Kevin Anderson - On Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory

8/3/2019 Kevin Anderson - On Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory

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On Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory: A Critical Appreciation of Herbert Marcuse's Reasonand Revolution, Fifty Years LaterAuthor(s): Kevin AndersonSource: Sociological Theory, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Nov., 1993), pp. 243-267Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/201970Accessed: 14/12/2010 11:54

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On Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory:A CriticalAppreciationof Herbert Marcuse's Reason and Revolution,FiftyYearsLater*KEVINANDERSON

Northern Illinois UniversityMarcuse's Reason and Revolution was thefirst Hegelian Marxist text to appear inEnglish, thefirst systematicstudyof Hegel by a Marxist,and thefirst work in Englishto discuss theyoungMarxseriously.It introducedHegelianand Marxistconceptssuchas alienation, subjectivity,negativity,and theFrankfurtSchool's critiqueofpositivismto a wide audience in the United States. When he book irst appeared,it was attackedsharply from the standpointof empiricismand positivism by Sidney Hook, amongothers. Since 1960, new critiquesof Marcuse's book have been developedfromvaryingperspectives, especially by the "scientific"MarxistLucio Colletti, the critical theoristDouglas Kellner, and the Marxist humanistRaya Dunayevskaya.From the postmod-ernistcamp, Jacques Derrida has discussedsome of the same themesas didMarcuse,especially around the issues of negativityand difference.It is argued, however, thatDerrida's reading of Hegel is moreproblematic hanMarcuse's, especiallywithregardto theproject of constructinga critical social theory.

Hegel and Hegelianism have lurked in the background of sociological theory from thevery beginning of the sociological enterprise. In Capital, Marx wrote in praise of "theHegelian 'contradiction,' which is the source of all dialectic" ([1867-75] 1976, p. 744).In a later postscript to the same text he stated "My dialectical method is, in its foundations,not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly opposite to it" ([1867-75] 1976, p. 102).The generation of Marxist theorists who followed, and who were the contemporaries ofWeber and Durkheim, tended to favor the second type of statement over the first, in partbecause they had not read the 1844 Manuscripts; these were published only in 1927 (inRussian) and then in 1932 (in German). As the French sociologist Lucien Goldmann(1976) writes, the Marxist attitude toward Hegel did not begin to change until after WorldWar I:

. . . Hegelian categories are all recovered in Marxism; and it is no accident that theywere reactualized in Europe around, say, the years 1917-23: first by Lenin in thePhilosophic Notebooks, secondly by Lukacs in History and Class Consciousness, andthirdly, I believe, somewhat later in Gramsci's concretely philosophical analyses. Fur-thermore it is not accidental that in the interim, with Mehring, Plekhanov, Kautsky,Bernstein, and even Lenin at the time he wrote Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,Marxism was just as positivistic as academic science (pp. 112-13).

* Earlier and much-abbreviated ersionsof this paperwere presentedat the annualmeetingof the AmericanSociological Associationheld in Pittsburghn 1992 and at the Socialist ScholarsConferenceheld in New Yorkin 1991. I would like to thankJanetAfary, RobertAntonio, Anna Maillow, and severalanonymousreviewersfor helpfulcomments and criticisms of earlierdrafts.Douglas Kellnergenerously providednot only extensivecriticismsof earlierdrafts,but also valuablesourcematerialon discussions of Marcuse'swork. I am of courseresponsible or any deficiencies in this article.Sociological Theory 11:3 November 1993? AmericanSociological Association. 1722 N StreetNW, Washington,DC 20036


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Thus Marx's debt to Hegel was mutednearly to the point of invisibilityby the leadingMarxisttheorists of the turnof the century.During this period the non-Marxistfounders of sociology also were ratherhostile toHegel, and seemed to regardany lingeringinfluenceof Hegelianismas essentiallyperni-cious to sociologicaltheory.This was certainly rueof Durkheim.In theyearsimmediatelyprecedingthe publicationof Durkheim'sSuicide, GeorgesNoel's majorstudy of Hegel,which included a sharpattackon positivism, was published n the Revue de me'taphysiqueet de morale, a journaldevoted both to philosophyandsociology, andin whichDurkheimalso publishedarticles. In 1897 Noel's La Logiquede Hegel was issued as a book by theprestigiousParispublishinghouse of Felix Alcan, who also publishedSuicidein thatyear(Durkheim [1897] 1951; Noel 1897). AlthoughDurkheimnever publisheda critiqueofHegel, his statementin the preface to Suicide that "real laws are discoverable whichdemonstratehe possibilityof science better thanany dialecticalargument"[1897] 1951,p. 37) probably s directedat least in partagainstthe type of HegelianismrepresentedbyNoel. In Durkheim's view, Hegelianism contained an outdated,prescientific theory ofsociety. Certainly t is evident today thatpositivismwould eclipse Hegelianism n Frenchsocial thoughtfor many years, but in 1897 Durkheimcould have had no way of knowingthatHegel's perniciousshadowwas soon to be banishedto the sidelines.Weber seems to have regardedHegel with greaterrespect,butevidentlymore as a rivalthan as a co-thinker.Donald N. Levine (1985, p. 150) writesof "Weber'ssilent homageto and acute consciousness of Hegel as his majorintellectualantagonist"n referring oan unpublished1909 letter in which Weber wrote "Two ways of treating things standopen: Hegel's or ours"(citedin Bruun1972, p. 39). During hisperiodDilthey's influentialbook JugendgeschichteHegels ([1905] 1959) helped to begin a Hegel revival in centralEurope. Three decades later, for example, Dilthey's work was cited frequentlyin Mar-cuse's first book on Hegel (Marcuse[1932a] 1987).In the United States at least since the 1960s, it has become commonplaceto refer toHegelianMarxismand to regardthe Hegel-Marxrelationshipas a key point of debateinsocial theory. Such was not the case in 1941, however, when Marcuse's Reason andRevolution:Hegel and the Rise of Social Theorywas firstpublished.Below I proposetoassess the importanceand subsequent nfluenceof Marcuse'spathbreaking ook, a half-centuryafterits publication.

THEORIGINALITYOF REASONAND REVOLUTIONReason and Revolutionholds the importantdistinctionof being the firstHegelianMarxistbook to appearin English. In addition, it was the first systematic published analysis ofHegel's major works from a Marxist standpoint n any language, precedingby severalyears those by Georg Lukacs ([1948] 1975) and ErnstBloch ([1949] 1962). To this dayReason and Revolutionstandsas one of the majorMarxist treatmentsof Hegel. It viewsMarx's work as groundedin Hegel's concept of dialectic. Theoretically,Marx's work ispresentednot only as a critiqueof capitalism,butalso, at least implicitly,as the foundationfor a critique of Stalinist Communism.Marcuse's book contains a critical analysis ofHegel's major works, such as the Phenomenologyof Mind, the Science of Logic, thePhilosophy of History, and the Philosophy of Right; it also includes the first serioustreatment n English of Marx's Economic and PhilosophicalManuscriptsof 1844. ThisHegelian-Marxianheritageis counterposed o what Marcuseconsideredto be the essen-tially conservativeworldviewof positivism, which teachespeople "toview and studythephenomenaof their world as neutralobjects governed by universallyvalid laws" (1941,p. 326).

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MARCUSE ON HEGELAND SOCIALTHEORYIn the preface to the originaledition, Marcuse(1941, p. vii) arguesthat "the rise ofFascism calls for a reinterpretationf Hegel's philosophy."One major hemeof his work,he writes, is that it "will demonstratethat Hegel's basic concepts are hostile to thetendencies that have led into Fascist theoryandpractice" p. vii). A secondmajorthemeis Hegel's link to Marx. Marcusewrites that he "tried o go beyondmere restatement"nhis "surveyof the structureof Hegel's system," in order to connect it "particularlywiththe Marxian heory" (p. vii). A thirdtheme, he continues, is the critiqueof positivism, atheory "which undertookto subordinatereason to the authorityof established fact."Positivismcounterposes tself to the negativeand criticalcharacterof Hegel's dialecticalconceptof reason, whereby Hegel's "criticaland rationalstandards, speciallyhis dialec-tics, had to come into conflictwith the prevailingsocial reality" p. vii).Marcuse locates Hegel's thoughtas partof the heritageof the Enlightenment onceptof reason and the French Revolution: "Reasonpresupposes reedom,the power to act in

accordance with knowledge of the truth, the power to shape reality in line with itspotentialities" 1941, p. 9). By drawing "history nto philosophy,"Hegel culminatesthejourney of Germanidealism;at the same time, however, this historicaldimension ulti-mately"shatters he idealisticframework"1941, p. 16) of thattradition.Hegel's critiqueof empiricismis not entirely new; it is part of the origin of Germanidealism, which,Marcusewrites, "rescuedphilosophy romthe attackof Britishempiricism"1941, p. 16).Kantbeganthecounterattackn empiricism,butaccording o Hegel the"skeptical lementof Kant'sphilosophy" n the end vitiates "hisattempt o rescue reason from the empiricistonslaught" 1941, p. 23). Whereasphilosophers"fromHume to the present-day ogicalpositivists"have made recourseto "the ultimateauthorityof the fact,"Hegel believes that"the facts themselves have no authority" 1941, p. 27) until they are subjectedto thecritiqueof dialecticalreason.Before taking up Hegel's first major work, the Phenomenologyof Mind, Marcusesurveys some of his largely unpublishedearlierwritingsin the first discussion of thosewritings n English.He singlesout the radicalismof Hegel's earlywritingson industrialismand labor, in which the attack on alienationand exploitationis scathing. In Marcuse'sview, "the tone and pathosof the descriptionspoint strikinglyto Marx's Capital"whenHegel writes"Thefacultiesof the individualareinfinitelyrestricted,and the consciousnessof the factory workeris reducedto the lowest level of dullness"(1941, p. 79). At thesame time, writesMarcuse,the very manuscripthatdevelopedthis critiqueof capitalismbreaksoff, as if Hegel "was terrifiedby what his analysisof the commodity-producingsociety disclosed"(1941, p. 79). Marcusestates thataccording o Hegel the "wildanimal"which is capitalistsociety and its class contradictions"mustbe curbed,andsucha processrequires he organizationof a strongstate" 1941, p. 79). Marcusedevelopsthis argumentfurtherwhen he takes up the Philosophy of Right.In his discussionof Hegel's Phenomenology,Marcusenotes Hegel's severe critiqueofthe results of Enlightenmentreasonin the French Revolution:"Hegel saw that the resultof the FrenchRevolutionwas not the realizationof freedom,but the establishmentof anew despotism"(1941, p. 91). The centraltheme of the Phenomenology,as it movesfromsense awareness hroughReasonto AbsoluteKnowledge,is thatthe "world n realityis not as it appears,but as it is comprehendedby philosophy"(1941, p. 93). Further,according o Hegel, "Knowledgebegins whenphilosophydestroysthe experienceof dailylife." The latter is only "thestartingpoint of the search for truth" 1941, p. 103), whichis based ultimately on a critique of commonsense notions of reality. Thus Marcuseidentifiesstronglywith the specificallyHegelian critiqueof commonsenseexperience, aposition for which he has been criticizedharshlyas a mystical idealist (as we shall seelater)by moreorthodox Marxisttheoristssuch as Lucio Colletti.

