Reassessing Marx’s social and political philosophy : freedom, recognition, and human flourishing

287 Pages·2018·14.088 MB·English

by  Kandiyali, Jan

Reassessing Marx’s Social and
Political Philosophy
Interest in the study of Marx’s thought has shown a revival in recent
years, with a number of newly established academic societies, conferences
and journals dedicated to discussing his thought This book brings
together scholars from around the world to provide a major re-evaluation
of historical issues in Marx scholarship and to connect Marx’s ideas
with fresh debates in contemporary Anglo-American social and political
philosophy. Among the topics discussed are Marx’s relationship to his
philosophical predecessors—including Hegel, the young Hegelians
and the utopian socialists—his concept of recognition, his critique of
liberalism and his views on the good life. This book will be of interest to
scholars and advanced students interested in Marx, Hegel the history of
political thought, and social and political philosophy.
Jan Kandiyali is Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities
and Social Sciences at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey.
Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
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Edited by Susanne Herrmann-Sinai and Lucia Ziglioli
Nietzsche and the Philosophers
Edited by Mark T. Conard
Schopenhaur’s Fourfold Root
Edited by Jonathan Head and Dennis Vanden Autveele
Nietzsche’s Psychology of Ressentiment
Revenge and Justice in On the Genealogy of Morals
Guy Elgat
The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer’s Pessimism
Dennis Vanden Auweele
Nietzsche’s Constructivism
A Metaphysics of Material Objects
Justin Remhof
Hegel and Ancient Philosophy
A Re-Examination
Edited by Glenn Alexander Magee
Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Politics
Edited by Michael/. Thompson
Reassessing Marx’s Social and Political Philosophy
Freedom, Recognition and Human Flourishing
Edited by Jan Kandiyali
For a full list of titles in the series: please visit: www.routledge.com
Reassessing M arx’s Social
and Political Philosophy
Freedom, Recognition and
Human Flourishing
Edited by Jan Kandiyali
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
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First published 2018
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Contents
Acknowledgements vn
Introduction 1
JAN KANDIYALI
PARTI
Marx and his Predecessors 17
1 Perfectionism, Alienation and Freedom: From the
German Idealists to Marx 19
DOUGLAS MOGGACH
2 The Early Marx and Hegel: The Young Hegelian
Mediation 43
EMMANUEL RENAULT
3 Marx, Engels and Some (Non-Foundational) Arguments
Against Utopian Socialism 60
DAVID LEOPOLD
PART II
Marx and Recognition 81
4 From the Old Hegel to the Young Marx and Back:
Two Sketches of an Evaluative Ontology of the Human
Life-Form 83
HEIKKIIKÄHEIMO
5 How Do Rights Affect Our Freedom? On Some
Differences Between Hegel and Marx—and Why
They Shed Light on Honneth’s Social Philosophy 102
HANS-CHRISTOPH SCHMIDT AM BUSCH
6 Human Solidarity in Hegel and Marx 120
ANDREW CHITTY
PART III
Marx and Liberalism 147
7 Marx and Hegel on the Value of ‘Bourgeois’ Ideals 149
FREDERICK NEUHOUSER
8 Marxian Liberalism 163
JEFFREY REIMAN
9 Liberalism, Marxism, Equality and Living Well 187
CHRISTINE SYPNOWICH
PART IV
Marx and Communism 209
10 Two Marxian Themes: The Alienation of Labour and
the Linkage Thesis 211
DANIEL BRUDNEY
11 Schiller and Marx on Specialization and Self-Realization 239
JAN KANDIYALI
12 The Idea of Communism 261
SEAN SAYERS
Contributors 272
Index 276
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my fellow members on the organizing committee
of the Marx and Philosophy Society, past and present, for their initial
suggestion that I edit this book and for their help along the way. The
Society states that it aims cto encourage scholarly engagement with, and
creative development of, the philosophical and foundational aspects of
Marx’s work’. I hope that this book contributes to that task. I would
also like to thank Allie Simmons and Andrew Weckenman at Routledge
for their patience and editorial guidance. Finally, I am also grateful to
the contributors to the volume, both for their excellent essays and for the
efficient manner in which they have delivered them. They have made the
editing of this volume a relatively straightforward task.
Jeffrey Reiman’s chapter ‘Marxian Liberalism’ is also published in
Michael Boylan, ed., Business Ethics, 2nd edition, Malden, MA and
Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
Frederick Neuhouser’s chapter ‘Marx and Hegel on the Value of
“Bourgeois” Ideals’ uses portions of his essay ‘Marx (und Hegel) zur Phi­
losophie der Freiheit’ in Rahel Jaeggi and Daniel Loick eds., Nach Marx,
Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013.
Christine Sypnowich’s chapter ‘Liberalism, Marxism, Equality and
Living Well’ provides an expanded and revised discussion of her essay,
‘What’s Left in Egalitarianism? Marxism and Liberal Theories of Equal­
ity’, Philosophy Compass 12/8, August 2017 12: el2428. https://doi.
org/10.1111/phc3.12428.
JanKandiyali

Introduction
Jan Kandiyali
Recent years have been surprisingly kind to Marx. Not so long ago, he
was often claimed to be dead and buried. The Soviet Union collapsed,
socialist parties in the West were haemorrhaging support, and capitalism
was everywhere triumphant. Marx’s ideas were widely perceived to be
discredited. Interest in his thought appeared to be fading away.
Today, however, things look rather different. Far from burying Marx,
the collapse of Soviet communism has been a positive development for
Marx scholarship, liberating Marx both from the rigid interpretation
that the Soviet Union sustained and from his association with its failed
brand of communism. In addition, capitalism has been going through
the kind of crisis that Marx claimed was an inevitable consequence of its
operation, and the contradiction he identified between the brutal poverty
and unfreedom suffered by the many and the tremendous wealth and
opportunities enjoyed by the few is arguably greater today than it was in
the nineteenth century (Wood 2016). Reaction against these enormous
inequalities in wealth and well-being has also led to a revival of social­
ism, in the shape of anti-capitalist demonstrations like Occupy and in
politicians like Bernie Saunders and Jeremy Corbyn who have generated
a level of support and enthusiasm for left-wing ideas that seemed to be
unimaginable just a few years ago. In this context Marx has once again
become a major cultural presence: in 2005 he was voted, in a BBC Radio
4 poll, the ‘greatest philosopher of all time’; following the 2008 economic
crash, he made the headlines of a number of mainstream newspapers and
magazines;1 and in 2017 he was the subject of both a theatre production
(‘Young Marx’) and a feature film (‘Der Junge Karl Marx’).
While it would be wrong to overstate the current level of interest in
Marx in philosophy, something of a revival does now seem to be under
way here too. Over the last few years, philosophical societies dedicated to
discussing Marx’s thought have been thriving, with conferences attract­
ing eminent scholars and large audiences.2 After years of neglect, work
on the definitive edition of Marx’s collected writings—the Marx-Engels-
Gesamtausgabe (MEGA)—resumed, and now more of Marx’s writings
are available than ever before. Recent years have also seen a number