This is the negation of the negation. We return to the Universal but now completely fulfilled.
Let me add here that simple cooperation, manufacture, modern industry are stages of determination. You can, if you like, build up Universal, Particular, Individual around this. But it is the type of thing. For the Judgement, use as a model Engels on the Dialectic of Nature.8
Now page 4 "distinction of different parts of Logic". We have to be damned careful here.
There is no doubt (to me) that:
Being = early society up to capitalism.Essence = capitalism to the classical philosophyThe Absolute Idea is the Method.
Hegel I see as the last of the philosophers who "interpreted" the world. The thing, however, is to change it. Hegel could discover no more than the method, though this for him was a prelude to action (in a subordinate way). But Marx could not stop at exposition of the "Notion". For him the "Notion" was directly connected, linked to action, and action by masses of men, not the few philosophers. Capitalism, therefore had and could have no "Notion" in the sense of the Method. Marx's final and completed "Notion" of Capital is revolutionary political practice. He goes along with Hegel a long way and there they separate, Hegel to the philosophers, Marx to the workers. Marx has "broadened, deepened, corrected" Hegel in the way we know.
I cannot agree with your para beginning "As for the distinction between...".
E.G. in Being you see the development from abstract individuality through political equality to political democracy (a synthesis). Maybe. Maybe. But start right now avoiding the practice of making Hegel write as if he had politics in mind. He insists that he had got rid of all concreteness. If even you are right, that for us means trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble. Hegel has in mind scientific method, mathematics, Nature, etc. etc. To make it all "revolution" serves no purpose. We shall apply it to politics, to society. (I am wondering if we can make some general applications to the history of science. But that may be too much and is not here strictly necessary). What is running through my head is if we cannot make UPI9 apply even to the development of Capital, Vol. I.
Now for some random notes. Bear in mind simple sentences such as "Robespierre10 in his policy of... represents Will". We need not invent many. M'x has a lot. Just a sentence to drive the Logic home. (And I note again that in those early writings M'x in talking about political and real emancipation seems to me to have the logic in mind all the time).
Again UPI. Remember Lenin on Marxism 1914 and L on dialectic in that essay: then L on Dialectic 1915 and his new conception of socialization, etc.11 I take it Rae is getting ready to tear the guts out of these, the new Lenin and the old. What about being able to state these in broad terms of UPI. Just think about these.
Lenin is very insistent on not taking a "one-sided view". He never wasted a second on what was not concrete. Obviously this was an error he knew and feared. Abstract and concrete. Isn't "abstract" merely the essence of Bukharinism?12 I do not mean a point to point equality, correspondence in all these things. But logically all these fundamental problems and all serious deviations must or should be seen at least as a tendency in one of these basic divisions.
Now back to something I had started and not finished. Is Being the mode of thought "of the market". I see him tracing modes of thought leading up to the market mode all seen in the light of his finished method. But that type of thought: a) can be used on low levels; b) is still used by backward classes or their philosophical or political representatives. The thing, however, is to show its historical developing character, [**]13, etc. Just as Marx sums up thousands of years in Section I in terms of developing concepts of value and labor.14 Make much of M's statement that it took 2000 years for men to discover the truth about value, etc.
Very hard work must be done to be able to state simply and briefly why Hegel thinks the discoveries of Greek philosophers (Being-for-Self etc) recur and have validity for Leibniz etc.15 A blanket statement like "market" pins it down. Being into Essence is commodity into Capital.16 We enter into Capitalist production from pre-capitalist production. If you don't like this, be prepared to attack it.
Again. Have you fitted Synthetic Cognition and Understanding into the general scheme? For Hegel they were a constant, recurring enemy. I leave to you the distinction in treatment between the three divisions of the Logic.
Let me sum up where I am heading.
Lenin's method up to 1914 for socialism was or contained the elements of:
a) misunderstanding of particularb) Understandingc) Synthetic cognitiond) abstract for concrete etc.
He broke with it. The others went on with it, even the most revolutionary. This as I hope you see is dynamite. But we have on our side truth. That is much. Also we have the points he made, so joyfully, the criticism of the past, the consciousness that he had discovered new things and was dropping off the old wrong ones in which he had shared.
Always remembering that he had developed his Marxism with the aim of a bourgeois revolution.17
Now let us characterise logically the pre-1914 mistakes. Let us write a study of the Logic that will show the mistakes in abstracto that L was making.
Take one example and in this, in my opinion, is involved the whole of the Logic: The Soviet.18
Pre-1914 they all saw socialism as an organization of economy, etc., etc. In 1917 L saw it as the Soviet, a concrete form in which to build a new state and a new economy. Nobody saw that before. That was concrete. All the rest was bad UPI: Synthetic Understanding, abstract, etc., etc.
Do a profound UPI around that. At least think about it. The Soviet was a new category. The Soviet was concrete, a new an individual, a negation of the particular. Somewhere around there is our problem, our problem, ours.
To write this using material which our enemies will. Doing all the deepest theoretical work around this material, bringing all the logic to bear on this.
Everything must now wait until we meet.
J.
(We are well but just beginning to feel we are here)
P.S. I have no plan for discussion. Everyone brings what he thinks is important or important for him, and our first session will take up these. The general outline I propose is very clear in my mind and can be agreed to, modified or a substitute proposed.
