In this paper, I offer an original interpretation of Marx's conception of unalienated labor, which I frame as a response to Aristotle's view of work, or technē. Both Aristotle and Marx share a particular conception of freedom as “normative self-determination,” according to which an activity is free insofar as it does not depend for its value on externally valuable things. For instance, when my activity is a mere means for satisfying some need separate from it, it comes to depend for (...) its value on the externally valuable effect—the “needs-meeting”—it achieves. Or, when my activity is only causally—but not normatively—enabled by the cooperative contributions of others, it comes to depend for its value on those externally valuable contributions. On Aristotle's view, work is unleisurely (ascholos) and servile (doulos) because it is normatively dependent in both of these ways. For Marx, by contrast, work possesses the capacity to “internalize” these external determinants of its value. Unalienated work does this, first, by satisfying “internal” needs, or needs whose satisfaction does not constitute a normatively external effect of the work that satisfies them. The satisfaction of internal needs is valuable because of the manner or way in which they are satisfied. Second, unalienated work would not only be causally, but also normatively, enabled by the contributions of others, in that those contributions would help to make it the distinctively valuable act that it is. Unalienated work would be valuable because, and not despite, its cooperative character. In both of these respects, then, cooperation is essential to make work fully free. (shrink)

Hegel's influence on post-Hegelian philosophy is as profound as it is ambiguous. Modern philosophy is philosophy after Hegel. Taking leave of Hegel's system appears to be a common feature of modern and post-modern thought. One could even argue that giving up Hegel's claim of totality defines philosophy after Hegel. Modern and post-modern philosophies are philosophies of finitude: Hegel's philosophy cannot be repeated. However, its status as a negative backdrop for modern and post-modern thought already shows its pervasive influence. Precisely in (...) its criticism of Hegel, modern thought is bound up with his thinking. (shrink)

In the Critique of Gotha Programme, Karl Marx famously argues that a communist society will be characterised by the principle, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ I take up a question about this principle that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen, namely: what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? In reply to this question, Cohen interprets Marx as saying that communism is possible because of limitless abundance, a view that Cohen takes to be (...) implausible for ecological reasons. I develop a new interpretation of Marx's position. On this interpretation, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, self-realisation generates conditions in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I defend this view as an interpretation of Marx and I argue that it represents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen's interpretation in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role. (shrink)

In the Critique of Gotha Programme, Karl Marx famously argues that a communist society will be characterised by the principle, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ I take up a question about this principle that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen, namely: what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? In reply to this question, Cohen interprets Marx as saying that communism is possible because of limitless abundance, a view that Cohen takes to be (...) implausible for ecological reasons. I develop a new interpretation of Marx's position. On this interpretation, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, self-realisation generates conditions in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I defend this view as an interpretation of Marx and I argue that it represents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen's interpretation in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role. (shrink)

Marx says of alienated labor that it does not “belong” to the worker, that it issues in a product that does not belong to her, and that it is unfulfilling, unfree, egoistically motivated, and inhuman. He seems to think, moreover, that the first of these features grounds all the others. All of these features seem quite independent, however: they can come apart; they share no obvious common cause or explanation; and if they often occur together, this seems accidental. It is (...) not clear, then, how Marx’s concept of alienated labor could possess the strong unity that he takes it to have. This article defends a reinterpretation of the concept that explains this unity. The various features of alienated labor, the article argues, all follow from a single, hitherto underappreciated feature of its formal motivational structure: the fact that such labor is motivated not by its product but by an incentive. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the philosophical side of Karl Marx's thought as well as some of the major debates about it in the secondary literature. It first examines Marx's early writings, focusing, in particular, on his views on religion, the limitations of political emancipation and the dehumanizing conditions of work under capitalism. Marx and Engels considered the theory of history to be one of Marx's most important theoretical achievements. In an autobiographical note Marx described it as the “guiding thread of his (...) studies,” and in a speech delivered at Marx's graveside Engels compared Marx's discovery of “the law of development of human history” with Darwin's discovery of the law of nature. The chapter examines Marx's materialist theory of history, the view that history is characterized by the development of productive power to free people from material scarcity. It also examines the problematic area of Marx's ethics. (shrink)

Should Marxists support universal basic income (UBI), i.e., a regular cash income paid to all without a means test or work requirement? This paper considers one important argument that they should, namely that UBI would be instrumentally effective in helping to bring about communism. It argues that previous answers to this question have paid insufficient attention to a logically prior question: what is Marx’s account of communism? In reply, it distinguishes two different accounts: a left-libertarian version that associates communism with (...) the freedom to live and work how one wants, and a perfectionist version that associates communism with the overcoming of alienated labour and self-realisation in work. It argues that UBI would make steps towards the left-libertarian account but not the perfectionist account. Ultimately, then, the question “should Marxists support basic income?” is shown to partly depend on which account of communism Marxists want to bring about. (shrink)

Efficient markets are alienating if they inhibit us from recognizably caring about one another in our productive activities. I argue that efficient market behaviour is both exclusionary and fetishistic. As exclusionary, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care alongside their market behaviour. As fetishistic, the efficient marketeer cannot manifest care in their market behaviour. The conjunction entails that efficient market behavior inhibits care. It doesn’t follow that efficient market behavior is vicious: individuals might justifiably commit to efficiency because doing so serves (...) the common good. But efficient market systems nevertheless have significant opportunity costs. The discussion yields a range of desiderata for non-alienated economic organization. (shrink)

Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) is neither a well known nor an easily accessible author.1 Despite playing a significant role in both the evolution of Hegelianism and in nineteenth century controversies abo...

In this paper it is shown that in his conception of value, published in the first volume of Capital, Marx relies on Hegel’s concept of pure recognition to organise the relations between use- and exchange-value on the one hand and the relation between the social relations between things (goods) and actors (sellers) on the other hand. Establishing this thesis is important in three respects: Firstly it demonstrates that there is a strong continuity in the philosophical thought of Karl Marx, making (...) visible an essential relation between his Economic-philosophical Manuscripts and his later writings. Secondly it helps to better understand Marx’s conception of value; and thirdly it shows that “recognition” is an important conception in his critique of political economy. (shrink)

In scholarship on the history of philosophy, it is widely assumed that Charles Fourier was a utopian socialist who could not have exerted a significant influence on the development of Karl Marx's thought. Indeed, both Marx and Engels seem to have advanced this view. In contrast, I argue that in 1844 when Marx was developing his anthropology and social critique, he relied upon Fourier's thought to supply a key assumption. After establishing this connection, I explain why Marx's tacit reliance on (...) Fourier creates a problematic undercurrent in his thought. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We can best understand Marx’s economic thought by seeing it as implicitly relying upon and reworking a Hegelian philosophy of history, which was deeply salvific and soteriological in its basic structure. Hegel’s philosophy of history reworked the Christian narrative of man’s fall, his redemption through Christ’s atonement, and his return to a state of reconciliation with God in the life of the Christian church. Thus, the loss of the organic form of community found in the Greek polis was a (...) fall that was atoned for in the religious alienation found in both Judaism and Christianity, where man is treated as separated from a transcendent God. The reconciliation between man and God is found, finally, in the reconciliation of the modern, rational state. Early on Marx adopted Hegel’s philosophy of history, but its basic structure remains even in his mature economic work. There he envisions the loss of the organic unity of primitive communism, and the alienation of individuals from the larger social totality of feudalism and capitalism. Under communism, however, individuals are reconciled with the larger social whole through the collective mastery of the products of labor. (shrink)

