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Marx and Heidegger

Gerry Stahl

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This volume contains the doctoral dissertation of Gerry Stahl in Philosophy at Northwestern University. It was entitled: “Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory: Interpreting and Transforming Our World.” The dissertation was defended on May 8, 1975.

The original typewritten version was scanned and an electronic version was created on the 25^th anniversary of the document. Changes were limited to minor stylistic improvements and the graphics. Digital copies are available in html and pdf format at: http://GerryStahl.net/publications/dissertations/philosophy. Additional graphics have been added for the 35^th anniversary edition.

Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory:

Interpreting and Transforming Our World

Gerry Stahl

a dissertation

submitted to the Graduate School

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Northwestern University

Evanston, Illinois

June 1975

The original typewritten version is available at Northwestern University:

Diss

378

N.U.

1975

5781m

It is indexed in Dissertation Abstracts and available from University Microfilms

Gerry Stahl

Abstract

Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory:

Interpreting and Transforming Our World

gerry stahl,

northwestern university

june 1975

Today neither philosophy of interpretation (hermeneutics) nor philosophy of society can legitimately proceed without the other. Interpretation of the world precedes the possibility of transforming it, according to Martin Heidegger, because the presence of beings is always already meaningfully structured. For Karl Marx, however, interpretations of the world are constituted by human praxis, the reproduction and transformation of social reality. The confrontation of Marx’s thought with Heidegger’s provides an appropriate historical medium for the indispensable task of bringing the problematics of critical social theory and philosophical hermeneutics to bear upon each other.

The alternative notions, that hermeneutics either founds or is founded upon social analysis, are reconciled by interpreting Marx’s social methodology as being in accord with hermeneutic principles and by transforming Heidegger’s ontology to take account of social mediations. Thereby, Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics clarifies Marx’s methodological sophistication, rescuing Marxism from a history of mechanistic corruptions, while Marx’s insights into the power of social relations provide a corrective to the politically reactionary self-understanding, abstract form, scholastic structure and non-social content of Heidegger’s jargon.

Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism plays a role analogous to Heidegger’s theory of the oblivion or Being. In both systems, the distorted appearance of things is related to the prevailing form of the Being of beings: their commodity form for Marx or their technological character for Heidegger. The commodity form of products and of human productive labor prevails in the bourgeois or capitalist era. Marx, whose methodology is specific to an analysis of this period, traces the historical and structural development of these commodity relations in primarily socio-economic terms. The way in which changes in the over-all social character are thereby related to concrete interactions provides the guiding theme of the Marx interpretation, which forms Part II.

Where Marx relates the technological character of the commodity to its actual, concrete, everyday exchange in the marketplace as historically developed, Heidegger insists that the process by which, e.g., the technological character of beings has been given, the “Ereignis,” is ungrounded and incomprehensible. But such an insistence ignores the proper position of the Ereignis within Heidegger’s system: as the process of self-mediation and of totalization of all that which is present, The analogy between the role of the social character in Marx’s system and that of the Ereignis in Heidegger’s is drawn in the opening and closing remarks of Part III, the Heidegger interpretation. There it is argued that Heidegger’s alternative conceptualization weakens Marx’s sense of the historical limits of theory as well as foregoing all ability to comprehend transformations of Being or society concretely.

Considering Heidegger and Marx together suggests that Heidegger’s central fault is in failing to relate changes in Being – the historically prevalent form of presence of beings – to developments within the concrete social realm of entities. Changes of ontological interpretation can, as Marx demonstrates, be comprehended in terms of transformations within society, whereby, of course, the social theory must itself be hermeneutically appropriate.

Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory:

Interpreting and Transforming Our World

Man müsse durch die Eiswüste der Abstraktion hindurch, um zu konkretem Philosophieren bündig zu gelangen.

Adorno quoting Benjamin

Preface

Thinking about Marx and Heidegger together is most fruitfully accomplished by a sympathetic study of their mature approaches and systems, focusing on the relation between beings and Being, the concrete and the abstract, the individual entity and its socio-historical context. This strategy determines the selection of texts to be analyzed. Rather than centering on accidentally parallel discussions of explicitly political issues, writings are chosen with the goal of developing the most important systematic and methodological themes of Marx’s and Heidegger’s thought. Their mature presentations – Volume I of Das Kapital (1867) and the lecture on Time and Being (1962) – are taken as standards, with other works drawn upon to trace the developments leading up to them. Hermeneutic, political and internal justifications for the selection of specific primary texts, for not making explicit use of secondary works, and for interpreting the two philosophers through each others’ eyes are indicated in the introductory Part I. Above all, it is argued, a contemporary perspective on Marx is inevitably affected by Heidegger’s influence as well as by intervening political developments; and similarly for reading Heidegger.

While less central points of direct contact between the writings of Marx and those of Heidegger have been ignored, several correspondences have been thematized. A primary motivating presupposition of both Marx’s and Heidegger’s project is the belief that true reality lies hidden from our direct perceptions. Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism plays a role analogous to Heidegger’s theory of the oblivion or Being. In both systems, the distorted appearance of things is related to the prevailing form of the Being of beings: their commodity form for Marx or their technological character for Heidegger. Heidegger’s “technological stock” has essentially the same characteristics as Marx’s “commodity.” Both forms are, furthermore, historically specific. Technological stock is the characteristic form of the Being of beings in the modern epoch, which is, according to Heidegger, historically given by Being-as-such or the Ereignis. Correspondingly, for Marx, the commodity form of products and of human productive labor prevails in the bourgeois or capitalist era. Marx, whose methodology is specific to an analysis of this period, traces the historical and structural development of these commodity relations in primarily socio-economic terms. The way in which changes in the over-all social character are thereby related to concrete interactions provides the guiding theme of the Marx interpretation, which forms Part II.

