The Hegelian Master–Slave Dialectic in History and Class Consciousness

1 Introduction

One hundred years ago, G. Lukacs completed in Vienna and published in Berlin his magnum opus, History and Class Consciousness (HCC), with the aim of re-revolutionizing Marxism by making the Hegelian dialectics a central pillar of its methodology, or as he himself writes: “History and Class Consciousness represents what was perhaps the most radical attempt to restore the revolutionary nature of Marx’s theories by renovating and extending Hegel’s dialectics and method.”^[1] According to Lukacs, the total rejection of Hegelian dialectics by the Second International leadership (K. Kautsky, E. Bernstein), as an idealistic residue in Marxian and Marxist thought responsible for producing abstract and arbitrary constructs obstructing the knowledge of reality,^[2] led to the defeat of the workers’ movement in the Central European countries during 1918–1923. In other words, this defeat was not simply the result of a series of erroneous choices and tactics made by the labour movement leadership, but, above all, it was the consequence of adopting an anti-dialectical, neo-Kantian, or positivist-tinged Marxism, a Marxism that treated Hegelian dialectics as a dead system and from which “it is precisely the dialectic that must be removed if one wishes to found a thoroughgoing opportunistic theory, a theory of ‘evolution’ without revolution and of ‘natural development’ into Socialism without any conflict”^[3] a condition which rendered the leadership of the workers’ movement incapable of comprehending bourgeois society comprehensively and, therefore, incapable of attributing a conscious, rational character to the spontaneous action of the rebellious working class.^[4] Only within the framework of Marxism that includes “a whole series of categories of central importance and in constant use stemming directly from Hegel’s dialectic”^[5] can, as Lukacs claims, bourgeois society be comprehensively comprehended and, on the basis of this comprehension, the revolutionary action of the proletariat be rationally organized aiming at society’s radical change.

In this attempt to re-revolutionise Marxism, Lukacs explicitly mentions and thoroughly discusses in HCC the category of Hegelian dialectics that he considers the most crucial for Marxism: Totality.^[6] However, in our estimation, there is also a key dimension of the Hegelian dialectics that runs through HCC in an inconspicuous way – without any direct reference to it: The dialectic of master and slave. So, taking into account the Lukacsian observation fifteen years after the writing of HCC, that what is important in the master–slave dialectic is not Hegel’s diagnosis of how a man acquires the status of master or slave, but rather the “Hegelian analysis of the relation of master and slave both to each other and of each of them to things,”^[7] in this article, we will seek to trace the influence of this analysis on HCC and in particular on the essay The Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat. More specifically, we will attempt to shed light on the way in which the above-mentioned Hegel’s analysis, residing tacitly in HCC and constituting another – apart from the category of totality – aspect of the Hegelian dialectics, contributes both to the constitution of the Lukacsian category of reification and to the elaboration in HCC of topics such as the interaction – interdependence and contrast – between the working class and bourgeoisie, the importance of praxis/labour for conceiving reality as a whole, the false, incomplete forms of social consciousness, ideology’s social function, the role of violence in class struggle, and society of freedom.

2 The Object

I. According to Hegel, all living beings are governed by the natural desire for biological survival, for their preservation in life. However, a human being is distinguished from other living beings for the reason that one is characterized by an additional desire, the desire to be recognized by the other, the fellow human being, as an autonomous being, as a being that has managed “to free oneself from the only slavery possible, the enslavement to life,”^[8] the need to work, as a being which, by “overcoming one’s attachment to life,”^[9] is superior to other beings. This second desire constitutes, according to Hegel, the main pursuit of human beings, since anyone who does not aim at its satisfaction “is not a truly human being.”^[10] Now, human beings can satisfy the above desires – the desire for biological survival and the desire for recognition by the other as an autonomous subject, i.e., as a subject free from work – exclusively through possessing the object. Therefore, all human beings seek the possession-pleasure of the object.

