The Specter of Capitalism and the Promise of a Classless Society

by Weiss, Donald

• ISBN13: 9780391037526
• ISBN10: 0391037528
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-01-01
• Publisher: Prometheus Books

Table of Contents

Preface
Prelude: Is Marxism Dead?	p. 1
The Utopian Prospect	p. 1
The Decline of the East	p. 2
The Specter of Communism?	p. 2
Introduction: Technological Emancipation: Its Importance and Its Limits	p. 5
Varieties of Contemporary Interpretation	p. 5
The "End of History"?	p. 9
The Ideal of Formative Parity	p. 14
Marx Versus the Classical Defense of Capitalism	p. 15
Confronting Marxism in its Own Terms	p. 19
The Methodological Limits of this Study	p. 21
The Project	p. 24
Down from Utopia
Beyond the Coercion of Labor: Toward the Inner Sanctum of Marxian Communism	p. 33
Marx's Attack on the Coercion of Labor	p. 33
Beyond Economic "Punishment"	p. 36
The Dialectics of Scarcity	p. 39
"Free Labor" as "Damned Serious"	p. 42
Marx's "Promethean" Commitment	p. 43
The Modern Prometheus: A Fundamental Contradiction in Marxian Social Theory	p. 49
Prometheus Bound and Unbound	p. 49
The Temporary Necessity of Capitalism	p. 52
Automation and the Abolition of Capital	p. 56
Marx at Odds with His Own Dialectics of Scarcity	p. 58
Marx contra Marx	p. 63
Privation and Coercion as "Moments of Motion"	p. 65
Speculation and Surplus Value: Marx and the Failure of Orthodox Communist Theory	p. 71
Alienation as Expropriation	p. 71
Expropriation as Surplus Value	p. 73
Capitalist Speculation: Non-Science as Non-Work	p. 76
Science and the Appropriation Problem	p. 78
Hegel and the Vindication of Speculative Labor	p. 80
Postmodernism and the Problem of Political Economy	p. 85
The Call of the Wild	p. 87
Speculation as Mental Labor	p. 90
The End of the Matter?	p. 94
The Prospect of Classless Capitalism
The Ideal of the Classless Society: The Challenge of Formative Parity	p. 103
What Can Be Salvaged?	p. 103
The Sublimation of Commodification and Class	p. 104
Marx and the Significance of Birth Privileges	p. 106
Formative Parity and the Abolition of Classes	p. 108
Formative Parity as Inescapable Prima Facie Ideal	p. 111
The Logic of Thresholds	p. 112
Explaining Social Classes: Marx on the Mental-Manual Division of Labor	p. 114
Is the Parity Threshold within Reach?	p. 116
The Coming of the Classless Society: Two Revolutions in the History of Education	p. 125
The Question of Means	p. 125
Money as the Measure	p. 126
Public Schools and the Abolition of Classes	p. 128
Should Education Remain Public?	p. 131
The Rationality of Public Education as a Historically Relative Question	p. 134
Transition to the Question of Privatization	p. 139
Public Education and the Bias of the Canon	p. 142
The Market as Essential to the Attenuation of Class	p. 146
The Importance of Mandated Stipends	p. 151
Classless Capitalism: Problems in Interpretation	p. 159
The Marginalization of Formative Disparities	p. 159
Distortions in the Determination of Talent	p. 164
Education and Domination	p. 165
Ecological Dialectics	p. 169
Formative Parity as a Rational Historical Trend	p. 175
Living up to Our Rhetoric	p. 177
Conclusion: Beyond the Ideology the Age: The Nature and Limits of the Contradiction between Capitalism and Communism	p. 181
Why Have "Capitalism" and "Communism" Been Opposed?	p. 181
Toward a New Social Paradigm	p. 185
Index	p. 189
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