J.
Editor's footnotes
1 R is Raya Dunayevskaya.
2 F. and L. are Freddie and Lyman Paine. The Paine's were early members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency (JFT). They remained with CLR James and Grace Lee (Boggs) after the break-up of the JFT. When James and Lee-Boggs parted ways, they sided with Lee-Boggs.
3The previous but one letter in this correspondence. Titled: 26. August 16, 1949. Lee to James on Hegel's categories of Universal, Particular and Individual.
4 H is Hegel.
5 CLR James is referring to Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks on Hegel's Science of Logic.
6 Private property.
7 private property.
8 Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature, was not completed in Engels's lifetime. It was first published, in Russian and German, in the USSR in 1925. Since then it has provided the reference point for many Marxist understandings of 'Marxist dialectics'. Engels and Marx, however, did not have the same conception of Hegel or of dialectics. See e.g. Terrell Carver's Engels (1981), Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (1984) and other work critiquing the idea that there was one personality 'Marx-Engels'. In Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution, (1981), Dunayevskaya also notes significant differences between Marx and Engels. In particular, she notes significant differences between Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and Marx's Ethnological Notebooks, which Engels used as a source for his book.
9 UPI is an abbreviation of Universal-Particular-Individual. This triadic form is introduced by Hegel in the section of the Science of Logic on the Doctrine of the Notion.
10Maximillien Robespierre (1758-1794) was the leader of the left Jacobins and head of the French revolutionary government, 1793-94. On 27th July 1794 (9th Thermidor in the new calendar created by the new government), the revolutionary Jacobin government was overthrown and Robespierre and his supporters executed. This event marked the end of the Terror, the end of the second, revolutionary phase of the Revolution, and the beginning of the third, reactionary phase culminating on 19th November 1799 (18th Brumaire) with the seizure of power by Napoleon Bonaparte, who proclaimed himself Emperor.
11 James is drawing a contrast between Lenin's writing on dialectic before he read and took notes on Hegel's Logic and after his reading of Hegel. The 'Lenin on Marxism 1914' comment appears to be a reference to Lenin's essay 'The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism', which was published in March 1913. The 'L on Dialectic 1915' comment could be a reference to Lenin's Notebooks on Hegel, or to Lenin's essay 'Karl Marx', (1915), written for the Granat Encyclopaedia.
12 Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938) was a leading Bolshevik. Lenin, in his Last Testament, (1922/23), described Bukharin as: "not only the most valuable and biggest theoretician of the party, but also may legitimately be considered the favorite of the whole party; but his theoretical views can only with the very greatest doubt be regarded as fully Marxian, for there is something scholastic in him (he never has learned, and I think never fully understood the dialectic)." The Johnson-Forest Tendency concurred with Lenin's assessment of Bukharin as economistic. See also letters: 8. May 27, 1949. Discussion notes: James and Lee; 14. June 24, 1949. James to Dunayevskaya on the article for Marcuse - notes; 15. June 28, 1949. James to Dunayevskaya on the article for Marcuse - notes (continued); 17. July 2, 1949. James to Lee on abstractions in Lenin's thought; 18. Lee to James on abstract and concrete in Lenin; 21. July 9, 1949. Lee to James on Lenin and Bukharin; the Taylor system; 22. July 15, 1949. James to Lee reply to letter on Bukharin; 23. July 20, 1949. Dunayevskaya to James on Lenin 1914-1917.
13 This word is difficult to read on the archived version of the letter. 'tactics' is the editor's best guess at the word James was using.
14 'Section 1' appears to be a reference to the first part of Chapter One of Marx's Capital (Volume 1). That section is titled 'The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value'.
15 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German polymath and co-founder, with Newton, of calculus. In philosophy he vigorously criticised the positions of Descartes, Locke, Newton and Spinoza.
16 The terms 'Being-in-Self', 'Being into Essence' and, (in the subsequent paragraph), 'Synthetic Cognition' and 'Understanding' are references to sections of Hegel's Science of Logic.
17 Prior to February 1917 the assumption amongst socialists, particularly amongst Marxists of the Second (Socialist) International, was that workers revolution would happen in advanced industrial countries first. The majority view in Russia, even amongst Bolsheviks in October 1917, was that Russia needed a bourgeois revolution first and only after capitalist industry and liberal democracy were fully fledged would it be possible to move to a socialist society. Lenin was instrumental in challenging the conventional view. In a reversal of the thinking which dominated Marxists across the world, he argued that workers in Russia had matured rapidly in their class consciousness and were now in advance of workers in more industrially developed countries. Russian workers were now the example that could inspire workers in western Europe to take power into their own hands. Compare, for example, Lenin's arguments in Two Tactics of Social Democracy, (1905) and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, (1918).
18 'The Soviet' is a reference to the soviets (workers councils) established by workers and peasants in Russia in 1917. The British left-wing journalist, Henry Noel Brailsford (1873-1958), wrote a book length study of the Soviets, How the Soviets Work, (1927). An article on the Soviets by the American journalist, John Reed (1887-1920), is available on the Marxist Internet Archive, 'Soviets in Action', (1918).