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To say that the humanities – "the core of the university" (J.M. Coetzee) – are coming to an end is to invite a counterclaim: the humanities will continue to survive, outlasting the predictions of their demise. Either way, ends can turn into immobilising ideals: as we look to the future, the time for collective action passes us by. So this essay starts from the premise that the humanities' time is up. Turning to a range of thinkers, including G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor W. Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Wendy Brown, it looks for a critical orientation toward an ongoing crisis, and for a way to exit the troubling interregnum in which humanists now find themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concluding chapter of Karl Marx's Capital (volume 1) has received remarkably little scholarly commentary. This is especially surprising as Marx addresses there "the modern theory of colonization" developed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. But rather than systematically pursue the issue of colonialism, Marx investigates Wakefield's theory in order to illuminate the processes of primitive accumulation (or "originary dispossession") that gave birth to capitalism in Europe. This article suggests directions in which Marx ought to have gone in order to analyze the globalization of capitalism outside of Europe by means of colonialism. In so doing, it proposes the need to recenter bondage, slavery, colonialism, and racism as constitutive elements of capitalism as a global system. JEL Classification: B51, N3, P1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains the three dimensions of Marx's philosophy of work: work as production, work as subjectivation, and work as integration. From this, the article defends the following thesis: while Marx allows us to shed much light on exploitation (social pathology of work as production) and alienation (social pathology of work as subjectivation), in particular in capitalism, nonetheless, he lacks an understanding of the ins and outs of emancipation as it is effectively deployed in our wage societies, far from the radicalism of his communist utopia. JEL Classification: B14, B40, B52 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what sense did Marx think that capitalism was 'immoral' or 'unjust'? There are four responses: for Marx, 1) capitalism is morally deficient according to some external criterion; 2) capitalism is just, at least on its own terms; 3) capitalism is both just and unjust because the terms capitalism uses to defend itself as just simultaneously reveal its injustice; 4) capitalism is neither just nor unjust, for justice is an inadequate evaluative standpoint that should be overcome. Marx's thinking cannot be fully captured by any one of these positions; he instead held all of them without contradiction. The crucial interpretive question is how they relate to each other. This article argues that while accepting that capitalism could be criticized externally, justified internally, and undermined by its self-justifications, Marx ultimately emphasized transcending the 'act-based' conception of morality and replacing the immanently contradictory capitalism with an alternative, ideal mode of human life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article systematically presents Marx's ideas about political economy and historical materialism in the "Introduction" to the Grundrisse. Two questions are posed and addressed. The first one is: what implications does the "Introduction" have for the contemporary Marxist discussions on economic crisis, and on primitive accumulation? Underlying these two topics is the question of the importance of production relative to distribution, exchange and consumption. Marx sometimes appears to be ambivalent in his treatment of this question, and this partly explains why some Marxists can suggest that the production of commodities under capitalism is not the main aspect of late capitalism, and find the main reason for economic crisis outside of production. Read carefully, however, the "Introduction" does provide enough ground to critique these views. The second question addressed is: what implications might Marx's discussion on political economy and historical materialism, including the relation between culture and economic development, have for the fight for socialism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores German philosopher Karl Marx's views on morality, arguing that while he criticized moralism, he still engaged with ethical concerns through his emphasis on human flourishing. Topics discussed include the distinction between moralism and morality, Marx's conception of non-moral goods like freedom and dignity, and his critique of equality as a bourgeois value.

This article explores the relationship between Gilles Deleuze's philosophical endeavours and Marxism, with a particular focus on his unfinished work, Grandeur de Marx. Despite the collapse of Soviet socialism, Deleuze acknowledged that his philosophical pursuits were profoundly intertwined with Marxist thought. His insistence on this connection was not a mere expression of regret or an apology for his political leanings. In the 1990s, as neoliberal globalisation spread beyond the United States and Europe, Marxism persisted as a rallying cry for resistance. The ascendancy of global capitalism was not a consequence of Marxism's failure; rather, it was a manifestation of what Marx had presciently predicted in his works. Thus, Deleuze's unfinished project on Marx can be viewed as a response to anti-Marxist reactionism from a distinct vantage point. While several interpretations of Deleuze's unwritten Marx exist, the argument in this essay is that Deleuze attempted to recreate the conditions for Marx's critical analysis by employing communism as an