ABSTRACT
This article examines the connection between Hegel’s and Marx’s respective dialectical methods in the light of the recent Marxist debates on the subject matter. It argues that the development of the Marxian critique of political
economy cannot uncritically appropriate the content or the form of Hegel’s dialectical method. More specifically, the article submits that there is a “rational kernel” in Hegel’s work, which can be found in his discovery of self-movement as the simplest form taken by the real. However, insofar as he takes a pure thought-form as point of departure, which, moreover, results from an act of absolute abstraction, the aforementioned “rational kernel” becomes expounded under a “mystical shell”. As a consequence, his dialectic remains external to the movement of the real concrete.
KEYWORDS
dialectical method; materialism; idealism; logic; capital