Marx’s Radical Critique of Capitalist Society: A Reconstruction and Critical Evaluation

Exactly what did Marx find objectionable about capitalist society? Scattered throughout his writings (and those of his collaborator, Engels) is a systematic--and thoroughly radical--answer to this question. Marx believed that the ills of capitalist society are neither accidental nor incidental; instead they are embedded in the very structure of the capitalist economic system. This book articulates and critically evaluates the Marxist charges against capitalism of exploitation and alienation, and argues that Marx's radical critique of capitalist society presupposes a set of alternative institutions without the defects attributed to capitalism. A careful analysis of Marx's vision of the two phases or stages of post-capitalist society (later called "socialism" and "communism") reveals that neither vision could be realized. It has often been said that Marxism works in theory but not in practice; this book contends that it does not work in theory.