September 4, 1949
Dear J:
I shall write this letter along the lines that I had been thinking and working before I received your last letter - and hope that some of the points you raised will be dealt with within this framework. In particular, I am putting off for a day or two the intensive working on the H.T. of C.A.1 until I can get back my copy of Capital in German.
First, in general, some "extensive" remarks on the abstract and the concrete. I don't think that I have to belabor the point that for Hegel, the presumed "concrete" sense-data or products of imagination are nothing but pictorialized generalizations and abstractions or images of the abstract universals of understanding, e.g. flower. Lenin caught this clearly and with it made his break from the "explanations" of Plekhanov.2 See Notes, p. 17:3
"the procedure of knowledge reflecting on experiences which first perceives determinations in the phenomenon, next makes them the basis, and finally assumes for their so-called explanation corresponding fundamental materials or forces which are supposed to produce these determinations of the phenomenon" (L 193).4
(By the way, the emphases are all in the German edition of Hegel which Lenin used. In the Johnston and Struthers translation no attempt was made to follow Hegel's emphases).
Nevertheless Hegel always began with a universal, e.g. Being as such, Essence as such, the Notion as such, using Universal as the immediate identity of the concept with itself. What distinguishes those universals from the generalisations of abstract understanding is that each of them is a new category, a leap, a I, which is the result of a previous process of UPI and therefore in turn the beginning of another process of UPI.5 Here again Notes, p. 49, of Lenin:
"The forming (of abstract) of notions and the accompanying operations already include the presentation, the conviction, the consciousness of the law of the objective world connection. To single out causality from this is nonsense. To reject the objectivity of notions, the objectivity of the universal in the particular and in the individual is impossible. Consequently Hegel considerably more profoundly than Kant and others investigating the reflection of the movement of the objective world in the movement of notions. As the simple value form, the individual act of exchange of a given commodity with another already includes in undeveloped form all major contradictions of capitalism - so the simplest generalization, the first and simplest forming of notions (judgement, syllogisms, etc.) signifies the ever deeper knowledge of the objective world connections. Here it is necessary to seek the real sense, significance and role of Hegelian logic".6
These new categories arise at certain moments in history when men have the conviction that they are already in full possession of the truth. (I whisper in an aside that these are moments of revolution and that only revolutions can produce such universals). It is at these periods that an overwhelming experience - "the consciousness of the law of the objective world connections" - is transmuted into new categories of thought, or knots, crystallisations, coagulations, (See Nevada document).7
What makes thought not Understanding but Reason is that these categories are a result of a movement and themselves move. It is not that the Understanding thinks different categories from those which Reason thinks, but that Understanding makes determinations and maintains them (Logic, I, p. 35, 56).8 It is the process, the path, Der Weg, Die Bewegung, the transition, the Ubergehen9, as Lenin kept insisting, which make the categories not one-sided, not abstract identity, not abstract but concrete.
Another extensive word about Der Weg, the process. It is not a movement in general, not just a growing, or a developing in general (as if it were merely quantitative expansion from something already existing), (See Logic, I, p. 359, Notes, p. 22)10, but a movement through contradiction, through UPI. I want to emphasize this, not only because of Hegel's and Lenin's insistence, but because it has given me a lot of trouble. I wonder if you recall my writing you while in Paris that I felt Ch's11 insistence on the negation in the proletariat needed more clarification. It has taken me more than a year to be able to state baldly without any hesitation that if you don't see negation in the proletariat itself, then you can't see self-movement in the proletariat but must derive all its movement from external reflection. The self-movement of the proletariat to second negation, unity of opposites, negation of negation, is only possible because of the self-movement to first negation. To hold fast this contradiction in the proletariat and yet not to be dominated by it (the core of Hegel) - it was not until I formulated through my own groping the movement of UPI, or of first and second negation, that I could actually feel comfortable about this negation in the proletariat. You probably have grasped this before, but for myself I can say that for the first time, I can virtually feel the wheels in my head moving from first to second negation - and feel that I have substituted reason for faith (see Lenin, Notes, p. 9).12
With that as general beginning I want to try to describe the movement in the Realm of Essence13 and show how I think the revolt is integral to it.
The Logic in general, as we have seen, is divided into:
(the broad sweep of Marx in H.T. of C.A.)Being - UniversalEssence - Particular - first negationNotion - Individual - second negation
Essence is the internally self-contradictory14 movement of capitalism, the movement through constant determination and transcendence of determination. This movement in turn has its own concrete UPI.