event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marx studied how capitalism changes relations to land before and after Capital—but wielded different methodologies and reached different conclusions. In Grundrisse, Marx investigates precapitalism from a speculative standpoint. In Capital, Marx provides a selective and historical description of dispossession but delimits his analysis to Western Europe. Post-Capital, Marx wields Henry Lewis Morgan's anthropology and Justus von Liebig's ecology as scientific bases upon which to critique capitalist property relations. Specifically, Marx believed that the capitalist mode of production installed a historically specific relation to land; and that this relation was abstract, accumulative, and proprietorial. This article shows that Marx began to develop a critical theory of dispossession that overspills the historical, metaphysical, and developmental sequencing usually attributed to him. This late Marx believes that Indigenous peoples have a concrete, metabolic, and communal relationship to the land that communism must recapitulate and rehabilitate; this thesis has been misunderstood by readers of Marx, who impose an overly historicized interpretation upon his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the reception of W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk as a text consigned to his "early liberal" period, distinct from a later period in which he incorporates Marxist analysis. This periodization of Du Bois's corpus risks obscuring a longstanding focus in Du Bois's work: the alienation of Black life. In Souls, alienation consists not only in the alienated double-consciousness Black Americans suffer, but also in a material "double life" that grounds this consciousness. Insofar as it attributes theoretical priority to the objective conditions of racial capitalism, Du Bois's early account of alienation bears striking similarities to Marx's theory of alienation. By appreciating Du Bois's emphasis on objective, socioeconomic conditions, it becomes apparent that core, philosophical insights of Souls persist throughout Du Bois's corpus and prefigure his later embrace of Marxism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thorstein Veblen gave special importance to work. He claimed that once humans became tool users, their work activity was driven by an instinct of workmanship. This instinct is 'an object of attention and sentiment in its own right' beyond providing provisioning and serving another instinct, that of parental bent, or society's wellbeing. Given appropriate social institutions, 'labor might... assume that character of nobility in the eyes of society at large'. Yet, Veblen took little notice that during his lifetime between 1857 and 1929, the rapid industrialisation of the American economy massively proletarianised workers, greatly degrading their work experience. In Europe, this proletarianisation and degradation of the work process had begun centuries earlier with the rise of capitalism, and greatly accelerated with rapid industrialisation during Veblen's lifetime. Although Veblen addressed how capitalism, as the latest predatory society, exploited workers, he presented industrialisation of the work process as positive for workers. This article first surveys the process of proletarianisation, focussing on the American experience. It then explores Veblen's understanding of the impact of industrialisation on workers and how he missed a far-reaching labour-degrading process that was important in provoking massive violent insurrection, and which had earlier been addressed by political economists as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Because he failed to recognise the degradation of the work process that accompanied industrialisation, he missed its contributing role in the explosion of conspicuous consumption by Americans of all classes, the subject of his most renowned work, The Theory of the Leisure Class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the influential new book Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism , Japanese academic Kohei Saito argues that Karl Marx made a theoretical breakthrough in later life. He abandoned his earlier interest in the development of productive forces and the possibilities raised by this for the realization of socialism. Marx intensively studied a range of topics including soil science and communal societies in this time and became what Saito refers to as a degrowth communist. Relatedly, according to Saito, Marx's ecological work had a different character to that of Friedrich Engels. Saito bases his analysis on a careful analysis of Marx's written work, including previously unpublished notebooks as well as theoretical engagements with theories of metabolism and metabolic rift. He shows how this remains relevant today in developing an ecological socialism that is cognizant of natural limits to growth and therefore capable of addressing capitalism's unsustainable relationship to the natural world. Saito argues strongly that socialists cannot rely on technological solutions to ecological breakdown. His conception of ecological Marxism tends to play down discussions of socialist and working-class strategy. However, it nevertheless contributes much to our understanding of Marx as a non-determinist and non-Eurocentric thinker as well as someone whose work was grounded in materialist ecological thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay exposes the radicality of the subjective philosophy of living labor that Michel Henry (1922–2002) developed, following Marx. It suggests starting from the problem of the status of this interpretation as such. As an interpretation inhabiting the center of what it is interpreting while seeking to prolong it through clarification, how exactly does the philosophy of living labor enhance Marx's critique of capitalism? If it goes beyond what it is interpreting, how and to what degree