Moishe Postone and the self-reflexive critique of capital: Crisis, limits and possibilities of radical social transformation

Abstract

The goal of radical social critique is the emancipatory transformation of the world. In a socio-historical context marked by a fundamental crisis of capitalist civilization that blocks the possibilities of radical transformation and that is rapidly sliding towards a new era of catastrophes, there emerges the need to update and rethink a critical theory of capital, understood as a necessarily immanent, self-reflexive and historically specific critique of this mode of production and social life. In this respect, the reinterpretation of the Marxian critique of political economy undertaken by Moishe Postone constitutes a powerful theoretical endeavor that grounds in the very contradictory objectivity of capital the possibility of radical critique and emancipatory overcoming of this particular web of socialization. Consequently, the present article develops and extends in a critical key some aspects of the Postonean reinterpretation of Marx’s theory, pointing out its importance for the constitution of a radically self-reflexive social critique capable of unraveling the fundamental logic of the crisis of contemporary capitalism and, therefore, being a powerful element for a perspective of radical social emancipation that has its condition of possibility, and its limits, in the intrinsic dynamics of capital.