The Struggle for Recognition

            The Struggle for Recognition
A struggle has existed within humans since Homo sapiens evolved into the modern form that has populated the world.  This struggle has caused war, grief, and suffering and has limited the full potential energy residing within the human consciousness.  The mystery is what this struggle is.  Many philosophers over millennia have debated and pondered what this struggle is over.  Why do people behave irrationally, violently, and aggressively when it seems common knowledge that cooperation benefits everyone?  Georg Hegel writes famously in his Phenomenology of Spirit that the desire for recognition is a struggle that arises from the interaction of humans amidst the stages of self-consciousness.[1]  His dialectical perspective, unique conception of freedom, and intricate thoughts on recognition being the motor of history allows Hegel’s writings to inspire Karl Marx and his written works.  While Hegel follows philosophical tendencies to respond to history in order to help explain the contradictions within the world, Marx aims more towards a materialist answer to the struggle of man.  While Marx aligns himself with Hegel’s theory that this struggle for recognition is the real motor of history, Marx goes beyond this statement by defining this struggle, at one stage of historical development, between proletariat and bourgeoisie.  This struggle between worker and capitalist is almost equivalent to the struggle of recognition in the master-slave dialectic described in the Phenomenology of Spirit.  In order to show the fundamental level to which Marx agrees with Hegel, I will first give a short description of what the desire of recognition is and what Hegel means by “motor of history.” I will follow this brief passage by showing the parallels between Marx’s and Hegel’s writings and then contrasting their written works to show how Marx goes further by writing about the material as opposed to the philosophical ideal. I will briefly conclude this discussion by showing how a combination of the two theorists’ works accurately depicts modern political economic society.

While Hegel followed writers such as Kant and Fitche in writings about attaining consciousness through the acknowledgement of others, Hegel expands on this concept by requiring self-consciousness to arise from determining other self-conscious subjects.  Hegel states: “Separate consciousnesses…use the other as the means by which it achieves self-consciousness. To mutual solicitation mutual recognition here corresponds, as well as the recognition of mutual recognition.”[2]  Hegel is developing an argument that every human must not choose otherness to recognize one’s self, rather one subject should engage with others in order to help self-consciousness develop.  The interaction of humans in a social consciousness helps determine the differences between individuals and helps them form conceptions of who they are.  Positive interaction enriches both people and promotes consciousness while negative interaction limits us and forms contradictions within us.  Hegel depicts this recognition in the master-slave dialectic.  His beginning to end writings depict two men becoming aware of each other before one potentially distrusts the other and attempts to subjugate the other.  The oppressed subject either does not fear death and dies or begs for his life and becomes the master’s slave.  As the slave works, he gradually gains a reflection of himself through his labor in the world around him while the master requires the slave in order to be recognized as the "higher" subject.  This unhappy situation forms contradictions as the slave, beginning to see what he could do outside the bonds of slavery, desires recognition for his work as the master becomes dependent upon the slave’s labor. This contradiction eventually must be solved in order for a balance to exist.  The slave can resist once more and the contradictions will ultimately be solved once no differences exist between the two self-conscious beings.[3]  This simulation could be expanded in a greater sense to represent struggles that have resulted in war and bloodshed.  The struggle to be recognized can be displayed in peasant wars, slave revolts, revolutions, to civil war.  As people begin to see the product of their labor they attain consciousness and demand to correct the contradictions that exist.  The American Revolution is a product of this master-slave dialectic.  The colonies, under the enslavement of the British empire, began to see how economically powerful they were becoming.  They began to form an identity based on trade that was being restricted by the social and political bonds Britain placed on it.  Seeking to correct the contradictions, America decided to revolt in order to pursue its own economical gains as opposed to Britain's gain.  This struggle for recognition can also be placed to the playground social scale.  A group of similar kids may find a shared identity between them, say they all wear shoes with flashy lights.  In order to legitimate themselves and feel recognition of their shared identity they will find a vulnerable person to pick on for not having shoes with lights on them, or in other words: by delegitimizing the other child's life choice.  The child can hope to either find shoes with lights on them in order to conform, pursue a different route for legitimization among the community in order to be recognized, succumb to sadness for being ostracized,  or lash out in a physical way because of the frustrations of not being recognized.  The struggle for recognition is the motor of history, social life, and political life(all intertwined) and for Hegel, philosophy is meant to describe and form reconciliations with past global contradictions.[4]
Though Marx departs greatly from Hegel’s writings, it is necessary to identify the parallels between the two theorists.  Marx states that the motor of history is the “history of class struggle” which is closely related to the struggle for recognition.[5]  While the terminology is different there is a close relationship between class struggle and recognition.   Marx writes “the serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune” because the serf eventually began seeing the product of his labor and began developing consciousness.[6]  Both Hegel and Marx would agree it is out of these struggles for recognition of one’s labor and personality that change happens in history.  A serf for instance notices a contradiction between the work he puts out and the little reward he gets, while his Lord gains benefit for not working on the land, so the serf aims to fix it.  Since there is an opposing force also attempting to be recognized the contradictions are never wholly fixed.  It is also similar to Marx’s description of the representative constitution form of government being a “great advance, not because it resolves all social problems” but rather reveals the contradiction of the modern state.[7]  This contradiction arises from emancipation given politically as opposed to full emancipation through social revolution.  All rights are given from the nation-state, as opposed to the people identifying the rights they give their own society.  At the social scale, people define what is okay and what is not okay.  Social interactions are judged on the context, environment, and mood of the people engaging in the process.  There is no huge rulebook of all the different norms and complexities, because it evolves with our species.  Just as our social rules are utilized through our community interactions and education through living, our human rights should not be something passed to us from the nation-state.  Using the slave-master situation one can see how emancipation and freedom given from the state retains differences in status between slave and master.  For Hegel freedom involves the “shaping and controlling” of one’s own life for that subject is “self-determining.”[8]  In order to shape one’s own life the subject must not be alienated from oneself by selling one’s labor.  When a man reduces himself to a commodity “he becomes an appendage of the machine” and “the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance.”[9]  The worker becomes alienated from his character and cannot be free or self-conscious, so he depends on others to dictate who he is or who he should conform to.  His rights are told to him, his wages placed, and he sees his character split between work-self, family-self, social-self, and political-self.  Both Hegel and Marx agree that division of labor limits man from being free and “is letting whatever external processes determine his particular desires and goals for him.”[10]  Though Marx and Hegel fundamentally agree with each other that the desire for recognition is the motor of history, they do differ on the means to the end of the dialectic view.
Hegel writes in the philosophical sense of looking backward at time and seeing the contradictions and aims to form an answer so that people can reconcile with the past.  Marx dismisses this way of looking at the history of the world in his essay titled: Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.  While on a fundamental level Marx agrees that the motor of history is the struggle for recognition as argued above, Marx disagrees with the abstract idealist approach Hegel employs.  He denotes the abstract thinking of individuals and social forces because of the strong materialist approach he is making.  For instance, Marx writes that “[Hegel] does not allow society to become the actually determining thing, because for that an actual subject is required and he only has an abstract, imaginary subject.”[11]  Hegel’s logical and abstract approach to his works limits his writing from being pragmatic to the real world.  Marx goes further than Hegel by attempting to have real world directions.  He critiques modern political economy for the alienation of human work in the name of profit, the corruption from the arbitrary value of money since currency does not degrade and thus have a "use" value such as food, timber, metals, and oil.  He  believes the consistent growth, bust, and more growth will eventually force revolutions, or contradiction-struggles, in hopes of seizing production, land, and the shared biosphere from the capitalist.  Hegel also writes that man will eventually and logically come to a worldly public culture of freedom as the “product of a historical process of development that draws…on previous cultures and ways of living.”[12]  Marx would criticize this for drawing generally from a logical historical consequence because Marx believes change will come from action and force as opposed to a sudden philosophical change as Hegel identifies with.  Marx also greatly differed on the opinion of government.  Hegel writes that the proper environment would produce virtuous behavior and names monarchy, republics, and democratic governments capable of doing so.   In Marx’s critique, he writes that Hegel’s interpretation continues the separation of man between civil life and political life, which continues to forms contradictions and inequalities because it continues to alienate the worker from his true nature.[13]  To Marx political and social life is one in the same, which is divided in Hegel’s writings.[14]

