Pub Date : 2022-02-07DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2031030
E. Brancaccio, M. Passarella
This essay critically examines a statement made by former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, before and during a debate with one of the authors. Blanchard argued that a Keynesian “revolution” is needed to avert a future “catastrophe.” But analyzing the historical process this essay names the law of capital’s reproduction and tendency toward centralization leads to a grim prediction: the tendency of free capital to centralize and thereby jeopardize all other freedoms threatens today’s liberal-democratic hegemonic institutions. In the face of this prospect, neither Keynesian policy nor a universal basic income seem adequate. The only revolution able to avert catastrophe is the redefinition of the most powerful tool in the history of political struggles: collective planning, subversively regarded as a factor for developing free social individuality and a newly liberated human being.
{"title":"Catastrophe or Revolution?","authors":"E. Brancaccio, M. Passarella","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2031030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2031030","url":null,"abstract":"This essay critically examines a statement made by former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, before and during a debate with one of the authors. Blanchard argued that a Keynesian “revolution” is needed to avert a future “catastrophe.” But analyzing the historical process this essay names the law of capital’s reproduction and tendency toward centralization leads to a grim prediction: the tendency of free capital to centralize and thereby jeopardize all other freedoms threatens today’s liberal-democratic hegemonic institutions. In the face of this prospect, neither Keynesian policy nor a universal basic income seem adequate. The only revolution able to avert catastrophe is the redefinition of the most powerful tool in the history of political struggles: collective planning, subversively regarded as a factor for developing free social individuality and a newly liberated human being.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44271166","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 : 2022-01-23DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2021.2008766
P. Buck
This essay reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic, the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the months since Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, connecting these to the author’s book, The Punishment Monopoly: Tales of My Ancestors, Dispossession, and the Building of the United States. It argues that an understanding of the present conjuncture depends on centering the long history of dispossession and the punishment that enables it, and on the theft of land and labor on which U.S. sovereignty continues to depend. That foundation is, in the present conjuncture, being challenged by invigorated movements for racial and social justice and defended by equally invigorated fascistic defense of white supremacy and racialized capitalism. The author sees this clash and current ills not as a unique moment, but as a continuation of the arc of U.S. history, an arc that becomes visible if the history we tell emphasizes the foundation of racialized capitalism and its ongoing state-enforced theft, dispossession, and punishment.
{"title":"Reflections on the Present Conjuncture","authors":"P. Buck","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2021.2008766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2021.2008766","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic, the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the months since Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, connecting these to the author’s book, The Punishment Monopoly: Tales of My Ancestors, Dispossession, and the Building of the United States. It argues that an understanding of the present conjuncture depends on centering the long history of dispossession and the punishment that enables it, and on the theft of land and labor on which U.S. sovereignty continues to depend. That foundation is, in the present conjuncture, being challenged by invigorated movements for racial and social justice and defended by equally invigorated fascistic defense of white supremacy and racialized capitalism. The author sees this clash and current ills not as a unique moment, but as a continuation of the arc of U.S. history, an arc that becomes visible if the history we tell emphasizes the foundation of racialized capitalism and its ongoing state-enforced theft, dispossession, and punishment.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41372268","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026755
J. Gregson
Jason Hannan’s Ethics under Capital provides a compelling contribution to contemporary social and ethical theory, examining the contemporary culture wars and thereby developing a stimulating analysis of the cultural and ethical crises that liberal capitalism creates. Central to Hannan’s analysis is Alasdair MacIntyre, the ex-Marxist turned Thomistic Aristotelian. Hannan argues for MacIntyre’s continuing relevance to both critical inquiry and the anticapitalist tradition.
{"title":"Ethics under Capital: MacIntyre, Communication, and the Culture Wars, by Jason Hannan. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.","authors":"J. Gregson","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026755","url":null,"abstract":"Jason Hannan’s Ethics under Capital provides a compelling contribution to contemporary social and ethical theory, examining the contemporary culture wars and thereby developing a stimulating analysis of the cultural and ethical crises that liberal capitalism creates. Central to Hannan’s analysis is Alasdair MacIntyre, the ex-Marxist turned Thomistic Aristotelian. Hannan argues for MacIntyre’s continuing relevance to both critical inquiry and the anticapitalist tradition.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47676345","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026757
R. Khachaturian
Interest in the state is once again growing in contemporary critical theory, prompted by changes in state power in the neoliberal period and by decentralized social movements’ inability to meaningfully impact state policy or carve out autonomous spaces beyond the state’s reach. Noting this period of reflexive antistatism since the turn of the millennium, the edited volume The Future of the State rests on two key premises: first, that the ongoing crisis is not just that of the neoliberal state but of the very concept of the state; and second, that the radical Left lacks an affirmative theory of state power and how to exercise it. In the introduction, volume editor Artemy Magun thus points to a project of reviving a theory of the democratic polity and of a possible “state of the future.”
