This article clarifies and resituates Althusser’s materialist philosophical project in relation not only to such predecessors as V.I. Lenin and Jean-Toussaint Desanti but also to such successors as Pierre Macherey and Pierre Raymond. The thesis of the article is that Althusser’s project to establish a philosophical practice that would be appropriate for Marxism did not simply consist of identifying and defending a ‘materialist’ position in philosophy against external ‘idealist’ challenges or threats. On the contrary, it recognised that there exists an (...) interminable struggle between inextricably linked but ever-shifting materialist and idealist tendencies – a struggle that operates as a defining feature in the history of philosophy. As a result, the problem explored in this article concerns how best to conceptualise this struggle and to determine whether or not the term ‘tendency’ genuinely holds analytical value and can serve as an important conceptual resource for Marxists working within the field of philosophy. (shrink)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian Marxism, which was rapidly gaining intellectual and political influence, faced the need to develop its ethical concepts, since the “atheistic ethics,” represented by the philosophy of Russian narodniki and European social democrats, were found to be ideologically unacceptable. The subject of this article is an attempt to comprehend the moral problems addressed in the heterogeneous circles of Russian Marxism in the first three decades of the twentieth century. The concepts introduced by A. (...) Bogdanov, L. Aksel’rod, and A. Lunacharsky played a critical role in this context. If Bogdanov proclaimed historical legality and morality as such to be forms of ideological consciousness that would be abolished in the course of social evolution, then Aksel’rod sought to defend and justify a universalist understanding of morality, faced with the need to reconcile this understanding with the key provisions of historical materialism. Lunacharsky, finally, found himself in an equally difficult situation, trying to reconcile the position of the self-sufficiency of the Marxist worldview with the obvious, as it seemed to him, need for its “ethical supplement” and finding a solution in peculiar identification of the ethical and the aesthetic. These attempts reflect a peculiarity of the development of Russian Marxism. In the field of ethics, in particular, it followed a path that could be described as one of narrowing interpretations‚ as a result of which a more heuristically simple and unambiguous version of the theory was created. (shrink)

The central strength of the Hegelian dialectical tradition is that reason is not divorced from its own internal limits in the name of a reason free from ideological mediation and constraint. This article holds onto this insight in the examination of the recent returns to religious categories in political philosophy and political theory. In this it follows a twofold logic. In the spirit of Hegel and Marx it seeks to recover what is ‘rational in religion’; at the same time, it (...) examines the continuing entanglements of politics with religious categories. That this is an atheistic and materialist project is not in a sense strange or anomalous. On the contrary, it is precisely the ‘secularisation’ of Judeo-Christian categories in Kant, Hegel and Marx's respective theorisations of history that provides the dialectical ground for the atheistic recovery and invocation of Judeo-Christian thought in recent political philosophy. Consequently, this discussion of religion, or ‘religion beyond religion’, has very little to do with the spread of obscurantism and anti-rationalism in the global upsurge of reactionary Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms, neo-pagan mysticisms, and other retreats from the real, or with the left-liberal denunciation of religion in the recent writings of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Rather, ‘religion’ here, in its Judeo-Christian legacy, is that which embodies the memory or prospect of a universal emancipatory politics. (shrink)

The central strength of the Hegelian dialectical tradition is that reason is not divorced from its own internal limits in the name of a reason free from ideological mediation and constraint. This article holds onto this insight in the examination of the recent returns to religious categories in political philosophy and political theory. In this respect the article follows a two-fold logic. In the spirit of Hegel and Marx, it seeks to recover what is 'rational in religion'; and, at the (...) same time, examines the continuing entanglements of politics with religious categories. That this is an atheistic and materialist project is not in a sense strange or anomalous. On the contrary, it is precisely the 'secularisation' of Judeo-Christian categories in Kant, Hegel and Marx's respective theorisation of history, that provides the dialectic ground of the atheistic recovery and invocation of Judeo-Christian thought in recent political philosophy. Consequently the discussion of religion, or 'religion beyond religion', here, has very little to do with the spread of obscurantism and anti-rationalism in the global upsurge of reactionary Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms, neo-Pagan mysticisms, and other retreats from the real, or with the left-liberal denunciation of religion in the recent writings of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Rather, 'religion' here, in its Judeo-Christian legacy, is that which embodies the memory or prospect of a universal emancipatory politics. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to reconsider the relationship between marxism and existential-phenomenological sociology in light of margolis' (1978) recent articulation and systematic defense of what he terms nonreductive materialism--a material monist ontology which acknowledges an irreducible dualism of attributes. it is argued that reductive materialism is philosophically indefensible and that the most important reasons for thinking that marxism entails reductive materialism are mistaken.

