Reification-Thingification and Alienation ̶ Basic Concepts of Marxʼs Critique of Political Economy and Practical Materialsm ̶
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Moving Labor Power and Historical Forms of Migration: the Internationalist Socialist Worker, the Social Benefit Tourist and the Economic Migrant
Moving Labor Power and Historical Forms of Migration: The Internationalist Socialist Worker, the Social Benefit Tourist and the Economic Migrant By Raia Apostolova Submitted to Central European University Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisors: Professor Prem Kumar Rajaram Professor Dan Rabinowitz Budapest, Hungary CEU eTD Collection 2017 Statement I hereby state that this dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. The thesis contains no material previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Budapest, September 31, 2017 CEU eTD Collection Table of Contents INTRODUCTION FORMS OF MOVEMENT .................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE THE METHODOLOGY BEHIND MOVING LABOR POWER .......................... 10 1.1. What is Moving Labor Power?.............................................................................................. 10 1.2. Methodological Liberalism: Liberal Philisophy and the Praxis of Movement ..................... 12 1.3. Approaching Movement from the Point of View of Labor Power ......................................... 22 1.4. Movement: The Potentiality and Actuality of Capitalism ..................................................... 31 1.5. Organized and Anarchic Forms of Migration ...................................................................... -
Volume 33, Numbers 1-2, Fall 2019-Spring 2020 • Realism Published Twice Yearly, Mediations Is the Journal of the Marxist Literary Group
Volume 33, Numbers 1-2, Fall 2019-Spring 2020 • Realism Published twice yearly, Mediations is the journal of the Marxist Literary Group. We publish dossiers of translated material on special topics and peer-reviewed general issues, usually in alternation. General inquiries and submissions should be directed to [email protected]. We invite scholarly contributions across disciplines on any topic that engages seriously with the Marxist tradition. Manuscripts received will be taken to be original, unpublished work not under consideration elsewhere. Articles should be submitted electronically in a widely-used format. Manuscripts should not exceed reasonable article length, and should be accompanied by an abstract of up to 300 words, including six keywords. Articles will be published in MLA endnote format, and should be submitted with the author’s name and affiliation on a separate cover page to facilitate blind peer review. Photographs, tables, and figures should be sent as separate files in a widely- used format. Written permission to reproduce copyright-protected material must be obtained by the author before submission. Books for review should be sent to: Mediations Department of English (MC 162) 601 South Morgan Street University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago IL 60607-7120 USA Articles published in Mediations may be reproduced for scholarly purposes without express permission, provided the reproduction is accompanied by full citation information. For archives and further information, visit http://www.mediationsjournal.org Cover -
Hegemony and Democracy in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks
Hegemony and Democracy in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks Dylan Riley Antonio Gramsci is once again moving to the center of debates in contemporary social theory. Sociologists have taken up the concepts of hegemony and civil society to analyze regimes and social movements (Riley 2010; Tugal 2009). Political theorists have used Gramsci as an inspiration for developing the idea of radical democracy (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Scholars of international relations have found Gramsci’s focus on global processes useful for analyzing neo-liberalism (Morton 2004, 125-127). Gramsci’s work has also been central in the attempt to elaborate a “sociological Marxism” that moves beyond both the statist and economistic biases of more traditional forms of Second and Third International historical materialism (Burawoy 2003; Wright 2010). But despite this outpouring of recent interest, many of the key elements of Gramsci’s political theory remain obscure. In this context, this essay returns to the Prison Notebooks1 to ask a specific question: “How did Gramsci conceive of the connection between democracy and hegemony?” This question has already generated a substantial body of scholarship. But most of it can be placed into one of two positions. One interpretation views hegemony as a theory of revolutionary dictatorship: a “Leninism” for the West (Galli della Loggia 1977, 69; Salvadori 1977, 40-41). These writers tend to be highly critical of the various attempts by the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party, PCI) to use Gramsci as a symbolic justification -
Reification in the Modern World
