Moishe Postone

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Moishe Postone (born April 17, 1942 in Edmonton , † March 19, 2018 in Chicago ) was a Canadian historian , philosopher and economist . He was a professor of history at the University of Chicago .

He lived in Frankfurt am Main from 1972 to 1982 and worked at the Institute for Social Research . In 1983 he received his doctorate from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University there . Most recently he taught in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. His main focus was on modern European intellectual history, critical theory , the history of Germany in the 20th century, anti-Semitism and global transformation. Postone was regarded as a prominent representative of a value-critical continuation of the Marxian theory. Postone was the son of Rabbi Abraham Postone, his mother was Evelyn Postone, nee. Detention.

Confrontation with the German left

Moishe Postone first became known in the Federal Republic of Germany through his essay Antisemitism and National Socialism , which appeared in German translation for the first time in 1979 in the Frankfurt student newspaper Diskus , and through the 1985 open letter to the German Left .

The essay Anti-Semitism and National Socialism reflects the recording of the film Holocaust - The History of the Weiss Family and Anti-Semitism in the FRG. It became one of the key theoretical texts for post-Marxist currents - for both value critics and anti-Germans . In it, Postone accuses the German left of restricting itself to the history of the labor movement and the resistance to National Socialism and of avoiding a historical confrontation with the Third Reich. You tend to treat anti-Semitism as a marginal phenomenon of National Socialism. The result is "that the extermination camps either appear as mere examples of imperialist (or totalitarian) mass murders or remain inexplicable".

In his open letter to the German Left , Postone was shocked by the German left's lack of interest in Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan's visit to the military cemetery in Bitburg , where SS members are also buried. Postone interpreted the visit to Bitburg as a “rehabilitation of the Nazi past”, which the German left had almost ignored. This expresses "a degree of blindness that in turn only confirms how extensively the fundamental repression at the core of post-war German social consciousness has permeated the present and been passed on to a new generation."

Anti-Semitism theory

Postone was best known for his anti-Semitism theory. He saw modern anti-Semitism as a variant of the " fetish " in the Marxian sense. In his essay Anti-Semitism and National Socialism , he emphasizes that the power and danger of modern anti-Semitism lies in the fact that it provides "a comprehensive worldview that apparently explains various types of anti-capitalist discontent and gives them political expression". But he let capitalism “exist in that it only attacks the personification of those social forms”.

An often overlooked criticism of Postone relates to Hannah Arendt's depiction in her work Eichmann in Jerusalem . According to Postone, her theory misses the special meaning of the extermination of the Jews and incorrectly interprets the ideological motive of the Holocaust as the extermination of the “superfluous”, although the Jews were understood in the Nazi ideology as “the evil” and “tangible abstracts”, due to this his danger must be destroyed.

Marx interpretation

With his Marx interpretation Time, Labor and Social Domination ( Time, Labor and Social Domination ) , published in 1993, Postone wanted to fundamentally differentiate the theory of Marx from the Marxist theoretical tradition.

In it, Postone turns against those Marxist theories which denounce the capitalist mode of production from the point of view of exploitation and class rule and which limit themselves to criticizing the distribution of social wealth. Postone, on the other hand, wanted to return to the analysis of the abstract forms of the capitalist mode of production - commodity, value, labor, capital. The starting point for him is the dual character of the work , i. H. the differentiation between abstract and concrete work. In line with this, Postone introduced his own distinction between abstract and concrete time.

Fonts

In German

  • Lukács and the Dialectical Critique of Capitalism . In: Georg Lukács u. a .: Reification, Marxism, history. From the defeat of the November Revolution to critical theory , edited and introduced by Markus Bitterolf and Denis Maier. ça ira, Freiburg im Breisgau 2012, pp. 477–509.
  • "The Germans prefer to stage themselves as victims". Interview with Moishe Postone . In: Hermann L. Gremliza (Ed.): No way out? 14 attempts to understand the current financial and economic crisis (= Konkret Texte , No. 56), KVV Konkret, Hamburg 2012, pp. 165–174.
  • Time, Labor, and Social Domination , a new interpretation of Marx's critical theory (original title: Time, Labor, and Social Domination , translated by Christoph Seidler). ça ira Verlag , Freiburg im Breisgau 2003, ISBN 3-924627-58-4 (Dissertation University of Frankfurt am Main [2003], 616 pages, 22 cm, English, German).
  • Germany, the Left and the Holocaust. Political Interventions. Ça ira, Freiburg 2005, ISBN 3-924627-33-X ; correct: ISBN 3-924627-33-9 .
  • Hannah Arendt's " Eichmann in Jerusalem ". The unresolved antinomy of universality and the particular. In: Gary Smith (Ed.): Hannah Arendt revisited: "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and the consequences. Frankfurt am Main 2000.
  • Deconstruction as social criticism. Jacques Derrida on Marx and the New World Order. In: Krisis . 21/22, Bad Honnef 1998, p. 115 ff.
  • National Socialism and Anti-Semitism. A theoretical attempt. In: Dan Diner (ed.): Civilization break. Thinking about Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 242ff., From: Merkur . 1, 1982, pp. 13-15.
  • with Barbara Brick: Critical Pessimism and the Limits of Traditional Marxism. , In: Wolfgang Bonß, Axel Honneth (Hrsg.): Social research as criticism. Frankfurt am Main 1982.
  • “Nobody else taught that.” A biographical interview with Moishe Postone. In: sans phrase . Journal of ideological criticism. Issue 9/2016. Pp. 5-11.
  • Critical Capitalism Theory Today , Supplement der Sozialismus (Journal) 5/2008, ISBN 978-3-89965-944-3 .

