New Left Review I/195, September-October 1992

Norman Geras

Bringing Marx to Justice: An Addendum and Rejoinder

The question is here taken up—yet again—of whether Marx did or did not characterize capitalism as unjust and condemn it as such. What follows is in the nature of a postscript to the case I argued seven years ago in ‘The Controversy About Marx and Justice’, a critical survey of the debate on this question to that point. [1] The discussion has since continued. To the bibliography of more than three dozen entries there appended, in testimony to how extensive the relevant literature already was, it is now possible to add some four-fifths as many items again. [2] My intention, however, is not to offer another general review of the material. It is to reaffirm the central claim made out at length in the earlier essay (and which has been cogently put, too, by Jerry Cohen and Jon Elster): in a nutshell, that Marx did condemn capitalism as unjust in the light of transhistorical norms, albeit inconsistently with his own emphatic disavowals. [3]

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