Essence as such or Show - UDetermination of Reflection - PGround - I
Essence as such means that it is not in the immediate Being but through mediation, or in general by a process of distinguishing between essential and unessential that truth is reached. Essence in general is this process of mediation.
The determinations of reflection give the particular way in which this process develops, i.e. through Identity, Difference and Contradiction - where Contradiction is the I of the Identity as U, the difference as P. (You recall the way in which Marx distinguishes between Opposition and Contradiction in the first paragraph of the essay on Private Property and Communism.15 I shall have to do something on an analysis of the strict logical structure of these early essays).
But it is Ground which has been intriguing me, as Being-for-Self intrigued me in the Realm of Being. Ground, the negation of negation, is the affirmation that it is the self-or subject which is this process of mediation and transcendence of mediation (Logic, p. 71).16 The English translation can't convey the sense of leap that you get with the second paragraph on that page. (By the way, Vera in a French translation of the Smaller Logic in 185?17 translated Grund18 as Raison d'etre). To me that Ground, the process of self-identity in negativity, is nothing more or less than the revolt of the proletariat, the leap into universality at the beginning which is going to become true subjectivity and concrete universality with the Notion. It is there from the very beginning and it is only because of that self-movement through negativity that all further determinations in the Realm of Essence develop.
I don't want to say too much here about the fact that Ground is for the Realm of Essence what Being-for-Self was for the Realm of Being. But the analogy has to be made because it is through the analogy that we also see the difference between Ground and Being-for-Self. If Being-for-Self was abstract individuality, abstract subjectivity, Ground is subjectivity, individuality as self-mediating, self-negating identity. The particularity which emerges from Being-for-Self, i.e. One, quantity, etc. is not a process but a point, so to speak. The particularity which will emerge from Ground will be a process of self-mediation and contradiction, i.e. stages of revolt.
The Ground, however, which is negation of negation, or Individual, is at the same time an abstract universal. It must therefore determine itself as particular. What is of interest to us is the way in which this particularity develops.
[Text in the image:
Existence - Thing . Descartes- - - Matter . Hobbes
Appearance - Law . Hume and then Kant
Essential Relation -Whole and PartForce and Manifestation . Kant and FichteOuter and Inner . SchellingThe Absolute . "]
All of these categories which the abstract understanding, stuck in the realm of Being, would regard as substratum, are in reality the categories in which the philosophers sought to capture the essence of Ground or of revolt. Unless I am very much mistaken the movement of Capital, not to mention of political economy, can also be seen in this development of these categories - all hypostatization (as the philosophers say) of the revolt of the proletariat.
I haven't worked out this in detail. I have been spending the last couple of weeks going over a half-dozen times the movement in the Realm of Essence, to capture if I could, the movement itself. What I have in mind is the emphasis:
1) on Ground, as a movement not only through opposition but through contradiction (Hence not only first but second negation from outset). This sticks in my mind because concretely I know that the greatest illumination for me and for everybody I talked to in France19 was by stating simply that passage from State and Revolution20 which quotes Marx's letter to Weydemeyer in 1852).21
2) on the fact that the movement from Thing through Substance and finally to Subject (the Notion) are all stages of the self-determination through negativity of Ground. What we have to avoid, in other words, is thinking of Thing as if it were One (in the Realm of Being).
3) Hence these stages as constituting what Hegel calls a Becoming toward the Notion (LL, II, 157),22 i.e. a development (in philosophical terms, from presupposition of an underlying Thing or substratum) to an absolute self-mediation or substance (which substance is an absolute self-mediation but nevertheless not yet subject because 1) it remains a presupposition and 2) because it is actually a neutralization of opposition (as measure was a neutralization of multiplicity) and 3) because it is an Abgrund23 for individuality (L, 162).24
4) Hence it is not only the opposition in capitalist society which develops it but the self-transcending Ground as revolt.
Worthy of note here is the sharp change that takes place at Appearance, i.e. between Existence and Essential Relation.25 It is at this point that you had the first big crisis in developing capitalism which manifested itself philosophically in Hume and then in Kant. I believe it is here that the transition from Absolute to Relative Surplus Value becomes necessary. Certainly it is here that the finitude of capitalism explicitly emerges. From that point on you have the infinity of the progress to overcome this finitude which moves through Kant to Fichte until Schelling establishes the Absolute to try to overcome it.26
All this is very schematic. I hope to be able to fill it in more when I go into H.T. of C.A. and the concrete analysis of the Absolute Relation to Reciprocity. It has taken me a great deal of trouble to get the movement and I have therefore stated it in the terms which are closest to the philosophical surface.