{"title":"The Future of the State","authors":"R. Khachaturian","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026757","url":null,"abstract":"Interest in the state is once again growing in contemporary critical theory, prompted by changes in state power in the neoliberal period and by decentralized social movements’ inability to meaningfully impact state policy or carve out autonomous spaces beyond the state’s reach. Noting this period of reflexive antistatism since the turn of the millennium, the edited volume The Future of the State rests on two key premises: first, that the ongoing crisis is not just that of the neoliberal state but of the very concept of the state; and second, that the radical Left lacks an affirmative theory of state power and how to exercise it. In the introduction, volume editor Artemy Magun thus points to a project of reviving a theory of the democratic polity and of a possible “state of the future.”","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41961955","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026748
Rodrigo Steimberg
This essay engages the debate around the Althusserian concept of the void, presented in “The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter.” While Althusser claimed that an aleatory void is needed for a structural transformation to take place, his commentators object to linking the concepts of the void and the encounter. However, both Althusser and his commentators rely on the concept of the pure void to explain such a transformation, an idea that Hegel rejects. This essay shows that Hegel’s dialectics already provide a conceptual framework for grasping the transformation of social structures resulting from internal contradictions.
{"title":"Althusser and the Absolute Beginning","authors":"Rodrigo Steimberg","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026748","url":null,"abstract":"This essay engages the debate around the Althusserian concept of the void, presented in “The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter.” While Althusser claimed that an aleatory void is needed for a structural transformation to take place, his commentators object to linking the concepts of the void and the encounter. However, both Althusser and his commentators rely on the concept of the pure void to explain such a transformation, an idea that Hegel rejects. This essay shows that Hegel’s dialectics already provide a conceptual framework for grasping the transformation of social structures resulting from internal contradictions.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41653173","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026753
N. Stevenson
A reassessment of Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory is timely given the recent revival of interest in his life and work and the critical questions he poses for the endemic violence of late capitalism. This essay considers Marcuse’s ideas on liberation and a postwork future from the viewpoint of the 1960s before examining attempts to relocate his scholarship in the present. The essay focuses on the dialectical nature of Marcuse’s writings and points to critical possibilities for a society beyond the one-dimensional present in a future world that will have socialized the economy and liberated nature while having broken with the puritan ethic, thereby enabling citizens to live more peaceful and fulfilled lives. But Marcuse remains a problematic intellectual for socialists to the extent of his distance from the working-class movement. His work therefore needs to be carefully positioned in relation to relevant New Left voices that remain critical of his intellectual and cultural production.
{"title":"Herbert Marcuse as a Critical Intellectual: The New Left and Alternative Socialist Futures","authors":"N. Stevenson","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026753","url":null,"abstract":"A reassessment of Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory is timely given the recent revival of interest in his life and work and the critical questions he poses for the endemic violence of late capitalism. This essay considers Marcuse’s ideas on liberation and a postwork future from the viewpoint of the 1960s before examining attempts to relocate his scholarship in the present. The essay focuses on the dialectical nature of Marcuse’s writings and points to critical possibilities for a society beyond the one-dimensional present in a future world that will have socialized the economy and liberated nature while having broken with the puritan ethic, thereby enabling citizens to live more peaceful and fulfilled lives. But Marcuse remains a problematic intellectual for socialists to the extent of his distance from the working-class movement. His work therefore needs to be carefully positioned in relation to relevant New Left voices that remain critical of his intellectual and cultural production.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42243482","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026756
N. Ali
The article reviews the recently published volume, Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel, edited by Hicham Safieddine, translated by Angela Giordano. The focus of the review is to argue that Amel’s Marxian analysis is reducible neither to the project of National Liberation, nor to theories of uneven development, but has to be considered in relation to the influences of 20th century French epistemology and structuralism. Amel’s work opens up major conceptual problems that are crucial to contemporary Marxism such as: the relation between idealism and materialism, and structuralism and dialectics. Most importantly, Amel did not simply prioritize anti-colonialism over anti-capitalism, rather he aimed to provide a systematic theory for the analysis of colonization from within the mechanisms of capitalist domination.
