Re/centering the social subject: use value, social metabolism and anti-capitalist strategies

Abstract

This essay observes the critical and heterodox development of Bolívar Echeverría on the Marxist corpus, particularly in regards to the contents and scope of “use value”, an essential concept in the criticism of political economy yet not well developed by Marx. The persistence of use value as a “qualitative aspect of life” is connected with the politicity of the social subject and concrete universality and orientates the emancipatory social transformation and the current revolution contents. The text brings into account the notion of modernity as unexplored potential of different worlds and identities.