Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading -- part 2.2

Ambivalence

Published in 1821, The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties was a major influence on Marx's analysis of ‘disposable time.’ In an 1851 notebook, Marx logged a 1000 word summary of the pamphlet. He also discussed it extensively in volume 3 of Theories of Surplus Value. His discussion of disposable time in a section of his Grundrisse notebooks that came to be known as the ‘fragment on machines’ has inspired rethinking of Marx's mature work by authors ranging from Raniero Panzieri, Antonio Negri, and Paolo Virno to Moishe Postone. Yet those re-evaluations do not acknowledge the decisive contribution of The Source and Remedy. This chapter examines Marx’s admiration, criticisms, and uses of the pamphlet, and the neglect of the pamphlet by subsequent writers, and offers suggestions about what might be gained by close attention to this seminal source and relying on it to perform a ‘remedial reading’ of Marx’s texts.