Democracy
& Nature, Vol. 6, No. 1
The
Dynamics of Change: Class, Politics and Civil Society – from Marx to
post-Marxism
George
Lafferty
Abstract:
This paper discusses how Marxist understandings of politics and civil society,
particularly Marx’s own work, can contribute to understanding the dynamics of
political change in contemporary capitalist democracies. While briefly exploring
the conceptual problems contained in the political-philosophical agenda set out
in Marx’s earliest works, the paper argues that his subsequent examinations of
civil society and class relations are grounded in a political economy of
capitalist development which retains considerable salience. The possibilities of
a post-Marxist politics of civil society are assessed in this light, using the
example of recent neo-liberal and neo-conservative assaults on the welfare state
to indicate the ways in which membership of civil society is itself a critical
focus of political contestation. A politics of civil society (for example,
contemporary ‘third way’ strategies) lacks any substantive democratic
potential, without the type of radical political economy developed by Marx.
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