Consciousness & Consent: Gramsci's Historical
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Telling the Truth About Class
TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT CLASS G. M. TAMÁS ne of the central questions of social theory has been the relationship Obetween class and knowledge, and this has also been a crucial question in the history of socialism. Differences between people – acting and knowing subjects – may influence our view of the chances of valid cognition. If there are irreconcilable discrepancies between people’s positions, going perhaps as far as incommensurability, then unified and rational knowledge resulting from a reasoned dialogue among persons is patently impossible. The Humean notion of ‘passions’, the Nietzschean notions of ‘resentment’ and ‘genealogy’, allude to the possible influence of such an incommensurability upon our ability to discover truth. Class may be regarded as a problem either in epistemology or in the philosophy of history, but I think that this separation is unwarranted, since if we separate epistemology and the philosophy of history (which is parallel to other such separations characteristic of bourgeois society itself) we cannot possibly avoid the rigidly-posed conundrum known as relativism. In speak- ing about class (and truth, and class and truth) we are the heirs of two socialist intellectual traditions, profoundly at variance with one another, although often intertwined politically and emotionally. I hope to show that, up to a point, such fusion and confusion is inevitable. All versions of socialist endeavour can and should be classified into two principal kinds, one inaugurated by Rousseau, the other by Marx. The two have opposite visions of the social subject in need of liberation, and these visions have determined everything from rarefied epistemological posi- tions concerning language and consciousness to social and political attitudes concerning wealth, culture, equality, sexuality and much else. -
Even Long After the Latter's Willingness to Act As a Party of Capital Was Plain To
Reviews 185 Dennis Dworkin, Cultural Mamism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). Ellen Meiksins Wood and John Bellamy Foster, Editors. In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997). "[Bly contrast to earlier Marxisms," declares Fredric Jameson in his contribution to In Defense of History, "[tlhe Marxisms .. that emerge from the present system of late capitalism .. [will] appear to be more cultural in character." (181) What might this mean? Is it a helpful assessment? To comprehend the significance of an evolving "cultural Marxism" requires examination of two intertwined issues: The history and current character of Marxism's intellectual engagement with cultural theory, and the changing status of "cultural" practice within the capitalist political economy. The two books under review allow us to take up the first of these critical questions. Demis Dworkin provides a careful and relatively comprehensive assessment of cultural Marxism's emergence as a postwar British intellectual and political project, which developed around both history-writing and what came to be called cultural studies. Readings of texts by historians such as Edward Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Catherine Hall and Sheila Rowbotham, and by cultural analysts including Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, and Angela McRobbie, are effectively interwoven with exegeses of environing political trends. The far-reaching theoretical debates about culture and society, -
An Experiment in Decolonial Method Bruce Mckenna
Inhabiting Contemporary Upper Canada: An Experiment in Decolonial Method Bruce McKenna Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MA in Political Science School of Political Studies University of Ottawa Supervised by Dr. Dalie Giroux April 2018 1 Introduction The following is an effort to sketch a background for emancipatory political action in the suburbs of Southern Ontario. It is an effort to engage seriously with indigenous voices and integrate insights from decolonial literature into theory about political emancipation in mainstream Canadian society. At meetings with socialist activists in Ottawa, standard practice involves acknowledging that we are working on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin people, and that we should bear in mind the need to decolonize as we go about our work. However the encounter between these two projects—decolonization and mainstream emancipation—often does not feel fully thought through. What does it mean to take decolonization into account on an everyday basis? What ethical imperatives exist vis-à-vis indigenous peoples when we contemplate political action in a major Canadian city? I cannot fully answer these questions. What I am trying to do in this paper is think through the implications of the decolonial literature emerging from indigenous people for how non-indigenous people can understand their place in the world—the context and horizons of their citizenship and political action. To a large extent, I will argue that these implications necessitate a work of positioning, both politically and geographically. I will argue that a useful place to start is by reconsidering our relationship to the land we inhabit in a critical light. -
Why Not Capitalism
