the platypus review issue 61 (november 2013)

8/13/2019 The Platypus Review issue 61 (November 2013)

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Staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Laurie Rojas

MANAGING EDITOR

Nathan L. Smith

EDITORS

Spencer A. Leonard

Josh Rome

Sunit Singh

James Vaughn

COPY EDITORS

Jacob Cayia

Lucy Parker

Emmanuel Tellez

PROOF EDITOR

Edward Remus

DESIGNER

Brian Hioe

WEB EDITOR

Ninad Pandit

THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

REVOLUTIONWITHOUT MARX?ROUSSEAU AND HISFOLLOWERS FOR THE LEFT

Chris Cutrone

Spencer A. Leonard

Sunit Singh

Issue #61 / November 2013

www.platypus1917.org

Issue #61 | November 2013

Platypus Review

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Statement of purpose

Taking stock of the universe of positions and goals that

constitutes leftist politics today, we are left with the

disquieting suspicion that a deep commonality underlies

the apparent variety: What exists today is built upon the

desiccated remains of what was once possible.

In order to make sense of the present, we find it

necessary to disentangle the vast accumulation of posi-

tions on the Left and to evaluate their saliency for the

possible reconstitution of emancipatory politics in the

present. Doing this implies a reconsideration of what is

meant by the Left.

Our task begins from what we see as the general

disenchantment with the present state of progressive

politics. We feel that this disenchantment cannot be cast

off by sheer will, by simply carrying on the fight, but

must be addressed and itself made an object of critique.

Thus we begin with what immediately confronts us.

ThePlatypus Reviewis motivated by its sense that the

Left is disoriented. We seek to be a forum among a va-

riety of tendencies and approaches on the Leftnot out

of a concern with inclusion for its own sake, but rather

to provoke disagreement and to open shared goals as

sites of contestation. In this way, the recriminations and

accusations arising from political disputes of the past

may be harnessed to the project of clarifying the object

of leftist critique.

ThePlatypus Reviewhopes to create and sustain a

space for interrogating and clarifying positions and orien-

tations currently represented on the Left, a space in which

questions may be raised and discussions pursued that

would not otherwise take place. As long as submissionsexhibit a genuine commitment to this project, all kinds of

content will be considered for publication.

1 Issue#61/November2013

Rousseau,Kant,Hegel

ChrisCutrone

Rousseaucontinuesonpage2

OnJune9,2013,thePlatypusAffiliatedSocietyorganized

apaneldiscussiononRevolutionwithoutMarx?Rousseau

andhisfollowersfortheLeftatthe2013LeftForumin

PaceUniversity,NewYork.Whatfollowsareeditedver-

sionsoftheirpreparedremarks.Afullrecordingofthe

eventisavailableonline:

Introduction

BOURGEOISSOCIETYCAMEINTOFULLRECOGNITION

WITHROUSSEAU,whointheDiscourseontheOriginof

InequalityandOntheSocialContract,openeditsradical

critique.Hegelwrote:Theprincipleoffreedomdawned

ontheworldinRousseau.MarxquotedRousseau

favorablythatWhoeverdaresundertaketoestablish

apeoplesinstitutionsmustfeelhimselfcapableof

changing,asitwere,humannaturetotakefromman

hisownpowers,andgivehiminexchangealienpow-

erswhichhecannotemploywithoutthehelpofothermen.Rousseauposedthequestionofsociety,which

AdornowroteisaconceptoftheThirdEstate.Marx

recognizedthecrisisofbourgeoissocietyintheIndus-

trialRevolutionandworkerscallforsocialism.But

proletariansocialismisnolongertherisingforceitwas

inMarxstime.Sowhatremainsofthinkingtheunreal-

izedradicalismofbourgeoissocietywithoutMarx?Kant

statedthatifthepotentialofbourgeoissocietywasnot

fullyachievedasthemid-pointoffreedomthenRous-

seaumayhavebeenrighttoprefersavageryagainst

civilizationsglitteringmisery.Nietzschewarnedthat

wemightcontinuetobelivingattheexpenseofthefu-

ture:Perhapsmorecomfortably,lessdangerously,but

atthesametimeinameanerstyle,morebasely.1How

havethinkersoftherevolutionaryepochafterRous-

seau,AdamSmith,Kant,Hegel,BenjaminConstant,

andNietzschehimself,contributedtothepossibilityof

emancipationinaworldafterMarxism?

MarxandRousseau

MarxsfavoritequotationofRousseau,fromOntheSo-

cialContract,goesasfollows:

Whoeverdaresundertaketoestablishapeoplesinstitu-

tionsmustfeelhimselfcapableofchanging,asitwere,

humannature,oftransformingeachindividual,whoby

himselfisacompleteandsolitarywhole,intoapartof

alargerwhole,fromwhich,inasense,theindividual

receiveshislifeandhisbeing,ofsubstitutingalimited

andmentalexistenceforthephysicalandindependent

existence.Hehastotakefrommanhisownpowers,and

givehiminexchangealienpowerswhichhecannotemploy

withoutthehelpofothermen.2

Marxwrotethatthiswaswellformulated,butonlyas

theabstractnotionofpoliticalman,concludingthat,

Humanemancipationwillonlybecompletewhenthereal,

individualmanhasabsorbedintohimselftheabstract

citizen;whenasanindividualman,inhiseverydaylife,in

hiswork,andinhisrelationships,hehasbecomeaspecies-

being;andwhenhehasrecognizedandorganizedhisown

powersassocialpowerssothathenolongerseparatesthis

socialpowerfromhimselfaspoliticalpower.3

WhatdidMarxmeanbysocialpowersasopposedto

thepoliticalpowerfromwhichithasbeenseparated?

AkeypassagefromMarxsGrundrissearticulateswell

thenewmodernconceptoffreedomfoundinRousseau:

Theancientconception,inwhichmanalwaysappears(in

howevernarrowlynational,religious,orpoliticaladefini-

tion)astheaimofproduction,seemsverymuchmore

exaltedthanthemodernworld,inwhichproductionisthe

aimofmanandwealththeaimofproduction.Infact,how-

ever,whenthenarrowbourgeoisformhasbeenpeeled

away,whatiswealth,ifnottheuniversalityofneeds,ca-

pacities,enjoyments,productivepowersetc.,ofindividu-

als,producedinuniversalexchange?What,ifnotthefull

developmentofhumancontrolovertheforcesofnature

thoseofhisownnatureaswellasthoseofso-calledna-

ture?What,ifnottheabsoluteelaborationofhiscreative

dispositions,withoutanypreconditionsotherthanante-

cedenthistoricalevolutionwhichmakethetotalityofthis

evolutioni.e.,theevolutionofallhumanpowersassuch,

unmeasuredbyanypreviouslyestablishedyardstickan

endinitself?Whatisthis,ifnotasituationwhereman

doesnotreproduceinanydeterminedform,butproduces

histotality?Wherehedoesnotseektoremainsomething

formedbythepast,butisintheabsolutemovementof

becoming?Inbourgeoispoliticaleconomyandinthe

epochofproductiontowhichitcorrespondsthiscom-

pleteelaborationofwhatlieswithinman,appearsasthe

totalalienation,andthedestructionofallfixed,one-sided

purposesasthesacrificeoftheendinitselftoawhollyex-

ternalcompulsion.Henceinonewaythechildlikeworldof

theancientsappearstobesuperior;andthisisso,insofar

asweseekforclosedshape,formandestablishedlimita-

tion.Theancientsprovideanarrowsatisfaction,whereas

themodernworldleavesusunsatisfied,or,whereitap-

pearstobesatisfied,withitself,isvulgarandmean.4

AstheintellectualhistorianandcriticofMichelFou-

caultshistoricism,JamesMiller,putitinintroduction

toRousseau,

Theprincipleoffreedomanditscorollary,perfectibility,

...suggestthatthepossibilitiesforbeinghumanareboth

multipleand,literally,endless...Contemporarieslike

Kantwellunderstoodthenoveltyandradicalimplications

ofRousseausnewprincipleoffreedom[and]appreci-

atedhisunusualstressonhistoryasthesitewherethe

truenatureofourspeciesissimultaneouslyrealizedand

perverted,revealedanddistorted.Anewwayofthinking

aboutthehumanconditionhadappeared.5

Anothercontemporaryintellectualhistorian,Louis

Menand,writinginintroductiontotherepublicationof

EdmundWilsonshistoryofsocialism,TotheFinland

Station,describedthisnewwayofthinkinginMarxand

Engelsasfollows:

Inpremodernsocieties,theendsoflifearegivenatthe

beginningoflife:peopledothingsintheirgenerationso

thatthesamethingswillcontinuetobedoneinthenext

generation.Meaningisimmanentinalltheordinarycus-

tomsandpracticesofexistence,sincetheseareinherited

fromthepast,andarethereforeworthreproducing.The

ideaistomaketheworldgonotforward,onlyaround.

Inmodernsocieties,theendsoflifearenotgivenatthe

beginningoflife;theyarethoughttobecreatedordiscov-

ered.Thereproductionofthecustomsandpracticesofthe

groupisnolongerthechiefpurposeofexistence;theidea

isnottorepeat,buttochange,tomovetheworldforward.