One more thing about Abstract and Concrete because I don't quite understand the apparent difference between us on the Absolute Method. Marx's most telling blow at Hegel is that he re-instated the existing positivism, i.e. at the end of his work, he still finds it necessary to go outside, to Nature, and therefore to external reflection, for content and the objectification of the Absolute which had been reached by the dialectical development of thought. In doing so, Hegel falls into the same fatal error for which he had attacked understanding, i.e. the retention of the antithesis between Subject and Object, thereby revealing that the historian of philosophy even when he gets to a concrete universal has to go to external reflection for content.
Insofar, however, as we are stage by stage going to use the absolutely revolutionary movement of Hegel, i.e. the dialectic of negativity but showing this not as way or manner, but in the concrete revolutionary development, then when we reach Absolute Method, we will reach the permanent revolution, to the extent that the historian of the mass movement can do so and the historian of philosophy cannot. I don't think there is a real difficulty here, but that the question will be cleared up in the actual execution.
As ever,
G-
1 Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation, which is the title of Chapter 32 of Marx's Capital: Volume 1.
2 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.
3 Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel.
4 'L 193' is a reference to page 193 of the edition of Hegel's, Science of Logic, (Larger Logic), that Lenin took his notes from. The quote is a direct quote from the original Hegel.
5 UPI is an abbreviation of Universal-Particular-Individual. This triadic form is introduced by Hegel in the section of the Science of Logic on the Doctrine of the Notion.
6 This lengthy quote is from page 49 of Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel.
7 'The Nevada Document' (subsequently published as Notes on Dialectics), was written by CLR James in late 1948 (see Footnote 3.2 for more details).
8 The reference is to Part One of Hegel's Science of Logic.
9 'Der Weg' ('the way'), 'Die Bewegung' ('the movement'), 'Ubergehen' ('transition') are terms used by Hegel in the original German.
10 page 22 of Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel.
11 This word is unclear on the digital version of the manuscript in the Dunayevskaya archive. It could be Oh's or Ch's.
12 page 9 of Dunayevskaya's translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel.
13 'The Doctrine of Essence' is the title of Book Two of Volume One of Hegel's Science of Logic.
14 'self-contradictory' is the editor's best guess at the word Lee used. The first part of the word is difficult to decipher in the original.
15 'Private Property and Communism' is one of the sections of Marx's 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.
16 The reference is to Part One of Hegel's Science of Logic.
17 The last digit on the date is unclear in the digital version of the manuscript.
18 'Grund' is usually translated from German into English as 'ground'.
19 In 1948 Lee(-Boggs) travelled to Europe to as a representative of the state-capitalist position at the Second World Congress of the Fourth International. While at the Congress she met with Cornelius Castoriadis (Pierre Chatelieu) (1922-1997). Castoriadis established the Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism) group. The Johnson-Forest Tendency maintained fraternal links with Socialisme ou Barbarie. The latter, for example, created and distributed a French translation of the Johnson-Forest Tendency pamphlet The American Worker, co-written by Phil Singer, a factory worker, and Grace Lee (under their pen-names Paul Romano and Ria Stone).
20 Lenin, State and Revolution, (1917).
21 Joseph Weydemeyer (1818-1866), was an ally of Marx. He took part in the 1848 Revolution in Europe and emigrated to the United States in 1851. He worked as a journalist in the USA and fought against the Confederate Army in the Civil War. Extracts from the Letter that Lee is referring to are available on the MIA.
22 'LL II 157' is a reference to page 157 of the edition of Hegel's, Science of Logic, (Larger Logic), that Lenin took his notes from.
23 Abgrund (German) translates into English as Abyss.
24 'L 162' is a reference to page 162 of the edition of Hegel's, Science of Logic, (Larger Logic), that Lenin took his notes from.
25 'Essential Relation' is the editor's best guess at the term used by Lee.
26 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher and scientist. He was the pre-eminent German philosopher of his day, and is still more influential in mainstream philosophy and social science than Hegel. Kant tackled the key philosophical problems posed by the Scottish philosopher, David Hume. He developed a philosophy riddled with contradictions. Hegel built on Kant's work and argued that contradictions were not simply features of some philosophical dilemmas, but were a feature of all thought, and that thought developed through contradiction. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), was a German philosopher and supporter of the French Revolution. After the death of Kant, he was considered the pre-eminent philosopher in the German speaking world. He critiqued the dualism in Kant's thought, particularly the idea of thing-in-itself. His critique of Kant influenced Hegel's own thinking. Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) was a German idealist philosopher and poet. Hegel and Schelling were close friends.