Friday 5 March 2021

Alienation and Capitalist Domination

Such an interesting discussion between Novara's James Butler and Peter Hudis, author of Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism among other books. The conversation ranges over Marx's concept of communism, what alienation is and its continued relevance, and the thorny issue of the negation of the negation. In other words, the establishment of the abstract forms of domination capital inaugurates and depends on. Peter also speculates on how contemporary Marxists would react to Marx if he happened to be about today. A long listen but a rewarding listen.

2 comments:

Dialectician1 said...

Thanks for the link, Phil. I really enjoyed this discussion. Peter Hudis is exceptionally good at explaining some of the facets of Marx's writings that are difficult to understand and often get misconstrued. I like the way he keeps linking everything back to Marx's understanding of alienated labour, which is the bases of his volumes on Capital but, ironically, rarely get mentioned explicitly. I like how he links Marx's understanding of 'species being' to naturalism and ecology. As he says, Marx got a lot wrong but he's the best we have to make sense of the world today.

Richard said...

Excellent comment - thanks