György Lukács’s infl uential interpretation of commodity fetishism as “reifi cation” shapes many contemporary critiques of the apparently objective and impersonal form taken by capitalist social relations. Such critiques seek to debunk the false veil of objectivity that results from fetishism, revealing the real character of the social relations underneath. Th is line of criticism, however, often attributes totalising power to capitalism, which undermines its own critical standpoint. I argue that the solution to this dilemma lies in understanding the fetish not as an ideological veil that needs to be debunked, but instead as a novel form of social interdependence that is genuinely – not illusorily – impersonal. Th is impersonal form is generated by a diverse array of disparate social practices whose interaction yields this unanticipated and unintended result. Within this framework, the diversity of the underlying social practices off ers a practical potential basis for constituting new forms of social interdependence that lack not only the semblance, but also the reality of capitalism’s oppressive objectivity.
This study discusses the limits of Marx’s reinterpretation of Hegel’s conception of dialectics as a self-mediation of the fundamental by way of historical reality: we will show Marx’s disessentialisation of the (already quite monistic) Hegelian absolute spirit, and the consequences of Marx’s conception of consciousness as of a conscious being for the concept of culture, reduced that is to interest-conditioned, “ideological” praxis and its self-reflection. The study thus subjects to criticism the reduction of objectivi¬ty to totality in György Lukács, the founder of modern western Marxism; it points to the residuum (in no way objectively unlicensed) of self-positing subjecti¬vism in his “class-consciousness”; and it compares this immanentist conception with, on the one hand, the utopian conception of Ernst Bloch, foreshadowing Derrida’s stress on the auto criti¬cism of Marxism as a philosophy of the historicity of categories (as Lukács himself theo¬retically understood it!), and, on the other hand, with the dialectical non identity of the possible of Theodor W. Adorno. By reflecting on Marx’s concept of (historical) consciousness (of conscious Being) through critical insight into its most (in our view) signi¬ficant interpretations of the 20th century, the study attempts to capture the limi¬ts of the monistically-conceived dialectic for democratic social pra¬xis, preserving the “principle of hope” in the openness of the unsubsumable individual.
Th is article considers the relevance of the ideas of Soviet jurist Evgeny Pashukanis for debates about the relationship between Marxism and justice. In particular, it employs these ideas as a criticism of those who seek to supplement Marx’s critique of capitalism with liberal theories of justice, paradigmatically those of John Rawls. Pashukanis’s analysis of the legal form as a kind of fetish, arising on the basis of capitalist relations of production, opens up the possibility of a similar criticism of theories of justice. Th is involves more than just the familiar critique that such theories are ideological; Pashukanis suggests an approach that recognises the practical eff ectiveness of theories of justice while also recognising their limits from the perspective of radical critique. Th is new approach allows for a better understanding of how theories of justice might form part of radical theory and practice today.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of the Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Since the publication of his book Marx’s Ecology in 2000 he has become one of the most significant voices in uncovering Marx’s ecological thinking and developing ecological Marxism. In this interview we discuss his most recent work, the legacy of Soviet environmentalism, the long-running debate over “the dialectics of nature”, and the idea of production according to need.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of the Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Since the publication of his book Marx’s Ecology in 2000 he has become one of the most significant voices in uncovering Marx’s ecological thinking and developing ecological Marxism. In this interview we discuss his most recent work, the legacy of Soviet environmentalism, the long-running debate over “the dialectics of nature”, and the idea of production according to need.