Where Marx relates the technological character of the commodity to its actual, concrete, everyday exchange in the marketplace as historically developed, Heidegger insists that the process by which, e.g., the technological character of beings has been given, the “Ereignis,” is ungrounded and incomprehensible. But such an insistence ignores the proper position of the Ereignis within Heidegger’s system: as the process of self-mediation and of totalization of all that which is present. To divorce mediation from its content is hypostatization; to project social totalization beyond its socio-historical limits is to fall behind Marx’s level of methodological self-reflection. The analogy between the role of the social character in Marx’s system and that of the Ereignis in Heidegger’s is drawn in the opening and closing remarks of Part III, the Heidegger interpretation. There it is argued that Heidegger’s alternative conceptualization weakens Marx’s sense of the historical limits of theory as well as foregoing all ability to comprehend transformations of Being or society concretely.

***

The methodological reflections on thinking about Marx and Heidegger together, the interpretation of Marx, and the analysis of Heidegger are each carried out in three chapters, as summarized below:

The dialectic of essence and appearance at work in the systems of both Marx and Heidegger represents a shared response to present social appearances as obscuring the potential for a better world, one which would incorporate new forms of ontological relations (Part I). But the two mainstreams of contemporary continental thought which flow from these systems, and which appeal especially to those interested in transforming the world, problematize each other. Issues both internal and external to Marx’s theory and Heidegger’s thought call for a reckoning by each with the other (Chapter I). Heidegger, for instance, accuses Marxism of adopting “metaphysical” conceptualizations (Chapter II), while Marxists respond that Heidegger has ignored the impact of social conditions upon his thought (Chapter III).

Marx’s works are construed as interpretations of the social relations underlying appearances which have been distorted by capitalist relations (Part II). His early writings, Alienated Labor and Theses on Feuerbach, anticipations of his mature critique of political economy, occasionally substitute the critical appropriation of prevalent metaphysical hypotheses for the stringent methodology subsequently used (Chapter IV). Marx’s Grundrisse then develops the appropriate historical analyses, economic categories and hermeneutic methodology though theoretical research (Chapter V). Finally, Capital systematically presents the analysis of capitalist society, starting dialectically from the abstractions arrived at in the capitalist economy (Chapter VI). The hermeneutic accord between Marx’s interpretations of the world and the historic processes which reproduce and transform the world, the manifold unity of Marx’s social theory and capitalist social practice, saves Marx’s system from the charge of being metaphysical by deriving its method from its object.

Heidegger’s post-war thought offers an alternative to Marxism by focusing on the general, non-economic relationship between entities and their form of presence in a given historical epoch (Part III). The Origin of the Work of Art presents Heidegger’s “reversal” toward Being-as-such, formulating his central question of Being in terms of the origin of the historically specific form of presence of a work which establishes its own presence (Chapter VII). The tendency here to give an absolute priority to Being develops in the essay The Thing, which introduces his mature theoretical framework. (Chapter VIII). Heidegger’s final statement, the lecture on Time and Being, takes a meta-ontological overview of the history of the forms of presence which, however, leaves the concrete details of historical ontological transformations shrouded in mystery (Chapter IX). Thereby, the ontological self-interpretation of the world is illegitimately divorced from its ontic self-transformation, leaving Heidegger’s social commentary content-less and messianic next to Marx’s.

***

Note: Chapter III is copywritten by the journal in which it appeared as “The Jargon of Authenticity: An Introduction to a Marxist Critique of Heidegger” by Gerry Stahl (Boundary II, Department of English, SUNY-Binghamton, NY 13901, Winter 1975, pp. 439-497).

Quotations: All quotations are given in English. Translations from the German are based upon the best available English versions, but are revised without notice for increased literalness and consistency. References to texts of Marx and Heidegger are given to both the translation and the original, with English page numbers preceded by p and German by S.

***

The present work represents the culmination or thirty years of progress toward the author’s intellectual maturity. As such, it is a token of gratitude to all those who have contributed, however unknowingly, to that process. It is, accordingly, dedicated to those magical moments when truth makes its appearance unannounced, but deservedly, within a social gathering.

Abstract

Preface

Contents

Part I: Interpreting Marx and Heidegger in Our World

Chapter I. The Alternative of Marx and Heidegger

Interpretation for Transformation

Interpreting Marx and Heidegger Together

The Hermeneutic Context

Chapter II. Heidegger’s Critique of Marx

Heidegger’s Early Criticisms

Political Distortions

Heidegger’s Mature Criticisms

Chapter III. A Marxist Critique of Heidegger

Adorno’s Early Criticisms

Adorno’s Methodology of Critique

Adorno’s Mature Criticisms

Part II. Karl Marx: Ideology Critique as Interpretation and Transformation of the World

Chapter IV. Anticipations: The Early Works

The Primacy of Commodity Production for Interpretation

The Alienated World

Ideology Critique and the Transformation of the World

Chapter V. Research: The Grundrisse

Materialistic Conceptualizations for the Self-Interpretation of the World

Historically-specific Conceptualizations

Retrospective Interpretation of the History of Property Relations

Chapter VI. Presentation: Capital

The Form of Value of Commodities

Abstract Labor in Theory and Practice

Fetishism as Appearance and Reality

Part III. Martin Heidegger: Meta-Ontology as Interpretation and Transformation of the World

Transitional Remarks

Chapter VII: The Work

The Art Work and History

Art and Being

The Primacy of Being

Chapter VIII: The Thing

Thing and Stock

Technological Being

Forgetfulness of Being

Chapter IX: Being-Itself

The History of Being

Meta-ontology

The Concept of Being

Concluding Remarks

Bibliography

Vita

Endnotes

Part I: Interpreting Marx and Heidegger in Our World

The author thinking about Marx and Heidegger during a visit to East Berlin in 1972.

Chapter I. The Alternative of Marx and Heidegger

The reasons for my decision to write on Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger together are numerous. Throughout my study of philosophy, the two major tendencies in continental thought, Marxism and existentialism, have been rivals for my interest. Marx and Heidegger are clearly the founders of the two schools and to my mind they remain the most profound representatives. It was thus natural that I should take the opportunity of researching a dissertation to come to grips with the philosophical alternative they present.

My personal inclination is not, however, merely subjective; it is an expression of the objective conditions in society and in the philosophical tradition. There are, that is, good reasons for someone critical of today’s society to be repelled by the inherent conservatism of Anglo-American philosophy and to be attracted to Marx and Heidegger. Both Marx and Heidegger, for all their criticisms of Hegel, retain the central insight of dialectics: that the facts are not simply given, but are mediated in ways that can only be comprehended with the help of theory. A philosophy that does not take this seriously is ill equipped to deal with deceptive reality.

