Abstract
Critique of philosophy, critique of religion, critique of politics, critique of political economy — there is almost no sphere of modern society of which Karl Marx’s theory does not offer a critique. This makes it all the more necessary to investigate whether these different critiques possess any common traits, be it with respect to their aims or their methods.1 In what follows, I argue that Marx’s notion of critique is unified by three characteristics and that it is still relevant for contemporary critical theory if understood as practice rather than as science. First, Marx’s critique is always at the same time a critique of forms of knowledge and of the forms of practice that correspond to them. Second, it is practical and emancipatory in the sense that it aims not only to understand, but also to contribute to a transformation of the social world that is already under way. Third, Marx follows Hegel in rejecting the dichotomy between internal and external critique and in opting instead for what can be called immanent critique.2 His version of immanent critique focuses on the internal contradictions and crises of a specific social order (modern capitalist society) and its social imaginary. Accordingly, it cannot be reduced to a purely normative undertaking, but involves empirical analyses of both a historical and a sociological kind. In Marx’s theory, analysis and critique are thus inextricably linked.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The best and most comprehensive discussion of Marx’s notion of critique can be found in E. Renault, Marx et l’idée de critique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995); for a short version see his ‘La modalité critique chez Marx’, Revue Philosophique, 124/2, 1999, 181–198.
J. Habermas, ‘Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as Critique’, in Theory and Practice (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1973), 238.
R. C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx — Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978), 15 (translation modified) (hereafter MER);
K. Marx and F. Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1956–1990), Vol. 1, 346 (hereafter MEW). Several caveats are in place: the reliance on the early Marx’s methodological self-understanding as against the objectivist and positivist tendencies of some of his later works stands in need of further justification — here I can only acknowledge it, together with the almost complete bracketing of Marx’s critique of political economy as elaborated in Capital. Consequently, this chapter can only provide a partial view, not only of Marx’s theory, but also of the understanding of critique it involves. Furthermore, neither the relation between Marx’s theory and his own political engagement in the workers’ movement nor his influence on ‘actually existing socialism’ — both questions of considerable historical, but less of philosophical interest — will be discussed.
K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), Vol. 4, 93 / MEW, Vol. 2, 98. As the famous statement from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte goes, ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past’ (MER 595 / MEW, Vol. 8, 115). In another passage (MER 578 / MEW, Vol. 12, 4), these two aspects are concisely linked: ‘History is the judge — its executioner, the proletarian.’
MER 85–86 / MEW, Suppl. Vol. 1, 537–538. See C. Gould, Marx’s Social Ontology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978) and
E. Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx (London: Verso, 2007).
MER 20 / MEW, Vol. 1, 231; Marx concludes that ‘In democracy the constitution itself appears only as one determination, that is, the self-determination of the people.’ Therefore, ‘Democracy is the solved riddle of all constitutions.’ On this notion of democracy see M. Abensour, Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Moment (Cambridge: Polity, 2010).
Indeed, Marx conceives of the critique of political economy in an analogous way, characterising capitalism as a ‘society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him’, and later adding: ‘As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand’ (MER 327, 422 / MEW, Vol. 23, 95, 649). See S. Benhabib, ‘The Marxian Method of Critique: Normative Presuppositions’, PRAXIS International, 3, 1984, 284–298.
MER 555 / MEW, vol. 19, 165. See also the third thesis on Feuerbach, MER 144 / MEW, Vol. 3, 5–6. For a more complex picture, see C. Mills, ‘Getting out of the Cave: Tension between Democracy and Elitism in Marx’s Theory of Cognitive Liberation’, Social and Economic Studies, 39/1, 1990, 1–50.
For a helpful summary of Marx’s criticism of bourgeois rights, see W. Brown, ‘Rights and Losses’, in States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 114: ‘(1) Bourgeois rights are rendered necessary by the depoliticised material conditions of unemancipated, inegalitarian civil society, conditions that rights themselves depoliticise rather than articulate or resolve. (2) They entrench by naturalizing the egoism of capitalist society … thereby masking social power and mistaking its effects — atomistic individuals — for its wellspring and agents. (3) They construct an illusory politics of equality, liberty, and community in the domain of the state, a politics that is contradicted by the unequal, unfree, and individualistic domain of civil society. (4) They legitimise by naturalizing various stratifying social powers in civil society, and they disguise the state’s collusion with this social power, thereby also legitimating the state as a neutral and universal representative of the people.’ Obviously, it can be debated whether this criticism exhausts the emancipatory potential of even bourgeois rights.
For a more detailed discussion see A. Wood, Karl Marx (London: Routledge, 2004), Ch. 16.
See R. Jaeggi, ‘Rethinking Ideology’, in B. de Bruin and C. F. Zurn (eds), New Waves in Political Philosophy (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 63–86.
The question of utopianism involves complicated issues of interpretation. To give just one example, it is disputed whether the formulation from The German Ideology according to which in communist society it becomes possible for the individual ‘to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind’ (MER 160 / MEW, Vol. 3, 33), is to be taken either seriously or ironically. For a defence of taking it seriously, see W. J. Booth, ‘Gone Fishing: Making Sense of Marx’s Concept of Communism’, Political Theory, 17/2, 1989, 205–222; for a more sceptical reading, see
J. Wolff, Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 97–98.
See K. Nielsen, ‘Marx, Engels and Lenin on Justice: The Critique of the Gotha Programme’, Studies in Soviet Thought, 32/1, 1986, 23–63.
J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 141.
MER 635–636 / MEW, Vol. 17, 343. See F. Fischbach, ‘Marx et le communisme’, Actuel Marx, 48, 2010, 12–21.
See Habermas, ‘Between Philosophy and Science’ and D. Brudney, Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). It should be noted, however, that there is also a long tradition of interpreting Marx’s critique of political economy in non-scientistic terms; see Renault, Marx et l’idée de critique.
This is why for the young Marx, philosophy ‘can only be realised by the abolition [Aufhebung] of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only be abolished by the realisation of philosophy’ (MER 65 / MEW, Vol. 1, 391). See G. Hindrichs, ‘Das Erbe des Marxismus’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 54/5, 2006, 709–729.
For a more detailed characterisation of such an understanding of critical theory see R. Celikates, Kritik als soziale Praxis (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009) and
R. Celikates, ‘From Critical Social Theory to a Social Theory of Critique’, Constellations, 13/1, 2006, 21–40.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2012 Robin Celikates
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Celikates, R. (2012). Karl Marx: Critique as Emancipatory Practice. In: de Boer, K., Sonderegger, R. (eds) Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230357006_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230357006_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31897-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-35700-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)