Giorgio Agamben said in an interview that ‘thought is the courage of hopelessness’ – an insight which is especially pertinent for our historical moment, when even the most pessimistic diagnostics as a rule finish with an uplifting hint at some version of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The true courage is not to imagine an alternative, but to accept the consequences of the fact that there is no clearly discernible alternative: the dream of an alternative is a sign of theoretical cowardice, it functions as a fetish which prevents us from thinking through to the end the deadlock of our predicament. In short, the true courage is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most likely the headlight of another train approaching us from the opposite direction. Which, then, are the taboos to be broken in imagining a future outside the constraints of the existing order? There are (at least) three. First, one should dismiss not only the two main forms of twentieth-century state socialism (the social democratic welfare state and the Stalinist party dictatorship) but also the very standard by means of which the radical Left usually measures the failure of the first two: the libertarian vision of communism as association, multitude, councils, and anti-representational direct democracy based on citizen’s permanent engagement. The second taboo to be broken concerns the problem of resentment. One should totally reject the predominant optimistic view according to which in communism envy will be left behind as a remainder of capitalist competition, to be replaced by solidary collaboration and pleasure in other’s pleasures. The third taboo concerns democracy. When Badiou claims that democracy is our fetish, this statement is to be taken literally – in the precise Freudian sense – not just in the vague sense that we elevate democracy into our untouchable Absolute. ‘Democracy’ is the last thing we see before confronting the ‘lack’ constitutive of the social field, the fact that ‘there is no class relationship’, the trauma of social antagonism. It is as if, when confronted with the reality of domination and exploitation, of brutal social struggles, we can always add: yes, but we have democracy which gives us hope to resolve or at least regulate struggles, preventing their destructive explosion.
{"title":"Addressing the Impossible","authors":"S. Žižek","doi":"10.2307/J.CTT1BPMBN2.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/J.CTT1BPMBN2.20","url":null,"abstract":"Giorgio Agamben said in an interview that ‘thought is the courage of hopelessness’ – an insight which is especially pertinent for our historical moment, when even the most pessimistic diagnostics as a rule finish with an uplifting hint at some version of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The true courage is not to imagine an alternative, but to accept the consequences of the fact that there is no clearly discernible alternative: the dream of an alternative is a sign of theoretical cowardice, it functions as a fetish which prevents us from thinking through to the end the deadlock of our predicament. In short, the true courage is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most likely the headlight of another train approaching us from the opposite direction. Which, then, are the taboos to be broken in imagining a future outside the constraints of the existing order? There are (at least) three. First, one should dismiss not only the two main forms of twentieth-century state socialism (the social democratic welfare state and the Stalinist party dictatorship) but also the very standard by means of which the radical Left usually measures the failure of the first two: the libertarian vision of communism as association, multitude, councils, and anti-representational direct democracy based on citizen’s permanent engagement. The second taboo to be broken concerns the problem of resentment. One should totally reject the predominant optimistic view according to which in communism envy will be left behind as a remainder of capitalist competition, to be replaced by solidary collaboration and pleasure in other’s pleasures. The third taboo concerns democracy. When Badiou claims that democracy is our fetish, this statement is to be taken literally – in the precise Freudian sense – not just in the vague sense that we elevate democracy into our untouchable Absolute. ‘Democracy’ is the last thing we see before confronting the ‘lack’ constitutive of the social field, the fact that ‘there is no class relationship’, the trauma of social antagonism. It is as if, when confronted with the reality of domination and exploitation, of brutal social struggles, we can always add: yes, but we have democracy which gives us hope to resolve or at least regulate struggles, preventing their destructive explosion.","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126832976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Though the European radical left has not generally been of interest to mainstream political observers, it has nonetheless recently become the subject of significant media coverage. Such presentations have often fallen into two symmetrical pitfalls. On the one hand, left parties have sometimes been presented as completely new, with their historical development left unexamined. On the other hand, many editorialists and even academics have paid little attention to what is original about these organizations: some have seen them as a disagreeable avatar of the far left, others as a resurgent ‘traditional’ (and thus inoffensive) social democracy. In fact, the parties which have realized the most remarkable electoral gains certainly belong to a ‘new’ radical left, though their theoretical orientations and the strategic challenges they face find an echo in a historical sequence which is today largely forgotten: that of Eurocommunism. Despite important differences in political and economic conditions today, several strategic debates from the Eurocommunist period are still relevant. They concern the capacity of the radical left to escape both marginality and normalization; in other words, to approach power without its desires for transformation being absorbed or liquidated by existing institutions. In fact, the Eurocommunist legacy is rich with inspiration (the search for a middle way between social democracy and the far left) and potential assets (in defining a strategy adapted to current European societies and the multiplicity of dominations which run through them), but also with unresolved problems (concerning in particular the relationship to the capitalist state).
{"title":"The Heritage of Eurocommunism in the Contemporary Radical Left","authors":"F. Escalona","doi":"10.2307/j.ctt1bpmbn2.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1bpmbn2.8","url":null,"abstract":"Though the European radical left has not generally been of interest to mainstream political observers, it has nonetheless recently become the subject of significant media coverage. Such presentations have often fallen into two symmetrical pitfalls. On the one hand, left parties have sometimes been presented as completely new, with their historical development left unexamined. On the other hand, many editorialists and even academics have paid little attention to what is original about these organizations: some have seen them as a disagreeable avatar of the far left, others as a resurgent ‘traditional’ (and thus inoffensive) social democracy. In fact, the parties which have realized the most remarkable electoral gains certainly belong to a ‘new’ radical left, though their theoretical orientations and the strategic challenges they face find an echo in a historical sequence which is today largely forgotten: that of Eurocommunism. Despite important differences in political and economic conditions today, several strategic debates from the Eurocommunist period are still relevant. They concern the capacity of the radical left to escape both marginality and normalization; in other words, to approach power without its desires for transformation being absorbed or liquidated by existing institutions. In fact, the Eurocommunist legacy is rich with inspiration (the search for a middle way between social democracy and the far left) and potential assets (in defining a strategy adapted to current European societies and the multiplicity of dominations which run through them), but also with unresolved problems (concerning in particular the relationship to the capitalist state).","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122027075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For a certain North American and European left, revolution today names more a problem than it does a solution. I claim we no longer believe in revolution because we no longer adopt the perspective from which we see ourselves as revolutionaries, the perspective of the communist party. Absent this political perspective, only capitalism with its permanent crises, innovations, and transformations appears as capable of effecting revolutionary change. Fortunately, the crowds and demonstrations of the last decade suggest that a new party perspective may be emerging. The collective practices and intensities exhibited in current struggles, as well as the limits against which these struggles falter, are renewing the salience of the party question on the left. As people experience their collective power, the desire for something like a party is re-emerging, a party as the organized site of our belief in revolution. In this essay I focus on two, seemingly opposed, approaches to organization and revolution. My argument begins with Georg Lukacs’ account of the Leninist innovation: the realization that the core of historical materialism is the actuality of the proletarian revolution. This enables me to draw out the articulation of revolution, proletariat, party, and state central to the event of 1917. The force of this articulation comes from anticipation, the capacity of the future revolution to coordinate the actions that will bring it about. I then turn to our present setting wherein the links between revolution, proletariat, party, and state have dissolved. Here I engage Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s discussion in Commonwealth, the third volume of their influential Empire trilogy. For Hardt and Negri, revolution involves biopolitics rather than the state, democracy rather than the party, and identity rather than the proletariat. The problem with their account is that it precludes the temporality that would produce revolutionary practice. Revolution is present as potential, a possibility that flows out of what we are already doing. Hardt and Negri view revolution as a continuation of the practices of biopolitical production and capitalism’s own revolutionary innovation. There is no revolutionary break, no negation of some practices, trajectories, and potentials in the forwarding of emancipatory egalitarian aims. Theirs is thus a ‘revolution without revolution’. In contrast, the future projected in Lenin’s assumption of the actuality of revolution coordinates political action to bring revolution into being. The party anticipates the revolution, materializing the belief that makes revolution possible not just as an outflow or overflow of present possibilities, but as an effect of the negation of some practices, trajectories, and potentials and the forcing of others.
{"title":"The Actuality Of Revolution","authors":"J. Dean","doi":"10.2307/j.ctt1bpmbn2.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1bpmbn2.6","url":null,"abstract":"For a certain North American and European left, revolution today names more a problem than it does a solution. I claim we no longer believe in revolution because we no longer adopt the perspective from which we see ourselves as revolutionaries, the perspective of the communist party. Absent this political perspective, only capitalism with its permanent crises, innovations, and transformations appears as capable of effecting revolutionary change. Fortunately, the crowds and demonstrations of the last decade suggest that a new party perspective may be emerging. The collective practices and intensities exhibited in current struggles, as well as the limits against which these struggles falter, are renewing the salience of the party question on the left. As people experience their collective power, the desire for something like a party is re-emerging, a party as the organized site of our belief in revolution. In this essay I focus on two, seemingly opposed, approaches to organization and revolution. My argument begins with Georg Lukacs’ account of the Leninist innovation: the realization that the core of historical materialism is the actuality of the proletarian revolution. This enables me to draw out the articulation of revolution, proletariat, party, and state central to the event of 1917. The force of this articulation comes from anticipation, the capacity of the future revolution to coordinate the actions that will bring it about. I then turn to our present setting wherein the links between revolution, proletariat, party, and state have dissolved. Here I engage Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s discussion in Commonwealth, the third volume of their influential Empire trilogy. For Hardt and Negri, revolution involves biopolitics rather than the state, democracy rather than the party, and identity rather than the proletariat. The problem with their account is that it precludes the temporality that would produce revolutionary practice. Revolution is present as potential, a possibility that flows out of what we are already doing. Hardt and Negri view revolution as a continuation of the practices of biopolitical production and capitalism’s own revolutionary innovation. There is no revolutionary break, no negation of some practices, trajectories, and potentials in the forwarding of emancipatory egalitarian aims. Theirs is thus a ‘revolution without revolution’. In contrast, the future projected in Lenin’s assumption of the actuality of revolution coordinates political action to bring revolution into being. The party anticipates the revolution, materializing the belief that makes revolution possible not just as an outflow or overflow of present possibilities, but as an effect of the negation of some practices, trajectories, and potentials and the forcing of others.","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116663468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-03-19DOI: 10.1057/9780230227675_10
C. Rude
{"title":"The Role of Financial Discipline in Imperial Strategy","authors":"C. Rude","doi":"10.1057/9780230227675_10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230227675_10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115967984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Finance and American Empire","authors":"L. Panitch, S. Gindin","doi":"10.1057/9780230227675_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230227675_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134624495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2009-03-19DOI: 10.4324/9780203392386_chapter_13
H. Moghissi, Saeed Rahnema
In all the major political developments in twentieth-century Iran, from the constitutional revolution of 1906-11 and the nationalization of the oil industry in early 1950s to the political upheavals of early 1960s and the 1979 revolution, workers were major participants and demonstrated a high level of militancy. However, governments of diverse persuasions, from the Pahlavis' modernizing dictatorial monarchy to the liberal nationalists, and the Islamists' pre-modern theocracy, have ignored workers' legitimate demands and suppressed their dissent. Many factors account for this failure, not least of them being the qualitative and quantitative weaknesses of the working class-a result of the specific nature of capitalist development and industrialization in Iran. Because of its own internal weaknesses, the workers' movement has depended historically on left social democratic and communist movements both organizationally and intellectually. In fact, socialist and communist ideas about the workers' right to form unions and emancipate themselves preceded the emergence of the working class itself. Yet dependence on external leadership made Iranian workers susceptible to the theoretical and political wavering and internal conflicts of the country's left intelligentsia. As well, the continuous suppression of the left by successive dictatorial regimes inevitably also affected the militancy and organizational efficacy of the working-class movement.
{"title":"The Working Class and the Islamic State in Iran","authors":"H. Moghissi, Saeed Rahnema","doi":"10.4324/9780203392386_chapter_13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203392386_chapter_13","url":null,"abstract":"In all the major political developments in twentieth-century Iran, from the constitutional revolution of 1906-11 and the nationalization of the oil industry in early 1950s to the political upheavals of early 1960s and the 1979 revolution, workers were major participants and demonstrated a high level of militancy. However, governments of diverse persuasions, from the Pahlavis' modernizing dictatorial monarchy to the liberal nationalists, and the Islamists' pre-modern theocracy, have ignored workers' legitimate demands and suppressed their dissent. Many factors account for this failure, not least of them being the qualitative and quantitative weaknesses of the working class-a result of the specific nature of capitalist development and industrialization in Iran. Because of its own internal weaknesses, the workers' movement has depended historically on left social democratic and communist movements both organizationally and intellectually. In fact, socialist and communist ideas about the workers' right to form unions and emancipate themselves preceded the emergence of the working class itself. Yet dependence on external leadership made Iranian workers susceptible to the theoretical and political wavering and internal conflicts of the country's left intelligentsia. As well, the continuous suppression of the left by successive dictatorial regimes inevitably also affected the militancy and organizational efficacy of the working-class movement.","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114567431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
En su discurso en un encuentro con banqueros locales en el otono de 2003, y luego de la implosion calamitosa de la economia de su pais, el presidente argentino Nestor Kirchner anuncio su intencion de rescatar a la economia argentina de las ruinas del neoliberalismo. Pero, declaro, “es imposible construir un proyecto nacional si no consolidamos una burguesia nacional”1. De hecho, este discurso fue solo uno entre los tantos que hizo luego de su asuncion en mayo resaltando la necesidad de un “capitalismo nacional”. Kirchner no ha estado solo en esto. En Brasil, el ascenso de Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva y el PT al poder ha reavivado el discurso de un pacto social entre trabajo y capital, y la posibilidad de labrar un espacio para el desarrollo brasilero mediante una alianza con los industriales “nacionales” –representados mas explicitamente en la eleccion del magnate textil Jose Alencar como vicepresidente de Lula. Y tanto Kirchner como Lula siguen la linea del presidente venezolano Hugo Chavez, quien frente a la abierta hostilidad de EUA ha denostado repetidas veces a la ortodoxia neoliberal, exhortando a los paises en desarrollo a reclamar el legado de los modelos de desarrollo nacionales.
