Moishe Postone

Moishe Postone (April 17, 1942 – March 19, 2018) was a Canadian social theorist, historian, and professor of history at the University of Chicago. He is best known for his influential reinterpretation of Karl Marx's critique of political economy, articulated in his magnum opus, Time, Labor and Social Domination (1993).

Postone's work challenges fundamental tenets of Marxist thought. He argued that "traditional Marxism" misunderstands Marx's mature theory by framing it as a critique of capitalism from the "standpoint of labor"; Postone instead proposed that Marx's theory is a critique of labor in capitalism itself. According to him, the core problem of capitalism is not class exploitation based on market relations and private property, but a historically unique form of "abstract domination" by impersonal social structures that individuals themselves constitute. This domination is driven by the contradictory logic of capital, which he characterized as a "treadmill" dynamic that generates increasing material wealth alongside growing social precarity. Postone also applied his theoretical framework to analyze modern antisemitism, which he controversially described as a fetishized, one-sided form of anticapitalism.

Early life and education

Moishe Postone was born on April 17, 1942, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the oldest son of Evelyn and Abraham Postone. His father was a modern Orthodox rabbi, and his parents, who had met in a Jewish choir in Winnipeg, were immigrants from Eastern Europe. His mother had emigrated from Ukraine in the 1920s, and his father from Lithuania shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The rest of his father's immediate family perished in the Holocaust.