A full lecture is being devoted to a single chapter, the last in the Logic, because the working out of this is the task of our age and not only the task of the book, Philosophy and Revolution. This separates us from others, all others, including even Lenin. It is true, of course, that we could not begin to carry out this task had Lenin not left us all those stepping stones. It is true that we must first internalize what Lenin had done with the chapter before we can make any steps on our own. But it is equally true that no one can work out the problems of another generation. That task has remained for us.
Speaking strictly philosophically, the working out of this chapter in 1953 is what led, on the one hand, to the split in the State-Capitalist tendency, and; on the other hand, to the extension of that analysis into Marxist Humanism. In a word, even though we ourselves were not conscious of it at the time (as can be seen from the fact that the Letters on the Absolute Idea of May 12 and May 20, 1953 were addressed to a co-leader in the State-Capitalist tendency) it is, in fact, this grappling with the Absolute Idea which led to our singling out the Humanism of Marxism as the emblem of ourselves as a theoretically independent tendency, and as the unique expression of the age. Therefore, it will be important for you to consider those letters as part of these notes. If you still find it too difficult to follow that paragraph by paragraph interpretation of the Absolute Idea (as well as the chapter on Absolute Knowledge from the Phenomenology of Mind) then study only those paragraphs which are the subject of Lenin's notes.
Hegel begins the chapter with this sentence:
The Absolute Idea has now turned out to be the identity of Theoretical and the Practical Idea; each of these by itself is one-sided and contains the Idea itself only as a sought Beyond and an unattained goal; each consequently is a synthesis of the tendency, and both contains and does not contain the Idea, and passes from one concept to the other, but failing to combine the two concepts, does not pass beyond their contradictions. (Hegel II, p. 466)
And in the next paragraph, Hegel has a statement which we singled out last as the underlying thought which should guide your study of self-determinations "The self-determination therefore in which alone the Idea is, is to hear itself speak." Despite all that Lenin, in 1916, that is to say, the year after completing Hegel's Science of Logic, had written on self-determination of nations, it was not this sentence that he singled out in 1915. What he was concerned with was the dialectic as the whole which first, now, after nearly a thousand pages, was once again summarized by Hegel. As he was to express it at the end:
It is noteworthy that the whole chapter on the "Absolute Idea" scarcely says a word about God (hardly ever has a "divine" "notion" slipped out accidentally) and apart from that -- this NB -- it contains almost nothing that is specifically idealism, but has for its main object the dialectical method. The sum total, the last word and essence of Hegel's logic is the dialectical method -- this is extremely noteworthy. And one thing more: in this most idealistic of Hegel's works there is the least idealism and the most materialism. "Contradictory," but a fact! (Lenin, p. 234)
It is this dialectic method, which at this point Hegel calls the Absolute Method, which preoccupies Lenin throughout the chapter, and which allows him to summarize it for himself in 16 points, that stresses the totality as well as objectivity, unity as well as struggle of opposites, co-existence and causality as well as transition from one to its opposite until the whole self-movement appears to be but a return to the old, but is, in fact, the negation of the negation. Studying the whole 16 points very carefully (Lenin, pp. 221-222 or in Marxism and Freedom, pp. 349-350), he is then ready to summarize all of the 16 points into a single one: "In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics but it requires explanations and development."
It is necessary, once again, to return to those categories: Universal, Particular, Individual, keeping in mind also the definition Hegel gives of Individuality in his final work, the Philosophy of Mind1 "individuality ... purified of all that interfere ... with freedom itself." In the Science of Logic he wrote:
In the absolute method, however, the universal does not mean the merely abstract but the objectively universal, that is, that which is in itself the concrete totality, but not as posited or for itself. Even the abstract universal considered as such in the Notion (that is, according to its truth) is not only the simple: as abstract it is already posited as affected with a negation. For this reason there is neither in actuality nor in thought anything so simple and abstract as is commonly imagined. Such a simple entity is a mere illusion which is based on ignorance of what in fact is given, (Hegel II, p. 471)
Once again Lenin keeps stressing to himself that there is here a "clear, important sketch of the dialectic", singling out the following Hegelian principle:
To hold fast the positive in its negative, and the content of the presupposition in the result, is the most important part of rational cognition; also only the simplest reflection is needed to furnish conviction of the absolute truth and necessity, of this requirement, while with regard to the examples of proofs, the whole of Logic consists of these. (Hegel II, p. 475)
Upon which Lenin comments:
Not empty negation, not futile negation, not sceptical negation, vacillation and doubt is characteristic and essential in dialectics, -- which undoubtedly contains the element of negation and indeed as its most important element -- no, but negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive, i.e., without any vacillations, without any eclecticism." (Lenin, p. 226)