In their work The German Ideology, the founders of Marxism assert that the prerequisite of post-capitalist (defined by them as communist) society is the universal development of human abilities and all social relations. But then on the same page, contrary to this statement, it is alleged that the abolition of private property is not only highly topical but it is also an imperative history-making task. In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels explain that economic crises recurrently shaking capitalist (...) society expose an apparent contradiction between the productive forces and the capitalist relations of production – therefore, these relations must be eliminated for the preservation of society. Nonetheless, the same treatise affirms that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without revolutionizing not only the productive forces but also the relations of production. But in this case it stands to reason to recognize that there is no conflict between productive forces and production relations, and, therefore, there is no crisis of the capitalist system, either. Paradoxes in the communist theory of Marxism stem not merely from erroneous conceptions but reveal the fact that Marxism as an ideology comes into conflict with its scientific social theory. Hence, these paradoxes disclose the relative independence of the social theory of Marxism from its ideological postulates. (shrink)

This paper gives a critical evaluation of the philosophical presuppositions and implications of two current schools in the sociology of knowledge: the Strong Programme of Bloor and Barnes; and the Constructivism of Latour and Knorr-Cetina. Bloor's arguments for his externalist symmetry thesis (i.e., scientific beliefs must always be explained by social factors) are found to be incoherent or inconclusive. At best, they suggest a Weak Programme of the sociology of science: when theoretical preferences in a scientific community, SC, are first (...) internally explained by appealing to the evidence, e, and the standards or values, V, accepted in SC, then a sociologist may sometimes step in to explain why e and V were accepted in SC. Latour's story about the social construction of facts in scientific laboratories is found to be misleading or incredible. The idea that scientific reality is an artifact turns out to have some interesting affinities with classical pragmatism, instrumentalism, phenomenology, and internal realism. However, the constructivist account of theoretical entities in terms of negotiation and social consensus is less plausible than the alternative realist story which explains consensus by the preexistence of mind-independent real entities. The author concludes that critical scientific realism, developed with the concept of truthlikeness, is compatible with the thesis that scientific beliefs or knowledge claims may be relative to various types of cognitive and practical interests. However, the realist denies, with good reasons, the stronger type of relativism which takes reality and truth to be relative to persons, groups, or social interests. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between the classical Marxist tradition and the conceptual roots of totalitarianism. Here totalitarianism is understood to entail the attempt to frame the developmental impulses of modernity within the logic of a premodern political imaginary—defined as internally homogenous and transparent to itself. In the first part, we take issue with those who try to distinguish between the thought of Marx and Engels, and who insist that it is only in Engels's thought that the traces of a (...) totalitarian politics might be found. In the second section, we outline briefly the context within which Marx's thought was developed, after which we argue that Marx's vision of communism is dependent on the three-phase vision of historical process which he inherited from Hegel. Without denying the historical peculiarities of the imposition of communism in Russia, we conclude that it is out of this latter vision of history that the conceptual roots of totalitarianism must be located. (shrink)

This paper deals with some aspects of the relationship between Hegel and Marx and with their influence on the development of Marxism. The story is largely, though not entirely, one of misunderstandings and misappropriations, lost opportunities, unnoticed slippages, wrong turnings and blind alleys. As a result the project which unites Hegel and Marx, and, indeed, is the driving force of their work, has fared less well than it might have done. This, to state it in the most general terms, is (...) the project of a dialectical theory in the service of human freedom. Anyone interested in that project who wishes to gauge its current standing and prospects will need to understand its strange history. The history also contains elements of deep continuity and unity of thought, at least where Hegel and Marx themselves are concerned. Yet even these have been subject to distortion and forgetting by Marx's successors. The discussion will try to do justice to them too. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe examine Marx's critiques of language, politics, and capitalist political economy and show how these anticipated critical discourse and argumentation analysis and ‘cultural political economy’. Marx studied philology and rhetoric at university and applied their lessons critically. We illustrate this from three texts. The German Ideology critically explores language as practical consciousness, the division of manual and mental labor, the state, hegemony, intellectuals, and specific ideologies. The Eighteenth Brumaire studies the semantics and pragmatics of political language and how it represents (...) the class content of politics and contributes to social transformation. Capital deconstructs the categories of classical political economy and their constitutive role in capitalist social relations. This is one aspect of CPE. Capital also highlights the structural and agential aspects of these relations, their contradictory dynamic, and their crisis-prone character. We comment on this aspect too. This said, Marx held that social transformation is mediated through political imaginaries and highlighted the need for the proletariat to develop a ‘poetry’ of the future. We then consider the misleading ‘base-superstructure’ metaphor and note how, against the thrust of Marx's work, it tends to reify culture. The article concludes that Marx contributed to the critique of semiotic as well as political economy. (shrink)

Lars Lih’s study of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? demolishes the shared liberal and Stalinist myth of Leninism as an ice-cold ideology of professional and opportunistic revolutionary organisation. He conclusively shows, not only that Lenin’s thought had deep roots in the democratic culture of contemporary Marxism, but also that it was predicated upon a strong belief in the revolutionary potential of the working class. Lih’s research thus moves the debate about Lenin’s contribution to Marxism on from the tired caricatures (...) of the textbooks to focus instead upon his complex relationship to the Marxism of the Second International. By showing that Lenin’s Marxism was much more sophisticated and textured than is normally allowed, this debate opens his rich legacy to contemporary re-evaluation. 1. (shrink)

Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages is a towering comparative overview of Rome’s successor-states in the four centuries after its collapse in the West. Not only does it bring together evidence from across the continent in a way that will inform all subsequent serious discussions of the period, it also conceptualises an important, peasant-mode of production. Notwithstanding these strengths, Framing has been criticised for its structuralist, static characterisation of feudalism. The debates surveyed in this essay suggest that, while Wickham’s (...) book will act as a milestone in the history of Europe, it should also act as a spur to further research and critical reflection on the period. Moreover, in the light of recent criticisms of Marxist historiography, Wickham’s book and the debate surrounding it point to the continued vibrancy of historical materialism. (shrink)

It is often believed that the only alternative to an idealist conception of natural phenomena excludes both the presence of objective universal forms and their progression towards higher forms as the finality of processes in the natural world. Realism regarding the universal and teleological approaches regarding processes are signs of idealism. Therefore, materialism, it would seem, must conform to a nominalist and mechanical view of nature. However, an intelligent materialist reading of idealism’s classics reveals a more complex scenario. A real (...) fact is expressed in a mystical fashion in idealism’s conceptions of objective universals and teleology. This article attempts to show such a real fact in its authentic (materialist) form. With that goal in mind, the present article discusses the notion of nature’s alienation, the distinction between abstract and concrete universals, and the concept of dialectical interaction. The natural-historical emergence of a higher form of matter’s organization assimilates, as its organs, the conditions that preceded it in time, transforming itself into an active producer of such conditions. That is the secret glimpsed but not correctly understood by idealism that a consistent materialist should not ignore. (shrink)

