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The opportunity offered by the adoption of a Treaty on the Right to Development could relaunch aspirations of sovereignty, self-determination and cooperative solidarity, breaking with the structural inequalities among and within nations. The aim of this article is to mobilize political actors in favour of the Treaty as a stepping-stone to achieve universal social protection systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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What can Western feminism hope to learn from women whose feminisms were originally shaped by experiences behind the 'Iron Curtain'? In the first instance, an acute sensitivity to the importance of a politics that is responsive to needs. In its social democratic heyday, Western feminism had embraced a politics of contested need interpretation. Now, though, a neoliberal version has converted feminism into an attitudinal resource for the individual woman who is bent upon success. The takeover was made easy by the poor self-understanding of social democratic feminism. My paper will compare Agnes Heller's theory of 'radical needs' and Maria Márkus's account of the 'politicization of needs' and apply both to the normative clarification of endangered feminist agendas. We look to the Budapest School women for more than just a way of conceptualizing the political radicalism of modern feminism as a social movement. Women need heroes too and a reflection upon the dignified and admirable lives of Agnes Heller and Maria Márkus has much to contribute to an ongoing search for a feminist ethic of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My comments aim to cast light on a specific political proposal that can arise from a discussion of the topic of the 'refusal of work' and its implications for a social radical change. Autonomist, anarchist and feminist activism, have been and are the main sources of a long-term conceptual and empirical work on the refusal of work. Refusal of work is a very complex concept that has traversed history and is reduced for uncritical dominant common sense to unemployment, laziness, idleness, indolence but it is in reality one of the basic foundational qualification to think any radical change. Among many important intuitions, the added value of Silvia Federici's work is to have offered a different perspective on the refusal of work discussion and how it can be expressed to develop different forms of communing. Her work provides the backbone for this brief excursion on the issue of the refusal of work. Emerging and consolidated social movements, for example in Southern Europe, have, consciously or not, taken position, often contradictorily, regarding what refusal of work means. In the context of current neoliberal capitalism, an increasing structural unemployment and precarious jobs are one of the trademarks of austerity policies to 'revive' economies. Drawing on Federici's insights on the women exclusion as a useful way of thinking about the spatial dimension of these issues in feminist theory, this article looks at examples of prefigurative politics that define their strategies of refusal of work building significant spatial patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a political dissident in communist Hungary, Agnes Heller and her Budapest School colleagues forged a theory and practice of political engagement that offered a democratic alternative to state socialism but maintained a critical tension with Western liberalism. It is out of this neglected body of political thought that new insights can be gained for confronting the shortcomings of liberalism while still maintaining an unerring commitment to democratic politics. Focusing on Heller and her colleagues' earlier writings, this essay will examine two major themes: the radicalization of democratic citizenship and the notion of the Great Republic. The ultimate goal of this essay is to inquire whether or not Heller's thought offers real insights into transforming the constitutive and practical aspects of democratic politics without undermining its stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Agnes Heller's attempt to construct a post Marxist radical philosophy. It examines the two main phases of this project: beginning with her late seventies A Radical Philosophy, it charts her development towards the position she now characterises as reflective post-modernism. It shows that despite a constant commitment to rational critique, Heller's concept of philosophical radicalism has shifted from an emphasis on total critique to that of maintaining balance between the rival technological and historical imaginations that exercise a 'double-bind' over the modern individual. The paper explains the rationale of this evolution, highlights the features of each phase and critically analyses their weaknesses. Finally it argues that Heller's contemporary position represents a sophisticated attempt to overcome the limitations of former left radicalism and address the continuing need for orientation in contemporary modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]