WHY NOT CAPITALISM SOCIALIST REGISTER 1 9 9 5 Edited by LEO PANITCH Special Coeditorx ELLEN MELKSINS WOOD JOHN SAVILLE TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Preface vii Ralph Miliband, Socialist Intellectual, 1924-1994 1 Leo Panitch A Chronology of the New Left and Its Successors, Or: Who's Old-Fashioned Now? Ellen Meiksins Wood Saying No to Capitalism at the Millenium George Ross Once More Moving On: Social Movements, Political Representation and the Left Hilary Wainwright Globalizing Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics Frances Fox Piven Europe In Search of a Future Daniel Singer The Yeltsin Regime K. S. Karol The State in the Third World William Graf Page The 'Underclass' and the US Welfare State 163 Linda Gordon 'Class War conservatism': Housing Policy, Homelessness and the 'Underclass' Joan Smith Capitalist Democracy Revisited John Schwartzmantel Parliamentary Socialism Revisited John Saville Harold Laski's Socialism Ralph Miliband How it All Began: A Footnote to History Marion Kozak Ralph Miliband, A Select Bibliography in English PREFACE Ralph Miliband, the founder of the The Socialist Register with John Saville in 1964, and its co-editor for the subsequent three decades, died on May 21, 1994. His death, after falling ill upon his return to London from the New York Socialist Scholars Conference in April, was unexpected. Despite a close brush with death after a heart by-pass operation three years before, he had resumed his activities with characteristic strength of will and stamina, and celebrated the completion of a new book, Socialism for a Sceptical Age, at a festive 70th birthday party in January, 1994. -
History of Social Theory
Fall 2013 Sociology 101 Michael Burawoy HISTORY OF SOCIAL THEORY A course on the history of social theory can be presented with two different emphases -- as intellectual history or as theoretical tradition. In the first approach the classics are examined in relation to their political, social, economic and particularly their cultural context. In the second approach the classics are systematically compared to one another to show both similarities and differences but also to place them in some developmental sequence. In this course we shall primarily follow the second approach although it will still be essential to situate the ideas of any given writer in his or her historical milieu. It is the hypothesis of this course that within our field there are essentially three theoretical traditions: a marxist tradition, a sociological tradition and an emergent third tradition that transcends both Marxism and sociology. In this view sociology developed out of a critical dialogue with the writings of Marx and Engels and the Marxists that followed them, while this third tradition, often referred to as postmodernism, seeks to go beyond the optimistic accounts of both marxism and sociology. Accordingly, in the first semester we shall examine the Marxist tradition, beginning with Marx and Engels, passing rapidly through German Marxism (Kautsky, Bernstein, Luxemburg), stopping at Russian Marxism to study Lenin's treatise on the transition from capitalism to communism, moving on to Antonio Gramsci as the foremost "Western Marxist" and from there dealing with Third World Marxism as represented by Frantz Fanon. Next semester we will work through key representatives of the sociological tradition, Durkheim and Weber, followed by Foucault, our “postmodern” thinker, before ending with the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, followed by those who have worked in that tradition in the United States – Catherine MacKinnon and Patricia Hill Collins. -
Monthly Review Press Catalog, 2011
PAID PAID Social Structure RIPON, WI and Forms of NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE U.S. POSTAGE Consciousness ORGANIZATION ORGANIZATION PERMIT NO. 100 volume ii The Dialectic of Structure and History István Mészáros Class Dismissed WHY WE CANNOT TEACH OR LEARN OUR WAY OUT OF INEQUALITY John Marsh JOSÉ CARLOS MARIÁTEGUI an anthology MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker editors and translators the story of the center for constitutional rights How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care the people’s RevolutionaRy lawyer DOCTORS 2011 Albert Ruben Steve Brouwer WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT CAPITALISM JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER FRED MAGDOFF monthly review press review monthly #6W 29th Street, 146 West NY 10001 New York, www.monthlyreview.org 2011 MRP catalog:TMOI.qxd 1/4/2011 3:49 PM Page 1 THE DEVIL’S MILK A Social History of Rubber JOHN TULLY From the early stages of primitivehistory accu- mulation“ to the heights of the industrial revolution and beyond, rubber is one of a handful of commodities that has played a crucial role in shaping the modern world, and yet, as John Tully shows in this remarkable book, laboring people around the globe have every reason to THE DEVIL’S MILK regard it as “the devil’s milk.” All the A S O C I A L H I S T O R Y O F R U B B E R advancements made possible by rubber have occurred against a backdrop of seemingly endless exploitation, con- quest, slavery, and war. -
Gramsci's Marxism
