From the Grundrisse to Capital and Beyond: Then and Now

Abstract

This paper is part Marxology, in remembrance of that volcanic eruption of Marx’s carbuncle-inducing mental labor that resulted in the Notebooks we now know as the Grundrisse or the Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), and part contemporary conceptual history of the anti-capitalist movement’s increasing “techno-skepticism.”  By “techno-skepticism” I mean a political attitude that questions the centrality of technological change in the struggle against capitalism. I will trace some parallels between Marx’s thought from 1857 until 1882 and the succession of some themes in the anti-capitalist movement (with special reference to the US) between the 1960s and the present.