Marx and Singularity: From the Early Writings to the Grundrisse

by Luca Basso

Overview

Marx and Singularity attempts to understand the development of Marx's thought as a search for individual realization. Drawing upon the concept of singularity in contemporary French theory—and mapping its own terminology onto Marx's vocabulary—this book challenges those who see no difference between the early and the “mature” Marx. The productivity of the notion of singularity is argued to be based on the fact that it allows us to highlight the element of individual realization, while stressing at the same time its distance from the modern conception of individuality so central to capitalist ideology. The “correlate” of singularity is reciprocity—moving and unstable between the “individual” and the “collective”—which occurs in the class struggle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608463367
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	12/03/2013
Series:	Historical Materialism , #41
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Luca Basso Ph.D. University of Pisa, studied in Padua and in Berlin. He is Researcher of Political Philosophy at the University of Padua. He has published many articles and three monographs: Individuo e comunità nella filosofia politica di Leibniz (Rubbettino, 2005), Socialità e isolamento: la singolarità in Marx (Carocci, 2008) of which the current book is a revised edition, and Agire in comune. Antropologia e politica nell’ultimo Marx (Ombre Corte, 2012).

Table of Contents

Introduction. The Individual and Singularity 1

1 The Question of Individuality 23

1.1 Individuals, determination and contingency 23

1.2 Gattungswesen and politics: from the Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State to The Holy Family 26

1.3 The individual separation between bourgeois and citoyen 36

1.4 A society without relations 52

1.5 The need for a change of perspective: The German Ideology 66

2 Beyond the 'Private-Social' Dichotomy 73

2.1 Social power and chance in The German Ideology 73

2.2 The ambivalence of the community 83

2.3 Singularity and practice: the realisation of 'individuals as such' 96

2.4 Common class-action 104

2.5 Towards 1848: thinking in the conjuncture 109

3 Social Nexus and Indifference 123

3.1 The genesis of individuality and capitalism in the Grundrisse: the breakthrough of the critique of political economy 123

3.2 Gemeinwesen in precapitalist-social formations 134

3.3 Society as an ensemble not of individuals, but of relations 142

3.4 The subject between universality and emptiness 150

3.5 Isolation: a sentence or a potentiality? 160

Conclusion 179

References 183

Name Index 199

Subject Index 202