Other languages

  • Critique, State and Economy , in: Fred Rush (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory , Cambridge 2004
  • Marx est-il devenu muet: Face à la mondialisation? , Paris 2003
  • Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century (as editor with Eric Santner), Chicago 2003
  • Lukács and the Dialectical Critique of Capitalism , in: R. Albritton / J. Simoulidis (Ed.), New Dialectics and Political Economy , Houndsmill / Basingstoke / New York 2003
  • Contemporary Historical Transformations: Beyond Postindustrial and Neo-Marxist Theories , in: Current Perspectives in Social Theory Vol. 19, Stamford 1999
  • Rethinking Marx in a Postmarxist World , in: Charles Camic (Ed.), Reclaiming the Sociological Classics , Cambridge 1998
  • Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (as editor with Craig Calhoun and Edward LiPuma), Chicago / Cambridge 1993
  • Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory , New York / Cambridge 1993
  • Political Theory and Historical Analysis , in: C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere , Cambridge 1992
  • History and Critical Social Theory , in: Contemporary Sociology Vol. 19, No. March 2, 1990
  • After the Holocaust: History and Identity in West Germany , in: K. Harms / LR Reuter / V. Dürr (Ed.), Coping with the Past: Germany and Austria after 1945 , Madison 1990

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Moishe Postone passed away - On analysis of capitalism and anti-Semitism. In: Sozialismus.de . March 27, 2018, accessed on March 29, 2018 (obituary and reprint of a conversation by Fritz Fiehler and Christoph Lieber with Postone for issue 9/2000 of the journal Sozialismus ).
  2. ↑ Funeral Details: Moishe Postone . Chicago Jewish Funerals, accessed March 20, 2018.
  3. ↑ Volkan Agar: Personal obituary for Moishe Postone: Nobody interpreted Marx like him. In: TAZ March 21, 2018.
  4. ^ Historian Moishe Postone died ORF , accessed on March 30, 2018
  5. ↑ born May 18, 1915 in Vilkomir , 1939 emigrated to Canada, place of work Calgary , died in January 2009 in British Columbia
  6. ^ Moishe Postone: Anti-Semitism and National Socialism , in: Redaktion diskus (Hrsg.): Kiss the ground of freedom . Discus - Texts of the New Left. Berlin-Amsterdam 1992, pp. 425-437.
  7. ^ Moishe Postone: Open Letter to the German Left , in: Bahamas , No. 10 (1993), pp. 26-28.
  8. ^ Moishe Postone: Anti-Semitism and National Socialism , see web links
  9. ↑ See Bitburg controversy
  10. ↑ Moishe Postone: Open Letter to the German Left , p. 27.
  11. ^ Moishe Postone: Anti-Semitism and National Socialism , p. 192 (see web links)
  12. ↑ Moishe Postone: The unresolved antinomy of universality and the particular. In: Gary Smith (Ed.): Hannah Arendt revisited: "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and the consequences. Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 264-290.
  13. ^ Moishe Postone: Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory , New York / Cambridge (1993). German: time, work and social domination. A new interpretation of the critical theory of Marx (2003)
  14. ↑ For a longer excerpt, see web links. The essay “History and Powerlessness” from it is a lecture from November 2003. In slightly changeable. Form again in MP, Critical Capitalism Theory Today. Brenner , Arrighi , Harvey and anti-capitalist strategies. Special issue of the Zs. Sozialismus 5, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89965-944-3 , pp. 25-45. The minor corrections and additions in 2008 are based on the English revised Version: History and helplessness. Mass mobilization and contemporary forms of anti-capitalism , in: Public Culture , 18, 2006, H. 1
personal data
SURNAME Postone, Moishe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Edmonton
DATE OF DEATH 19th March 2018
Place of death Chicago