This essay criticises Arthur’s reading of Marx and especially Hegel against the background of important contributions to Hegel scholarship in the last decades. given some minor reconstructive work.’ (Arthur 2004, p. He claims that the categories of Hegel’s Logic and those of the beginning of Marx’s Capital show a ‘striking homology. Arthur’s ‘New Dialectic’ has had a strong impact on Marx scholarship in the Anglophone world by highlighting the correlation of Hegel’s systematic (non-historical) dialectic with Marx’s central oeuvre, Capital, and especially Marx’s theory of the value form. The second part moves on to examine the further evolution of Marx's ideas as found in later texts, particularly the Grundrisse. Marx's views are first discussed as expressed in the perennially-cited text, the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.

While Marx's position was radically different from conventional anti-consumerism it is equally incompatible with complacent affirmations of 'the consumer society' in that Marx at all times aimed at a revolutionary change which will transform consumption both quantitatively and qualitatively. It is argued that Marx regarded the expansion of needs entailed by capitalism in a generally favourable way, but saw capitalism as a system yoking use-value to the imperatives of profit accumulation, hence limiting and subjugating the consumption of the masses. This essay revisits Karl Marx's understanding of consumption, in an effort to rescue it from the overshadowing legacy of critical theory which has construed Marx as inveighing against false needs.

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