Students of the Hegelian school must acknowledge an abiding debt to Ernst Barnikol. Upon his death in 1968, he left uncompleted a voluminous manuscript on Bruno Bauer, representing over forty years of research. Of this manuscript, conserved at the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, only a fraction has been published, but even this fraction, in its almost six hundred pages, continues to set standards in the field for meticulous scholarship, rigorous analysis, and balanced criticism. Barnikol's interests were primarily theological, (...) though he recognised clearly that Bauer's religious critique was politically motivated. Barnikol also discovered, but did not publish, Bauer's 1829 Latin manuscript on Kant's aesthetics. This text, adjudicated by Hegel and awarded the Prussian royal prize in philosophy, had been deposited among Hegel's correspondence in the archives of the Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. It was first published in 1996, in the original Latin, with German translation and commentary. In referring to his discovery, Barnikol made a substantive claim which must be disputed here, that Bauer's early text remained without influence on his subsequent work. Focusing on Bauer's depiction of art, and on the relation of art and religion as manifestations of spirit, we can trace lines of continuity and development in his thought, from his 1829 manuscript to his writings of 1841-42. The central idea of the early manuscript, a Hegelian conception of the unity of thought and being, is the key to deciphering the complex and elusive meaning of Bauer's critical theory in the Vormdrz. (shrink)

InThe Gramscian MomentPeter Thomas fundamentally revises the ‘textbook’ Gramsci – a theorist whose work centred on a primordial East/West distinction, focused on the superstructure, and upon the ways a ruling class secured subaltern consent to its rule. Placing special emphasis on the Notebooks from 1932, Thomas critiques readings of Gramsci by Perry Anderson and Louis Althusser, and finds that Gramsci articulated the ‘philosophy of praxis’ not so much as a synonym for, or declaration of independence from, Marxism, but rather as (...) a tendency within Marx’s legacy that Gramsci hoped to make hegemonic within the working-class movement. Two friendly amendments emerge with respect to this persuasive account. First, the emphasis on Gramsci’sphilosophyleads the author to an over-simplified account of the role of evolutionary theory within Gramsci’s own perspective and privileges ‘philosophy’ over other fields to which Gramsci’s vision was even more decisive. Is the ‘Gramscian moment’ really best analysed by looking at those intellectuals commonly deemed philosophers? And second, does not this moment also entail a more fundamental rethinking of the orthodox concepts and methods of revolutionary-left historiography than the author sometimes implies? (shrink)

It is a hallmark of the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory that it has consistently made philosophical reflection a central component of its overall project. Indeed, the core identity that this tradition has been able to maintain arguably stems from the fact that a number of key philosophical assumptions have been shared by the generations of thinkers involved in it. These assumptions form a basic ‘philosophical matrix’, whose main aim is to allow for a ‘critique of reason’, the heart (...) of the critique of modern society, which emphasises the collective, historically situated and naturalistically grounded nature of rationality. In this matrix, Feuerbach's place has been only a minor one. This paper aims to show that there is more to be retrieved from Feuerbach for critical theory than at first meets the eye. The first section identifies key conceptual features that are shared by the central authors of the Frankfurt School. They signal a collectivist and materialist shift from Kant to Marx via Hege.. (shrink)

In scholarship on the history of philosophy, it is widely assumed that Charles Fourier was a utopian socialist who could not have exerted a significant influence on the development of Karl Marx's thought. Indeed, both Marx and Engels seem to have advanced this view. In contrast, I argue that in 1844 when Marx was developing his anthropology and social critique, he relied upon Fourier's thought to supply a key assumption. After establishing this connection, I explain why Marx's tacit reliance on (...) Fourier creates a problematic undercurrent in his thought. (shrink)

This article contributes to an ongoing revival of interest in the intellectual history of the German Vormärz, and to an emerging body of scholarship on the influential political philosopher and Bible scholar Bruno Bauer (1809–1882). While, during much of the twentieth century, Bauer was remembered primarily for his relationship with the Young Marx, more recent scholarship has attempted to examine his work on its own terms, and to consider his unique contributions to the history of republicanism and radicalism in particular. (...) But to date, no one has provided a systematic and synoptic account of his theology during the crucial years of 1838 to 1843. This article aims to fill that gap in the literature. It argues that Bauer’s political thought cannot be understood independently of his theology, his church and religious histories, and his Bible criticism. In doing so, it provides new insights into the significance of theology for the polemical debates of the Vormärz more generally. (shrink)