Moishe Postone’s Historical Time: Capital, the Holocaust, and Jewish Marxism

Abstract

n 1993, Moishe Postone published Time, Labor, and Social Domination, which revolutionized our understanding of Marx’s critical theory of capitalism. Scholars from various disciplines have approached this work in relation to its contributions with respect to Postone’s critique of class in capitalism and his unique reading of commodity fetishism, among a host of other themes. However, it is rare for people to focus on the Jewish dimension of his work. Although those who have known Moishe Postone personally will confirm that he deemed Judaism extremely important and that he has at times privately commented on Jewish dimensions of his reading of Marx, in his written work, he primarily deals with Jewishness in his discussion of the Shoah and anti-Semitism. Recently, his colleague formany years,William Sewell, has challenged this trend and commented on Postone’s Jewish upbringing and his reading of Capital: “I believe that Moishe’s deep Jewish heritage and his father’s rabbinical vocation influenced much about his life and thought. . . . It is my hunch that Moishe’s training in Torah interpretation must have unconsciously influenced his approach to Marx’s Capital and the Grundrisse in his magnum opus, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. Whatever else it may be, Moishe’s book is a profoundly exegetical work—in that it assumes the essential truth of Marx’s text and relies on a close and meticulous reading and argument to disclose this truth to