Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
Critical Theory, Philosophy, and History
Moishe Postone
Paris, Oct. 5, 2007
As is well-known, Marx concludes his Theses on Feuerbach in 1845 with the
statement that “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point,
however, is to change it.”1 This famous eleventh thesis raises the issue of the relation of
philosophy to society and, hence, the relation of philosophy and social theory. This
problematic is central to the Theses on Feuerbach, which begin by opposing materialism
and idealism. Whereas materialism, according to Marx, conceives of reality only in the
form of the object, idealism grasps the active, subjective dimension, but does so in a
manner abstracted from sensuous activity.2 Marx does not take the side of materialism
here, but regards the opposition of materialism and idealism as expressing a
subjective/objective dualism that has characterized modern Western philosophy. Marx’s
aim is to overcome the dualism itself – which he claims can only be accomplished by an
approach centered on sensuous human praxis.
In so arguing, Marx is not simply calling for a better philosophical understanding
of the world. His statement that “Feuerbach…does not see…that the abstract individual
which he analyzes belongs to a particular form of society”3 implies that the object of
thought must be understood as historically and socially determinate.
1
Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol.5, p.8.
Ibid. p.3.
3
Ibid. p.5.
2
1
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
Moreover – and this is even more fundamental – not only the object of thought,
but thought itself must be grasped with reference to its context. Consequently, Marx
criticizes “the materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and
upbringing” not only for forgetting the active dimension – “that it is men who change
circumstances” – but also the reflexive dimension – “that the educator must himself be
educated.” The result is that materialist doctrine ends up dividing “society into two parts,
one of which is superior to society.”4 This critique can be read not only as one of avantgardist conceptions of politics, but also of any understanding of theory that, explicitly or
implicitly, posits a decontextualized theorist, hovering above and outside of all
determinate contexts as an omniscient spirit.
Overcoming the classical subject/object dualism endemic to modern Western
philosophy, then, requires a form of thought that grasps philosophical problems with
reference to their determinate social/historical context. In other words, the approach
Marx outlines in the Theses on Feuerbach, although still underdetermined, regards
critical social theory as the adequate supersession of philosophy.
This general point emerges more clearly in the German Ideology. In that
manuscript, Marx famously argues that, contrary to the idealism of the Young Hegelians,
“[i]t is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.”5
Nevertheless, Marx does not simply argue that the Young Hegelians have made a
conceptual error. Instead he claims that their idealist understanding – that consciousness
determines life – must itself be understood with reference to its context: “If in all
4
5
Ibid. p.4.
Marx and Engels, German Ideology, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol.5, p.37.
2
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscure, this
phenomenon arises…from their historical life process...”6
One task of critical theory, then, is to show that determinate forms of thought are
forms of misrecognition by elucidating their conditions of possibility with reference to
their context. This critique, however, is not and cannot be undertaken from a standpoint
that claims transhistorical validity. Within the framework of this approach, no theory,
including Marx’s, has such validity.
This critique of any conception of transhistorically valid truth, does not, however,
necessarily imply a radical relativism that ultimately is self-undermining. A theory can
show itself to be both a rigorous theory of its context and historically specific if it
reflexively can account for its own conditions of possibility by means of the same
categories with which it grasps that object, i.e., its own context. In this way, it can get
beyond the opposition of universal decontextualized truth and relativism.
In the German Ideology, this approach is still largely programmatic. Marx only
begins to work out the relationship between society and thought. So, for example, in
discussing idealism, he relates its condition of possibility in very general terms to the
division of mental and manual labor.7 He also very generally relates the possibility of
social critique to the contradictory character of society, arguing that “if…theory…comes
into contradiction with the existing relations, this can only occur because existing social
relations have come into contradiction with existing productive forces.”8
6
Ibid. p.36.
Ibid. p.45.
8
Ibid.
7
3
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
Although the notion of contradiction is not well developed here, it should be clear
that it is crucial to the self-reflexive character of the critique. It grounds the possibility
both of social critique as well as of historical transformation. Its significance in Marx’s
work cannot adequately be grasped objectivistically, in terms of the problematic of
economic crises, or subjectivistically, simply in terms of social antagonism.