However, given the object’s scarcity, according to Hegel, the object possession by someone implies that someone else is automatically deprived of it. Since all desire the object, while at the same time it is scarce, they are all involved in a life-and-death struggle for its possession and enjoyment, assuming that everyone is equally entitled to it. The winner in this struggle is the one who defies the danger of death and the loser is the one who, in fear of death, avoids risking his life, at the price, of course, of losing the object and, consequently, one’s autonomy. However, despite the threat of death, the struggle between the claimants of the object ends without the physical extermination of the loser. This is for the reason that the victor cannot be recognized as the winner, as the possessor of the object, by a dead opponent. Thus, the victor does not seek death but the defeated challenger’s submission, or in other words, the defeated challenger is allowed to live on the condition that one recognizes the victor’s independence from labour, which, at the same time, means that one accepts one’s own dependence on labour, since one of them must harness nature, to shape the object practically, in order to ensure the perpetuation of humanity.

Therefore, through the life-and-death struggle a condition emerges in which, on the one hand, the victor, the master, is acknowledged by the defeated, the slave, as the owner of the object and, therefore, as an autonomous subject, while, on the other hand, the loser is transformed into a heteronomous being, a being who, for the master’s sake, “is bound to his labor so that it determines his whole existence.”^[11] Stated differently, through the life and death struggle for the object, a situation emerges in which the master can enjoy the object without working on it, while the slave, though constantly working on the object, is not entitled to enjoy it.

A particular feature of this condition is the fact that each of its moments – master, slave, and object – is “related (a) immediately to both, and (b) mediately to each through the other.”^[12] More specifically, the master’s unmediated relationship with the object concerns the direct enjoyment of the object; while, the master’s unmediated relationship with the slave concerns the control over the latter’s labor, i.e., the direction of the slave’s labor activity in order to shape the object according to the master’s needs and desires. At the same time, the master’s relationship with the object is mediated by the slave, since the object is ready for consumption only through the slave’s labour, and his relationship with the slave is mediated by the object, since the object constitutes the chain that binds the slave to the master. For his part, the slave relates unmediatedly to the object in the process of its production, in the shaping of the raw material, and relates unmediatedly to the master in the undeniable obedience to the latter’s commands. At the same time, the relationship of the slave to the object is mediated by the master, since the master is the holder of the object, the one who allows the former to work on it, and slave’s relationship to the master is mediated by the object, since the slave secures the master’s mercy, one’s nonkilling, through one’s attachment to the object, through one’s obligation to work on the object for the master’s benefit.

That said, master and slave, both immediately and mediately, are essentially dependent on each other. Master’s enjoyment and, especially, autonomy, the fact that the master “no longer needs to make any effort to satisfy his desires,”^[13] that one does not have to struggle with nature to form the object one enjoys, depends exclusively on the slave’s labor; whereas, slave’s survival depends exclusively on one’s attachment to the object possessed by the master. On the one hand, then, master and slave exist per se only through the existence of the other. On the other hand, however, each of them constitutes the absolute negation of the other, since the master denies the autonomy of the slave and the slave can obtain autonomy only through the negation of the master. Thus, we could argue that, in the Phenomenology of Spirit (PS), master and slave appear to constitute and coexist in a contradictory relationship of interdependence and opposition, of mutual acceptance and contestation of each one’s function, in a situation where there is “simultaneous denial and maintenance of relationships of mutual recognition”^[14] of each one’s role.

II. In HCC, Lukacs argues that, within the capitalist mode of production, there is an unceasing struggle, a life-and-death struggle, between bourgeoisie and working class over labour time or, in other words, “the extraction of surplus-value in the course of production.”^[15] In the context of this struggle, the two social classes are presented by Lukacs as developing relations of dependence and opposition around the object–surplus-value, that is, they are presented as developing relations strongly reminiscent of the Hegelian master and slave dialectic.

In particular, in HCC and as regards the relations, unmediated and mediated, of dependence between the two classes and surplus value, the unmediated relation of the working class to surplus-value lies in the fact that it is the working class that directly produces surplus-value through its daily labour, and the unmediated relation of the working class to bourgeoisie lies in the fact that the former performs its labour at the dictation of the latter. The relation of the working class to surplus-value is mediated by the bourgeoisie, since the bourgeoisie, as the owner of the means of production, is the one who chooses who will work and on what terms for the production of surplus-value, and the relation of the working class to the bourgeoisie is mediated by surplus-value, since the worker can gain access to the means of production, and thus a wage in return for one’s labour, only if one accepts the precondition of surplus labour. On the other hand, the unmediated relation of the bourgeoisie to surplus-value refers to its direct appropriation and utilization – utilization aimed, above all, at its further increase and not only at its enjoyment; whereas, the unmediated relation of bourgeoisie to the working class consists in the fact that the former sets the purpose of the latter’s labour, which is none other than the production of surplus value. Finally, for reasons which are easily apparent from the above, the relation of bourgeoisie to surplus-value is mediated by the working class, and the relation of the bourgeoisie to the working class is mediated by surplus-value.

In short, Lukacs of HCC, by interpreting the Hegelian relation of internal and mutual interdependence between the master and the slave from the point of view of the Marxian theory of value, conceives the capitalist mode of production as an organic relation of immediate and mediated interdependence between the bourgeoisie and the working class. In the final analysis, under capitalism, according to Lukacs, the bourgeoisie depends immediately and mediately on the working class because of the fact that the latter’s labour constitutes the sole cause of the production of surplus-value; while the working class depends also immediately and mediately on bourgeoisie because of the necessity of the wage it receives as payment for its labour for the production of surplus-value, since, without it, it is literally – not metaphorically, as in Hegel – driven to death by starvation.^[16]

However, Lukacs, again in Hegel’s spirit, sees the two social classes not only as dependent on each other, but also as constantly in conflict with each other, with labour time being at the centre of their competition, since this is what determines the amount of surplus-value. In other words, their conflict is due to the existence of two universally opposing demands in relation to working time. On the one hand, the working class’s demand for an increase in the time of necessary labour at the expense of the time of surplus labor, which automatically implies an increase in the value of labour power – hence an improvement in the living conditions of the working class – and a reduction in the surplus value reaped by the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, bourgeoisie’s demand for an increase in the duration of surplus labor at the expense of the duration of the necessary labour and, by extension, at the expense of the value of labour power, which directly brings about an increase in surplus-value. This conflict is presented by Lukacs as taking place immediately in the workplace and mediately in the fields of politics, law, and ideology, where it is mediated by the particularities of each field. Finally, we should note here that Lukacs, like Hegel, considers that opposition constitutes the dominant pole, the fundamental determinant of the dialectical interdependence-opposition relationship developing between the bourgeoisie and the working class, or master and slave.

3 The Thing

In the Hegelian master and slave dialectic, the slave, submitting oneself to the master, because of the fear of death, becomes “a being-for-another,”^[17] for the master, one becomes a being that exists solely to serve the master, who “what the slave does is really the action of the master,”^[18] who acts at the behest and for the benefit of the master, “in everything he does, the servant faithful to his master has the master in mind and not himself.”^[19] This means that “the slave regards the master outside him as his own essence, his own ideal,”^[20] that the master’s essence, one’s needs, and desires, are internalized by the slave and become one’s own intrinsic essence, the end in itself of one’s doing. The fact that the slave’s doing is heteronomously determined by the master’s essence has, in turn, the result that the slave cannot perceive it as the cause of the master’s autonomy, but rather treats it like something completely unimportant to oneself and the master, for humanity, like a mere thing in the possession and service of the master, like a thing that passively serves the master and not as that essential act that creates oneself, that makes one’s autonomy possible.^[21]

Similarly, in the HCC, the working class, due to commodity fetishism, the concealment by the law of value of the fact that every commodity is produced for the sake of not only surplus-value but also the satisfaction of a human need internalizes the purpose of the capitalist mode of production, which is none other than the production and increase of the surplus-value, the production of wealth in its general form. Also, according to HCC, through the modern systems of labour organization (Taylorism and Fordism), which aim to maximize surplus-value, and through the modern bureaucracy, which aims to organize production efficiently, formal rationalization and the principle of calculability, quantification, the increasing of productivity, the detailed specialization, the adaptation to the dictates and rhythm of the rationalized machine, discipline and depersonalization, “extend right into the worker’s ‘soul’,”^[22] becoming one’s inner voice. Thus, Lukacs, in the spirit of the Hegelian master–slave dialectic, claims that the working class makes the essence of bourgeoisie a second nature, it internalizes this essence, that is, the purpose and principles of the capitalist mode of production, with the consequence that its labor activity takes place on the basis of this alien essence, this alien will and intellect.

Since its labour activity is carried out on the basis of an alien substance, Lukacs continues, the working class conceives the entire production process, the process of surplus-value production like something of which it has been forever deprived and which has been concentrated against it in bourgeoisie, like something that, in Hegel’s words, is “outside of and alien to it.”^[23] That is to say, the determination of working-class labour activity by an alien essence has as a consequence the working class being unable to conceive of its own labour as the irreplaceable foundation of the capitalist mode of production, as that single, active force that produces surplus-value and, by extension, capitalism. Instead, because of this heteronomy, it conceives itself and its labour like the passive object of the process of surplus-value production, like an expendable, measurable, and exchangeable cog in this process, like a helpless, substance-less being, which is passively adapted and determined entirely by the requirements of the production of surplus-value, like a thing that is completely owned and used at will by bourgeoisie together with other things (raw materials, machines, premises, etc.), in order to achieve the production of surplus-value. In other words, this definition of the working class by an alien substance has as a consequence that the working class is unable to grasp surplus-value in its true dimensions, as an outgrowth of its own daily labour, and instead grasps it in an inverted, reified way, like a product of bourgeoisie, as if the bourgeoisie constituted the active subject of its production process, its source. As is the case with the slave in PS, then, so in HCC, the working class, by internalizing the essence of bourgeoisie, is led to a reified conception of itself – of its labor, is led to a conception of itself and its labor like a mere “means and tool,”^[24] like a component of the process of surplus-value production, like a mere thing at the absolute disposal of bourgeoisie, or in other words, it is led to being unable to conceive of itself as it really is, as that single subject which, through its labour, produces the surplus-value that bourgeoisie reaps.

4 Labour, Self-Consciousness, and Revolution

I. In PS, the slave, facing in the object the objectification of one’s labour, the fact that it is one’s own labour activity that “draws the objects out of their immediate existence and grants them a specific form and meaning,”^[25] realizes that one is the true and unique creator of the object. This means that the slave, in forming the object for the sake of the master, forms, at the same time, oneself as a conscious subject, as a subject who gradually realizes that one is not a thing in the master’s employ, but the essence of the master’s autonomy, the real producer of the object.^[26] The slave realizes that the master’s autonomy is superficial, since the master depends, in essence, on labour – slave’s labour – and that the slave is essentially autonomous, in the sense that one does not have the substantive – since the master does not contribute to the production of the object – need of the master, that the slave can exist without the master. That is, through the “dialectic of labour,”^[27] the slave gradually ceases to conceive oneself like a thing and, instead, conceives oneself as the active, potentially autonomous, subject who creates the world (the object, oneself as slave, the master, and the latter’s autonomy), and who, therefore, can change it according to one’s own needs and desires. Stated differently, the slave, through the dialectic of labour, denies the status of the thing that the relation to the master confers on the slave, thus posing the primary precondition for the subversion of this world that reduces the slave to a thing.

However, although the slave realizes that one is not a thing and consciously denies the master’s world, one remains a slave, and continues to live in a world where is being treated by the master like a thing. The final abolition of this condition requires the slave, overcoming the fear of death,^[28] “to dare to fight against the master and to risk his life in fight for freedom,”^[29] in the struggle to create a new world where no one treats anyone like a thing, but also where no one has the role of a thing.

