialectic² for me, then I translated Lenin for you. Surely you who have gone into a regular "conspiracy" with Lenin on the analysis of Hegel deserved seeing Lenin's notes in their entirety, and not merely in extracts. Being the only Russian, it was my duty to have done this long ago. The only reason (and it is the real ground, not a mere excuse) I have for not doing so is that I could not have without first having digested your Notes: so now we are "quits". Perhaps I'll even be conceited enough to say that when you come to rewriting your Notes I can be of service.³

Let me say at the start that, although you have entered into this "conspiracy" with Lenin, the oustanding difference between the two "versions" is striking. You will note that Lenin's notes on the Notion are as lengthy as those on the Introduction, Doctrines of Being and Essence combined. Yours were too - but in your notes on the Notion you included the actual application of it, both insofar as a balance sheet of Trotskyism is concerned as well as in outlining our own leap, but Lenin's Notes on the Notion are that bulky in and for themselves, with bare indications as to how to apply. The difference is not accidental. Lenin was looking for a new Universal. He found Hegel's Idea, and said: if I may steal an expression from Marx who stole it from some one else: hic Rhodus, hic salta.⁴ And even then Lenin couldn't fashion his new universal: revolution to a man: until there appeared the Soviets, 1917 version. The Idea had him pose the question correctly: the Russian masses supplied the practice; and then Lenin arrived and unified the two and called it: State and Revolution.⁵ We, on the other hand, although we are looking for our (this age's, that is) universal, have something to go by as Lenin had not. Hence, although you spent that much time on Notion, and included its practice, the thing you chose most to stop at and say: hic Rhodus, hic salta to was the Law of Contradiction in Essence.⁶ That too is not accidental since what we are confronted with is not a "betrayal" (like that of the Second Int.⁷) but the contradictions of Trotksyism which still passes for Leninism and in which we too have our roots and being, so much so that even when you come to the Notion (in your Synthetic Cognition) you return back to Essence, contradiction of form and content, cause and effect, etc. in order once and for all not only do away with, but overcome, transcend Trotskyism.⁸

Just as the LEAP characterized Lenin's comprehension of the Doctrine of Being, LAW as Essential Relation his grasp of the Doctrine of Essence, so PRACTICE characterizes his very profound analysis of The Doctrine of the Notion, and why he chooses to single out the section on the Idea as you had Observation 3.⁹

Lenin begins with the fact that "The dialectic road to cognition of truth is from living observation to abstract thinking and from this to practice" and never lets go of this for a single second.¹⁰ He insists that the laws of logical cognition reflect objectivity in the subjective consciousness of man, but he does not stop at reflection. No, he states categorically, "Man's cognition not only reflects the objective world, but creates it".¹¹ (My emphasis). But if you think for a moment that that means you can get off into the high clouds of the land beyond, he brings you right back to earth and practice, practice, practice:

And before that: he had traced the embryo of historical materialism in Hegel, quoting and emphasizing in caps the following from Hegel: "In his tools man possesses power over external nature even though according to his ends, he frequently is subjected to it".¹⁴ His whole emphasis on the End, and Subjective notion is that the aims of man are generated by the objective world but that he changes, subjectively desires change and acts; there he goes so far as to call the objective world non-actual and the desires of man actual, and the reason he hangs on so to the Idea is that "it not only has the dignity of a universal, but also the simply actual".¹⁵

Let me see whether I can do with The Idea, what I tried to do with the Law, listing it in detail, for Lenin has no less than 17 definitions - more correctly, manifoldednesses: (What a word I just made up!).

1) Notion and objectivity;

2) relations of subjectivity to objectivity;

3) impulse to transcend;

4) process and subordination of thought and object;

5) contains strongest contradiction in itself since notion reaches freedom and eternally creates, eternally overcomes;

6) is Truth (only as totality and relation does it realize itself;

7) is Reason (Subjective and Objective);

8) is objective activity;

9) develops through (a) Life, (b) process of knowledge, including practice, (c) reaches the Absolute Idea or complete truth;

10) logical notion, which - nature AND concreteness AND abstractness AND phenomena AND essence AND motion AND relation;

11) not only dignity of universal but also simple actual; the richest is the most concrete;

12) unity of cognition and practice;

13) 3 postulates summarize it; (a) good End (subjective End) vs. actuality ('external actuality'), (b) external means (weapon) (objective), (c) correspondence of subject and object, the verification of subjective ideas, which are;

14) criteria of objective of truth;

15) Absolute Idea as unity of theoretical and practical idea;

16) method of absolute cognition, after which is the

17) summation of the dialectic.¹⁶

For that Lenin gives 17 other aspects which constantly develop through relations, objectivity, contradiction, struggle, transition, unfolding of new sides which seem to be a return to old (negation of the negation), motion, practice.¹⁷ He sums up science which he considers, after Hegel, "a circle of circles"¹⁸ as the movement from "subjective Idea to objective truth through practice",¹⁹ with no end of emphasis on technique and the objective world and subjective aims; "Technique, mechanical and chemical, thus serve the aims of man, in that its character (essence) consists in its determination by external conditions (by the laws of nature)".²⁰ Finally concluding that the only verification of all these dialectical laws is the application to individual sciences and hence the emphasis on our restudying Marx's Capital, which none of the Marxists of the 20th century understood,²¹ and a remark against himself: "Marxists criticized the Kantians and Humists at the beginning of the 20th century more in the Feuerbachian (and Bucherian) than in a Hegelian manner".²² The emphasis on the plural (Marxists) is Lenin's; it follows the remark against Plekhanov;²³ and has an additional remark; "The question of the criticism of contemporary Kantianism, Machism, etc.".²⁴ In other words, the emphasis on the plural includes himself as he is the only one in addition to Plekhanov who had bothered much with Machism.