University of Mary Washington Eagle Scholar Student Research Submissions Spring 5-3-2020 Reification in the Modern orldW Tommy F. White Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation White, Tommy F., "Reification in the Modern orld"W (2020). Student Research Submissions. 337. https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/337 This Honors Project is brought to you for free and open access by Eagle Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Research Submissions by an authorized administrator of Eagle Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. White 1 Reification in the Modern World Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in Philosophy University of Mary Washington Fredericksburg, Virginia Tommy F. White Philosophy 485 4/26/2020 Supervised by Professor Craig Vasey White 2 REIFICATION IN THE MODERN WORLD TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction: 3 II. Reification: 8 III. Heidegger and Lukács: 18 IV. Marcuse and Leisure Time: 26 V. Conclusion: 31 Special Thanks to Dr. Craig Vasey, Dr. Michael Reno, Dr. Jason Hayob-Matzke, and Dr. David Ambuel for all the help and discussions over the last four years. White 3 I. In this paper, I will discuss a couple of ways that our experiences as individuals are affected by the capitalist structures of the society we live in. Mainly, I will focus on the process of reification, and whether it can help us understand society. There is reason to believe that by living in the late-capitalist society that is the United States, we are expediting our process of dying. -
Georg' Lukacs, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat”
Georg Lukacs History & Class Consciousness Written: 1923; Source: History & Class Consciousness; Publisher: Merlin Press, 1967; Transcribed: Andy Blunden; HTML Markup: Andy Blunden. Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat To be radical is to go to the root of the matter. For man, however, the root is man himself. Marx: Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. It is no accident that Marx should have begun with an analysis of commodities when, in the two great works of his mature period, he set out to portray capitalist society in its totality and to lay bare its fundamental nature. For at this stage in the history of mankind there is no problem that does not ultimately lead back to that question and there is no solution that could not be found in the solution to the riddle of commodity-structure. Of course the problem can only be discussed with this degree of generality if it achieves the depth and breadth to be found in Marx’s own analyses. That is to say, the problem of commodities must not be considered in isolation or even regarded as the central problem in economics, but as the central, structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects. Only in this case can the structure of commodity-relations be made to yield a model of all the objective forms of bourgeois society together with all the subjective forms corresponding to them. I: The Phenomenon of Reification 1 The essence of commodity-structure has often been pointed out. Its basis is that a relation be- tween people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a ‘phantom objectivity’, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fun- damental nature: the relation between people. -
Braverman and the Structure of the US Working Class
Employ Respons Rights J (2014) 26:219–236 DOI 10.1007/s10672-014-9243-4 Braverman and the Structure of the U.S. Working Class: Beyond the Degradation of Labor R. Jamil Jonna & John Bellamy Foster Published online: 4 July 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract The fortieth anniversary of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital is the occasion here for a reassessment of his work as a whole. Braverman’s analysis of the degradation of work is shown to have been only a part of a much larger argument he was developing on the structure of the U.S. working class. Building on his pioneering empirical research into occupational composition, a new empirical assessment of the structural evolution of the U.S. working class over the last four decades is provided, throwing light on current problems of unemployment, underemployment, and socially wasted labor—and the rights of labor. Keywords Braverman . Labor and monopoly capital . Labor process . Working class . New middle class . Degradation of work . Deskilling . Reskilling . Reserve army of labor. Capitalism Braverman and the Structure of the U.S. Working Class: Beyond the Degradation of Labor Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital, first published 40 years ago in 1974 (Braverman 1998), was unquestionably the work that, in the words of historian Bryan Palmer (1999:33),“literally christened the emerging field of labor process studies.” In the four decades since its appearance Braverman’s book has continued to play a central role in debates on workers’ struggles within industry, remaining indispensable to all attempts at in- depth critique in this area. -
Examining the Biopolitics of Unwaged Immaterial Labour
Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 6-28-2012 12:00 AM Will Work For Free: Examining the Biopolitics of Unwaged Immaterial Labour Brian A. Brown The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Nick Dyer-Witheford The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Media Studies A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Brian A. Brown 2012 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, and the Photography Commons Recommended Citation Brown, Brian A., "Will Work For Free: Examining the Biopolitics of Unwaged Immaterial Labour" (2012). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 620. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/620 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WILL WORK FOR FREE: EXAMINING THE BIOPOLITICS OF UNWAGED IMMATERIAL LABOUR (Spine title: Will Work For Free) (Thesis format: Monograph) by: Brian A. Brown Graduate Program in Media Studies A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Brian A. Brown THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor: Examiners: __________________________________ ___________________________________ Dr. Nick Dyer-Witheford Dr. Sharon Sliwinski – Program Examiner Supervisory Committee: __________________________________ ___________________________________ Dr. -
Queer Marx John Andrews CUNY Graduate Center
Criticism Volume 52 Issue 2 Honoring Eve: A Special Issue on the Work of Article 22 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 2010 Queer Marx John Andrews CUNY Graduate Center Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism Recommended Citation Andrews, John (2010) "Queer Marx," Criticism: Vol. 52: Iss. 2, Article 22. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol52/iss2/22 QUeer Marx In the introduction to his collection of essays For Marx (1965), Louis John andrews althusser tells us that one of Marx- ian philosophy’s unique assets—and one of its ongoing challenges—is The Reification of Desire: Toward its ability to account for itself, “to a Queer Marxism by Kevin Floyd. take itself as its own object.”1 Cer- Minneapolis: University of Minne- tainly, Marxism’s historical reflex- sota Press, 2009. Pp. 304, 4 black- ivity has propelled its enduring and-white photos. $75.00 cloth, power to describe and explain the $25.00 paper. fallouts and reinventions of capi- talism. Yet this power has in recent decades been eclipsed by critiques of its tendency to reduce all of social relations to relations of economic production, relegating particularities such as race or sex “in the final instance” (asa lthusser might say) to class. One of the most trenchant of these critiques has come from queer theory, a field whose own critical efficacy has also been called into question in recent years. The wholesale “queering” of any fixed epistemological category alongside the “homonormaliza- tion” of LGBT politics prompted the editors of a special volume of Social Text to ask “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?”2 The issue of Marxism’s and queer theo- ry’s ongoing critical power—and their seeming incommensurabil- ity—sets the backdrop for Kevin Floyd’s ambitious and careful book The Reification of Desire. -
Hegemony and Democracy in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks
Peer Reviewed Title: Hegemony, Democracy, and Passive Revolution in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks Journal Issue: California Italian Studies, 2(2) Author: Riley, Dylan J., University of California - Berkeley Publication Date: 2011 Publication Info: California Italian Studies, Italian Studies Multicampus Research Group, UC Office of the President Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5x48f0mz Author Bio: Dylan J. Riley is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His work uses comparative and historical methods to challenge a set of key conceptual oppositions in classical sociological theory: authoritarianism and democracy, revolution and counter-revolution, and state and society. His first monograph The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania 1870-1945 was published in 2010 by Johns Hopkins University Press. His current book project is entitled Knowledge Production or Construction?: A Comparative Analysis of Census Taking in the West (with Rebecca Jean Emigh and Patricia Ahmed) and is forthcoming in the Rose Monograph Series of the American Sociological Association. Keywords: Gramsci, Hegemony, Social Theory Local Identifier: ismrg_cisj_8962 Abstract: What is the relationship between democracy and hegemony in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks? Salvadori and Galli della Loggia argue that hegemony is best understood as a theory of dictatorship and is therefore incompatible with democracy. Vacca argues that hegemony is inconceivable in the absence of democracy. I bridge these divergent readings by making two arguments. First, hegemony is a form of rationalized intellectual and moral leadership, and therefore depends on liberal democratic institutions. Second, hegemony is established through revolution. Gramsci thus paradoxically combines a deep appreciation for liberal democracy with a basically Leninist conception of politics. -
A Phenomenological Take on the Problem of Reification