2003年9月，阿根廷总统内斯托尔·基什内尔(Nestor Kirchner)在与当地银行家的一次会议上发表讲话，宣布他打算将阿根廷经济从新自由主义的废墟中拯救出来。但是，我说:“如果我们不巩固民族资产阶级，就不可能建立民族工程。”事实上，这只是他在5月亚松森会议后发表的众多强调“国家资本主义”必要性的演讲之一。在这方面，基什内尔并不孤单。在巴西,Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva)的崛起和葡免职了上台演讲劳动和资本之间的社会契约,和发展空间能否犁通过与巴西国家工业“—”代表更多的报价。在选择大亨纺织何塞鲁拉的阿伦卡尔担任副主席。基什内尔和卢拉都遵循委内瑞拉总统乌戈·查韦斯的路线，后者面对美国的公开敌意，多次谴责新自由主义正统，敦促发展中国家恢复国家发展模式的遗产。
{"title":"¿Reviviendo el estado desarrollista?: el mito de la “burguesía nacional”","authors":"Vivek Chibber","doi":"10.14409/DA.V1I11.1236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14409/DA.V1I11.1236","url":null,"abstract":"En su discurso en un encuentro con banqueros locales en el otono de 2003, y luego de la implosion calamitosa de la economia de su pais, el presidente argentino Nestor Kirchner anuncio su intencion de rescatar a la economia argentina de las ruinas del neoliberalismo. Pero, declaro, “es imposible construir un proyecto nacional si no consolidamos una burguesia nacional”1. De hecho, este discurso fue solo uno entre los tantos que hizo luego de su asuncion en mayo resaltando la necesidad de un “capitalismo nacional”. Kirchner no ha estado solo en esto. En Brasil, el ascenso de Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva y el PT al poder ha reavivado el discurso de un pacto social entre trabajo y capital, y la posibilidad de labrar un espacio para el desarrollo brasilero mediante una alianza con los industriales “nacionales” –representados mas explicitamente en la eleccion del magnate textil Jose Alencar como vicepresidente de Lula. Y tanto Kirchner como Lula siguen la linea del presidente venezolano Hugo Chavez, quien frente a la abierta hostilidad de EUA ha denostado repetidas veces a la ortodoxia neoliberal, exhortando a los paises en desarrollo a reclamar el legado de los modelos de desarrollo nacionales.","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133108067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-03-01DOI: 10.1142/9789812795496_0005
M. Mamdani
We have just ended a century replete with violence. The twentieth century was possibly more violent than any other in recorded history. Just think of world wars and revolutions, and of colonial conquests and anti-colonial resistance, and, indeed, of revolutions and counter-revolutions. Yet even if the expanse of this violence is staggering, it makes sense to us. If we are to make political violence thinkable, we need to understand the process by which victims and perpetrators become polarized as group identities. Who do perpetrators of violence think they are? And who do they think they will eliminate through violence? Even if the identities propelled through violence are drawn from outside the domain of politics--such as race (from biology) or ethnicity or religion (from culture)--we need to denaturalize these identities by outlining their history and illuminating their links with organized forms of power.
{"title":"Making Sense of Political Violence in Postcolonial Africa","authors":"M. Mamdani","doi":"10.1142/9789812795496_0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812795496_0005","url":null,"abstract":"We have just ended a century replete with violence. The twentieth century was possibly more violent than any other in recorded history. Just think of world wars and revolutions, and of colonial conquests and anti-colonial resistance, and, indeed, of revolutions and counter-revolutions. Yet even if the expanse of this violence is staggering, it makes sense to us. If we are to make political violence thinkable, we need to understand the process by which victims and perpetrators become polarized as group identities. Who do perpetrators of violence think they are? And who do they think they will eliminate through violence? Even if the identities propelled through violence are drawn from outside the domain of politics--such as race (from biology) or ethnicity or religion (from culture)--we need to denaturalize these identities by outlining their history and illuminating their links with organized forms of power.","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129567068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1995-03-18DOI: 10.4324/9780203300527_chapter_3.6
Frances Fox Piven
Capitalism has penetrated societies and spanned the globe. In this sense, it is homogenizing social life. But instead of universalizing popular politics, capitalist expansion is weakening and conceivably destroying working class politics. The advance of international markets and technological change are eviscerating the mass production industries, at least in the mother countries, diminishing the working class numbers and organizations which once gave life to the idea of the proletariat as the hope of humankind. And the new mobility of capitalist investment is also reducing the autonomy of the nation state, with a crushing impact on existing forms of working class organization and influence. Moreover, instead of wiping out all ancient prejudices, a globalizing capital is prompting a rising tide of fractious racial, ethnic, religious and gender conflict. It is contributing to an identity politics which expresses not only the ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions which were presumably to be swept aside, but the apparently inexhaustible human capacity to create new prejudices and opinions, albeit often in the name of an imagined ancient past.
{"title":"Globalizing Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics","authors":"Frances Fox Piven","doi":"10.4324/9780203300527_chapter_3.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203300527_chapter_3.6","url":null,"abstract":"Capitalism has penetrated societies and spanned the globe. In this sense, it is homogenizing social life. But instead of universalizing popular politics, capitalist expansion is weakening and conceivably destroying working class politics. The advance of international markets and technological change are eviscerating the mass production industries, at least in the mother countries, diminishing the working class numbers and organizations which once gave life to the idea of the proletariat as the hope of humankind. And the new mobility of capitalist investment is also reducing the autonomy of the nation state, with a crushing impact on existing forms of working class organization and influence. Moreover, instead of wiping out all ancient prejudices, a globalizing capital is prompting a rising tide of fractious racial, ethnic, religious and gender conflict. It is contributing to an identity politics which expresses not only the ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions which were presumably to be swept aside, but the apparently inexhaustible human capacity to create new prejudices and opinions, albeit often in the name of an imagined ancient past.","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1995-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125101604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1995-03-18DOI: 10.1080/07393149508429754
L. Panitch
Ralph Miliband stood as a beacon on the international Left. He epitomized what it meant to be a creative and independent socialist intellectual, and he provided consistent leadership in defining the issues for critical engagement. He ranks among those most directly associated with the emergence of the British New Left after 1956, and for the flourishing Marxist scholarship it spawned in the following decades. As with Edward Thompson in the field of social history, or Raymond Williams in cultural studies, Ralph Miliband took the lead in political studies, clearing the ground and establishing the foundations for, as he once put it, 'what has so long been lacking, namely a radically-oriented, critical and demystifying discipline of political studies'. For those of us nurtured in the fertile and open Marxism that Miliband, like Thompson and Williams, practised, the contemporary spate of charges that economism, determinism or totalitarianism are inherently inscribed in Marxist ideas and practice can only appear as but a reversion to the shabbiest of stereotypes, the crudest of caricatures.
{"title":"Ralph Miliband, Socialist Intellectual, 1924-1994","authors":"L. Panitch","doi":"10.1080/07393149508429754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393149508429754","url":null,"abstract":"Ralph Miliband stood as a beacon on the international Left. He epitomized what it meant to be a creative and independent socialist intellectual, and he provided consistent leadership in defining the issues for critical engagement. He ranks among those most directly associated with the emergence of the British New Left after 1956, and for the flourishing Marxist scholarship it spawned in the following decades. As with Edward Thompson in the field of social history, or Raymond Williams in cultural studies, Ralph Miliband took the lead in political studies, clearing the ground and establishing the foundations for, as he once put it, 'what has so long been lacking, namely a radically-oriented, critical and demystifying discipline of political studies'. For those of us nurtured in the fertile and open Marxism that Miliband, like Thompson and Williams, practised, the contemporary spate of charges that economism, determinism or totalitarianism are inherently inscribed in Marxist ideas and practice can only appear as but a reversion to the shabbiest of stereotypes, the crudest of caricatures.","PeriodicalId":364251,"journal":{"name":"Socialist Register","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1995-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128805077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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