Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2009
1 Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston, 1964)Google Scholar; idem, “Socialism in the Developed Countries”, International Socialist Journal, 2:8 (1965). Compare Mattick, Paul, “The Limits of Integration”, in Wolff, Kurt H. and Moore, Barrington Jr, (eds), The Critical Spirit. Essays in Honor of Herbert Marcuse (Boston, 1967)Google Scholar.
2 Karl Marx, Results of the Immediate Process of Production, trans. Livingstone, Rodney, in Marx, , Capital, vol. I, trans. Fowkes, Ben (Harmondsworth, 1976), p. 992Google Scholar: “labour must be broken down into its twofold form – on the one hand, into concrete labour in the use-values of the commodity, and on the other hand, into socially necessary labour as calculated in exchange-value”.
3 Colletti, Lucio, “Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International” (1968)Google Scholar, in idem, From Rousseau to Lenin. Studies in Ideology and Society, trans. Merrington, John and White, Judith (New York, 1972), p. 79Google Scholar.
4 Breuer, Stefan, Krise der Revolutionstheorie. Negative Vergesellschaftung und Arbeitsmetaphysik bei Herbert Marcuse (Frankfurt/Main, 1977), p. 45Google Scholar.
5 ibid., p. 49.
6 Postone's soulmates included Barbara Brick, Dan Diner, Helmut Reinicke and Peter Schmitt-Egner. See e.g. Reinicke, , Ware und Dialektik (Darmstadt, 1974)Google Scholar; Schmitt-Egner, , Kolonialismus und Faschismus (Giessen/LoIIar, 1975)Google Scholar; and Diner, , Israel in Palestlna. über Tausch und Gewalt im vorderen Orient (Königstein/Taunus, 1980)Google Scholar.
7 Postone, Moishe and Reinicke, Helmut, “On Nicolaus ‘Introduction’ to the Grundrisse”, Telos, 22 (Winter 1974–1975)Google Scholar; Postone, Moishe, “Necessity, Labor, and Time”, Social Research, 45 (Winter 1978)Google Scholar.
8 Marx, Capital, I, p. 290.
9 As early as 1976, Postone wrote: “The ideas of the traditional working class movements, whether Social Democratic or Communist, arose at a time when the non-identical moment emerging out of capitalist society could not, even in its most militantly anti-capitalist form, encompass the idea of the Aufhebung of capitalist labor. Questions of ownership of means of production, of the mode of organization of existing labor, and of the distribution of capital and goods, could be placed on the agenda; not however the question of proletarian labor itself.” Postone, Moishe, review of Reinicke's, HelmutRevolte im bürgerlichen Erbe: Gebrauchswert und Mikrologie (Giessen/Lollar, 1975)Google Scholar, in Telos, 29 (Fall 1976), p. 244.
10 Among the many examples is Trotsky's ode to the conveyor belt, which is used in capitalism “for higher and more perfected exploitation of the worker”, but which may also serve very different purposes, as “this use of the conveyor is connected with capitalism, not with the conveyor itself. […] A socialist organization of the economy must endeavor to bring about a reduction in the physiological load on each individual worker […] while safeguarding at the same time the coordination of the efforts of different workers. This will be the significance of the socialist conveyor as distinct from the capitalist one”: Trotsky, Leon, “Culture and Socialism” (1926)Google Scholar, in idem, Problems in Everyday Life and Other Writings on Culture and Science (New York, 1973), pp. 241–242.
11 Marx, Karl, Grimdrisse, trans. Nicolaus, Martin (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 325Google Scholar.
12 Marx, Capital, I, 344.
13 “Whereas an antagonistic social form can be static, the notion of contradiction necessarily implies an intrinsic dynamic”(TLSD, p. 103).
14 Kurz, Robert, Der Kollaps der Modernisierung. Vom Zusammenbruch des Kasernensozialismus zur Krise der Weltökonomie (Frankfurt/Main, 1991)Google Scholar.
15 See the crucial text “Die Krise des Tauschwerts”, Marxistische Kritik, 1 (1986).
16 Lohoff, Ernst, “Staatskonsum und Staatsbankrott: Profitrate und Profitmasse”, Marxistische Kritik, 6 (1989), p. 48Google Scholar.
17 Kurz, Robert and Lohoff, Ernst, “Der Klassenkampf-Fetisch. Thesen zur Entmythologisierung des Marxismus”, Marxistische Kritik, 7 (08 1989), p. 10Google Scholar.
18 Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. III, trans. Fernbach, David (Harmondsworth, 1981), p. 358Google Scholar.
19 Marx, Grunmdrisse, pp. 705–706.
20 , Marx, “Postface to the Second Edition” (1873), Capital, I, p. 98Google Scholar.
21 Kurz, Robert, “Der doppelte Marx”, in Eidam, Heinz and Schmied-Kowarzik, Wolfdietrich (eds), Kritische Philosophie gesellschaftlicher Praxis (Würzburg, 1995)Google Scholar; “Fetisch Arbeit”, in Fleischer, Helmut (ed.), Der Marxismus in seinem Zeitalter (Leipzig, 1994)Google Scholar; “Postmarxismus und Arbeitsfetisch”, Krisis. 15 (1995).
