Andres Saenz de Sicilia – författare

What is the status of ‘the human’ and ‘humanism’ in Marx’s thought? Does Marx’s critical project rest upon ‘humanist’ commitments? If so, what are these and how do they shift across his writings and inform his critical theory of capitalist society?Marx and the Critique of Humanism addresses these questions through a diverse collection of critical interventions from leading Marxist scholars. These contributions offer both a renewed appraisal and contextualisation of the notion of ‘the human’ across Marx’s oeuvre, as well as a range of critical perspectives on the status of humanism within critical social theory today.The book revaluates Marx’s relation to humanism by examining the intellectual context, influences and interlocutors which shaped his theoretical commitments and critical methodology; the concept of ‘Gattungswesen’ in Marx’s early writings; the ways in which 'the human' informs and is transformed by Marx's critique of political economy; the ecological dimensions of Marx’s thought; the reception of Marx’s humanism by anti-colonial thinkers; and the relation of Marx’s thought to post-structuralist and post-humanist critiques of enlightenment humanism. Moving beyond the simplistic picture of a ‘humanistic’ early Marx and a ‘scientific’ late Marx, this volume shows instead how a sustained concern with the human evolves in tandem with Marx’s broader intellectual development.

Capital is often depicted as an all-encompassing and abstract social force which seeks to "subsume" all of human life. But what in fact is involved in such "subsumption" and how might it be resisted? Tracing the discourse of subsumption through the work of Kant, Hegel, Marx and the critical Marxist tradition, this book offers a materialist framework for analysing capitalist power. Saenz de Sicilia argues that capitalist subsumption operates at three distinct yet interrelated levels: exchange, production, and reproduction, each characterised by distinct logics of domination and resistance. Conflicts over subsumption at each of these levels lie at the heart of capitalism’s struggle to determine the shapes of human social life. A major intervention into debates surrounding the historical trajectories of capitalism, Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society systematically refutes the influential thesis that we are now in a stage of "total" capitalist subsumption which leaves no space of refuge or resistance.