Nevertheless, until the slave fully realizes the need for a practical conflict with the master, one’s consciousness passes through some certainties of one’s freedom (Hegel quoted in Houlgate, 2005: 74) with which one justifies to oneself one’s unwillingness to engage in such a conflict, or else through which one disguises the fact that one still fears death.^[30] In the context of the first such certainty (Stoicism), the slave considers that the constitution of an abstract idea of freedom on the slave’s part automatically makes one free, so that the slave does not have to clash in practice with the master. In the context of the second certainty (scepticism), the slave treats freedom as a purely theoretical questioning of all values and all “facts, moral rules, data”^[31] of the existing world; the slave treats it exclusively as an intellectual denial of “the very reality of all that is not I.”^[32] In the context of the third certainty (unhappy consciousness), the slave attaches a transcendent character to one’s freedom, creating an imaginary world within which one is free from the master, being absolutely equal to the master before God. Now, the slave, feeling free in this world beyond the sensible, is indifferent to one’s state of unfreedom in the real world, living in the real world without any interest in denying neither intellectually its values nor practically the master. Eventually, however, the slave, since one cannot constantly “exist in a state of self-division,”^[33] in a state of transcendent freedom and actual slavery, realizes that one must unify these two states by giving a material dimension to one’s transcendent freedom, by freeing oneself from the master within the real world; something which requires a practical challenge of one’s relationship to the master.

In general, we could argue that Hegel distinguishes three levels, three forms of false, incomplete consciousness in the slave’s process of attaining complete consciousness, each of which constitutes the dialectical transcendence of the previous one. At the first level, the slave sees oneself like a thing in the service of the master. At the second level, through one’s work, the slave realizes that one is not a master’s thing, but the active subject producing the master and the latter’s autonomy. The slave realizes, that is to say, that one’s labor, although heteronomous from the master, constitutes the source of the latter’s world; this realization, of course, does not at all bring about the actual abolition of slavery. Finally, at the third level, through the dialectical denial of the previously mentioned certainties the slave becomes aware of the need for a practical conflict with the master, in order to actually cease to be a slave.

II. In the same spirit, Lukacs argues in HCC that working-class consciousness, its transition from class in-itself to class in-and-for-itself, passes through three levels, three forms of false consciousness, each of which marks a qualitative change in its state of consciousness and contains the previous ones as its dialectical moments; whereas, at the same time, consciousness movement from the one to the next level is mediated by class struggle, by the unfolding, the evolution and the sharpening of class conflict. At the first level, the working class perceives itself like a commodity among other commodities, like an attachment of the productive process, fully subject to the property and orders of the bourgeoisie. That is, like the slave in PS, the working class in HCC initially conceives of itself like a thing, like a passive object determined entirely by alien purposes, principles, and interests.

At the second level, through “the worker’s inability to identify with himself in the role of a mere object of the productive process”^[34] or, more specifically, through the fact that the worker sees in the commodity produced the crystallization of the particular, qualitative characteristics of one’s labour, the working class transitions from the consciousness of itself like the passive object (thing) of the productive process to the consciousness of itself as the active – yet hetero-determined – subject of production, as the production’s hetero-determined driving force. In other words, the working class conceives in and from its own everyday labour experience, in its direct, unmediated contact with the commodity produced, the fact that it constitutes the real source of capitalist production and, by extension, of surplus-value. In the HCC, then, the process of de-reification of the working class starts from the working class’s practical activity in the sphere of production, since only there becomes possible the direct, unmediated primary awareness of the fact that its labour not only is hetero-determined by bourgeoisie, but also constitutes, at the same time, the inescapable condition of the capitalist mode of production.^[35] This means that the dialectic of labour is also here, as in PS, what leads the working class to cease to perceive itself like being a thing.

