IS THERE a FUTURE for MARXISM? by the Same Author

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IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MARXISM? By the same author ALTHUSSER'S MARXISM SOUTHERN AFRICA AFTER SOWETO (with john Rogers) MARXISM AND PHILOSOPHY THE REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS OF KARL MARX IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MARXISM? Alex Callinicos M MACMILLAN PRESS LONOON © A. T. Callinicos 1982 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1982 Reprinted 1983 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-28479-7 ISBN 978-1-349-16677-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-16677-0 Contents Preface and Acknowledgements vn Definitions 1x Introduction 1 1 The 'Crisis of Marxism' 5 2 In the Beginning Was the Word 25 3 Althusser and the Return to Marx 53 4 Desire and Power 81 5 Difference and Contradiction 112 6 Relations of Production 142 7 For and Against Epistemology 168 8 Classical Marxism and Contemporary Capitalism 196 Notes and References 226 Name Index 252 Subject Index 258 v Preface and Acknowledgements Without the help of a number of people this book would not have appeared. I would like to thank the following especially: Tony Cliff, Tony Dodd, Duncan Hallas, Chris Harman, Alan Montefiore, Mike Rosen, Joanna Seddon, Colin Sparks. David Edgar first stirred me from my dogmatic slumber and made me realise that there was a case to answer. I am also grateful to the Master and Fellows of StPeter's College, Oxford, and to John Winckler and Anne-Lucie Norton at Macmillan's. The usual disclaimer that no one but myself is responsible for the outcome is more than usually appropriate in this case. I am painfully aware of the provisional and sketchy nature of the arguments in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. However, I offer this book in the hope that it may make some contribution to clarifying the issues raised by current debate on marxist theory. Vll Definitions The following terms have much currency in contemporary marxist writing. Since I have found it necessary to use them, and since they have a technical meaning, these definitions may be helpful. Mode of production designates more than simply the economy. It is best understood as a set of relations of production, the forces of production corresponding to them, and the social relations which can be deduced from these relations. So the concept of the capitalist mode of production includes not simply all the economic determina tions elaborated by Marx in Capital; it also includes, at the minimum, some basic definition of the capitalist state. Social formation is, by contrast, a more concrete concept. No mode of production in the pure form ever exists. What does exist are definite social formations in which different relations of production co-exist with, however, one set of relations prevailing over the others. Thus Marx in Capital analyses the (economic level of the) capitalist mode of production, Lenin in The Development of Capitalism in Russia (some aspects of) the Russian social formation. Nicos Poulantzas, populariser of this jargon, writes that 'social formations are not ... the concretisation and spatialisation of modes of production existing already in a state of abstract purity, but rather the particular form in which modes of production exist or are reproduced'. 1 Discourse is a generic term for both the activities of speaking and writing and their result, bodies of utterances and inscriptions. IX .

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A Socialist Schism

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Chris Harman

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Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy

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Alex Callinicos Ali Saqer*

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A People's History of the World

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A Brief History of Rank and File Movements

Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk McIlroy, John (2016) A brief history of rank and ﬁle movements. Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 44 (1-2) . pp. 31-65. ISSN 0301-7605 [Article] (doi:10.1080/03017605.2016.1173823) Final accepted version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/20157/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Works, including theses and research projects, may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from them, or their content changed in any way, without ﬁrst obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). They may not be sold or exploited commercially in any format or medium without the prior written permission of the copyright holder(s). Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author’s name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pag- ination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address: [email protected] The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated.
Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism

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Critical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxism: the Poverty of Theory Revisited

Critical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxism: The Poverty of Theory Revisited BRYAN D. PALMER Summary: This essay notes the extent to which poststructuralism/postmodernism have generally espoused hostility to historical materialism, surveys some representative examples of historical writing that have gravitated toward the new critical theory in opposition to Marxism, and closes with a discussion of the ironic evolution of a poststructurally inclined, anti-Marxist historiography. Counter to the prevailing ideological consensus that Marxism has been brought to its interpretive knees by a series of analytic challenges and the political collapse of the world's ostensibly "socialist" states, this essay argues that historical materialism has lost neither its power to interpret the past nor its relevance to the contemporary intellectual terrain. It is now a decade-and-one-half since Edward Thompson penned The Poverty of Theory: or an Orrery of Errors, and ten times as many years have passed since the publication of Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy.1 Whatever one may think about the advances in knowledge associated with historical materialism and Marxism, particularly in terms of the practice of historical writing, there is no denying that this sesquicentennial has been a problematic period in the making of communist society; the last fifteen years, moreover, are associated with the bleak end of socialism and the passing of Marxism as an intellectual force. Indeed, it is a curious conjuncture of our times that the
Where's the Working Class?

tripleC 16(2): 535-545, 2018 http://www.triple-c.at Where’s the Working Class? Peter Goodwin University of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), UK, Germany, [email protected] Abstract: From the Communist Manifesto onwards, the self-emancipation of the working class was central to Marx’s thought. And so it was for subsequent generations of Marxists including the later Engels, the pre-WW1 Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and Gramsci. But in much contemporary Marxist theory the active role of the working class seems at the least marginal and at the most completely written off. This article traces the perceived role of the working class in Marxist theory, from Marx and Engels, through the Second and Third Internationals, Stalinism and Maoism, through to the present day. It situates this in political developments changes in the nature of the working class over the last 200 years. It concludes by suggesting a number of questions about Marxism and the contemporary working class that anyone claim- ing to be a Marxist today needs to answer. Keywords: Marxism, proletariat, working class, self-emancipation 1. Introduction None of the authors in this Marx bicentenary issue believe that Marxism will be two hundred years old on May 5, 2018. Newly born babies, even ones who would turn out to be as sharp as Karl Marx, do not have such world views ready-made in their heads. It took more than two and a half decades for Marx to become a Marxist and for Marxism itself to be born. As to exactly when that was – and why – there would be a range of differing opinions.
Postmodernism, Historical Materialism and Chicana/O Cultural Studies

UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Previously Published Works Title Postmodernism, historical materialism and Chicana/o cultural studies Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9ph6b9s2 Journal Science & Society, 68(2) ISSN 0036-8237 Author Gonzalez, M Publication Date 2004 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California 161 Marcial González, “Postmodernism, Historical Materialism, and Chicana/o Cultural Studies,” Science and Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis 68:2 (Summer 2004): 161-186. Postmodernism, Historical Materialism and Chicana/o Cultural Studies Marcial González Today we are more fragmented than ever, which is terrible, which is beautiful. – Ruben Martínez (1998, 22) ABSTRACT: During the past two decades, critics have taken an interest in explaining the ideological ambivalence expressed in Chicana/o literature. Most critics correctly point out that Chicana/o ambivalence cannot be separated from the conflicted material realities historically experienced by Mexican Americans, but this view has not prevented some critics from tiptoeing into the idealist terrain of postmodernism. Postmodernist theory has provided Chicana/o criticism with conceptual tools for explaining the heterogeneity of culture, but its antagonism toward history and class analysis has limited the potential for Chicana/o studies to develop an effective social criticism. Two postmodernist terms used to describe ambivalence are “cultural schizophrenia” and “heterotopia.” Historical materialism •• a method that makes truth- claims about social existence after a rigorous critique of the concepts and ideas that emerge from that existence •• stands as a viable alternative to postmodernist theory for the interpretation of Chicana/o literature. In this essay, I examine the influence of postmodernist theory on Chicana/o cultural studies.