This book considers Karl Marx’s ideas in relation to the social and political context in which he lived and wrote. It emphasizes both the continuity of his commitment to the cause of full human emancipation, and the role of his critique of political economy in conceiving history to be the history of class struggles. The book follows his developing ideas from before he encountered political economy, through the politics of 1848 and the Bonapartist “farce,”, the maturation of the critique (...) of political economy in the Grundrisse and Capital, and his engagement with the politics of the First International and the legacy of the Paris Commune. Notwithstanding errors in historical judgment largely reflecting the influence of dominant liberal historiography, Marx laid the foundations for a new social theory premised upon the historical consequences of alienation and the potential for human freedom. (shrink)

This book reveals Marxâe(tm)s moral philosophy and analyzes its nature. The author shows that there is an underlying system of ethics which runs the length and breadth of Marxâe(tm)s thought. The book begins by discussing the methodological side of Marxâe(tm)s ethics showing how Marxâe(tm)s criticism of conventional morality and his views on historical materialism, determinism and ideology are compatible with having an ideological system of his own. In the light of contemporary social, moral and political philosophy the insights and defects (...) of Marxâe(tm)s major ethical themes are discussed. (shrink)

Three recently published books, by Stavros Tombazos, Jonathan Martineau, and Harry Harootunian, join a now established body of literature that highlights the temporal aspects of Marx’s work. Their differences notwithstanding, these books are united by the conviction that, at its core, capitalism is an immense and complex organisation of time, and thus that the importance of Marx’s work is realised by its singular contribution to our understanding of this. Each book is centrally concerned with the historically specific character (...) of capital’s temporal order, such that each presents a new reading of the relationship between capitalism and historical time. (shrink)

Während der letzten zehn Jahre wurde viel über den ‘Humanismus’ des jungen Marx gesprochen. Osteuropäische Marxisten, die bemüht sind, ihren Anti-Stalinismus durch Berufung auf die Autorität von ‘Marx selbst’ zu untermauern, gebrauchen den Ausdruck ‘Humanismus’ in einem ungenauen Sinn, etwa gleichbedeutend mit ‘Anthropozentrismus’. Aber wenn man sagt, daß Marx’ Haltung anthropozentrisch sei, so sind damit die Hauptfragen erst gestellt, nicht schon gelöst.‘Humanismus’ mag etwa soviel wie ‘Säkularismus’ bedeuten — der Mensch, nicht Gott, wird als im Mittelpunkt stehend (...) gedacht. Die anthropozentrische Haltung kann verschiedene Formen annehmen, vor allem die Formen, die man als ‘Humanismus der Ideale’ und als ‘Humanismus der Prinzipien’ bezeichnen könnte. Der Humanismus der Ideale ist ausdrücklich an derZukunft orientiert, der Humanismus der Prinzipien aber an derGegenwart. Nur ein Humanismus der Prinzipien, dem es darum geht, den Eigenwert existierender Individuen zu behaupten und zu verteidigen, verdient es, ‘ethischer Humanismus’ genannt zu werden. Marx, sogar der jüngste Marx, war kein ethischer Humanist in diesem Sinn. Und nur ein Humanismus in diesem strengen Sinn würde einen philosophischen Standort bieten, von dem aus man den Stalinismus oder Neo-Stalinismus angreifen könnte.Marx war ein Säkularist, und er entwarf ein humanistisches Ideal für die Zukunft, aber humanistische Prinzipien für die Gegenwart lehnte er ab. Er betonte, daß nur dem nicht entfremdeten, produktiven Individuum der kommunistischen Zukunft ein eigener Wert zukomme. Bis dahin haben Individuen nur einen geschichtlich instrumentalen Wert: jene, die an der Verwirklichung der kommunistischen Gesellschaft arbeiten, sind zu respektieren; diejenigen, welche dabei Widerstand leisten oder versagen, müssen ausschließlich als Hindernisse auf dem Wege des geschichtlichen Fortschritts behandelt werden.In diesem Sinn ist der Leninismus und sogar der Stalinismus und Neo-Stalinismus in dem zukunftsorientierten Humanismus der Ideale des jungen Marx einbegriffen, oder zumindest davon nicht ausgeschlossen. Selbst der jüngste Marx machte sich den Modeirrtum des 19. Jahrhunderts zu eigen — den Irrtum des ‘aufgeschobenen Wertes’ oder des ‘zeitlich verstellten Wertes’ und nahm damit eine mit dem ethischen Humanismus grundsätzlich unvereinbare Position ein. (shrink)

