Posts Tagged ‘marx’
La Teoría Marxista hoy – Problemas y perspectivas
Con este libro, de autoría colectiva, pretendemos trascender el espacio de las aulas virtuales para llegar a un público mucho más amplio. Nos mueve el deseo de revitalizar y enriquecer el debate en torno del marxismo como imprescindible corpus teórico de nuestro tiempo y como no menos indispensable “guía para la acción”, como filosofía práctica que nos permite no sólo entender el mundo, sino ambién cambiarlo. Este volumen de CLACSO es el resultado de un esfuerzo institucional dirigido a construir un ámbito de formación interdisciplinaria que, nutrido en las distintas variantes del pensamiento crítico, facilite el siempre inacabado proceso formativo de los investigadores sociales.
A lição de método de Marx e o legado de Hobsbawm
Paul Valéry, no início de sua “Introdução ao Método de Leonardo da Vinci”, disse que “o que fica de um homem é o que nos leva a pensar seu nome e as obras que fazem desse nome um signo de admiração, de ódio ou de indiferença”. A obra de Eric Hobsbawm é um signo de admiração e de lições para o século XXI. Em um de seus últimos trabalhos, reafirmou sua confiança política e metodológica na obra de Marx: “o liberalismo econômico e o liberalismo político, sozinhos ou combinados, não conseguem oferecer uma solução para os problemas do século XX. Mais uma vez chegou a hora de levar Marx a sério”.
Marcuse, Fromm and Dunayevskaya: A New Window on Critical Theory
During the years 1954 to 1978, the Marxist-Humanist and feminist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya corresponded separately but intensively with two noted members of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. The correspondence covered dialectical social theory, socialist humanism, the structure and contradictions of modern capitalism, and feminism and revolution. As a whole, these exchanges illustrate the deeply Marxist and humanist concerns of all three of these thinkers. The correspondence also highlights their significant differences as they discussed the degree to which the ideas of Marx and Hegel could continue to underpin an analysis of capitalist modernity and its forces of opposition.
Dialectics and difference: against Harvey’s dialectical ‘post-Marxism’
David Harvey’s recent book, Justice, nature and the geography of difference (JNGD), engages with a central philosophical debate that continues to dominate human geography: the tension between the radical Marxist project of recent decades and the apparently disempowering relativism and ‘play of difference’ of postmodern thought. In this book, Harvey continues to argue for a revised ‘post-Marxist’ approach in human geography which remains based on Hegelian-Marxian principles of dialectical thought. This article develops a critique of that stance, drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
I argue that dialectical thinking, as well as Harvey’s version of ‘post-Marxism’, has been undermined by the wide-ranging ‘post-’ critique. I suggest that Harvey has failed to appreciate the full force of this critique and the implications it has for ‘post-Marxist’ ontology and epistemology. I argue that ‘post-Marxism’, along with much contemporary human geography, is constrained by an inflexible ontology which excessively prioritizes space in the theory produced, and which implements inflexible concepts. Instead, using the insights of several ‘post-’ writers, I contend there is a need to develop an ontology of ‘context’ leading to the production of ‘contextual theories’. Such theories utilize flexible concepts in a multi-layered understanding of ontology and epistemology. I compare how an approach which produces a ‘contextual theory’ might lead to more politically empowering theory than ‘post-Marxism’ with reference to one of Harvey’s case studies in JNGD.
Working Out Marx – Marxism and the End of the Work Society
Reading the Communist Manifesto against the contemporary background of massive unemployment, the author argues that Marx’s theory of work is no longer adequate to tackle the problem of ‘workers without work’ and suggests that it has to be reformulated in such a way that its normative intuitions and its critical impulses can be maintained. In the first part, he presents a philosophical critique of Marxism that is inspired by Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. In the second part, he presents a sociological critique of Marxism and argues that the theory of the alienation of work implies a justification of work and the work society. Finally, in the last part, the author presents an ideological critique of Marxism that is inspired by Marcel Mauss’ sociology of the gift. Criticising the contractualist assumptions of workfare solutions, he proposes a package solution for a radical decommodification of the labour market by means of a disjunction of income and work.
Deleuzian Politics? A Survey and Some Suggestions
This article surveys and evaluates the broad field of Deleuzian political theory with particular reference to its novel implications for anglophone cultural theory. It opens by discussing Mengue’s and Hallward’s recent critical studies of Deleuze and the wider problem of evaluating the normative and descriptive function of key Deleuzian concepts. It goes on to consider the specificity of Deleuzian approaches to the key notion of ‘essentialism’ with reference to a comparison between the ideas of Manuel Delanda and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, before moving into a consideration of recent appropriations of Deleuzian philosophy for the theorisation of gender and race. From there it goes on to consider various Marxist and post-Marxist uses of Deleuzian thought for the theorisation of capital, labour and the state in the work of writers such as Thoburn, Read and Lazaratto, following this with a consideration of recent debates over the status of democracy in Deleuze’s political thought, arguing against any liberal interpretations thereof that would minimise the anti-individualism of this ideas or collapse its advocacy of ‘rhizomatic’ relations into an argument for the universal desirability of market logics. It moves on from here to argue for the relevance of Deleuze and Guattari’s thought to green politics, and to the importance of understanding ‘affect’ as an irreducibly social, multi-directional and polyvalent phenomenon in recent cultural theory.
Marx and Education
Marx and Education is the first assessment of the educational thought of Karl Marx and its later influence. Marx’s thinking on education touches on many still current issues: about personal development, the nature of learning, and the ultimate aims of education, as well as the relations between the school and society. Robin Small explores Marx’s approach to each of these issues and in relating them to later developments brings the story up to the present day.
Foucault and Marx on Political Economy
It is perhaps true that every generation treats the revered thinkers of the previous generation as a “dead dog,” to quote Marx’s famous phrase. When I was in grad school I remember that Sartre in particular was dead to us, too tainted by humanism to be interesting. This was of course a shame. From a rather cursory observation of current conferences and publications it seems that a similar fate is befalling Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard. This may just be another example of a generational shift, but it also may have to do with the revival of interest in Marx and Marxist thought. Thus, focusing on one of these figures in particular, namely Foucault, I offer the following two paragraphs, paragraphs edited out of a published piece, as something of a provocation.
Thinking about Fromm and Marxism
Fromm actually began his attempt to unite Marxian class analysis with psychoanalysis in a critique of the criminal justice system, rather than in the study of fascism as such.
Fromm’s most important contributions to Marxism came after World War II, when he championed a specifically Marxist humanist standpoint in the public sphere in the U.S. As the radical psychologist Joel Kovel aptly notes, Fromm’s move away from orthodox Freudianism led to “the introduction of Marx’s humanism — the humanism of the 1844 Manuscripts — in place of Freudian instinct theory,” something that “distinguishes him from the other psychoanalytic Marxists of the time“. In Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud, Fromm acknowledged publicly that Marx was for him the more important of the two thinkers.
Marx, Weber and the Critique of Capitalism
Despite their undeniable differences, Marx and Weber have much in common in their appraisals of modern capitalism: they share a vision of the capitalist economic system as a universe where “individuals are directed by abstractions,” (Marx), where impersonal relations and objects [Versachlicht] replace personal relations of dependence, and where the accumulation of capital becomes an end in itself and, by and large, irrational. Their analysis of capitalism is inseparable from a critical posture—explicit in Marx, more ambivalent in Weber. But the content and inspiration of the critique are very different. And, whereas Marx banks on the possibility of overthrowing capitalism by workers of socialist persuasion, Weber is a fatalistic and resigned observer to the mode of production and administration that seem to him to be inevitable.
