Back to materialism Reflections on Marx’s conception of labour, praxis, cooperatives and libertarian socialism

From Marx to Althusser, the materialist approach has tended to assume that individuals (that is, workers, proletarians and other social actors), unconsciously reproduce the social structures of capitalism which alienate them. It is assumed that individuals accept the conditions forced upon them and no longer seek to rebel against a world which substantially impoverishes their labour, their spirit and their creativity. In this paper, I will try to show that by dint of favouring almost exclusively Marx's concept of alienation, there is a considerable risk that materialist thought will adopt only a negative path. Whilst I acknowledge Marx’s significance to materialism, I wish to argue that his stance should be combined with that of the anarchist and libertarian French thinker Proudhon. Proudhon has succeeded in presenting a conception of the worker as more than just alienated. Workers can also cooperate and experience a reciprocity seemingly at odds with the character of capitalism. Under Proudhon’s influence materialism takes a positive turn, enabling us to avoid falling into the utopianism that the theory of social economy employs to critique capitalism – a utopianism that renders its critique even less effective than that of Marx.