To turn to Marx or Heidegger as to a dogma is, however, to destroy them. Not only does the originality of their thought demand an intellectual struggle that critically overcomes the habits of common sense, but the weaknesses which have become apparent in their systems necessitate creative development of these systems. Internal requirements of the two philosophies, as well as their deficiencies, call for a confrontation between them, which could serve to clarify and strengthen each of the alternatives, if not to synthesize them. The present introductory chapter and the subsequent review of previous debates between the two positions outline these needs, anticipating the material which follows in the actual interpretations.

A basis for comparison of the two approaches exists in terms of the common search for essences hidden in appearances. The differences between the essential concepts they form and emphasize suggest, then, that Heidegger can be understood as a rethinking of Marx, who too narrowly based his analysis on the economic realm. On the other hand, the lack of historical content in Heidegger’s concepts needs to be remedied through a study of Marx’s method of historically-specific concept formation. Although a review of previous attempts at interpreting Marx and Heidegger from each other’s perspective reveals that there has been little success to date in this enterprise, previous misunderstandings can generally be attributed to national and international politics, and it can be hoped that a more fruitful dialogue is now possible.

Chapter I concludes with a summary of the themes and considerations which are raised in Part I and which determine the outlines of the subsequent interpretations of Marx and Heidegger. Chapters II and III expand upon the comparison of Marx and Heidegger by reviewing Heidegger’s critique of Marx and Adorno’s Marxist critique of Heidegger. These chapters thereby uncover internal arguments why Heidegger should have paid more attention to Marx and why Marxists must come to terms with Heidegger’s thought.

Interpretation for Transformation

There is today a need for interpretation of the world. Marx and Heidegger share with Freud the belief that it is possible with the help of a theory to understand someone’s ideas, behavior and self better than he understands them himself. The motivations consciously debated by the agent may well be screens against true perception or at best interpretations of his situation, which are not necessarily privileged over the analysis of his situation by other people. The idealistic presupposition of the transparency of the cogito to the ego has been rejected by these post-Hegelian outlooks. The subject, who has been raised in a family, mediated by social conditions, and “thrown” into the world, must interpret his own consciousness, activity, and Being just as an observer must, namely from a perspective which may well be more limited by ignorance of various factors and by being more caught up in self-concealing conditions than an observer with a developed theory – even though the subject has been exposed to more of the empirical facts. This is not a merely scholastic question of epistemology. The self-perception of the subject situated naturally (i.e., without the objectifying alienation of theoretical analysis) in his family, society and world is in fact subject to systematic distortions of which he remains unaware. The normal psychic dynamic of family life is predicated upon its sublimation into the unconscious; the invisible hand of bourgeois exchange society could not be effective without commodity fetishism; and the reliability of the world presupposes that we are “fallen” in it and do not recognize its “worldhood” or “worlding,” its Being.

Both Marx and Heidegger situate Hegel’s dialectic of essence and appearance in the contemporary world. Marx argues that capitalist society is pervaded by a “fetishism of commodities,” that is, that the essential social relationships which structure society and the lives of its members appear, if at all, in the illusory form of characteristics of physical objects, of the commodities produced. Any evaluation of capitalist society in terms of its appearances alone, without the assistance of a theory which interprets and demystifies the appearances will necessarily be apologetic – at most liberally reformist – covertly and dogmatically endorsing the mystifying ideology of capitalism. A theoretical interpretation of the essences as illusion, on the other hand, allows for a critical grasp of their contradictory nature and reveals potentials for qualitative transformation.

Similarly, Heidegger argues that Western thought is guilty of a progressive “forgetfulness of Being” such that the ontological categories through which we understand reality distort our relationships to ourselves and other beings. What is needed is a meta-ontology, a theory which deals with the deceptive character of contemporary appearances. Thus, common to Marx and Heidegger, but not to the competing philosophic approaches of the twentieth century, is the belief that appearances by themselves are illusory, the insight that this illusory character is historically situated, and the conviction that philosophy’s task is to break through such illusion. This shared conviction provides a basis for the following interpretations of Marx and Heidegger and for their comparison. The central methodological problem for both thinkers is accordingly the question of how to derive the appropriate theoretical essence from the given appearances, from the ideologies and the phenomena. The different approaches to a shared project determine contrasts between Marx and Heidegger, which are clear in their respective conceptual frameworks, or rather, in the way in which they try to avoid imposing conceptualizations external to their subject matter.

Marx and Heidegger each formulate an essential concept. Marx raises the question, What is truth? by arguing that capitalist appearances are illusory, fetishized, false. This alone might qualify him for consideration as a philosopher in the broad sense of a thinker who stops at no academic borders. Frequently, however, he is relegated to the ranks of out-moded economists. Worse yet, perhaps, his thought is accepted as interdisciplinary, and segmented according to the academic division of labor against which it stands as a forceful counterexample. A preferable way of understanding the complexity of Marx’s thought is suggested by Jürgen Habermas’ analysis of emancipatory science as a dialectical unity of interpretive and, explanatory interests. [1 – see Endnotes at end of this volume]

Speculative philosophy (of the Hegelian tradition) is concerned to interpret reality, to provide categories for subsuming reality such that the system of categories provides a sense or meaning in terms of which reality can be understood, comprehended, interpreted. Such philosophy is retrospective, not predictive; it does not make calculations, but interprets the significance of their results. Non-dialectical philosophy and science are explanatory in the sense that they construct their concepts operationally, formulate laws to predict in quantitative terms, clarify logical difficulties and anomalies. They are thus useful for manipulating events within the given norms, but inadequate by themselves for criticizing these norms. Because Marx wants both to comprehend reality critically and to explain its functioning and its development with an eye to transforming it, his theory must be both interpretive and explanatory.