Meaningisnolongerimmanentinthepracticesofordinary

life,sincethosepracticesareunderstoodbyeveryonetobe

contingentandtime-bound.Thisiswhydeath,inmodern

societies,isthegreattaboo,anabsurdity,theworstthing

onecanimagine.Foratthecloseoflifepeoplecannotlook

backandknowthattheyhaveaccomplishedthetaskset

forthematbirth.Thisknowledgealwaysliesupahead,

somewhereoverhistoryshorizon.Modernsocietiesdont

knowwhatwillcountasvaluableintheconductoflifein

thelongrun,becausetheyhavenowayofknowingwhat

conductthelongrunwillfinditselfinapositiontore-

spect.Theonlycertainknowledgedeathcomeswithisthe

knowledgethatthevaluesofonesowntime,thevalues

onehastriedtoliveby,areexpunge-able...Marxism

gaveameaningtomodernity.Itsaidthat,wittinglyornot,

theindividualperformsaroleinadramathathasashape

andagoal,atrajectory,andthatmodernitywillturnout

tobejustoneactinthatdrama.Historicalchangeisnot

arbitrary.Itisgeneratedbyclassconflict;itisfaithfultoan

innerlogic;itpointstowardanend,whichistheestablish-

mentoftheclasslesssociety.Marxismwasfoundedonan

appealforsocialjustice,butthereweremanyformsthat

suchanappealmighthavetaken.Itsdeeperattraction

wasthediscoveryofmeaning,ameaninginwhichhuman

beingsmightparticipate,inhistoryitself.When[Edmund]

Wilsonexplained,inhisintroductiontothe1972edition

ofTotheFinlandStation,thathisbookhadbeenwritten

undertheassumptionthatanimportantstepinprogress

hasbeenmade,thatafundamentalbreakthroughhad

occurred,thisisthefaithhewasreferringto...Marxand

EngelswerethephilosophesofasecondEnlightenment.6

PeterPreuss,writinginintroductiontoNietzschesOntheAdvantageandDisadvantageofHistoryforLife,

pointedoutthat,

Man,unlikeanimal,isself-conscious.Heisawarethat

heisaliveandthathemustdie.Andbecauseheisself-

consciousheisnotonlyawareofliving,butoflivingwell

orbadly.Lifeisnotwhollysomethingthathappensto

man;itisalsosomethingheengagesinaccordingto

valueshefollows.Humanexistenceisatask...The19th

centuryhaddiscoveredhistoryandallsubsequentinquiry

andeducationborethestampofthisdiscovery.Thiswas

notsimplythediscoveryofasetoffactsaboutthepastbut

thediscoveryofthehistoricityofman:man,unlikeanimal,

isahistoricalbeing.Manisnotwhollytheproductofan

alienact,eithernaturalordivine,butinpartproduceshis

ownbeing.Thetaskofexistingisataskpreciselybecause

itisnotacaseofactingaccordingtoapermanentnature

oressencebutratherofproducingthatnaturewithinthe

limitationsofasituation.Historyistherecordofthisself-

production;itistheactivityofahistoricalbeingrecovering

thepastintothepresentwhichanticipatesthefuture.7

Liftingthetaskofhumanfreedominmodernsocietyout

ofitscurrenthistoricalobscuritytodayisdifficultpre-

ciselybecausewehaverevertedtoregardingourselves

asproductsofanalienact,andsoproceedaccord-

ingtoamodelofsocialjusticeowingtotheAncients

closed...formandestablishedlimitationthatloses

Marxismsspecificconsciousnessofsocietyinhistory.

Butsuchconsciousnessofhistorywasnotatalloriginal

toMarxismbutratherhadrootsintheantecedentdevel-

opmentoftheself-consciousthoughtofemergentbour-

geoissocietyinthe18thcentury,beginningwithRous-

seauandelaboratedbyhisfollowersKantandHegel.

Theradicalismofbourgeoisthoughtconsciousofitself

wasanessentialassumptionofMarxism,whichsought

tocarryforwardthehistoricalprojectoffreedom.

If,asMenandputit,MarxandEngelswerephilos-

ophesofaSecondEnlightenmentinthe19thcentury,

thenwhatofthe18thcenturyEnlightenmentofwhich

Rousseauwasperhapsthemostnotoriousphilosophe?

Whatremainsofthis18thcenturylegacyforthestruggle

toemancipatesocietytoday?


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Nietzches untimeliness

Sunit Singh

3 The Platypus Review 4Issue #61 / November 2013

Eros and Civilization:the title expressed an optimistic,euphemistic,even positive thought,namely, that the

achievementsof advanced industrial societywould en-

able man to reverse the direction of progress, to break

the fatal union of productivityand destruction, liberty

and repressionin other wordsto learn [Nietzsches]

gayscience.

Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civlization

In [ancient]philosophy the dutiesof human life were

treated assubservient to the happinessand perfection

of human life.But when moral,aswell asnatural phi-

losophy,came to be taughtonly assubservient to theol-

ogy,the duties of human life were treated of aschiefly

subservientto the happinessof alife to come.. .. [But

even]in [what came to be called]the modern philosophy

[perfecting virtue]was frequentlyrepresented asgener-

ally,orratherasalmostalwaysinconsistentwith any

degree of happinessin thislife; and heaven wasto be

earned onlyby penance and mortification, byausterities

and abasementof amonk; notby the liberal generous,

and spirited conductof man.

Adam Smith, The Wealthof Nations

NIETZSCHE BELIEVED thatgaining even amodicum of

reason and freedom had to be ahard won, blood-

soaked,and world-historical affair,but wasneverthe-

lessinclined to be as uncharitable in the extreme to-

ward Jean-JacquesRousseau,the seducer behind the

idealistand rabble in the French Revolution, astoward

the socialistswho claimed to be the inheritorsof the

Jacobin tradition.He identifiedOf theSocialContractameditation on the conditionsof possibilityfor the radical

self-determination of modern civilizationasputting

forward the firstimage of modern man to inspire mor-

talsto atransfiguration of theirown circumstances.

However,modern man turned outto be acreature af-

flicted with afevered historical self-consciousnessthat

periodicallyflared up in revolutions,like Typhon under

Etna.1It wasasymptom of thiscurioussickness,Ni-

etzsche held,that had led the philosophizing son of a

watchmaker to characterize man asa creature full of

pityor empathyand ascapable of perfectibility,while

positing an unwarranted faith in nature asan idyll of

freedom.Nietzsche saw modern civilization asa chi-

mera,c haracterized bywhatKant had referred to as

glittering miseryand bythe creation of invidiousinter-

dependencies.Nietzsche therefore reached ac onclu-

sion opposite thatof the Citizen of Geneva.For Ni-

etzsche, plunging furtherinto the civilization thatthe

latterabhorred ispreciselythatwhich speaksinfa-vorof civilization.2Formoderns, who were provingthemselvesunable to squarelytake on the task of En-

lightenment,itwasas reasonableto considera return

to nature asit wasfor them to revive Greek tragedy; we

modernshad no chance of evergoing back to the state

of naturethe state of nature wasitself amyth that the

dialecticof Enlightenmenthad necessitated.

Despite identifying re proving themselvesunable to

squarelytake on the task of Enlightenment,it never

offered aclear resolution to the the physiological self-

contradictionthatdefinescapitalism.One can admitas

much withouteither attempting to shape Nietzsche on a

Marxistlathethe accusation once leveled atAdorno

orgiving in to the ideathat Nietzsche wasan elitist,

anti-democratic, and anti-liberal conservative.3The

effortsto letworkersbe themselveshad failed,Ni-

etzsche wrote inTwilightof the Idols,as aresultof themostirresponsible negligence.Nietzsche wasappor-

tioning faultfor thisnegligence directlyon the social-

ists,who were confounded asto why, in spite of the fact

that workershad made enormousstrides toward socio-

political equalitysince the industrial revolution,and

justifiablywanted more and felt their existence to be

desperate ... an injustice,theirdemandsforasocial

democracy could notbe metby the vote and contrac-

tual rights.Europe had to answerthe workers, while the

workerstried to articulate theirown demands and to

answer,Whatdo theywill?4Butt he socialiststhose

superficial,envious, and three-quarterac torsinfected

with nihilismhad turned freedom into an ethicand

so crab-walked backward into awill to negate life.5

Further,the irvalues were little more than refashioned

Christian idealsrather than peculiarlymodern aspira-

tions; theircert itude that asocialist revolution wasin-

evitable wasmotivated bythe same animalisticinstincts

that had led Christiansto see the LastJudgmentas the

sweetco nsolation of revenge.6Such vituperationsalso

masked the actual task of emancipation and leftthe

socialistswith the muddle-headed belief that,[as] time

marchesforward Everything that isin italso marches

forwardthatthe developmentisone thatmovesfor-

ward.Although even the mostlevel-headed are led

astrayby thisillusion, Nietzsche claimed,t he nine-

teenth centurydoesnot representprogressperthe six-teenth .. .Mankinddoesnotadvance,it doesnoteven

exist.. .. Man representsno progressoverthe animal:

the civilized tenderfoot isan abortion.7Despite the

touted progressof the nineteenth overthe eighteenth

century,t he socialistshad overlooked orwere unable to

recoverwhat earlierrevolutionaries, inspired bythe

notion of the infallible sovereigntyof the General Will,

had understoodthatrather than dance in our

chainswe had to break them. 8

Thecase of anti-Nietzsche

The aristocraticantipathy in which Nietzsche held the

Left ispresumably one reason behind the leftistanti-

Nietzschestance.Otherschafe at the factthat Ni-

etzsche wasa staunch individualist who clubbed the

Marxistsocial-democrat stogether with the anarchists

aswell as with the Christian socialists; Nietzsche was

satisfied to saythat anarchism held the same ideal [as

socialism],but in amore brutal fashion,while the dog-

matic social-democratwho hypostatized classrelations

wasin asmuch bad faith asthe Protestant ministerwho

reconciled men to theirwretched fate.9Malcolm Bull is

the latestleftist to argue foran anti-Nietzsche stance

butwith the critical difference thatBullscriticism of

Nietzsche isrooted in aconservatism thatobfuscates

the established tradition of leftcriticism of Nietzsche,

which datesback to the revisionistdebate.Bull com-

paresNietzsche to Durkheim,as both were diagnosti-

cianswho theorized thatthe incompletenessof our

transition to modernityhad manifested itself pathologi-

callyin whatNietzsche referred to asdecadence or

nihilism,and in whatDurkheim called anomie.How-

ever,Bull argues,whereas Durkheim articulated aner-vousoptimism aboutabout the totalization of society

based on the cohesivenessof organicsolidaritythe

ideathat societyis an increasinglycomplex machine

that addsup to more than the sum of itsdifferent com-

ponentsNietzsche wanted to effect aret urn to me-

chanical solidarity,a hierarchical,caste-based society

with ashared collective conscience molded byBrah-

manical overmen.10Durkheim,in otherwords,wasa

theoristof difference.Nietzsche,on the otherhand,was

amisogynisticromanticnot much differentfrom the

predatorybird in Onthe Genealogy of Moralsthatwag-

es an all-outwaragainstthe defenselessout of sheer

hatred.But thismissesthefactthat Nietzschewas

pointingoutthattherewaslittleevidencesocietywas

progressivelyheadedtoward organicsolidarity, behind

thebackofthe actorsinvolved,throughthedialecticthat

Kanthad termedunsocial sociability.Instead, Ni-

etzschehadsensedonewantstosay,presciently

thatmodern societyhad turnedself-destructive. Bull

attributestoNietzschethe nihilismthatNietzschehad

identifiedinmodernsociety,andin thiscomescloserto

Heidegger,whocriticizedNietzschefor givingupon phe-

nomenologyby insteadproffering metaphysicalanswers

toconfrontnihilism(themeaninglessoflife),11thanto

someonelike Lukcs.Bull isultimately ambivalent

abouttheideathatthetransvaluationofvaluesre-

quiresa self-transfigurationand self-sublationof

spirit.Yetit ispreciselythismotifinNietzschethatreso-

nateswiththeLeftsself-conceptionofitshistoricalrole.

The antecedentsof leftcriticism of Nietzsche date

back to the 1890s,when anarchist-inclined advocatesof

the ideasof Max Stirner publishing in the revisionist

organSozialistische Monatscheftetried to appropriateNietzsche to their cause.On the orthodoxside, Franz

Mehring mounted the criticism that,after 1848,co nser-

vativeshad turned awayfrom Hegel only to find their

inspiration in Schopenhauer.N ietzschesbreak with

Schopenhauer,Mehring contended, had onlyresulted in

Nietzsche placing alaurel wreath on the class of exploi-tation and financial interestsinstead of on aclassof

aristocrats.12 Nietzsche,in otherwords, failed to appre-

ciate the revolutionarycharacter of the working class

and wasaccordinglyseen asputting forward aphiloso-

phyof capitalism thatwas elitist.Nonetheless, Mehring

wasalso clearthat,the Nietzsche cultis still more

useful to socialism in anotherrespect. Forthose still

growing up within the upperclasses,Mehring re-

marked,Niet zsche isonlya transitional stage on the

wayto socialism.13 WhatMehring suggestsisthatthe

critique of culture one findsin Nietzsche strikesnotes

that Marx himself wasfond of playing before Engels

introduced him to the categoriesof political economy;

Nietzsche echoesMarx the Young Hegelian.A different

strain of the orthodoxcriticism of Nietzsche isoffered

bythe late Lukcsin the chapterfromThe DestructionofReason(1952)on Nietzsche asthe foundational irratio-nalistof the imperialistera. Nietzsche had,Lukc s

claimed,at leastforawhile,consider[ed]socialism to

be an allyof liberalism and democracy,their consum-

mation carried to radical extremes,butt hen came to

treatt he emancipation of workersas apurely ideologi-

cal issue.[when in]fact the question had objective eco-

nomicfoundations. 14Aftert he failure of the revolutions

of 1918-19a nd the experience of the Second World War,

Lukcs,in the last, also succumbed to the temptation to

see Nietzsche asexpressing certain methodological

affinitieswith Romantic anti-capitalism.Lukcs nei-

thermade an effort to grasp the depth of the historical

divide thatseparated Nietzsche from Marx norto re-

hearse the argumentshe had made so ablydecades

beforepreciselythat, through their criticismsof the

socialistsof their age,Niet zsche and Marx were grap-

pling with whatLukcs himself had referred to inHis-tory and Class Consciousnessasthe antinomieso f bour-geoisthought.The late Lukcsalso slidesoverthe

pressing query: Whatis Marxism if notan ideologyif

nota necessaryform of appearancethatdemands

furtherdevelopment through critique?

NietzscheaftertheLeft

Ata seminaron Nietzsche held in the summerof 1942

in LosAngeles, the conversation between the trans-

planted membersof the FrankfurtS chool had shifted to

trying to appraise whether,in postulating the self-

transformation of animalisticman into superman,

Nietzsche had cleftto the notion of utopia,the sermon

on the mountas well asthe classlesssociety.15Gn-

therAnderswasskeptical of the claim.Nietzsche,An-

dersheld, had articulated an affirmative worldview that

centered on the ideaofamorfati,the acceptance of fate.Horkheimercountered thatwhatwasapparentlyaffir-

mative in Nietzsche wasin fact an effectof the ideologi-

cal charactero f attempting to overcome capitalism,

which asa system of domination wascapable of

satisfy[ing]mostof ourmaterial needsaswell as

allay[ing]the causesof our fear.Whatbindsusto Ni-

etzsche, Adorno then remarked,is that Nietzsche

standsin relationship to Bebel [co-founderof the SPD]

onlyin the sense that [Nietzsche]uses [Bebel]to specify

thingsthat in realityare ideology.He wassuccessful in

perceiv[ing]thatnot onlydemocracy,butalso social-

ism hasbecome an ideology.And in certain critical

respects,Nietzsche had progressed furtherthan Marx,

in thatNietzsche had identified certain aspectsof the

dialecticof capital that were notto be found in the cri-

tique of political economy.Herbert Marcuse interjected,

If Marx isright, then Nietzsche iswrong. Andersre-

lented slightly: One can use Marx to interpretNi-

etzsche,butnot vice versa. Nietzsche isnot arevolu-

tionarywho wanted to transform the world. ButAdorno

rode the steed hard:

Nietzsche realized thatthe ideaof socialism is tied to a

conceptof praxisthatis notmerely areflection of society.

Marx could onlysaythatit isnaturallya reflection of soci-

ety.On the otherhand, itseems thatalready in Nietzsches

daythe whole nexusof conceptslike praxis,organization,

and so forth,showed aside whose implicationsare be-

coming onlyapparenttoday. Nietzsche withdrew from the

demandsof the dayfor the sake of advancing anumberof

the categoriesin question.He understood that,in and of

itself,the conceptof praxisis inadequate to differentiate

between abarbarian and anon-barbarian world.. .. All-

inclusive,all-defining praxishasa tendencyto continue to

reproduce the form of domination overand above domi-

nation assuch... .Nietzschesaversion to all questions

having to do with mansmaterial existence certainlyhas

itsnegative side,but italso showsthathe understood that

there issomething bad aboutthe conceptof total praxis. .

.. Thusthe seriousnessof culture.Otherwise one runsthe

risk of transforming socialism into apragmatism magni-

fied to planetarydimensions.16

Nietzsche,on thisview,wasa criticof aculture that

remainsindividualistic and acritic of the socialism of

the Marxist Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands

(SPD)as an affirmative ideologyasa symptomaticbut

necessaryform of appearance.Adorno wasalso point-

ing outthat Marx had optimisticallyhoped thatt he so-

cialists,through acombination of theoryand praxisim-

manentt o capital,might achieve ahistorical conscious-

nessadequate to the task of getting beyond capital.

Nietzsche, on the otherhand, had troublinglyin the

sense of whatis unfashionableor untimelyraised

the specterthat the weightof incomplete and thusfailed

revolutionshad vitiated life, led man into unstable

equilibrium between animal and angel,and forced

the recognition that we are unknown to ourselves.

Adorno thusimplies thatNiet zsche,but also Rousseau

forthat matter, will remain valid until the desiderata

that Marx had identified are fulfilledatask made ex-

ponentiallymore difficultsince the Left lostits will-to-

power.Nietzsche, in placing the whole question of the

relationship between communism and anarchism in its

second phase,Adorno concluded, had shifted the onus

of trying to realize the valuesof liberal emancipation, by

deepening the analysisand critique of capitalism,back

onto the socialists.

