Below are links to and brief descriptions of my four-volume doctoral studies of the thought, politics, and contemporary relevance of Karl Marx. These studies were completed in 1997, showing the superiority of Marx's view over the intellecual and political fashions of the age.
Marx and Materialist Dialectics is a four volume study of Marx's critical-emancipatory praxis, locating Marx on the post-modern terrain, developing notions of an 'active materialism' in the society-nature interchange as a critique of modernity's 'alien' rationalisation. The work draws a distinction between a scientistic-deterministic Marxism and a critical-emancipatory Marxism in order to establish freedom as the end of Marx's practical critique. The book emphasises Marx's concern to facilitate the recovery of human subjectivity from within the alienated forms through which sociability has come to be expressed, thus affirming conscious, creative human agency in a social world that is bounded by a given and inherited natural world. The book therefore places the society-nature interchange at the centre of Marx's materialist dialectics.
Marx, Materialist Dialectics, and Praxis. Vol 1. Beyond Modernity and Postmodernity, 1997 107,304 words
Volume 1 Beyond Modernity and Postmodernity sets the 'crisis of Marxism’ in the context of the ‘crisis of Modernity,' and contrasts Marx's approach favourably with current intellectual trends.
Marx, Materialist Dialectics, and Praxis. Vol 2. Dialectical Realism and Active Materialism, 1997 142,065
Volume 2, Dialectical Realism and Active Materialism, divides into three parts.
Part 1 Materialist Ontology
Part 2 Revolutionary-Critical Praxis
This part argues for Marx’s critical and transformatory ‘philosophy of praxis’ as against the contemplative-passive approach to knowledge, which tends to rationalize and preserve prevailing power relations. This part shows Marx’s praxis to subvert alienation, fetishism and determinism in furthering the democratisation of politics, philosophy, and power.
Part 3 The Dialectic of Agency and Structure
A liberatory dialectic of structure and struggle lies at the heart of the third part, showing values and society-constituting praxis to be central to Marx’s emancipatory project. Emphasising the way in which Marx incorporated the active side of idealism into his materialist conception, this part employs Marx’s active and affirmative materialism against naturalism and positivism.
The Critique of Alien Control develops Marx’s materialist ontology, centred on labour, to show what is required to uproot the alienating separations and dualisms characterising liberal modernity and the capital system. The book emphasises Marx's concern to facilitate the recovery of human subjectivity from behind the alienated forms through which sociability has come to be expressed, thus affirming conscious, creative human agency in a self-made social world bounded by a given and inherited natural world. The book therefore places the society-nature interchange at the centre of Marx's materialist dialectics.
Marx, Materialist Dialectics, and Praxis. Vol 4. The Recovery of the Political: Socialism as the Social Republic. 1997 166,394 words
This concluding volume develops Marx’s commitment to the democratisation of power, philosophy, and production as a critique of alien politics. Proceeding from a conception of the state and capital as alienated social powers, Marx is shown to realise ‘the political’ as the public life required for human social flourishing through the political investment of civil society, thus establishing the forms of the common life.
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