does it modify the critique of capitalism? The present contribution clarifies this modified critique in stages to defend the explanation overall despite that—as enlightening as this modification might be—it ends up shifting the overall perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text serves as an introduction to the first publication of an extensive new selection from Sergei Eisenstein's notebooks for a film of Capital (made "according to the script of K. Marx"): the Capital Diaries. While these texts have haunted the imaginations of historians, artists, and writers (from Guy Debord to Milica Tomic and Alexander Kluge) ever since short excerpts were first published in Russian in 1973 and English in October in 1976, this introduction presents a different and much broader selection, situating the experimental dimension of the notes between their main sources, Karl Marx's Das Kapital and James Joyce's Ulysses, as well as in the discursive framework of Viktor Shklovsky's theory of "defamilarization," Nikolai Marr's "palaeontology of speech," Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of "polyphony," and Eisenstein's own conceptual and cinematic propositions, such as "intellectual attraction," "typage," and "inner monologue." Furthermore, it traces the use value of images and collages in Eisenstein's diaries according to their potential to recirculate Marx's concepts and reveal cinema's participation in the entangled regimes of fascism and capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marx's theory of ground rent has been widely used to help understand the trinity of land, labor, and capital. However, limited attention has been paid to the role of water within the Marxian rent framework. This lack of attention proves troubling due to the role of surface waters as an essential means of production throughout capitalism. Here I restate Marxian ground rent in the form of water rent and discuss the function of water-rent in the two dominant surface water rights doctrines of the United States—the riparian doctrine and the doctrine of prior appropriation. In doing so, I revise the distinction between differential rent 1 and differential rent 2 to provide more analytically useful categories. Paying special attention to issues of drought and scarcity, I fully articulate the function of Marxian rent and its four forms for both surface water rights doctrines, while clearly stating where they do and do not differ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a reading of the theories of contract and value developed in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. We show how the circular shape emblematic of Hegel's philosophy allows both to make sense of the ambiguous stance of Hegel towards liberalism and to clarify the relationship between the Hegelian conception of value and that developed by Marx and some of his continuators. The article then studies how Hegel's analyses of contract and value shed light on the dynamics of neoliberalism. These analyses are shown to anticipate both early descriptions of neoliberal capitalism (Bourdieu, Foucault) and contemporary works (Fraser, Honneth, Jaeggi). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Karl Marx did not formulate an explicit, comprehensive theory of justice, he substantively engaged with the concept. Utilizing the analytical framework of historical materialism, Marx critically examined the capitalist notion of justice, thereby paving the way for the development of his own theoretical perspective. An understanding of Marx's approach to justice necessitates an exploration of the role that historical materialism plays within it. The introduction of 'historical man' via historical materialism fundamentally shifts our perspective, shaping Marx's conception of justice and laying the theoretical groundwork for its formulation. Moreover, historical materialism has profoundly transformed the methodology within justice theory, heralding a new paradigm in the field. Thus, the paradigmatic and methodological revolutions instigated by Marx's historical materialism underscore the fundamental distinctions between his theory of justice and capitalist justice theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karl Marx's bundle of ideas, postulates, and views is known as dialectical materialism. In it, he speculated about political and economic remedies to the issues facing France. It was a response to what he perceived as unfairness and social and economic wrongs that were quickly establishing themselves as the norm in his society. The relevance of actual circumstances in terms of class, labor, and socioeconomic interactions was underlined by the Marxist dialectic. Contrarily, the Hegelian dialectic emphasizes the notion that inconsistencies in natural occurrences can be resolved by deciphering them and synthesizing a resolution while preserving their essential characteristics. Marx thought addressing and rearranging the social organization systems at the core of the issues would be the most effective way to handle the issues brought on by stated contradictory phenomena. With this in mind, the goal of this research work is to critically analyze Marx's theory of dialectical materialism and then show how, if properly embraced in society, it may aid in the building of a nation. This study will eventually come to the conclusion that, despite communism's failure in practice, it still contains some key ideas and principles that are essential to the advancement of a nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descola's work has profoundly renewed ecological thought by suggesting that the global planetary crisis is linked to the 'naturalist ontology', by which modern Westerners distance themselves from non-humans. This article proposes to re-read Descola with Marx in order to critically assess question the genesis of this ontology. Rather than looking to the history of ideas