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Paradox in the Dialectic: Reading Hegel into Dialectical Materialism
By Sam Dalton

There runs a famous (mis)presentation of Hegel’s system as thesis-antithesis-synthesis. A position is posed and asserts itself (thesis), the contrary, inverse of that position asserts itself against that position (antithesis), and through the negotiation between the two, a middle ground is established that synthesizes elements from each side, thereby establishing a new, higher position (synthesis). This synthesis is then itself posed as thesis, to which an antithesis is posed, and the cycle begins over. This cyclical, upward movement is supposed to capture within it from the movement of truth in dialogue, to the progressive march of history, to the successive stages of consciousness throughout history. Given that this bite-size representation of Hegel is taught by everyone from armchair philosophers to university professors, one would be alarmed to learn that this triad receives less than a handful of references in Hegel’s entire corpus, and of these references, not one of them positive. In the preface of the Phenomenology of Spirit, after attributing the triadic schema to Kant, Hegel labels it a “lifeless schema,” a “veritable shadow,” and says of it that “the knack of this wisdom is as quickly learned as it is easy to practice; the repetition of it, when it is familiar, becomes as insufferable as the repetition of a conjuring trick already seen through. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is no harder to handle than a painter’s palette having only two colours.”[1]

The fallaciousness of characterizing Hegel’s dialectics in this reductive form boils down to a missed engagement with Hegel’s critique of the notion of contradiction operative in the triad. I would like to take the space here to flesh out a more rigorous account of Hegel's notion of contradiction with the ultimate hope of furnishing us with a more nuanced account of what, some 10 to 15 years after Hegel’s death, will come to be founded upon an appropriation of Hegelian contradiction, namely, dialectical materialism. The common trope among marxists is to cast Hegel aside as the figure that had a few crucial insights here and there about the nature of reality, but which ultimately took Marx to discern the radical elements, toss away the excess metaphysical baggage, and turn him rightside up. My claim is that to ignore Hegel, and to suppose that Marx already said all that needed saying about Hegel, is a misstep, and that it is only by going through Hegel that we can properly understand Marx’s project - it is only through an engagement with Hegel that we can see the Hegel in Marx. The to-be-developed uptake of dialectical contradiction in Marx is only one (and perhaps the most obvious) example of a Hegelian cornerstone of Marx’s thought, amongst, to name just a couple, the development of the terms of political-economy in the introduction to the Grundrisse as mirroring Hegel’s speculative notion of system as opposed to syllogism, or the passage from money to capital in Capital as the Hegelian passage from in-itself to for-itself. To take the claim I am making here from a philosophically-oriented marxist, Lenin himself claims “it is impossible completely to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!”[2] What I wish to work towards in this article is not only that by reckoning with Hegel we can elucidate Marx’s thought, but that it is only by reckoning with Hegel that we truly grasp the radicality of Marx’s project.

In his Science of Logic and the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel's main object of critique is the “common logic,” also sometimes referred to as "ordinary logic.” The common logical form of contradiction is the obverse of the law of identity that A=A, that is, a denial of self-identity. Thus, the thesis-antithesis of the misguided triplicity is posed in terms of common logic: a thesis, A, is set against its antithesis, ~A, and they are in contradiction for they cannot both be true at the same time, otherwise A=~A, an absurdity. Hegel's argument throughout the Science of Logic is not to deny the law of non-contradiction, in fact he aims to preserve the entirety of common logic. Rather, his contention is that the common logic falters when its claims are taken to their full ontological extent. Apropos the law of non-contradiction, it is inadequate ontologically because it fails to conceptualize movement and difference immanent to the objects it classifies.[3]

Common logic deals in abstract universalities, predicating universal judgements to particularities (eg., Socrates is male), but, as Robert Pippin notes, “we are interested not in what properties s [the particular] happens to have but in just what s is so that it can have properties.”[4] Hegel’s sustained argument throughout the Logic is that in order to meaningfully say something about what the particular in question in fact is, we must identify it with what it is not, “a plant ‘is not’ its seed or blossom or fruit, but neither is it something ‘other’ than the becoming of these moments”[5]

The difference between common logic and Hegel's speculative logic is thus that where the common logic posits two self-contained, pure identities, A and ~A, with an externally related contradiction between the two terms, Hegel wants to demonstrate the contradiction inherent within, or immanent to each term, A and ~A. This latter form of contradiction Hegel terms “dialectical contradiction,” and it is how Hegel moves from the abstract realm of static entities with a lack of specificity to that of the dynamic, comprehensive realm of the concrete. To be clearer about what precisely dialectical contradiction is, it, as Robert Hana notes, is closer to what modern logicians call “paradoxes” or “antinomies” than it is to what we typically understand by “contradiction.” Dialectical contradiction shares a structure with paradoxes or antinomies insofar as paradoxes and antinomies “undo themselves by means of the very same functions and conditions by which they establish themselves.”[6] Put otherwise, everything both posits itself as well as its own negation - every object has within it difference and negativity.

