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Between Capitalism and Community
Connects the Marxist construct of capitalism to systems of community
In this book, Michael Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his award-winning, Beyond Capital . Karl Marx, in Capital , focused on capital and the capitalist class that is its embodiment. It is the endless accumulation of capital, its causes and consequences that are central to Marx’s analysis. In taking this approach, Marx tended to obscure not only the centrality of capital’s “immanent drive” and “constant tendency” to divide the working class but also the political economy of the working class (“social production controlled by social foresight”).
In Between Capitalism and Community , Lebowitz demonstrates that capitalism contains within itself elements of a different society, one of community. Whereas Marx’s intellectual construct of capitalism treats it as an organic system that reproduces its premises of capital and wage-labor (including a working class that looks upon the requirements of capital “as self-evident natural laws”), Lebowitz argues that the struggle of workers in common and activities based upon solidarity point in the direction of the organic system of community, an alternative system that produces its own premises, communality, and recognition of the needs of others. If we are to escape the ultimate barbarism portended by the existing crisis of the earth system, the subordination of the system of capitalism by that of community is essential. Since the interregnum in which capitalism and community coexist is marked by the interpenetration and mutual deformation of both sides within this whole, however, the path to community cannot emerge spontaneously but requires a revolutionary party that stresses the development of the capacities of people through their protagonism.
In this book, Michael Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his award-winning, Beyond Capital . Karl Marx, in Capital , focused on capital and the capitalist class that is its embodiment. It is the endless accumulation of capital, its causes and consequences that are central to Marx’s analysis. In taking this approach, Marx tended to obscure not only the centrality of capital’s “immanent drive” and “constant tendency” to divide the working class but also the political economy of the working class (“social production controlled by social foresight”).
In Between Capitalism and Community , Lebowitz demonstrates that capitalism contains within itself elements of a different society, one of community. Whereas Marx’s intellectual construct of capitalism treats it as an organic system that reproduces its premises of capital and wage-labor (including a working class that looks upon the requirements of capital “as self-evident natural laws”), Lebowitz argues that the struggle of workers in common and activities based upon solidarity point in the direction of the organic system of community, an alternative system that produces its own premises, communality, and recognition of the needs of others. If we are to escape the ultimate barbarism portended by the existing crisis of the earth system, the subordination of the system of capitalism by that of community is essential. Since the interregnum in which capitalism and community coexist is marked by the interpenetration and mutual deformation of both sides within this whole, however, the path to community cannot emerge spontaneously but requires a revolutionary party that stresses the development of the capacities of people through their protagonism.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published February 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 11, 2021
Lebowitz builds on his series of books promoting protagonism and the building of an 'economy of community'.
"Material incentive versus social preferences, atomism versus community, separation versus solidarity, homo economicus versus homo solidaricus, the political economy of capital versus the political economy of the working class – these are the sides of the class struggle within existing capitalism. Rather than hoping for “a wise combination” of each, the wise revolutionary understands that it is essential to struggle by all means possible to defeat capitalism, to decommodify everything, to build the system of community where producers act in common. And, simultaneously in that process, how they produce themselves as the working class the system of community needs" (p.122).
"Material incentive versus social preferences, atomism versus community, separation versus solidarity, homo economicus versus homo solidaricus, the political economy of capital versus the political economy of the working class – these are the sides of the class struggle within existing capitalism. Rather than hoping for “a wise combination” of each, the wise revolutionary understands that it is essential to struggle by all means possible to defeat capitalism, to decommodify everything, to build the system of community where producers act in common. And, simultaneously in that process, how they produce themselves as the working class the system of community needs" (p.122).
January 26, 2023
Michael Lebowitz has written several great books that argue human protagonism is the radical kernel of Marxist theory and that the goal of socialism is to forge new social relations that foster sustainable human development above all else. Real human development is possible only in a communal society, which is based on and promotes human solidarity. Working people remake themselves as the subjects of this required social transformation by engaging together in common struggle or ‘revolutionary practice’, the simultaneous process of changing circumstances and self-change.
This book is a more dense, theoretical read than his invaluable The Socialist Alternative. It is a sequel of sorts to the Deutscher Prize-winning Beyond Capital. Like that book, Between Capitalism and Community argues against one-sided interpretations of Marxist theory (including, sometimes, by Marx himself) that suggest capitalism is an organic system that reproduces it own premises. An alternative is to develop a thorough-going ‘political economy of the working class’, which emphasises capital’s reproduction is contested, and it must keep the working people divided, atomised and demoralised if it is to last.
Lebowitz’s arguments challenge lifeless teleological versions of Marxism, in which social systems are said to necessarily and inevitably succeed one another like a lost passage from Genesis (e.g. and feudalism begat capitalism, and capitalism begat socialism, and socialism begat communism etc). It also challenges Marxian arguments that say capitalism’s tendency to create severe crises will be its downfall. Instead, he argues that capitalism’s periodic overproduction crises and its long-term tendency of a falling rate of profit (often overstated) are self-correcting and generally function to strengthen capital’s ideological hegemony. Even the fundamental crisis in the Earth system, threatening all life itself, does not in itself weaken capital or cause it to self-destruct. Going beyond capitalism is most likely via ‘revolutionary practice’, organised by a democratic & anti-capitalist ‘political instrument’ that promotes protagonism in all social struggles and milieus.
A recurring preoccupation of the book is methodological: a challenge to Marxists to use dialectical concepts to rethink the problems and contradictions such as capitalism’s resilience, the socialist transition, what ‘working class’ struggles are, and what is a communal society. Throughout, he returns to Richard Levin’s and Richard Lewontin’s valuable arguments about dialectical processes and thinking to illustrate his points. He also draws on Marta Haenecker’s arguments about the need for a political instrument (or political party) that ‘respects the autonomy of social movements instead of manipulating them’ and fosters the development of political cadres with a deep understanding of the centrality of popular protagonism.
This book is a more dense, theoretical read than his invaluable The Socialist Alternative. It is a sequel of sorts to the Deutscher Prize-winning Beyond Capital. Like that book, Between Capitalism and Community argues against one-sided interpretations of Marxist theory (including, sometimes, by Marx himself) that suggest capitalism is an organic system that reproduces it own premises. An alternative is to develop a thorough-going ‘political economy of the working class’, which emphasises capital’s reproduction is contested, and it must keep the working people divided, atomised and demoralised if it is to last.
“If you do not understand the centrality of capital’s need to separate workers, you will not grasp that such characteristics as racism, patriarchy, and xenophobia do not drop from the sky, and you will suggest that we obscure relations of class exploitation by emphasising these. On the contrary, these characteristics are produced and reproduced within a capitalism that must divide the working class if it is to be reproduced.”
Lebowitz’s arguments challenge lifeless teleological versions of Marxism, in which social systems are said to necessarily and inevitably succeed one another like a lost passage from Genesis (e.g. and feudalism begat capitalism, and capitalism begat socialism, and socialism begat communism etc). It also challenges Marxian arguments that say capitalism’s tendency to create severe crises will be its downfall. Instead, he argues that capitalism’s periodic overproduction crises and its long-term tendency of a falling rate of profit (often overstated) are self-correcting and generally function to strengthen capital’s ideological hegemony. Even the fundamental crisis in the Earth system, threatening all life itself, does not in itself weaken capital or cause it to self-destruct. Going beyond capitalism is most likely via ‘revolutionary practice’, organised by a democratic & anti-capitalist ‘political instrument’ that promotes protagonism in all social struggles and milieus.
A recurring preoccupation of the book is methodological: a challenge to Marxists to use dialectical concepts to rethink the problems and contradictions such as capitalism’s resilience, the socialist transition, what ‘working class’ struggles are, and what is a communal society. Throughout, he returns to Richard Levin’s and Richard Lewontin’s valuable arguments about dialectical processes and thinking to illustrate his points. He also draws on Marta Haenecker’s arguments about the need for a political instrument (or political party) that ‘respects the autonomy of social movements instead of manipulating them’ and fosters the development of political cadres with a deep understanding of the centrality of popular protagonism.
“Separation is not only horizontal. Capital produces and reproduces vertical separation, that between mental and manual labour, between those who think and those who do. It produces those who think they know and those who think they do not know. And this separation of the products of capital does not automatically disappear when workers begin to struggle against capital, because those workers are themselves ‘in every response, economically, morally, and intellectually,’ infected by capital.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews