Published in 1981 in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology. Discusses Marx's concept of science, his dialectical method, his critique of fetishism, his attempts to resolve the revolutionary and evolutionary (determinisitic) aspects of his theory, and Grossman's and Korsch's attempts to avoid determinism through a turn to subjective factors (working-class self-activity).
Comments
A brief note on how
A brief note on how communization theory resolves some of the problems discussed in this article: Communization theory resolves (or avoids) the issue of "consciousness," the demystifying of capitalist social forms, by equating revolution with the movement that takes measures to abolish these forms. It becomes an issue of the proletariat actually changing social reality (abolishing the commodity-form) rather than becoming conscious of the reality behind appearances. Communization theorists also turn to "subjective factors," as suggested by Grossman and Korsch, either by discussing the "failures" of past struggles (Troploin) or by tracking current struggles with a eye to spotting where the proletariat comes up against itself as limit to be overcome (TC); however, without, like Korsch, opposing this to the "objective development of capitalism."