DOCSLIB.ORG

Karl Kautsky: Early Assumptions, Preconceptions, and Prejudices

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Karl Kautsky: Early Assumptions, Preconceptions, and Prejudices Karl Kautsky: Early Assumptions, Preconceptions, and Prejudices GARY P. STEENSON Washington, D. C., U.S.A. ABSTRACT Analysis of one of Karl Kautsky's earliest articles, "Der Kampf um's Dasein in der Menschenwelt" (1877a), reveals a relatively subtle and sophisticated understanding of biology and Darwinian theory, but also shows many of the problematical assumptions which colored Kautsky's early work. Even more importantly, this article makes it clear that far from disregar- ding the subjective element of human behavior, Kautsky made such behavior central to his efforts to link Darwinian thought to the workers' socialist movement. FROM 1875, WHEN AT THE AGE of twenty-one he published his first contributions to the socialist presses of Germany and Austria, until shortly before his death in 1938, Karl Kautsky was one of the most prolific and eclectic writers of the international socialist movement. He wrote about medieval England and Germany, ancient Greece, modern industry, philosophy, educa- tion, economics, history, modern society, imperialism, the natural and social sciences, contemporary affairs, party politics, Russia, France, the United States, anything, in fact, which struck his fancy and seemed important to him. For over half a century he devoted himself to advancing the cause of the workers' socialist movement and, more specifically, to the advancement of Marxism. Because of his close affiliation with the German Social Democratic Party and his responsibility for Die Neue Zeit, the leading intellectual journal of socialism and Marxism from its founding in 1883 until the outbreak of the First World War, Kautsky was, after Engels, the most important Marxian theorist in the world for the thirty years from the death of Marx to the war. Critics have long pointed out that Kautsky was attracted to and influenced by Darwinian thought, and in fact, as recently as 1986, one writer contended of Kautsky that "his one original contribution to orthodoxy consists of grafting Darwin's theory of evolution onto Marxism." (Dorman 1986, p. 158). The origins of this view are quite obvious since Kautsky himself frequently asserted the influence of Darwin upon his own thought. He once recalled in a memoir that while still in the university, he accepted Darwin with enthusiasm and wanted his own "historical theory to be nothing other than the application of Darwinism to societal development." (Kautsky 1954). Furthermore, in 1927, late in his career as a socialist thinker, Kautsky published a work entitled Die 34 materialistische Geschichtsauffassung to which he appended work done much earlier in his life-some pieces were among the earliest work he ever did-and which he called "the quintessence of my life's work." (Kautsky 1927, p. vii). This study not only directly tied his earliest theoretical writings to his mature views, but also reasserted the close connection with Darwin's thought. Among the most prominent of the many critics to claim that the influence of Darwin on Kautsky had a direct impact on his political writings was Karl Korsch, who in 1929 called Kautsky a cryptorevisionist who substituted evolution for the dialectic and thus eliminated the subjective, active element of Marx's theory to focus on "objective, historical evolution in nature and history." (Korsch 1929). However, more perceptive analysts, especially Hans-Josef Steinberg (1967) and others following his lead (Hunlich 1981, p. 28; Gasman 1971, pp. 123-24 n. 12),1 have long recognized that such a characterization is too glib and imprecise. Certainly Kautsky was influenced by Darwin, but his political writings, especially his discussion of tactics to be pursued by socialist-workers' parties, never particularly reflected any special evolutionary or fatalistic qual- ity. Furthermore, on several occasions during his long career as a Marxian theorist, Kautsky took pains to deny specifically that the Darwinian paradigm of natural development applied to human societies without major adjustments.2 The discussion which follows looks carefully at what was perhaps the first such case, a very early article by Kautsky in which he rejected the idea that humans are controlled by the same non-conscious forces that other organic forms are and in which he also revealed many of the assumptions and pre- judices that shaped his later writings. By October of 1876, just two weeks short of his twenty-second birthday, Karl Kautsky was already serving as the Austrian correspondent for the official organ of the German socialist party, the horzvarts, published in Leipzig. Kaut- sky had recently abandoned his university studies, and though by then he had pretty much committed himself to the cause of workers' socialism, he still had not secured a career that would provide an income and give him the time to develop his interest in socialist theory. As his reports to the Vorwdrts make clear, he had little hope that the Austrian movement would soon afford him the opportunity of being a professional socialist. His first contribution opened with the observation that "there is nothing more inconceivable than to be the correspondent from Austria for a social-democratic paper," because Austria 3 had virtually no movement to speak of.3 Kautsky was somewhat different from many of his fellow members of the Austrian movement in the extent to which he was concerned with the abstract theoretical underpinnings of socialism rather than with organization or political activity. He was especially fascinated by the natural scientific rage of the time-Darwin, above all, but many other writers who are now less well- known, such as Ernst Haeckel and Ludwig Buchner, made early impressions on him-and sought to add to socialism some of the cachet conferred at the time by being scientific. These were concerns which could not be well sup- .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 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.
