The double overcoming of the ‘Subject’ by the Marxist critique of political economy

Abstract

One of the main polemics that cross Marxism is around its position concerning the philosophy of modern consciousness and the sovereignty of the subject. In this article, we will defend the critique of political economy as an overcoming of the “subject” – of knowledge and immanent to history – based on the epistemological break carried out by the “mature” Marx and in his antihumanist propositions, a point highlighted and developed by the Althusserian lineage. In the first place, we outline an analysis of the problem of the subject in modern thought, and of how the young Marx remained in the problematics of his time. Then, we advance in the analysis of the epistemological break, its characteristics and theoretical and political effects. The conceptions of absent structural causality and relational structure will be fundamental in this exercise. Finally, the profound theoretical inequality between humanism, as a defense of the immanence of the subject, and Marxism, as a political science and practice, can be seen.