Flyting

ABSOLUTE FREEDOM AND TERROR
by Maxwell Clark

“In this absolute freedom all social ranks or classes… are effaced and annulled…” –Hegel's Phenomenology

Rather deep into Hegel’s Phenomenology there is a section entitled, “Absolute Freedom and Terror”. Although I cannot directly summarize Hegel’s insights in this section here, I will at least passionately suggest their reading or rereading. All that follows in this article is therefore of nowise equal value to Hegel’s monstrous virtuosity. The passage in question is its own best interpreter, in other words. I merely point up to my superior.

What is so ingenious about Hegel's account of class-annulling and universal revolutionary subjectivity is his assured knowledge of its real limits. He is actually nowise utopian, in the sense that he speaks here:

“For the universal [subject and will] to pass into a deed, it must gather itself into the single unity of individuality, and put an individual consciousness in the forefront; for universal will is an actual concrete will only in a self that is single and one. Thereby, however, all other individuals are excluded from the entirety of this deed, and have only a restricted share in it, so that the deed would not be a deed of real universal self-consciousness.

Universal freedom can thus produce neither a positive achievement nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the rage and fury of destruction.”

A restoration is fated for all revolutionary acts. Failure is its destiny. Any revolution confirms this, from France to Egypt, without exception. To end all historical becoming in an event of absolute freedom, as is precisely the dream of most communists, is beyond impossible. Real communism is a repetitive event that blooms and withers through our social being in cycles. Revolution is periodic.

Many former "comrades" may immediately heap calumny on me for writing this. These are of the factions who hope to exchange lies of a permanent communism for greater power in the restoration of state and class relations. Communism still produces its own antithesis, even as a lie. All the wishful critiques of Hegel made in the name of a utopian cessation of historical becoming are not so much invalid therefore as they are hatefully indirect and eventual means of proving Hegel’s truth.

“The sole and only work and deed accomplished by universal freedom is therefore death – a death that achieves nothing… It is thus the most cold-blooded and meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of water…"

Communism, as a periodic event, contains its own negation. There is no utopian end of history. Rejoice therefore in the rapture of good times, as I do mightily and with abandon, but know that every such season must also turn and die. Communism is an eternally reoccurring evanescence in our social being, not its end-state.

Again, and in end, return to the Hegel!