Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism


Book Description

In contrast to the traditional view that Marx's work is restricted to a critique of capitalism and does not contain a detailed or coherent conception of its alternative, this book shows, through an analysis of his published and unpublished writings, that Marx was committed to a specific concept of a post-capitalist society that informed his critique of value production, alienated labor and capitalist accumulation. Instead of focusing on the present with only a passing reference to the future, Marx's emphasis on capitalism's tendency towards dissolution is rooted in a specific conception of what should replace it. In critically re-examining that conception, this book addresses the quest for an alternative to capitalism that has taken on increased importance today.




Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism


Book Description

This is the first book-length study of Marx’s concept of the alternative to capitalism. It shows that his critique of capital flowed from a commitment to a specific vision of the kind of human relations that define a new society.




Rethinking Alternatives with Marx


Book Description

This book presents a Marx that is in many ways different from the one popularized by the dominant currents of twentieth-century Marxism. The dual aim of this edited volume is to contribute to a new critical discussion of some of the classical themes of Marx’s thought and to develop a deeper analysis of certain questions to which relatively little attention has been paid until recently. Contributions of globally renowned scholars, from nine countries and multiple academic disciplines, offer diverse and innovative perspectives on Marx’s points of view about ecology, migration, gender, the capitalist mode of production, the labour movement, globalization, social relations, and the contours of a possible socialist alternative. The result is a collection that will prove indispensable for all specialists in the field and which suggests that Marx’s analyses are arguably resonating even more strongly today than they did in his own time.




Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives


Book Description

In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. Two years later the Soviet Union disintegrated. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union discredited the idea of socialism for generations to come. It was seen as representing the final and irreversible victory of capitalism. This triumphal dominance was barely challenged until the 2008 financial crisis threw the Western world into a state of turmoil. Through analysis of post-socialist Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as of the United Kingdom, China and the United States, Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives confronts the difficulty we face in articulating alternatives to capitalism, socialism and threatening populist regimes. Beginning with accounts of the impact of capitalism on countries left behind by the planned economies, the volume moves on to consider how China has become a beacon of dynamic economic growth, aggressively expanding its global influence. The final section of the volume poses alternatives to the ideological dominance of neoliberalism in the West. Since the 2008 financial crisis, demands for social change have erupted across the world. Exposing the failure of neoliberalism in the United Kingdom and examining recent social movements in Europe and the United States, the closing chapters identify how elements of past ideas are re-emerging, among them Keynesianism and radical socialism. As those chapters indicate, these ideas might well have potential to mobilise support and challenge the dominance of neoliberalism.




Alternatives to Capitalism


Book Description

The essays in this provocative collection survey and assess institutional arrangements that could be alternatives to capitalism as it exists today. The agreed point of departure among the contributors is that on the one hand, capitalism leads to unemployment, a lack of autonomy in the workplace, and massive income inequalities; while on the other hand, central socialist planning is characterized by underemployment, inefficiency, and bureaucracy. In Part I, various alternatives are proposed: profit-sharing systems, capitalism combined with some central planning, worker-owned firms in a market economy, or the introduction of the elements of market economy into a centrally planned economy as has occurred recently in Hungary. Part II provides a theoretical analysis and assessment of these systems.




Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism


Book Description

An accessible and comprehensive overview of the ideas of Karl Marx




Marx at the Margins


Book Description

In Marx at the Margins, Kevin Anderson uncovers a variety of extensive but neglected texts by Marx that cast what we thought we knew about his work in a startlingly different light. Analyzing a variety of Marx’s writings, including journalistic work written for the New York Tribune, Anderson presents us with a Marx quite at odds with conventional interpretations. Rather than providing us with an account of Marx as an exclusively class-based thinker, Anderson here offers a portrait of Marx for the twenty-first century: a global theorist whose social critique was sensitive to the varieties of human social and historical development, including not just class, but nationalism, race, and ethnicity, as well. Through highly informed readings of work ranging from Marx’s unpublished 1879–82 notebooks to his passionate writings about the antislavery cause in the United States, this volume delivers a groundbreaking and canon-changing vision of Karl Marx that is sure to provoke lively debate in Marxist scholarship and beyond. For this expanded edition, Anderson has written a new preface that discusses the additional 1879–82 notebook material, as well as the influence of the Russian-American philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya on his thinking.




Marxism and Film Activism


Book Description

In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx writes, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is to change it.” This collection examines how filmmakers have tried to change the world by engaging in emancipatory politics through their work, and how audiences have received them. It presents a wide spectrum of case studies, covering both film and digital technology, with examples from throughout cinematic history and around the world, including Soviet Russia, Palestine, South America, and France. Discussions range from the classic Marxist cinema of Aleksandr Medvedkin, Chris Marker, and Jean-Luc Godard, to recent media such as 5 Broken Cameras (2010), the phenomena of video-blogging, and bicycle activism films.




Marxist Class Theory for a Skeptical World


Book Description

Marxist Theory of Class for a Skeptical World is a critique of some of the influential radical theories of class, and presents an alternative approach to it. This book critically discusses Analytical Marxist and Post-structuralist Marxist theories of class, and offers an alternative approach that is rooted in the ideas of Marx and Engels as well as Lenin and Trotsky. It presents a materialist-dialectical foundation for class theory, and conceptualizes class at the trans-historical level and at the level of capitalism. It shows that capitalism is an objectively-existing articulation of exchange, property and value relations, between capital and labour, at multiple geographical scales, and that the state is an arm of class relation. It draws out implications of class relations for consciousness and political power of the proletariat.




Liberal Socialism


Book Description

Should we be looking for alternatives to the western world’s status quo of neo-liberal capitalism? Should we be seeking a new form of freedom for a more just and better social world? Drawing on Rawls’s theory of justice and Marx’s critique of capitalism, this book answers those questions in a resounding affirmative. Some think that a just society for Rawls cannot promote a better social world unless it is acceptable to all but, this wrongly treats Rawls as a supporter of minimal government. Setting this aside, the book argues that the ideas of justice behind political and media pundit support of neo-liberal capitalism are faulty, and should be replaced with a Rawlsian idea of justice. Resistance to the idea that an acceptable theory of justice can say that capitalism is unjust is overcome by showing that capitalism, as Marx sees it, must be unjust on Rawls’s theory of justice because it breaches the difference principle and involves exploitation of employees. Reasons are then given for a new society that will be just under a modified Rawlsian idea of justice and will promote the Marxian good of free social cooperation on projects pursued independently of demands of nature. What a free life lived in this new society means is spelled out and shown to be acceptable. This book concludes by asking whether society can set out on a path to a better social world.