Mass labor

reviving the concept of community and collectivity

pp. 99-118

in: Tom G. Griffiths, Robert Imre, Mass education, global capital, and the world, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

In many ways, Mészáros has sought to maintain a "traditional" view of collective action in that people with a specific class interest still have the capacity to act in their own interests for the good of the collective. This view of collective action is grounded in the philosophical anthropology of early Marx. Mészáros discusses human communities and human collectivities as having a "natural propensity" for collective activity as well as having a universally understood desire to develop trade. Mészáros' analysis is one in which the philosophical grounding can be found in Marx's early work, and is combined with a Gramscian view of hegemony as well as Polanyi's idea of the destruction of the commons in England.