Revisiting Marx's Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality and Rights

ISBN-13: 9783030301941 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 239 str.

Igor Shoikhedbrod

Recenzje

"Igor Shoikhedbrod's Revisiting Marx's Critique of Liberalism is an engaging and worthy effort to reconstruct a Marxist account of legal rights that goes beyond a critique of liberal formalism and lays the groundwork for a positive theory of communist legality. ... There is much to recommend Shoikhedbrod's book." (William Clare Roberts, The Review of Politics, Vol. 84 (3), 2022)

"[Shoikhedbrod's] rereading of Marx is intended to accomplish two tasks: first, to show that Marx believed liberalism and liberal rights were an impressive historical accomplishment; and second, to argue that overcoming the limits of liberalism in a classless society wouldn't necessarily mean the end of legality and some transliberal conception of rights. ... It is to Shoikhedbrod's great credit that he manages to be highly convincing on both counts, writing an eminently readable book that gives us a better understanding of the relationship between Marxism and liberalism." (Matt McManus, Jacobin Magazine, jacobinmag.com, October 14, 2020)

"Shoikhedbrod makes a persuasive case for including Marx in the canon of the great theorists of liberalism and democracy ... . All in all, this is an excellent and timely book. Especially impressive is Shoikhedbrod's attention to Marx's biography and formation as a political actor in his own right." (LSE Review of Books, May 18, 2020)

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 The Theoretical Background: Then and Now

1.2 The Aims of This Book 

1.3 Summary of Chapters

PART I 

Chapter 2: Situating Marx with Respect to Justice and Right

2.1 Conceptualizing Recht

2.2 The Influence of Hegelian Rational Law

2.3 From Rational Law to the New Materialist Theory of Right 

2.4 A New Materialist Basis for Right

Conclusion

Chapter 3: Marx’s Radical Critique of Liberalism and the Supersession of Bourgeois Rights

3.1 “On the Jewish Question”: Marx’s Selective Critique of Bourgeois Rights

3.2 Marx’s Assessment of Rights in the Grundrisse and in Capital

3.3 Rights, Revolution, and Communist Society

3.4 The Supersession of Rights and the Conceptual Relevance of Aufhebung

Conclusion

Chapter 4: The Normative Argument for Communist Legality

4.1 Forecasting the “Withering Away” of Law: The Theoretical Deviations of Evgeny Pashukanis

4.2 Pitting Pashukanis against Marx

4.3 The Dubiousness of Technical Regulation

4.4 Defining the Terms of Recognition: Cognitive and Normative Considerations

4.5 Alienated Production versus Associated Production: Marx’s Radical Account of 

Recognition

4.6 Mutual Recognition and the Reconstitution of Juridical Personhood

4.7 The Preliminary Case for Communist Legality

4.8 Legality without Organized Coercion?

4.9 In Search of Marx’s Social Ontology: Lukács and the Ethical Necessity of Legal Mediation

Conclusion

PART II

Chapter 5: Contemporary Responses to Marx’s Critique of Liberal Justice

5.1 John Rawls: Property-Owning Democracy and the Aporia of Concentrated Capital

5.2 Jürgen Habermas: Systemic Colonization and the Tension Between Democracy and Capitalism

5.3 Axel Honneth: Market Morality, Social Freedom, and the “Marx Problem” 

5.4 Nancy Fraser: The Crisis of Financialized Capitalism and De-Democratization

Conclusion 

Chapter 6: Democracy and the Riddle of All Constitutions: Marx’s Enduring Lessons

6.1 Unjust Laws and the Norms Underpinning the Rule of Law: Marx and E.P. Thompson

6.2 The Rule of Law and the Struggle for a “Normal” Working Day

6.3 The Struggle over the Constitution

6.4 Solving the Riddle of All Constitutions: The Renewed Urgency of Transformative Politics

Conclusion

Chapter 7: Conclusion

Bibliography

O autorze

Igor Shoikhedbrod received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto, Canada. He is currently Assistant Professor of Political Theory, at St. Francis Xavier University.

Blurb

Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism offers a theoretical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s new materialist understanding of justice, legality, and rights through the vantage point of his widely invoked but generally misunderstood critique of liberalism. The book begins by reconstructing Marx’s conception of justice and rights through close textual interpretation and extrapolation. The central thesis of the book is, firstly, that Marx regards justice as an essential feature of any society, including the emancipated society of the future; and secondly, that standards of justice and right undergo transformation throughout history. The book then tracks the enduring legacy of Marx’s critique of liberal justice by examining how leading contemporary political theorists such as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Nancy Fraser have responded to Marx’s critique of liberalism in the face of global financial capitalism and the hollowing out of democratically-enacted law. The Marx that emerges from this book is therefore a thoroughly modern thinker whose insights shed valuable light on some of the most pressing challenges confronting liberal democracies today.