Introduction to the dossier: The critical theory of Moishe Postone

Abstract

Moishe Postone’s reinterpretation of Capital in his book Time, Labor, and Social Domination has become one of the most important and innovative critical theories of society today—a key theory for understanding the recent historical and social transformations of capitalism. Postone not only seeks to account for the fundamental social relations that characterize capitalist society but also to explain the intrinsic historical dynamic underlying capitalism as an abstract and impersonal mode of domination. In this latter sense, it is a critical theory of time in modernity, accounting for the domination of people by a historically specific form of temporality. This is the core of his critical theory, and therein lies its objective importance for thinking about society from the standpoint of its possible transformation. This renewing reading of Marx’s work has inspired the present dossier of Bajo el Volcán.