Alastair GRAMSCI’S Davidson MARXISM The author, lecturer in politics at Monash University, con tinues his series on the great Italian Communist leader, Antonio Gratnsci. The article probes the particular features of Gramsci’s approach to marxism, pointing to conclusions important to consider in elaborating revolutionary strategies for advanced capitalist countries today. GRAMSCI’S APPROACH to marxism was so novel that he has been called a neo-marxist’. The novelty starts with his extremely rigorous methodological approach to the content of marxism, and not with the conclusions he reaches. Obviously, one of the greatest dangers in drawing inspiration or creed from a collection of writings is eclecti cism. Marx’ writings, as with those of the Bible, provide ammunition for God and the devil or, at least, have done so for a myriad of mutually contradictory schools of marxism, each claiming to find authority for its propositions in the work of the master. Such a situation immediately raises the question: What is marxism anyway? Gramsci’s method of deciding this question must be the starting point in any examination of his marxism. Without understanding his methodological approach to marxism we cannot understand fully some of his conclusions about what marxism is. Furthermore, if we do not agree with his methology then we cannot of course, agree with his conclusions. He wrote: In science in general the most important thing is method: in certain sciences, furthermore, which must necessarily base themselves on a restricted source of posi tive -
University of California Santa Cruz Marxism
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ MARXISM AND CONSTITUENT POWER IN LATIN AMERICA: THEORY AND HISTORY FROM THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY THROUGH THE PINK TIDE A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS with an emphasis in POLITICS by Robert Cavooris December 2019 The dissertation of Robert Cavooris is approved: _______________________________________ Robert Meister, Chair _______________________________________ Guillermo Delgado-P. _______________________________________ Juan Poblete _______________________________________ Megan Thomas _________________________________________ Quentin Williams Acting Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Robert Cavooris, 2019. All rights reserved. Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements and Dedication vi Preface x Introduction 1 Chapter 1 41 Intellectuals and Political Strategy: Hegemony, Posthegemony, and Post-Marxist Theory in Latin America Chapter 2 83 Constituent Power and Capitalism in the Works of René Zavaleta Mercado Chapter 3 137 Bolivian Insurgency and the Early Work of Comuna Chapter 4 204 Potentials and Limitations of the Bolivian ‘Process of Change’ Conclusions 261 Appendix: List of Major Works by Comuna (1999–2011) 266 Bibliography 271 iii Abstract Marxism and Constituent Power in Latin America: Theory and History from the Mid-Twentieth Century through The Pink Tide Robert Cavooris Throughout the history of Marxist theory and practice in Latin America, certain questions recur. What is the relationship between political and social revolution? How can state institutions serve as tools for political change? What is the basis for mass collective political agency? And how can intellectual work contribute to broader emancipatory political movements? Through textual and historical analysis, this dissertation examines how Latin American intellectuals and political actors have reframed and answered these questions in changing historical circumstances. -
Social Property Relations in the 21St Century: an Interview with Ellen Meiksins Wood — Jordy Cummings
Social Property Relations in the 21st Century | 159 Social Property Relations in the 21st Century: An interview with Ellen Meiksins Wood — Jordy Cummings Jordy Cummings1 (JC): Let’s start with Canada. What do you make of the current context of the Canadian state? Is it exceptionally right wing in comparison with earlier governments, for example, on issues like Pal- estine or the environment? Or are current policies continuous with past policy trajectories? Ellen Meiksins Wood2 (EMW): I don’t think the two options here are mutually exclusive. Yes, this government is distinctively right- wing, not least on matters like Palestine and the environment. But, like everything else, it has a history. The simple continuity, of course, is that Canada was and remains a capitalist economy, with all this entails: the imperatives of profit-maximization imposed by the capitalist market, the necessity of constant capital accumulation, the constant need to reduce the costs of labour, the subordination of all social goods including ecological sustainability to the requirements of profit, the inequities and social injustices these imperatives inevitably engender, and the limitations placed on states as long as the economy is regulated by capitalist requirements. But let’s be more specific. For 1 Jordy Cummings is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at York University, Toronto, Canada. He has written forCounter Punch, The Bullet and Socialist Studies. His main research area is classical Marxist political theory and is working on a dissertation examining the significance of the French Revolution for the socialist project in light of the rethinking of the concept of Bourgeois Revolution. -
SOCIOLOGY 9191A Social Science in the Marxian Tradition Fall 2020
