Marx’s Concept of Socialism

One of the most important theoretical challenges facing us is developing a viable alternative to capitalism. Achieving this requires rethinking basic premises of social theory and practice, given the difficulties of freeing humanity from such problems as alienation, class domination, and the capitalist law of value. Taking off from Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism, this article explores how Marx’s critique of capital, value production, and abstract universal labor time is grounded in an emancipatory vision of a post-capitalist society—a vision that has been largely overlooked. While Marx never wrote “blueprints of the future,” the full breadth of his work as revealed in the Marx-Engels Gesaumtausgabe indicates that his vision of a post-capitalist society went further than specifying the need to abolish private property and “anarchic” exchange relations. This chapter seeks to show how Marx’s writings on this issue provide important theoretical ground for envisioning a non-capitalist future in the twenty-first century.