by István Mészáros, foreword by John Bellamy Foster
“Today Mészáros’s theoretical insights are becoming a material force, gripping the masses through various world-historical developments, including the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez.”
—JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER, editor, Monthly Review
“István Mészáros illuminates the path ahead. He points to the central argument we must make in order . . . to take to the offensive—throughout the world—in moving toward socialism.” —Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela
“If everyone had the spirit of István Mészáros, that is, if everyone were… so mindful of the totality and the future, so fierce in opposition, so faithful to the exploited and oppressed, and so hopeful for a better world, then such a world would be in closer reach.”—Joel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies, Bard College
A breakthrough in the development of socialist thought, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time is both a companion volume to Mészáros’s seminal Beyond Capital and a major theoretical contribution in its own right. Mészáros, one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of our age, focuses on the tyranny of capital’s time imperative and the necessity of a new socialist time accountancy, and provides a strong refutation of the popular view that there is no alternative to the current neoliberal order.
Mészáros offers masterful analysis of the forces behind the expansion of inequality and unemployment, the return of imperial intervention across the globe, the growing structural crisis of the capitalist state, and the widening ecological crisis—along with the hope offered by the reemergence of concrete socialist alternatives. This powerful and provocative new collection defines the challenges and burdens facing all who are committed to a more rational and egalitarian future.
About the Author:
István Mészáros left his native Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956. He is professor emeritus at the University of Sussex, where he held the Chair of Philosophy for fifteen years. Mészáros is author of Beyond Capital, Power of Ideology, The Work of Sartre, and Marx’s Theory of Alienation.
This is the talk Mészáros gave at "The Credit Crunch, Food Riots and the New Capitalist Crisis" panel at the "1968 and All That" conference held on 10 May 2008 at Conway Hall, London. Video by Ady Cousins.
Table of Contents:
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
1. THE TYRANNY OF CAPITAL’S TIME IMPERATIVE
1.1 The Time of the Individuals and the Time of Humanity
1.2 Human Beings Reduced to “Time’s Carcase”
1.3 The Loss of Historical Time Consciousness
1.4 Free Time and Emancipation
2. THE UNCONTROLLABILITY AND DESTRUCTIVENESS OF GLOBALIZING CAPITAL
2.1 The Extraction of Surplus Labor in Capital’s “Organic System”
2.2 Unreformability, Uncontrollability, and Destructiveness
2.3 The System’s Threefold Internal Fracture
2.4 Capital’s Failure to Create Its Global State Formation
2.5 Chronic Insufficiency of “Extraneous Help” by the State
3. MARXISM, THE CAPITAL SYSTEM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION
3.1 The Global View of Capital
3.2 Historical Limits of the Labor Theory of Value
3.3 Ongoing Proletarianization and Its Wishful Denials
3.4 The Necessary Renewal of Marxian Conceptions
3.5 The Objective Possibility of Socialism?
3.6 Political and Social Revolution
3.7 Downward Equalization of the Differential Rate of Exploitation
4. SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM: FROM THE “AMERICAN CENTURY” TO THE CROSSROADS
Foreword
4.1 Capital—the Living Contradiction
4.2 The Potentially Deadliest Phase of Imperialism
4.3 Historical Challenges Facing the Socialist Movement
4.4 Conclusion
4.5 Postscript: Militarism and the Coming Wars
5. UNEMPLOYMENT AND “FLEXIBLE CASUALIZATION”
5.1 The Globalization of Unemployment
5.2 The Myth of Flexibility and the Reality of Precarization
5.3 From the Tyranny of Necessary Labor-Time to Emancipation through Disposable Time
6. ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICS—BEYOND CAPITAL
6.1 Alternative Economic Approaches
6.2 The Need for Comprehensive Planning
6.3 Capital’s Hierarchical Command Structure
6.4 From Predictions Based on “Economic Laws Working Behind the Backs of the Individuals” to Anticipations of a Controllable Future
6.5 Objective Preconditions for the Creation of Non-Deterministic Economic Theory
6.6 Socialist Accountancy and Emancipatory Politics
7. THE CHALLENGE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE CULTURE OF SUBSTANTIVE EQUALITY
7.1 Farewell to “Liberty—Fraternity—Equality”
7.2 The Failure of “Modernization and Development”
7.3 Structural Domination and the Culture of Substantive Inequality
8. EDUCATION BEYOND CAPITAL
8.1 Capital’s Incorrigible Logic and Its Impact on Education
8.2 Remedies Cannot Be Just Formal; They Must Be Essential
8.3 “Learning is Our Very Life, from Youth to Old Age”
8.4 Education As the “Positive Transcendence of Labour’s Self-Alienation”
9. SOCIALISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
9.1 Irreversibility: The Imperative of a Sustainable Alternative Order
9.2 Participation: The Progressive Transfer of Decision Making to the Associated Producers
9.3 Substantive Equality: The Absolute Condition of Sustainability
9.4 Planning: The Necessity to Overcome Capital’s Abuse of Time
9.5 Qualitative Growth in Utilization: The Only Viable Economy
9.6 The National and the International: Their Dialectical Complementarity in Our Time
9.7 Alternative to Parliamentarism: Unifying the Material Reproductive and the Political Sphere
9.8 Education: The Ongoing Development of Socialist Consciousness
10. WHY SOCIALISM? HISTORICAL TIME AND THE ACTUALITY OF RADICAL CHANGE
10.1 Conflicting Determinations of Time
10.2 Why Capitalist Globalization Cannot Work?
10.3 The Structural Crisis of Politics
10.4 New Challenges on Our Horizon and the Urgency of Time
NOTES
INDEX
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