Revolution and history: from Theses to Manifesto

Abstract

In the last century, the advance of neoliberalism and post-positivism not only produced misery from an economic point of view, but reinforced a typically Stalinist stigma surrounding Marx's work: “outdated”. This stigma permeates many readings that, in general, start from a mechanical division of the work: on the one hand, the “young” Marx – the one with concepts that are not very precise and, especially, “immature”, with all the load of evolutionary prejudices that the expression can hold. On the other, the “old man”, whose reflection has been undermined by history and which can be read in the same way as one admires a spinning wheel in a museum. Because this enemy to be execrated and already declared dead (along with history) is still very much alive and, as indicated by the increase in sales of Capital in Germany, is being read again. His name can also be heard in street demonstrations – such as Occupy Wall Street. Capital, however, despite its evident importance, is far from expressing the richness of the Marxist reading of reality and, notably, the clarity of its conception of the forms of domination and the trends in the history of class struggle.