Hegel vs. Schelling on Freedom (The Concept vs. Evil) - From an Essay on German Idealism by Todd McGowan
Part three of Limiting Us to Freedom by Todd McGowan, originally published in Underground Theory by Theory Underground Publishing
“I was delighted to have something published in Underground Theory. My goal is always to see the most complex philosophy—such as that of German Idealism—as it manifests itself in the banality of everyday life. Underground Theory as a volume operates with this same imperative that prioritizes accessibility to all. It is the fundamental project of theory, as I see it, and being a part of it was an absolute privilege for me. Hegel once said that if we can change the world in theory, practice can’t hold out for very long. Underground Theory attempts to realize this idea.”
- Todd McGowan
Alternative Infinities
Karl Marx is not a liberal. His critique of capitalism focuses on the destructiveness laden in liberal ideology. Specifically, he sees the isolated subjectivity of liberalism as the necessary jumping off point for capitalist relations of production. The inability to take the collective into account is the fundamental problem with capitalism, according to Marx. The fact that capitalism is structured through individuals looking out for their own isolated interest at the expense of the collective is the reason for its destructive irrationality. Marx proposes communism as a corrective that takes the perspective of the whole into account. This perspective follows from that of Hegelian dialectics.
Marxism derives from the tradition of German Idealism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are students of thinkers who were shaped by German Idealism. In the case of Engels, he actually studies under Schelling himself. Marx lacks this direct exposure to one of the German Idealist thinkers, but he does learn from their chief inheritors. Furthermore, Marx testifies to the importance of Hegel’s Science of Logic for the analysis that he undertakes in his Capital. Marxism takes Hegelian dialectics and uses it as a tool for understanding the contradictions of capitalist society.[i] Marxism as a political movement is thoroughly embedded in the tradition of German Idealism.
And yet, despite its commitment to the universality of German Idealism, Marxism operates from a capitalist conception of freedom. Freedom, for Marx, is the freedom from limitations, just as it is for capitalism. While Marx criticizes capitalist freedom as nothing but formal freedom or freedom for the ruling class alone, he nonetheless locates real freedom in escaping the barriers that capitalist relations of production impose on subjectivity.[ii] Marx’s critique of capitalism focuses on the limitations that it imposes on human society. In the manner of liberal philosophers like John Locke and Isaiah Berlin, he argues for an attempt to escape these limitations, not for responding to capitalism with the freedom of self-limitation that emerges in German Idealism. Marx’s abandonment of his own origins in the German Idealist tradition indicates the point at which capitalism seduces even its greatest critic with its idea of an infinite freedom, with a conception of freedom as the absence of limits. As a result of Marx’s own turn away from Kant and Hegel, political thought and activity lacks a viable alternative to capitalism’s perverse conception of freedom. The alternative to capitalism that emerges through Marx is a call for a limitless more when it might be instead an insistence on the freedom of the limit.
Marx criticizes capitalism for its inability to develop the productive forces of society to their fullest capacity and thus to provide humanity with a society of plenitude. In the third volume of Capital, Marx points out that the limit capitalism imposes on productivity stems from its need to valorize capital. This is what makes it an artificial limit. He writes, “The means—the unrestricted development of the social forces of production—comes into persistent conflict with the restricted end, the valorization of the existing capital. If the capitalist mode of production is therefore a historical means for developing the material powers of production and for creating a corresponding world market, it is at the same time the constant contradiction between this historical task and the social relations of production corresponding to it.”[iii] In other words, the capitalist mode of production acts as an unnecessary brake on the development of the means of production. The relations of production contradict the means of production. The solution to this contradiction—the communist revolution—will have the effect of freeing the means of production by removing the limit that capitalist relations of production require.[iv]
Every economic system, as Marx sees it, runs into a point where the relations of production that it authorizes become a fetter on the means of production that it unleashes. The economic structure becomes capable of more than the social relations allow. This becomes the driving force for social change and the justification for political revolution. Capitalism reaches a point where it restricts what we can collectively have, so communism must arrive on the scene to replace it. The restrictiveness of the ruling system of production serves as the cause for its eventual death. The justification for toppling the capitalist system is that it acts as a barrier to the production of more.