The next two pages in Hegel, Lenin copies pretty nearly in full, stressing constantly that it is: "the kernel of dialectics, the criterion of truth (the unity of the concept and reality)". What he is referring to especially is Hegel's description of the second negativity as the turning point of the whole movement, and yet the self-movement and the objectivity predominates in Lenin so that when he comes to the sentence in Hegel that we have reached the transition of the Logic to Nature, Lenin notes "it brings one within a hands grasp of materialism ... this is not the last sentence of the Logic but what comes after it to the end of the page is unimportant." (Lenin, p. 234) We will be retracing our steps to the second negativity just as soon as I show what it is that I wrote in my letter on the Absolute Idea under Lenin's above quoted remarks:
But, my dear Vladimir Ilyitch, it is not true; the end of that page is important; we of 1953, we who have lived 3 decades after you and tried to absorb all you have left us, we can tell you that. Listen to the very next sentence: "But this determination is not a perfected becoming or a transition.." Remember how transition was everything to you in the days of Monopoly, the eve of socialism. Well, Hegel has passed beyond transition. He says this last determination, "the pure Idea, in which the determinateness or reality of the Notion is itself raised to the level of Notion" is an absolute liberation, having no further immediate determination which is not equally posited and equally Notion. Consequently there is no transition in this freedom ... The transition here therefore must rather be taken to mean that the Idea freely releases itself in absolute self-security and self-repose. (p.7, Letter dated 5/12/53)
Now then, let us return to the second negative as Hegel expresses it:
The negativity which has just been considered is the turning point of the movement of the Notion. It is the simple point of negative self-relation, the innermost source of all activity, of living and spiritual self-movement, the dialectic soul which all truth has in it and through which it alone is truth; for the transcendence of the opposition between the Notion and Reality, and that unity which is the truth, rest upon this subjectivity alone.The second negative, the negative of the negative which we have reached, is this transcendence of the contradiction, but is no more the activity of an external reflection than the contradiction is: it is the innermost and most objective moment of Life and Spirit, by virtue of which a subject is personal and free. (Hegel II, pp 477-478)
Where Lenin stressed the objectivism, we added emphasis on "personal and free". Where Lenin had next emphasized the materialism, we stressed that "the transcendence of the opposition between Notion and Reality ... rest upon this subjectivity alone." And where Lenin stopped a paragraph short of the end of the Logic, we proceeded to show that Hegel's anticipation of Volumes II and III of the Encyclopedia was similar to Marx's anticipation in "The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation" in Volume I of Capital, of the movement of the law of motion of capitalism in Volumes II and III. We concluded that what Hegel is showing in the movement from the Logic to Nature to Mind was this: The movement is from the logical principle or theory to nature or practice and from practice not alone to theory but to the new society which is its essence. (Letter, dated 5/20/53, p,4)
It is this discovery that there is a movement from practice to theory as well as from theory to practice upon which the whole of Marxism and Freedom is built. No wonder that, though Marxism and Freedom was only an idea in my head in 1953, I had written: I am shaking all over, for we have come to where we part from Lenin. I mentioned before that, although in the approach to the Absolute Idea, Lenin had mentioned that man's cognition not only reflects the objective world, but creates it, nevertheless within the chapter he never developed it. Objective world connections, materialism, dialectical materialism, it is true, is what predominates, not the object and subject as one fully developed.
And it in why I had also written, in that letter: Now stand up and shout, Personal end Free, Personal and Free, Personal and Free, as Lenin had shouted, Leap, Leap, Leap, when he first saw dialectical development as the development of both the objective and subjective world. It is true that Lenin, too, had written: "This NB: The richest is the most concrete and most subjective" alongside Hegel's statement: "The richest consequently is also the most concrete and subjective, and that which carries itself back into the simplest depth is also the most powerful and comprehensive."
But the subjectivity, the self-activity of the proletariat first became concrete and predominant when Lenin prepared himself for the November revolution as the February had broken out. It was never to leave him again, There was not a single important writing of his that did not breathe the spirit of freedom; population to a man, worker as subject, masses as subject:, from then until the day of his death. Since this meant not only "in general", as against capitalism, but concretely even against his co-leaders, it is of the utmost importance that this lecture be concluded with: (1) the sections on the Trade Union debate (pp 194-210), which includes also Lenin's Will; (2) the debate against Bukharin, that is to say the pamphlet, State-Capitalism and Marxist Humanism, or Philosophy and Revolution. Finally, (3) you should now be able to get along swimmingly with the chapter "Hegel's Absolutes as New Beginnings" in Why Hegel, Why Now?
In fact, why not practice all you have learned and more by writing Philosophy and Revolution?
RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA
December 14, 1967
1 The Philosophy Mind is Volume III of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences of which Volume I was published as Hegel's Logic: Volume II, the Philosophy of Nature has never been translated into English; and Volume III, or the Philosophy of Mind, is published separately.