At the third level, the working class, by rejecting both bourgeois ideology, which presents capitalism to be eternal and unchanging, and the various forms of reformist ideology, which prefer reform to revolution, realizes that only through its revolutionary action can it radically change its state of heteronomy from bourgeoisie and become the identical subject–object of history. The subject that, through its autonomous purposeful action, creates and changes the world, conceiving it, at the same time, as its own creation, while, at the same time, constantly improving the quality of its material and spiritual existence through the feedback from this now rational world. Thus, the working class, like the slave in PS, finally realizes that the objective abolition of the situation of heteronomy or exploitation, that it daily experiences, can only be achieved through its revolutionary break with bourgeoisie.

5 Interlude: The Enjoyment

In PS, the enjoyment of the object allows the master to overcome the discontent, “dissatisfaction and suffering,”^[36] caused by the fact that the recognition of one’s autonomy is not complete and meaningful, as it does not derive from another autonomous being, or in other words, it allows the master to overcome the fact that “he cannot have the certainty of his own self as true, [as] his truth is in a consciousness that is non-essential and servile.”^[37] Similarly, in the HCC, bourgeoisie is presented to transmute the discontent of living in a reified and reifying world into the enjoyment of the surplus-value it reaps. Also, in PS, just as in HCC, the master/bourgeoisie’s attachment to a labour-less and therefore untroubled enjoyment of the object, its adoption of a consumer attitude, has the consequence of forming a static, superficial, and antidialectical consciousness. A consciousness that fails to truly grasp the “solid reality,”^[38] that is, that fails to grasp that the master is essentially dependent on the slave/working class, while the slave is not essentially dependent on the master and that, consequently, fails to grasp the real cause of the other’s rebellion, the fact that the slave, not being essentially dependent on the master, seeks one’s total emancipation.

6 The Freedom

In the Hegelian master–slave dialectic, the abolition of slavery implies the constitution of a new society, in the context of which a relationship of symmetrical, mutual recognition of the members’ autonomy is established between them, a relationship in which each subject sees its autonomy in the eyes of the other, also autonomous, subjects.^[39] In other words, it implies the creation of a society within which each member is recognized and acknowledged by the other members as an autonomous subject. As a subject whose labour is not heteronomous but, on the contrary, serves one’s own needs and desires, and which appropriates – and exchanges – the objects one produces through one’s own labour. That is, as a subject who is the owner of both one’s labour and the product of one’s labour, as a, according to Hegel, bourgeois. The guarantor of property, of the general terms of transactions, as well as of the relation of mutual recognition, is the state, or, in other words, the state is that which prevents their violation, by regulating the intense competition that develops between the private interests of autonomous subjects in the sphere of market.

In the HCC, through the socialist revolution, the labour of the working class ceases to serve alien purposes and principles and is put at the service of the workers themselves, at the service of the satisfaction of their needs and desires. In this context, each worker recognizes and is recognized by the other as an autonomous and equal comrade in the transformation of nature for the benefit of the workers, as an autonomous, active subject who, through one’s conscious, intentional, and cooperative action, on the one hand, contributes catalytically to the satisfaction of the needs and desires of all the workers, and on the other hand, rationally conceives the process of production.^[40] The workers’ soviets constitute the guarantor of the new purpose of production, of the resolution of any contradictions that arise because of the survival of the law of value, as well as of the mutual recognition of the workers as autonomous subjects.

Thus, in both works under discussion, although one refers to the bourgeois-democratic and the other to the socialist revolution, the liberation of the slave or the working class, that is, the overcoming of the main master–slave or working-class contrast,^[41] signifies the creation of a new society, the society of freedom, whose members recognize each other as autonomous subjects on the basis that their labour is no longer heteronomous, and whose secondary contrasts are resolved by the existence of an institution unprecedented in history, the state or soviets. The difference is that Hegel conceives the society of freedom as a relation of mutual recognition, which is mediated by the abolition of the dependent labour; whereas Lukacs conceives it in the totally opposite manner, as a new social reality of abolition of the dependent labour, which is mediated by relations of mutual recognition. Finally, in both works, violence, required for the struggle for autonomy, is presented as the necessary and justified onset (Beginnen) of the new society and in no way as its principle (Prinzip) or its foundation (Grund).^[42]