The Radical Republican Structure of Marx's Critique of Capitalist Society. Issue 3 (3rd July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Thompson, Michael J.
• Is Part Of: Critique. Volume 47:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 391
• Page End: 409
• Publication Date: 2019-07-03
• Subjects: Marx -- Republicanism -- Radicalism -- Radical Republicanism -- Capitalism -- Common Good; Soviet Union -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; Europe, Eastern -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; Socialism -- Periodicals; Socialisme; Communisme; 4.935; 335.4
• DOI: 10.1080/03017605.2019.1642987
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0301-7605

Abstract

Abstract : In this paper, I argue that Marx's political and social theory expresses ideas that we can characterize as 'radical republican' in nature. By this term, I mean a theory of the nature of human beings as essentially social in nature, of free individuality as a function of the developed interdependence of the social context to which one has access for self-development, of a concept of the common good as the socio-economic wealth of the community as oriented toward the ends of social and individual developmental aims and goods, and a concept of justice as the maintenance of these criteria. Marx's critique of capitalism is a genuinely political critique in that is embraces the economic and social dimensions of human reality. Marx's ideas about exploitation, alienation, commodity fetishism, and so on, all are categories that describe the defective nature of capitalism as the negation of the values of radical republican ideas.