Hegel, Haiti and revolution: the post-colonial moment

Susan Buck-Morss’s argument that the Haitian Revolution embodied the most universal aspect of the French Revolution, namely the quest for universal freedom, relies on the supposed references to Haiti in the master–slave dialogue in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The revolution’s lodgement at the core of this foundational text of Enlightenment universalism is, for her, about as convincing a demonstration as one can have of the universal significance of the Haitian Revolution. Marxists have opposed her venture, and demonstrated their hostility to post-colonial thinking, principally by claiming that the master–slave is an expression of European class conflict. This paper agrees with Buck-Morss that the Haitian Revolution critically affirmed the principle of universal freedom and, indeed, pushed the revolution in France and Europe in a radical direction. A better affirmation of the universal significance of the Haitian Revolution than the thoughts of Hegel is possible. The latter do not actually provide such affirmation, because racism, Eurocentrism and a hostility to political radicalism are fundamental aspects of Hegel’s thought. The alternative affirmation can be found in Marxist analysis. This paper outlines such an analysis, and concludes that post-colonialism of Buck-Morss’s sort is no substitute for the perspective provided by historical materialism.