    [Show full text]
  • Karl Korsch: a Review Essay
    Karl Korsch: A Review Essay Cyril Levitt Michael Buckmiller, ed., Karl Korsch Recht, Geist una* Kultur. Schriften 1908-1918 Gesamtausgabe Band I. (Frankfurt-am-Main: Europaische Verlag- san stall 1980). Michael Buckmiller, ed., Karl Korsch: Rdtebewegung und Klassenkampf. Schriften zur Praxis der Arbeiterbewegung 1919-1923. Gesamtausgabe Band 2. (Frankfurt-am-Main: Europaische Verlagsanstalt 1980). Douglas Keller, ed., Karl Korsch: Revolutionary Theory (Austin: University of Texas Press 1977). "All attempts to restore the Marxist doctrine as a whole and in its original function as theory of the social revolution of the working class are today reactionary Utopias." — Karl Korsch, 1950 FEW NORTH AMERICAN STUDENTS of the history of the labour movement and socialism know very much about the life and work of Karl Korsch. Of course, many know of him — as the 'poor cousin' of George Lukacs in the school of 'Western Marxism' popularized by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as a Frankfurt School tag-a-long, or as Bert Brecht's close friend and teacher. For historical and linguis­ tic reasons Korsch's work is better known in Germany (more accurately in the Federal Republic of Germany, for Korsch is reviled in the German Democratic Republic), yet even in his native land the general unavailability of many of his writings has prevented even his most enthusiastic readers from grasping the totality of his practical and theoretical contribution to the working-class movement. This is lamentable for Korsch was perhaps the most sensitive student of Marx in the twentieth century. (Franz Borkenau, in a review of Korsch's intellectual biography Karl Marx, wrote: "Korsch possesses a model knowledge of every imaginable literature connected with Marxism I have little doubt that his is the Marx-study most solidly close to the actual teaching of Marx.
    [Show full text]
  • Marx's Concept of Labor
    University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1990 Marx's concept of labor. Christopher J. Mulvaney University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Mulvaney, Christopher J., "Marx's concept of labor." (1990). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1800. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1800 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MARX'S CONCEPT OF LABOR A Dissertation Presented by CHRISTOPHER J. MULVANEY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY SEPTEMBER 1990 Department of Political Science (c) Copyright by Christopher J. Mulvaney 199 0 All Rights Reserved MARX'S CONCEPT OF LABOR A Dissertation Presented by CHRISTOPHER J. MULVANEY Approved as to style and content by: Department of Political Science ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I dedicate this work to Shirley J. Gedeon, Ph.D., in thanks for her love and support, and in memory of my father, John F. Mulvaney, Ph.D., and my mother, Gertrude M. Mulvaney ABSTRACT MARX'S CONCEPT OF LABOR SEPTEMBER, 1990 CHRISTOPHER J. MULVANEY, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA M.A., UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor Jean B. Elshtain This work examines Habermas' claim that Marx's theory is latently obj ectivistic due to a restrictive, instrumental understanding of the concept of labor.
