Hegel and Marx: Dialectics, Alienation, and Self-Consciousness
Hegel’s Spirit and the Development of History
According to Hegel, Spirit is responsible for the development of history. In every age, politics, morals, fashion, dress, and painting styles reflect the level of self-consciousness reached by human beings through the Spirit. However, after serving the Spirit, the culture of an era becomes dated and is replaced by a new culture capable of increasing the Spirit’s level of self-consciousness. Similarly, Marx argues that the production relations and superstructure, generated by the productive forces, are transformed by the advance of these forces.
Hegel’s View on Law and State
According to Hegel, legal relations (the law) and the state’s form depend on the general evolution of the Spirit. These are stages in the development of the Spirit’s goal. However, for Marx, the evolution of law and the state depends on the material conditions of life, which Hegel called “civil society.” The essence (anatomy) of this “civil society” must be sought in political economy.
Dialectics in Hegel and Marx
The dialectic, in Hegel’s thought, is how the Infinite unfolds in history. The dialectic is a process in three stages, of which the first two are opposites (thesis and antithesis), and the third is a harmonious reconciliation of the two (synthesis). The clearest antecedent of this dialectical conception of reality is Heraclitus. Marx asserts that reality proceeds dialectically, but the subject of the dialectic is not the Spirit but humanity. Marx takes the concept of Hegel’s dialectic but eliminates any religious or theological interpretation.
Alienation: Hegel vs. Marx
For Hegel, alienation represents the second stage of the dialectic. This is the procedure by which the Idea (thesis) becomes something radically different from itself, Nature (antithesis). The reason that the Idea is alienated in this way is that it can only come to know itself. Marx takes the term “alienation” and liberates it from its theological connotations: the subject of alienation is the oppressed class that has lost its being in the capitalist mode of production. Arguably, alienation has a positive meaning for Hegel and a pejorative one for Marx. Alienation, in Marx, refers to the exploitation of man by man; it refers to when the oppressed class works to produce goods that do not belong to them but to the ruling class. The cause of alienation, in Marx, is the right owned by the ruling class over the means of production and the workforce.
Hegel’s Subjective Spirit and the Master-Slave Dialectic
In Hegel’s stage of subjective Spirit, the process by which individual self-consciousness is reached is contained, along with the realization of individual freedom. A man attains self-consciousness and freedom when imposed by the nature of work. However, at first, self-consciousness requires recognition from another self; only because of the other can I be myself. It then engages in a deadly struggle for prestige and recognition. He who fears death gives up and becomes a slave; the other is recognized as Lord and works for him. This is the familiar dialectic of master and slave. The relationship between them means that the tables turn. Being the master is a death trap: the slave’s recognition has no value since it is not a free man. Moreover, the slave is interposed between the master and the world so that the master, not working, loses all contact with reality. In contrast, the slave will get their freedom through work. Thus, Hegel is the first to affirm the value of work for the establishment of self-consciousness, a theme that coincides with Marx. Man is a productive being, and work is nothing but the transformation of reality to satisfy their needs, but in transforming reality, man transforms himself. Happiness, human perfection, and their own good do not come to them from passivity but from action, from occupation with things (hence work, including intellectual work).