Ah, good ole Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Known to us philosophy enthusiasts simply by the revered title of Hegel, he exists as the favorite philosopher of your most pretentious philosophy-loving friend. The Hegel bros, who traipse about the philosophy parts of the internet, are a cult of Phenomenology of Spirit enthusiasts of the highest order.

It might surprise you to know that one of the most famous fanboys of that inscrutable German was Karl Marx himself. Marx, who started off learning philosophy in Germany, grew enthusiastic about Hegel’s dialectics. Marx found the process to be so important that it became essential to his communist works.

However, while Hegel, a professor of philosophy whose Phenomenology remains a difficult work to read (if only for the vexing writing style of the author), thought of the dialectic process in an abstract way, Marx took it to heart in a practical way. Marx, who disdained the academic philosophers in their ivory towers, decided to use the philosophiest of philosophers’ work as a backbone for his work as a socialist.

The Hegelian Dialectics

Hegel (1770-1831) worked as a philosophy professor in various German universities throughout his career. So beloved was he, that many of his posthumous works were published from the notes of his students. Imagine taking notes from your favorite professor and turning them into a book after they move on from this mortal coil!

While Hegel dipped his philosophical toe into many areas of philosophy, he may be best known for his dialectic approach to history. The dialectic as a philosophical tool is not new (it dates back to Plato), but Hegel’s interpretation was mindblowing at the time.

The basic concept of the dialectic is the idea of pitting two supposedly opposing concepts (thesis, antithesis) against each other, until eventually, after loads of thinking, one can come up with a way to incorporate them together, in which they no longer exist as a dualism, but rather resolve in synthesis, dissolving this supposed juxtaposition. He used this method in his idealistic work, usually incorporating it into logic or theories of the mind.

The Hegelian dialectic concept is so influential that there is a form of psychotherapy known as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), that uses similar concepts in its implementation. Used to treat people who experience strong emotions that often disconnect them to a more holistic view of others and themselves, the therapy takes the two opposing ways that some people see things and tries to help combine them, through talk therapy, so that the person might have a less divided view of their personal reality. Kind of nice to see the ghost of Hegel in something that helps people!

Marx’s Dialectic of History

Marx, pragmatic dude that he was, decided to take this dialectic and make it his own. Though his work as a socialist-philosopher, and especially in his Capital, Marx takes up the magnifying glass of dialectics and turns it specifically to history.

In the Marxist historical dialectic, Marx views two opposing sides historically. These two sides are separated by class, and they struggle with each other in dialectic form until there is a synthesis in the struggle, usually giving one of the parties a better advantage in future.

As an example, during the latter half of the 18th century, the lower, peasant class of France struggled against the nobility, which ate cake while its people could barely afford bread. The synthesis of this struggle became the French Revolution.

For Marx, this dialectic continues over and over: the thesis (proletariat) class always struggles against the upper (bourgeoisie) class until the end of history. Because for Marx, as well as for Hegel, the dialectical dance of history is of a teleological nature. That is, it has an end point, a place where it is meant to go at the end of things.

Where Marx Diverges

But Marx diverges from Hegel a bit, because Hegel gladly throws anything from history to logic into his dialectic, though focuses on idealistic matters. Marx, however, has a very specific place for his dialectic to go, and a use for it.

According to Marx, in his materialist dialectics, these consistent class struggles that we can see throughout history will come to an end with the advent of communism. They will all end up synthesizing and history as we know it will cease. When the working class is able to seize the means of production and socialism takes over, history ceases.

What happens when history ceases is a cause of debate. There are a lot of people who refer to things as a “Year Zero” (which is not just a Nine Inch Nails album), in which the past history will be irrelevant and a new, altogether better history will assert itself and all will be well with the world. I am sure that those under the foot of the Khmer Rouge would not quite agree.

Synthesizing Thought and Suffering

And this is a criticism that we can see in Marx, because, while there are many of us (your writer included) who consider ourselves Marxists philosophically, there are also those who decided to take Marx’s writings and implement them in ways that ended up appalling.

The Soviet Union’s bloody revolt was certainly taken in a Marxist spirit at first, with a working class who wanted to be out from the boot of an oligarchy that had repressed them. However, with Stalin, this was soon replaced with another form of repression.

So, how can we consolidate these two opposing things? Like a dialectic, we have the thesis of Marx’s excellent criticisms on capitalism, and on the other side, the antithesis in which Marxist thought has been implemented that caused a heck of a lot of human suffering. What is the synthesis here?

For me, I find hope in the fact that things are never strictly one way or the other. You can and should find good takeaways from Marxist thought, and I find that Marx himself, while advocating for violence in the Manifesto, does not make violence central to his work. Indeed, the centrality of his work is the suffering of the most vulnerable, and how to alleviate that suffering.

Unfortunately, so many ideologies turn into weird and unpleasant things in some circles, given enough time. One has only to see the changes in religious ideologies over time to see this is often the case. While consistency sounds like a good thing, there is rarely (if ever) any sort of ideological purity, even within ourselves on an individual level.

What we can do best in the wake of Marx and his ideas, is to try to synthesize both the thesis and antithesis in a way that helps us to learn from both and do better in the future. And that does mean accepting the fact that communist-branded societies often haven’t done the best for their people, and often did horrible things, systemically oppressing those in their care.

But on the other hand, we can’t just knock out Marx in the meantime, as many of us live in a capitalistic society that also oppresses and does horrible things to its people. Is there a way to synthesize the two? Let me know when you find out!