    [Show full text]
  • O 76 Aniversario Del Fallecimiento De José Marlátegul Ola Muerte Prematura Elnoporfuna • Conferencias • Videos • Homenaj
    o76 aniversario del fallecimiento de José Marlátegul ola muerte prematura elnoporfuna • Conferencias • VIdeos • Homenajes • Seminarios peruano más vendido de todos los tiempos. En 1972, la Casa fue salvada de la demolición y declarada Monumento Histórico Republicano. Veinte años después se inició su restauración, que terminó con la entrega en el Centenario del nacimiento de José Carlos Mariátegui, el 14deJuniode 1994. Actualmente, bajo la responsabilidad del instituto Nacional de Cultura (INC), se desarrollan exposiciones, conferencias, seminarios y ta lleres. Además, el público tienen acceso libre a la CASA MUSEO JOS E CARLOS biblioteca, donde se encuentran MARIATEGUI numerosas obras sobre Mariátegui. Presentación Misión Somos una Casa Museo que se La Casa Museo José Carlos Mariátegui propone difundir la vida, obra y fué escenario de los cinco últimos y más pensamiento de José Cartos Mariátegui proouctivos años del Amauta , desde al Perú y al mundo, realizando y 1925 hasta su muerte, el 16 de abril de motivando diversas investigaciones 1930. Este ambiente, en el cual sobre ello y difundiéndolas, a través de destaca el representativo "Rincón sus actividades : con fe ren cias, Rojo", fue testigo de la preparación y exposiciones, seminarios, etc., Ylo las edición de la revista "Amauta" cuyo más auténticas expresones cultura les contenido organizaba José Cartos de nuestro pals. mariátegui hasta el menos detalle, además de darle el elegante y Visión vanguardista diseno de su composi­ Converlimos en el Centro Cultural y de ción gráfica. En esta casa editó Investigación más importante a nivel también sus dos primeros libros " La nacional e internacional. Ser el foco de escena contemporánea" (1925) y "7 luz que irradia el pensamiento ensayos de interpretación de la maria teguiano, educación, desarrollo y realidad peruana" (1928), el libro cultura.
    [Show full text]
  • David Craven's Future Perfect
    THIRD TEXT Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture May 2013 David Craven’s Future Perfect: Tensions between Political Engagement and Art History Brian Winkenweder The fact that a work of art has a politically radical content therefore does not assure its revolutionary value. Nor does a non-political content necessarily imply its irrelevance to revolutionary action. It is in the larger context of the social movement and its positive historical results that the practical significance of partisan art has to be judged. Meyer Schapiro1 I. Against the Grain: The Education of a Progressive Art Historian Art, however, is social not only because of its mode of production, in which the dialectic of the forces and relations of production is concentrated, not simply because of the social derivation of its thematic material. Much more importantly, art becomes social by its opposition to society, and it occupies this position only as autonomous art. By crystallizing in itself as something unique to itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as ‘socially useful,’ it criticizes society by merely existing, for which puritans of all stripes condemn it… Art’s asociality is the determinate negation of a determinate society. Theodor Adorno2 David Craven, a subtle and deeply nuanced scholar, engaged in a sustained critique of socio-political structures during an epoch characterized by a pernicious form of late capitalism and aggressive imperialist motives in the name of globalism. For the past three decades Craven characterized the potential and power of the role played by art in the ongoing formation of socially just communities.
    [Show full text]
  • MARX's LEGACY REINTERPRETED Karl Heinrich Marx and Political
    MARX’S LEGACY REINTERPRETED Karl Heinrich Marx and Political Philosophy Bora Erdağı (Kocaeli University) Abstract Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–1881) is one of the most important refer- ence thinkers for contemporary political theory, contemporary political phi- losophy and contemporary political history. The bases for this view are manifold. The ideas and criticisms presented by Marx are inclined to create friends and foes from the aspect of political praxis; and the most profound elements of his critique on capitalism are, I wish to argue, still valid. These also reflect the potentiality of Marx’s ideas to create alternative perspectives for study of the contemporary world. This ensures the recall and the discus- sion of Marx’s political ideas by alternative political agents in terms of both scientific concern and the contemporary world. Another reason for Marx be- ing a reference thinker of the history of political philosophy—depending on the first two reasons—is that his ideas have been perceptibly “realized” in political practices albeit partially. Thus, whenever the Marxist tradition and its political practices are remembered, the agents of the political arena are obliged to reconsider Marx. In this article, the fact that Marx is considered as a reference thinker in the history of political philosophy will be analyzed in more detail. The basic concepts of his theory will be presented, related to each other with regard to philosophical, real and concrete moments. As con- clusion, a short commentary on Marx’s political theory will be provided.
