TheNeue Marx-Lektüre (German for "New Marx Reading") is a school of thought inMarxist theory that originated inWest Germany in the mid-1960s. It proposes a reconstruction ofKarl Marx'scritique of political economy by returning to his original texts and breaking with the interpretations ofMarxism–Leninism and, to a lesser extent,Western Marxism. Key figures associated with its development includeHans-Georg Backhaus andHelmut Reichelt. The movement is characterized by its focus on what it terms the "esoteric" dimension of Marx's work—particularly his critique of fundamental economic forms such as value, money, and capital—as opposed to the "exoteric" dimension that appears compatible with traditional political economy.
TheNeue Marx-Lektüre gained prominence in the context of theGerman student movement and the subsequent academic institutionalization of Marxist theory. Its central argument is that traditional Marxism misunderstood Marx's project, reducing his critique of social forms to a deterministic and transhistorical political economy. In contrast, theNeue Marx-Lektüre emphasizes the monetary character of value, the logical (rather than historical) structure ofDas Kapital, the theory ofstate derivation (Staatsableitung), and a critical reappraisal of traditional revolutionary theories centered onclass struggle. Although it originated in German-speaking academia, its influence has extended internationally, particularly in debates on value theory, the critique of political economy, and related critical currents such asWertkritik (value-critique) andcommunisation theory.
The termNeue Marx-Lektüre was likely first used byHans-Georg Backhaus in the 1970s and was later popularized by his students, such asMichael Heinrich.[1] It designates a specific intellectual current that distinguishes itself from other contemporary interpretations likeNeo-Marxism, "critical Marxism", or "capital-logical" Marxism by its specific methodological approach to reconstructingKarl Marx's theory.[1] The movement is defined by its shared project of reconstructing thecritique of political economy as a critique of the fundamental social forms of capitalist society, rather than as a simple economic analysis of its laws of motion or a philosophy of history.[2]
According to Ingo Elbe, theNeue Marx-Lektüre can be understood in contrast to two other major paradigms of Marxist interpretation:
TheNeue Marx-Lektüre shares Western Marxism's critique of traditional Marxism's determinism but extends its critical focus to the core of Marx's economic works. It argues for an "esoteric" reading of Marx, which uncovers a radical critique of the very categories of political economy (value, labor, money, state), against an "exoteric" reading that presents Marx as a successor to classical economists likeAdam Smith andDavid Ricardo.[9]
TheNeue Marx-Lektüre emerged inWest Germany from the mid-1960s, a period marked by theGerman student movement and a renewed academic interest in Marx's texts outside the confines ofSocial Democratic andLeninist party doctrines.[10][8][11] Its genesis can be traced to several intellectual influences.
The most direct intellectual lineage of theNeue Marx-Lektüre is theFrankfurt School. While earlycritical theorists likeTheodor W. Adorno developed a critique of identity logic and the "administered world," they did not fully extend this critique to a systematic reconstruction of Marx's value theory.[12] The groundwork for theNeue Marx-Lektüre was laid by pupils of Adorno andMax Horkheimer, particularlyHans-Georg Backhaus andHelmut Reichelt, who are considered its pioneers.[7][13][14][15] The catalyst for the movement was Backhaus's discovery of a copy of the first edition ofDas Kapital in 1963. He formed a private reading group with Reichelt and others, where they noted significant differences from the second edition, particularly the presence of a more explicit "dialectical contradiction in the analysis of the 'equivalent form' of value".[16] Reichelt later claimed that this discovery would have "had no consequences if it happened to someone who had not attended Adorno's lectures on the dialectical theory of society".[16] Adorno's critical social theory—especially his concepts of an autonomized society, objective abstraction, and "the anamnesis of the genesis"—deeply influenced theirvalue-form analysis.[17] The project of theNeue Marx-Lektüre can thus be seen as an attempt to "deepen and even to ground Adorno's critical theory of society" through a concrete analysis of the form of value.[18]
Backhaus's 1969 essay "On theDialectic of the Value-Form", which originated in a 1965 seminar under Adorno, is considered the "initial spark" of the movement.[19][7] Backhaus argued that the entire reception history of Marx's economic theory, including in the Marxist tradition, had been based on a "pre-monetary" misinterpretation of his theory of value, a misunderstanding initiated by Friedrich Engels's editorial interventions and reviews ofDas Kapital.[20] Reichelt's 1970 workOn the Logical Structure of the Concept of Capital in Karl Marx further developed this by systematically reconstructing the logical sequence of Marx's categories as a non-historical, conceptual development.[21][14] TheFrankfurt colloquium of 1967 on the centenary ofDas Kapital also served as a crucial forum where these ideas were first publicly debated.[22]