To understand Marx is to comprehend the unity of these two aspects of his work. Nevertheless, one can roughly say that Marx’s theory of value (in Capital, Volume I) is primarily interpretive (of the essence), while his price theory (Capital, Volume III) is primarily explanatory (of the appearance). We shall be concerned with Marx’s interpretive framework, rather than with his explanatory science. The criticisms which the technical details of the latter have received by even Marx’s most sympathetic readers is not the least reason for reconsidering Marx’s interpretive theory in relation to present society and in comparison to competing philosophies. The mediation of Marx’s value theory with his price theory – which gives the unity of interests to his critical theory of society – takes place in terms of the consideration of more and more economic influences. The starting point for the entire system is the commodity, cornerstone of capitalist production. The theory of capitalist society, including the analysis of fetishism, which is the basis of the critical thrust of Marx’s system, can be presented by unpacking this abstract concept. For Marx’s concept of the commodity summarizes the results of years of social research and theoretical critique which he dedicated to developing his early, anticipatory social criticisms.

Despite the fact that many social critics today feel that Marx’s systematic focus was too narrowly economic, surprisingly few alternatives to Marx’s approach have been developed. Either Marx’s theory is patched up or research into delimited realms of appearance is carried out with little theoretical guidance. Martin Heidegger’s thought suggests itself as a broader alternative to Marxism. His philosophical theory is not only prima facie comparable to Marx’s, but in many respects methodologically quite similar. Furthermore, there are historical reasons for viewing this alternative as a rethinking of Marxism. Heidegger’s mature thought can well be understood as the attempt to interpret reality, including its illusory character, more radically than Marx by reflecting upon the ontological categories at work in capitalist production and more generally in our modern age. In his theory, the concept of technological Being plays roughly the same role as that of the commodity in Marx’s. Two crucial questions in evaluating Heidegger’s alternative to Marx are: Has Heidegger really thought about Marx adequately, that is, has he understood the significance of Marx’s accomplishments? Secondly, has Heidegger really been more radical than Marx or has he in fact fallen behind Marx’s standpoint philosophically as well as in terms of content? These questions are to be understood quite apart from the undisputed fact that Heidegger’s theory is not as fully developed in concrete details as Marx’s, that Heidegger has, by his own admission, just managed to clear the ground somewhat.

The concepts of a critical theory of society are perforce radically historical. They display a temporal structure all their own. If the given appearances are illusory, then the concepts that name them effectively must be able to move dialectically between essence and appearance. In temporal terms, the concept must show that appearances lack necessity, that the past was essentially different. As critical, the concept also proclaims the possibility of a better future; it anticipates a qualitative transformation.

Marx’s key concept, that of the commodity, is not limited to the era which it characterizes. Nor is it simply universal. Rather, it can retrospectively shed light on its less developed forms under feudalism and also suggest the form it might take in a subsequent harmonious industrial society. Briefly, that is, the relation between the two primary moments of the commodity, use value and exchange value, mirrors the historically changing tensions within society as a whole, their relation of opposition within the capitalist form of production had not yet developed before capitalism and would have to be overcome in the future in order to transcend fetishism, alienation, exploitation, and impoverishment. Within Heidegger’s system, much the same can be said about the technological character of Being. In his terms, it is the “Janus head” facing both danger and salvation, one foot in the present epoch and another in a possible subsequent one. Retrospectively, it also makes sense of the development that led up to it.

For a theory to move between essence and appearance, to interpret the development up to the present and to uncover potentials for the future in the present, its key concepts must be neither operationally defined in terms of the given nor ahistorically general. This accounts for the extensive concern with history evident in the work of both Marx and Heidegger. That Heidegger’s concepts often seem to lack the historical content characteristic of Marx’s suggests that a comparison of the two philosophies may help remove Heidegger’s greatest weakness.

Interpreting Marx and Heidegger Together

The problematics of Marx and Heidegger are comparable in fundamental ways. Central to both are the twin paradoxes: guided by theory, the analyses must nevertheless be immanent to their object; consciously situated in the world they interpret, their task is to transform it through critique. The unity of critical theory and situated immanence common to Marx and Heidegger defines the tangential point of ideology critique and destructive hermeneutics, social theory and social praxis, interpretation and transformation of the world.

Marx and Heidegger follow a theoretical approach by focusing on an essential category. This essence, which is elaborated into a conceptual framework, is not simply a concept from which one could logically or dialectically deduce a system, nor does it represent some one being which grounds all other beings as God did in medieval theologies. The theoretical approach is a consequence of the claim that the true structure of reality has been obscured. That this claim does not itself lead to mysticism is due to its being situated in the character of capitalist commodity relations or technological Being. Marx and Heidegger see the root of obfuscation in historical developments and strive for the removal of the prevalent deception rather than for submission to it or exploitation of it for purposes of domination. Recognizing the historical objectivity of false appearances, they view their own theoretical insights as moments in the historical transformation required to remove the deceptive character of reality’s contemporary self-interpretation. This sense of historical objectivity distinguishes Marx and Heidegger from vulgar utopianism which dreams up ideal societies without concern for making the transition from today’s problems. Yet the two thinkers are critical in the sense of orienting their thought toward a qualitatively different future. As situated, their theoretical and critical approach is immanent. Their orientation toward the future is based on their position in the present, which they understand as having developed out of the past. The character of the systems of Marx and Heidegger, including their methodologies, is explicitly immanent to their historical situation. The theories are articulations of their own circumstances, rather than attempts to impose an abstract, unrelated, ahistorical conceptual framework upon the given. The given is criticized in accordance with its own claims.

However, despite these at least formal similarities, Marx and Heidegger have generally been considered to be at logger-heads. Followers of Marx and Heidegger have maintained primarily polemical relations with each others and previous attempts to think about Marx and Heidegger together have been problematic at best. Since the publication of Heidegger’s Being and Time, Marxists have dealt with Heidegger in basically two ways. Some, like the early Marcuse or the late Sartre, sought in Heidegger’s approach a new ontological foundation or philosophy of man to supplement the analyses of a Marx who supposedly had little time for epistemological questions. Others, like Lukacs, lumped Heidegger’s writings in with bistro existentialism and rejected the whole as bourgeois ideology. Generally, the polemicists have been quick to attack surface features without understanding their role in a system that admittedly was until recently only available in the form of obscure hints. Heidegger’s apologists, at the other extreme, try to remove all danger of criticism by insisting that he must be interpreted – an endless and thankless task – before he can be judged.