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Marcuse'sinterpretation f Hegel contains a radicalconcept of the subject. The "firstthree sections of the Phenomenologyare a critique of positivism and, even more, of'reification',"he writes (1941, p. 112). This is the case because "commonsense andtraditionalscientific thought"are not subject-centered: there s, in the last analysis, notruth that does not essentially concern the living subject"(1941, p. 113, author'sem-phasis). Marcuse links all of this interpretationo Marx's thought when he discussesHegel's conceptof labor n lightof Marx's treatment f thePhenomenologyn his "Critiqueof the HegelianDialectic"in the 1844 Manuscripts.There,writesMarcuse,Marx"caughtthe critical impactof Hegel's analysis":The greatnessof thatwork he saw in the fact thatHegel conceived he "self-creation"of man(that s, thecreationof a reasonableocial order hroughman'sownfreeaction)as the processof "reification"nd its "negation,"n short,thathe grasped he "natureof labor"and saw manto be "theresultof his labor" 1941, p. 115).

Eventually,however, Hegel's idealism seems to overtake both historyand subjectivity.Marcusewrites that at the end of the Phenomenology, n the chapteron AbsoluteKnowl-edge, "pure houghtagainseems to swallow up living freedom" 1941, p. 120). Marcuse,however, questionswhether"thissolution was Hegel's last word"(1941, p. 120).Marcuse'streatment f Hegel's Scienceof Logicin ReasonandRevolutions particularlyoriginalandprobing.It includesan interestingdiscussionof the famousbeginningsectionof the Science of Logic on Being, Nothing, andBecoming;this section, contendedLukacsin History and Class Consciousness ([1923] 1971, p. 170), "contained he whole of hisphilosophy."This section of the Science of Logic also was importanto Jean-PaulSartre,whose Being and Nothingnessappeared wo yearsafter Reasonand Revolution. Marcuseargues that the "togethernessof being and nothing"in Hegel's chapterallows him "todemonstrate he negativecharacterof reality" 1941, p. 130), and to thusdevelopa criticalstance towardthe social world.In contrast to contemporaryreligious interpretations thatthe world was a finite onebecause it was a created world and that its negativityreferred o its sinfulness"(1941,p. 136), Hegel's interpretationof the problem of infinity and finitude is critical andrevolutionary.Whereasreligious thoughtcounterposesa human,finiteworld to a religious,infiniteworld, Marcusewrites that for Hegel "[t]hereare not two worlds, the finite andthe infinite," but "one world, in which finitethingsattain heirself-determinationhroughperishing" 1941, p. 139). Marcuselinks this notionto Marx:

Marx ater laid down the historical aw thata social systemcan set free its productiveforcesonlyby perishingandpassing nto anotherormof socialorganization.Hegelsawthis law of historyoperativen all being(1941, p. 137).Thus, accordingto Marcuse, Hegel's concept of infinityis rootedin the worldof being,wherewhen "a finite thing 'perishes"'it actually develops "its truepotentialities"1941,p. 137) by moving to a higherstage througha process of negatingwhat existed before.Further, his dialecticalconcept underliesone of the centralelementsof Marx'seconomictheory.Especiallyin his discussionof the Scienceof Logic, Marcuse ocuses on Hegel's conceptof the "negationof the negation."In Marcuse'sview, negativityand the negationof thenegationare the core of the dialectic for bothHegel andMarx(Bernstein1988). Marcusewrites (1941, p. 26) that "Hegel's philosophy is indeed what the subsequentreactiontermedit, a negative philosophy."He states further(1941, p. 27) that this is the case



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MARCUSE ON HEGELAND SOCIAL THEORYbecause to Hegel, "the facts that appear o common sense" as the truth"are n realitythenegationof truth"and that "truthcan only be establishedby their destruction."RobertPippindiscusses this emphasison negativityin Reason andRevolution:

Mostclearly,whatMarcusewantsto preserveanddefend n Hegel is the centralplacegiven in his systemto "negativity,"he "power"of thoughtand action to rejectandtransformny putative"positive"eality,andtheimpossibilityf understandingnysuchrealityexcept in relation o thispossibility.Accordingly,n ReasonandRevolution,heagainrejects n Hegelall thoseaspectsof his thought hattendto suppress r overcomethisnegatingpotential . . (1988, p. 82).Pippin implies further hat this rejectionis due at least in partto Heidegger's influence,as seen in Marcuse's first book on Hegel ([1932a] 1987), even though Heidegger, withwhom Marcuse had brokenby then because of Heidegger'sties to Nazism, is not men-tioned in the text of Reason and Revolution. The only writingby Heidegger to whichMarcuserefers even in the bibliography s a 1933 workon the Germanuniversity,whichMarcuse(1941, p. 428) lists pointedlyunderthe heading"PhilosophyunderFascism andNationalSocialism." Thus, if a Heideggerian nfluenceis present, it is subterranean ndimplicit.Probably more importantwith regard to the concept of negativity in Reason andRevolution s the work to which Marcusedoes referexplicitly there, the "Critiqueof theHegelian Dialectic" from Marx's 1844 Manuscripts. ApparentlyMarcuseread this textonly after he had completedhis earlier"Heideggerian"Hegel book ([1932a] 1987; alsosee Kellner 1984). He wrote a lengthyarticleon the 1844 Manuscripts mmediatelyafterthey appeared or the first time in German n 1932. There, in the conclusion, he quotesthe following passage from the young Marx'scritiqueof Hegel:

The outstandingachievementof Hegel's Phenomenology nd of its final result, thedialecticof negativity s themovingand creativeprinciple-is thusthatHegelconceivesthe self-creationof the humanbeing [des Menschen]as a process . . . (Marx[1844]1968,p. 574;emphasisadded).In his essay on the young Marx, Marcuse([1932b] 1973, p. 46) alreadycites this pointas illustrating"thepositive meaningof negation."A decadelater,in Reason andRevolution 1941, p. 282), Marcuse akesup thispassageagain, but now he spells out more explicitly the centrality o Marx of Hegel's conceptofnegativity. In this text, he argues, lie "the origins of the Marxian dialectic." Marcusewritesfurther:"ForMarx,as forHegel, the dialectic takes noteof thefact thatthe negationinherent n reality is 'the moving and creativeprinciple.'The dialectic is the dialecticofnegativity."Negativity is important o Marxin partbecause"[e]conomicrealitiesexhibittheir own inherentnegativity."Marcuse'sstress on Hegel's conceptof negativityis newand original. It disagrees with the interpretations f more conservativeHegel scholars,who tend instead to stresscategoriessuch as reconciliationand mediation. It also differs,however, from the emphasis on the category of totality in Lukaics'sHistory and ClassConsciousness, writtenbefore Marx's 1844 discussion of Hegel's concept of negativityas "themoving andcreativeprinciple"had been published n any language.Even after the 1844 Manuscriptswere published, however, official Soviet Marxistsgenerallywere hostile to any emphasison the concept of negation, viewing it as a traceof idealisticHegelianism.In the 1950s, forexample,theSoviet ideologistV. A. Karpushin(cited in Dunayevskaya[1958] 1988, p. 62) triedto banish the issue of negativityfrom

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Marxism;in a discussion of the ManuscriptsKarpushinarguedthat Marx opposed thenotion of "some kind of negativitywhich allegedly inherentlyclings to things, as Hegelput it."Marcuse's discussion of Hegel's Phenomenologyconcentratesmainly on the earlychaptersof that work. In his discussion of the Science of Logic, he follows Hegel's textfrom the Doctrine of Being to the Doctrine of Essence, the middlebook of the Scienceof Logic. There Marcuse discusses what he terms Hegel's concept of "realpossibility"(1941, p. 151). He writes thatin Hegel's conceptof essence, the "possibleandthe actualare in a dialectical relation"(1941, p. 150). This idea leads Marcuse, as a Marxist, towrite that accordingto Hegel "a new [social] system is really possible if the conditionsfor it are presentin the old" (1941, p. 152).Marcuse discusses more briefly the third and final book of Hegel's Science of Logic,the Doctrine of the Notion or concept, but this discussionis notablefor its ratherunusualfocus on "aroughinterpretationf its closing paragraphs"1941, p. 161). Marcusedevotesseven pages to these closing paragraphs,statingthat "Hegel's chapteron the AbsoluteIdeagives us a finalcomprehensivedemonstration f dialecticmethod,"and thateven theAbsolute Idea "is dialecticalthoughtandthuscontains its negation; t is not a harmoniousand stableform but a process of unificationof opposites"(1941, p. 165).At the same time, however, Marcuse writes that in its closing paragraphs"Hegel'sLogic resumes the metaphysicaltraditionof Westernphilosophy,a traditionthat it hadabandonedn so many of its aspects"(1941, p. 166). This is because "thebasic conceptsof idealism reflecta social separationof the intellectualspherefromthe sphereof materialproduction...." Such a separationexists in a situationwhere"a 'leisure class' becamethe guardianof the idea by virtueof the fact that it was not compelled to work for thematerialreproductionof society" (1941, p. 163). Marcuse holds that although Hegelattemptsto go beyond this traditional ype of idealism, he is ultimatelyunsuccessful.Accordingto Marcuse, then, Hegel's Absolute Idea moves out of historyand negativityand toward a purely ontological position. He also points to what he considers to be thetheological aspects of the Absolute Idea, as "the Christiantradition,in which Hegel'sphilosophywas deeplyrooted,asserts ts right" 1941, p. 167). In this connectionMarcusequotesa passage in which Hegel assertsthat his concept of logic "showsforth God as heis in his eternal essence" (1941, p. 167). Yet this passage which Marcusecites is notfrom the conclusion, but from the introduction, o the Science of Logic. Very few directreferencesto God or religioncan be found in the Absolute Idea chapterof the Science ofLogic, as noted by Lenin, an earlierMarxistreader:

It is noteworthy hat the whole chapteron the "Absolute dea"scarcely says a wordabout God . . . it contains almost nothing that is specifically idealism, but has for itsmainsubject he dialecticalmethod [1914-15] 1961, p. 234).In a somewhatsimilarvein, but not moving as far as Lenin in rejectingreligious rootsfor Hegel's AbsoluteIdea, MarcusenonethelessregardsHegel's Absolute Idea as seekingto "prove its freedom by freely releasing itself into otherness, that is, nature"(1941,p. 167). In this sense he seems to view the conclusionof the Science of Logic as less ofa closure than the end of the Phenomenology.In the text of Hegel's Science of Logic, in fact, Hegel writes in the last paragraphhatthe Idea engages in a process wherebyit "freelyreleases itself" in partin a relationshipto Nature(Hegel [1831] 1969, p. 843). To Marcuse his statement hows the "rationalistictendencies"(1941, p. 167) in Hegel's philosophy,even where Marcusesees (at least tosome degree) a move to theology as well. Throughthis free release into Nature, Hegel

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MARCUSE ON HEGELAND SOCIALTHEORYhas made a transition o the worldof materialreality,whichtakes us eventuallyto humanpraxis and history. Marcuse writes that Nature, for Hegel, is the transitionto history,where the "identityof subject and object" is "attained" 1941, p. 168). This transitionallows Marcuse o move from the discussionof the AbsoluteIdea at the end of the Scienceof Logic to Hegel's political philosophy.He skips over the way in which Hegel, in theclosing paragraphof the Science of Logic, points not only to Nature but also to Spirit(Mind), writing that the Notion "completes its self-liberationin the science of Spirit(Mind)"(Hegel [1831] 1969, p. 844). I read Hegel here as outliningthe whole of hisphilosophicalsystem. This system, in the form of the Encyclopedia of the PhilosophicalSciences, would include three books: the ShorterLogic (a more popularizedversion ofthe Science of Logic), the Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Mind (Spirit).Thus he makes a transition romLogic to Natureand thento Mind(Spirit).Marcusedoesnot take up the latter two partsof Hegel's Encyclopedia.Fourdecades earlier,Noel addressedsomewhatdifferentlythe questionof the place ofLogic in Hegel's overallphilosophy.In a remark hat seems to offer a critiquebefore thefact of Marcuse's position, Noel (1897, p. 129), whose work is listed in Marcuse'sbibliography,wrote "To treatNature in itself, abstracted rom Spirit(Mind), is that notan implicitreturnto the most naive realism?"Lenin ([1914-15] 1961, p. 321) attackedNoel as "an idealist and a shallow one" for this particularpassage. I believe, however,thatMarcuse's avoidanceof Hegel's categoryof Spirit(Mind)in the AbsoluteIdeachapterof the Science of Logic seems to rob social theoryof a key Hegelian category,one whichindeedhelps us to critiquenaive realism.This point is importantbecause, as we shall see below, critics of Marcusesuch as PaulTillich, KarlL6with, KarelKosik, and Raya Dunayevskayahave pointedout in differentways that Marcuse, in seeking to portray he transition rom Hegel to Marxas one fromphilosophyto social theory, fails to discuss some of the most idealistic texts in Hegel'swork, such as his treatmentof Mind, religion, and aesthetics. Marcuse'soverlookingofthe more idealistic transitionfrom Logic to Mind exemplifies the procedure n Reasonand Revolution thatthese critics of Marcuse have singled out.

Resuminga step-by-stepdiscussionof Marcuse'stext, we see that Marcusedoes movefromHegel's Science ofLogic to a discussionof hispoliticalphilosophy.Inthisdiscussion,Marcuse criticizes Hegel's political philosophy and his philosophy of history, and heregardsHegel's concept of negationof the negation,rather hanHegel's specificwritingson history and politics, as the principallink to Marx. According to Marcuse, Hegel'sappointmento the leadingchairin philosophyat the Universityof Berlin in 1817 marked"the end of his philosophical development"at the very time when he became "thephilosophicaldictatorof Germany"as the "so-called official philosopherof the Prussianstate"(1941, p. 169). In this periodHegel composedhis Philosophy of Right, a workthatexpresses "the underlying identity of social and economic relations"of "middle classsociety" (1941, p. 172). Thus Hegel wanted a powerfulbureauracy o create a strongerfoundation for the new social order"thanthe interestsof relativelysmall providerscanprovide"(1941, p. 176). Even so, writesMarcuse,Hegel's determinedoppositionto J.F.Fries's antigovernmentGerman youth movement must be seen in the context of thatmovement's anti-Semitismand concern with "the Teutonicrace alone" (1941, p. 179);Marcuseregards his movementas a precursorof fascism. At the sametime, Hegel's statewas to be "governed by the standardsof criticalreason and universallyvalid laws" andthus was "a weapon againstreaction" 1941, p. 180).In workingout the analysisof social relations,however,Hegel's philosophyof the state"loses its critical content and comes to serve as a metaphysical ustificationof privateproperty"1941, p. 189). Accordingto Marcuse,this is thecase becausethe "authoritarian

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trend that appearsin Hegel's political philosophyis made necessary by the antagonisticstructure f civil society"(1941, p. 202) a societydivided intoclasses. In Hegel's schema,threeinstitutions-the police, the corporations,and the state itself-are to help alleviateand reconcile class conflict. This philosophy is hardlyradical or even democratic,butratheris bound to the authoritarian nd underdevelopedconditionsof Germanyin the1820s. Marcuse writes that Hegel adopts this view because Hegel believes "philosophycannot ump aheadof history"(1941, p. 215). MarcusecriticizesHegel's cynicism aboutwar andconquestbetween statesas "oppressive" nda formof "authoritarianism"1941,p. 221).This chapteron the Philosophy of Right is crucial for Marcuse's attemptto portrayHegel's philosophy as critical and revolutionary.It has been the targetof many of theattackson the book ever since, in which Marcusewas accused of being too uncritical nhis appropriation f Hegel. Yet as we have seen, Marcuseis scathinglycritical of Hegelat manypoints in this chapter.Morerecently,MacGregor 1984) has attempted o portrayHegel's Philosophy of Right as an essentially leftist work that has a strong affinity toMarx'sthought,butMacGregor's tatistreadingof Marx,whichrelies on thatof Althusser,diverges sharplyfrom Marcuse'ssubject-centered nterpretation.Before addressingMarx, Marcuse includes a briefer but no less critical discussion ofHegel's Philosophyof History. Once he comes to Marx,Marcusewrites that"[t]hecriticaltendencies of the Hegelian philosophy . . . were taken over by, and continued in, theMarxian social theory"(1941, p. 252). To Marcuse, however, this does not mean thatMarx'searly writingsareprimarilyphilosophical.Rather,"[t]heyexpressthe negationofphilosophy, though they still do so in philosophical language"(1941, p. 258). In thissense, he writes, the transition rom Hegel to Marx is a move from philosophyto socialtheory.In his discussion of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts,Marcuse concentrateson Marx's dis-cussion of alienation. Many sociological accounts of Marx's concept of alienation havefocusedon anelaborationof Marx's four forms of alienated abor:1) workersare alienatedfromthe productsof theirlabor;2) the workprocessitself lackscreativity;3) workersarealienated rom themselvesas well as fromotherhumanbeings;and4) workersarealienatedfrom their species being and from nature. This schematicelaboration,valuableas it maybe in certaincontexts, nonethelessfixes Marx'sconceptof alienated aboras a sociologicaldescriptionrootedin an economic relationship.

Marcuse focuses more closely on the underlyingdialectical frameworkof Marx'sargument,and on the link between the essay "AlienatedLabor" and the more generalstatementsmade in the same Manuscripts. (See especially Marx's most fundamentalconcluding essay, "Critiqueof the Hegelian Dialectic.") In his 1932 analysis of thoseessays, Marcuse stresses that all of Marx's economic categoriesare also philosophical.He notes the statementin the essay "AlienatedLabor"that privatepropertyis not thebasisof alienated abor,but rather he result.Althoughhe calls this statementa seemingly"idealisticdistortion"of economic facts, Marcuse([1932b] 1973, p. 12) concludes that itshows Marx's sociological depth.This issue is importantbecause the central feature of capitalismthen becomes not apropertybut a social relationship.Thereforethe move fromprivateto collective propertyrelationsalone, as (for example)understatistCommunism,does not remove the problemof alienatedlabor and may even intensify it. Now, in Reason and Revolution,Marcusewrites "Marxviews the abolitionof private propertyentirelyas a means for the abolitionof alienatedlabor,andnot as an end in itself" (1941, p. 282).Further, n an implicitbutvery profoundcritiqueof Stalin'sRussia, Marcuseconcludeson the basis of the writingsof the young Marx that state ownershipof the economy "if



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MARCUSEON HEGELAND SOCIALTHEORYnot utilized for the developmentand gratificationof the free individual . . . will amountsimply to a new form for subjugating ndividuals to a hypostatizeduniversality" 1941,p. 283). Marcuseroots his concept of the liberated ndividualin passages from Marx's1844 text such as the following: "One must above all avoid setting 'the society' up againas an abstractionopposed to the individual.The individual is the social entity"(1941,p. 283). Such an emphasison Marx's notionof the "free individual"was extremelyrarein 1941. This does not mean, however, that Marcusecompletely repudiatedhe resultsofthe 1917 Russian Revolution.Citingthe writingsof the reformist ocial democratEduardBernstein, Marcuse says "The schools of Marxism that abandoned the revolutionaryfoundationsof the Marxian heorywere the samethatoutspokenlyrepudiatedhe Hegelianaspectsof the Marxian heory,especiallythe dialectic" 1941, p. 398). Onthe otherhand,in an apparent eferenceto Lenin's 1914-15 Hegel notebooks,Marcusewritesthat "Lenininsisted on dialectical method to such an extent that he considered it the hallmark ofrevolutionaryMarxism" 1941, p. 401).As Jay (1973, p. 76) argues, Marcusein 1941 places "theontologicalsignificanceoflabor" at the centerof his concept of dialecticalReason, somethingwhich his FrankfurtSchool colleagues Max Horkheimerand Theodor Adomo "were less sure about." Thisidea is evident in Marcuse'sdevelopmentof Marx's concept of a revolutionaryworkingclass:

The revolution equireshematurity f manyforces,butthegreatestamong hem s thesubjectiveorce,namely herevolutionarylass itself. Therealization f freedom equiresthe freerationality f thosewho achieve t (Marcuse1941,p. 319).In this sense, the class is to be armed ntellectuallywith the conceptof dialecticalReasondevelopedby Hegel and Marx. Marcuse'sdiscussionof Marx, however, concludes on amore sanguine note, stressing the persistence of radical theory even in the face of ablockedobjectivesituation:"Theorywill preservethe trutheven if revolutionarypracticedeviates from its properpath. Practice follows the truth,not vice versa"(1941, p. 322).In this passage, which concludeshis discussion of Marx,Marcuse's stance is substantiallysimilarto thatof his FrankfurtSchool colleagues.To Marcuse, positivism representsa theoreticalcounterrevolution gainstthe heritageof Hegel and Marx. He writes (1941, p. 340) thatComte'sattempt o found"anindepen-dent science of sociology" is made at the price of "renouncinghe transcendentpoint ofview of the philosophical critique,"especially the negativeand critical stance towardtheworld foundin Germanphilosophy.Comteviewed himself as focusingon "usefulknowl-edge"-that is, knowledge useful to rulingelites-"instead of negationand destruction"(1941, p. 341). Further:

Rarely n thepasthasanyphilosophyurged tself forwardwith so strongand so overtarecommendationhat it be utilized for the maintenance f prevailingauthority ndfortheprotection f vested interest romanyandall revolutionarynset(1941, p. 345).