It is a masterly understatement to say that I am immensely impressed. A better way to express it is that I am dying to get down to apply all this to two things: (1) the American economy to which I hope to get to seriously this summer; (2) to Marx's Capital on which I hope Grace will collaborate; I have written on some of the aspects already and will tomorrow send off another letter on other aspects.²⁵

Because I have been very anxious to finish this (Novack's visit too a week out²⁶) I have not read either the notes on the Puritan Revolution or the one on the Negro question;²⁷ I hope I can keep both till next week and will let you have my reactions then.

Editor's footnotes

² 'Notes on the Dialectic', (sometimes referred to as 'The Nevada Document'), was written by CLR James in late 1948, while he was in Nevada to finalise his divorce from his first wife, Juanita, from whom he had been estranged since leaving Trinidad for England in 1932. Each chapter of the Notes consists of James's analysis of sections of Hegel's Science of Logic, alongside a discussion of the relevance of Hegel's insights to understanding the development of the Trotksyist movement and the current state of the revolutionary Left and the working class, particularly in the USA. It was written as an internal discussion document and circulated, chapter-by-chapter as each was written, amongst the JFT membership. After the break-up of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, the document circulated, in mimeographed form, amongst the various organisations that James played a leadership role in. It was eventually published, with a new introduction by James, as Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin (1980), by Allison and Busby in London and Lawrence Hill in the USA.

³ The reference to CLR James rewriting his Notes suggests that James had intended to do so (which he never did). Or it may be that Dunayevskaya was hoping that James would revisit his Notes. Her comments on the Notes show that she believed that they needed to be revised in light of her own comments on Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel.

⁴ "Hic Rhodus, hic salta" (Latin) is a quote from Aesop's Fables. It is used to express the idea that people should be known by their deeds, rather than by the claims they make for themselves. The quote, and allusions to it, appear in several places in Marx's writings.

⁶ The Law of Contradiction is a reference to a section of Hegel's Science of Logic.

⁹ 'Observation 3' appears to be a reference to The Law of Contradiction section of Hegel's Science of Logic.

¹⁰ The quote appears to be a misquote from Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1537. In her letter to James, she says: "The dialectic road to cognition of truth is from living observation to abstract thinking and from this to practice". In her translation she has written:

'cf. Theses on Feuerbach' is a reference to Marx's Theses on Feuerbach (1845). MIA has an English translation of Marx's original, as well as the version edited by Engels in 1888. Lenin was familiar with the version edited by Engels, as Marx's original was not publicly available at the time when Lenin was making his notes on Hegel.

¹⁵ In the letter Dunayevskaya has written "it not only has the dignity of a universal, but also the simply actual", but in her translation she has written "it has not only the dignity of the universal, but also immediate actuality". Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel, page #1559.

¹⁶ These seventeen points are not itemised by Lenin. Dunayevskaya has discerned them from Lenin's notes, but they do not appear in the exact wording she uses in the letter, and not in the order that she presents them.

¹⁷ Lenin's seventeen part "Elements of the dialectic" are on pages #1563-4 of Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel.

²³ Georgi Velentinovich Plekhanov (1856-1918), was one of the founders of the first Marxist organisation in Russia (the Emancipation of Labour Group, founded 1883). He was a major intellectual influence on Lenin. In the section of Lenin's notes on Hegel's Science of Logic, that Dunayevskaya is referring to, Lenin said that:

²⁵ The editor has not been able to identify this letter in the Raya Dunayevskaya archive. It is possibly a reference to the sixth letter in this series, the letter of May 18, 1949 on Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

²⁶ This appears to be a reference to George Novack (pseudonyms: G. N. Edward; John Marshall; Manuel; William F. Warde). Novack was a leading figure in the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP).

²⁷ In early 1949 CLR James wrote a lengthy analysis of what is variously referred to as 'The English Civil War', 'The English Revolution' and the 'Puritan Revolution'. This analysis was published in the Socialist Workers' Party (USA) journal Fourth International, in two instalments, in the May and September issues. The reference to notes on the 'Negro question' could be to drafts of one, or both, of two articles that CLR James had published in Fourth International, in 1949. In the June and December issues.

Johnson-Forest Tendency

Philosophic Correspondence on Lenin's Notebooks on Hegel, 1949-51

3. March 12, 1949. Dunayevskaya to James on Lenin's Notebooks on Logic. (Doctrine of Notion)

Editor's footnotes