A Phenomenological take on the Problem of Reification Wade A Bell Jr University of Gothenburg Abstract This article attempts to provide a new look at an old idea within Marxist discourse. Reification, as first imagined by Marx and later Lukacs, describes a process by which capitalism transforms human beings and social relations into things. Although the concept has been subjected to much abstraction and reinvention over the years, this article attempts to address a foundational problem that has remained unsolved since its inception: Close analysis reveals that the concept of reification has never been developed to include an example of an alternative or non-reified state of being. To solve this foundational problem, I look beyond Marxism and to the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is our primary vehicle for being-in-the-world, but what makes his philosophy unique is his emphasis on embodied subjectivity, as well as his dialectical conception of corporeality and being-in-the- world. From this view, the social and material worlds can best be understood as dynamic realms of intersubjectivity, while sentient beings always exist as subjects prior to the reifying effects of capitalism. Building upon an ongoing dialectic between the ideas of Marx, Lukacs, Merleau- Ponty and others, I will ultimately reframe the concept of reification as a objectifying tendency, precipitating from capitalism’s ability to obscure the lived experience of the phenomenal body. Keywords: Reification; Phenomenology; Marxism; Georg Lukacs; Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1. Introduction Perhaps no other concept in Marxist discourse has been subjected to as much conjecture, abstraction, and rethinking as reification. -
Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of Critical Social
THEORY IN WEBERIAN MARXISM: PATTERNS OF CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY IN LUKÁCS AND HABERMAS* Harry F. Dahms 1 ABSTRACT For Weberian Marxists, the social theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx are complementary contributions to the analysis of modern capitalist society. Combining Weber's theory of rationalization with Marx's critique of commodity fetishism to develop his own critique of reification, Georg Lukács contended that the combination of Marx's and Weber's social theories is essential to envisioning socially transformative modes of praxis in advanced capitalist society. By comparing Lukács's theory of reification with Habermas's theory of communicative action as two theories in the tradition of Weberian Marxism, I show how the prevailing mode of "doing theory" has shifted from Marx's critique of economic determinism to Weber s idea of the inner logic of social value spheres. Today, Weberian Marxism can make an important contribution to theoretical sociology by reconstituting itself as a framework for critically examining prevailing societal definitions of the rationalization imperatives specific to purposive-rational social value spheres (the economy, the administrative state, etc.). In a second step, Weberian Marxists would explore how these value spheres relate to each other and to value spheres that are open to the type of communicative rationalization characteristic of the lifeworld level of social organization. INTRODUCTION Since the early 1920s, the function of theory in Western Marxism has undergone a major transformation.1 So far manifesting itself as an increased willingness and ability in 2 modernist critical social theories to confront societal complexity, this change points toward a qualitatively different way of relating diverse social-theoretical projects to each other. -
From the Labour Question to the Labour History Question Chad Pearson
review essay / note critique From the Labour Question to the Labour History Question Chad Pearson McIlroy, John, Alan Campbell, John Halstead, and David Martin, eds., Making History: Organizations of Labour Historians in Britain since 1960 (Leeds: Maney Publishing Press 2010) Allen, Joan, Alan Campbell and John McIlroy, eds., Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (London: Merlin Press 2010) Haverty-Stacke, Donna, and Daniel J. Walkowitz, eds., Rethinking U.S. Labor History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756–2009 (New York: Continuum International Publishing 2010) The essays in these collections, several of which were published to coin- cide with the fiftieth anniversary of England’s Society for the Study of Labour History (sslh), address numerous issues that will undoubtedly interest his- torians of labour and the working class: the development of labour history associations, the relationship between scholarship and labour activism, the tensions between public and academic history, the political orientation of labour historians, the emergence of professional conferences and peer- reviewed journals, methodological innovations, and the overall state of the field today. Anniversaries, especially this one, which also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the US journal, Labor History, provide a good opportunity to reflect on the subject’s health and even predict future developments.1 For the most part, the articles under review will spark curiosity, raise questions, and stimulate further debate and discussion. 1. For a survey of the development of this journal, see Melvyn Dubofsky, “A Stroll Down Memory Lane: My Fifty Years-Plus Association with Labor History,” Labor History, 50 (November 2009), 399–408. Chad Pearson, “From the Labour Question to the Labour History Question,” Labour/Le Travail, 66 (Fall 2010), 195–230.