The implication of Marx’s theory—never spelled out in so many words by Marx himself or his epigones—is that a fundamental drive for more, a drive to surpass limits, inheres in subjectivity. This is why he views the restriction that the capitalist economic structure imposes on the capitalist means of production as a contradiction. One might see it as only a limitation. It becomes a contradiction when one assumes that subjects—or societies—inherently want to surpass the limitations that they confront. Marx interprets limitation as contradiction because he postulates a desire to maximize production as inherent in subjectivity itself. He doesn’t admit the possibility, a possibility theorized extensively by the German Idealists, that self-limitation is the most fundamental gesture of subjectivity and the source of the subject’s satisfaction.
Marx believes that turning from the isolated individual subject to the collective as the theoretical point of departure will result in a form of freedom that has nothing to do with the form operative under capitalism. He identifies the liberalism that he rejects with a focus on individual rather than collective freedom. What Marx doesn’t see is that the conception of freedom as the move beyond limitations is the liberal conception that capitalism demands. At no point does he consider the possibility of thinking about freedom or about political struggle through self-limitation, which is the limitation of the Marxist project itself. Marx unknowingly leads the Left away from his own origins in German Idealism.
In addition to turning away from the German Idealist emphasis on self-limitation, Marx also attempts to reintroduce the good into the modern universe. While Kant explicitly rejects any reference to good in his morality, Marx’s politics aims at constructing a good society. In contrast to capitalism, communist society will be good for everyone. That is the source of its appeal for Marx. Rather than allowing excess production to go to waste in the way that capitalism does, communism will distribute it to those in need. The productive capacity of society will be unleashed in order to flow to everyone equally. Marx brings together modern liberal freedom to produce excessively with the premodern ideal of the good that would rein in all excess. The result will be a communist society in which the road of excess leads to the palace of the good.
This Marxist attempt to resurrect the good in modernity becomes visible in actually existing communist societies. Although these societies were often Marxist in name only, they did attempt to genuinely realize some ideal of the good in contrast to capitalism’s excessiveness. The fate of these societies reveals the incompatibility of the good with modernity. Attempts to impose the good on modernity necessarily lead to mass murder because the good requires the elimination of the excess of the modern subject. In order to realize the good society, one must do away with Kulaks with their excessive attachment to their own animals, intellectuals with their excessive attachment to ideas, and the bourgeoisie with its excessive attachment to private property. The destruction unleashed by Stalinism, the Cultural Revolution, and the Khmer Rouge is the price that excess pays for the good. Whereas capitalist society sacrifices the good in order to enjoy, communist societies sacrifice enjoying subjects for the sake of the good. But despite all these sacrifices for its sake, the good society remains out of reach.
Freedom is incompatible with a society organized around the good, which is why no premodern thinker is able to conceptualize freedom. Premodern societies take the good as their organizing principle. The modern break replaces the good with enjoyment. Although this fuels the development of capitalism, it also makes the freedom as conceived by German Idealism possible. To return to the ideal of the good, as Marx suggests, is to abandon this freedom. His misconception of freedom as the liberal freedom to produce more, combined with a return to the good, leads the project of universal emancipation astray, despite the astuteness of his critique of capitalism.
The challenge today is to reengage the project of German Idealism that the Left forgot with Marx. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are not commonly considered among the great political thinkers of the Left, but they should be. As they theorize freedom through self-limitation, they point toward a politics that stops fighting capitalism with capitalism’s own logic. They show that the only way to oppose the unfreedom that capitalist accumulation drives is with the power of the autonomous limit. We must fight over the definition of capitalism’s most precious word in order to restore the sense that it has in the epoch of German Idealism.
This post was an excerpt from Underground Theory: Coming To A City Near You. Enjoy it serially here for free. Each part of Limiting Us to Freedom by Todd McGowan will be published over the next two months before Todd’s course at Theory Underground begins in July, 2024 (more info on the course below). If you prefer a physical copy, orders within the U.S. can get it at a discount here. Otherwise, I recommend getting it from Amazon. Also, stay tuned for the Audible version of this - in production now!
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References:
[i] This is a point that Lenin stresses. He claims that understanding Marx requires a thorough background in Hegel. He states, “Aphorism: it is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!” V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic,” in Collected Works, vol. 38 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), 180. Marx himself would certainly second Lenin’s claim here.
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