Publisher's Synopsis
This book seeks to explain marxism?s political failure, and the concomitant success of advanced capitalism, despite it being recognised that the common criticisms of Marx?s work as politically doctrinaire or 'ideological' are essentially unfair. It is argued that Marx's critique of classical political economy is a faithful and productive development of the Hegelian immanent critique of alienated beliefs. - - Working through a central theme of what has since become the vexed idea of the 'inversion' of alienated beliefs, Marx engaged with classical political economy in a non-dogmatic fashion which both stressed political economy?s achievements and exposed many of its limitations. However, this idea of inversion has its own limitations and these give rise to serious weaknesses in the role Marx gave to the 'economic' and the 'political' in his explanation of the transition from capitalism to socialism. In the space left by these weaknesses, Marx remained held by a central characteristic of classical political economy in being unable properly to account for the corporate refashioning of laissez-faire into advanced capitalism. This both paralysed his efforts to complete Das Kapital and led to the failure of marxism as a political programme. The nature of Marx's failure, however is such as still to indicate the pressing necessity of the critique of alienated beliefs.