The relation of Marx's writings to ethical theory has been viewed in a variety of different ways. Some deny that Marx has or can have any ethical theory at all. Others claim, on the contrary, that underlying Marx's pronouncements lies an implicit ethical theory which we may discern. Amongst this latter group a debate has quietly been taking place of late as to the nature of the ethical theory to which Marx might be said to subscribe. (...) Some, e.g. E. Kamenka, have maintained that Marx's ethics is non-utilitarian. Others such as A. Schaff, and most recently D. Allen, have argued that in fact, Marx is a utilitarian, though of course Marx did not proclaim himself to be a utilitarian. (shrink)

The essay is a critical revision of various of Marx’s approaches in his analysis of capitalism in “Das Kapital”. One can distinguish immanent, normative critiques from transcendental and objectivistic ones. The review of the normative standards used in each case leads to the questions of how Marx determined and used the relationships of justice and law and the capitalist mode of production. Orthodox Marxist views (most recently C. Menke) claim that Marx did not criticise capital as unjust (...) and understood the law of capital only as private law that stabilised domination. Against this, it is shown that he certainly bases his “critical presentation” on an (almost Kantian) constitutional (“rechtsstaatliches”) concept of private law and public law. Thus the “popular prejudice” of “human equality”, defined by Marx as an epochal and systematic condition of the capitalist exchange of goods, becomes apparent as a covert reference to the historical (America, French Revolution),public-lawdeclarations of human rights. And in the chapter “Struggle for the length of the working day” Marx presents the decisions of this dispute between “equal rights” first and foremost in the systematic historical actions of the constitutional powers (legislature, executive and judiciary). At the same time, however, he attempts to ironise and defame this public-law and deliberative, democratic dispute and then to misinterpret it as a violent “civil war”. Because Marx in his further presentation ignores this legal-democratic dispute, including a potential human-rights critique and (possible!) future regulation of capitalism, focussing instead on objectivist concepts of history and development, he can only insufficiently grasp the still challenging relationship between democracy and capitalism. (shrink)

Long prone to dogmatic disagreement, the question of value in Marx’s thought—what value is, the purpose it serves, its application to real-world capitalism—requires renewal if Marx’s work is to remain vibrant. In _Value in Marx_, George Henderson offers a lucid rereading of Marx that strips value of its turgid theoretical reduction and reframes it as an investigation into the tensions between social relations and forms as they are rather than as what they could otherwise become. Drawing (...) on Marx’s _Capital_ and _Grundrisse_, Henderson shows how these volumes do not harbor a single theory of value that equates value to capital. Instead, these books experimentally compose and recompose value for a world that is more than capitalist. At stake is how Marx conceives of human freedom, of balanced social arrangements, and of control over the things people produce. Henderson finds that the limits on social becoming, including the tendency toward alienated existence, haunt Marx even as he looks beyond the critique of capital to an emancipated society to come. Can these limits be confronted in a creative, even joyful, way? Can they become aspects of what we desire, rather than being silenced and denied? As long as we persist in interpreting value broadly, following it as an active and not a shut-down, predetermined feature of Marx’s texts, Henderson ultimately views Marx as responding positively to these challenges and employing value as a powerful tool of the political imaginary. (shrink)

The problematics of alienation have played a rather significant role in the discussions\nabout the sense and relevance of Marxism which have taken place in\nthe last twenty years. &dquo;Back to Marx&dquo; was at least one of the main slogans of\nthat ideological/intellectual movement, which evolved both in the East and\nWest from the mid-fifties and which is sometimes referred to as the trend of\n&dquo;humanist&dquo; Marxism. The idea of a &dquo;Marx-Renaissance&dquo; was undoubtedly\ndirected first of all against the completely petrified framework of institutionalized\nMarxism, (...) turned into a &dquo;religion of state&dquo; legitimating the domination\nof a bureaucratic apparatus over the population of East European societies.\nThe &dquo;rediscovery&dquo; and &dquo;rehabilitation&dquo; of the young Marx, the emphasis on\nthe continuity of his thought, meant not only a reintroduction of a number\nof categories, problems and ideas, which were thought fruitful in their critical\ninsight into contemporary conditions and which the impoverished and distorted\nversion of Marxism in official communist ideology (deliberately) failed\nto take into account: it also meant a global challenge to the appropriation of\nthe Marxian tradition by an apologetic ideology, which disguised its positivistic\ncontent through the form of an old-fashioned, dogmatic metaphysics; it\nwas an attempt to recover the critical/emancipatory meaning of this tradition\nwithin the realities of the twentieth century. It was in this context that the\nnotion of &dquo;alienation&dquo; again reappeared -- as a concept through which one\ncould articulate an attitude which was critical simultaneously of Western\ncapitalist and so-called &dquo;socialist&dquo; Eastern societies. Within the framework of\nEast European realities even the rather abstract character of this notion found\nin young Marx, was well suited to the theoretical vagueness and the practical\nlimitations of this new-found leftist criticism of home-societies. (shrink)

Georg Lukács wrote The Theory of the Novel in 1914-1915, a period that also saw the conception of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Letters, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Spengler's Decline of the West, and Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia. Like many of Lukács's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and (...) Husserl.The Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukács's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungMarx und Simmel gehören zur Tradition der Moderne, die seit Rousseau und Hegel die moderne Gesellschaft für verschiedene Phänomene der „Entfremdung“ kritisiert. Während der junge Marx noch eindeutig „Entfremdung“ negativ bewertet, analysiert und bewertet der reife Marx des Kapitalbuches Entfremdungsphänomene als differente „Verdinglichungen“ und „Vergleichgültigungen“ und bewertet diese Indifferenzen kontextspezifisch positiv oder negativ. Ihm folgt Georg Simmel, der besonders in seiner „Philosophie des Geldes“ Indifferenz als Signatur der modernen Gesellschaft bestimmt und für ihre negativ bewerteten Auswirkungen positive Kompensationen (...) aufzeigt und verfolgt. Der Aufsatz skizziert Marxens Analyse und Kritik von Kapital-verursachten Indifferenzen und verfolgt dann Simmels mehr kulturphilosophische Diagnosen von gesellschaftlichen Indifferenzen an den Phänomenen „Lebensstil“, „Ästhetisierung des Lebens“, „Tragödie der Kultur“ u. a. mehr, die alle auf die Frage hinauslaufen: Warum gelingt der Übergang von modernen Befreiungsprozessen durch Indifferenzen zu neuen Bindungen nicht „vollständig“? (shrink)

G. A. Cohen’s pathbreaking book, Karl Marx‘s Theory of History: A Defence (1978), prompted extensive reconsideration of historical materialism. This effort recast ongoing debates about Marx‘s theory of history by defending the view that historical materialism embodies a set of substantive claims as appropriately subject to analytical scrutiny as those of any other viable theory. Specifically, Cohen advances one central substantive claim that summarizes his reading of the “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. “History (...) is, fundamentally, the growth of productive power, and forms of society rise and fall according as they enable or impede that growth.” This premise affirms that the same set of factors that explain changes societies undergo within a given historical epoch also explain transitions between historical epochs. The theoretical account of intraepochal historical development suffices equally to cover interepochal, revolutionary change. In this paper we reject this premise and argue that even on the most plausible reconstruction of Marx’s theory of history—a reconstruction that employs, among other things, a careful ownership-based criterion of historical epochs and the use of functional explanations—Marx’s theory of history cannot explain social revolutions. -/- . (shrink)

