Kommentar zu Hegel und Marx, Chapter 1
Hegel or Marx
There is a story so widespread that it barely registers as a claim anymore. It goes like this: Hegel derived the world from thought, grasped reality as the appearance of an idea, and philosophically justified the existing state of things. Marx put him back on his feet, replaced idealism with materialism, and thereby laid the foundation for a science that had not existed before. Whoever follows Marx is no longer bound to Hegel; whoever follows Hegel has no need of Marx.
The story comes from Marx himself, at least in its broad outlines, and it has good reasons for its influence. It describes how Marx understood himself, and at certain points it hits on something true. As a description of what Marx actually does, it does not hold up.
What speaks against it can be said in one sentence and needs the whole book to work out: Marx’s method is Hegelian before he turns it against Hegel, and it remains Hegelian while he turns it. The categories he works with — the development of a thing out of its inner contradictions, the totality in which each element is determined only in relation to the whole, the immanent critique that measures a position against its own claim, appearance as the necessary form of essence — are developed by Hegel and applied by Marx.
It does not follow from this that Marx added nothing. He added a great deal, and without what he added, Hegel’s architecture would remain untested against modern reality. Nor does it follow that his critique misses its mark; it hits home at several points, and it hits where Hegel is vulnerable. What follows is only that the alternative is falsely posed. Whoever believes they must choose between the two loses half the toolkit.
What this looks like in detail is the subject of this book. At the beginning stands the question of where Marx got his method.