Abstract
The historical transformation in recent decades of advanced industrialized societies, the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Communism, and the emergence of a neoliberal capitalist global order have drawn attention once again to issues of historical dynamics and global transformations. These historical changes suggest the need for a renewed theoretical concern with capitalism, and cannot be addressed adequately by the poststructuralist and postmodern theories that were hegemonic in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Notes and References
Lukács, G., ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’, in History and Class Consciousness, trans. R. Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971).
Marx, K., Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. M. Nicolaus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 106 (translation modified).
See, for example, Dobb, M., Political Economy and Capitalism (London: Routledge, 1940), pp. 70–1;
Cohen, G. A., History, Labour, Freedom: Themes from Marx (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 208–38;
Elster, J., Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 127;
Meek, R., Studies in the Labour Theory of Value (New York/London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1956);
Sweezy, P., The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968), pp. 52–3;
Steedman, I., ‘Ricardo, Marx, Sraffa’, in I. Steedman (ed.), The Value Controversy (London: NLB, 1981) pp. 11–19.
Arato, A. and Breines, P., The Young Lukács and the Origins of Western Marxism (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), p. 140.
This argument was first elaborated in Postone, M., Time, Labor, and Social Domination (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 71–83.
Hegel, G. W. F., ‘Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit’, in W. Kaufmann (ed.), Hegel: Texts and Commentary (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966), p. 28.
See, for example, Piccone, P., ‘General Introduction’, in A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (eds), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Continuum, 1982), p. xvii.
Marx, K., The Holy Family, in L. Easton and K. Guddat (eds), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 369–73.
Marx, K., Capital, vol. I, trans. B. Fowkes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 128.
Habermas claims that his theory of communicative action shifts the framework of critical social theory away from the subject-object paradigm (Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984, p. 390)). I am suggesting that Marx, in his mature works, already effects such a theoretical shift. Moreover, I would argue — although I cannot elaborate here — that Marx’s focus on forms of social mediation allows for a more rigorous analysis of capitalist modernity than does Habermas’ turn to communicative action.
Lukács’ interpretation of Marx is echoed by Habermas, who claims that Marx treated the systemic dimension of capitalism as an illusion, as the ghostly form of class relations that have become anonymous and fetishized (Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. II, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1987, pp. 338–9)). Habermas’s reading is significant inasmuch as it underlies his attempt to appropriate critically Talcott Parsons in order to formulate a theory that would be adequate to both what Habermas considers the systemic and lifeworld dimensions of modern society. The reading of Marx I shall outline overcomes Habermas’ objection, renders the turn to Parsons unnecessary, and places the critique of capitalism back at the centre of contemporary critical theory.
This analysis provides a powerful point of departure for analysing the pervasive and immanent form of power that Michel Foucault described as characteristic of modern Western societies. See Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish (New York: Pantheon Press, 1984).
Marx, K., ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in K. Marx and F. Engels Collected Works, vol. 11 (New York: International Publishers, 1979), p. 106.
Benjamin, W., ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in S. Bronner and D. Kellner (eds), Critical Theory and Society (New York/London: Routledge, 1989), p. 258.
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© 2003 Moishe Postone
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Postone, M. (2003). Lukács and the Dialectical Critique of Capitalism. In: Albritton, R., Simoulidis, J. (eds) New Dialectics and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230500914_5
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