Postone's Reinterpretation of the Critique of Political Economy Confronted to the Contestation of Marx's Concept of "Labour"

Since the last years of the decade of 1950 take place a series of challenges to Marx and Marxism focused on the centrality that this tradition would have given to the production processes and to the concept of "labour". Thus, authors like Arendt, Habermas or Baudrillard have questioned Marx for reducing the ampleness of human action to mere "labour", understood as an activity of mediation with nature for satisfying needs, through which, in addition, man would realize himself once abolished the alienation imposed on labour in capitalism. This article attempts to confront these questions with the reinterpretation of Marx's critical theory proposed by Moishe Postone. In fact, this autor argues that Marx's theory is not a critique of capitalism from the standpoint of "labour", but rather a critique of "labour" as the fundamental social relation of capitalism. Here we'll try to emphasize the potential of this rereading not only to respond to those critics, but above all to reconsider the issues they raise within the device of an immanent critique of capitalism.