Beyond Capital

by Meszaros, Istvan

• ISBN13: 9780853458814
• ISBN10: 0853458812
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-12-01
• Publisher: Monthly Review Pr

Summary

"Not only profound in its analysis, but also so passionately inspired by sympathy for the downtrodden and their struggle for liberation. . ." --Daniel Singer, The Nation"This is an important book, heavy in size and tone. It belongs in every serious library." --Choice

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
PART ONE The Shadow of Uncontrollability	1	(280)
Breaking The Spell of `Universal Permanent Capital'	2	(37)
Beyond the Hegelian Legacy	2	(5)
The First Global Conception -- on the Premiss of `the End of History'	7	(4)
Hegel's `Universal Permanent Capital': False Mediation of Self-Seeking Individuality and Abstract Universality	11	(7)
Encircled Revolution at the `Weakest Link of the Chain' and Its Representative Theorization in History and Class Consciousness	18	(12)
Marx's Unexplored Alternative Perspective: From the `Little Corner of the World' to the Consummation of Capital's Global Ascendancy	30	(9)
Capital's Order of Social Metabolic Reproduction	39	(33)
Structural Defects of Control in the Capital System	39	(10)
Capital's Remedial Imperatives and the State	49	(16)
Mismatch between Capital's Material Reproductive Structures and Its State Formations	65	(7)
Solutions to the Uncontrollability of Capital as Seen From Capital's Standpoint	72	(32)
The Answers of Classical Political Economy	72	(6)
`Marginal Utility' and Neo-Classical Economics	78	(12)
From the `Managerial Revolution' to Postulating `Technostructure Convergence'	90	(14)
Causality, Time, and Forms of Mediation	104	(38)
Causality and Time under Capital's Causa Sui	104	(4)
The Vicious Circle of Capital's Second Order Mediations	108	(10)
Eternalization of the Historically Contingent: The Fatal Conceit of Hayek's Capital-Apologetics	118	(8)
Productive Limits of the Capital-Relation	126	(6)
Alienated Articulation of Primary Social Reproductive Mediation and the Positive Alternative	132	(10)
The Activation of Capital's Absolute Limits	142	(139)
Transnational Capital and National States	152	(18)
The Destruction of the Conditions of Social Metabolic Reproduction	170	(17)
Women's Liberation: The Challenge of Substantive Equality	187	(37)
Chronic Unemployment: The Real Meaning of `Population Explosion'	224	(57)
Notes to Part One	254	(27)
PART TWO Historical Legacy of the Socialist Critique 1: The Challenge of Material and Institutional Mediations in the Orbit of the Russian Revolution	281	(240)
The Tragedy of Lukacs and the Question of Alternatives	282	(22)
Accelerating Time and Belated Prophecy	282	(4)
Search For Autonomous Selfhood	286	(7)
From the Dilemmas of Soul and Form to the Activist Vision of History and Class Consciousness	293	(6)
The Continued Reassertion of Alternatives	299	(5)
From The Closed Horizon of Hegel's `World Spirit' To Predicating The Imperative of Socialist Emancipation	304	(25)
Individualistic Conceptions of Knowledge and Social Interaction	304	(5)
The Problem of `Totalization' in History and Class Consciousness	309	(3)
`Ideological Crisis' and Its Voluntaristic Resolution	312	(9)
The Function of Lukacs's Methodological Postulate	321	(3)
The Hypostatization of Imputed Class Consciousness	324	(5)
The Limits of `Out-Hegeling Hegel'	329	(35)
A Critique of Weberian Rationality	329	(12)
Paradise Lost of `Western Marxism'	341	(6)
Lukacs's `Identical Subject-Object'	347	(17)
Theory and Its Institutional Setting	364	(21)
The Promise of Historical Concretization	364	(7)
Changing Evaluation of the Workers' Councils	371	(8)
Lukacs's Category of Mediation	379	(6)
Politics and Morality: From History and Class Consciousness to The Present and Future of Democratization and Back to The Unwritten Ethics	385	(39)
Appeal to the Direct Intervention of Emancipatory Consciousness	385	(5)
The `Guerrilla Struggle of Art and Science' and the Idea of Intellectual Leadership `from Outside'	390	(7)
In Praise of `Subterranean Public Opinion'	397	(2)
Capital's Second Order Mediations and the Advocacy of Ethics as Mediation	399	(6)
The Political Boundary of Ethical Conceptions	405	(6)
The Limits of Lukacs's Last Political Testament	411	(13)
Historical Legacy of the Socialist Critique 2: Radical Break and Transition in the Marxian Heritage	423	(1)
Marx's Unfinished Project	424	(19)
From the World of Commodities to the `New Historic Form'	424	(3)
Historical Setting of Marx's Theory	427	(2)
The Marxian Critique of Liberal Conceptions	429	(2)
Dependency on the Negated Subject	431	(1)
The Social Embeddedness of Technology and the Dialectic of the Historical/Transhistorical	432	(2)
Socialist Theory and Party-Political Practice	434	(3)
New Developments of Capital and Its State Formations	437	(2)
A Crisis in Perspective?	439	(4)
The `Cunning of History' In Reverse Gear	443	(17)
`List der Vernunft' and the `Cunning of History'	443	(4)
The Reconstitution of Socialist Perspectives	447	(3)
The Emergence of Capital's New Rationality	450	(7)
Contradictions of an Age of Transition	457	(3)
How Could the State Wither Away?	460	(61)
The Limits of Political Action	461	(3)
Main Tenets of Marx's Political Theory	464	(4)
Social Revolution and Political Voluntarism	468	(5)
Critique of Hegel's Political Philosophy	473	(6)
The Displacement of Capital's Contradictions	479	(7)
Temporal Ambiguities and Missing Mediations	486	(35)
Notes to Part Two	496	(25)
PART THREE Structural Crisis of the Capital System	521	(350)
The Production of Wealth and the Wealth of Production	522	(25)
The Disjunction of Need and Wealth-Production	522	(4)
Fetishistic and True Meaning of Property	526	(4)
Productivity and Use	530	(2)
Contradiction between Productive and Non-Productive Labour	532	(4)
The Command Structure of Capital: Vertical Determination of the Labour Process	536	(2)
The Homogenization of all Productive and Distributive Relations	538	(5)
The Curse of Interdependence: Vicious Circle of the `Macrocosm' and Constitutive Cells of the Capital System	543	(4)
The Decreasing Rate of Utilization Under Capitalism	547	(33)
From Maximizing the `Useful Course of Commodities' to the Triumph of Generalized Waste-Production	547	(5)
The Relativization of Luxury and Necessity	552	(8)
Tendencies and Counter-Tendencies of the Capital System	560	(3)
The Limits of Economically Regulated Surplus-Extraction	563	(3)
The Decreasing Rate of Utilization and the Meaning of `Disposable Time'	566	(14)
The Decreasing Rate of Utilization and the Capitalist State	580	(21)
Capital's Line of Least Resistance	580	(8)
The Significance of the Military/Industrial Complex	588	(8)
From `Great Thunderstorms' to a Depressed Continuum: Crisis-Management and Capital's Destructive Self-Reproduction	596	(5)
Changing Forms of the Rule of Capital	601	(72)
The Meaning of Capital in the Marxian Conception	601	(21)
`Socialism in One Country'	622	(17)
The Failure of De-Stalinization and the Collapse of `Really Existing Socialism'	639	(15)
The Attempted Switch from Political to Economic Extraction of Surplus-Labour: `Glasnost' and `Perestroika' without the People	654	(19)
Historical Actuality of the Socialist Offensive	673	(66)
The Necessary Offensive of Defensive Institutions	673	(7)
From Cyclic to Structural Crisis	680	(14)
The Plurality of Capitals and the Meaning of Socialist Pluralism	694	(9)
