State of Capital – Class Movement – Alternatives

With Elmar Altvater in search of the renewal of left-wing politics

Abstract

A year ago, the political scientist Elmar Altvater died, whose works attempted to combine the Marxist discussion beyond the often sterile analyses with the current questions of the left and the newly emerging social movements, to renew Marxism, to open it up to ecological questions and thus strategically bring environmental and labour movements together, but at the same time also to contribute to the fact that ecological criticism did not follow romanticist earlier stages of the development of civilization. He regarded Marx's theory as a kind of building hut. If it were not continued, it would be threatened with decay. That is exactly what he did, he contributed to the further development of this theory in very different fields. His controversial involvement in magazines, especially PROKLA, is closely linked to this. The article focuses on Altvater's work on the connection between state and capital, crisis and class movement and the question of socialist alternatives.