A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion

This book explores a variety of themes central to contemporary Marxist thought and its development as a critical social theory, advancing a focus on social rather than economic categories and identifying the unrest of life and class struggle as characteristic of capitalist society, to be resolved in the communist society of human purposes.

This book explores a variety of interconnected themes central to contemporary Marxist theory and its further development as a critical social theory.

Championing the critique of political economy as a critical theory of society and rejecting Marxian economics as a contradiction in terms, it argues instead that economic categories are perverted social categories, before identifying the sheer unrest of life - the struggle to make ends meet - as the negative content of the reified system of economic objectivity. With class struggle recognised as the negative category of the cold society of capitalist wealth, which sees in humanity a living resource for economic progress, the author contends that the critique of class society finds its rational solution in the society of human purposes, that is, the classless society of communist individuals.

A theoretically sophisticated engagement with Marxist thought, A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in critical theory and post-capitalist imaginaries.

Autorentext

Werner Bonefeld is Professor of Politics at the University of York, UK. He is the author of Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy and The Strong State and the Free Economy.

Inhalt

1 A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation PART ONE Society as Process of Compulsion 2 Real Abstraction: On Capital and Class; 3 Money as Social Power: On Labour and Value; 4 World Market and Crisis: On Capital and its State PART TWO Practical Humanism and the Reason of Negation 5 Social Coldness and Practical Humanism: On Counter-Hegemony and Governmentality; 6 History and Freedom: On Social Justice and Class Society; 7 On Communism and the Philosophy of Now-Time. A Conclusion Postscript. On the necessity and impossibility of communism