{"title":"Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel","authors":"N. Ali","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026756","url":null,"abstract":"The article reviews the recently published volume, Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings of Mahdi Amel, edited by Hicham Safieddine, translated by Angela Giordano. The focus of the review is to argue that Amel’s Marxian analysis is reducible neither to the project of National Liberation, nor to theories of uneven development, but has to be considered in relation to the influences of 20th century French epistemology and structuralism. Amel’s work opens up major conceptual problems that are crucial to contemporary Marxism such as: the relation between idealism and materialism, and structuralism and dialectics. Most importantly, Amel did not simply prioritize anti-colonialism over anti-capitalism, rather he aimed to provide a systematic theory for the analysis of colonization from within the mechanisms of capitalist domination.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43468961","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026752
Bruna Furlan Miranda Della Torre, Eduardo Altheman
This essay discusses the relation between Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, with their dialogue on the political events of the 1960s student movements as its main axis. While these two critical theorists are usually taken as antithetical in their positions regarding this issue, the essay problematizes such a dualist conception by resorting not only to their theoretical works but also to their unpublished correspondence and other public interventions. The aim is to contextualize such texts and letters to present a more complex view of the debate in question.
{"title":"“Nicht mitmachen!” and “Weitermachen!”: Rereading Adorno and Marcuse on Theory and Praxis","authors":"Bruna Furlan Miranda Della Torre, Eduardo Altheman","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026752","url":null,"abstract":"This essay discusses the relation between Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, with their dialogue on the political events of the 1960s student movements as its main axis. While these two critical theorists are usually taken as antithetical in their positions regarding this issue, the essay problematizes such a dualist conception by resorting not only to their theoretical works but also to their unpublished correspondence and other public interventions. The aim is to contextualize such texts and letters to present a more complex view of the debate in question.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48285853","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026750
Diego Martínez-Zarazúa
To construct a dialogue between Marx and Heidegger, this essay reads the first volume of Capital together with Heidegger’s writings on technology, contending there is a common concern over the impoverishment of things and, more precisely, of their qualitative consistency that occurs under the sway of capitalism/modern technology. Regarding Marx, the essay argues for reading Capital in an ontological key, thereby placing it in the same philosophical register as Heidegger, and for conceiving it as a description of the impoverishment of beings, the reduction of their being to value. The essay then takes Heidegger’s writings on technology as corresponding to Capital, arguing that modern technology also leads to the same ontological Dürftigkeit. Finally, the essay succinctly sketches what Heidegger’s poietic way out of this situation might be, which in essence coincides with Marx’s position.
{"title":"When Things Impoverish: An Approach to Marx’s Analysis of Capitalism in Conjunction with Heidegger’s Concern over Technology","authors":"Diego Martínez-Zarazúa","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026750","url":null,"abstract":"To construct a dialogue between Marx and Heidegger, this essay reads the first volume of Capital together with Heidegger’s writings on technology, contending there is a common concern over the impoverishment of things and, more precisely, of their qualitative consistency that occurs under the sway of capitalism/modern technology. Regarding Marx, the essay argues for reading Capital in an ontological key, thereby placing it in the same philosophical register as Heidegger, and for conceiving it as a description of the impoverishment of beings, the reduction of their being to value. The essay then takes Heidegger’s writings on technology as corresponding to Capital, arguing that modern technology also leads to the same ontological Dürftigkeit. Finally, the essay succinctly sketches what Heidegger’s poietic way out of this situation might be, which in essence coincides with Marx’s position.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48865666","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 : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2022.2026749
Joel Wainwright
This essay provides a concise review of the meanings of praxis, emphasizing its complex evolution since Aristotle formulated it within a triad of concepts. While the transformation of the concept owes something to Hegel, Marx’s writings in 1844–6 (not fully published until the twentieth century) gave praxis a central role in Left philosophy. Yet this inheritance is complex and uncertain. Notwithstanding many profound elaborations on the philosophy of praxis, the concept remains at once fundamental yet vague, ostensibly materialist yet metaphysical, and therefore worthy of questioning.
{"title":"Praxis","authors":"Joel Wainwright","doi":"10.1080/08935696.2022.2026749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2026749","url":null,"abstract":"This essay provides a concise review of the meanings of praxis, emphasizing its complex evolution since Aristotle formulated it within a triad of concepts. While the transformation of the concept owes something to Hegel, Marx’s writings in 1844–6 (not fully published until the twentieth century) gave praxis a central role in Left philosophy. Yet this inheritance is complex and uncertain. Notwithstanding many profound elaborations on the philosophy of praxis, the concept remains at once fundamental yet vague, ostensibly materialist yet metaphysical, and therefore worthy of questioning.","PeriodicalId":45610,"journal":{"name":"Rethinking Marxism-A Journal of Economics Culture & Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45073760","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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