NihilismandHistory

Nietzschecharacterized thesustained crisisof culture,

civilization,andlifewhatwe mightsummarizeas

capitalismthroughitssymptoms: nihilism(mean-

inglessness),historicalspirit (historicism),and eternal

return(endlessrepetition).Readfromadistantstar,

themajusculescriptofourearthlyexistence,Nietzsche

hypothesized,might leadan extra-planetaryastronomer

totheconclusionthatlifeonearthwasmarkedbya dis-

tinctiveasceticism,a nookofdisgruntled,arrogantandoffensivecreatures filledwith adisgust foreverything

andgleaning asadistic satisfactionin theirself-inflicted

wounds.17 Formanismoresick,uncertain,changeable,

indeterminatethananyotheranimal,thereisnodoubt

ofthat. .. [H]owdidthiscomeabout?18 Althoughman

hadbravedmoreandchallengedfatemorethanall

theotheranimals,as anexperimenterwithhimself,

discountedand insatiable,man wasgrapplingwith

animals,nature,andgodsforultimatedominion.The

futureitselfhaditsownrestlessenergiesthatnever

leftmantohimselfpeacefully,butinsteadthisfuture

digslikeaspurintothefleshof everypresent.19 Ni-

etzsche,inattemptingtothinkthroughthehistorical

inversions,the self-destructiveness,andself-transfor-

mationofthemannerinwhichmankindhadovercome

naturewondersoutloud:Howarewe tocrossthat

abyss?Howhadour valuescometo devaluethemselves?

Whatmakeshistoryrelevanttothe future?Through

theeyesofZarathustraNietzschesawthat manisa

rope,tiedbetweenbeastandovermanaropeoveran

abyss.20 (ThatZarathustra descendsfrom priestlyascet-

icsratherthanaristocratsrevealsfarmoreaboutwhat

Nietzschethoughtofhimselfthandoallegoriesabout

predatorybirdsor blondbeasts.)

AsRichard Schachtargues,the developmentof man,

asNietzsche saw the matter,isnotthe resultof acci-

dental change,o rHerac litan flux,or the actualization of

potentiality.21 Self-transfiguration involvesa transfor-

mation of nature,more preciselya struggle to overcome

oursecond natures.. .[which]are mostlyfeeblerthan

the first.22 Or,as Marx wrote in the 1844manuscripts,

The nature which comesto be in human historyis

mansreal nature.Historyis itself areal partof natural

historyof naturescoming to be manhistorycan

be adevelopmentinbutalsobeyondnature.23 Butwiththe option of going back to firstnature foreclosed, man,

who isself-consciouso f alife led well orpoorly, had

to treatthe symptomsof ourmo dern sicknesswhich

isanalogous to the sicknessof pregnancy: that which

mustbe labored through to delivera new life.24 The con-

temporarycrisis of meaninglessnesshad to be situated,

therefore,asNietzsche arguesinBeyond Good and Evil,on the 10,000year timeline of the historyof humanity,

formost of which the value of man wastied to the con-

sequencesof hisactions.

During the longestpart of human historyso-called

pre-historical timesthe value ordisvalue of an action

wasderived from its consequences.The action itself was

considered aslittle asits origin.[T]he imperative know

thyself!wasas yetunknown.In the lastten thousand

years,however,one hasreached the point,step bystep,in

afew large regionsof the earth,where itisno longerthe

consequencesbutthe origin of an action thatone allows

to decide itsvalue.[which]involvesthe firstattemptat

self-knowledge.Instead of the consequences,the origin:

indeed the reversal of p erspective!Buttodayshouldnt

we have reached the necessityof once more resolving on a

reversal and fundamental shiftin values,owing to another

self-examination of man,anothergrowth in profundity?25

Thecultural normsor moralityof moresof classical

antiquityaprimallyanimalisticattachmentto domina-

tionhadtransitioned,onlyafter extremereversals,into

classsociety,marked byliberaldemocratic values.The

slaverevolthad affectedthe transvaluationofvalues.

Whatfollowedwasthedefectionoftheclericstotheside

ofthe slaves,whichexplains theworld-historicalsignifi-

canceof Christianity,untilthe passingoftraditional meta-

physicsrenderedlifemeaninglessbutthiswas also

onlya transitionalstage.26 Theriseofclasssociety,in

otherwords,raises thepossibilityof atransition towhat-

everis beyondthislife-form,but torealize whatNietzsche

crypticallyrefersto asthe gayscience involvesaccepting

adifficult task:replacingthe antiquarianhistoricistsensi-

bilitiesthatwere sappinglifewith acritical approachfrom

asupra-historicalstance thatrevivifieslife, givingita

telos,inthe Hegeliansense,asa direction,ratherthanas

afinalend-point.Nietzschezoomorphizesussothatas

weshedouranimalisticnature.We mightthencontinue

toask:Arewelate-orfirst-comers?27

Justasthedisappointmentof theemancipatoryaspi-

rationsof 1848hadledWagnerto composeParsifalasataleofsalvation,utilitarianslaComteand[John]Stu-artMillhadtheorizedtheinsipidandcowardlyconcept

ofman,which,Nietzscheremarkedwithanacerbic

bite,wasanotionthatwasmoresuitedtothe objectof

acult.28 WhatNietzschewassayingwasthat,inre-

gressingbehindthe18 th century,modernswereleftvul-

nerabletovulgarizationofthoughtbythecultivated

Philistines(who,Adornoquipsinthe 1942seminar,will

onlydisappearwheneveryonecanfindenoughtoeat),

whichwasalsoNietzschesowntitleforthefirstun-

timelymeditationonDavidStrauss.Thesocialistsinthe

SPDmanifested thisself-vivisection inaccepting theideasoftheanti-SemiteEugenDhring,thatBerlin

apostleof revengewho employsmoral mumbo-jumbo

moreindecently andrepulsivelythan anyoneelse.29 Ni-

etzscheoffered aheuristic forthis historicaldevaluation

ofourvaluesinTwilightofthe Idols:Liberal institutionsstopbeingliberalassoonastheyhavebeenattained:

afterthat,nothingdamagesfreedommoreterriblyor

morethoroughlythan liberalinstitutions.Yet, aslong

astheyarestillbeingfoughtfor,thesesameinstitutions

haveentirelydifferent effectsand areactually powerful

promotersoffreedom.Oncloserinspection,itisthewar

thatproducestheseeffects,thewarforliberalinstitu-tionswhich,beingawar,keepsilliberalinstitutionsinplace.Andthewar iswhatteachespeopletobe

free.30 Freedom,Nietzscheconcluded, [in]the senseI

understandtheword:[is]somethingthatyouhaveand

donothave,thatyouwill,thatyouwin.

If workers,as the socialistsclaimed, were going to

notsimplylive .. .one dayas the bourgeoisdo now,

but[really] above them,distinguished bytheir freedom

from wants,the socialistshad to firstshed theirurge

to condemn,libel, and denigrate societyand their

blind faith in historical development.Nietzsche thus

outlinesa philosophyof historythatcallsour attention

to theregressionin progress.He confrontsthe vexa-tion: How isthisnew historical consciousness,the 19th

centuryhistoricist thoughtexemplified bythe right-

Hegelians,disadvantageous to life butalso potentially

whatwe require forlife? What if modernslived at the

expense of the future? How mighto urvalues be the

source of enervation? Faced with these difficulties,

modern man,who isgenerationallythe resultof earlier

aberrations,passions, mistakes,and even crimes,

wishesin vain foran existence like thatof animalsen-

thralled onlyin the moment,thatis,withoutasense of

yesterdayorthe future,thusneitherbored normelan-

choly.31 Animalsare unhistorical,while man,on the oth-

erhand, resiststhe ever-growing weightof whatwas.Thisiswhy[man]ismoved,asthough he remembered

alostparadise,when he seesagrazing herd,or,in a

more intimate proximity,seesa child,which asyethas

nothing pastto deny,playing between fencesof pastand

future in blissful blindness.32 Although we can cultivate

aforgetful orunhistorical disposition,or conversely

obsessover historical details,both methodsrisk what

Nietzsche callsa Dionysian affirmation of the world as

itis. .. [which is]myformulaforamorfati. 33 The su-pra-historical task consistsin grasping aknife and go-

ing atwhat had come before withoutreverence.

34

Ourinherited customarynature and ourk nowledgehad to

be broughtinto conflict,in fact,even into a warn [in

orderto]cultivate a new habit,anew instinct,a second

nature,so that the firstnature atrophies.35 A historical

genealogyis therefore an attemptto give oneself,as it

were,aposterioriapast from which one would like tobe descended in opposition to the pastfrom which we

descended,although the obstacle wasperceiving not

merelythe necessity of those sidesof existence hitherto

denied,but theirdesirability; and nott heirdesirability

merelyin relation to the sideshitherto affirmed. 36

Conclusion

Nietzsche came of age with the Franco-Prussian War

and waslucid while Bismark wasChancellor.His first-

hand experience with the savageryof war confirmed

Nietzsche asthe firstanti-German. Italso made odious

the triumphalism thatmarked the rise of Bismarck.

German self-satisfaction wasrooted in afalse sense of

accomplishment.The French defeatmarked the col-

lapse of the revolutionsof 1789,1848, and 1871,Ni-

etzsche believed,more than ithe ralded the advance of

authenticTeutonicor Protestantculture.Berlin wasa

counterfeit new Athens; the semblance of poetry,music,

and philosophywasinsufficient to the immanence of the

task of modern life.The victorieson the battlefield were

sure to exorcise the spiritsof 1848, butperniciously.

Nietzsche attacked the evasionsof the 1848-revolution-

aries-turned-anti-Semites asdecadent, in bad faith,

mendacious,and desperate to ape the modern.But the

socialists,who had turned dogmatic,were equallyin

bad faith.It isas if Nietzsche were specificallypointing

to the Leftwhen identifying the speciesof moral mas-

turbatorsgesturing like invalid Phariseesfilled with

noble indignation.How were the socialists,who were

themselvesafflicted with the belief that,[as] time

marchesforward .. .everything thatis in italso march-

esforward, going to then serve asphysicians, consol-ers,and saviorsof the sick?37

Nietzsche was,in alot of ways,a typical liberal of the

late 19thcentury,expressing aconce rn with conformism,

massor herd society,and authoritarianism.H isinner

affinitiesand differences with Hegel and Marx can be

productivelyspecified in the twistthat each deliversto

theirRousseauian conviction that aconsciousness of

historyand the task of freedom are interdependent.The

main differencesbetween them can be attributed to the

eventsof the mid-19thcenturythatmark ahistorical

watershed,on one side of which standsHegel, on the

other Marx and Nietzsche.Hegel had attempted to su-

persede the contradiction between romanticism and

enlightenment.But whereasHegel saw the romantic

view of historyasa necessarystage of modernity,and

Marx saw the metaphysicsof historical Spiritattendant

to the emergence of the state asthe rat ional core of

Hegel,for Nietzsche modernityhad degenerated into

melancholy.Nietzsche wasacute lyaware of the exhaus-

tion within the bourgeois-democraticrevolution, which,

unable to manage itself within the framework of parlia-

mentarydemocrac y,had collapsed into Bonapartist

authoritarianism underBismarck.

After1848,Nietzsche remarked,workerswere en-

listed forthe military,they were given the rightto orga-

nize,the political rightto vote: isitany wonderthat

workerstoday feel theirexistence to be desperate (ex-

pressed morallyto be an injustice)?As ithappened,

Nietzsche had reason to doubt whether theirdemands

were pointing toward wasthe realizationcompletion

and transfigurationof the valuesof liberal emancipa-

tion.Thedevelopmentsof thelast100yearsmakethe

relationshipbetween Nietzscheand Marxinevitably

moreopaquethanit wasfortherevolutionaryMarxists

oftheearly19 th century.Bothwereharshcriticsofthe

socialistsoftheirday,butwhereasMarx(andEngels)

sawinthestruggleforsocialismsignsofthatstruggle

pointingbeyonditself,towardtheestablishmentofthe

classlesssociety, Nietzschesaw onlywidespreadre-sentmentasthe finaldestinationofthesocialistmove-

ments.Thismajordifference,socrucialwhentheinter-

nationalsocialistmovementwasexpandingandanew

eraofrevolutionaryhistorywason thehorizon,hasre-

cededbehindthehistoryofthe20 thcentury.Any attempt

toreckonwithourpresentimpasseinevitablycomesto

ask:Whatistheretorecover? Itisin lightofthistask

thatMarxandNietzschearenot flatlycounterposed,but

aredifferentcriticsofanobjectthatdisintegratedbefore

itfulfilleditsmostvitalaspirations.|P

1.Friedrich Nietzsche,SchopenhauerasEducator inUntimely

Meditations,trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge

UniversityPress1997), 151.

2.Nietzsche, The Willto Power,trans. WalterKaufmann (New

York,Vintage,1967), 384, 206.

Nietzsche,continued from page 3

Nietzsche continues onpage 4

firsttime, forinstance,the distinctionbetweenproductive

andunproductivelaborisofnoconcerntothelikesof

Harvey.AttheheartofSmithsprojectistheattemptto

advance,intheory andpractice, theradical emancipation

entailedinfree wage-labor.Thissocialemancipation

thatis,thefreedomoflabortosellitselfonthemarket

unconstrainedbythe demandsofcustomary privilegeis

utterlyobscuredby Harveysanachronistictalkof free-

marketregulatorypolicy.Nor isthe moreoverwrought

MarxologyofaMichaelHeinrichanystrongerontheques-

tionof Marxsrelationto Smithand tobourgeoispolitical

economymore generally.UnderstandingMarx tobe anti-

bourgeois,Heinrichconsignsto thedustbinof worldview

Marxismallthose whomight imaginethatMarxs

thoughtis inany wayimmanentto politicaleconomy.9

Asa systematiclabortheoristof value,Smith proves

himself an indispensable philosopherof the revolution-

aryThird Estate.For him,the world of commercial soci-

etyisone grounded in the free laborof a newlyemer-

gentclass, aclass of city-dwellersfreed from serfdom

and customaryclaims. The city-dwellersor bourgeois

of the late medieval and earlymodern period share in a

common freedom,workerand merchantalike.Their

society,a sSmith outlines in Book Three ofThe Wealthof

Nations,emergesasa resultof whatcan onlybe dubbed

aslave revoltin what had been arelatively obscure cor-

nerof Europe.Thisslave revolt,incidentally,hasnot

ceased to thisday,and notjustin the sense thatithas

spread from Western Europe to otherpartsof t he world.

The massesof humanity, including in Europe and Amer-ica,have not ceased to demand aworld in which theydo

notrequire the benevolence orindulgence of the baker,

the butcher,the brewer, oranyone else in orderto live

theirlivesastheychoose underthe law.To thisday,this

emancipation isonly available to the broad massesof

the population in preciselythe way in which Smith de-

manded it,i.e.bywage labor.To thisday,the greatdem-

ocratic demand isthat people should be subjectto no

arbitrarypowerof wealth,butonlyto thatpowerthat

possession immediatelyand directlyconveys[48] to

the ownerof money: command overlabor.

WhatSmith termed commercial society isbest un-

derstood preciselyasthe interrelationshipsof people

exchanging the productsof labor.As he famouslywrote:

When the division of laborhasbeen once thor-

oughlyestablished itis buta verysmall part

of amanswants which the produce of hisown

laborcan supply.He suppliesthe fargreater

partof them byexchanging .. .Every man thus

livesby exchanging,orbecomes in some mea-

sure amerchant,and the societyitself grows

to be whatis properly[called] acommercial

society.[37]

Thatsuch acommercial societyis classdivided repre-

sentsforSmith anachievement,one thatsimultaneously

exposesas irrational the prescriptive claimsof all past

ruling classesand,indeed, of the ruling classesof his

own day.If we still saythat the historyof all hitherto

existing societiesis the historyof classsociety, those

societiesand thathistoryissimultaneouslyworthyof

condemnation forhaving failed to have been.That isbe-

cause theyfailed to recognize and realize themselvesas

classsocieties, and were thusinadequate to the concept

of societyitself.In otherwords, all wealth isoriginally

labor,from which, after the claimsarising from the ac-

cumulation of stock and the appropriation of land[65]

are deducted asprofit and rents,those who expect in

addition,say, personal deference orsexual favorsfail to

recognize (and mustagain be made to understand)that

thisisa classsociety.AsAdorno remarks,crediting the

19thcenturylegal historian J. C.Bluntschli,society.. .

[is]aconceptof the third estate.10

Thoughthefactis inimicaltomostleftists,thehis-

toricalemergenceoffreedomwasoccasionedbythe

demandforclasssociety.Thedemandforwork,i.e.the

demandtobe subjectonlytothesocialpowerthatprop-

erlyappertainsto money,led tothat world-historical

liberationfromcommunitythatwecallthe birthofthe

modernindividual.This demandfor freedomfrom the

needtorelyuponthebenevolenceof others,thisstruggle

forfree wage-labor,remainsthe greatestsocial move-

mentonearth.Itshouldnotbethoughtthatworkersand

thosestrugglingfor employmentare simplyresignedto

workingfora master.Rather,theworkersdemandfor

workmustbeviewedassimultaneouslyademandfora

formofprivatepropertyadequatetoitsconcept.

Driven to dialecticsby hisstruggle againstthe French

Physiocratsand the British mercantilists,Smith over-

turnsall pastpolitical economy. Though hiswork is

chieflyassociated with the demand forfree marketsand

the invisible hand,none of thisis in factpeculiar to

Smith.Rather,as partand parcel of the projectof the

revolutionaryThird Estate reaching back into the17 th

century,t hese were mainstream concernsof political

economyfrom at leastthe time of John Locke and Sir

DudleyNorth. Similarly,the characterand productive

potential of the division of labor,so closely associated

with Smithsname, formsa subjectof intense reflection

and analysisnearly three-quartersof acenturybefore

The Wealthof Nationsin the writingsof SirWilliam Petty.

The neglectof whatis novel in Smith goeshand in hand

with the one-sided rejection of liberalism and of the

bourgeoisrevolutions.

