Moishe Postone’s Anticapitalism without Shortcuts
Joseph Grim Feinberg (Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought II, no. 2 (2018): 241–245
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Keywords: Moishe Postone, anti-Semitism, universalism
In this reflection on the legacy of Moishe Postone, who passed away March 19, 2018, Joseph Grim Feinberg lays out Postone's critique of "traditional Marxism" and of nationalist and anti-Semitic movements that uphold what Postone calls "foreshortened anticapitalism": they criticize only the abstract or universalist side of capitalism while seeking salvation in the concrete, particular, and national. But Feinberg also applies Postone's critical conception to movements that make the opposite move, seeking salvation in the universal while overlooking the particular. Instead of such shortcuts, Postone's legacy calls on critics to engage with our society as a whole and to seek emancipation as a whole that includes all its parts.
Erratum: This article incorrectly states that in April 2016 Moishe Postone was a visiting scholar in Vienna at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM). In fact, he was at the Internationale Forschungsstelle Kulturwissenschaften (IFK). He was affiliated with the IWM only later.
doi: 10.46957/con.2018.2.19
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