Commentators who have focused on Heidegger’s later works have frequently expressed the feeling that Heidegger’s thought, for all its depth and breadth, is in the end somehow empty. However, when not hurtled as a weapon of polemic, this objection generally appears camouflaged in the guise of a personal aside tacked onto the end of an objectively argued, uncritical exposition with no attempt to explain the emptiness in terms of what was analyzed. How does this emptiness arise from Heidegger’s approach? Where can the problem be pinpointed in his system? What are the ideological implications? What remains of value? The answers to these questions must be sought in the innermost recesses of Heidegger’s system. Such a search differs as much from the last minute posing of general “critical” doubts at the end of an uncritical analysis as from an emotional response to surface features. The massive secondary literature on Heidegger seems to lack such a critical search of his system, judging its claim to relevance on the basis of its underlying outlines.

The two knowledgeable attempts to deal with Heidegger as a social thinker fail not only in their over-zealous defense and acceptance of Heidegger’s pronouncements, but, more seriously, in seeking something that is not there, Heidegger’s “political philosophy” in the Aristotelian sense. Otto Pöggeler’s Philosophie und Politik bei Heidegger [2] – apparently an attempt to deal with the basic critical problem avoided in his larger commentary on Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers – collects many of the central issues and provides a counter-balance to the polemics, without, unfortunately, finding time to go beyond making plausible his defenses of Heidegger. He emphasizes the problem of developing a “political philosophy” on a Heideggerian foundation, without trying to understand how Heidegger’s approach already represents an alternative to Marxism.

Alexander Schwan, in his Politische Philosophie im Denken Heideggers, [3] tries to adapt Heidegger’s analysis of the ontological structure of the work of art simplistically to an analysis of the Hitler state, rather than seeing the art analysis as itself already a social analysis. The arbitrary nature of Schwan’s approach becomes striking when he repeats the adaptation with a very different later Heideggerian model with almost identical results. An alternative approach to an analysis of the relation of politics to Heidegger’s thought suggests itself in the material on the 1930’s which Schwan has himself assembled: to trace the effects of the political climate upon Heidegger’s writings or to oppose an analysis of the political phenomena to Heidegger’s conception of history – lines of politically critical analysis which are, unfortunately, absent from the political philosophizings of Pöggeler and Schwan.

While few have succeeded in relating Heidegger to Marx, there is an increasing tendency to focus on his similarities to Hegel. Heidegger himself has become more concerned with Hegel in his later writings and seminars, although even Being and Time discussed Hegel’s conception of time at some length. Heidegger, however, intends to go beyond the tradition that stretched from Plato to Hegel. Hence Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Marx, the great Hegel critics, are important to him. The concern with Kierkegaard, who allegedly remained on an ontic level, diminished after Being and Time, while Nietzsche assumed a central importance in Heidegger’s work. After his fascination with Nietzsche waned, Heidegger seems increasingly to have recognized the importance of Marx’s post-Hegelianism, without, however, dealing in any depth with Marx. Rather, Heidegger’ s references to Marx suggest that a discussion between them is one of the great unfinished tasks of Heidegger’s project. An analysis of these references indicates, further, that a necessary first step is to correct the misunderstandings that they express.

The work of Theodor W. Adorno contains a serious and extended critique of Heidegger’s system. However, Adorno avoids a treatment of Heidegger’s philosophy in isolation. For him, as a Marxist, it is important to deal with Heidegger the way Marx dealt with Hegel: as an expression of the latest stage in the history of philosophy and society. Heidegger’s popularity is to be understood in social terms and its ideological consequences are to be combated. Consequently, Adorno’s analysis is difficult to judge on a purely philosophical level. Further, while it makes several fundamental points, its form of presentation suffers from abstractness: distance from the material. Not only is the Marxist alternative to Heidegger kept on an implicit level; the interpretation of Heidegger’s system remains itself between the lines. Only when supplemented by a thorough interpretation of Marx and Heidegger can Adorno’s claims be evaluated, demonstrated, criticized or expanded upon. Particularly bothersome in Adorno’s discussions is the way in which he ranges across Heidegger’s writings without admitting that they have developed under the recognition of many of the same immanent criticisms which Adorno articulates. Thus, it is useful to focus on one stage of Heidegger’s path of thought – his final system – in order to determine just which of Adorno’s accusations hold in the end.

The Hermeneutic Context

Heidegger’s attitude toward Marx suggests that he has rather uncritically accepted certain prevailing reductionist interpretations of Marx’s writings and has thereby reinforced their popularity (cf. Chapter II below). Soviet orthodoxy has not only reified Marx’s critical, dialectical thought into a metaphysics, but has used it as a justification for totalitarianism. In rejecting Soviet Diamat, Heidegger (at least until after the war) thinks he is dispensing with Marx, thereby accepting orthodoxy’s false claim to authenticity while ignoring what truth may yet be contained in its system. Here, as elsewhere, Heidegger’s jargon of origin-al thinking comes into conflict with his insight into the need for “destructive’ thought, which starts out from available philosophies to uncover what truth is buried within them. Thus, Heidegger makes a blanket rejection of the economism of Marx as seen through the eyes of the old left (Marxist-Leninists and Social Democrats alike) without considering Marx’s arguments for the primacy of commodity production in interpreting our world and, thereby, without being able to up-date the theory to more contemporary needs. Because he does not see the mediation of Marx’s economic studies with his philosophy (i.e., his explanatory with his interpretive theory), Heidegger is forced to an extreme humanist interpretation when he wants to salvage something of Marx’s thought. By focusing his attention exclusively on Marx’s early work as divorced from Capital, Heidegger inevitably arrives at the kind of humanist or even existentialist picture of Marx which is so popular in liberal theological circles and which allows him to reject Marx as metaphysically humanist.

In opposition to Heidegger’s emphases, the following interpretation of Marx (in Part II) attempts to make sense of his thought as a whole precisely by steering clear of possible metaphysical, economist and humanist distortions in order to arrive at a position that can speak to Heidegger with strength, relevance and independence. Within the context of a presentation of the core of Marx’s system, focus will be on Marx’s principle of the primacy of commodity production, the unity of his social theory and capitalist social practice, and his analysis of fetishism. It is hoped that the discussion of these focal points will contribute to thought on these important matters. Although the view of Marx presented is conceived as a synthesis of contemporary independent Marxist exegesis, the attempt to structure an interpretation of Marx in terms of the confrontation with Heidegger is, it seems to me, unique and fruitful.

The interpretation of Heidegger (in Part III) follows similar guidelines. The manifold debates over existentialism and Marxism are indicative of the tact that Marxists almost always consider Heidegger an existentialist That is, Heidegger’s doctrine of man in his Daseinsanalytik is interpreted moralistically, or at least is taken as an end in itself, as a subjectivistic, individualistic philosophy, rather than as a first step in the anti-subjectivistic questioning of Being. This understanding of Heidegger has not led to significant results because, I suspect, the “existentialism” in Being and Time is a popular, superficial level of meaning which merely obscures Heidegger’s own thought as developed in his later writings. Adorno’s critique is, I think, convincing in arguing that the appealing elements of Heidegger’s magnum opus are jargonistic and wholly inconsonant with Marxist concerns. The following interpretation thus turns to the late Heidegger, where the accent is no longer on the individual, avoiding, however, the theological interpretation to which Heidegger’s ambiguity carefully leaves itself open.

Seen in relation to Marxism, Heidegger’s final system seems to call for the comparison with Marx’s and it is, indeed, surprising that so little has been done along these lines. The important influences of Heidegger on Marxism tend to be highly indirect: e.g., through the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and within the context of French structuralism. By contrast, the interpretation presented here aims at confronting Heidegger’s mature thought head-on with a viable reading of Marx. The central themes will accordingly be: Heidegger’s claim for a priority of Being, his doctrine of the forgetfulness of Being and the structure and methodology of his critical meta-ontology – especially the relation of its concepts to history. The basic analysis of Heidegger’s system attempts to capture what seems to be obviously at work in Heidegger’s writings since the mid-thirties in line with reflections which Heidegger himself makes in his latest work. The danger is, of course, that any such over-all sketch is reductive of Heidegger’s thought, whose importance lies more in its concrete suggestions and specific points then in its general outlines – witness the above reference to hermeneutics and structuralism. If, however, this interpretation lacks the profundity that alone can benefit from Heidegger, at least it consciously avoids the shortcomings of previous interpretive attempts and clears the way for further work by establishing a context within which the confrontation between Marx and Heidegger can meaningfully be developed. Although placed within a critical argument, the interpretation of Heidegger, like that of Marx, aims at sympathetic understanding and constructive development.

The problem with previous interpretations of Marx (including Heidegger’s) and of Heidegger (including those by Marxists) can be summed up in one objection: they impose a preconception upon their object. This is precisely what phenomenology, with its slogan: “Zur Sache selbst,” rebelled against. Heidegger has adopted this ethos in demanding that Being-itself be thought about “appropriately.” Appropriate thought appropriates its object in an appropriate way, in a manner derived from the thing itself. Marxism, too, in line with its rejection of ideology, is opposed to criticism from an external standpoint; Marx’s “immanent critiques” of Hegel, political economy and bourgeois ideology in general set out from the presuppositions of the questionable theory itself in order to show its contradictions and inadequacies.

To understand Marx and Heidegger appropriately, to uncover what is unique and original to each, means to follow their own hermeneutic principles. In comparing the two systems, neither can be subordinated to the other or to some supposedly objective third standpoint of commonsensical analysis. The principle guiding the present work has been to allow the two systems to unfold themselves autonomously, understanding the tangential points as organic parts of their respective contexts. This has been sought through keeping the two presentations distinct rather than comparing them point by point. The systems are developed through close textual analysis of key works, which, however, are selected with an eye to the comparison. Further, the confrontation is not externally imposed; it arises immanently out of the present crisis of Marxist theory and the contradictions of Heidegger’s thought as well as out of the internal demands of the two systems. Once the Marx interpretation has been spelled out, the points of comparison can be developed in terms of the material as it occurs in the course of the Heidegger presentation, thereby strengthening the focus of the Heidegger interpretation without distorting it.

Just as, for Marx, immanent critique need not become apologetic if it retains its critical thrust, so, for Heidegger, what is decisive is not to avoid the hermeneutic circle but to come into it in the right way: “Our first, last and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves.” [4]

As this quotation from Heidegger notes, it is not merely one’s project and an anticipation of the results which form preconditions of understanding, but one’s preconceptions as well. If one is to avoid external critique which is inappropriate, distorts and misses the point, then account must be taken of the source of preconceptions, the Wirkungsgeschichte of the work under consideration. [5] Only through the history of its effects, its tradition of having been variously construed, does a work cross the gap between the author and the reader. The history of ideas is thus the medium which permits understanding, the reconciliation of the dead spirit in language with that spirit which forces it to life on the basis of its afterlife.

But intellectual history takes place in the context of socio-political developments. Heideggerian hermeneutics may be correct when it argues that society can only be known through linguistic texts: “Language is the house of Being” and conversely “Being, which can be understood, is language.” [6] Thus, it is true that Marx focuses on Hegel’s texts, the tomes of bourgeois political economy and British governmental reports. More generally, “society” is to be located only in its citizens, that is, in their (fundamentally linguistic) objectifications in self-reflection, speech, documents, works and institutions. Marxism none-the-less has the last word when it points out that the subjects have already been thoroughly mediated, so that the social superstructure created by their activity is, through them, already (pre-linguistically) shaped by the character of the social totality. Karl-Otto Apel is thus right to point to the basis in the “community of interpreters” for the ontological categories, whose history Heidegger leaves to a linguistic world-spirit whose theological overtones have merely been modernized and whose substance has accordingly been diminished. [7] However, in abstracting from the historically-specific to formulate the ideal of a speech community, Apel is himself in danger of abstracting from the social context of the communicating subjects: their relations within a specific, concrete, historical form of’ production.

