Reification, rationalization and capitalism's 'dialectic of scarcity': A reconceptualization of the Marxist emancipatory project

This dissertation undertakes an immanent critique of the work of Marx, Weber, Lukacs and Gramsci as a means to the reconceptualization of the Marxist emancipatory project. It is argued that capitalism's 'dialectic of scarcity' accounts for both the utopian, transcending moment of capitalist society and this society's reifying thrust. This ambiguity is reflected in the work of the thinkers in this study and it is this ambiguity that makes possible the immanent critique of their work.;The transcending moment of capitalism's dialectic of scarcity stems from the compulsive dynamism of capitalist society that raises the specter of a radically different, non-alienated society that would use capitalism's technological achievements to conquer material scarcity and enrich human life. This utopian potential is obscured, however, by the workings of a capitalist society that can artificially reproduce scarcity even after this scarcity has become objectively obsolete.;Weber's analysis of rationalization is treated as an ideological manifestation of capitalism's contradictoriness. Weber's recognition of the materialist impulse underlying religion implies that with the emergence of capitalism the meaning of intellectual rationalization has to shift. Instead of representing a movement towards the ideological sublimation of the impulse for a world without undeserved suffering, rationalization after the emergence of the dynamic capitalist society requires social change that would turn a drastic reduction of undeserved human suffering into a reality.;While Weber's pessimistic development of his rationalization analysis is interpreted as a symptom of the reification that capitalism's artificial reproduction of scarcity produces, this reification is also shown to inform Marx's more optimistic vision. More specifically, the transcending moment of capitalism's dialectic of scarcity signifies the objective obsolescence of all forms of social oppression and gives rise to a genuinely universal interest in a free, non-alienated society. Capitalism's artificial reproduction of scarcity, however, not only obscures this general interest but also constitutes social subjectivity along the lines laid down by forms of social oppression. The traditional Marxist appeal to class consciousness and struggle as a means to human liberation unwittingly contributes to the naturalization of scarcity implicit in the conflict theoretical imaginary.;The recognition that reification forms the great obstacle to human liberation forces us to rethink emancipatory politics as a universalistic project that will have to crystallize out of an alliance between the partial struggles of different movements against the different forms of class and non-class oppression. This implication for emancipatory politics is developed through an immanent critique of Gramsci's concept of hegemony.;Finally, the implications of capitalism's ecological destructiveness for emancipatory politics are examined. To the extent that this destructiveness threatens to turn scarcity from a social into an once again natural fact, it also threatens the material preconditions for abolishing all forms of social oppression. In so doing, capitalism provides the material basis for an alliance between ecological movements and movements struggling against the various forms of social oppression.