Whatisin factcentral to Smithswork isthe funda-

mental clarification of laboras the categoryatt he heart

of bourgeoisfreedom. Thisfurther specification of mod-ern freedom reachestoward Ricardo and the Ricardian

theoristsof the labormovement,as well asthe 19 thcen-

turymore generally,inasmuch asSmith raisesnot only

the question of the emergence of classsociety, butalso

of the Third Estatesinternal capacity forclass division.

AsSmith notes:

We have no actsof parliamentagainst combining to lower

the [wagesof labor],butmany againstcombining to raise

it.. .We rarelyhear,ithasbeen said,of the combinations

of masters; though frequentlyof those of workmen. But

whoeverimagines,upon thisaccount,thatmasters rarely

combine,is asignorant of the world asof the subject.

Mastersare alwaysand everywhere in asortof tacit,but

constantand uniform combination,notto raise the wages

of labour.. .To violate thiscombination isevery where a

mostunpopularaction, and asortof reproach to amaster

among hisneighboursand equals.We seldom,indeed,

hearof thiscombination,because itis the usual,and one

maysay,the natural state of thingswhich nobodyever

hearsof .. .[The workerscombinations,by contrast,]are

desperate [asthey]act with the follyand extravagance

of desperate men who musteitherstarve or frighten

theirmastersinto an immediate compliance with their

demands.The mastersupon these occasionsare notas

clamourousupon the otherside, [yet]they nevercease to

call aloud forthe assistance of the civil magistrate and the

rigorousexecution of [anti-laborlaws]. [84-5]

AsSmith remarks, clinching the matter,A man must

alwayslive by hiswork[85].And,justasSmith reaches

toward Ricardo and Ricardian theoristsin hisanalysis

of classformation, so he also connects the revolu-

tionaryThird Estate to itsprogeny and heir,the 19th

centuryworkersmovement,bycalling notonlyforthe

emancipation of laborbut also forthe fulfillmentof that

emancipation in the struggle forhigherwages and bet-

ter working conditions.On thismatter, The Wealthof

Nationscould notbe clearer:

[A mans]wagesmust atleast be sufficientto maintain

him.Theymust even upon mostoccasionsbe somewhat

more; otherwise itwould be impossible forhim to bring up

afamily, and the race of workmen would notlastbeyond

the firstgeneration ... differencesin the mode of subsis-

tence [of workers]is notthe cause butthe effectof the dif-

ference in wages; though byastrange misapprehension,I

have frequentlyheard itrepresented asthe cause.Itis not

because one man keepsa coach while hisneighbor walks

afootthat the one isrich and the otherpoor, butbecause

the one isrich he keepsa coach,and because the other

ispoorhe walksafoot.. .Isimprovementin the circum-

stance of the lowerranksof the people to be regarded as

an advantage orasan inconveniencyto the society.The

answerseemsabundantly plain ... The liberal reward

of labor,asit isthe effectof increasing wealth,so itis

the cause of increasing population.To complain of itis to

lamentover the necessaryeffectand cause of the greatest

publicprosperity.[85, 93,96, 99]

Thus,while demanding legal protection forlaborsright

to organize,Smith could still hope,and moreover hope

in good faith,thatbourgeois freedom realized in and

through the supremacyof economicswould one day

lead to the emancipation of laboring humanity.

Itis the commitmentto philosophyand freedom

that confersforthrightness upon the greatscientific

pronouncementsof the bourgeoisclass asexemplified

bythe authorof The Wealthof Nations.S uch bourgeois

revolutionarythought stands,as mightwell be expected

from aself-proclaimed devotee of Rousseau,as an

indictmentof the history of all hitherto existing societ-

ies,including the mere civilization of Smiths own day.

Marxism and itscritique of political economyrepresent

the continuation of thisrevolutionarybourgeois tradi-

tion,a lbeitin changed conditions.Marxism isbyno

meansthe repudiation of Smithsradical Enlighten-

ment. ForMarxism seeks,in itsstruggle to advance

social-political emancipation,not to redeem history

from the wreckage of Smithsutopianism of process;

rather,itseeksto redeem Smithsthoughtfrom the

wreckage of history.Under conditionsof capital,Smiths

thoughtitself demandsits own critique. |P

All referencesto SmithsWealthof Nations

in whatfollowsare

to the two volume edition edited byR..H.Campbell and Andrew

Skinner(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress,1976). Referenceswill

be provided in the textin brackets.

1.Theodor W.Adorno,Reflections on ClassTheory,in Can

One Live AfterAuschwitz? A PhilosophicalReader,edited byRolf

Tiedemann (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress,2003, 93.

2. David Hume to Adam Smith 10/17/1767,in Correspondence

of Adam Smith,ed.E.C. Mossnerand I.S.Ross(Oxford: Oxford

UniversityPress, 1976),137.

3.Smithsearly opinion of Rousseau could nothave been higher.

Thusin the second essaySmith ever published,he writes,

Theoriginaland inventivegeniusofthe Englishhasdis-

covereditself. .. inmorals,metaphysics,and partof the

abstractsciences.Whateverattemptshavebeenmade in

moderntimestowardsimprovementin thiscontentious

andunprosperousphilosophyhavebeen madein England.

TheMeditationsof Descartes,excepted,Iknowof nothing

inFrenchthataims atbeing original. .. [However,]English

philosophyseemsnowto beneglectedby theEnglish

themselves[and tohavebeen] transportedintoFrance,

aboveallinthelate Discourse[onInequality]byMr.Rous-

seauofGeneva. [Lettertothe EdinburghReview,inW.P.

D.Wightmanand J.C. Bryce(eds.),EssaysonPhilosophical

Subjects(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,1980), 250-51.

4.B.Faujasde SaintFond,A Journey ThroughEngland and Scot-

land to the Hebrides in1784,vol.2,edited by SirArchibald Geikie

(Glasgow,H. Hopkins,1907),246.

5.Adam Smith to AndreasHolt10/26/1780, in Correspondence,

251.

6.Jean-JacquesRousseau, Confessions,trans.J.M.Cohen

(London: Penguin Books,1953), 306.

7.David Harvey,A Companionto Marxs Capital (New York: Verso,

2010),52.

8.David Harvey, Spaces of Hope(Berkeley: Universityof Califor-

niaPress,2000), 175.

9.For the view thatbourgeois political economistssuch as

Smith have fallen preyto an image of realitythatdevelops inde-

pendentlyas aresult of the everydaypractice of the members

of bourgeoissociety,see Michael Heinrich,AnIntroductiontoMarxs Three Volumes of Capital,translated byAlexanderLocas-

cio (New York: MonthlyReview Press,2012),34-5.

10.T.W. Adorno,Societytranslated byF. R.Jameson Sal-

magundi10-11(1969-70),144. Elsewhere Adorno elaborates

saying,

The societalization of society,itsconsolidation into what.

.. ismore trulylike asystem than an organism,hasre-

sulted from the principle of domination,the principle of

division itself,and itperpetuatesit.Society hassurvived,

reproduced,and extended itself,and hasdeveloped its

forces,onlythrough itsdivision into the opposing interests

of those who command and those who produce.[Theodor

W.Adorno,Hegel: Three Studies,translated byShierry

WeberNicholsen (Cambridge: MITPress,1993), 79].

Adam Smith,continued from page 3 3.Theodor Adorno,et al.,Discussion of aPaper byLudwigMarcuse on the Relation of Need and Culture in Nietzsche (July

14,1942), Constellations8.1(2001): 133.

4.Nietzsche,Twilightof the Idols,in The Anti-Christ, Ecce

Homo, Twilightof the Idols, and OtherWritings,trans.Judith Nor-

man (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress,2005), 40,216.

5.Nietzsche, The Willto Power,125,77.

6.Nietzsche, Twilightof the Idols,34,209.


8.Nietzsche,Beyond Good and Evil,in BasicWritings of Ni-

etzsche,trans.Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library,

1968),226,344.


10.Malcolm Bull,Where is the Anti-Nietzsche?, NewLeft

Review,3 (May-June 2000): 142.

11.Robert B.Pippin, Heideggeron Nietzsche on Nihilism,

in PoliticalPhilosophy Cross-Examined,ed.ThomasPangle and J.

HarveyLomax (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2013),184.

12.Hinton Thomas, Nietzsche inGermanPolitics and Society,

1880-1918 (Manchester,ManchesterUniversityPress,1983), 18.

13.Mehring quoted in Georg Lukcs,Destructionof Reason,

trans.PeterR. Palmer,available online at< http://www.marx-

ists.org/archive/lukacs/works/destruction-reason/ch03.htm>.

14. Ibid.

15.Theodor Adorno,et al.,Need and Culture in Nietzsche,

131.

16.Need and Culture in Nietzsche,134-135.

17.Nietzsche,On the Genealogyof Morals,in BasicWritings of

Nietzsche,trans. WalterKaufmann (New York: Modern Library,

1968),Third Essay11,553.

18. Ibid,Third Essay13, 557.

19. Ibid.

20.Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,trans. WalterKaufmann

(New York: Modern Library,1982), 4,14.

21.Richard Schacht, Nietzsche,London: Routledge,1983, 31.

22.Nietzsche, Onthe Advantage and Disadvantage of History for

Life,trans.Peter Preuss,

23.Marx, Economicand Philosophical Manuscriptsof 1844in

The Marx-Engels Reader,ed. RobertC. Tucker, (New York: W.W.

Norton,1978),90-91.