    [Show full text]
  • Class Consciousness Or Ethical Hegemony? from Leninism To
    CHAPTER FIVE CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS OR ETHICAL HEGEMONY? From Leninism to “Western Marxism” The historical predicament of Marxist-led mass revolutions was one of the major factors that gave rise to what would come to be known as le marxisme occidental, an intellectual movement within the Comintern that shifted the emphasis of Marxism from economy and politics to culture, ide- ology, and religion.1 Motivating such a radical reorientation of Marxism, as so many analysts have correctly suggested, was the recognition that social- ist authoritarianism was not simply an aberration of the Marxist project. Rather, it was the outcome of the “deep structure” of Marxist categories, with its emphasis on the power of economic-structural constraints over human action and consciousness in modern societies.2 Both Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács found the source of authori- tarianism in the irresolvable tensions inherent in Lenin’s notion of class hegemony, and both therefore tended to attribute these tensions to the economic determinism that underlies Marx’s theory of the relationship between class and democracy. However, these two founders of “Western Marxism” differed sharply in their diagnosis of the crisis of Leninism. Their respective accounts of what should be responsible for the authori- tarian turn of Soviet democracy stood diametrically opposed. As Laclau and Mouffe have observed, the central point that divides Gramsci from the anti-economic positions formulated by Lukács and Karl Korsch lies precisely in his blunt rejection of class reductionism: Lukács and Korsch . also reproportioned the terrain classically attributed to the superstructures; but they did this within the parameters of a class- reductionist perspective which identified the revolutionary subject with the working class, such that hegemony in the sense of articulation was strictly unthinkable.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 INTRODUCTION: MARX, ETHICS and ETHICAL MARXISM 1. Karl
    Notes 1 INTRODUCTION: MARX, ETHICS AND ETHICAL MARXISM 1. Karl Marx, 'Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy' in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), p. 506. Further references throughout the book will be to CW followed by the volume number. 2. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Gennan Ideology, in CW 5, p. 247. 3. Ibid., p. 73. 4. This is made clear in section three of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in which Marx and Engels deal with a variety of socialist litera­ ture- CW 6, pp. 507-17. 5. Karl Kautsky, Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History (Chi­ cago: Charles Kerr, 4th edn, n.d.), p. 206. 6. Harry van der Linden, Kantian Ethics and Socialism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988); Tom Bottomore and Patrick Goode (eds), Austro­ Marxism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), Introduction and Part One. 7. For a short review of the progress of ethical debate within Marxism see Agnes Heller, 'The Legacy of Marxian Ethics Today', in Praxis International 1 ( 4 ), 1982. Heller's own position is a fusion of Marx and Kant, although she acknowledges that this approach was specifi­ cally rejected by Marx (p. 362); also Steven Lukes, Marxism and Morality (New York: Oxford University Press and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 14-26. 8. For example, Lukes, Marxism and Morality, p. 146. I use 'Marxian' to denote that which can be attributed to Marx's own thought, and this does not include Engels; 'Marxist' denotes all those who accept, in one version or another, Marx's critique of capitalism, his production­ oriented theory of historical development, and his goal of a classless society.
    [Show full text]
  • Karl Kautsky — Between Darwin and Marx
    Karl Kautsky - Between Darwin and Marx Catherine Raflerty Australian Journal of Politics & History, Vol. 36, n° 3, December 1990 Karl Kautsky has experienced a curious fate at the hands of contemporary writers. Despite being a figure of considerable historical significance in the international socialist movement of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. he has rarely been accorded the attention his stature in the movement warrants. It is perhaps timely, given the recent collapse of Russian-style communism in Eastern Europe, to return to one of its early critics and to reassess the philosophical basis of the man whom Lenin referred to slightingly as “the revisionist Kautsky”.’ Kautsky was the foremost theoretical exponent of Marxism in the German Social Democratic Party in the thirty years before the first world war. He popularised Marx’s works, edited the theoretical organ of the Party from 1883 and was the major theoretical force in designing the political platform which influenced the Party’s destiny for some twenty years. The collapse of German social democracy as a force for world peace, on the eve of the first world war, however, linked him forever with the failure of that party to achieve its revolutionary goal. Theorists from the 1920s up to the prescnt day have denounced Kautsky’s brand of Marxism as orthodox, determinist and fixed, influenced far more by Darwin‘s theory of evolution than by Marxist dialectics. Karl Korsch,2 for example, an influential German Marxist of the Frankfurt School. and the late Erich Matthia~,~a Social Democrat in post- war Germany, coined the phrase “Kautskyianism” to describe this brand of Marxism, responsible they believed for the revolutionary inactivism (Immobilismus) of pre-war German socialism.
    [Show full text]
  • Gramsci's Presence in China
    Gramsci’s Presence in China Xin Liu The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Con Gramsci il marxismo, liberato dalle parassitarie deformazioni del fatalismo positivistico e del materialismo volgare, riacquista tutto il suo valore di concezione del mondo e visione integrale della storia. È di nuovo guida dell’azione e del pensiero in tutti i campi, non solo nella ricerca puramente politica, ma nella critica di una decrepita cultura idealistica incapace di farci capire il mondo di ieri e di oggi, nella costruzione di una cultura nuova e nella lotta per il rinnovamento della società.1 Palmiro Togliatti, Il Partito Comunista Italiano. As a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy, Antonio Gramsci is widely regarded as a highly original and influential thinker within the Marxist tradition. Surprisingly, for quite a long period in the twentieth century, Gramsci and his theoretical contributions to Communist movements were unknown or overlooked by Marxist scholars in China, the largest existing socialist country in the world. In this paper, I analyze Gramsci’s reception in China, which, generally, can be divided chronologically into three phases: the period before the 1980s, the twenty years from 1980 to the end of the century, and the twenty-first century. To understand the precise progression, it is necessary to keep in mind certain underlying historical complexities. With the humiliating defeat in the Opium War in 1840 and the expanding treaty ports system that followed,2 the last Chinese dynasty collapsed in 1911. The whole country was left under the control of several major and lesser warlords, each supported by different Western countries.