A merger is necessary between the hermeneutic insight into the context-dependence of all understanding and the ideology-critical emphasis on societal mediations. From his early analysis or Being-in-the-world as the essential structure of human existence, Heidegger has stressed the importance of the world around a being to the character of the being itself: a tool has meaning within a technical context, a jug within the relationships of the physical world, a bridge within lived space and a word within the communicative situation. The grand question of Being is ultimately an investigation of the contextuality of beings. But Heidegger fails to recognize the power of social formations to define the context of beings; here Marxism furnishes the antidote. With Marx, social theory supplies the comprehension of the context. A Marxist appropriation of Heidegger’s critique of non-contextual, “metaphysical” positivism would simultaneously clarify Marxism’s own approach and demystify Heidegger’s content-poor ontological musings. For Marx and his creative followers have articulated numerous ways in which the power of the context to structure the beings it contains is itself created by those beings. Such analyses are, however, readily subject to misunderstandings unless they are formulated within a theory which explicitly rejects mechanistic, positivistic, idealistic and subjectivistic philosophical stances. To bring out those fundamental theoretical features of Marx’s thought which are especially important today requires a peculiarly twentieth century formulation which would make explicit how social facts are comprehended within a social theory and how the categories and orientation of that theory are related to its social context.

Because the essence of man inheres in the nexus of social relations from the viewpoint of social theory, human activity constitutes social praxis, the process of the production and reproduction of the form and substance of society. The task of socially-conscious theory is accordingly to interpret social phenomena, as human artifacts and, as such, as the expression of social relations among people. The reconstruction of the preconditions of the given social reality should ideally demonstrate the mediations that constitute its history. This demonstration is neither a recounting of empirical history, a logical argument unrelated to the specifics of the case, nor a causal account of events and effects. Rather, it points to ways in which the phenomena have been conditioned, have been characterized by social conditions such that in the end the social origins have become obscured. Political events, for instance, function as both symptoms and screens for social transformations.

Outside the political arena of the past century, divorced from the Russian and Chinese revolutions, the failure of revolution in the West, the rise of fascism, the development of advanced industrial economies and culture, Marx cannot today be understood. For it is in terms of such events and what underlies them that the Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, existentialist and humanist interpretations arose.

A contemporary understanding of Marx must take into account these events, the social relations behind them and the resultant interpretations if it is to comprehend its own procedure, possibilities and necessity. The situation with respect to understanding Heidegger is, if slightly less complex, not as different as might be assumed. What is particularly clear in Capital holds for Heidegger’s writings and his references to Marx as well: namely, the philosophical argument is inextricable from timely observations and social considerations. This relates as much to the perspective of the reader as to that of the authors.

It is precisely our temporal distance from the concerns of the past decades which makes the following interpretations possible. Until recently, the hermeneutic goal of understanding the author better than he understood himself has been hindered by politics. In their concern to battle socialism and Stalinism, the Heideggerians ignored or distorted the thought of the man the Soviets claimed as a founding father. Similarly, Marxists felt compelled to attack and ridicule the thought of a philosopher who had consorted with fascism, and here the “existentialist” themes seemed most vulnerable. This is not to imply that the problems underlying the old politics and polemics have vanished nor that exegesis must or can completely disavow politics. But philosophy today is in a period of retrenchment, where hasty formulations prove ineffectual; serious interpretation of Marx and Heidegger is presently underway throughout the world. This has opened the possibility of a successful confrontation of their respective systems, already implicit in the convergence of approaches and concerns in the respective philosophical camps. The political changes are, of course, related to social conditions which are more difficult to evaluate. Suffice it to say that developments in the consciousness of youth throughout the world in the past decade suggest progress in the conditions of the possibility of a new epoch in both Marx’s and Heidegger’s terms. If this is so, then the Marxian and Heideggerian systems have gained in relevance, and that means in accessibility and comparability.

The point of new interpretations of Marx and Heidegger is not to rewrite Capital and Being and Time as though sub specie eternitatis; rather, each age – every decade, class and country – requires its own understanding, incorporating both changes in the social fabric and consequent modifications in revolutionary perspectives. That the American New Left considered Capital irrelevant is understandable; whatever unfortunate consequences it may have had, this attitude allowed for a freshness, creativity and experimentation which may not only have been its greatest virtue, but its only objective potential. The 1970’s, however, call for a synthesis of the best in the old and new leftovers. The following is not the required reformulation of Marx and Heidegger, but understands itself as a faltering step in the task of clarification, analysis and interpretation which recognizes itself to be politically, historically and philosophically situated. This means that perspectives which may well be appropriate in Eastern Europe, Italy or China are here rejected. Not unrelated to the concern with the situation of advanced industrial society, the insights of Theodor W. Adorno have guided the whole of the dissertation. Acknowledgment is made therefore by quoting Walter Benjamin, Adorno’s guru, whose ephemeral and contradictory character may provide an appropriate symbol for the iconoclastic attitude of the so-called Frankfurt School.

In line with their tentative character, the following presentations can be taken as theses on reading Marx and Heidegger today, working hypotheses for future inquiry. Accordingly, the thought of Marx and Heidegger, which is conceived of as systematic, as well as the debates between them are presented in terms of their development. Rather than starting with texts which represent mature statements of the systems, the analyses unfold in chronological order, even if the continuity and teleology of thought is often stressed over the deviations. Not the least motivation for this procedure is the suspicion that the System has become an anachronism. Where systematic presentations tend to petrify into monuments, an approach which follows the research which spirals in on a system makes more sense pedagogically and critically, for it stresses the arguments and aporia. Nevertheless, the mature works of Marx and Heidegger assume a priority in the interpretation of their early works, which are grasped as the seeds of the later thought and thus as inadequate articulations of that which they intend.

Chapter II. Heidegger’s Critique of Marx

Being and Time (1927) made its appearance between two of the most important Marxist publications since Capital (1867), namely Georg Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness (1923) and Marx’s 1844 Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts (first published in 1932). It is perhaps less arbitrary to place Heidegger in this context than might be assumed, Heidegger formulates both the historical motivation for the analyses in Being and Time and the task which remains at its end in terms of the concept of “reification of consciousness,” the category central to the philosophically most important essay in Lukacs’ book and later made popular by the discussion of’ “alienation” in Marx’s Manuscripts.

