Conclusion: New Forms of the Necessity and Freedom Dialectic

Abstract

In this chapter, Rockwell concludes with the identification of the necessity and freedom dialectic as the inner determination of three of Marx’s autocritiques, the first two of which Postone describes as Marx’s attempt to overcome the epistemology associated with the subject–object dichotomy. Regarding labor and objectification, and the philosophical concept of substance and the historical Subject, Postone describes the late versus the early Marx’s critique of Hegel’s philosophy. Rockwell identifies a third autocritique in which in a critique of his early dismissal of Hegel’s conclusion to Philosophy of Mind Marx posits the dialectic of the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom. Identification of this autocritique, along with Postone’s reinterpretations of the late Marx, resolves heretofore insoluble issues dormant in the Dunayevskaya–Marcuse correspondence.