It is in the Grundrisse and Capital that Marx provides a firm foundation for a
historical/social analysis of forms of thought, consciousness, and subjectivity – that is, for
a critical social theory capable of superseding philosophical thought by convincingly
mediating it and its historical context. He does so by developing a conception of
historically specific social forms.
The Grundrisse, a massive preparatory study for Capital, helps illuminate Marx’s
critique of capitalist modernity. Capital is more difficult to decipher inasmuch as it is
very tightly structured as a critique undertaken from a standpoint immanent to its object
of investigation. For this reason, its critical categories can be misunderstood as
affirmative. Hence, all too frequently, what clearly, in light of the Grundrisse, is the
object of Marx’s critique has been regarded as its standpoint – an issue to which I will
return.
In a crucial section of the Grundrisse, titled “[the] method of political economy,”9
Marx wrestles with the question of an adequate point of departure for his critical analysis.
He makes clear that the categories of his analysis should not be understood in narrow
economic terms. Rather, they “express the forms of being [Daseinsformen], the
9
Marx, Grundrisse, pp.100-108.
4
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
determinations of existence [Existenzbestimmungen]…of this specific society.”10 As
such, they are, at once, forms of subjectivity and objectivity; they express “what is given,
in the head as well as in reality.”11 That is, Marx’s categories grasp as intrinsically
interrelated, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of capitalist modernity that
frequently are treated as contingently related, as extrinsic to one another. This categorial
approach also contravenes understandings of the relations of social objectivity and
subjectivity in terms of a base/superstructure model.
Moreover, Marx makes very clear that the categories of his critique are
historically specific. Even categories that appear to be transhistorical and that actually do
play a role much earlier historically – such as money and labour – are fully developed
and come into their own only in capitalist society.12 As simple, abstract categories,
according to Marx, they are as “modern…as are the relations which create this simple
abstraction.”13 That is, the abstract character of such categories is rooted in the abstract
form of the social relations of capitalism. And it is precisely because of this abstract
form that what is specific to capitalist society can appear to be transhistorical. In other
words, Marx now intrinsically relates forms of thought, including forms of
misrecognition, and forms of social relations.
Marx’s emphasis on the historical specificity of the object of investigation is
intrinsically linked to the issue of the point of departure of his critical analysis. The
historically specific character of the theory is not simply a matter of content, but also of
form; its form should not contravene the historically specific character of the theory. The
10
Ibid. p.106; translation modified.
Ibid.
12
Ibid. p.103.
13
Ibid.
11
5
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
theory cannot present itself in a transhistorical form, for example, as a universally valid
‘method’ that simply can be applied to a variety of objects, to which it is related only
contingently. Rather the historical specificity of the theory requires that the concept be
the concept of its object.
The point of departure of the critical analysis, therefore, cannot be grounded in a
Cartesian manner, as a deduction from purportedly indubitable, transhistorically valid,
truths. Rather, the point of departure must be historically specific, the core of a
historically determinate analysis of the historically specific formation that is its context.
Rather than presenting the categories in the order in which they arose historically, critical
analysis must begin with what is most essential to the determinate society it seeks to
grasp.14
If Hegel, in The Science of Logic, was concerned with the problem of the point of
departure for the exposition of a logic that doesn’t presuppose a logic, that is, a grounding
outside of that which it seeks to demonstrate, Marx was concerned with the problem of a
historically specific point of departure for a critical social theory that is rigorously
immanent, that doesn’t ground itself outside of its object/context.
Such a point of departure can only be rendered plausible immanently – by the
course of its unfolding, whereby each successive unfolded moment retroactively justifies
that which preceded it. And, indeed, this how Capital is structured. The categories of the
beginning – for example, commodity, value, use value, abstract labour, concrete labour –
are only really justified by the subsequent unfolding of the analysis. What appears to be
their transhistorical ‘grounding’ in the first chapter of Capital, in the form of a Cartesian
14
Ibid. p.207.
6
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
deduction, should be understood with reference to the framework of Marx’s immanent
mode of presentation, which does not take a standpoint extrinsic to its object.
Understood in this way, what appears to be a transhistorical grounding (of value, for
example) is the way in which the subjective/objective forms present themselves. It is a
metacommentary on thought that remains bound within the limits of the structuring forms
of modern, capitalist society.
The historical specificity of the categories of Marx’s critique also emerges clearly
in another important section of the Grundrisse entitled “Contradiction between the
foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development.”15 There,
Marx outlines what he regards as the essential core of capitalism and the fundamental
contradiction that generates the historical possibility of a postcapitalist form of social life.
The category of value expresses the social relations that most fundamentally characterize
capitalism as a form of social life, according to Marx. At the same time, it expresses a
determinate form of wealth. As a form of wealth, value generally has been understood of
as a category of the market. Yet Marx’s characterization of value as “the foundation of
bourgeois production” calls that into question and suggests it also should be understood
as a category of capitalist production itself.
This implies that the process of production should be seen as intrinsically related
to capitalism, and that Marx’s understanding of capitalism’s fundamental contradiction
should not be thought of as one between industrial production, on the one hand, and the
market and private property, on the other. This requires further examination.
15
Ibid. p.704; first emphasis added.
7
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
Value as a social form, according to Marx, is constituted by the expenditure of
direct human labour in the process of production, measured temporally. As a category of
the fundamental social relations that constitute capitalism, it expresses that which is, and
remains, the underlying foundation of capitalist production.16 Yet production based on
value generates a dynamic that gives rise to a growing tension between this foundation
and the results of its own historical development. Marx argues that capitalism generates
enormous, ongoing increases in productivity, as a result of which what he calls “real
wealth” comes to depend less on labour time than on the general state of science and on
the progress of technology. A huge gap emerges between direct human labour and the
productive powers developed under capitalism.17
The contrast Marx draws between value and “real wealth” is one between a form
of wealth based on labour time and one that does not depend on immediate labour time
and can be generated by knowledge. It clearly indicates that value does not refer to social
wealth in general, but is a historically specific form of wealth that is intrinsically related
to a historically specific mode of production.
Many arguments regarding Marx's analysis of the uniqueness of labour as the
source of value – supportive as well as critical – overlook his distinction between “real
wealth” and value. The Grundrisse indicates, however, that Marx's “labour theory of
value” is not a theory of the unique properties of labour in general, but an analysis of the
historical specificity of value as a form of wealth and, hence, implicitly, of the labour that
supposedly constitutes it. Consequently, it is irrelevant to argue for or against Marx’s
theory of value as if it were intended to be a labour theory of (transhistorical) wealth –
16
17
Ibid.; emphasis added.
Ibid. pp.704-705.
8
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
that is, as if Marx had written a critical political economy rather than a critique of
political economy.
I am suggesting then, that value, for Marx, is a category that expresses the
historical specificity of the form of wealth and of production characteristic of capitalism,
and is not a normative category for judging capitalism. In the Grundrisse, Marx argues
that, as the mode of production based on value develops, value becomes less and less
adequate as a measure of social wealth; it becomes anachronistic in terms of the potential
of the system of production to which it gives rise. The realization of that potential would
entail the abolition of value.
This historical possibility is not simply quantitative – that ever
greater masses of goods could be produced on the basis of the existing process of
production, and distributed more equitably. The logic of the growing
contradiction between ‘real wealth’ and value also implies the possibility of a
different process of production, one no longer based on direct human labour.18
This section of the Grundrisse makes abundantly clear that, for Marx, overcoming
capitalism involves the abolition of value as the social form of wealth, which, in turn,
entails overcoming the mode of producing developed under capitalism. It entails a
fundamental transformation of the structure of social labour.
Yet, although the course of capitalist development generates the possibility of a
new, liberating, structure of social labour, its general realisation is impossible under
capitalism, according to Marx. Despite value’s growing inadequacy as a measure of
social wealth produced, it is not simply superseded by a new form of wealth. Instead,
18
Ibid. p.705; second emphasis added.
9
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
according to Marx, it remains the necessary structural precondition of capitalist society.19
This is the basis of capitalism’s fundamental contradiction.
These Grundrisse passages indicate that Marx’s notion of the structural
contradiction in capitalism should not be identified immediately with social antagonism,
such as class conflict, and does not refer most fundamentally to a contradiction between
private appropriation and socialized production, since production itself is moulded by
capitalist relations. Nevertheless, Marx's analysis locates a contradiction between the
actuality of the form of production constituted by value, and its potential – a potential that
grounds the possibility of a new form of production. Far from entailing the realization of
the proletariat, overcoming capitalism would involve the material abolition of proletarian
labour.
