Tom Rockmore

This article examines two views about the capitalism that lies at the heart of modern industrial society. We owe to Marx and Piketty two large-scale, hugely important, but very different studies of the nature of modern industrial capitalism. In Capital, Marx provides a complex analysis of the anatomy of modern industrial capitalism, which he regards not as stable but rather as over time unstable and tending toward internal collapse on several grounds, of which the most important is apparently the so-called tendency of the falling rate of profit. The falling rate of profit supposedly threatens its continued existence. Piketty criticizes the latter view in the context of his theory of contemporary capitalism. The article suggests, first, that Marx's view of the falling rate of interest is empirically implausible but Piketty's rival claim is empirically plausible. Second, a successful transition from capitalism to communism on Marxian grounds is unlikely in practice. And finally, despite Marx's intentions, it is unlikely to realize itself in practice, and is in this respect a traditional theory.

We ignore the history of philosophy at our peril. Engels, who typically conflates Marx and Marxism, points to the relation of Marxism to the tradition while also denying it. In his little book on Feuerbach, Engels depicts Feuerbach as leading Marx away from Hegel, away from classical German philosophy, away from philosophy and towards materialism and science. This view suggests that Marx is at best negatively related to Classical German philosophy, including Hegel. Yet Engels elsewhere suggests that Marx belongs to the classical German philosophical tradition. In the preface to Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels wrote: “We German socialists are proud that we trace our descent not only from Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen, but also from Kant, Fichte and Hegel”. In this paper I will focus on Marx’s relation to Fichte. This relation is rarely mentioned in the Marxist debate, but I will argue, it is crucial for the formulation of Marx’s position, and hence for assessing his contribution accurately. One of the results of this study will be to indicate that Marx, in reacting against Hegel, did not, as is often suggested, ‘leave’ philosophy, but in fact made a crucial philosophical contribution.

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW CENTURY provides a good time to reflect on the most influential philosophers of this period, or those most likely to survive, or again whom we should be reading in a hundred years. The answer one gives to this type of question obviously depends on what one thinks philosophy is about. I would like to suggest that at the beginning of the new century, at the start of the new millennium, the philosopher we will and should still be reading at the end of the new century is not one of the obvious candidates, like Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Heidegger, Peirce, or Dewey, Rorty’s favorite, but the nineteenth century German thinker, G. W. F. Hegel.

This paper examines the distinction between materialism (or realism) and idealism, which to the best of my knowledge all forms of Marxism regard as central to Marx as well as to Marxism. Materialism comes into ancient philosophy as a philosophical approach to philosophy of nature, which later becomes a philosophical alternative to idealism, and still later becomes a Marxist view of an extra-philosophical, scientific approach supposedly illustrated by Marx. The paper will review Marxist approaches to materialism in Marxism-Leninism and then in classical Marxism before turning to Marx, with special attention to the Paris Manuscripts. I will suggest that if “materialism” is understood in a standard manner as referring to the priority of matter as the main or even the sole explanatory element, then Marx’s alleged materialism is no more than a Marxist myth. I will further suggest that Marx is a materialist in another, non-standard sense of the term as concerns the focus on concrete, social problems.

The cognitive problem, which is a main modern theme, arises early in the Greektra- dition. Parmenides, who formulates one ofthe first identifiably "modern" approaches to epistemology, points toward identity as the only acceptable cognitive standard. The paper, which leaves epistemic skepticism for another occasion, reviews versions of metaphysicalrealism identified with Plato in ancient philosophy and Descartes in the modern tradition in suggesting that for different reasons both fail. The paper reviews German idealist versions of epistemic constructivism formulated by Kant, Fichte and Hegel. The criticalphilosophy provides a widely known, complex a priori account of cognitive constructivism.This account is amplified, corrected, and reformulated in different ways by such post-Kantian German idealists as Fichte and Hegel. A key element concerns the restatement ofthe abstract Kantian view ofthe subject as finite human being by Fichte and Hegel.Early in the Greektradition,in equatingthinking and being, Parmenides pointstothree approaches to knowledge as epistemic skepticism, metaphysicalrealism or epistemic constructivism. If epistemic skepticism is unacceptable and, metaphysical realism is implausible,then epistemic constructivism appearsto bethe most promising approach to cognition.

There is an obvious distinction between the philosophical meditation on politics and relevance to politics, on the one hand, and the political engagement of philosophers and even philosophy, on the other. At this late date, there can be few people interested in philosophy, and even many uninterested in this ancient discipline, unaware that Martin Heidegger turned to Nazism in the 1930s. Heidegger, who all his life subscribed to the Platonic view of the priority of philosophy over politics, later described his own political turning as “die grösste Dummheit,” in short as an error. This paper will consider recent discussion of this instance of “stupidity,” with special attention to three books: Julian Young, Heidegger, philosophy, Nazism; Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias; and Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time.

The importance of Lukács’ interpretation of classical German philosophy and Marx is almost self-evident. Although Marxists are frequently content to dismiss with contempt a philosophical tradition with which they display scant acquaintance, Lukács’ knowledge of philosophy is obviously extensive. His writings contain what is perhaps the most detailed discussion of the history of philosophy from a Marxist perspective. Further, his influence on the interpretation of Marx has been unequaled over the course of more than fifty years, ever since the appearance of his epoch-making book, History and Class Consciousness. A case in point is provided by Sartre’s and Habermas’ respective attempts to reconstruct Marx’s position. Although the proposed reconstructions are vastly different, they are alike in their dependence on Lukács’ interpretation of Marx.

_John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ provides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American pragmatism and continental philosophy had the lines of communication been more open between Dewey and his European contemporaries. Since they were not, Paul Fairfield and thirteen of his colleagues seek to remedy the situation by bringing the philosophy of Dewey into conversation with several currents in continental philosophical thought, from post-Kantian idealism and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to twentieth-century phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism. This unique volume includes discussions comparing and contrasting Dewey with the German philosophers G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer on such topics as phenomenology, naturalism, organicism, contextualism, and poetry. Others investigate a series of connections between Dewey and contemporary French philosophy, including the notions of subjectivity, education, and the critique of modernity in Michel Foucault; language and politics in Jacques Derrida; and the concept of experience in Gilles Deleuze. Also discussed is the question of whether we can identify traces of _Bildung_ in Dewey’s writings on education, and pragmatism’s complex relation to twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, including the problematic question of whether Heidegger was a pragmatist in any meaningful sense. Presented in intriguing pairings, these thirteen essays offer different approaches to the material that will leave readers with much to deliberate. _ John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ demonstrates some of the many connections and opportunities for cross-traditional thinking that have long existed between Dewey and continental thought, but have been under-explored. The intersection presented here between Dewey’s pragmatism and the European traditions makes a significant contribution to continental and American philosophy and will spur new and important developments in the American philosophical debate