> Second, Marx's "dialectical" conception of human development,
> appropriated from Hegel, gives unethical behaviour (i.e. behaviour
> motivated by irrational "passions") a necessary and positive role
> in that development
<snip>
> I recently quoted a passage from the Philosophy of Right in which
> Hegel makes this an essential feature of his idea of "dialectics":
> "the higher dialectic of the conception does not merely apprehend
> any phase as a limit and opposite, but produces out of this
> negative a positive content and result."
<snip>
> Accumulation for accumulation's sake, production for production's
> sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical
> mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant
> deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. But what avails
> lamentation in the face of historical necessity?
What didn't occur to Hegel and therefore the Hegelian Marx was that, more often than not (though not always), the negative produces only the negative, sometimes irreversibly so, but they never thought deeply about the problem of climate change (and things like that). . . .
Really, capitalism had no historical necessity. It just happened to arise and survive. On one hand, what is doesn't need any philosophical justification; on the other hand, it can't be made any more bearable by it either.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>