This section of the Grundrisse indicates, then, that Marx’s critical theory should
be understood essentially as a critique of labour in capitalism, rather than a critique of
capitalism from the standpoint of labour (as in traditional Marxism). This has farreaching implications for comprehending Capital.
At this point I can briefly outline a reading of Capital based on the considerations
developed thus far. As is well known, Capital’s point of departure is the commodity. On
the basis of the Grundrisse, it now is evident that the category of the commodity here
does not refer to commodities as they might exist in many societies. Nor does it express
a (fictitious) historical stage of ‘simple commodity production’ purportedly antecedent to
capitalism. Rather, the category of the commodity here is historically specific. It
designates the most fundamental social form of capitalist society, the form from which
19
Ibid. p.706.
10
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
Marx then proceeded to unfold the essential features and dynamic quality of that society.
The characteristics of that form – that it simultaneously is a value and a use value, for
example – should also be understood as historically specific.20
The commodity form of social relations is constituted by labour, according to
Marx. Hence it necessarily exists in objectified form. Marx’s conception of the
historical specificity of labour in capitalism underlies this description. He maintains that
labour in capitalism has a “double character”: it is both “concrete labour” and “abstract
labour.”21 “Concrete labour” refers to the fact that some form of what we consider
labouring activities mediates the interaction of humans with nature in all societies.
“Abstract labour,” however, does not simply refer to labour in general. Rather, it is a
historically specific category signifying that labour in capitalism has a unique social
function that is not intrinsic to labouring activity as such: it serves as a kind of quasiobjective means by which the products of others are acquired. As such a socially
mediating activity, labour constitutes a new, quasi-objective, form of interdependence,
where people’s labour or labour products function as quasi-objective means of obtaining
the products of others. In serving as such mediations, labour and its products pre-empt
that function on the part of manifest social relations.
Labour in capitalism not only mediates the interaction of humans and nature, then,
but also constitutes a historically specific social mediation, according to Marx. Hence, its
objectifications (commodity, capital) are both concrete labour products and objectified
forms of social mediation. The social relations that most fundamentally characterize the
capitalist form of social life are thus very different from the qualitatively heterogeneous
20
21
Marx, Capital, vol.1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London, 1976), pp.166, 169.
Ibid. pp.131-139.
11
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
and overtly social relations, such as kinship relations, which characterize other forms of
social life. The fundamental forms of social relations constitutive of capitalism are
peculiarly quasi-objective and formal, and are characterized by a dualistic opposition of
an abstract, general, homogenous dimension, and a concrete, particular, material
dimension (both of which appear to be natural, rather than social).
In Marx’s mature works, then, the notion of the essential centrality of labour to
social life is historically specific. It should not be taken to mean that material production
is the most essential dimension of social life in general, or even of capitalism in
particular. Rather, it refers to the historically specific constitution by labour in capitalism
of a form of mediation that fundamentally characterizes that society. Because this
mediating activity is not a characteristic that is intrinsic to labouring activity, however, it
does not – and cannot – appear as such. Instead, when the commodity is analyzed, its
historically specific dimension, value, appears to be constituted by labour in general,
without any further qualifications – the “expenditure of human brains, muscles, nerves,
hands, etc.”22 In other words, what is historically specific – the socially mediating
function of labour in capitalism – appears as transhistorical, as socially ontological. This
transhistorical form of appearance of labour’s historically unique socially constituting
function in capitalism – whereby the concrete dimension expresses and veils the abstract
dimension – is an initial determination of what Marx refers to as the fetish forms of
capitalism. It underlies all approaches that transhistoricize the socially constituting role
of labour in capitalism, whether affirmatively (as in classical political economy and
traditional Marxism) or negatively (as in Dialectic of Enlightenment).
22
Ibid. p.135.
12
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
The double character of the fundamental forms of capitalism also provides the
basis for a social/historical analysis of philosophical forms of thought that posit an
abstract, ontological essence that exists behind the realm of sensuous appearances. I am
suggesting, in other words, that, with his categorial analysis in Capital, Marx establishes
the foundations for a powerful social/historical theory of knowledge that is nonfunctionalist.
The historically specific form of mediation at the heart of capitalism is constituted
by determinate forms of practice, but becomes quasi-independent of the actors. The
result is a new form of social domination, one that subjects people to increasingly
impersonal “rational” imperatives and constraints that cannot adequately be grasped in
terms of the concrete domination of social groupings such as class or institutional
agencies of the state and/or the economy. Like power as conceptualised by Foucault, this
form of domination has no determinate locus and appears not to be social at all.
However, it is not static, but temporally dynamic. In Capital, Marx treats the historically
dynamic character of capitalism as historically specific, grounded in the form of
impersonal domination intrinsic to the basic structuring forms of that society. In so
doing, he relativises the notion of an intrinsic historical dynamic.
What drives this dynamic is the double character of the underlying social forms of
capitalism. It is crucially important to note in this regard that the distinction Marx makes
in the Grundrisse between value and “real wealth” reappears in the first chapter of
Capital as that between value and “material wealth.”23 Material wealth, which is
measured by the quantity produced, is a function of a number of factors in addition to
23
Ibid. p.134.
13
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
labour, such as knowledge, social organization, and natural conditions.24 Value, the
dominant form of wealth in capitalism, is constituted by (socially necessary) human
labour-time expenditure alone, according Marx.25
Their dialectic, of value and use value, becomes historically significant with the
emergence of relative surplus value and gives rise to a very complex non-linear historical
dynamic underlying modern society. On the one hand, this dynamic is characterized by
ongoing transformations of production and, more generally of social life; on the other
hand, this historical dynamic entails the ongoing reconstitution of its own fundamental
condition as an unchanging feature of social life – namely that social mediation is
ultimately effected by labor and, hence, that living labor remains integral to the process
of production (considered in terms of society as a whole) regardless of the level of
productivity. The historical dynamic of capitalism ceaselessly generates what is new
while regenerating what is the same. This dynamic both generates the possibility of
another organization of social life and yet hinders that possibility from being realized.
Marx grasps this historical dynamic with his category of capital.
The historically specific abstract form of social domination intrinsic to
capitalism’s fundamental forms of social mediation, then, is the domination of people by
time. This form of domination is bound to a historically specific abstract form of
temporality, abstract Newtonian time, which is constituted historically with the
commodity form. The temporality of capital’s dynamic, however, is not only abstract. I
can only mention here that the dialectic of the value and use-value dimensions changes
the determination of what counts as a given unit of time. The unit of (abstract) time is
24
25
Ibid. p.130.
Ibid. p.129, 130, 136.
14
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
pushed forward, as it were. The movement here is one of time, and can be termed
historical time. Both abstract time and historical time are constituted historically as
structures of domination.
Within this social universe, people appear doubled. On the one hand, as
commodity owners, they are subjects, free from relations of personal domination, and
equal to all other subjects. On the other hand, they are unfree, constrained by social
forms of domination that appear external and objective. This historically specific double
character of personhood in capitalism can be and has been transhistoricized and
ontologized – for example by Durkheim with his notion of homo duplex. This form of
social relations, as it becomes increasingly general, undermines formal, juridically
recognized, social hierarchy. At the same time, those who are not commodity owners are
not deemed subjects, and tend to fall out of the realm of general human equality.
This historical dynamic I have outlined is at the heart of capital, which Marx
analyzes as self-valorizing value. Significantly, in introducing the category of capital in
Capital, Marx describes it with the same language that Hegel used in the Phenomenology
with reference to Geist – the self-moving substance that is the subject of its own
process.26 In so doing, Marx suggests that a historical Subject in the Hegelian sense does
indeed exist in capitalism. Yet – and this is crucially important – he does not identify that
Subject with the proletariat (as does Lukács) or with humanity. Instead he identifies it
with capital. This implies that the so-called “rational core” of Hegel’s dialectic is
precisely its idealist character. It expresses capitalism’s dynamic structure of social
26
Ibid. pp.255-256.
15
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
domination that acquires a quasi-independent existence vis-à-vis the people who
constitute it.
In his mature theory then, Marx does not posit an historical meta-subject, such as
the proletariat, which will realize itself in a future socialist society, but provides the basis
for a critique of such a Feuerbachian anthropological inversion. This implies a position
very different from that of theorists like Lukács, for whom the social totality constituted
by labor provides the standpoint of the critique of capitalism, and is to be realized in
socialism. In Capital, the totality and labor constituting it have become the objects of
critique. The contradictions of capital point to the abolition, not the realization of the
Subject.