Communist discourses are resurging in various disciplines across the globe. Philosophy has its share of this resurgence especially after the global financial crisis of 2008 made a number of its thinkers convene in various conferences and intellectually meet in a host of publications. In these intellectual engagements, the idea of communism is once again interrogated as the moribund capitalist system failed humanity its promise. Alain Badiou is among the leading figures in the philosophical task of (re)interrogating the idea of communism. (...) Badiou raised the urgency of reformulating what he calls as the communist hypothesis for it to both reconsider its supposed failures of the past and better suit the current conditions. Badiou is particularly guided by the lessons of the May ’68 of France, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China, and various contemporary popular uprisings to develop a reformulation of the communist hypothesis. In advancing a laborious task of reformulation, Badiou inevitably rejected a core category of the Marxist-Leninist tradition: the party. The rejection is supported by a view of the party that reduced it to its supposed fusion with the State, i.e., the party-State fusion. Such a fusion is characterized by either parliamentarian or insurrectionary politics. In this politics, Badiou argues that the party is obstructed from advancing further the proletarian revolution as it is tied to a Statist procedure. This work develops a Maoist reformulation of the communist hypothesis. Along the course of the socialist constructions of Russia and China, certain moments of what can be called as indigenized and mobilizational politics characterized periods that escape what Badiou reduced the party into, i.e., the party-State fusion. The Maoist notions of the mass line and protractedness come out as indispensable requisites in developing the concepts of indigenized and mobilizational politics. These moments depicted what can be called as the party-masses fusion and provided practical resources not only for the rectification of the supposed failures of the past but also for a reformulation of the communist hypothesis. Through the development and employment of the category of the party-masses fusion and the politics that determine it, the reformulation of the communist hypothesis is supported by a discourse of success rather than of defeat. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most scholars' comprehension on labour are ambiguous because of the variety of philosophical contradictions embedded in their plausible theories being not explicitly stated but irrationally taken for granted. We, therefore, inquisitively direct sole attention to social spacetime in which, and by which, labour in totality takes place. And then consider the division of labour in natural spacetime as just the appearance of the alienation of labour in social spacetime by our Marxist renewal of the notion of labour - thus (...) manifesting its benefaction to an essential up-to-date explanation of human being, on which a labourer could struggle to survive as still a human being within social spacetime, to fight against the almighty empire of capitalism in the era of globalisation. RESUMO A compreensão da maioria dos estudiosos acerca do trabalho é ambígua em razão da variedade de contradições filosóficas embutidas no fato de suas teorias plausíveis não serem explicitamente declaradas, mas presumidas de modo irracional. Nós, assim, inquisitivamente, dirigimos nossa total atenção ao espaço-tempo social no qual, e através do qual, o trabalho ocorre, em sua totalidade. Em seguida, consideramos a divisão de trabalho em espaço-tempo natural como apenas uma aparência da alienação do trabalho em espaço-tempo social, segundo nossa renovação marxista da noção de trabalho - assim manifestando seu benefício em uma explicação atualizada do ser humano, segundo a qual um trabalhador deve lutar para sobreviver como um ser humano parado dentro do espaço-tempo social, lutar contra o todo-poderoso império do capitalismo na era da globalização. (shrink)

We ignore the history of philosophy at our peril. Engels, who typically conflates Marx and Marxism, points to the relation of Marxism to the tradition while also denying it. In his little book on Feuerbach, Engels depicts Feuerbach as leading Marx away from Hegel, away from classical German philosophy, away from philosophy and towards materialism and science. This view suggests that Marx is at best negatively related to Classical German philosophy, including Hegel. Yet Engels elsewhere suggests that Marx belongs to (...) the classical German philosophical tradition. In the preface to Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels wrote: “We German socialists are proud that we trace our descent not only from Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen, but also from Kant, Fichte and Hegel”. In this paper I will focus on Marx’s relation to Fichte. This relation is rarely mentioned in the Marxist debate, but I will argue, it is crucial for the formulation of Marx’s position, and hence for assessing his contribution accurately. One of the results of this study will be to indicate that Marx, in reacting against Hegel, did not, as is often suggested, ‘leave’ philosophy, but in fact made a crucial philosophical contribution. (shrink)

Focusing on the conceptual terms of the idealist-realist debate, the paper shows that the inability of the realists to recognize Marx’s idealist heritage is out of the realists’ limited understanding of the category of idealism in their reading. To prove the paper’s case, the first section starts with elucidation of Marx’s concept of epistemological idealism as read by his interpreters. It shows the actual meaning of epistemological idealism as used by Kolakowski, Lukacs, and other idealist readers of Marx. The second (...) section shows how the realists conflate the two idealisms, how the realist reading is erroneously grounded on failure to clarify the difference between the concept of ontological and epistemological idealism. The third section highlights the differences between epistemological and ontological idealism. It explains that Ontological idealism claims that idea is the fundamental reality, while epistemological idealism suggests that knowledge is dependent upon the subject. (shrink)