Conference paper
REVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS AND APORIAE OF MODERNITY
Alexander Theodore Callinicos
; Centre for European Studies, King's College, London, Great Britain
Abstract
The work General Theory of Modernity prompts us to reflect on and understand
modernity as a fusion of two constitutive moments: the declarative
moment, as an affirmation of the right to emancipation which is capable of
constant revolutionary extension, and capitalism, which is simultaneously dynamic
and revolutionary, a system both destructive and exploitative. There
are two wrong ways of understanding this fusion. According to the liberal understanding,
the declarative moment is accomplished in capitalism. According
to the vulgar Marxist understanding, the emancipatory moment is a mere
ideological illusion. Bidet’s concept of “metastructure” offers a possibility of
a more adequate understanding of the fusion. In Bidet’s understanding of the
metastructure of modernity, which is based on a specific reading and reconstruction
of Marx’s Capital, the metastructure designates a general matrix of
possibilities of combining market and organisation, as basic structural characteristics
of modern society. The author critically disproves such an approach.
It is better to start from the structure, from an analysis of capitalism, and show
that capitalism also opens up emancipatory horizons which make it possible to refute
capitalism. An adequate understanding of modernity requires an adequate
theory of capitalism rather than a general theory of modernity. Such an
approach does not reduce the normative discourse to some sort of super-structural
epiphenomenon. It is logically quite possible to assert that certain principles
and ideals emerge in a concrete historical context, but one can also assert
that the contents of those principles and ideals transcend that context.
Keywords
modernity; declaration moment; capitalism; metastructure; Marx; Bidet
Hrčak ID:
47204
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2009.
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