SOCIOLOGY 9191A Social Science in the Marxian Tradition Fall 2020 DRAFT Class times and location Wednesday 10:30am -12:30pm Virtual synchronous Instructor: David Calnitsky Office Hours by appointment Department of Sociology Office: SSC 5402 Email: [email protected] Technical Requirements: Stable internet connection Laptop or computer Working microphone Working webcam “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” – Karl Marx That is the point, it’s true—but not in this course. This quote, indirectly, hints at a deep tension in Marxism. If we want to change the world we need to understand it. But the desire to change something can infect our understanding of it. This is a pervasive dynamic in the history of Marxism and the first step is to admit there is a problem. This means acknowledging the presence of wishful thinking, without letting it induce paralysis. On the other hand, if there are pitfalls in being upfront in your desire to change the world there are also virtues. The normative 1 goal of social change helps to avoid common trappings of academia, in particular, the laser focus on irrelevant questions. Plus, in having a set of value commitments, stated clearly, you avoid the false pretense that values don’t enter in the backdoor in social science, which they often do if you’re paying attention. With this caveat in place, Marxian social science really does have a lot to offer in understanding the world and that’s what we’ll analyze in this course. The goal is to look at the different hypotheses that broadly emerge out of the Marxian tradition and see the extent to which they can be supported both theoretically and empirically. -
Towards a Unified Theory Analysing Workplace Ideologies: Marxism And
Marxism and Racial Oppression: Towards a Unified Theory Charles Post (City University of New York) Half a century ago, the revival of the womens movementsecond wave feminismforced the revolutionary left and Marxist theory to revisit the Womens Question. As historical materialists in the 1960s and 1970s grappled with the relationship between capitalism, class and gender, two fundamental positions emerged. The dominant response was dual systems theory. Beginning with the historically correct observation that male domination predates the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, these theorists argued that contemporary gender oppression could only be comprehended as the result of the interaction of two separate systemsa patriarchal system of gender domination and the capitalist mode of production. The alternative approach emerged from the debates on domestic labor and the predominantly privatized character of the social reproduction of labor-power under capitalism. In 1979, Lise Vogel synthesized an alternative unitary approach that rooted gender oppression in the tensions between the increasingly socialized character of (most) commodity production and the essentially privatized character of the social reproduction of labor-power. Today, dual-systems theory has morphed into intersectionality where distinct systems of class, gender, sexuality and race interact to shape oppression, exploitation and identity. This paper attempts to begin the construction of an outline of a unified theory of race and capitalism. The paper begins by critically examining two Marxian approaches. On one side are those like Ellen Meiksins Wood who argued that capitalism is essentially color-blind and can reproduce itself without racial or gender oppression. On the other are those like David Roediger and Elizabeth Esch who argue that only an intersectional analysis can allow historical materialists to grasp the relationship of capitalism and racial oppression. -
Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociologyl
Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociologyl John Bellamy Foster University of Oregon This article addresses a paradox: on the one hand, environmental sociology, as currently developed, is closely associated with the thesis that the classical sociological tradition is devoid of systematic in- sights into environmental problems; on the other hand, evidence of crucial classical contributions in this area, particularly in Marx, but also in Weber, Durkheim, and others, is too abundant to be convinc- ingly denied. The nature of this paradox, its origins, and the means of transcending it are illustrated primarily through an analysis of Marx's theory of metabolic rift, which, it is contended, offers impor- tant classical foundations for environmental sociology. CLASSICAL BARRIERS TO ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY In recent decades, we have witnessed a significant transformation in social thought as various disciplines have sought to incorporate ecological awareness into their core paradigms in response to the challenge raised by environmentalism and by what is now widely perceived as a global ecological crisis. This transformation has involved a twofold process of rejecting much of previous thought as ecologically unsound, together with an attempt to build on the past, where possible. This can be seen as oc- curring with unequal degrees of success in the various disciplines. Geogra- phy, with its long history of focusing on the development of the natural landscape and on biogeography (see Sauer 1963), was the social science that adapted most easily to growing environmental concerns. Anthropol- ' I would like to express my gratitude to Joan Acker, Paul Burkett, Michael Dawson, Michael Dreiling, Charles Hunt, John Jermier, Robert McChesney, Fred Magdoff, Harry Magdoff, John Mage, David Milton, Robert O'Brien, Christopher Phelps, Ira Shapiro, Paul Sweezy, Laura Tamkin, and Ellen Meiksins Wood for creating a climate of intellectual exchange and support without which this work would not have been possible.