The problemis not thatpositivism"excludedreform and change"but rather hatchangewas to takeplace as "partof themachineryof thegivenorder" 1941, p. 348). Throughout,MarcusesharplycontrastsComte's "positivephilosophy"with the "negativephilosophy"not only of Marx, but also of Hegel. He also discusses some conservative Germanpositivists,but he does not connectthis critiqueto contemporary ositivistsor pragmatistsor to the work of othermajor figuressuch as Durkheim.Marcusecritiquespragmatismnsome of his writingsin Germanfor the FrankfurtSchool's own Zeitschrift ir Sozialfor-

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schung(Kellner 1984), but he does not do so in Englishduring hisperiod.This reticencemay have had some connectionwith the precariouspositionof an emigre scholar.Marcuse also defends Hegel against charges, still common even today in the English-speakingworld, thatHegel's thoughtis somehow the forerunner f fascism and totalitar-ianism. MarcusearguesthatNazi ideologists, far fromembracingHegel, regardedhim asone of their chief enemies. The book closes with a quote from Carl Schmitt, whomMarcuse terms "the one serious political theoristof NationalSocialism." Schmitt wrotethat on the day of Hitler's ascent to power, "Hegel, so to speak, died" (1941, p. 419).This statement s importantoday in light of the reneweddiscussionof Schmitt'spoliticaltheory.Marcuse's attack on positivism, along with his defense of Hegel as a revolutionarythinker, subjected his book to severe criticism, especially from the more empiricallyminded American Marxistsand socialists. These scholarsconsiderpragmatismand evenpositivism as having more in common with Marx's thought than with Hegel's. Theseattacks persist today, even while the book has become a classic as a major work ofHegelianMarxism.REVIEWS AND CRITIQUESIN THE 1940sWhen Reason and Revolutionwas first published, the harshestcriticismcame from thepragmatistSidney Hook, then still a memberof the Marxist eft, who went to the troubleof writing two negative reviews. Hook was outragednot only by Marcuse'sdefense ofHegel as critical andrevolutionarybut also by Marcuse'sattackon positivismas essentiallyconservative. In a review in The New Republic,Hook (1941a, p. 91) reproachesMarcusefor not addressingthe ways in which Hegelian logic is opposedto "scientificmethod"-that is, positivism. In his defense of positivism against what he terms "the idealistprinciple"underlyingMarcuse'sapproach,Hook writes that"positivismseeks to discoverby scientific, not dialecticalmethodswhat the facts are"andadvocates"testingour idealsandprinciplesby availablefacts."He objects especiallyto Marcuse'snotion thatpositivismis essentially conservative: "[P]ositivists can be and have been revolutionistsjust asdialecticianscan be and have been reformists,and even stand-patters."He also maintainsthat Hegel's Philosophy of Right provides "a connection between Hegel and NationalSocialism"(1941a, p. 91).

Hook's more academic review for The Living Age concentrates almost entirely onHegel's Philosophy of Right, a work that Marcusediscussedonly briefly.In this review,Hook attacksHegel's "absoluteidealism"as essentially "conservative"and defends em-piricism "as a philosophical attitude"that is "essentially public and critical" (1941b,p. 595). In neither of these reviews does Hook even mentionthe writingsof the youngMarx,or Marcuse's discussion of the Hegel-Marxrelationship.Hook's reviews are morean occasion for attackingHegel than a seriousgrapplingwithanyof Marcuse'sarguments.From anotherquarterof the Americanleft, a less vitriolic but somewhatsimilar dis-cussion was publishedin the Communist-orientedheoretical ournalScience & Society.There the MarxistphilosopherVernonJ. McGill (1942, p. 161) points to the "author'sinterestingargument o demonstratehe Hegelian component n Marx'sphilosophy."Heretoo, however, positivism was defended as scientific and thereforerevolutionary,whileMarcuse'spathbreakingdiscussion of the young Marx was ignored.In a vein similar to Hook's, Erich Franzen's critique in the AmericanSociologicalReview attacks Marcuse for failing to critique Hegel's basic concepts. Franzen alsosuggests that contraryto Marcuse's view, a possible link existed between Hegel andfascism. Franzen's review concludes that Husserland Simmel offer betteralternatives or



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MARCUSEON HEGELAND SOCIAL THEORYsociological theory than Marcuse's "dubiousexpedient"of a "revivificationof Hegel"(Franzen1942, p. 128).Marcuse's book faredmuch better in the pages of the AmericanJournal of Sociology.In a more balanced and more respectfulreview, political theoristGeorge Sabine linkedReason and Revolution to Dilthey's 1905 JugendgeschichteHegels, calling Marcuse'sbook "much the best account of Hegel in English."Sabine also identifiedstronglywithMarcuse's refutation of the notion of a link between Hegel and fascism, stating that"Hegel's philosophy was fundamentallyrationalist, while the philosophy of nationalsocialism is fundamentally rrationalist"Sabine 1942, p. 259). Even Sabine, however,expressed strong disagreemmentwith Marcuse'sattackon positivism.The most curiousfeatureof these and otherearlyreviews by Americanscholarsis thatnot a single one even mentioned the lengthy discussionof Marx's 1844 Manuscripts nReason and Revolution,even thoughthere, for the firsttime, Marcuse introduced o theAmerican ntellectualpublicsuchkey issues as Marx's discussionof alienation.Thattopicdid not receive attention n the United Statesuntil the late 1950s, after the Manuscripts,includingthe essay "AlienatedLabor,"were finally publishedin English, and after thenew popularityof Europeanphilosophiessuch as existentialismhadhelpedto underminethe hegemonyof empiricismand positivismeven amongleft-wing intellectuals.AmongGermanemigrescholars,KarlLowith(whose own importantbookFromHegelto Nietzsche also appeared n 1941) and the theologianPaul Tillich each wrote an inter-esting critiqueof Reason and Revolutionsoon after it appeared.Tillich, writing in theFrankfurtSchool's journalStudies in Philosophyand Social Science (formerlythe Zeit-schrift ur Sozialforschung),singles out Marcuse'semphasison the "negative"characterof Hegel's thoughtas the link betweenHegel and Marx.Tillich views Marcuseas one ofa groupof youngerGermanphilosophers"whosephilosophicaleducationoccurred n theperiod of war and revolution,"a situationthat drew them to Hegel and Marx (1941,p. 476). Despite his overall praisefor the book as a pioneeringstudyof Hegel from theviewpointof criticaltheory,Tillich criticizes Marcusefor not discussing Hegel's writingson religion or aesthetics. AlthoughTillich mainly defends the need for a religious per-spective, there is more to his argument;n some ways this argumentresemblescritiquesof Marcusemade in the 1960s by the MarxisthumanistsKosik andDunayevskaya.Tillichapparentlys referring o the general issue of Hegel's Absolutes andtheirrelationship oreligion, and, at the same time, to Marcuse's stress on Hegel as a political and socialthinker.He writes "Even a critical social theorycannot avoid an 'ultimate' in which itscriticism is rooted because reason itself is rooted therein. Otherwise criticism itself be-comes positivisticandcontingent" 1941, p. 478).A somewhat similarcritiquewas made by Lowith, who knew Marcuse from the daysin the 1920s when they both studiedunderHeidegger.Lowith writes that the "bookgivesin its firstpartan excellent analysisof Hegel's philosophy" 1942a, p. 561), but he alsotakesReason and Revolutionto task for downplayingthe religiousandnonrevolutionaryaspectsof Hegel's work. Takingissue with Marcuse's stresson categoriessuch as nega-tivity,Lowithwrites further hatHegel is primarilya philosopherof "progressivemediationand reconciliation."He finds fault with what he terms Marcuse's one-sided stress on"criticismof the given state of affairs" (1942a, p. 562) in his treatment of Hegel'sphilosophyas a critiqueof fascism. This review was publishedtogetherwith Marcuse'sresponseandLowith's rejoinder 1942b). Marcuse(1942, p. 565) writes in responsethatLowith's statementaboutHegel on "progressivemediationand reconciliation" hows that"he apparentlyconfuses Hegel's dialecticwith a shallow philosophyof progress."As tohis alleged politicalizationof Hegel's thought,Marcusereplies that "althoughLowith isa good student of the development from Hegel to Marx," unfortunatelyhe "deems it

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incompatiblewith the dignity of philosophyto take sides in the greathistoricalstrugglesof our time"(1942, p. 564).

