Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

First Remarks “Hegel and Haiti” was written as a mystery story. The reader is encouraged to begin with it directly, before the introduction provided here. For those already familiar with the plot and its denouement , this new introduction (that can be read as the afterward as well) describes the process of discovery behind the essay and the impact of its 0rst reception. It traces the years of research that led to “Hegel and Haiti,” leshing out material condensed in the footnotes so that the scholarly implications can be more easily ascertained, and situating the essay within ongoing intellectual debates that have realworld political implications. The Accidental Project I did not set out to write about Hegel or Haiti. In the 1990s, I was working on a diferent project. With the end of the Cold War, neoliberalism rose to ideological dominance on a global scale. Appeals 3 INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE to economic laws and market rationality were the legitimating mantra used to justify every kind of practical policy. Just what was this bodiless phantasm, “the economy,” that was the object of such fetishistic reverence? When and why was it discovered, and more perplexing given its invisible hand, how? Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment were the logical place to look, not just for the arguments of these philosophers but also for the context in which their ideas took hold. Most surprising was how much intellectual excitement theories of political economy stirred up throughout Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. By the time Marx studied economics two generations later, it was described as the “dismal science”; today’s philosophers seldom show interest. Even if a few basic phrases have become staples of everyday thought (supply and demand; pro0t motive; competition), just how the economy works remains inscrutable to today’s general public; it is knowledge reserved for a priesthood of experts who have inordinate power to determine our lives. No one reads economics journals for fun. So, what accounts for the enormous excitement with which the 1776 publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was received? Hegel’s early writings proved useful for this inquiry.1 His Jena texts are a striking record of the impact of reading WealthofNations in 1803.2 His philosophical attention was caught by Smith’s description of the radically transforming efects of a deceptively simple innovation in manufacture: the division of labor. Using the mundane example of pin making, Smith argued that dividing production into introduction to part one 4 1. The results of this search into the origin of the economy, its mysterious invisibility , and Hegel’s excited reception of Smith are discussed in Buck-Morss, “Envisioning Capital,” 434–67. The idea that the economy has been an ahistorical constant since Aristotle is as erroneous as the claim that Aristotle was the source of Hegel’s understanding of slavery. 2. Christian Garve produced an extremely good German translation (1784–96), but Hegel seems to have used the original English edition. Both versions, Smith’s original and Garve’s translation, were ultimately in Hegel’s permanent library. small, specialized tasks had an exponentially multiplying efect on both worker productivity and consumer need, hugely increasing the scope and degree of human interdependency.3 Hegel was fascinated , perhaps terri0ed by the vision of limitless masses of pins being heaped upon the world, as well as the deadening efect that the repetitive, segmented actions of labor had upon the workers. He recognized that this new economy as a “system of need” had the power to alter the form of collective life.4 His description was dramatic : “need and labor” create “a monstrous system of mutual dependency ” that “moves about blindly, like the elements, and like a wild beast, requires steady and harsh taming and control.”5 By 1805–6, he was using the new economy in place of the traditional concept of “bourgeois” or “civil” society (die bürgerliche Gesellschaft) as 5 introduction to part one 3. Hegel cites Smith’s pin making example on multiple occasions—nearly every time making a new numerical mistake! Not the details of the new science intrigued him but, rather, Smith’s innovative conceptualization (see Buck-Morss, “Envisioning Capital,” 458n57). See Waszek, Scottish Enlightenment, for details on Hegel’s reading of Adam Smith, including his poor mathematics regarding pin production, and indications that he was using Smith’s original English text: “The recently discovered 1817/18 set of...