Las manzanas

5) What do Marxists mean when they talk about capitalism as more as just an economy? In what ways are politics and culture integral to capitalism as a way of life?

For Marxists, Capitalismwas not to be confused with markets or exchange. For them Capitalism represented a way of social life, rather than some essential human nature, in which human labor was bought and sold on the market.(Politics) Capitalism involves unique forms of freedom-unfreedom, empowerment and disempowerment. It develops the productive powers of human societies to historically unprecedented heights, givesthe others certain freedom and democracy. Thanks to capitalism there is a greater transparency and competition between political elites, than there was in the past (19th and half of the 20th centuries).Also, interventions routinely result from non-business special interests representing education, the environment, labor, minorities, religion, retirees, science, and taxpayers, among others. State’sstructural dependence on private investment, government is efficiently compelled to serve the long term interest of the capitalist class.

(Culture) Capitalism as a system of social org. presupposesas part of its structure both: a privatized and depoliticized economic sphere and, correspondingly a political and public state.

6) How do the insights of Western Marxism shed critical light onmore ‘economistic’ forms of Marxism?

Western Marxists saw that Marxism was being transformed into rigid doctrine of economic determinism sanctified as objective science in the Soviet Union. Inthese developments they wanted to retain critical and potentially progressive role for social theory.

People might be led to think of their economic lives as having political significance, andthey might begin to question capitalism’s structured separation of the economic from the political aspects of social life, therefore it is necessary to precondition for concurrent democratization of...