MARCUSE'S 1954 EPILOGUEAND 1960 PREFACEMany writersin the critical theorytraditionhave tendedto downplaythe importanceofReason and Revolution,even in Marcuse'sown work. Yet as an indicationof its impor-tance to Marcusehimself, it is the only one of his worksto which he added new materialnot once but twice: in 1954 and again in 1960. The new material hat Marcuse addedtoReasonand Revolution in the 1954 and the 1960 editionsalso illustrates he evolution ofhis thoughton Hegel, Marx,anddialectics. In the 1954 edition,Marcuseaddsanepiloguethatbegins on a far moreresignedand morepessimisticnote than does the 1941 text:

The defeatof Fascism andNationalSocialismhas not arrestedhe trend oward otali-tarianism.Freedom s on the retreat-in therealmof thought swell as inthatof society.Neitherthe Hegeliannor the Marxian dea of Reasonhave come closerto realization(Marcuse1954, p. 433).Such is the case, says Marcuse, because "late industrialcivilization" has been able totransform he conditions and mentaloutlookof the workingclass, enablingit to "absorbits negativity" 1954, p. 437). This is truenot only in the West but also in the East, where"the Soviet stategrew into a highlyrationalizedand industrializedociety"(1954, p. 439).In 1941 dialectical reasonseemed to have a chance to appearas the revolutionaryphilos-ophy guiding working-classaction towarda practicallypossible transcendenceof aliena-tion. To Marcusein 1954, however, such aspirationsareutopian:"The idea of a differentform of Reason and Freedom,envisionedby dialectical idealismas well as materialism,appearsagain as Utopia"(1954, p. 439). Yet he concludes thateven in a utopianform,dialecticalconcepts such as reason and freedomremaina distantpossibility;as a result,the established orces in society propagandize ndlessly against hevery ideaof liberation.Marcuse's more importantpreface to the 1960 edition, "A Note on the Dialectic,"develops furthersome of the conceptshe introduced n the 1954 preface.Here, however,he focuses moreclosely on the dialecticproper hanon social and economicdevelopmentsafter 1945. Marcuse speaks of the "powerof negative thinking,"as seen in Hegel andMarx, as "in dangerof being obliterated" 1960, p. vii). Dialectical reason is "alien tothe whole establisheduniverseof discourseand action"(1960, p. vii). Hegel's thoughtasa dialecticof negativitycritiques heexistingworld on the basisof a "principle f freedom"andends by relegatingthatfreedom"to the realm of pure thought,to the AbsoluteIdea"(1960, p. ix). According to Hegel, this impasse leads dialectical thought "to becomehistoricalanalysis."Buthow to do that n 1960, asksMarcuse,when thepowerof negativethoughthas been practicallyobliterated?Negativity, virtuallyabolishedfrom philosophyand social theory because of the dominationof positivist and empiricist thought, can befound elsewhere: in "poetic language"and "avant-gardeiterature" 1960, p. x). Theseforms help to move us towardwhat Marcuseterms a "GreatRefusal"(1960, p. x) ofindustrial nd technocratic ociety, a pointhe illustratesby quotingfromMallarme,Valery,and otherFrenchpoets.This point leads Marcuseaway from Hegel's concept of dialecticalreason, a conceptthat was one of the centralthreads n Reason and Revolution:

I believe it is the idea of Reasonitself which is the undialectical lementin Hegel'sphilosophy.This idea of Reasoncomprehendsverything ndultimately bsolvesevery-



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MARCUSEON HEGELAND SOCIALTHEORYthing,because t has its placeand function n the whole. ... It mayeven be justifiableto defineReason n termswhich includeslavery, heInquisition, hildlabor,concentra-tioncamps,gas chambers,and nuclearpreparedness1960, p. xii).

Reasontherefore s "a partrather han the whole."Marx'scriticalappropriationf Hegel, says Marcuse,stemmedfrom"arecognition hatthe established forms of life were reachingthe stage of their historicalnegation"(1960,p. xiii). Unfortunately,however,Those socialgroupswhichdialecticalheory dentified stheforcesof negation reeitherdefeatedorreconciledwith the established ystem.Beforethepowerof thegivenfacts,thepowerof negative hinking tandscondemned1960, p. xiv).

Hegel's conceptof totalityis true andyet, atthe sametime, nottruebecause"[n]omethodcan claim a monopoly of cognition"(1960, p. xiv). Therefore here aretwo poles aroundwhichwe can thinka dialecticalnegationof theexisting society:"'The whole is the truth,'and 'the whole is false"' (1960, p. xiv).Althoughthe language is abstract,the message seems to be twofold: 1) The workersare no longera revolutionaryclass, as Marxhadconcluded; hus much of his concept ofdialectic is called into question. 2) The Hegelianconceptof the unfoldingof freedomasdialecticalReason has been blocked increasinglyas well because of the pervasivenessoftechnological rationality n modem society. In Marcuse'sview, WesternReason has beenused to create mass destructionand genocide; thus, it, too, must be questioned. Thecritiqueof society to be found in avant-garde rtmight ultimatelybe moredialecticalthanHegel's concept of dialectical Reason. Marcusethus questionsHegel's totalizingnotionof Reason, which by now he regardsas leadingback toward nstrumental eason, andhepointsto less totalizingformsof thought.Thus, to continue to be criticalin a technocraticsociety, dialectical Reason must move outside the Hegelian-Marxianraditionwhile re-taining many of its achievements.In the early 1960s, second-generationcritical theorist OskarNegt in West Germanydevelopeda view of this problemthatmayhave a relationshipo Marcuse's1960position,but which is at variance with the 1941 text of Reason and Revolution.Negt's study ofHegel andComtepointsnot only to differences,as did Marcuse's work in 1941, but alsoto affinitiesbetween Comte andHegel in theirrespectivetheoriesof society. In a prefaceto this work, Negt's teachers Horkheimerand Adomo write that his book shows "thelatentpositivism implicit in the Hegelianconstructionof social reality, somethingwhichone would not expect becauseof Hegel's own hostilityto positivism"(Negt [1963] 1974,p. 8). Negt himself ([1963] 1974, p. 133) links Hegel's concept of "objectivespirit"toDurkheim'sconcept of a "conscience collective."By the 1960s, when Marcusehad become well-knowninternationally,evere critiquesof his work appeared rom a varietyof perspectives.Most of these discussions centeredaround his later works, such as One-DimensionalMan (1964), but they also addressedReasonand Revolution. Below I will concentrateon fourrepresentative iscussionssince1960: those by the anti-HegelianItalian philosopherLucio Colletti, by the AmericancriticaltheoristDouglas Kellner,by the CzechMarxisthumanistphilosopherKarelKosik,andby the Russian-AmericanMarxist humanistandHegel scholarRaya Dunayevskaya.CRITICALDISCUSSIONSSINCE 1960: COLLETTIAND KELLNERColletti ([1969a] 1972, [1969b] 1973) publishedtwo majorcritiquesof Marcuse as partof a generalattackon Hegelian Marxism,which had gained wide popularity n Italy by

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the late 1960s. Colletti's work was translated nto English in the 1970s; along with thatof Althusser,it becamepartof the critiqueof HegelianMarxismand criticaltheoryin theEnglish-speakingworld.In an article titled "FromHegel to Marcuse,"Collettitakesup some themes similartothose of Hook in 1941. He wants to criticize bothHegel andMarcuse rom the viewpointof "science" ([1969a] 1972, p. 131). In contrast to Marcuse'sview, which I discussedabove, Colletti ([1969a] 1972, p. 112) attacksHegel's conceptof infinityas an essentiallymysticalandreligious"annihilation f theworld"of facts andthings. According o Colletti,Marcuseadoptsthis Hegeliannotionof annihilationand"negativity"n a one-sided senseand creates from it a philosophyof generalizedrevolt againsthuman existence. Colletti([1969a] 1972, p. 130) links this "revolt" o what he regardsas Hegel's "old spiritualistcontempt for the finite and the terrestrialworld." In doing so, however, he ignoresMarcuse's strong arguments n Reason and Revolution that Hegel's philosophyis morehistoricallybased than thatof otherGerman dealists, and thus is closer to Marx.Colletti attacksMarcuse's "idealisticreactionagainstscience" n his critiqueof positiv-ism ([1969a] 1972, p. 131). Marcuse'sattack on capitalismis thereforenot Marxistbut"an indiscriminateattack on science and technology"([1969a] 1972, p. 135). Collettiattemptsto link this attackon science and positivismto Sartre'sconcept of "nausea" nregardto the materialworld in orderto arguethat Marcuse is not a Marxistthinker,but"descendsfrom Heidegger"([1969a] 1972, p. 131).A fundamentalproblemin Colletti's discussionis that he constructshis "Marxist" iewof Hegel without ever seriously discussing Marx's crucially important"Critiqueof theHegelianDialectic"in the 1844 Manuscripts.In this essay, as Marcuse notes in ReasonandRevolution,Marxsinglesouttheconceptof negativityas the creativeandrevolutionaryelement in Hegel's dialectic. Collettiavoidsdiscussionof thiskey essay by Marxnot onlyin his critique of Marcuse, but even in a 50-page introduction o an edition of Marx'searly writings publishedin associationwith the New LeftReview. There, in his discussionof the 1844 Manuscripts,Colletti (1975) addressesonly the conceptof alienation.Also,whereas Marcuse confrontsandcomes to gripswith those partsof Hegel's writings, suchas the Philosophy of Right, which createdifficultyfor his view of Hegel as an essentiallyrevolutionary hinker,Colletti does not seriously engage argumentscontrary o his own.In this sense his polemic againstMarcusemisfires. Colletti's own anti-Hegelianism ven-tuallyled to a breakwith Marxism as well in the 1970s (Jay 1984;McGlone 1985).

Kellner's book on Marcuse, the most thoroughtheoreticalstudy to date, expressesgreateraffinityfor his later work than for Reason and Revolution. Kellner(1984, p. 133)writes that in Reason and Revolution "thethrustof Marcuse'sinterpretations to valorizethe radical components in Hegel," giving us "a powerful critique of empiricism andpositivism."Kellner views these critiquesas having anticipatedMarcuse'slatercritiquesof empiricismand positivism in works such as One-DimensionalMan. He argues thatalthoughMarcuse never directly answered Hook's polemics againstReason and Revolu-tion, muchof his later workwas occupiedwith a critiqueof positionssimilarto Hook's.In emphasizing the critique of positivism, Kellner stresses the similaritiesbetweenMarcuse'sbook and those of other critical theorists such as AdornoandHorkheimer.Onthe one hand, this procedurehas the meritof effectively showingthe link of Reason andRevolution o Marcuse'slaterwork, suchas One-DimensionalMan, andto thatof Adornoand Horkheimer.On the other, it fails adequatelyto highlight the unique features ofMarcuse'sHegelianMarxism,which had a somewhat differentorientation hanAdorno'sand Horkheimer'sboth to the dialectic and to politics;this differencealreadywas visiblein 1941. Marcuse's Hegelian Marxismof 1941 helps us to anticipateone aspect of hiswork in the 1960s as well: his public return o a variantof the left revolutionarypolitics



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MARCUSEON HEGEL AND SOCIALTHEORYthat his FrankfurtSchool colleagues Adorno and Horkheimerabandonedafter the early1940s.Kellner makesthreemajorcriticismsof Reason and Revolution.First,he sees problemsin Marcuse's overallperspectiveon Hegel. He complains(1984, p. 144) that "Marcuse'sappropriation f Hegel's ontology and epistemologyis too uncritical"and that "he neverreally criticizes Hegel's philosophy as such." In Kellner's view (1984, p. 144), it is"preciselyHegel's philosophicalpositions"which are at the rootof the authoritarianlawsin those works of Hegel which Marcusecriticizes, such as thePhilosophyof Right. KellnercriticizesparticularlyHegel's "thoroughgoingpanrationalism nd his concept of the Ab-solute"(1984, p. 144). The latter"containsmystifyingovertonesof finality,completenessandperfection"and leads us to the notion that"reasonwas realizedin the Prussianstate"(1984, p. 145). Kellner accuses Marcuse of havingevaded these issues.Second, on the relationof Hegel to Marx, Kellner writes that Marcuse"picturesMarxas emerging fully developed from Hegel," while "a more balancedinterpretationwouldhave indicated the influenceson Marxismof French socialism and Britishpoliticalecon-omy"(1984, p. 419). Thus, says Kellner,Marcuse'sMarxism s too uncriticallyHegelianand does not includeenough politicaleconomy.Third, Kellner (1984, p. 143) writes that in contrast to his "laterquestioningof theproletariat,"Marcuse'sMarxism n Reason and Revolution"is remarkablyorthodox"' ntreating he workingclass as (in Marx'sterms)theliving negationof capitalism.Accordingto Kellner, this aspect of Marcuse's work shows Reasonand Revolutionto be almost anaberrationwhen seen alongsidehis earlier and laterwritings:

There s a "rationalist"urn nhisthoughtduringhisperiodwherehe affirms heheritageof criticalrationalismand distanceshimself from Heidegger,existentialism,Lebens-philosophieand phenomenology.Later Marcusewouldrespond o Adornoand Hork-heimer'scritiqueof technologyandinstrumentaleason,andin Eros and Civilizationand other laterworks would reformulatehe conceptof reasonandreconstructriticaltheory Kellner1984, pp. 128-29).I agree with Kellner that the Hegelian Marxism of Reason and Revolutionis alteredconsiderably romthatof the 1940s, but I wouldarguethat it also expressesthe dialecticalcore of Marcuse'sleft radicalvision. This vision, although t appearedn a differentformin the 1960s, at the same time was a partialreturnto the left revolutionaryvision ofGermany n the 1920s, as seen in the writingsof Lukacs andKorsch.Kellnerdoes not fully drawtogetherthe threadsof his variouscritiques.If Marcuse'sMarxism s both too Hegelianandtoo orthodox,how do these two flaws fit together?Themainproblem n Kellner'scritique,however, is that he focuses too little on what Marcusewas doing with Hegel in 1941. He tends to let the critiqueof instrumental eason andofpositivismovershadowthe othermajorthemes in Marcuse'sbook.In 1991, in the introductionto a new edition of Marcuse's One-DimensionalMan,Kellnerdiscusses for the first time some recentlydiscoveredmanuscriptson theoriesofsocial change. There were composed by Marcuse and fellow criticaltheorist Franz Neu-mann during the period immediately after the publicationof Marcuse's Reason andRevolutionand of Neumann'sBehemoth,a studyof the social structure f Nazi Germany.Kellnerwrites that these manuscripts how "thetypicallyMarcusean endency, sharedbythe FrankfurtSchool, to integratephilosophy,social theoryandpolitics"(Marcuse[1964]1991, p. xxi). He arguesfurther hatReason and Revolutionwas connectedto a broaderprojectwithincriticaltheory,one which was opposedto the solely "philosophical-culturalanalysisof the trendsof Westerncivilizationbeingdeveloped by Horkheimer ndAdomo"

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(p. xxii). Thus, despite the seemingly asbtractandphilosophicalcharacterof Reason andRevolution,apparently t served as the theoreticalfoundation or a more empiricalstudyof social change.FURTHERCRITICALDISCUSSIONSSINCE 1960: KOSIKAND DUNAYEVSKAYASince the 1960s, Marxist humanists have challenged Reason and Revolution on stilldifferentgrounds. In his widely discussed book The Dialectics of the Concrete, CzechMarxist humanistKarelKosik suggests thateven Marcuse s guilty of "abolishingphilos-ophy"within Marxismwhen he moves from Hegel to a considerationof Marxism as the"dialectical heoryof society"([1963] 1976, p. 104). Kosik is referringhereto Marcuse'sview of the shift from Hegel to Marx as a shift from philosophyto social theory. Heopposes any attemptto "abolish"philosophywithin Marxism,even when this involvesmovingfromphilosophyto a criticalsocial theory.If philosophy s abolished n this way,writesKosik, Marx's theory"is transformednto its very opposite"and"praxisceases tobe the sphereof humanizingman."If we move one-sidedly into social theory, a certain"openness" s lost and "turns nto a closedness." We reach a point where "socialnessis acave" in which the humanbeing is "walledin" ([1963] 1976, p. 106). Kosik seems hereto point to a continualcross-fertilizationbetweenphilosophyand social theory.Today postmodernistshave attackedthe writings of Hegel and Marx as oppressive"greatnarratives"hatradicalthoughtshouldleave behind(Lyotard1989), anda second-generationcritical theorist, Habermas(1990, p. 15), distances himself from what heconsidersto be the "romantic ocialism" of the young Marx. At such a time, Marcuse'sReasonand Revolutionmight seem to many people to be far from currentconcernsin itsemphasison Marx's theoryof alienationand on Hegel's conceptof dialectical Reasonasa revolutionaryand criticalconcept. Yet these are precisely amongthe threadswhich theRussian-AmericanMarxist humanistRaya Dunayevskayapicks up from Marcuse'swork;she carries them into the theoreticalproblematicsof today, but all the while engagesMarcuse'swork very critically. Her interestin Marcuse's Reason and Revolutionbeganin the 1940s, but she continuedto write aboutit until her death in 1987.In 1979, at the time of Marcuse'sdeath, Dunayevskayawrote of the enthusiasmwithwhich she and her colleagues greetedReason and Revolutionwhen it firstappeared:

In thatseminalwork,Marcuse stablishedhe Humanism f Marxism ndre-establishedtherevolutionary ialecticof Hegel-Marx, or the firsttime for the Americanpublic.Itis impossible o forgetthe indebtednesswe felt for Marcusewhenthatbreathof freshair and vision of a truly classless society was published . . . (1979, pp. 10-11).Dunayevskaya, ike Marcuse,followed Marx's 1844 "Critique f the HegelianDialectic"and was drawnto Hegel's concept of negativity.Ollman (1993, pp. 26-27) writes that"forRaya Dunayevskaya,it was the 'negationof the negation"'which was the "pivotal"dialecticalcategory. In the 1940s she belonged to the so-called Johnson-ForestendencywithinAmericanTrotskyism,togetherwith the Trinidadianheorist C.L.R. James. In anunpublishedetter,Dunayevskaya [1966] 1981f, p. 13936) writes thatat the end of 1941she "reada new book, Reason and Revolutionby HerbertMarcuse. The first part onHegel meantnothingto me then, but the secondpartwhich dealtwithMarx'searlyessaysopened a new world to me."Scatteredthroughthe publishedand unpublishedwritingsof Dunayevskaya,who be-came a friend of Marcusein the 1950s, area numberof interestingdiscussionsof Reasonand Revolution. In her Marxismand Freedom ([1958] 1988, p. 349), a book to which



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MARCUSE ON HEGELAND SOCIALTHEORYMarcusecontributeda critical preface, she describes Reason and Revolutionas "a trulypioneeringand profoundwork"to which "I would . . . like to acknowledgemy debt."Dunayevskaya 1980, [1973] 1989a;also see Anderson1986) attemptscriticallyto appro-priateHegel's Absolutes, the very categorythat even otherHegelianMarxistshave tendedto avoidor dismiss (Bloch [1949] 1962;Lukacs[1948] 1975). To Dunayevskaya,Hegel'sAbsoluteswere not a closed totalitybut a source of "absolutenegativity";romthis sourcecould be constructeda radical concept of dialectics that would expand the traditionalMarxistview of the labormovement to include new social movementsof blacks, women,andyouth. By the 1980s she was connecting hese issues increasingly o a subject-centeredfeminist theory (Dunayevskaya[1982] 1991; also see Afary 1989; Johnson 1989; Rich1986).As part of his extensive correspondencewith Dunayevskaya n the 1950s, Marcuseexpresses some doubtabout this procedure:

I admireyour way of concretizinghe most abstract hilosophical otions.However,Istill cannotget alongwith the directtranslationf idealisticphilosophyntopolitics:Ithinkyou somehowminimize the "negation"which the applicationof the Hegeliandialectic o politicalphenomena resupposes DunayevskayandMarcuse1989,p. 4).Dunayevskayaresponds:

You seemto think hatI . . . minimize he"negation" . which theapplication f theHegeliandialectic o politicalphenomena resupposes.ButsurelyHegel'sAbsolute deahas nothing n commonwith Schelling'sconceptof the Absoluteas the synthesisoridentityn whichall differencesare absorbed y the"One"DunayevskayandMarcuse1989,p. 4).

The correspondencebetween Dunayevskayaand Marcuse illustrates some of their keydifferenceson Hegeliandialectics as well as on automation nd the laborprocess(Anderson1989a, 1989b, 1990; Kellner 1984, 1989a, 1989b).In 1960, later n theircorrespondence,Marcusewrites"Thevery conceptof theAbsoluteIdea is altogether ied to and ustifiesthe separation f materialandintellectualproductivityat the pre-technological tage" (DunayevskayaandMarcuse1989, p. 12). This statementrepresentsa developmentof an aspect of Marcuse's discussion of the Absolute Idea inReasonand Revolution.There, as we saw earlier,he writes(1941, p. 163) that it reflected"the social separationof the intellectualspherefromthe sphereof materialproduction."InMarcuse'sOne-DimensionalMan([1964] 1991)this themebecame central o thechapteron pretechnological hought. In that work, withoutmentioninghis correspondencewithDunayevskaya,he treats pretechnologicalthought from Plato to Hegel as critical anddialecticalReason, which is counterposed o the dominantpositivist, "one-dimensional,"technologicalthought.InherPhilosophyandRevolution,Dunayevskaya [1973] 1989, p. 44) seemsto respondto this argumentwithout directly naming Marcuse when she writes "[I]t would be acomplete misreadingof Hegel's philosophywere we to think . . . that his Absolute is amere reflection of the separation between philosopher and the world of materialproduction."Dunayevskayamakes two types of critiqueof Reason and Revolution:1) She contraststhe 1941 text with the prefaceaddedby Marcuse n 1960, "A Note on the Dialectic,"andattacksthe latteras an abandonment f the type of revolutionarydialecticMarcuse heldto in the 1940s. 2) She criticizes Marcuse's treatmentof the Absolute Idea in Hegel's