in search of what prepared this naturalism, a close reading of Marx allows to hypothesise a practical origin of naturalism, in the worldly occupations that make up 'abstract labour'. By shedding light on the practical ontogeny of naturalism, we emphasize that the Marxian analysis of capitalism remains highly needed for thinking about and living through the ecological crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adorno's social theory is enjoying renewed attention, as is the debate to what extent is it Marxist. A central issue remains Adorno's concept of social totality: capitalism as a fully integrated society in which every difference is levelled. One problem this raises is why is he still committed to the Marxist concept of class. And second, how to understand his critique of the idea of proletarian class-consciousness, which seems to leave his critical theory without an addressee. The article suggests that, for Adorno, capitalist society exhibits what is termed here "differential integration." It is predicated both on the labor/capital distinction and, at the same time, on sufficient homology between the two, such that the qualitative class divide is experienced as mere quantitative variance. This efficacious gap between social structure and social experience is at the center of his concept of ideology. Ideology-critique for Adorno is mainly the critique of symptomatic misconceptions of how ideology functions, due to lack of attention to how the class structure is in fact not experienced as such. Adorno's alternative to proletarian class consciousness is "differential solidarity": consciousness of social domination that is on the one hand found across class divides yet is experienced differentially between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was Keynes trying to save capitalism or create "Liberal Socialism"? Jim Crotty's unique approach to this long-standing question makes his work an outstanding contribution to heterodox macro policy. Tracing Keynes's policy positions from World War I to Keynes's death in 1946, Jim combines rich historical detail with Keynes's insistence that the realism of assumptions affects the truth content of hypotheses. Jim's book can serve as a guide to policy positions to sustain full employment through the socialization of investment under conditions of class struggle. Contrary to the position that Keynes denied class conflict, there is no fundamental contradiction between Marx's assumption of class conflict and Keynes's policy positions in support of full employment through the socialization of investment. JEL Classification: E6, E11, E12 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I demonstrate that temporal domination over subjects and producers in capitalist society is Marx's central category in the critique of political economy. Hartmut Rosa who is well known in the critical tradition for his works on social acceleration refers to Marx's value theory to explain the economic motor of social acceleration in the sphere of production and distribution, but he does not reach the very depth of Marx's critique of abstract time domination and considered it as a subordinate and marginal aspect of Marx's theory. I argue that Marx's critique of class exploitation and commodification of social relations, in the final analysis, consists in the critique of domination of time over man. In particular, I articulate their relationship by representing the Hegelian onto-logical couple of essence and appearance; it is demonstrated that class exploitation as an internal and substantial structure of capitalism posits the temporal domination as an form of appearance which presupposes the first. Moreover, this article shows that class domination has taken a more inverted and mysterious form in digital capitalism through new time appropriation strategies. This implies that in contrast to Rosa who considers social acceleration above and beyond class boundaries, it still reinforces class exploitation and acts through it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 'One Health approach' has ambivalently become a key policy instrument for dealing with global health risks, which raises some key questions. What problems does the One Health approach really address? And what is problematic about One Health? This article traces the development of the One health concept and deconstructs its implementation in policy and practice. While the original One Health approach has gradually embraced a broader outlook, it has ended up being implemented through the narrow focus on global health security gaining increased traction. Capitalism, according to Marx, creates a 'Metabolic Rift' between human and natural systems, undermining the conditions for human and nonhuman flourishing. For over 25 years, this rift concept has been extensively discussed in environmental sociology and political ecology, but it has sadly not found its way into interdisciplinary One Health scholarship and practice. Practically, and at its core, the One Health approach remains mainly hooked to biomedical, risk adaptation and risk mitigation strategies when it comes to existing and future pathogens emerging in the interactions between human, animals and the ecological environment. As such, One Health risks to maintain and confirm a status quo, hence deprived of any transformative potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Cultura Económica is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, as a response to some of the recent attempts to promote a "post-critical" approach to the humanities, I propose an eco-critical posthumanism as a research program that analyzes the historical nexus between humanism and capitalism, thus attempting to reconcile several traditions and interventions in an intersectional framework. For this purpose, I look at the essential theoretical developments from the 1970s (eco-feminism, ecological economics) that have contributed to a critique of both humanism and capitalism as precursors of critical posthumanism. Instead of inventing new forms of ontological and metaphysical thinking, I argue that we still need, in the words of Marx, "a ruthless criticism of all that exists" that may lead to an alternative to capitalist humanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This response to Denise Ferreira da Silva's Unpayable Debt (2022) takes up the question of violence and the role it plays in Karl Marx's theorization of the capital-labor relation. Ferreira da Silva usefully highlights the way Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and David Harvey posit the violence of primitive accumulation as anterior or external to the theoretical analysis of the scene of value, including the contractual relation between the dramatis personae of the free worker and capitalist, a presupposition of the capitalist mode of production. In response, this engagement works through Marx's mode of presentation in Capital Vol. 1, arguing that the historical chapters on primitive accumulation in section eight revise and retroactively condition our understanding of the presumptive equality between capitalist and worker. By structuring the depiction of the abstract and theoretical mode of production in this way, Marx's methodology reveals the overlapping modalities of violence and their immanent relation to the juridical standing of the free worker. This essay closes by reassessing the status of the free worker, as well as Ferreira da Silva's critique, considering current conditions of neoliberal accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the Cultural Dynamics book forum on Denise Ferreira da Silva's Unpayable Debt. The book examines the epistemological principles of Western thinking that make raciality and its practical implications for the contemporary world possible. Among Ferreira da Silva's targets is Karl Marx's theory of value. Commentators respond to the author's argument, with debates on whether Marx's approach sufficiently addresses the role of race within capitalism. This introduction adds to the debate wondering whether Ferreira da Silva's framing of Marx's ideas inadvertently mirrors the post-Enlightenment pillars she criticizes in other philosophers, suggesting a potential misunderstanding of Marx's dialectics. The article winds up by emphasizing the significance of Marx's dialectics as a transformative tool to critique the commodity form and its power dynamics in a racialized world economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a more-than-human, relational, new materialist ontology to ask the Deleuzian question: what does capitalism actually do? The transactions identified in Marx's Capital are re-analysed as more-than-human assemblages, constituted by affective flows involving both human and non-human matter. The paper then identifies further more-than-human affects that produce the fluctuations in prices and quantities of goods sold, described in classical economics as the 'laws of supply and demand'. Analysis reveals these affects to be associated with the affective and relational capacities of commodities. The consequences of this more-than-human ontology of capitalism are explored by means of a short case study of the digital economy. This demonstrates how more-than-human affects are responsible for many of the negative consequences of a capitalist economy, including uncertainty, waste and social inequalities. The paper suggests that capitalism is progressively becoming a 'black hole' from which neither workers nor capitalist enterprises can escape, and draws conclusions that diverge radically from both neoliberal and Marxist analyses of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study if Shakespeare had become aware of the role played by money in the common man's life. His Timon presents an excellent understanding of money power and describes its social role in humanity. Gold is a private venture and is the achievement of the rising middle class. Marx's Das Capital analyses the role of private capital in a detailed manner, while Shakespeare sums up the social and political power of money in a few lines. Timon of Athens is a great contribution to the political economy, as exemplified by Marx in his personal writings. This interpretation of Marx has created a platform for researchers to use literary works as tools to understand economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Underdevelopment in Peru: A Profile of Peripheral Capitalism" by Jan Lust is a comprehensive analysis of underdevelopment in Peru, focusing on its political, economic, and social aspects. Lust defines underdevelopment as the absence of sustainable inclusive economic development and argues that Peru's role in the international division of labor perpetuates this condition. The book explores various dimensions of underdevelopment, including social class structure, labor dynamics, social segmentation, the role of the state, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lust supports his insights with data from national databases and offers valuable insights into the dominance of extractive industries, informality, and the relationship between the economic base and the superstructure. However, the book could benefit from further exploration of racialization and its intersection with dependency. Overall, Lust's work provides a strong theoretical foundation and historical analysis of Peru's underdevelopment. [Extracted from the article]

