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From shipwreck to commodity exchange: Robinson Crusoe, Hegel and Marx

journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-28, 03:55 authored by M Lazarus
Robinson Crusoe is a mythic character who lives not only in the popular imaginary but through the history of political and social thought. Defoe’s protagonist lives marooned on his island, isolated and apart from society. The narrative is a perfect naturalisation of the ‘bourgeois’ world, dependent on an ontology of the self-sufficient individual. This article analyses this lineage in the social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Later, Hegel used the novel to illustrate his dialectic of mastery/servitude. Challenging the atomism of the state of nature, Hegel’s theory of recognition gives an account of positive freedom, where the individual is formed in and through social interdependence. This sociality is continued by Marx, who satirises Defoe's novel in his value-form critique of political economy. The value-form provides insight into Robinson's island labour and Marx's difference with Locke's labour theory of value. For Marx, the myth of ‘natural man’ hides the domination of capitalist development and Robinson Crusoe reflects the internalisation of the abstract rationality of commodity society. However, Marx's immanent critique of the novel points to a radical idea of social life and freedom.

History

Journal

Philosophy and Social Criticism

Volume

48

Article number

ARTN 01914537211066863

Pagination

1302-1328

Location

London, Eng.

Open access

  • No

ISSN

0191-4537

eISSN

1461-734X

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Issue

9

Publisher

Sage Publications