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Science of Logic even in the original 1941 text, arguingthat he stops short of a fullyHegelian Marxism by not seriously addressing Hegel's Absolutes. Dunayevskayaalsocritiquesa few other aspects of Marcuse'sdiscussion of Hegelianidealism, even thoughshe agrees generallywith the central idea of much of the 1941 text. The firstcritiqueismade publicly on several occasions, but often very briefly and cryptically. We canunderstandt mostclearly by lookingas well atsomeof herunpublishedwritings, includingher correspondence.The second critique is never made in public, and can be piecedtogether only from correspondenceand other unpublished writings, as well as fromthe handwrittenmarginalia n Dunayevskaya's personal copy of Reason and Revolution(Dunayevskayan.d.).In her critiques of Marcuse's 1960 preface, Dunayevskayatends to focus on thefollowing sentence:"Ibelieve that it is the idea of Reason itself which is the undialecticalelement in Hegel's philosophy"(Marcuse1960, p. xii). She remarks"howperversesucha conclusion will sound to dialecticiansin general, andto Marxists n particular"[1969]1981f, p. 4410). Dunayevskayawriteselsewhere ([1982] 1991, p. 177) that in the 1941text of Reasonand Revolution,Marcusewas workingout the relationshipof dialectics "toactualrevolution,"but in the 1960 edition he "added'A Note on the Dialectic,' whichpointedin a very different, 'one-dimensional'direction."By 1960, in her view, Marcusewas moving away not only from the traditionalMarxianconceptof the workingclass assubject, but also (and even more fundamentally,at a theoretical evel) from his earlierview of dialecticalReason. To be sure, Marcuse'snew dialectictraced ts originto Hegeland Marx, but Dunayevskayaargues that its grantingof a centralplace to the "GreatRefusal"of avant-gardeart was a move away from the Hegelian-Marxiandialectic asdevelopedin the original 1941 text of Reason and Revolution.In several letters writtento Marxist humanistcolleagues soon after the appearanceofMarcuse's One-DimensionalMan in 1964, Dunayevskaya regardsthe 1960 preface aslying somewhere between his book Soviet Marxism(1958), which she had attackedforits relativelyuncritical stance towardthe Soviet Union, and his presentposition: "[I]t ishis transitionpoint from totalpessimismandapologia through he mid-pointof the 'GreatRefusal' (1960) to the present almost-optimismof 'One-DimensionalMan,' perhapsworkinghis way out" (Dunayevskaya[1964b] 1981f, p. 13884). She calls this preface"the philosophic point which separatesus" ([1964c] 1981f, p. 13888). Apparently,inorder o stresswhat she regardedas the most radicalcore of Marcuse's hought,in contrastto his later development, she titled her review of One-DimensionalMan "Reason andRevolutionvs. ConformismandTechnology"(Dunayevskaya1964a;Greeman1968).

Finally, in a letter written a year before her death, and just after depositing hercorrespondencewith Marcuse in the Wayne State University archives, Dunayevskayasummarizes her view of the difference between Marcuse's 1941 and 1960 concepts ofdialectic:In 1941, Marcuse was optimistic, saw Marx as Humanism, revolutionary Humanism,inseparable from dialectics of revolutionary categories of development; in 1960 he waspessimistic and was on the way to declaring, not the "negation"of the system so muchas "negation"of mankind ... Dialectic, "negation of the negation," undergoes changedinterpretation-or, like Absolute, gets omitted altogether . . . (Dunayevskaya 1986a,p. 3).

Thus the attackon the 1960s preface simultaneouslyexpressesgreatappreciation or the1941 text.Dunayevskaya's critiquesof the 1941 text itself are less frequent,and tend to center



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MARCUSE ON HEGEL AND SOCIAL THEORYaroundMarcuse'sview of Hegel's Absolutesand the Hegel-Marxrelationship.Dunayev-skaya sees much similarity between Lenin and Marcuse in their reading of the lastparagraphsof Hegel's Science of Logic. Like Lenin in his 1914-15 Hegel notebooks,Marcuse nterpretshe lastparagraph f Hegel's Scienceof Logic as a transition o Nature,ignoringthe fact (accordingto Dunayevskaya) hatHegel mentionstherea transitionnotonly to Nature, but also to Mind. This point is importantbecause Lenin had seized onthis mention of Nature to conclude that it representeda transition o materialism Lenin[1914-15] 1961, p. 234). In materialaddedto the 1989 edition of her PhilosophyandRevolutionfrom some of her last writings(Dunayevskaya[1973] 1989) and elsewhere(Dunayevskaya1989), Dunayevskaya riticizes Lenin'sreadingof Hegel's finalparagraphsas an attemptto jump too quickly towardmaterialism,and thus as a truncationof thedialectic.In unpublished1961 notes on Hegel's Science of Logic, Dunayevskayawrites that inReason and Revolution, Marcuse (like Lenin in 1914-15) stresses Hegel's "statementabout the Idea releasing itself freely as Nature."At the same time, Marcusepoints outthe greatdifficultyof this passageof Hegel's work. Dunayevskayacomplains:

But he himself doesn't attempt o overcome these difficulties.On the contrary,hedisregardshem, accepting he idea that it is a closedontologyand thebest we can dois take this methodanduse it as a critical heory [1961] 1981f,p. 2832).In her marginalnotes to Reason and Revolution, apparently n comparingMarcuse'sdiscussionof the AbsoluteIdea withLenin's, Dunayevskayawrites"ActuallyHM [HerbertMarcuse] too stops at Nature"alongside a passsage in which Marcuse discusses theconclusion of Hegels' Science of Logic as a transitionto Nature (Dunayevskayan.d.,p. 166). HereDunayevskayaalso writes in the marginof Marcuse's ext: "notonly Naturebut also Spirit [Mind]."Apparentlyshe is criticizingMarcuse for ignoring Hegel's Phi-losophy of Mind, one of his most idealistic works. Althoughignored by most Marxists,this key text forms the conclusion to Hegel's Encyclopediaof the PhilosophicalSciences.Primarilyon the basis of this work of Hegel's, especially its concluding chapter onAbsoluteMind, Dunayevskayadevelopedthe most important spectsof her own interpre-tationof Hegel's Absolutes, not as closuresbut as permeatedwithabsolutenegativityandwith new beginnings (Dunayevskaya[1973] 1989, 1989).

Althoughgenerallyshe agreeswithMarcuse hatHegel's philosophycontainedhistoricaland social as well as purely ontologicalelements, at severalpoints in her marginalnotesDunayevskaya riticizes Marcusefor stressingtheprimacyof ontologyin some of Hegel'smost idealistic categories. Next to a passage where Marcusestates "Hegel's dialecticalprocess was thus a universal ontological one in which history was patternedon themetaphysical process of being," she writes "No, he derived it from actual history"(Dunayevskayan.d., p. 314). She also writes "NO" over the word ontological whereMarcusearguesthat Hegel's philosophy, althoughrooted in history,"is constantlyover-whelmed by the ontological conceptions of absolute idealism" (Dunayevskayan.d.,p. 161). In this sense herpositionmay be closer to thatof JeanHyppolite's([1955] 1969)treatmentof the connection of Hegel's philosophy to history in his discussion of therelationshipof the Phenomenonology o the FrenchRevolution. Accordingto Dunayev-skaya, the whole of Hegel's idealisticdialectic, includinghis Absolutes, is a historicallybased dialectic of freedomthatcan have concretepoliticaland social ramifications.By the late 1970s, Dunayevskayahad sharpenedher critiqueof even the 1941 text ofReason and Revolution. In 1978 she wrote to a leading British labor activist that herdifferenceswith Marcuse in the 1950s and 1960s were not only over issues such as the

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place of the labor movement in postwarcapitalism,but also over the dialectic: "Why,however,could I not have mademyself so clearto myself as to see that,muchas I learnedfrom Marcuse, we were not only on differentplanets 'politically'but philosophically?"(Dunayevskaya 1978] 1981f, p. 6433). A yearbefore her deathshe wrote that Marcuse'sanalysis of Hegel's Science of Logic "remained n the Doctrine of Essence, at mostreaching the threshold-the thresholdonly-of the Absolute" (Dunayevskaya[1986b]1981f, p. 11162).Thus DunayevskayacritiquesReason and Revolutionfrom a vantage point not onlydifferentfrom Colletti's but also from Kellner's. She identifiesstronglywith the HegelianMarxism of the 1941 text of Reason and Revolution,but develops her own concept ofdialecticby going beyondit, addressingwhole areasof Hegel's writings hateven Marcuseeither ignored or tended to dismiss as ontological idealism. WhereasMarcuse stressesHegel's concept of negativityin general, Dunayevskaya ocuses more specificallyon theconcept of absolute negativity. In contrastto Marcuse's (1941, p. 163) notion that theabstractcharacterof the Absolute Idea reflects an ultimatelyconservative"separationofthe intellectualspherefrom the sphereof materialproduction,"DunayevskayaarguesthatHegel's dialecticis at its mostcriticalandmostrevolutionaryhere in his Absolutes,whereit is most abstract,and that Hegel becomes more conservative when he comes down toearth to develop a politicalphilosophy:

PreciselywhereHegelsoundsmostabstract, eemsto close theshuttersightagainst hewhole movementof history, herehe lets the lifebloodof thedialectic-absolutenega-tivity-pour in . . . [H]e has, by bringing oppositions to their most logical extreme,opened new paths . . . ([1973] 1989, pp. 31-32).

As we have seen, Marcusealso regardsHegel's abstractworks such as thePhenomenologyor the Logic as more critical and more revolutionary hanHegel's political philosophy,but he does not accept Dunayevskaya's extensions of this notion to include Hegel'sAbsolutes. For herpart, Dunayevskaya ends to attackMarcuse or havingmoved (in herview) away from Hegelian Marxismby 1960 toward what she consideredto be a non-Marxistconcept, the "GreatRefusal."Meanwhileshe continued n herown work to drawinspirationfrom Marcuse's earlier writingson Hegel and Marx in elaboratingher ownposition,whichconsideredHegel's "absolutenegativityas new beginning" Dunayevskaya[1973] 1989, p. 3).CONCLUSION:FACINGTHE CHALLENGEOF POSTMODERNISMI am not suggestinghere anythingso simplisticas a notion thatMarcuse,in moving awayfrom some aspects of the HegelianMarxismof the 1941 text of Reason andRevolution,ever gave up either Hegel or the dialectic. A few years before his death, Marcusewasasked whetherHegel was dead. The interviewer,FrederickOlafson, wondered:"[I]s itstill possible for living philosophies to be built on the greatclassical authors?"Marcuserespondedstrongly:

I would say definitely yes. And I woulddefinitelysay that one of the proofsis thecontinued existence and development of Marxist theory. . . . It is, of course, a greatlymodifieddealism,but elementsof it remainn social andpolitical heory Olafson 1974]1988, p. 103).