The Need to Counter Capital's Extra-Parliamentary Force	703	(36)
The Communal System and The Law of Value	739	(32)
The Claimed Permanence of the Division of Labour	739	(5)
The Law of Value under Different Social Systems	744	(8)
Antagonistic and Communal Mediation of the Individuals	752	(6)
The Nature of Exchange under Communal Social Relations	758	(5)
Changed Meaning of the Economy of Time: Quality-Oriented Regulation of the Communal Labour Process	763	(8)
The Line of Least Resistance and The Socialist Alternative	771	(100)
Myth and Reality of Market	773	(16)
Beyond Capital: The Real Target of Socialist Transformation	789	(16)
Beyond the Command Economy: The Meaning of Socialist Accountancy	805	(18)
Beyond the Illusions of Marketization: The Role of Incentives in a Genuinely Planned System	823	(13)
Beyond the Adversarial Stalemate: From Institutionalized Irresponsibility to Democratic Decision Making from Below	836	(35)
Notes to Part Three	846	(25)
PART FOUR Essays on Related Issues	871	(106)
The Necessity of Social Control	872	(26)
The Counter-Factual Conditionals of Apologetic Ideology	873	(1)
Capitalism and Ecological Destruction	874	(3)
The Crisis of Domination	877	(6)
From `Repressive Tolerance' to the Liberal Advocacy of Repression	883	(2)
`War if the Normal Methods of Expansion Fail'	885	(3)
The Emergence of Chronic Unemployment	888	(2)
The Intensification of the Rate of Exploitation	890	(2)
Capital's `Correctives' and Socialist Control	892	(6)
Notes	894	(4)
Political Power and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Societies	898	(19)
`There Will be No More Political Power Properly So-Called'	898	(2)
The Ideal and the `Force of Circumstance'	900	(2)
Political Power in the Society of Transition	902	(3)
Lukacs's Solution	905	(2)
Individual and Class	907	(4)
Breaking the Rule of Capital	911	(6)
Notes	915	(2)
The Division of Labour and The Postcapitalist State	917	(20)
Foreword	917	(1)
The Gaps in Marx	918	(9)
The Future of Labour	927	(2)
The Fragmentation and Division of Labour	929	(1)
The Postrevolutionary State	930	(2)
Unity and Mediation: The Development of Socialist Consciousness	932	(5)
Notes	933	(4)
Radical Politics and Transition to Socialism: Reflections on Marx's Centenary	937	(15)
The Meaning of `Beyond Capital'	938	(2)
Historical Conditions of the Socialist Offensive	940	(1)
The Need for a Theory of Transition	941	(4)
`Restructuring the Economy' and Its Political Preconditions	945	(7)
The Dynamics of Postwar Developments	945	(3)
Alternatives to the Dominant Economic Imperatives	948	(2)
The Historical Moment of Radical Politics	950	(2)
The Present Crisis	952	(13)
Surprising Admissions	952	(2)
The Assertion of U.S. Hegemony	954	(5)
`Extra-Territoriality'	954	(1)
Industrial Advantage from Military Secrecy	954	(1)
Direct Trade Pressures Applied by the U.S. Legislative and Executive	955	(1)
The Real Debt Problem	956	(1)
Political Antagonisms Arising from U.S. Economic Penetration	957	(2)
Wishful Thinking about `the Decline of the U.S. as Hegemonic Power'	959	(1)
The Official View of `Healthy Expansion'	960	(5)
Poststscript 1995: The Meaning of Black Mondays (and Wednesdays)	960	(3)
Notes	963	(2)
`Socialismo Hoy Dia'	965	(12)
The Quickening Pace of History	965	(2)
The Premature Burial of Socialism	967	(2)
The Dramatic Reappearance of the National Question	969	(3)
The `Marketization' of Postrevolutionary Societies: Some Limits and Incompatibilities	972	(3)
Conclusion	975	(2)
Notes	976	(1)
Appendix	977	(10)
Marxism Today	978	(9)
1. Sartre's Alternative	978	(1)
2. Marxism Today	979	(3)
3. Mickey Mouse Socialism	982	(2)
4. The Problem of Organization	984	(3)
Index	987