Marx's democratic idea: Communism's relation to liberal theory
Item
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Title
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Marx's democratic idea: Communism's relation to liberal theory
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:7dfa4293dd1e:11548
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identifier
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12075
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Creator
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Horowitz, Morgan,
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Contributor
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Sibyl Schwarzenbach
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Philosophy | Social structure | Economics | Political science
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Abstract
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My dissertation, "Marx's Democratic Idea: Communism's Relation to Liberal Theory," focuses on working out the undeveloped connections between Marx's economic theory and his political critique. I develop a conception of Marx's work which demonstrates that his critique of the republican political state and capitalist private property relations led to a demand to develop communal, discursively empowered agency over economic relations. I argue that the communist project thus should be viewed as inseparable from a concern about both just social relations (non-coercive, non-exploitative relations) and the maintaining and empowering of democratic, political procedures. I then critically appropriate the work of John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas to fill out a normative standpoint which makes clear structural demands that must be fulfilled to realize a commitment to equality, but also notes that a part of justice is fulfilling the preconditions of discursive relations which should serve to consciously reproduce social relations (and allow citizen self-monitoring of the provision and maintenance of just relations). I then connect the conception of "citizen," which entails state granted protections, rights, and privileges, to Marx's early, descriptive standpoint of democracy, which simply refers to or emphasizes the location or place of each member of society in social reproduction. A connection is found then between a "non-ideal" social theory, which asks one to note the practices and relations which are found in and maintain a society, and an ideal theory of democracy which asks social relations to be consciously or discursively guided. Justice demands are then seen as inseparable from a communist perspective which critiques the alienated and exploitative relations of wage labor to capital; not as transcended in communist relations, but instead, as inherent to their construal and maintenance.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Philosophy
