Libertarian communism : Marx, Engels and the political economy of freedom / Ernesto Screpanti.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Screpanti, Ernesto, 1948-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communism.

Physical Description:

xviii, 205 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Summary:

This book re-examines and brings to light the libertarian components of Marx's and Engels' political and economic thought. Central to the book is a discussion of the notion of freedom in Marx's and Engels' work. In a post-Soviet world, there is an need to revise Marxism in the search for a libertarian foundation of political economy. The book argues that the libertarian foundations were present in Marx's and Engels' work and utilizes contemporary theories of freedom to reinterpret and analyses their original work.

Contents:

Part 1 A Theory of Welfare? 1

1 Communitarian Communism 3

Marx and Engels as moralists 3

Egalitarian justice 5

The New Man 10

The Hegelian origins of Marx's New Man 13

The dialectics of communism 20

2 The Communism of Abundance 26

Marx and Engels as amoralists 26

Against utopian socialism 32

The land of Cockaigne 39

A man rich in needs 47

A digression: 'English communism' 53

Part 2 A Theory of Freedom 59

3 Freedom and the Individual 61

The three faces of Marx 61

The individualist foundations of communism 68

Social structure and individual agency 76

Society and the individual in Hegel and Marx 86

Which freedoms? 91

What is freedom? 102

4 The Emancipation of Labour 107

Self-management of the producers 107

To each according to his needs 116

True democracy 121

The dictatorship of the proletariat and universal suffrage 131

The liberation movement 137

Part 3 A Reformulation 141

5 Foundations of the Liberation Theory 143

'Possibility means freedom' 143

Freedom in the production sphere 145

Freedom in the consumption sphere 150

Liberated time 152

6 The Politics of Communism 156

Class conflict and the choice opportunities of life projects 156

The change in production relations 153

The dissolution of the State 167.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9780230018969

0230018963

OCLC:

85689598