The core project of the originalNeue Marx-Lektüre was the reconstruction ofDas Kapital, based on the premise that Marx's own presentation was not always clear or consistent and that a certain amount of theoretical work was needed to reveal its systematic core.[23] Over time, this project faced internal criticism. Reichelt, for instance, later expressed doubts about whether a full reconstruction was possible or necessary. This skepticism marked the beginning of what has been called a "second generation of theNeue Marx-Lektüre" represented by figures like Heinrich, who questions the earlier assumption of a "hidden logic" or "inner coherence" in Marx's work that simply needed to be unearthed.[23]
TheNeue Marx-Lektüre is closely related to, but distinct from, the school ofWertkritik (value-critique) associated with theorists likeRobert Kurz and theKrisis group. While both schools reject traditional Marxism and focus on the critique of value as an abstract form of domination, they differ in several respects.Neue Marx-Lektüre largely originated within academia and focuses on a rigorous reconstruction of Marx's texts, whereasWertkritik emerged from a more extra-academic radical milieu.Wertkritik also extends its critique to the forms of subjectivity engendered by capitalism and posits that capitalist value is in a state of immanent crisis due to technological advancement, a position not central to theNeue Marx-Lektüre.[24]
A significant impetus came from the rediscovery in the 1960s and 1970s of Soviet theorists from the 1920s who had been suppressed underStalinism. The works ofIsaak Rubin andEvgeny Pashukanis were particularly influential. Rubin'sEssays on Marx's Theory of Value (1923; first published in German in 1973) provided a sophisticated reading of Marx's theory of value-form and fetishism, emphasizing thatabstract labor is not a physiological category but a specific social form of labor constituted in the process of exchange.[25] Pashukanis'sThe General Theory of Law and Marxism (1924) argued for a structural homology between the commodity form and the legal form, providing a foundational text for what would become the theory ofstate derivation.[26] Elbe describes these theorists as a "Western Marxism in the East" for their focus on social form over deterministic laws.[27]
Louis Althusser and the Frenchstructuralist school also played a crucial, though often critically appropriated, role. Althusser's call for a "symptomatic reading" of Marx's texts, his critique ofhistoricism and Hegelian expressive totality, and his thesis of an "epistemological break" between theearly and mature Marx provided important methodological tools.[28][14] TheNeue Marx-Lektüre adopted Althusser's anti-historicism and his insistence on the scientific rigor ofDas Kapital but rejected his sharp separation of structure from praxis and his residual structural determinism.[29] Proponents of theNeue Marx-Lektüre argued that Althusser, despite his innovations, failed to grasp the dialectical development of forms in Marx's work and thus could not provide an adequate theory of the categories of the critique of political economy.[30] In contrast to Althusser's "epistemological break", theNeue Marx-Lektüre proposed a unitary reading, interpreting Marx's early writings through the lens of his later critique of political economy.[31]
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A central methodological principle of theNeue Marx-Lektüre is the distinction between the "esoteric" and "exoteric" dimensions of Marx's work. This distinction, which Backhaus developed from a comment by Marx about Ricardo, posits that large parts of Marx's writings, particularly inDas Kapital, appear to operate within the framework of classical political economy (the exoteric dimension), while the true innovation of his work lies in its "esoteric" critique of the very constitution of these economic categories.[32] This approach is often framed as acritique of political economy rather than acritical political economy. While a critical political economy seeks to provide a more equitable or efficient management of economic categories like value, labor, and money, a critique of political economy challenges the very existence of these categories as natural or transhistorical, aiming to explain why social relations in capitalism take these specific forms.[33]
This approach leads to a critique of the "logical-historical method" associated with Engels, which interprets the sequence of categories inDas Kapital (from commodity to money to capital) as a reflection of their historical appearance.[35] TheNeue Marx-Lektüre argues that this sequence is purely systematic and logical, designed to reconstruct the conceptual architecture—the "ideal average"—of a fully developed capitalist society.[36][37] The project of reconstruction acknowledges that the esoteric argument is not always consistently presented by Marx, whose work can contain ambiguities between the esoteric and exoteric levels. Backhaus, for instance, argued that such misunderstandings "originat[e] in Marx himself".[18]
The most significant substantive contribution of theNeue Marx-Lektüre is its reconstruction of Marx's theory of value as a monetary theory.[38][39] It rejects the traditional Marxist and Ricardian view that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor time expended in its production and that money is merely a convenient technical instrument for measuring and circulating these pre-existing values.[40] According to Hans-Georg Backhaus, Marx's value theory should be understood fundamentally as a "critique of pre-monetary theories of value".[41][42] TheNeue Marx-Lektüre's approach is "anti-substantialist", stressing the importance of abstraction and social validation through exchange.[38] It argues:
