Competition Subjects, State and Civil Society

Abstract

Perhaps the greatest unfulfilled aspiration of Marxist intellectual activity has been adequately to theorise aspects of bourgeois society other than the economy on the basis of a coherent account of that economy: to develop a theory of the economic determination of the political and the personal. This chapter outlines such a theorisation of the political and, more sketchily, the personal on the basis of the theory of social forms (see Chapter 1).

This Chapter arises from a long-term research project with Geert Reuten of Amsterdam University. He is responsible for many of its insights, and none of its failings. It has also benefited from comments by C. J. Arthur, Waltraud Ernst and Calvin Taylor.