Publisher's Synopsis
âThe problem is not how to manage the capital system, but to get rid of itâ. And who will do the job? These are the questions posed at the start of Cliff Slaughterâs latest book. Recognising the importance of István Mészárosâs analysis - in Beyond Capital (1995) and other books - of the historic, âstructural crisisâ that has taken capital into its stage of âdestructive self-reproductionâ, Against Capital focuses on the crucial question of agency. Today, when there are fundamental disjunctures between the globalised economy, the means of social control and political and state structures, what are we to make of Marxâs conclusion that the working class - capitalâs only structural antagonist - is âthe gravediggerâ of capitalism? And what are the implications for this of the information revolution, the changing composition of the working class, and the emergence of new forms of oppositional organisation, with young people to the fore? Slaughter assembles contributions by participants in recent movements in South Africa, Britain, Spain, Mexico, countries in the former Soviet zone and - in a major contribution from Yassamine Mather - the Middle East. He offers an extended critique of âvanguardistâ conceptions such as Trotskyâs âthe crisis of humanity is reduced to the crisis of working-class revolutionary leadershipâ and Kautskyâs and the early Leninâs formulation that socialist consciousness must be brought to the working class âfrom the outsideâ. Finally, Against Capital examines the necessary theoretical foundations of a rebuilt working-class movement, with special attention to the concepts of class-consciousness and the relation between theory and practice. This book is a compelling and distinctive contribution to recent debates encompassing works such as Thomas Pikettyâs Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Paul Masonâs PostCapitalism (2015).