Hegel's Logic and Marx's Concept of Capital

Abstract

Arash Abazari's Hegel's Ontology of Power is a superb study of the relevance of Hegel's logic to Marx's theory. Hegel is often dismissed by Marxists as an ‘idealist’ denying the reality of the world, as if Hegel were Bishop Berkeley with a German accent.1 Abazari recognizes this is not the case: ‘(T)he logical categories are not self-standing, but shadow, or track, the empirical world’ (Abazari 2020: 7). But the world in its full actuality does not simply consist of the objects we sense or perceive. It is intrinsically intelligible, and its intelligibility can be comprehended only in thought. When it is, the ‘idealist’ thesis of the identity (in difference) of thought and being holds. Anyone asserting a truth claim implicitly asserts this identity. In so far as Marx asserts that Capital comprehends the capitalist mode of production, he too is an ‘idealist’ in the Hegelian sense of the term.

A methodological interpretation of the circuits of capital

“…The initial all-embracing concept is the most immediate, while the concrete is mediated by reflection (cf. Smith 2014). More specifically, the ascent from the abstract to the concrete is determined by the logical movement ‘immediacy-mediation-posited immediacy’.…”

“…The general formula displays the feature of capital in its immediacy, 11 namely, the fact that value in the form of capital has the capacity for self-valorization (cf. Smith 2014). However, in the circuit of money capital, it is now revealed that self-valorization is no more an enigmatic capacity but is grounded on the production of surplus-value.…”

“…Accordingly, the theoretical debate on the topic is strictly associated with the question of the relation between Hegel and Marx and how the latter utilizes the philosophical heritage of the former (see Dafermos 2021; Smith 2014).…”

Response to Critics of Hegel's Ontology of Power

“…I thought, and still think, that the best explanation for the parallelism between the logic of essence and the structure of social domination in capitalism is to posit that Hegel's logic of essence (if not the whole Science of Logic) is historical. This is the point that has proven to be unconvincing to McNulty (2022) and Smith (2022) and presumably for several others, and I need to defend it in some detail here.…”