Let us draw upon one of Zeno’s classic paradoxes of movement to illustrate such internal strife as is characteristic of dialectical contradiction. According to Zeno, if an arrow is shot at a target, it is impossible for it reach its target, for before it reaches its target it must cover half of the distance, and before reaching half of the distance, it must cover half of the half, and before reach half of the half, it must reach half of the half of the half… and so on. Borges connects this reasoning to that of Chuang Tzu’s who argued that if one were to cut a staff in half every day, this task would be interminable. In Zeno’s paradox we have a series of infinitely diminishing distances in which we ultimately fail to reach our goals. The unique characteristic of this paradox is that it fails via the own terms it sets for itself - we begin with the notion that for an arrow to successfully complete its movement, it must cover the distance between its starting point and the target, and Zeno’s ingenious is to show how by this very same reasoning we undermine the possibility of completing what we seek to do - this paradox posits itself as well as its negation in the same swift movement.

It is here we can pivot to draw the parallel between this reevaluation of Hegelian contradiction and Marx’s critique of capitalism. Capitalism posits itself insofar as it continually reproduces itself by reproducing its a) productive forces (the means of production, labour-power, skilled labour, etc.) and b) its relations of production, the form that production takes in capitalism. If any society proved incapable of such reproduction, it will simply dissolve and an alternative mode of production would slide in to take its place. Yet, capitalism equally as much posits its negation in the form of its permanently subjugated, and thereby potentially revolutionary class, the proletariat. Through this we can see how capitalism shares the same structure as Zeno's paradox, namely, that it is through the very structure that capitalism establishes itself by (the extraction of surplus value through exploited labour) that its negation is thereby produced as well.

What framing the issue in terms of paradox gets us that contradiction risks missing is the constitutive role of antagonism. In the common logical form of contradiction, A meets ~A, and a contradiction arises. Yet, by virtue of this relation being as it is an external relation between two forces, one term can always be replaced for another, more compatible term. We already see this at work in neoliberal ideology, “don’t like being exploited by your boss? Become your own entrepreneur! Refashion yourself according to your own terms!” or as well in rhetoric surrounding the “middle class,” where everybody is middle class and thus nobody has to identify with the working class nor worry about the issues that plague “them.” Yet this is precisely ideological manipulation insofar as it is designed to smooth over the irreconcilable contradiction of capitalist society that we as subjects encounter in our day to day life. And it is upon this point that I wish to stress the aptness of classifying capitalism in terms of paradox, simply because the structure of paradox denotes the fundamental impasse of capitalism. Put slightly otherwise, framing the issue in terms of paradox allows us to grasp the constitutive role of antagonism. The contradiction of capitalism is not simply between two forces, bourgeoisie and proletariat. It is a contradiction internal to the capitalist mode of production. In other words, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, of course, do not preexist the historical formation of capitalism, but are instead produced as antagonistic, as two classes in a fundamental conflict, and it is through this very conflict that capitalism itself is birthed (again, capital is nothing more than the dead, expropriated labour of the working class). Just as in Zeno’s paradox there is no possible solution within the defined parameters, in capitalism the conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat, class struggle, is a strict deadlock, irreconcilable for the very reason that capitalism establishes and maintains itself through this antagonism. This paradoxical structure of capitalism renders impotent any attempt to resolve class conflict from within the terrain of capitalism.

It is the recognition of this nature of dialectics that I want to say defines the radicality of Marx’s project. It is this that marks the structural impossibility of resolutions, concessions, reforms, etc. of garnering any real ground. Rather, what is required is a complete restructuring of the terms our situation is defined by, namely, revolution. Substituting one term for another can only masquerade as an antidote, like treating a broken leg with opiates. What is crucial is not how we rearrange what is already given, but precisely how we overturn what is given.

Notes
[1] G.W.F Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Michael Inwood (Oxford University Press, n.d.).

[2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm#LCW38_180a

[3] The necessity for thinking ontology in terms which captures the immanent dynamicity of objects is developed throughout the Phenomenology of Spirit, while Hegel’s argument that the common logical notion fails to live up to this conception of ontology is developed in the Science of Logic. Hence why Hegel conceived the Phenomenology as the introduction to his system - the Phenomenology performs what the Logic develops in pure thought.

[4] Robert Pippin, “Hegel's Metaphysics and the Problem of Contradiction,” in The Hegel Myths and Legends, ed. Jon Stewart (Northwestern University Press), p. 250

[5] Ibid.

[6] Robert Hana, “From an Ontological Point of View: Hegel’s Critique of the Common Logic,” in The Hegel Myths and Legends, ed. Jon Stewart (Northwestern University Press), p. 279.