    [Show full text]
  • History of Marxism & Socialism
    History of Marxism & Socialism: A Chart of Key Figures with Comments Dr. Rodney G. Peffer SOCIALIST SOCIALIST ANARCHISM ANARCHISM CLASSICAL UTOPIAN EVOLUTIONARY PROTO-SOCIAL IN EUROPE: IN UK & USA: MARXISM: SOCIALISM: SOCIALISM: DEMOCRACY 19th-Early 20th C. 19th-Early 20th C. 19th Century Late 18th Century- Late 19th Century Late 19th Century Mid 19th Century Pierre Proudhon William Godwin Karl Marx (Later) Fr. Engels Louis Blanc Mikhail Bakunin Johann Most Friedrich Engels Gracchus Babeuf Ferdinand Lassalle Daniel De Leon Louis Blanqui Oscar Wilde Eleanor Marx Saint-Simon William Morris1 William Morris2 Louise Michel James Connolly Wilhelm Liebknecht Auguste Comte Eduard Bernstein1 Eduard Bernstein2 Pietr Kropotkin Big Bill Haywood; August Bebel Charles Fourier Edward Bellamy; Henry George Leo Tolstoy Mother Jones; Joe Hill; Karl Kautsky Robert Owen Charlotte Gilmore Richard Ely Luigi Fabbri John Reed Georgi Plekhanov Perkins Victor Berger "LIBERAL" IMPORTANT NON- SOCIALIST HETERODOX MARXISTS/ CLASSICAL AUSTRO- MARXIST SOCIAL SOCIAL ANARCHISM ECONOMISTS SOCIALISTS i MARXISM: MARXISM SCIENTISTS DEMOCRACY Early-Mid 20th C. Early-Mid 20th C Early-Mid 20th C. Early-Mid 20th C. Early-Mid 20th C. Early-Mid 20th C Early-Mid 20th C. Emma Goldman J.M. Keynes Eugene V. Debs; Helen V.I. Lenin Rudolph Hilferding Emile Durkheim Jean Jaurès; Alexander Berkman; Michael Kalecki Keller; Antonie Panne- Leon Trotsky Otto Bauer Thorsten Veblin Sidney & Beatrice Ricardo Flores Magón; Nicholas Kaldor koek; G.D.H. Cole; Rosa Luxemburg Max Adler Max Weber Webb; G.B. Shaw; Rudolf Rocker; Gunnar Myrdal José Carlos Mariátegui; Karl Liebnecht Victor Adler Joseph Schumpeter Ramsay MacDonald; Buenaventura Duratti Joan Robinson Victor Serge; Andres Franz Mehring Karl Renner Talcott Parsons Leon Blum Lucía Sánchez Saornil Piero Sraffa Nin; George Orwell; Antonio Gramsci Otto Neurath C.
    [Show full text]
  • Futures of the Lumpenproletariat
    Lumpen: Vagrancies of a Concept from Marx to Fanon (and on) by Bennett Dempsey Carpenter Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Roberto Dainotto, Supervisor ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano ___________________________ Anne Garréta ___________________________ Nancy Armstrong Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 i v ABSTRACT Lumpen: Vagrancies of a Concept from Marx to Fanon (and on) by Bennett Dempsey Carpenter Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Roberto Dainotto, Supervisor ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano ___________________________ Anne Garréta ___________________________ Nancy Armstrong An abstract of a thesis/dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2019 Copyright by Bennett Dempsey Carpenter 2019 Abstract This dissertation, Lumpen: Vagrancies of a Concept from Marx to Fanon (and on), tracks the concept of the lumpenproletariat from its coinage by Karl Marx through its reworking by Franz Fanon, the Black Panthers and others in the context of the colonial liberation and Black Power movements, and onwards into contemporary debates about populism, identity, politics, and the end
    [Show full text]