The collapse of the Soviet Empire led many to think that communism and perhaps socialism were no longer relevant to the modern world. _Hegel and Marx After the Fall of Communism _presents a balanced discussion for and against the validity of the arguments of two of the most important political philosophers of all time, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. David MacGregor reinterprets Hegel and Marx’s philosophies, setting out key events in their lives against a backdrop of historical global (...) events. In a new afterword, MacGregor brings his study up to date, examining Russia’s revival as a world power under Vladimir Putin as well as China’s ambitious development efforts. (shrink)

In this radically revised intellectual portrait of Hegel and Marx that challenges standard interpretations of their political theory, David MacGregor considers the nature of the state in capitalist society. This is the first book to place Marx's and Hegel's political thought directly into social and historical context. Revealing the revolutionary content of Hegel's social theory and the Hegelian themes that underlie Marx's analysis of the English state in Capital, the author shows how the transformation of the Victorian state in the (...) nineteenth century influenced the mature Marx to reclaim Hegelian arguments he had earlier abandoned. These ideas included a theory of politics and social class that colored Marx's view of capitalist and working-class opposition to government reform initiatives. MacGregor criticizes interpretations of state action that present government solely as a tool of capitalist and patriarchal interests. Noting the essential significance of child labor in the growing industrialization during Hegel's and Marx's time, the author contends that "alienation," as the two philosophers understood the term, assumes a labor force in which many workers are socially powerless children and women. Given these conditions, the centrality of the English Factory Acts to workers' lives becomes obvious, a centrality acknowledged by Marx but forgotten by his followers. The author concludes his discussion with an assessment of current arguments about the state and civil society, relating these debates to Hegel's conception of the rational state. (shrink)

Abstract Chris Sciabarra's discussion of the dialectic and its uses in modern social science is most welcome. However, his account of Hegel, and his, and Ayn Rand's, vision of an ideal society, are groundlessly antistatist.

The title of this article, “The State at Dusk,” was adopted from the famous image of Minerva’s Owl in the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I chose it to capture the current mood of despair and foreboding about the state, both in its growing failure to protect individuals from the ravages of capital and in its malevolent capacity to destroy all life on earth. The threat of nuclear holocaust and the question of whether the welfare state has a future (...) are now urgent topics of political debate. Notwithstanding a few significant victories, however, the so-called New Right has achieved nothing like total success in its war against public-financed health care, education, and civil liberties, to name only a few of its targets. Moreover, despite the obvious madness of the nuclear arms race and two terms under the most reactionary of all modern U. S. presidents, the planet survives. As darkness gathers around the late twentieth century state, its outline appears much the same as it was at the outset of the conservative attack a decade ago. (shrink)

Chris Sdabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical offers a novel view of the founder of Objectivism. Sciabarra contends that Rand was influenced by Hegelian and Marxist themes that dominated Russian thought during its Silver Age, particularly the doctrine of internal relations. Yet while it is true that key Hegelian and Marxist concepts, such as the dialectics of work and the master‐slave relationship, are features of Rand's radical outlook, Sciabarra fails in his major argument that Rand's dialectical method presents an alternative (...) to that of Marx and Hegel. (shrink)

Tony Smith argues that dialectical social theory - once the dominant mode of discourse among Marxists and other leftists - has practically disappeared in an environment where radical change seems unlikely. The aim of this book is to rescue Marxism from game theory and neo-Kantianism, and revive the Hegelian tradition in radical social theory. The attempt to insert Hegel into leftist discourse seems especially timely given the resurgence of interest in Hegel elsewhere. The question, however, is whether this effort will (...) succeed. Is it too late to reverse Marxism’s retreat from dialectics; and is Smith’s book an instrument for doing so? (shrink)

Now that I have caught my breath after the monster “run away from the absolute idea,” and feeling properly chastened for resorting to 132 footnotes in a single chapter, I want to point out some errors in Raya Dunayevskaya’s review. Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right” is mentioned first on page 7, and is cited throughout The Communist Ideal. Refuting Marx’s criticism of Hegel is a central aim of the book. Dunayevskaya apparently does not agree that the bare structure (...) of Hegel’s dialectic contains the three moments, recognition, method proper, and exposition. She does not state why she disagrees, contending instead that I have drawn this interpretation from more than one Hegelian source. Unhappily, she chooses to keep from her readers what I actually say about Hegel’s logical method, in preference to an ad hominem attack on the political and intellectual credibility of my argument. (shrink)