Marx, Hayek, and Utopia: Progressive Education at the Crossroads

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SUNY Press, Jan 1, 1995 - Political Science - 178 pages
This book develops a critique of utopianism through a provocative comparison of the works of Karl Marx and F. A. Hayek, thus engaging two vastly different traditions in critical dialogue. By emphasizing the methodological and substantive similarities between Marxian and Hayekian perspectives, it challenges each tradition's most precious assumptions about the other. Through this comparative analysis, the book articulates the crucial distinctions between utopian and radical theorizing.

Sciabarra examines the dialectical method of social inquiry common to both Marxian and Hayekian thought and argues that both Marx and Hayek rejected utopian theorizing because it internalizes an abstract, ahistorical, exaggerated sense of human possibility. The chief disagreement between Marx and Hayek, he shows, is not political but epistemological, reflecting their differing assumptions about the limits of reason.

 

Contents

Hayekian Dialectics
11
Utopian Intentions and Unintended Consequences
30
Constructivism and Human Efficacy
41
Capitalism and Dualism
55
Marxian Dialectics
70
The Marxian Utopia
85
The Challenge of a New Left
100
Utopianism and the Radical Project
117
Notes
123
References
149
Index
171
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Page 7 - Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.

About the author (1995)

Chris Matthew Sciabarra is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Politics at New York University. He is the author of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.