Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism

Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism Historical Materialism Book Series Editorial Board Sébastien Budgen, Paris – Steve Edwards, London Marcel van der Linden, Amsterdam – Peter Thomas, London VOLUME 36 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hm Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism By Peter Hudis LEIDEN •âbosN 2012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hudis, Peter. Marx’s concept of the alternative to capitalism / by Peter Hudis. â p. cm. — (Historical materialism book series ; 36) âncludes bibliographical references and index. âSBN 978-90-04-22197-0 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-22986-0 (ebook) 1. Capitalism. 2. Marxian economics. 3. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. I. Title. HB501.H7835 2012 335.4’12—dc23 2012008823 ISSN 1570-1522 ISBN 978 90 04 22197 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 22986 0 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ vii Introduction Why Explore Marx’s Concept of the Transcendence of Value-Production? Why Now? ................................................................ 1 The object and purpose of this study ...................................................... 1 Objectivist and subjectivist approaches to Marx’s philosophical contribution ............................................................................................. 9 1. The Transcendence of Alienation in the Writings of the Young Marx ................................................................................................ 37 Marx’s beginnings, 1837–41 ...................................................................... 37 Marx’s critique of politics and philosophy, 1842–3 ............................... 43 Marx’s critique of economics and philosophy, 1843–4 ......................... 56 Discerning the ideal within the real, 1845–8 ........................................... 75 Evaluating the young Marx’s concept of a postcapitalist society ....... 85 2. The Conception of a Postcapitalist Society in the Drafts of Capital .... 93 The ‘first draft’ ofCapital : The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) ................... 93 The ‘second draft’ of Capital: the Grundrisse (1858) ............................... 100 The ‘third draft’ of Capital, 1861–3 ........................................................... 133 3. The Vision of the New Society in Marx’s Capital ................................... 147 Volume I of Capital ..................................................................................... 147 Volumes II and III of Capital ..................................................................... 169 4. Marx’s Late Writings on Postcapitalist Society ...................................... 183 The impact of the Paris Commune on Marx .......................................... 183 The Critique of the Gotha Programme ......................................................... 187 vi • Contents Conclusion Evaluating Marx’s Concept of a Postcapitalist Society ..... 207 Appendix Translation of Marx’s Excerpt-Notes on the Chapter ‘Absolute Knowledge’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit .................... 216 References ........................................................................................................ 223 Index ................................................................................................................. 231 Acknowledgements This work is not the product of mere solitary reflection, since it arose and developed as a result of a series of discussions and debates with numerous friends and colleagues over the course of the last decade, many of them associated with the philosophy of ‘Marxist-Humanism’. I wish to especially single out Richard Abernethy, Dave Black, Dan Buckley, Dale Heckerman, Karel Ludenhoff, Eli Messinger, Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, James Obst, Sandra Rein, Ali Reza, Sekou Samateh and Stephen Sarma-Weierman. I wish to especially thank Frieda Afary and Kevin Anderson for their insights, expressed in numerous conversations and letters, and for their careful and studious commentary on the manuscript. I am no less indebted to the thoughts and suggestions provided by a number of scholars at Loyola University Chicago, who commented on earlier ver- sions of this work. These include Andrew Cutrofellow, David Ingram, Lauren Langman, David Schweickart, Dan Vaillancourt and Thomas Wren. While any faults contained in this work are my responsibility alone, I could not have come this far without their assistance. Introduction Why Explore Marx’s Concept of the Transcendence of Value-Production? Why Now? The object and purpose of this study Two decades after the collapse of statist Commu- nism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, which many claimed had consigned Marx’s work to the dust- bin of history, a new climate has emerged in which his ideas are subject to renewed discussion and re-examination. This change is due, in part, to the phenomenon of capitalist globalisation, which has sparked interest in Marx’s analysis of the inherently expansionary and global nature of capital, which he defined as ‘self-expanding value’. It is also due to the emergence of a global-justice movement over the past two decades, which has called attention to the economic inequality, social instability and envi- ronmental destruction that have accompanied the global expansion of capitalism. Most of all, the new climate of discussion on Marx’s work is due to the worldwide financial and economic crisis that began in 2008, the most serious to afflict the global econ- omy in the past seventy years. The crisis has not only revealed the deep fault-lines that prevent capitalism from supplying the most basic of human needs for hundreds of millions of people worldwide; it has also made it clear that the system has little to offer humanity except years and indeed decades of economic austerity, reductions in public services, and eroding living conditions. Capitalism has clearly exhausted its historic initiative and raison d’être when 2 • Introduction all it can offer the future of humanity are social and natural conditions that are bound to become worse than those afflicting us today. As a result of these and related developments, a number of new works on Marx have appeared, many of which explore hitherto neglected aspects of his thought – such as his writings on the world-market, economic crisis, race and gender, non-Western societies, and the philosophical underpinning of his analysis of the logic of capital. These studies have appeared while a new edition of Marx’s complete works, the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (known as MEGA2), is being issued by an international team of scholars co-ordinated from Berlin. MEGA2 will make Marx’s entire body of work available for schol- arly analysis for the first time, in 114 volumes.1 It provides us with a new vantage-point for exploring Marx’s work unencumbered by uninformed claims about Marx’s work that have governed generations of earlier discussions of Marx’s theoretical contribution. Although the literature on Marx over the past one hundred years is immense, most of it has focused on his analysis of the economic and political structure of capitalism, the ‘materialist conception of history’, and his critique of value- production. There has been very little discussion or analysis, however, of his conception of what constitutes an alternative to capitalism. The lack of discussion of this issue has persisted in the face of the growth of the global-justice movement, which has sponsored a series of fora, gatherings and conferences in Brazil, Venezuela, Kenya, Senegal and elsewhere since the 1990s, devoted to the theme ‘Another World is Possible’. This diverse movement indicates that despite the notion, which became widely voiced after 1989, that ‘there is no alternative’2 to capitalism, increasing numbers of people around the world are searching for such an alternative. However, there appears to be little or no consensus within the global-justice movement as to what such an alternative might consist of. It is even hard to find consensus as to what theoretical resources would need to be explored in thinking one out. As a result, the discussion of alternatives to capitalism at events sponsored by the global- justice movement tends to remain rather abstract and limited to statements of intent. 1. The first Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe was issued in 12 volumes from 1927–35. It is known as MEGA1. The new Gesamtausgabe, or MEGA2, began appearing in East Germany in 1972 and has been issued since 1990 by a more international group of scholars. It will eventually include everything Marx ever wrote, including his volu- minous excerpt-notebooks, most of which were unknown until recently. It is the only edition of

Load more