Marxist Literary Group Institute on Culture and Society, Montreal, 13th of June 2024
Reading Group: Is Anti-Imperialism Dialectical: Reading Mao Reading Lenin Reading Hegel
G.S. Sahota (sahota@ucsc.edu)
This is my first time at the MLG and I cannot think of a better way to make my belated entry than to be alongside Chris and Colleen, whose work I much admire and friendship appreciate. I joined the conversation a bit late regarding the question at hand – Is Anti-Imperialism Dialectical? – and the chosen readings of readings of readings of Hegel to address this question. With respect to the guiding theme, one might respond in a number of ways. To the extent that anything that exists is subject to its own internally generated contradictions, the answer would be: “yes, what isn’t?” But if what is meant is whether anti-imperialism is necessarily anti-capitalist – that is, able to martial the powers of a determinate negation of the existing capitalist order of things – it has long been the case that the answer would be an unequivocal “no.” In many ways, as noted by figures as diverse as Roberto Schwarz and Aijaz Ahmad with reference to equally divergent histories, anti-imperialism may deflect from a critique of capitalism. Indeed, anti-imperialism’s persuasive powers within strong nationalist formations may tend more in this direction than toward a grappling with the contradictions of capitalism itself. This point itself lays bare anti-imperialism’s limitations, which is to say, the discrepancy between its program and its overarching aims. It is thus dialectical in ways not really intended, that is, generative of contradictions that anti-imperialism cannot always recognize and contain within its own ordering of peoples, things, and spaces.
But with the little bit of time remaining, I would like to draw attention to an aspect of the readings that I believe deserve some scrutiny in a setting such as ours, namely, the notion of “logic” as opposed to “dialectic” in Lenin and, in some cases, Mao as well. There seems to be a misprision of Hegel in this respect that is itself revelatory, also in ways not fully intended. The employment of the term “logic” would presume a sense of surety regarding the historical process at hand, which apparently can be worked out in the manner of a syllogism, as if one historical stage leads necessarily to the next, as if when one arrives at full blown capitalism, it inevitably follows that socialism will be on the horizon. This is an idea that has long been shed, of course, and not only by postmodernism but by many varieties of contemporary Marxism as well, following none other than the late Marx himself. Neither Lenin nor Mao were philosophers in the technical sense, so these criticisms may seem off point entirely. But nonetheless it is worth noting the discrepancy, if not real antagonism, between Hegel’s dialectic and traditional and neo-traditional logic. The figure who drew out the differences most forcefully to my knowledge is Theodor W. Adorno in his Introduction to Dialectics (Einfuhrung in die Dialektik), based on a series of lectures he gave in 1958.
What may seem initially as a quasi-scholastic point may reveal itself to have far-reaching social and political consequences. And this is where what I have to say might converge in some respects with Blunden’s thoughtful re-conscription of Hegel for contemporary social movements. In contradistinction to Lenin and perhaps Mao as well in certain regards, logic as understood by Adorno, particularly deductive logic, has a peculiarly coercive dimension for which dialectic is the antidote. This is a strong leitmotif that runs through most of the lectures in some form or another, but Adorno’s critique of logic comes out most explicitly in several of them (lectures 4, 7, 8, 15, and 20). First is dialectic’s tension with respect to any ostensibly logically grounded world: “The dialectic is a critique of the apparent logical character of the world, of its immediate identity with our conceptuality . . .”[1] This is in contradistinction to Lenin’s understanding that Hegel is developing logic in keeping with traditional philosophy rather than against it. Adorno is certainly out of step with Lenin when Lenin writes that Hegel “demonstrated that the logical forms and laws are not an empty shell, but a reflection of the objective world” or that the “laws of logic are the reflection of the objective in the subjective consciousness of man.”[2] Furthermore, Adorno notes that unlike traditional deductive logic, dialectic does not proceed inexorably from an ever-stable absolutely first or single highest principle. Rather, Adorno follows Hegel in recognizing that such principles reveal their limitations and falsity in being merely first. In not repressing contradiction but rather embracing it as the “organon of truth” – the generative tool or instrument of truth in process – Hegel and Adorno see dialectic as operating differently.[3] That is, as Adorno clarifies, “dialectic is the attempt to break out of the prison of logic, to break free of the compulsive character of logic.”[4] Instead of abiding by an imperative of non-contradiction, dialectic obtains a distinct freedom toward the inherent qualities of its object and of experience, a freedom of being unperturbed by immanent contradictions of both. Dialectic is never mere random thinking, flight of fancy, or negative freedom. But by giving priority to contradiction, dialectic comes into tension with logic itself, whose ironclad aim is understood as the production of consisten non-contradiction.
What are the actual practical political stakes in this distinction between logic and dialectic? This is a topic for collective deliberation – hence the appropriateness of this venue. One can sense Mao’s own tensions with some of his basic principles of perception, cognition, and ratiocination when he speaks of “the active leap.” This occurs in various ways, for instance: “The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from perceptual to rational knowledge, but – and this is more important – it must manifest itself in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice.”[5] In prying himself free from the grip of his own philosophical system, Mao here reveals himself to be more dialectical than logical, manifesting the tension more than avowing it. At this point in his essay “On Practice,” Mao comes close to expressing what Adorno sees as a crucial feature of the dialectic: “the continual interaction between an extremely theoretical thought and an orientation to praxis . . . For dialectical thought does not just present us with an elaborated theoretical system from which practical ‘conclusions’ are produced only after the entire theory has been duly settled. Rather, all levels of dialectical thought, we might say, effectively yield sparks which leap from the extreme pole of theoretical reflection to the extreme pole of practical intervention.”[6] In being fluid, mobile, and able to face unexpected situations, dialectic sets one up to respond to and work with contingencies and the generally aleatory nature of historical reality at various scales. Logic, on the other hand, does not work that way. Thank you.
[1] Theodor W. Adorno, An Introduction to Dialectics (1958), ed. Christoph Zimmerman (Cambridge UK: Polity, 2017). 73
[2] V.I. Lenin,”Abstract of Hegel’s Science of Logic” in Raya Dunayevskaya (ed.), Marxism and Freedom . . . from 1776 until Today (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958) 340.
[3] Adorno Dialectics 67
[4] Adorno Dialectics 216
[5] Mao Tse-Tung, “On Practice” in his On Practice and Contradiction, ed. Slavoj Zizek (New York: Verso, 2007) 61.
[6] Adorno Dialectics 35
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