Marx's Resurrection of Aristotle

Description

This book seeks to show how Karl Marx’s vision of communism was a continuation of Aristotle’s classical humanist philosophy. Challenging the Engelsian distortion of Marx, it presents a negation of previous interpretations of Marx which present him in materialist terms. Engels proposed a picture of the highest stage of communist society as an economic egalitarianism, a vision which became an axiom of Leninist-Stalinist-Soviet Communism. By contrast, here it is shown that Marx embraced the Aristotelian concept of “distributive justice”, of proportionate equality. Spanning the works of Marx, from his university education and doctoral dissertation on the differences between the Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of the atom, to the study of his Rheinische Zeitung period and the persistence of classical humanism in Marx’s defense of the freedom of the press, Levine skillfully reveals the gravitational pull between Marx and Aristotle. Showing how classical humanism is the dominant ethos in the communism of Marx, the book includes chapters on: Hegel as a transition point between Aristotle and MarxThe links between Marx’s theory of labor and Aristotle’s idea of the constitutive subject located in The Politics How the local methodologies of Aristotle and Hegel provided Marx with the social methodologies by which to interpret the functioning of capitalism Marx's Resurrection of Aristotle is the culmination of Norman Levine's life-long work to establish the correct placement of Marx and Marx’s communism within the classical humanist tradition. Contents Introduction Methodological Linguistic Revision The Enlightenment Left 1: The Tyranny Greece Over Marx Part One: Marx’s Doctoral Dissertation 1. Subjective Consciousness 2. Philosophy Confronts the World 3. Socrates and the Need for Political Participation 4. Hegelian Logical Categories (a) Negation 5. Praise for Aristotle 1. The Rheinische Zeitung and Letters to Arnold Ruge (a) Introduction (b) The Enlightenment Center and Enlightenment Left (c) “Debates on the Law of the Theft of Woods” (d) Marx’s Rejection of Natural Laws (e) The Hegelian Left (f) Ludwig Feuerbach (g) Aristotle’s Subsumption of Marx (h) “Civil Society” (i) The Tyranny of Greece and Rome Over Marx Part One Part Two Catalogue of Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Poets and Playwriters Part Three Syllabus of Scholars of Greek and Roman Philosophy and Law Part Two: The Tyranny of Greece and Rome Over Marx: The Pre-Paris Period Part Three: Tyranny of Greece and Rome over Marx in His Paris Period Part Four: The Paris Manuscripts 1. Human Requirements and the Division of Labor under the Rule of Private Property 2. The Power of Money 3. Antithesis of Capital and Labor. Landed Property and Capital 4. Private Property and Communism 5. The Preface 6. Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole Part Five: Marx in London 1. The Critique of Political Economy 2. The Grundrisse (a) Humankind as a Political Animal (b) Equivalence (c) Reciprocity (d) Constitutive Subject 3. The Manuscripts of 1861–1863 (a) Substance (b) Essence (c) Actual-Potential (d) Soul (e) Originative Agency (f) Constitutive Subject (g) End and Realization (h) Aristotle’s Theory of Production (i) Marx’s Theory of Labor 1. Family and Community 2. Household 3. The Organic Process of Production 4. Intercountry Trade 5. Money 6. Value 7. Retail Trade 8. Profit 9. The End of Equivalence 10. Need and Ability 11. Aristotle’s Condemnation of Capitalism (a) Subjectivity (b) Subject-Object (c) Substance (d) Subsumption (e) Alienation (f) Transformation (g) Being and Becoming 1. Bibliographical 2. Self-Identification (a) The Very Early Marx Aeschylus Cicero 1. The Philosophical and the Ethical 2. The Very Early Marx and the Early Marx 3. The Early Marx 2: The Restoration of Civic Humanism 1. Psychology 2. Ethics 1. Sustenance 2. Chrematistics 3. Politics 1. Impulse 2. Social life 3. Family 4. Tribes 5. Village 6. The State 1. Civil Society 2. Participation 3. Justice 4. Distributive Justice (a) Distribution (b) Justice 1. Proportion 2. Stability 3. Proportional Equality 1. Naturalism 2. Man as a Social Animal 3. Needs 4. Civil Society (a) The History of Subordination (b) The Introduction to the Process of Production 5. Government 6. State 7. Class 8. Constitution 9. Citizenship 10. Marx’s Revaluation of the Production-Distribution Calculus (a) Justice (b) Distributive Justice (c) Proportionate Equality 1. Reciprocity 2. Requital of Service 11. How the Civic Humanist Tradition Continued into Marx (a) Citizenship (b) A New Calculus of Production and Distribution 1. Communism Versus the Republic 2. Just Distribution and Proportionate Equality 3. The Rebirth of Civic Humanism 3: Pneumatology of Labor 1. The Soul 2. Property (a) Origins (b) Forms (c) Class (d) Anti-Plato and Marx 3. The Method of Explanation 4. Family, Tribe, Village, State 5. Revolution 6. Ethics (AA) Proportion (BB) Rectification (CC) Reciprocity (DD) Mutual Recognition (EE) Liberality (AA) Discontinuity (BB) Continuity 1. The Soul (CC) Logic 1. Subject-Object 2. Actual-Potential 3. Realization 4. Particular-Universal (DD) Method of Explanation (EE) History (FF) Associationism 5. Associationism 6. Master-Slave 4: Marx’s Pneumatology of Labor and His Methodology of Explanation (a) Theory of Pneumatics 1. Subject-Object 2. Substance-Essence 3. Actual-Potential 4. Immanence 5. Theory-Practice (b) Method of Explanation 1. Organic 2. Universal-Particular 3. Form-Content 4. Dialectic 5. Syllogism 1. Objectification (a) Theory of Production 1. Metabolism 2. Metamorphosis 3. Appropriation-Consumption 4. Determination 5. Realization 6. Actual-Potential 7. Transformation: Metastasis 8. Subject-Object 9. Substance-Essence 10. Form-Content (b) Method of Explanation 1. Method 2. Organic 3. Universal-Particular 4. Development 5. Immanence 6. Subsumption 7. Abstract-Concrete 8. Negation 9. Function 10. Precondition 11. Syllogism 1. Ontology 2. Historicity 3. Pneumatics 4. Teleology 5. Constitutive Subject 6. Need 1. Metaphysics (a) Theory of Production 1. Constitutive Subject 2. Substance-Essence 3. Actual-Potential 4. Subject-Object 5. Appropriation-Consumption 6. Metabolism 7. Transformation 8. Valorization 9. Commoditization 10. Alienation 11. Moment (b) The Theory of Explanation 1. Method 2. Precondition 3. Anatomy (a) Anatomy (b) Totality: Whole and Parts (c) Function (d) Universal-Particular 4. Abstract-Concrete 5. Subsumption (a) Social-Productive (b) Form-Content 6. Immanence 7. Relation (a) Physical (b) Social 8. Form-Content 5: Aristotle and Hegel as the Co-authors of Das Kapital 1. Aristotle’s and Classical Humanism’s Influence on Marx (a) “Zoon Politikon,” Humankind as Social Beings (b) The Linear View of History, or Anti-dialectical Materialism (c) Materialism (d) Production, Consumption, Distribution and Exchange 2. The Ancient Commune 3. The Hegelian Logical Categories Which Served as the Explanatory Methodology of Marx’s Theory of Production (a) The Phenomenology of Production in Hegel, Marx, and Aristotle (b) The Hegelian Logical Categories Which Served as the Explanatory Methodology of Marx’s Phenomenology of Production (a) The Process of the Movement of Consciousness 1. Subject-Object 2. Process 3. Implicit-Explicit 4. Actual-Potential 5. Universal-Particular 6. Negation-Determination (b) The Structure of Social Formations 1. Anatomy 2. Whole and Parts 3. Form-Content 4. Relationship 5. Sublation-Subsumption 6. Metabolism 7. Appropriation-Externalization 8. Productive Consumption (c) Dialectic and Syllogism (a) The Process of Production 1. Subject-Object 2. Process 3. Implicit-Explicit 4. Actual-Potential 5. Universal-Particular 6. Negation-Determination 7. Anatomy 8. Whole and Parts 9. Form-Content 10. Realization 11. Sublation-Subsumption 12. Metabolism 13. Appropriation-Consumption 14. “Productive Consumption”: Need 15. Syllogism The MEGA (2) 6: The Ethical Basis of Communism (a) Plato’s Continuity with Aristotle (b) Plato’s Discontinuity from Aristotle 1. Private Property 2. Class 3. Party 4. State (c) Marx’s Communism as It Existed in Plato 3A 3B 1. Civil Harmony 2. Governance 3. State 1. Will 2. Property 3. Value 4. Practical Mind (a) Need (b) Psychology (c) The Industrial Productive Process 5. Civil Society 6. Ethics 7. Political Economy 8. Poverty 9. Welfare State 3. Marx 1A. Natural Law and Natural Rights Section 1B. Materialism and Naturalism Section 1C. Historicism Section 2A. The End of Transcendence Section 2B. The Overthrow of Political Economy Section 3A. The Substitution of the Subject Section 4. Marx and the Resurrection of Aristotle Bibliography Index