ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the various objective social dialectics that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel describes in the Philosophy of Right. Incidentally, Hegel was probably not subscribing to the whole labor theory when he remarked that labor "confers value" on raw materials. In any case, the supply side of the labor theory is most plausible at the third stage, Hegel's time. The dynamic that Hegel describes —accumulation and concentration of capital, expanded impoverishment and colonial expansion —continues. Hegel and Karl Marx were describing the dynamics of manufacturing capitalism, whereas the continuing accumulation of capital has moved us into finance capitalism with its stock and bond markets and constant shifting of investments. In Hegel's time the overproduction problem was managed by expanded trade overseas, thus bringing more people into the capitalist economy. Hegel mentions arbitration as a way to avoid the expense and uncertainty of a court trial; nowadays, plea bargaining is another way.
