Did Marx Really Think That Capitalism Is Unjust

Bibliographic Data

ID21550445
AuthorsNigel Pleasants (0000-0003-3644-4044, Digital Catapult, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume51
Issue1
Pages147-177
Publication date2022-01-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophical Papers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0556-8641 • E-ISSN: 1996-8523
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/05568641.2022.2052347
OpenAlexW4281992391
LanguageEN
References cited13

Marx is typically and commonsensically seen as the arch moral critic of capitalism. But Allen Wood, in his celebrated but provocative ‘The Marxian critique of justice’, argued that in fact Marx held that capitalism (the capitalist mode of production) is not unjust, and indeed that it is perfectly just. His reasons in support of this attribution issue directly from Marx’s overarching social scientific and historical-cum-philosophical paradigm, ‘historical materialism’. Very few Marxists or exegetes of Marx have been persuaded by Wood’s radical reading of Marx on justice. G A Cohen, for example, dismisses it as an ‘unlikely thesis’. But I will argue that Wood’s ‘anti-injustice’ reading of Marx is essentially sound, though his key arguments for it are hostage to some subverting incoherencies. I go on to proffer a pared-down rendition of the defensible core of Wood’s anti-injustice reading of Marx

Capitalism · Economics · Epistemology · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Philosophy and Ethics

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access