Although Heidegger never wrote extensively on Marx or explicitly referred to Lukacs, those references to Marx which he does make assign him a surprisingly central position within the field of Heidegger’s concerns, Significantly, the dozen references to Marx’s thought which occur in Heidegger’s later writings deal exclusively with Marx’s early manuscript and the Theses on Feuerbach of a year later. A review of Heidegger’s comments on Marx in terms of their misunderstandings as well as their insights raises the suspicion that Heidegger’s familiarity with Marx is limited to a superficial reading of these early writings, an attempt to dismiss Lukacs’ philosophy as insufficiently radical (in the philosophical sense), a sympathy for conservative social criticism and even an openness to propagandistic anti-communism. This impression is, of course at odds with Heidegger’s carefully cultured reputation as a thorough historian of philosophy, a discoverer of what has remained implicit in what is said and a thinker of Being whose inspirations are above merely empirical, political influences.

In view of the importance Heidegger quietly attributes to Marx’s thought, one is forced to wonder why he never dealt with Marx in anything like the way he delved into Nietzsche. The suspicion that this represents an important failing in Heidegger’s work is a central motivation of the present comparison of Marx and Heidegger. In order to orient this study on the central issues and to incorporate what thinking Heidegger has devoted to the question or his relation to Marx, it is useful to consider hints Heidegger has, almost parenthetically, sprinkled through his writings. This chapter shall, therefore, review all his published references to Marx, Marxism and materialism.

Heidegger’s Early Criticisms

To begin with, it is interesting to note what Being and Time had to say about the Lukacsian phrase, “reification of consciousness.” There are three passages to consider. At the very start of Being and Time, where Heidegger is motivating the investigation of his fundamental ontology of Dasein (human Being), he argues that even the analysis of reified consciousness, no matter how critical it may be of the present human condition, still assumes uncritically the traditional concept of subjectivity as a standard:

Ontologically, every idea of a ‘subject’ – unless refined by a previous ontological determination of its basic character – still posits the subjectum (hypokeimenon) along with it, no matter how vigorous one’s ontical protestations against the ‘soul substance’ or the ‘reification of consciousness.’ Thinghood itself which such reification implies must have its ontological origin demonstrated if we are to be in a position to ask what we are to understand positively when we think of the nonreified Being of the subject, the soul, the consciousness, the spirit, the person. [8]

Where Lukacs’ analyses reified consciousness from within a problematized subject/object metaphysics (unlike Marx, as Heidegger fails to see), Heidegger sets out from the phenomenon of reified consciousness (formalized in the new terminology as inauthentic Dasein) in order to get at the essence behind this appearance. By raising the transcendental question of the conditions of the possibility of reification or inauthenticity, Heidegger hopes to arrive at a non-dogmatic conception of authenticity. The dialectic between the abstract value of capitalist commodities and their concrete use value, which is at the base of Lukacs’ analysis of reification, is cast in the aura of a radical ontological investigation in terms of presence-at-hand and readiness-to-hand. Heidegger’s originality here lies in his relating ontological categories to temporal structures – to human temporality in Being and Time.

Toward the end of his major work, Heidegger indicates that his analysis of temporality is intended to show the superiority of his analysis of presence-at-hand over Lukacs’ treatment of reification:

If world-time thus belongs to the temporalizing of temporality, then it can neither be violated ‘subjectivistically’ not ‘reified’ by a vicious ‘objectification’. [9]

If the last part of this sentence is, indeed, aimed at Lukacs, it does the depth of Lukacs’ analysis little justice. Lukacs in fact gave a coherent argument to show how human “temporalizing” was historically transformed into “world-time” due to social changes related to the transformation from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production. Lukacs’ eminently Marxian analysis suggests a mediating link between changes in ontological categories and societal developments, precisely the type of connection that is missing in Heidegger’s entire path of thought. Further Lukacs quotes Marx as having in 1847 (in The Poverty of Philosophy) already noted the reification of qualitative temporality into the quantitative measurement of time as a consequence of the mechanization of production.

In the end, it is unclear just how Heidegger’s analysis of the relationship between reification and temporality is supposed to be superior to Lukacs’. On the final page of Being and Time, Heidegger calls his accomplishments merely the “point of departure” and indicates that all of the crucial questions about reification remain to be settled:

The distinction between the Being of existing Dasein and the Being of being which does not have the character of Dasein may appear very illuminating: but it is still only the point of departure for the ontological problematic; it is nothing with which philosophy may tranquilize itself. It has long been known that ancient ontology works with ‘thing-concepts’ and that there is a danger of ‘reifying consciousness.’ But what does this reifying signify? Where does it arise? Why does Being get ‘conceived’ ‘proximally’ in terms of the present-at-hand and not in terms of the ready-to-hand, which indeed lies even closer? Why does this reifying always keep coming back to power? How is the Being of ‘consciousness’ positively structured such that reification remains inappropriate to it? Is the ‘distinction’ between ‘consciousness’ and ‘thing’ sufficient for tackling the ontological problematic in a primordial manner? Do the answers to these questions lie along our way? And can the answer even be sought as long as the question of the meaning of Being remains unformulated and unclarified? [10]

There is an ambiguity to Heidegger’s relationship to Lukacs, which foreshadows his later attitude to Marx. It is not clear whether Heidegger – who claims his analysis is more fundamental than Marxism – wishes to reject the thought of Lukacs and Marx or unobtrusively to translate it into a new conceptualization. While the question is basically a matter of degree, the opposed strivings do both seem to be at work in Heidegger’s writings. Whatever the intention of Heidegger’s references to Lukacs, they clearly present two characteristics of his approach which are opposed to Marxism and which Adorno singles out for criticism: the attempt to push all questions back to a fundamental question and the search for positive structures to replace Marxism’s negative, but therefore critical, analyses.

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Abstract

Preface

Contents

Part I: Interpreting Marx and Heidegger in Our World

Chapter I. The Alternative of Marx and Heidegger

Interpretation for Transformation

Interpreting Marx and Heidegger Together

The Hermeneutic Context

Chapter II. Heidegger’s Critique of Marx

Heidegger’s Early Criticisms