In February 1844, Marx published two articles in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher: “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” and “On the Jewish Question.” Together, these two articles push Marx, beyond the legal remedies that he had proposed in his 1842 articles on the thefts of wood, to call for revolution in Germany and human emancipation. This introduction begins to place these works in conversation with the writings of the French political philosopher Claude Lefort in preparation for our seminar with Professor Jean Louise Cohen of Columbia University. [Continue reading here…]
G.W.F. Hegel
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In his new book on the democratization of labor, *The Working Sovereign*, Axel Honneth takes a realist and pragmatist approach, advocating both for alternative democratic changes to the organization of labor and reforms to capitalist labor structures. It is a formidable intervention; but does Honneth’s account adequately take into account that the valuing of labor was itself a motivated project: labor became an object of value—whether in the work of Locke, or the early Protestant work ethic, or Hegel—driven or inspired by a deliberate (though perhaps not fully articulated or conscious) effort to make work appear valuable to laborers. Labor was transformed or shaped into a valuable performance in these philosophical interventions. But these philosophical constructions may be illusions, fabricated ways of trying to convince workers of the importance of their work as a way to reproduce more workers. If we look at it from this instrumental perspective, then the question that would arise is: What work are those philosophical discourses doing? And why might it be important to look at the work that they were doing? [To continue, read here….]