This article explores Adorno’s negative dialectics as a critical social theory of economic objectivity. It rejects the conventional view that Adorno does not offer a critique of the economic forms of capitalist society. The article holds that negative dialectics is a dialectics of the social world in the form of the economic object, one that is governed by the movement of economic quantities, that is, real economic abstractions. Negative dialectics refuses to accept the constituted economic categories as categories of economic (...) nature. Instead, the article argues, it amounts to a conceptualized social praxis [ begriffene Praxis] of the capitalistically constituted social relations, which manifest themselves in the form of seemingly independent economic categories. Economic nature is a socially constituted nature, which entails the class antagonism in its concept. The article concludes that for negative dialectics the explanation of real economic abstractions lies in the understanding of the class-divided nature of human practice. (shrink)

Engeström’s (1987, 1999) innovations in cultural-historical activity theory emphasise the role of contradictions in analysing and transforming learning in practice. This paper considers some of the problems and possibilities contained in his analytical understanding of contradictions, in relation to activity and to what he terms ‘expansive learning’ (Engeström, 2001, 2004, 2007). In doing so, it builds upon Engeström’s stated concern with theorising activities ‘in capitalism’. Its goal is to problematise the underlying practical definition of contradictions and the claims made for (...) his ‘contradiction-driven’ analysis of work practices as a platform for transformation. This paper suggests that the definition of contradictions that underpins Engeström’s notions of ‘expansive’ learning and his ‘developmental work research’ methodology is restrictive because it underplays the wider social contradictions and antagonisms inherent in the commodification of labour-power . As such, while Engeström’s take on activity theory offers a valuable approach to reforming configurations of labour within the bounds of capitalist efficiency, its engagement with capitalism’s internal contradictions is uneven and, therefore, its claims to produce transformative, expansive learning are heavily qualified. The framework of this argument is provided by Postone’s (1996) reading of Marx’s Capital and Grundrisse as social theories of labour within capitalism and the extensive analyses of the social reproduction of labourpower developed by Rikowski (1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2002a, 2002b), Allman et al. (2000) and Dinerstein and Neary (2002). The paper ends with a consideration of the practical research possibilities emanating from its call to ground activity theory and its concern with contradictions in a sophisticated understanding of labourpower theory. It draws upon the UK-based Learning in and for Interagency Working Project’s (2004 ‑ 2008) intervention research in multiprofessional children’s service settings. It discusses the project’s rethinking of the notion of contradictions, the need to understand the division of labour as a tool in the social production of labour-power and the sense in which historical shifts in the ways that institutions organise collective labourpower make visible the social production of labourpower as an object of activity. (shrink)

Los Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte de 1844 de Marx establecen las bases del proyecto marxista de superación del capitalismo. Para ello, desarrolla una crítica al trabajo asalariado desde el concepto de alienación procedente de la dialéctica hegeliana y de la crítica de Feuerbach a la religión. Este análisis le sirve para establecer otros conceptos como los de una alteridad materialista o la reducción a la animalidad, desde los cuales sería posible construir otro marxismo alternativo al de Das Kapital.