Libertarian Marxism: Reality or Illusion?

Over the past few years, several works have been written relating to the issue of libertarian socialism. In my presentation, I seek to critically investigate two contemporary systematic attempts at a distinctly libertarian reading of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ work. Theodore A. Burczak’s 2006 book, Socialism After Hayek constitutes an ambitious synthesis of F.A. Hayek’s notion of catallaxy and Marxism. Self-organization, Burczak argues, has a place in Marxist theory and may be unified with an anti-capitalist social philosophy. In fact, socialism would be the epitome of society as a self-organizing system, and the inclusion of market mechanisms does not endanger egalitarianism. A similar emphasis on freedom may be found in Ernesto Screpanti’s 2007 book, Libertarian Communism. From Marx’s work, Screpanti extracts an emphasis on voluntary association, and suggests that true communism would constitute the emancipation of the individual, a paradoxical position that contradicts the standard view of communism as collectivist politics. I suggest that both Burczak and Screpanti’s approaches ultimately fail to produce a political philosophy that is consistently libertarian.