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The aim of the book is to stimulate the realignment of political, theoretical and philosophical thinking that is now beginning in response to global warming. The author provides an examination of the theories of the most prominent social philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries - Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek. He does so in the belief that the work of these two thinkers, in their commonalities and differences, successes and failures, contain important indicators of the content of a social philosophy suited to today's conditions. The book proceeds in the context of the failure of the attempts by followers of Marx, having achieved political power, to realise the objectives they took to issue from his theories, on the one hand, and of the earlier successes, but now emerging failures of the neo-liberal philosophy of Hayek to cope with the with the environmental outcomes of those very successes, on the other. In doing so, the book will incidentally critique postmodernism, because of its claim to be 'Theory' as such, which for a generation impeded genuine theoretical and philosophical work.
List of contents
Introduction 1. The Two Social Philosophers 2. Market Virtues – and Limitations 3. Reason, Rules, Spontaneity 4. The Clash of Spontaneous Processes 5. Dialectics and a New Paradigm 6. Built in Marx’s Name 7. Social Justice 8. Morality 9. Human Nature 10. Law and the Rule of Law 11. Freedom, Coercion, Property 12. Politics, Democracy 13. Marx and Methodology 14. Hayek and Methodology 15. The Primacy of Values
About the author
Eric Aarons is the former Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia. His many published works include his memoirs, What's Left? - published by Penguin Books in 1993.
Summary
The author provides a thorough examination of the theories of Marx and Hayek in the belief that the work of these two thinkers, in their commonalities and differences, successes and failures, contain important indicators of the content of a social philosophy suited to today’s conditions.
