I remember reading the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel while in college.  I’m very certain that what I remember about him was more attributable to the extraordinary lectures of my professor, Thelma Z. Lavine, who at the time (1965-67) held an endowed chair at George Washington University and who subsequently was a Robinson Professor at George Mason University.

Hegel developed a system for looking at the world that was based on dialectics – opposites.  This system was applied to many philosophical issues, including ethics, but is perhaps most notable because his view of history was used by Marx as a cornerstone for his own communist philosophy.

I never entirely bought into the concept that history moves from one situation (a thesis, such as capitalism) to an antithesis (such as socialism) and then to a synthesis (which Marx said was communism), which becomes a new thesis to eventually be challenged by a new antithesis, and so on.

But Hegel turned me on to the concept that fundamental structures such as governments, economies and cultures do change over time, and in a direction that is much easier to understand when looking backward than to predict when looking forward.  Over time, I’ve come to alter my view of this process of change.  While in college (it was the 60s, after all), I thought history changed through dramatic events such as revolutions.  Now, I tend to think that change really comes in subtle events and microscopic steps that only become visible after they have become entrenched.

I’m afraid of that right now.  I think the financial and government infrastructure of the US (and, by consequence, the world), including core belief systems, have been changed and are being changed without any visibility.  Governments and political leaders are rushing to do something immediately to have some sort of short-term solution for an economic situation that is the consequence of years of incompetence and bad (often selfish) judgments, usually made by the very politicians who now condemn the situation they created.  At the same time, fundamental changes are being made to our capital markets, the role of government in business, and the priorities of government.  All that sort of change (catchy word: “change”) may or may not be good and may or may not be necessary.  But it isn’t being examined, debated, given visibility in the news media.  And such questions certainly aren’t being raised by politicians (why should that be surprising?).

The Great Marxist Irony

So … I’m thinking about Hegel, and his view of how change really happens.  And I’m thinking:  it isn’t by major revolutionary events.  Marx had it all wrong.  There is no need for workers of the world to unite to revolt against capitalism.  The capitalists of the worlds have already united, and they are standing on the sidelines, often applauding, as the politicians and failed bankers of the world assume the burden to move us further away from capitalism.  So that’s how fundamental revolutions occur:  quietly, subtly, without questions, and with the capitulation of the people who have the most to lose.  Who would have thought?