Thus it is fairly clear that Marcuseremained a HegelianMarxist until his death. At thesametime, however, I believe it is erroneous o ignorethe substantial hift in his concept



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MARCUSEON HEGELAND SOCIALTHEORYof dialecticfromthe 1941 text of Reason and Revolution o the 1960 prefaceand his otherwritingsof the 1960s.At a time when much of the debate in radical social theory is cast as a duel between(on one hand) Habermas's defense of liberal Enlightenmentreason and (on the other)Foucauldean and postmodernistattacks on both liberalism and the Hegelian-Marxiandialectic, Marcuse's Reason and Revolutionoffers us somethingdifferent: a defense ofthe dialectic as a critical, rational,and thereforeradicalperspective.Among the variousFrenchstructuralists,post-structuralists,ndpostmodernistswhosetheoreticalwritings have preparedthe groundfor much of the recent debate in radicalsocial theory, Derrida stands out as the one who has been engaged most seriouslywithHegel. In a brief look at Derrida's critiqueof Hegel, I will attemptto show that hiscritique addresses, at least implicitly, some of the positions advanced by Marcuse inReasonand Revolution,but that he does not succeed in refutingeitherHegel or Marcuse.AlthoughDerrida([1972b] 1981, p. 64) expresses admirationor "the decisive progresssimultaneously accomplished by Althusser and those following him" in analyzing "therelationshipof Marx to Hegel" ([1972b] 1981, p. 63), apparentlyhe does not endorseAlthusser'sextremerejectionof Hegel. As is well known,Althusser [1965] 1969, p. 116)once wrote that a task "more crucial thanany othertoday"would be to "drivethe shadeof Hegel . . . backinto thenight" n favor of a return o a de-Hegelianized Althusserized?)Marx.

Instead Derrida ([1972b] 1981, p. 77) argues: "We will never be finished with thereadingand rereadingof Hegel." This is not an idle statement: ts fulfillmentis evidentin much of Derrida's work. One key example is found in his well-knownessay "Differ-ance," in which he works with (and against)Hegel, Saussure, Nietzsche, and Freudtodevelop one of his own most important oncepts (Derrida[1972a] 1982; also see Norris1987). Yet in Derrida'sdiscussions, Hegel is most often a foil, the strongestexampleofwhat is wrong with the Western"logocentric" radition.This view leads Derridato twopointsof implicitconfrontationwithMarcuse'sHegelianMarxism:1)his generalrejectionof the existentialist, radical humanist, and Hegelian Marxist trends, in many respectssimilarto Marcuse'sposition, which were so prevalent n Frenchthoughtafter 1945, and2) his critiqueof Hegel's conceptsof differenceandnegativity.The latteris, as we haveseen, the centraldialecticalconcept developedandelaborated n Reason and Revolution.Derrida'smajor works were not translated mmediatelyinto English. Most of theseworks were publishedin Frenchin the late 1960s or early 1970s, as follows: L'Ecritureet la difference(1967), De la grammatologie(1967), Marges de la philosophie (1972),Positions (1972). This time lag obscures the politicalandtheoreticalcontextof Derrida'swork, namely the fact that these writings were published at the height of Marcuse'sinfluence. At that time his books were selling hundredsof thousandsof copies in theUnited States and Europe, in the midst of the studentupheavalsin the United States,France, and Germany.Thus Marcuse's"best-seller,"One-DimensionalMan (1964), waspublished only three years before two of the majorworksby Derrida isted above. Thetime lag in the English-languagediscussions of Derrida'sworkobscuresDerrida's mplicitcritiqueof positions similarto those takenby Marcuse,a fact thatwas recognizedwhenDerridawrote.This fact is evident in Derrida'sarticle "The Ends of Man,"firstdelivered as a paperto an internationalphilosophy colloquiumin New York in October 1968. Published in1969 in the American ournal Philosophyand PhenomenologicalResearch, "The EndsofMan"for yearswas one of the very few examplesof Derrida'swork available in English.More than a decade later, in 1982, it appearedin a different translation n Derrida'sMargins of Philosophy. In this often-cited paper (see, for example, Habermas1987),

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Derrida([1972a] 1982, p. 117) identifieswith what he terms "thecurrentquestioningofhumanism" n French thought. He critiques what he considers to be the "uncontestedcommon groundof Marxism and of Social-Democraticor Christiandiscourse,"all of itgroundedin "the anthropologisticreadingsof Hegel (interestin the Phenomenology ofSpiritas it was read by Kojeve), of Marx (the privilege accordedto the Manuscriptsof1844) . . ." Derrida attacks Sartre explicitly as well as Kojeve, but his targets probablyinclude other left existentialists,HegelianMarxists,andHegel scholars such as Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Henri Lefebvre, Lucien Goldmann,and Jean Hyppolite.Derrida ([1972a] 1982, p. 121) attacks Hegel for subordinatinghis philosophy to aChristianeschatology, in which the Hegelian"we" is "the unity of absoluteknowledgeandanthropology,of God andman, of onto-theo-teleologyandhumanism."He concludesthatthe creation of a trulyradicalphilosophy"canonly come fromoutside"the Westernhumanisttradition([1972a] 1982, p. 134). The best way to createsuch a philosophyis"byaffirmingan absolutebreakand difference" [1972a] 1982, p. 135)througha recourseto Nietzsche.Derrida'spaperreceived a formalcritique mmediatelyafterhe delivered it at the 1968conference in New York; the critique also was published in 1969 in Philosophy andPhenomenologicalResearch. In this critiquethe AmericanphilosopherRichardPopkin(1969, p. 63) attacks Derrida's recourse to Nietzsche, which he terms "the extremelypessimistic conclusion of the paper." Popkin draws a contrastbetween Derrida'santi-humanist,Nietzscheanstanceand the radical humanistmentality,which he saw exempli-fied in the ferment, then taking place on Americancampuses, againstthe Vietnam warandracism.

Although Popkin defends a radical Christianperspective,he also directly poses Mar-cuse's Hegelian Marxism as an alternative to Derrida's antihumanist,anti-Hegelianperspective:

The MarxianHegel is just beginning o be takenseriously n the form of the currentMarcuseboom. We have hadperhapsmore directcontactwith this vibrant,humanisticHegelthanFrancehashad, sincemanyof the leading igures n Germanhoughtof the20's fled to America,or fled to Francebrieflyandthento America Popkin1969,p. 61).Even thoughDerridahad not referredspecificallyto Marcuse'swork (which he may noteven haveread), Popkinwas fundamentally ightto bringMarcuse nto the debatebecauseMarcusewas a leadingexampleof the HegelianandMarxisthumanist rendsthat Derridaattacked n his paper.Thus more thantwo decadesago, beginningwith one of Derrida'searliest entries into Americanintellectualdebate, the questionof Derridaversus Marcusewas posed publicly.The second point, Derrida'scritiqueof Hegel's concepts of difference and negativity,shows not a generalbut a very specific engagementwith preciselythose questionswhichoccupy Marcuse in Reason and Revolution. (Once again, however, to my knowledge,Derridadoes not refer explicitly to Marcuse's argumentwhen he critiquesHegel.) Der-rida's stance with regard to Hegel's concept of negativity, which he often ties to theconcept of difference, is especially interestingin an examinationof the contemporaryrelevanceof Marcuse's Hegelian Marxismbecause negativityis one concept of Hegel'swhich Derridadoes not dismiss. Rather,he attempts o build on it while simultaneouslyattackingwhat he regards as the limits of Hegel's concept. In Of Grammatology,forexample, the first of Derrida'smajorworks to be published n English, Derrida([1967a]1974, p. 26) attacksHegel as the primeexample of a Westernlogocentricthinker,"thelast philosopherof the book." In the same paragraph,however,he praises Hegel as "also



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MARCUSEON HEGELAND SOCIALTHEORYthe thinkerof irreducibledifference."The Britishsociologist Gillian Rose (1985, p. 139;also see Rose 1981) writes of "Derrida'sequivocationconcerning Hegel" in this verypassage. CitingHegel's Logic on the dialecticalrelationshipbetweenunityanddifference,she argues further:"The alternativescould be avoided by the speculative exposition ofdifferanceas the 'unity and difference of identityand difference.' But Derrida's escha-tological readingof Hegel leaves this out."ElsewhereDerrida [1967b] 1978, p. 259) takesup Hegel's conceptof negativity,whichhe terms the "blind spot of Hegelianism."Following the interpretation f the FrenchNietzschean Georges Bataille, Derridaargues that for Hegel "negativityis always theundersideandaccompliceof positivity."AlthoughHegel createda "revolution"n thoughtby "takingnegativity seriously," Derrida concludes that in the end, Hegel works "toconvulsively tearapart he negativeside, that which makesit the reassuringother surfaceof the positive." With regardto this critique,Rose (1985, p. 162) observes astutely:"Itsounds as if Derrida is developing anotherkind of 'conservative' reading of Hegel'sthinkingand reservingits radicality or his own thinking."Thus DerridaultimatelyreadsHegel on negativityin a mannersimilar to L6with's (1942a) earliercritiqueof Marcuse,viewing Hegel as fundamentallya philosopherof reconciliationand of positivity.In this sense, Derrida'sequivocationon Hegel's conceptof negativitymanagesto avoidcoming to grips with the type of left revolutionary eadingof Hegel made by Marcuse nReason and Revolution. This reading,I have arguedhere, centers around he concept ofnegativity.So anxious is Derrida to move beyondhumanismand Hegelian Marxism, toaffirman "absolutebreakanddifference" [1972a] 1982, p. 135), that he avoids confront-ing fully the critical, even revolutionary amifications f Hegel's conceptof negativityasdefended and appropriated y Marcusefor radicalsocial theory. I would arguethat thefact that Marcuse's Hegelian Marxism points to alternatives to the fetishized humanrelationsof modemcapitalistsociety makesit notless butmoreradical han he perspectivedefendedby Derrida,who leaves us in the end with no real alternative o existing socialstructures.

REFERENCESAfary, Janet. 1989. "The Contributionof Raya Dunayevskaya, 1910 to 1987: A Study in Hegelian Marxist

Feminism."Extramares1(1): 35-55.Althusser,Louis. (1965) 1969. For Marx. New York:Vintage.Anderson,Kevin. 1986. "RecentWritingsof R. Dunayevskaya."Hegel-Studien21: 186-88.. 1989a. "A PreliminaryExplorationof the Dunayevskaya-Marcuse ialogue, 1954 to 1979." QuarterlyJournalof Ideology 13(4): 21-28.. 1989b. "Responseto Kellneron the Dunayevskaya-Marcuse ialogue."QuarterlyJournalof Ideology

13(4): 31-33.. 1990. "TheMarcuse-DunayevskayaDialogue, 1954-79." Studiesin SovietThought39(2): 89-109.Bernstein,Richard. 1988. "Negativity:Theme and Variations."Pp. 13-28. In Marcuse: Critical Theoryandthe Promise of Utopia, edited by RobertPippin

Kevin Anderson - On Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory

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