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Karl Marx

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

David-Hillel Ruben
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Extract

Although it was, until recently, unfashionable in certain circles to say this, Marx was not a philosopher in any interesting sense. He was a social theorist. As social theory, I am thinking primarily of two areas (in all social theory, there is also a large body of empirical work, which I am not competent to comment upon): (a) the methodology of social inquiry, and its metaphysical presuppositions, and (b) normative philosophy (ethics and political theory).

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 44 , March 1999 , pp. 65 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1999

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References

1 Elster raises these issues in many places, but see for example: Elster, Jon, Nuts and Bolts (Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

2 Marx, Karl, General Introduction to the Grundrisse in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, ed. Dobb, Maurice (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), pp. 188–9.Google Scholar

3 Marx, and Engels, , The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968), p. 31.Google Scholar

4 Marx, , The Holy Family; from Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), 1/3, ed. Ryazanov, D. et al. , (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1927), p. 265.Google Scholar

5 For a defence of the Aristotelian interpretation, see Meikle, Scott, Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx (Open Court, 1985)Google Scholar. The Aristotelian interpretation was advanced in the 1970s by Professor Heinz Lubacsz, of Essex University, in a short article in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

6 I have tried to defend this view of Marx, in my Marxism and Materialism (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1979).Google Scholar

7 Marx, Karl, General Introduction to the Grundrisse, pp. 205–7.Google Scholar

8 Marx, Karl, Capital, vol. I (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), p. 178.Google Scholar

9 From The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, and in MEGA 1/3, pp. 116–17Google Scholar.

10 See text above and footnote 8.

11 Kolakowski, L., ‘Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth ’, in Marxism and Beyond, trans. Peel, J. Z. (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969), pp. 58–86.Google Scholar

12 Marx, and Engels, , The German Ideology, p. 93.Google Scholar

13 Can an ethic be fully grounded naturalistically, or is there always an ultimately normative principle that must reappear in any such grounds? This is an issue that is not specific to Marx, and that we need not deal with here. For this issue with specific reference to Marx's ideal of human nature, see Lukes, Steven, ‘Alienation and Anomie’, in Philosophy, Politics and Society, third series, ed. Laslett, Peter and Runciman, W. G., (Oxford: Blackweil, 1967), pp. 134–56.Google Scholar

14 See for example the articles by Wood, A., Husami, Z., and others, in Marx, Justice and History, ed. Cohen, Marshall, Nagel, Thomas, and Scanlon, Tim (Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

15 See Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme.