Abstract

McCarthy discusses the central issues in Marx interpretation--for example, the relationship of the young Marx to the author of Capital, Marx's view of ethical theory in general and justice in particular, the meaning of praxis as a criterion of truth, the significance of Marx's atheism, and the positivistic and transcendental interpretations of Marxist Wissenschaft-from the perspective of a retrieval of his classical scholarship. His contention is that a study of Marx's doctoral dissertation, The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature--together with the 1838-40 Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy-yields the outlines of a fundamental intellectual project which is developed throughout the rest of his writings. That project, rooted in the humanism of the late classical period, gives a distinctive character to Marx's dialogue with modern political economists and with the liberal natural rights tradition. McCarthy thus stresses the fundamental coherence of Marx's writings, and at the same time disassociates him from modern positions--such as Ricardo's understanding of the labor theory of value--with which Marx's thought has been conflated. He does this by presenting Marx's interpretive interests as being distinctively premodern, and concludes that his classical formulation of the problems of social ethics affords Marx the critical distance to be "the most forceful opponent of modernity... [and] the first postmodern critic.