As an aside, it should be noted that by grounding the contradictory character of
the social formation in the dualistic forms expressed by the categories of the commodity
and capital, Marx implies that structurally based social contradiction is specific to
capitalism. The notion that reality, or social relations in general, are essentially
contradictory and dialectical, appears in light of this analysis to be one that can only be
assumed metaphysically not explained.
Within this framework, then, History, understood as an immanently driven
directional dynamic, is not a universal category of human social life. Rather, it is a
historically specific feature of capitalist society that can be and has been projected onto
all of human history. Far from viewing history as unequivocally positive, a position that
grounds such a dynamic in the category of capital takes its existence as a manifestation of
heteronomy.
16
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
In this evaluation, the critical Marxian position is closer to postructuralism than it
is to orthodox Second International Marxism. Nevertheless, it does not regard
heteronomous history as a narrative, which can simply be dispelled discursively, but as a
structure of domination that must be overcome. From this point of view, any attempt to
rescue human agency by focusing on contingency in ways that bracket the existence of
this structure of domination is – ironically – profoundly disempowering.
I am suggesting, in other words, that the category of capital allows for a position
that can get beyond the classical dualistic opposition of necessity and freedom,
recapitulated as one between a conception of history as necessity – frequently understood
as Hegelian -- and its poststructuralist rejection in the name of contingency (and
presumably agency).
The understanding of capitalism’s complex dynamic I have outlined also allows
for a critical social (rather than technological) analysis of the trajectory of growth and the
structure of production in modern society. Although I cannot elaborate here, in Capital,
Marx examines the form of growth and of production developed under capitalism as
heteronomous forms that, nevertheless, embody emancipatory possibilities that remain
unrealized under capitalism.
Marx's analysis, then, seeks to grasp the course of capitalist development as a
double-sided development of enrichment and impoverishment. It implies that this
development cannot be understood adequately in a one-dimensional fashion, either as the
progress of knowledge and happiness, or as the ‘progress’ of domination and destruction.
The rapid increase in scientific and technical knowledge under capitalism does not,
therefore, signify linear progress toward emancipation. According to Marx's analysis,
17
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
such increased knowledge — itself socially constituted — has led to the fragmentation
and emptying of individual labour and to the increasing control of humanity by the results
of its own objectifying activity; yet it has also increased the possibility that labour could
be individually enriching and that humanity could exert greater control over its fate. This
double-sided development is rooted in the double character of the structures of capitalist
society.
Marx's analysis thus implies a notion of overcoming capitalism that neither
uncritically affirms technological development as the condition of human progress nor
rejects technological progress per se. By indicating that the potential of the system of
production developed under capitalism could be used to transform that system itself, this
analysis overcomes the opposition of these positions and shows that each takes one
moment of a more complex historical development to be the whole. This approach
grasps the opposition of faith in linear progress and its romantic rejection as expressing a
historical antinomy that, in both of its terms, is characteristic of the capitalist epoch.
More generally, Marx’s critical theory argues neither for simply retaining nor abolishing
what was constituted historically in capitalism. Rather, his theory points to the
possibility that what was historically constituted in alienated form could be appropriated
and, thereby, fundamentally transformed.
This possibility is given by the historical emergence of a gap between society as it
is, moulded by capital, and society as it could be, given the possibilities generated by
capitalism itself. This gap, which indicates that the whole is not unitary, opens the space
for critical reflection – not on the basis of what is presumed to be ontological, but on the
basis of a growing contradiction between what is and what could be.
18
Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et
Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007
In other words, the critical theory of capitalism can elucidate its own condition of
possibility by means of the same categories with which it seeks to grasp its object.
Unlike some other critical theories, it does not accord itself a privileged standpoint that,
implicitly, is an exception to what it critically describes.
The thrust of the critique of capitalism is to point toward the possibility of the
overcoming of capitalism’s quasi-automatic historical dynamic – that is, toward the
possibility that people could finally become the subjects of their own history. With the
realization of that possibility, the critical theory would have lost its object, and hence, its
validity.
19