Marx and Rational Freedom

Below are links to and brief descriptions of my doctoral studies on the thought of Karl Marx. At a time when the political and intellectual world was turning away from Marx, I took the opportunity to trace Marx's emancipatory project to its philosophical roots in order to recover its true significance and redeem its potential and promise.

Marx and the Idea of Rational Freedom. 2001 150,991 words

Marx and the Idea of Rational Freedom locates Marx’s thought in its ‘rational’ origins, tracing the development of ‘rational freedom’ from Plato and Aristotle through the work of Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, culminating with an application to contemporary political theory.

Marx, Rational Freedom, and the Good Society: Vol 1. The Philosophy and Politics of Rational Freedom, 2002 196,163 words

Rational Freedom and the Good Society is a three-volume study of the thought of Karl Marx which relates Marx's philosophical views on reality and knowledge to politics and practice. Volume One locates the idea of freedom in Marx's thought to a philosophical tradition concerned to establish the appropriate regimen for creative human self-realisation.

Marx, Rational Freedom, and the Good Society: Vol 2. Active Materialism – The Ontology of Reason, 2002 103,548 words

Active Materialism consists of three parts.

Part 1 supplies the ontological grounding of Marx’s vision of communism as the good society of free and flourishing individuals. 

Part 2 addresses the question of mediation, arguing for a conception of social control as a form of self-determination and social self-mediation.

Part 3 develops Marx’s conception of communist individuality as against the diremptive individualism and ‘objective dependency’ which characterises the modern world.

Marx, Rational Freedom, and the Good Society: Vol 3. The Politics and Economics of the Self-Governing Society. 2002 105,163 words

The Politics and Economics of the Self-Governing Society, examines the political institutions and economic structures of socialism, as conceived by Marx as the self-governing society. The book integrates the themes of true democracy, social control and self-mediation, affirmative materialism, community and communist individuality within a conception of commune democracy and the cooperative mode of production.