This article investigates important and interrelated issues regarding China. It seeks to understand China's current social formation, setting out the relationship between China and socialism. To examine whether China is socialist, this article examines key principles of socialism drawn from Marx including: individuals' possession of the means of subsistence; the entitlement to a share of the means of production that are held in common; equality; and the degree to which the state is withering. Through an examination of China's social welfare regime, the rural land ownership regime, and state-owned enterprise profit sharing with citizens, the article finds that China does not meet the criteria for socialism. In this context, the article continues to evaluate – based on an examination of the ruling party's motivations and the power dynamics of several social forces – the possibility that China could return to socialism once it builds a sustaining productive dynamic. Also investigated is the role of the state, analysing state-controlled economic resources including natural objects and state-owned enterprise and their impacts on society and the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconstructs and defends Theodor Adorno's social theory by motivating the central role of abstract domination within it. Whereas critics such as Axel Honneth have charged Adorno with adhering to a reductive model of personal domination, I argue that the latter rather understands domination as a structural and de-individualized feature of capitalist society. If Adorno's social theory is to be explanatory, however, it must account for the source of the abstractions that dominate modern individuals and, in particular, that of value. While such an account remains undeveloped in Adorno, Marx provides resources for its development, in positing the constitution of value neither in production nor exchange alone, but in the social totality. This article argues that Marx's account is compatible with Adorno's, and that it may be used to render Adorno's theory of domination more credible on explanatory grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We examine corporate rentiership in the contemporary economy and suggest that the idea we are in a moment of step-change within capitalism may be premature. Implicit in arguments for a step-change is the claim that the present-day economy emphasises unproductive or rentier forms rather than the more productive and entrepreneurial forms of the past. In contrast, we argue that to understand our current situation we need to focus on the division of labour and most especially on processes of standardisation and the rise of intangible assets. Moving from Marx's understanding of rent as a class relation, we re-embed rent within the circuit of capital and the realm of value distribution to investigate the class dynamics (among labour, capital and the state) through which giant firms seem to generate value out of rentierism. We argue that these class dynamics include the crucial and unexplored relation between standardisation and intangibles. We suggest standardisation within the division of labour renders people, places, and things interchangeable and that, in contrast, intangible assets differentiate them. When intangible assets emerge as new forms of property, they enable owners to generate scarcity and exert direct and/or indirect control over the wider division of labour. Through examining the combined rise of standardisation and intangible assets within the technical division of labour, we demonstrate how hierarchy within the social division of labour empowers some corporations to capture value produced elsewhere within the circuit of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on an interpretation of the concept of phantasmagoria in Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project according to which its meaning implies an extension of Marx's understanding of ideology that makes it encompass modern society's field of ideas, the materiality of its cultural productions, and its forms of experience in their reciprocal interaction. On this basis, and taking into account the dreamlike component that Benjamin attributes to the phantasmagorical, the paper analyses what he calls the phantasmagorias of space, linked to the figure of the flâneur, and the phantasmagorias of time, that Benjamin associates with the character of the gambler. Given the correspondence that he also establishes between these two kinds of phantasmagoria, a hermeneutical hypothesis is proposed to explain their correlation, in addition to the significance that this acquires in the Arcades Project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reconsideration of the crucial historical role of slavery in the consolidation of the global regime of capital accumulation provides a vital source of Marxian critique for our postcolonial present. The Atlantic slave trade literally transformed African men and women into human commodities. The reduction of human beings into human commodities, or 'human capital' – indeed, into labour and nothing but labour – which was the very essence of modern slavery, served as a necessary prerequisite for the consolidation and perfecting of what Marx called 'labour in the abstract', and requires us to re-situate enslaved labour as the defining and constitutive limit for how we comprehend labour as such under capitalism. The production of labour in the abstract, or labour 'in general', depended nonetheless upon concrete productions of sociopolitical difference , particularly the branding of race. The term 'Black', which was devised to literally and figuratively brand the flesh of enslaved people, was also contrived to signify their particular sociopolitical condition of brutal degradation as the ultimate limit for the subjugation of labour. Blackness names that limit. Thus, Blackness is in fact necessary for apprehending labour as such under capitalism. Marx's scathing critique of wage labour is always haunted by the long shadow of slavery as its limit figure. If we comprehend labour to be the antithesis of capital, then to the extent that Blackness names the ultimate condition of labour's subordination and subjection to capital, we need to recognise the tendency for all labour under capital to be pressed toward a sociopolitical condition of Blackness (or approximating Blackness), where Blackness does not name any kind of essential identity but the racialised sociopolitical condition of that subordination/subjection. Consequently, the labour theory of value – which has always been in fact, more accurately, a value theory of labour – must be complemented with what we might posit to be a racial theory of labour. Such an ostensibly historical perspective on the foundational role of slavery in the genesis of capitalism is no mere scholastic exercise in the historiography of 'primitive accumulation', however, but rather must be re-purposed toward the ends of elaborating what has remained an as-yet underdeveloped Marxian theory of migrant labour. Extrapolating key insights from Marx's corpus for the formulation of a racial theory of labour, this essay is ultimately concerned with the ways that slavery supplies capitalism with a defining horizon for all labour, and thus how this insight might instructively serve to comprehend the racialised subordination of migrant labour within our global/postcolonial sociopolitical order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Karl Marx's critique of Thomas Malthus's theory of population and his discussion of colonization in the last chapter of Capital. For Marx, Malthus's theory naturalizes the process of social reproduction specific to capitalism, a process that was disrupted in the colonies, where, owing to the availability of land, the superfluous population of immigrant workers were transformed into independent producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lenin said, 'We do not regard Marx's theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life'. Marx himself believed in the principle of 'ruthless criticism' of everything existing. Critiquing and revising certain ideas to strengthen an approach to society is a constructive act. But the legitimate act of revision becomes revision-ism, when the fundamental tenets of Marxism are revised in order to attack – negate – its very explanatory or scientific foundation and to justify political reformism. Indeed, since Lenin's time, scientific socialism has been under attack from not only the ruling class and its ideologues, but also those who associate themselves with Marxism itself, including in academia. The latter are revisionist Marxists. For them, Marxism has some usefulness. But they deny the superiority of Marxism as a way of critically and scientifically interpreting the world and transforming that world in the interest of the exploited and oppressed masses in a revolutionary socialist manner. This denial of Marxism's superiority takes the form of the denial of Marxism's central concepts: class and capitalism. The article discusses, and critiques, various forms of revisionist Marxism (e.g. Analytical Marxism, Polanyian Marxism, Post-Modernist Marxism, and Geographical Marxism). Revisionism does respond to some recent developments in the world (e.g. the defeat of class-based movements; the complexity of class structure), but it seeks to explain these not on the basis of Marxist foundations but on the basis of scientifically inadequate ideas and in a manner that is politically reformist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human–animal scholars have repeatedly accused Marx of standing in the tradition of a Cartesian human–animal dualism. One central piece of evidence brought forward to substantiate the attack is Marx's concept of labour. The present article, however, argues that Marx's conceptualisation of labour is actually non-speciesist and recognises non-waged and other than human forms of labour as well without renouncing qualitative distinctions between them. For Marx, both useful labour and the historically specific capitalist form of social labour cannot be reduced to something peculiar to man. Useful labour encompasses a wide range of ways to transform nature. Due to the bourgeois social relations, capitalist social labour is instead limited to human productive wage labour, excluding numerous types of human labour as well as animal labour. Thus, his concept of labour proves that Marx is not just another 'speciesist' scholar in the long Western tradition of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contrastes: Revista Internacional de Filosofia is the property of Contrastes: Revista Internacional de Filosofia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Pacha: Revista de Estudios Contemporáneos del Sur Global is the property of PACHA REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS CONTEMPORANEOS DEL SUR GLOBAL and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Pacha: Revista de Estudios Contemporáneos del Sur Global is the property of PACHA REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS CONTEMPORANEOS DEL SUR GLOBAL and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Locke's philosophy money is 'naturalised' and thus ostensibly removed from political contestation. Locke has been criticised for marginalising monetary politics, and thus downplaying the conventional character of money that could potentially allow for democratic monetary reform. Drawing on Marx's writings, this paper shows that money is indeed a social convention, but its inherent economic functioning restricts its susceptibility to political contestation. There are limits to the democratic reform of money in a capitalist economy that spring from money's own nature. Specifically, the politics of money is rooted in the tension between money as measure of value and money as unit of account. The state draws political power from setting the unit of account, but the measurement of value occurs spontaneously among commodity producers, thereby generating tension that curbs monetary politics. In contemporary conditions, this is typified by central banks having the freedom to manage the unit of account but subject to heavy economic constraints rooted in value measurement. In this light, democratic monetary reform requires restricting the spontaneous measurement of value, thus intervening at the heart of the capitalist economy. For money to be democratic it needs to have a much narrower range of economic functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nancy Fraser's recent work on the hidden abodes of capitalism has quickly become a critical point of reference for those concerned with the racialized, gendered, and ecological conditions of capitalist reproduction. With that in view, this article seeks to extend Fraser's conceptualization through a sympathetic critique of her approach to capitalism's foreground/background nexus. After situating Fraser's project in relation to Marx (and his own engagement with capitalism's background conditions of possibility), it argues that (1) Fraser fails to adequately theorize how capitalist crisis is produced and resolved in space and (2) that Fraser obscures the relational-dialectical constitution of her own hidden abodes. This article then develops an alternative theoretical approach to capitalism's foreground/background relationship, based on a synthetic reading of Fraser's framework and the work of geographer Jason W. Moore. Finally, it closes with some brief reflections on the implications of this theorization for contemporary socialist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether we think history has a definite logic of its own, or is merely the emergent quality of an irreducible contingency - it is usually taken as granted that it the same way in all its course. This is the case with some philosophers who argue against a conception of history as having an inherent logic. In this paper I present Postone's critical reexamination of Marxian categories and argue that based on his project, we can criticize the presupposition of the "sameness" of history. For although there is no transhistorically valid "logic of history", something like it is constituted by the functioning of capitalism's elementary categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of complex and changeable world, the smooth development of civilization needs the guidance of Karl Marx's thought. The era Marx faced was not fundamentally different from the times we live in today, and Marx's theory, which was born in that era and directly used to analyze it, is not outdated yet. Some of Marx's basic standpoints and views about civilization, including his basic theoretical propositions on the understanding of civilization itself, the goal of civilization, this historical process and requirement of the development of civilization, the conditions and environment for the progress of civilization, the laws and roads of the development of civilization, and the exchanges between and spread of civilizations, are still of immense value today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the "backlash thesis" as a way of interpreting hostility and resistance to reproductive rights in the United States. The dominant interpretation of resistance to abortion rights or of advocacy for population control is that they are a backlash against feminism and civil rights. Granting that the backlash thesis has intuitive appeal, the article argues that it is not adequate to a contemporary analysis of these issues. It then claims that what is needed is an account of the contradictory and dynamic way in which capitalism generates anxiety about fertility and family life. The article then uses socialist feminist social reproduction theory to develop an alternative explanatory framework for why market forces form the precondition and basis for context-specific appeals to tradition rather than being antithetical to them. The latter includes both pronatalist ideas and neo-Malthusian ones about population control. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which the analysis can be useful in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of capitalism in the last 250 years is intimately linked to the intensive use of science, and the impact of four technological revolutions. Marx's technological conception and two concepts of the philosophy of technology, technological phases and metatechnology, contribute to explain the macro-process of adaptation of science and technology to the needs of capital and imperialism today. Three distinctive features of direct social change produced in everyday life by the last two industrial revolutions are identified: the displacement of technology from the productive process to the medium through which human activity is carried out; the fundamental change with respect to the place of the subject in human activity; and the impact of technology turned into a medium, in communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Changzhou University (Social Science Edition) is the property of Editorial Department of Journal of Changzhou University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Is a "fully automated" capitalism possible? According to Marx's labor theory of value (LTV) and the theory of surplus-value derived from it, a fully automated economy cannot be profitable. To refute the theory, critics have put forth various thought experiments claiming to show that a fully automated but profitable capitalist economy is conceivable. I argue that the thought experiments fail to demonstrate conceivability, because they misunderstand the role of labor in a commodity economy. In the latter, labor is a means for acquiring the property of others, and so it cannot be eliminated so long as the economy is based on the commodity form. Quite apart from issues of technical feasibility, then, the idea of a fully automated commodity economy is conceptually incoherent. The ineliminability of labor under the commodity form reflects the limits to the socialization of production this form imposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]