22 Lohoff, Ernst, “Das Ende des Proletariats als Anfang der Revolution”, Krisis, 10 (01 1991), p. 83Google Scholar.
23 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 245.
24 Pashukanis, Evgeny, “The General Theory of Law and Marxism” (1924), in Beime, Piers and Sharlet, Robert (eds), Pashukanis: Selected Writings on Marxism and Law (London [etc.], 1980), esp. pp. 74–90Google Scholar.
25 Klein, Peter, Die Illusion von 1917. Die alte Arbeiterbewegung als Entwicklungshelferin der modernen Demokratie (Bad Honnef, 1992), p. 29Google Scholar.
26 Ibid., p. 51. This line of thought might lead to a reconsideration of the “property in skill” often invoked in the past by artisans and skilled workers to legitimize their actions.
27 Other areas to be considered in this context are racism and colonialism. Did historical links exist between the commodity logic and the tendency (on the part of the bourgeois elite and large segments of the metropolitan labour movements) to look down on people from the colonies? Krisis did not address this issue. Nevertheless, a preliminary analysis appears in Schmitt-Egner, Peter, “Wertgesetz und Rassismus”, Gesellschaft: Beitrdge zur Marxschen Theorie, 8–9 (1976)Google Scholar. The radical implications of the critique of the commodity logic have to some extent escaped the attention of Eli Zaretsky; see his “A Marx for Our Time? Moishe Postone's Reading of Capital”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 22, 2 (1996).
28 Scholz, Roswitha, “Der Wert ist der Mann”, Krisis, 12 (1992)Google Scholar. Also see Robert Kurz, “Geschlechtsfetischismus”, ibid.
29 Scholz, “Der Wert ist der Mann”, p. 22; compare Kurz, Robert, “Subjektlose Herr-schaft”, Krisis, 13 (1993)Google Scholar.
30 Winkel, Udo, “Marx hat uns im voraus Uberholt”, Krisis, 15 (1995), p. 134Google Scholar.
31 Lukács, Georg, History and Class Consciousness (1923), trans. Livingstone, Rodney (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Theodor W. Adomo, “Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie: Drei Studien zu Hegel” (1956), in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5 (1971); Ranicro Panzieri, “Sull'uso capitalistico delle macchine nel neocapitalismo” (1961), in idem, Spontaneità e organizzazione. Gli anni dei “Quaderni rossi” 1959–1964, ed. Merli, Stefano (Pisa, 1994)Google Scholar; Debord, Guy, Society of the Spectacle (1967) (New York, 1995)Google Scholar.
32 Both Postone and the Krisis group characterize the former Soviet-type societies as capitalist because of the dominance of abstract labour there. I consider this assumption all too easy. Earlier, I argued that competition for profit between capitals is essential for capitalism (see Marx, Grundrisse, p. 650: “Free competition is the real development of capital”; also Capital, III, p. 127), and that such competition existed neither inside the Soviet Union between enterprises nor between the Soviet Union and Western capitalism. I favour regarding Soviet-type societies as non-capitalist (and, of course, non-socialist) modernization dictatorships and their competition with capitalism as state-centred. The labour processes remained mediated and abstract, given these relationships: van der Linden, Marcel, Von der Oktoberrevolution zur Perestroika: Der westliche Marxismus und die Sowjetunion (Frankfurt/Main, 1992), pp. 212–213, 227–245Google Scholar.
33 Compare Anderson's, Perry observation that “all the examples of Soviets or councils so far have emerged out of disintegrating autocracies (Russia, Hungary, Austria), defeated military regimes (Germany), ascendant or overturned fascist states (Spain, Portugal)”: Arguments within English Marxism (London, 1980), p. 196Google Scholar. On the parliamentarization of workers' councils, see Wohlforth, Tim, “Transition to the Transition”, New Left Review, 130 (1981)Google Scholar.
34 van der Linden, Marcel and Thorpe, Wayne (eds), Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective (Aldershot, 1990)Google Scholar.
35 Vincent, Jean-Marie, Critique du travail (Paris, 1987), p. 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Arthur, Chris, review of Postone's Time, Labor and Social Domination, in Capital and Class, 54 (Autumn 1994), p. 150Google Scholar.
37 Rothenbuhler, Eric W., “The Liminal Fight: Mass Strikes as Ritual and Interpretation”, in Alexander, Jeffrey C. (ed.), Durklieimian Sociology: Cultural Studies (Cambridge [etc.], 1988), p. 73Google Scholar.
38 Postone and Reinicke, ”On Nicolaus”, p. 144.
39 Some members of the Krisis group go even further and assert that the old class struggle lacks any historical perspective, since proletarian emancipation is irreversible: Kurz and Lohoff, ”Der Klassenkampffetisch”, p. 36. This view is dangerous not only because irreversible attainments do not exist but also because of its classic Eurocentric vision pretending that metropolitan attainments automatically apply all over the world.
You have
Access