This "monetary theory of value" critiques what it calls the "substantialist" fallacy of both classical political economy and traditional Marxism, which treat value as an inherent substance measurable in labor-hours.[49] While the monetary theory of value is a central pillar, its specific implications have been subject to internal debate. During the 1990s, Michael Heinrich put forward a critical view of Marx's theory of money as a commodity.[50] Following this, scholars like Ingo Stützle have argued that Marx's theory of commodity money, which posits that themoney commodity (e.g., gold) has intrinsic value, clashes with the reality of post-Bretton Woodsfiat money.[50] In response, other theorists associated with theNeue Marx-Lektüre, such as Dieter Wolf, Stephan Krüger, and Ansgar Knolle-Grothusen, have defended Marx's theory of commodity money against these critiques.[50]
The second major area of research within theNeue Marx-Lektüre is the theory of the state, known as theStaatsableitung (state derivation). Moving beyond the instrumentalist view of the state as a direct tool of the ruling class (as found in Lenin and traditional Marxism), the state derivation debate sought to explain thenecessity of the separation of the political from the economic in capitalist societies.[51][52]
The core argument is that the state's specific form—as an apparently neutral, public sphere separate from the private economic sphere—is logically derived from the nature of the commodity relation itself. Since social relations between private producers are mediated through things (commodities and money), society requires a separate instance that guarantees the general conditions of this exchange (e.g., property, contracts, legal equality). This instance, the state, must itself stand outside these private relations to secure them universally.[53] The state's form as an abstract, public authority is therefore homologous to the abstract form of value. Its seeming neutrality and its function as the guarantor of freedom and equality are real, not merely illusory, but this very form secures the reproduction of the capital relation.[54][55] The general capitalist interest that the state pursues is not a pre-existing entity but must be constantlyconstituted through a contested political process involving different fractions of capital and the lower classes.[56]
TheNeue Marx-Lektüre also leads to a profound critique of what it terms "worker-movement Marxism" (Arbeiterbewegungsmarxismus). It questions the traditional assumption that the proletariat is the automatic revolutionary subject destined by history to overthrow capitalism.[57]
The political conclusions of theNeue Marx-Lektüre align it with other anti-labor currents in Marxist thought. Its critique of the affirmation of labor implies that communism cannot be achieved by liberating labor from capital, but only by abolishing labor itself.[63] This has led to an affinity with the French theoretical current ofcommunisation, which argues that revolution must consist in the immediate abolition of capitalist social relations (value, money, labor, the state) rather than a transitional period of workers' management. The recent surge of interest in communisation theory in the Anglophone world has contributed to the wider dissemination of the ideas of theNeue Marx-Lektüre.[64]
A significant critique of theNeue Marx-Lektüre is its perceived formalism and its tendency to sidelineclass struggle. Critics argue that by focusing on the logical derivation of categories, the school presents a theory where "class antagonism... falls out of the... remit, or rather remains only as a logical derivative of the movement of the value-forms".[65] This focus on a "conceptually logical system" is said to leave theNeue Marx-Lektüre "spellbound to the logic of things", causing it to lose sight of the antagonistic social relations and the "violence contained within them" that constitute these very forms.[65] This is described as a "blind spot" shared with other form-analytic approaches like that of theWertkritik school orMoishe Postone, namely the "separation between struggle and structure".[66]
Other critics, writing from a perspective sympathetic to theNeue Marx-Lektüre's aims, have argued that the school "stops too early" in its reconstruction of Marx's work. According to this view, the earlyNeue Marx-Lektüre focused heavily on the analysis of circulation and the value-form in the opening chapters ofDas Kapital, but did not fully extend this analysis to the constitution of capital as a "self-valorizing value" within the production process.[67] This leads to a risk of reclaiming "Marx as a philosopher against Marx as an economist" and neglects the role of living labor in production as the ultimate source of capital's valorization and the site of social antagonism.[68] Another technical criticism is that the school's focus on money as a pure form of value paid insufficient attention to Marx's argument that, in a commodity-based system, the universal equivalent must itself be a commodity ("money as a commodity"), a link which grounds the translation of monetary magnitudes back into labour magnitudes.[69]