An anonymous professor once said that for one to understand Marx one must understand Hegel.  Hegel may be criticized by Marx however it is easy to find Hegelian influence in Marx’s writing such as the dialectic framework of history and the proposition of a better society.  Marx’s materialist approach allows him to on a more historical basis rather than abstract platform in order to show how eventually individuals will form a better society because of the contradictions that exist between proletariat and bourgeoisie.  The constant alienation of labor and exploitation of selling one’s labor as well ultimately brings man to a breaking point.  The mature capitalist system continues to grow the inequality of wealth because the “more wealth [the worker] produces” the cheaper of a commodity he becomes.[15]  The capitalist acquires more means of production and technological innovations continue to raise more capital for the bourgeoisie.  This breaking point is critical and it seems that today the capitalist system arrives closer and closer to a breaking point.  Hyper means of globalization and division of labor has alienated men from their work to the point where a Brazilian citizen is helping make a car that will be assembled in the U.S. and sold in Europe.  Since all of these markets have domestic laws social injustices begin to rise and the poorer laborer begins to desire recognition for his work after being so alienated from it.  It is impossible to forecast future political events, however a combination of Hegel and Marx’s writing does accurately paint a picture of contemporary struggle for recognition.


[1] Hegel, Georg.  Phenomenology of Spirit Lordship and Bondage. Paragraph 179 Accessed on: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phba.htm

[2] Hegel, Georg.  Phenomenology of Spirit Lordship and Bondage. Accessed on: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phba.htm

[3] Hegel, Georg.  Phenomenology of Spirit Lordship and Bondage. Accessed on: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phba.htm

[4] Pattern, Alan. “Hegel” Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, Eds. David Boucher and Kelly, 445-447.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003

[5] Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich. Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter 1
Accessed on: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

[6] Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich. Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter 2
Accessed on: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

[7] Wilde, Lawrence.  The Early Marx, Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, Eds. David Boucher and Kelly, 467-469.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003

[8] Pattern, Alan. “Hegel” Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, Eds. David Boucher and Kelly, 441.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003

[9] Manifesto Chapter 1

[10] Pattern, Alan. “Hegel” Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, Eds. David Boucher and Kelly, 443.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003

[11] Marx, Karl. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Part Six, Individuals Conceived as Abstractions.  Accessed on http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/index.htm

[12] Pattern, Alan. “Hegel” Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, Eds. David Boucher and Kelly, 446-447.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003

[13] Marx, Karl. Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Part Three, Separation of the State and Civil Society.  Accessed on http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/index.htm

[14] Smith, Cyril.  Marx’s Critique of Hegel Paper by Cyril Smith for the What is dead and What is alive in the Philosophy of Hegel Seminar. 18 June 1999 Accessed on http://ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/cyril.htm

[15] Marx, Karl. Alienation of Labor, 1086 Morgan, Michael L., ed. Classics of Moral and Political Theory. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992.