This collection includes an Introduction and nine articles by contemporary scholars writing on essential topics in Marx’s thought. The topics include: Marx’s theory of history and historical development, his theories of alienation and economic exploitation, his views on ideology, and his critique of justice (including distributive justice) and rights. These essays emphasize the value—specifically with respect to issues in social, moral, and political philosophy—of textually self-conscious, scrupulously analytic investigations of Marx’s work. They afford clarification and elucidation of (...) many of Marx’s fundamental commitments and theories thereby facilitating an understanding of their implications for both effective explication and critical evaluation. Authors included are: G. A. Cohen, William Shaw, John E. Elliott, George E. Panichas, Allen W. Wood, Ziyad I. Husami, Gary Young, and Allen E. Buchanan. (shrink)

This chapter picks up on what Heidegger in his 1949 ‘Letter on ‘Humanism’’ calls ‘the historical in being’, that dimension of being within which, for Heidegger, a ‘productive dialogue’ between phenomenology and existentialism, on the one hand, and Marxism, on the other, ‘first becomes possible.’ It introduces the possibility of this dialogue through a particular, and particularly revealing, problem with The German Ideology: namely, Marx and Engels offer no analysis of the relationship between time, temporality and their materialist concept (...) of history. (shrink)

This paper considers the theoretical and methodological origins of Marx's beliefs and attitudes towards classical moral theories and then their implications for two basic questions: (1) In what way, if any, was Marx suspicious and dismissive of classical moral theories (e.g., utilitarianism or Kantianism), and (2) what sort of moral theory can a proponent of Marx's moral views support? Here it is argued that there is a clear sense in which Marx would not have been automatically (...) suspicious of moral ideas, conceptions, discourse and the rest. But there is an equally clear sense in which he was. It is in the latter respect that Marx’s views must be explicated in terms of his theory of historical development, and it is only here that the full richness and impact of Marx’s views on moral philosophy can be understood and appreciated. (shrink)

This book is a complete translation of Marx's critical commentary on paragraphs 261-313 of Hegel's major work in political theory.

Ce célèbre texte de Marx, rédigé en 1845, est un des plus petits documents philosophiques : soixante-cinq lignes, distribuées en onze «thèses», dont la plus longue compte treize lignes et la plus brève, une ligne et demie.À quoi attribuer sa fortune? Il en va de ces notes comme des aphorismes de Nietzsche ou des -carnets de Valéry : le regard étranger découvre, dans l'apparente spontanéité de l'écriture, dans sa déconcertante concision, sa propre disponibilité et comme une invite à la (...) libre coproduction du sens.Marx, en réalité, règle ses comptes avec ce qu'il appelle sa «conscience philosophique d'autrefois ». Il refuse désormais de se contenter du rôle de spectateur.Il voit dans ce qu'il regarde autour de lui, des besoins et des projets, du travail et de l'imagination, qui renvoient à une économie, à une culture, à une histoire, c'est-à-dire à une société déterminée.Ce livre nous fait pénétrer au sein du laboratoire de Marx, au moment où il engage une révolution théorique qui n'a pas fini de faire parler d'elle, ainsi qu'en témoigne le retentissant, perdurable et quasi obsessionnel écho de la 11e thèse sur Feuerbach : « Les philosophes ont seulement interprété différemment le monde, ce qui importe, c'est de le changer. »La suite est connue, l'œuvre sera poursuivie sous le signe, pour l'essentiel, de la « critique de l'économie politique », du Manifeste du Parti communiste et du Capital, du 18 Brumaire et de La guerre civile en France. À noter que cet avenir-là, nous le connaissons, mais pas Marx... (shrink)

Marx, K. Preface to A contribution to the critique of political economy. From Capital.--Freud, S. From The psychopathology of everyday life.--De Saussure, F. From Course in general linguistics.--Tynianov, Y. and Jakobson, R. Problems in the study of language and literature.--Jakobson, R. Linguistics and poetics.--Jakobson R. and Lévi-Strauss, C. Charles Baudelaire's "Les chats."--Barthes, R. The structuralist activity. To write: an intransitive verb?--Lévi-Strauss, C. The structural study of myth. Four winnebago myths. History and dialectic.--Althusser, L. Marx's immense theoretical revolution.--Foucault, M. (...) The human sciences.--Lacan, J. The insistence of the letter in the unconscious. (shrink)