24.Peter Preuss,Introductionin History forLife,1. The preg-

nancymetaphoroccurs in the contextof the dissection ofParsi-

fal in the importantthird essayof Onthe Genealogy of Morals ,4,

537.

25.Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil,32,234.

26.Nietzsche, The Willto Power,7,10-11.

27.Nietzsche, History forLife,9,49.


29.Nietzsche, Onthe Genealogy of Morals ,Third Essay14, 560.

30.Nietzsche, Twilightof the Idols,38,213.

31.Nietzsche, History forLife, 3,22.

32. Ibid, 1 , 9 .


34. VideChrisCutrone,Beyond History? Nietzsche,Benjamin,

and Adorno,available online at http://chriscutrone.platy-

pus1917.org/?s=nietzsche.

35.Nietzsche, History forLife,3,22.

36.Nietzsche, The Willto Power,1041, 536-37.

37.Nietzsche, Onthe Genealogy of Morals , Third Essay

14,561.

Original stage design byPaul von Joukowskyfor ActIII of Parsifalcirca1882.Nietzsche feltthat Wagnerslastopera, astory

of redemption,had allowed asceticism and nihilism to triumph overart.


3/3

2Issue #61 / November 2013

By exposing the historical necessity that had

brought capitalism into being, political economy

became the critique of history as a whole

Theodor W. Adorno, Reflections on Class

Theory1

Unlike Jean-Jacques Rousseau or even Friedrich Ni-

etzsche, Adam Smith is a thinker few on the contempo-

rary left will have much time for. This tells us more

about the impoverishment of the currently prevailing

intellectual environment than about the persistent, if

ever more obscure, influence of bourgeois radicalism on

the Left. Today, of course, it is fashionable to have a

critique of the enlightenment or, alternatively, to de-

fend it against an array of enemies, including postmod-

ernism, religious conservatism, and academic obscu-

rantism. Those currents of the contemporary Left that

still seek to lay cl aim to the Enlightenment must fend

off Smith, because, like Rousseau, his is an Enlighten-

ment that cannot be upheld simply as an affirmation of

reason or the demand for human rights. Smiths

Enlightenment demands to be advanced. His 1776 trea-

tise,An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth

of Nations, is not a product of the Scottish Enlighten-

ment but of the cosmopolitan radical Enlightenment,

stretching from the coffeehouses of Rotterdam to the

meeting rooms of Calcutta. If that cosmopolitan Enlight-

enment project remains unfinished, it is because the

course of history since the publication of Smiths mag-

num opus failed to fulfill and indeed undermined the

radical potentials of the 18 thcentury.

Smiths powerful influence upon French revolutionar-

ies such as the Abb Sieys and the Marquis de Con-

dorcet, and through them upon Immanuel Kant, Benja-

min Constant, and G. W. F. Hegel, are not as well knownas they should be, but that need not detain us from

coming to terms with the profound radicalism of his

thought. Less well known still is the respect that Smith

and his close friend, David Hume, held for Rousseaus

works. Hume, refusing to allow his famous public quar-

rel with Rousseau to cloud his judgment, contended that

the Genevans major works were efforts of genius in a

letter to Smith.2This was an estimate Hume doubtless

knew would find favor with his friend, since as early as

1756 Smith had written an article that is perhaps the

earliest acknowledgement of R ousseaus Discourse on

the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, singling

that work out as the act whereby the Francophone world

re-established its supremacy in philosophy for the first

time since Descartes, displacing the preeminence of

English political and social thought that had lasted for

almost a century with the writings of Hobbes, Locke,

Rousseau,continued from page 1

Torso of Apollo

Rousseau in the 18thcentury

The Classicism of the 18th century Enlightenment had its

distinctive melancholy, already, reaching back in histori-

cal fragments, broken remnants of Ancient forms, for

inspiration to the modern task of freedom. Rilke, at the

turn of the 20thcentury, expressed this wistful sense of

modern freedom in his poem Archaic Torso of Apollo:

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise

this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beasts fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life.8

The scholar of German Idealist philosophy, Robert Pip-

pin, wrote that after Kants critical turn,

some new way of conceiving of philosophy adequate to the

realization of the radically historical nature of the human

condition was now necessary[.] . . . The problem of under-

standing properly (especially critically) conceptual, artistic,

and social change was henceforth at the forefront[.] 9

This new conception was found in Rousseau. Rousseau

wrote that while animals were machines wound up for

functioning in a specific natural environment, humans

could regard and reflect upon their own machinery and

thus change it. This was Rousseaus radical notion of

perfectibility which was not in pursuit of an ideal of

perfection but rather open-ended in infinite adaptability.

Unlike animal species, humans could adapt themselves to

live in any environment and thus transform outer nature

to suit them, thus transforming as well their own inner

nature, giving rise to ever-new possibilities. This was the

new conception of freedom, not freedom to be according

to a fixed natural or Divine form, but rather freedom to

transform and realize new potential possibilities, to be-

come new and different, other than what we were before.

Rousseau and Kant

Rousseau understood the most radical possibilities of

freedom-in-transformation to take place in society, the

site of new and alien powers which he cannot employ

without the help of other men. Rousseau described this

as the sacrifice of natural liberty for moral freedom,

the freedom to act in unnatural ways. For Rousseau, such

freedom was radically ambivalent: it could be for good or

for ill. However, the problem of society in which humanity

had fallen could only be solved socially, not individually.

This is why Rousseau was liable to be read later antinom-

ically, as either anarchist or authoritarian: Rousseau gave

expression to the radical ambiguity of freedom as it was

revealed in modern society, the crossroads of civilization

that bourgeois society represented. As Kant put it, in his

Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point

of View written in 1784, the same year as his famous es-

say answering the question, What is Enlightenment?,

The vitality of mankind may fall asleep Until this last

step to a union of states is taken, which is the halfway

mark in the development of mankind, human nature must

suffer the cruelest hardships under the guise of external

well-being; and Rousseau was not far wrong in preferring

the state of savages, so long, that is, as the last stage to

which the human race must climb is not attained[Mere

civilization,] however, is nothing but pretense and glit-

tering misery. In such a condition the human species will

no doubt remain until it works its way out of the chaotic

conditions of its international relations.10

Rousseau was profoundly inspirational for Kant with

respect to the fundamental philosophical issue of the

relation of theory and practice. Specifically, Rousseau

originated the modern dialectic of theory and practice,

what Rousseau called their reflective and Kant called

their speculative relation. In Kants First Critique, the

Critique of Pure Reason, and his summary of his argu-

ment there and reply to critics of it, the Prolegomena to

Any Future Metaphysics, Kant articulated the conditions

of possibility for concepts or categories of understand-

ing as being those of practice.

What this meant in Kant was that, while things-in-

themselves were inaccessible to us, things do become

objects of our theoretical understanding, by virtue of

being objects of our practical engagement: Objects were

concrete in the sense of being concretions of the vari-

ous practical and thus conceptual relations we have with

them. Furthermore, as Hegel put it, in the Science of Log-

ic, objects were not identical with themselvesthere

was a non-identity of an object and its own conceptbe-

cause they were subject to transformed, that is, changed,

practices. So, objects were not approximations of always

inaccurate theoretical models of conceptual understand-

ing, but our concepts change as a function of changes in

practice that were nonetheless informed by theoretical

concepts. Concepts were inductive rather than deduc-

tive because they were not abstractions from empiricalobservation as generalizations from experience, but rath-

er objects were concretions of abstractions in the sense

of being determined in a web of practical relations. Ratio-

nalist metaphysics had a real basis in issues of practice.

Furthermore, such practical relations were social in

nature, as well as subject to historical changechange

that is brought about subjectively by agents of practice

who transform themselves in the process of transforming

objects. What objects are for subjects changes as a func-

tion of changing practical relations.

In his essay What is Enlightenment?, Kant had

articulated a distinction between public and private

reason in order to demonstrate that, enmeshed in the

web of practical relations in society, we are condemned

to exercise merely private reason in pursuit of our

self-interest as individual cogs in the machine of soci-

ety. It was only in the exercise of public reason that we

were potentially free of such self- interest determined

by our positions in society, to exercise reason as any-

oneas any rational subject or any political citizen

from a position transcendent of such compromised

interested practice. For Kant, such exercise of public

reason expressed, however indirectly, the possibility of

changes in social practice: the way things ought to be

as opposed to how they are at present.

Hegel and the philosophy of history

Hegel built upon Kant and Rousseau in his pursuit of the

philosophy of history of accounting for such change in

freedom, or reason in history. The issue of Hegelianism

is a notoriously but ultimately needlessly difficult one:

how to include the subjective factor in history. Hegels

sense of the actuality of the rational in the real turns on

the relation of essence and appearance, or, with what

necessity things appear as they do. What is essential is

what is practical, and what is practical is subjective as

well as objective. In this view, theoretical reflection on the

subjective dimension of experience must use metaphysi-cal categories that are not merely handy but actually con-

stitutive of social practices in which one is a subject.

Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequal-

ity, had raised a hypothetical state of nature in order

to throw his contemporary society into critical relief.

In so doing, Rousseau sought to bring society closer

to a state of nature. Liberal, bourgeois society was a

model and an aspiration for Rousseau. For Rousseau,

it was human nature to be free. Humans achieved a

higher civil liberty of moral freedom in society than

they could enjoy as animals, with mere physical free-

dom in nature. Indeed, as animals, humans are not free,

but rather slaves to their natural needs and instincts.

