New Left Review I/103, May-June 1977

Raymond Plant

Hegel and Political Economy (Part I)

In The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, Ernest Mandel writes: ‘Hegel had been profoundly affected in his youth by economic studies, in particular by the work of Adam Smith; Marx saw the Hegelian system as a veritable philosophy of labour.’ [1] London 1971, p. 11. He goes on to quote from Pierre Naville’s well known study De l’aliénation ` la jouissance as follows: ‘When he [Marx] read The Phenomenology of Mind, The Philosophy of Right, and even The Science of Logic, Marx thus not only discovered Hegel but already through him, he was aware of that part of classical political economy which was assimilated and translated into philosophical terms in Hegel’s work; so that Marx could not have gone about his systematic criticism of civil society and the state according to Hegel if he had not found in the latter’s writings certain elements which were still live, such as the theory of needs, the theory of appropriation, or the analysis of the division of labour.’ [2] Paris 1957, p. 11. It is my aim in this essay to try to retrieve Hegel’s views on political economy on their own terms, as a prologomenon to understanding what Marx may or may not have derived from them for his own economic writings. I shall try to indicate the development of Hegel’s views on political economy and his mature position on these issues. In this discussion the Science of Logic will not figure, because however much Marx may have been influenced by it in the development of his own analysis of capitalism, and however much Lenin may have felt that it was necessary to understanding Capital, [3] See Lenin, Collected Works, London and Moscow 1961, Vol. 38, p. 180. it does not itself articulate any of Hegel’s specific views on political economy—although it does provide the philosophical background in logic and ontology within which his views on political economy, together with his understanding of other forms of human activity, is situated. [4] At the beginning of this essay, it is only right that I should say how indebted I am to Paul Chamley’s researches in this area, particularly his articles ‘Les Origines de la Pensée Économique de Hegel’, and ‘La Doctrine Économique et la Conception Hégelienne du Travail’ in Hegel Studien, Bonn 1965, and his books Économie Politique chez Steuart et Hegel, Paris 1963, and Documents relatifs ` Sir James Steuart, Paris 1965. Also to Manfred Riedel’s Studien zu Hegels Rechtsphilosophie, Frankfurt 1969.

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