Indeed, it is a conception that goes far beyond what many of his followers and critics today mean by “socialism” or “Communism.” Marx never wavered from the proclamation voiced at the start of his career-“I arrived at the point of seeing the idea in reality itself” ( Marx 1975a:18). On the contrary, his relentless critique of existing social relations is what enabled him to develop a far more expansive concept of socialism than any of his contemporaries. That Marx was not interested in utopian blueprints that are developed in disregard of actual mass struggles does not mean that his work is devoid of a distinctive concept of socialism. However, as with so much in life, the appearance is deceptive. Moreover, since Marx’s theoretical contribution consisted of an extended critique of the existing capitalist mode of production and he wrote relatively little about post-capitalist society, it may appear that his work has little to offer those seeking to develop a viable alternative to capitalism in the twenty-first century. It may seem that Marx had little to add to this notion, since he refrained from speculating about the future and sharply criticized the utopian socialists who spent their time doing so. It consisted of replacing an anarchic, market-driven competitive society with a planned, organized one controlled by the working class.
A general notion of an alternative to capitalism, even if vague and misdirected, was already in circulation.
Neither he nor any other radical intellectual of the time invented the idea of socialism and Communism. When Karl Marx broke from bourgeois society and became a revolutionary in the early 1840s, he joined an already-existing socialist movement that long predated his entrance upon the political and ideological scene. Keywords: socialism, value production, abstract labor, Communism, state This chapter seeks to show how Marx’s writings on this issue provide important theoretical ground for envisioning a non-capitalist future in the twenty-first century.
#ADAM JOHN CRITIQUES PUERTO RICO FULL#
While Marx never wrote “blueprints of the future,” the full breadth of his work as revealed in the Marx-Engels Gesaumtausgabe indicates that his vision of a post-capitalist society went further than specifying the need to abolish private property and “anarchic” exchange relations. Taking off from Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism, this article explores how Marx’s critique of capital, value production, and abstract universal labor time is grounded in an emancipatory vision of a post-capitalist society-a vision that has been largely overlooked. Achieving this requires rethinking basic premises of social theory and practice, given the difficulties of freeing humanity from such problems as alienation, class domination, and the capitalist law of value. One of the most important theoretical challenges facing us is developing a viable alternative to capitalism.