Only in society could freedom be achieved, and humans

free themselves from their natural, animal condition.

When Rousseau was writing, in the mid-18 thcentury, the

promise of freedom in bourgeois society was still on the

horizon. Bourgeois society aspired to proximity to the

state of nature in the sense of bringing humanity, both

individually and collectively, closer to its potential, tobetter realize its freedom

For Rousseau, in his reflections On the Social Con-

tract, society exhibited a general will not reducible to

its individual members: more than the sum of its parts.

Not Hobbess Leviathan, but rather a second nature,

a rebirth of potential, both collectively and individually.

Human nature found the realization of its freedom in

society, but humans were free to develop and transform

themselves, for good or for ill. For Rousseau and the 18th

century revolutionaries he inspired, to bring society clos-

er to the state of nature, then, was to allow humanitys

potential to be better realized. But, first, society had to

be clear about its aims, in practice as well as in theory.

Rousseau was the first to articulate this new, modern

task of social freedom.

The question Rousseau poses, then, is the specula-

tive or dialectical relation of theory and practice, today.

How might we raise the originally Rousseauian question

of critical-theoretical reflection on our practices, fromwithin the conditions of second nature that express our

condition of freedomincluding our self-imposed condi-

tions of unfreedom? That is the issue of public reason

today, as much as it was in Rousseaus time

As Hegel put it, in his Introduction to the Philosophy of

History,

When we look at this drama of human passions, and ob-

serve the consequences of their violence and of the unrea-

son that is linked not only to them but also (and especially)

to good intentions and rightful aims; when we see arising

from them all the evil, the wickedness, the decline of the

most flourishing nations mankind has produced, we can

only be filled with grief for all that has come to nothing.

And since this decline and fall is not merely the work of

nature but of the will of men, we might well end with moral

outrage over such a drama, and with a revolt of our good

spirit (if there is a spirit of g oodness in us). Without rhetori-

cal exaggeration, we could paint the most fearful picture

of the misfortunes suffered by the noblest of nations and

states as well as by private virtuesand with that picture

we could arouse feelings of the deepest and most helpless

sadness, not to be outweighed by any consoling outcome.

We can strengthen ourselves against this, or escape it, only

by thinking that, well, so it was at one time; it is fate; there

is nothing to be done about it now. And finallyin order

to cast off the tediousness that this reflection of sadness

could produce in us and to return to involvement in our

own life, to the present of our own aims and interestswe

return to the selfishness of standing on a quiet shore

where we can be secure in enjoying the distant sight of

confusion and wreckage . . . But as we contemplate history

as this slaughter-bench, upon which the happiness of na-

tions, the wisdom of states, and the virtues of individuals

were sacrificed, the question necessarily comes to mind:

What was the ultimate goal for which these monstrous

sacrifices were made? . . . World history is the progress in

the consciousness of freedoma progress that we must

come to know in its necessity . . . The Orientals knew

only that one person is free; the Greeks and Romans that

some are free; while we [moderns] know that all humans

are implicitly free, qua human . . . The final goal of the

world, we said, is Spirits consciousness of its freedom,

and hence also the actualization of that very freedom . . .

It is this final goalfreedomtoward which all the worlds

history has been working. It is t his goal to which all the

sacrifices have been brought upon the b road altar of the

earth in the long flow of time.11

Hopefully, still. | P

1. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals , in Walter Kaufmann,

trans. and ed., On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecco Homo(New

York: Random House, 2010), 20.

2. Quoted by Marx in On the Jewish Question(1843), available

online at: < http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/

jewish-question/>.

3. Marx, On the Jewish Question.

4. Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus, available on-line

at: < http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grun-

drisse/ >.

5. Introduction to Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), xv.

6. Foreword to Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station(New York

Review of Books, 2003), xv-xviii.

7. Introduction to Nietzsche, The Advantage and Disadvantage of

History for Life(Indianapolis, Hackett, 1980), 1-2.

8. Trans. Stephen Mitchell, available online at: < http://www.

poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15814>.

9. Robert Pippin, Critical Theory and Critical Inquiry: A Short

History of Non-Being, Critical Inquiry30.2 (Winter 2004), avail-

able online at: < http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/

v30/30n2.Pippin.html>.

10 . Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan

Point of View (1784), trans. Lewis White Beck. in Immanuel

Kant, On History(Bobbs-Merrill, 1963). available online at; .

11. Hegel, Reason In History, A General Introduction to the Phi-

losophy of History(Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), available online at:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/

introduction.htm>.

Adam Smith, Revolutionary

Spencer A. Leonard

Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and others.3Nor did Smiths

devotion to Rousseau, proclaimed in his very first publi-

cation, abate towards the end of his life. For we have the

testimony to the contrary of Faujas de Saint-Fond from

1784: When I was taking tea with him, [Smith] spoke to

me of Rousseau with a kind of religious respect. Vol-

taire sought, said he, to correct the vices and the fol-

lies of mankind by laughing at them, and sometimes

even getting angry with them; Rousseau, by the attrac-

tion of sentiment, and the force of conviction, drew the

reader into the heart of reason. His Contrat Socialwill in

time avenge him for all the persecutions he has suf-

fered[.]4Smiths profound sympathy with Rousseaus

epoch-making philosophy found its highest expression

in the radical political economy put forward in The

Wealth of Nations, which laid the groundwork for the

revolutionary wave of the late 18thand early 19thcentu-

ries no less than did the Discourse on Inequality and the

Social Contract. Indeed, Smith, as much a s Georges

Danton or Maximilien de Robespierre, was a leading

bourgeois revolutionary.

In order to fully grasp the radical specification of

Rousseaus call for the conscious advance of human

freedom contained in Smiths workthat is, in order to

grasp the works bourgeois-revolutionary implications

readers and interpreters must get beyond the outward

sobriety of The Wealth of Nations to the very violent

attack . . . upon the whole commercial system that lies

at its core.5Living in the most revolutionary society of

his age, Smith was nevertheless not complacent. He, no

less than Rousseau, demanded a revolutionary transfor-

mation of his society, railing with all his strength of in-

tellect against what Rousseau called our absurd civil

institutions whereby the real welfare of the public and

true justice are always sacrificed to some apparent or-der, which is in reality detrimental to all order and which

merely gives the sanction of public authority to the op-

pression of the weak and the iniquity of the strong.6It

was in full recognition of the flagging of British philoso-

phy and, with it, of the British revolution, that Adam

Smith wrote a work that was, in its way, not only the

most revolutionary of 1776, but also the crucial text,

along with the Abb RaynalsA Philosophical and Political

History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in

the East and West Indies, linking Rousseau to the French

Revolution and German Idealism.

Smith is one of those indispensable 18thcentury

thinkers who articulates unmistakably that centurys

critique of our own interminable 20thcentury. Profound-

ly, even originally, aware of the depth of the self-trans-

formative potential of humanity, Smith demands that we

transform ourselves. Author of one of the greatest acts

of public reason ever penned, Smith demands that our

time too make a thoroughgoing attack upon the entire

commercial system. Prophet of cosmopolitan civil soci-

ety, Smith would be outraged at the mockery made of it

by contemporary globalization.

Revolutionary diagnostician of the social ground of

freedom, he would condemn not only statist capitalism

but also no less certainly market capitalisms integral

connection with, and extension of, its own monstrousoutgrowth, the Bonapartist state. But rather than recog-

nize and potentially advance this critique, the desiccated

thought of what passes for Marxism or, for that matter,

of what passes for liberalism, can only adopt a posture

of knowing superiority respecting Smith about whose

thought it does not have a clue.

Take, for example, the prominent Marx scholar David

Harvey, whose writings are part of the gospel of the

contemporary academic and activist left. Harvey de-

scribes Smith as a liberal utopian committed to a the-

ology of perfectly functioning markets and the hidden

hand.7A spokesman for the capitalist class, Harveys

Smith promotes their exploitative system as a utopia-

nism of process from which he helpfully derive[s] a

political programme, the essence of which Harvey

states as follows: Give free markets room to flourish,

then all will be well with the world. By way of closing,

Harvey does not fail to instruct his reader that this, of

course, is the ideology that has become so dominant in

certain of the advanced capitalist countries . . . these

last 20 years. Smith represents a set of policy pre-scriptions against which, presumably, the Marxist Dav id

Harvey has others to oppose. And, surely, we can all

agree that Marx mounted a devastating attack upon

this utopianism of process in Capital.8

But Harvey should not be singled out. Rather, he ex-

presses something like the conventional view of the

matterwhile we might puzzle over Marxs relationship

to, perhaps dialectical appropriation of, Hegels dialec-

tic, Marxs critique of political economy is an attack, a

refutation, or at least a criticism. It would be truer to say

that Capitalis closed to Harvey, despite his being that

books leading interpreter in these spiritless times,

precisely because The Wealth of Nationsis impenetrable

to him. That Smith represents a major stage in the devel-

opment of the labor theory of valueformulating for the

Diderot and DAlemberts Encyclopdieshows an 18th century

pin factory and the tools used therein.

Adam Smith continues on page 3
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction.htmhttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction.htm

the platypus review issue 61 (november 2013)

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