Utopias
Future, Present and Concrete in Alasdair MacIntyre and C. L. R. James
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13042978 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul Blackledge (0009-0008-7681-6643, London South Bank University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 420-435 |
| Publication date | 2019-07-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Critical Thought (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2159-8312 • E-ISSN: 2159-8312 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/21598282.2019.1648185 |
| OpenAlex | W2898279338 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
Alasdair MacIntyre’s Ethics in the Conflict of Modernity caps a long engagement with Marx and Marxism through a discussion of the life and work of C. L. R. James. MacIntyre’s critique of James is interesting both because James influenced MacIntyre’s early Marxism and because MacIntyre’s mature critique of Marxism can be understood against the background of his failure to realise a broadly Jamesian political project in the 1960s. Moreover, MacIntyre’s mature concept of a “utopianism of the present” can, in part, be understood as an attempt to overcome the abstract utopian limitations of the politics he embraced in his youth. I argue that MacIntyre was right to reject the interpretation of Marxism he held in the mid-1960s, but that his general criticism of Marxism is less successful because Marxism, at its strongest, can be understood as a form of a utopianism of the present. The underlying flaw with the version of Marxism that MacIntyre embraced in the 1960s is not to be found in its abstractly utopian character but rather in its one-sided conception of the relationship between working-class self-activity and socialist consciousness. This is a problem, though inverted, that continues to haunt MacIntyre’s interpretation of Marxism
Character (mathematics · Class consciousness · Consciousness · Criticism · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Homelessness and Social Issues · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Philosophy
The Dialectics of Work and Leisure in Marx, Lukács, and Lefebvre
After Virtue
C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism
Lenin Rediscovered
Ethics and Politics
Marx and Alienation
Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity
Rationalist Capitalist Concerns
Marxism, Nihilism, and the Problem of Ethical Politics Today
On Strategy and Tactics
Hegemony and Intervention
Alasdair MacIntyre
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |