This essay engages with Ali Shariati’s lecture “Some of the Vanguard of the Return to Self in the Third World” to explore his conception of the “Third World” as a cultural, psychic, and politico-economic project of which Iran would be an integral part, and his relationship to the intellectual contributions of Frantz Fanon, whose translation and critical reception proved to be of considerable importance to the ideological development of a popular-nationalist and avowedly religious section of Iran’s anti-Pahlavi opposition during (...) the 1960s and 1970s. The essay explores several elements of Shariati’s anti-capitalism in the context of his advocacy of a Third World politico-economic bloc and some of the potential difficulties, tensions, and contradictions this vision would, and ultimately, did encounter. Finally, the essay concludes by examining how Shariati’s prescriptions for breaking the chains of “dependency” might have been further developed and complicated, given the immense obstacles the promise of Third World solidarity has historically faced. (shrink)

Leftwing critiques of philanthropy are not new and so it is unsurprising that the Effective Altruism movement, which regards philanthropy as one of its tools, has been a target in recent years. Similarly, some Effective Altruists have regarded anti-capitalist strategy with suspicion. This essay is an attempt at harmonizing Effective Altruism and the anti-capitalism. My attraction to Effective Altruism and anti-capitalism are motivated by the same desire for a better world and so personal consistency demands (...) reconciliation. More importantly however, I think Effective Altruism will be less effective in realizing its own ends insofar as it fails to recognize that capitalism restricts the good we can do. Conversely, insofar as anti-capitalists fail to recognize the similarity in methods which underlie Effective Altruism thinking about the world, it too risks inefficiency or worse, total failure in replacing capitalism with a more humane economic system. I first argue that Effective Altruism and anti-capitalism are compatible in principle by looking at similarities between Effective Altruist theory and some Marxist writing. I then go on to show that the theoretic compatibility can be mirrored in practice. I demonstrate this by considering and replying to objections to anti-capitalism as they might be raised by Effective Altruists and by replying to objections to Effective Altruism as they might be raised by anti-capitalists. I conclude by suggesting that their reconciliation would lead to better outcomes from the perspective of a proponent of either view. In short, an “Anti-Capitalist Effective Altruism” is not just possible, it’s preferable. (shrink)

For many, anti-capitalism signifies too much and thus lacks the political conviction needed to inform left-wing strategy and tactics. What remains neglected, though, is how anti-capitalism can function as an organisational form, one that is constituted by the democratic requirements of struggle. At different moments and for different purposes, anti-capitalist organising may rely on vertical, horizontal, centralised, or decentralised formations. We cannot predetermine the organisational particularities of anti-capitalism because it is always a form (...) of forms determined by the demands of struggle. However, we can explore the psycho-political valances of anti-capitalist organisation. The appeal of anti-capitalism, so conceived, lies in its ability to facilitate subjects’ enjoyment and political commitment through formal and psychic lack, rather than through neoliberal excess or ideological surety. Psychoanalytic theory is useful for considering how the anti-capitalist form’s significatory field can foster emancipatory knowledges, acts, and ways of being in politically fraught contexts of struggle. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I link the fundamentalist zeal of Trumpism to its romantic anti-capitalist ideology, and I argue that Trumpism and its European counterparts have appropriated the imaginative plot of romantic anti-capitalism from its place in the Leftist lexicon. The creed-makers of Trumpism now announce that the machinery of capital, which was supposed to belong to the common person, is managed by career politicians and over-educated apologists on behalf of a class that will do anything to keep others from (...) its ranks. I make the case that the ideological successes of Trumpism attest to the continued draw of romantic anti-capitalism and to the Left’s mistake of leaving the romantic imagination unfortified by enfranchising political initiatives. I cite a number of recent speeches by right-wing pundits and politicians, and I analyse them as inheritors of an expanding nationalism tied to romantic anti-capitalist ideologies. I turn to Agnes Heller’s approach to assessing populism and romanticism, both as part as her seminal evaluations of modernity and justice, and in the popular opinion pieces, essays, and lectures delivered during the last years of her life. (shrink)

The anti-capitalist debate has traditionally drawn up battle lines between oppressed individuals on the one hand, and an oppressive system on the other. While this has high rhetorical value, it is based on imprecise use of language. The language confuses an amoral system with im/moral agents but at the same time uses anthropomorphic language to lend capitalism moral agency. This inevitably leads to a confused debate. Given that all opponents of capitalism want the reformation of what they (...) see as a flawed system, precision in the use of the language employed would move the debate into arenas of action, and thus the debate is more likely to generate change. (shrink)

Résumé À la suite de La Sorcellerie capitaliste de Stengers et Pignarre, cet article cherche à cerner l’anéantissement de toute prise que signifie le capitalisme, en particulier par le fait de renvoyer tout discours rival dans le registre spéculatif, et de pouvoir ainsi devenir la seule réponse suivante.

A critique of neo-liberal academia and platform cultures, Knowledge, Spirit, Law: Book 2, The Anti-capitalist Sublime closes the "Knowledge, Spirit, Law" project (2014-2016). The project included the conclusion of PhD studies in Australia, in 2014, and subsequent post-doctoral activities in Europe and the USA, 2014-2016.

This article reviews a cross-section of the globalisation-literature written prior to the unfolding economic crisis of 2007. It assesses the literature in terms of its apprehending of changes in capitalism and the prospects for social change that are envisioned.

Through the examination of anti-psychiatric theory and literary texts, this timely and thought-provoking volume explores the possibilities of liberating our habitual patterns of perception and consciousness beyond the confines of a capitalist era. In Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry, Skott-Myhre asks the question, how might we be different if we didn't live in a capitalist society? By drawing on Marxist and post-Marxist theory, and conducting nuanced analysis of the professional writings of anti-psychiatrists including Basaglia and Laing, (...) and the work of fiction writers Kafka and Garcia Marquez, the text identifies alternative conceptualizations of the self. Focusing in particular on portrayals of institutions and the family, Skott-Myhre proposes that these social systems offer new modes of reading the world and ourselves which will transform social organization and free subjectivity from dominant capitalist structures. This transdisciplinary text responds to a revitalized interest in alternatives to traditional psychology, an interest in life beyond capitalism, and the crisis in the traditional family. Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry will offer timely reading for graduate students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, family studies, and interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

I map a queer reading of Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise at the intersection of sexuality, gender, race and class. Both poststructuralist and materialist in its approach, the analysis reads the identity formations reflected in the 8-Rock men and the Convent women as discursive fictions of stable subjectivity that, despite their apparent differences, actually constitute each other in capitalist networks of power.

This article is a review of Ilham Khuri-Makdisi’s bookThe Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1860–1914. I argue that this book is a valuable contribution to historiographies of the Left in the Middle East, a field that remains under-represented given the importance of labour to the nationalist movements as well as broader worker-activism in the region throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I review the main debates of the book, and raise critical questions about aspects that could (...) have been probed further, among them the questions of imperialism and race in contexts such as Egypt and Lebanon, and the relationship between workers and the radical intellectuals discussed throughout the book. (shrink)

Published in 1972, Anti‐Oedipus was the first of a number of collaborative works between the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, and the French psychoanalyst and political activist, Felix Guattari. As the first of a two‐volume body of work that bears the subtitle, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti‐Oedipus is, to say the least, an unconventional work that should be understood, in part, as a product of its time – created as it was among the political and revolutionary fervour engendered by (...) the events of ‘May 1968’. However, this paper will suggest that Anti‐Oedipus – as a critique of psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex, as well as being a study of the relationship between capitalism and schizophrenia – should also be understood in a less ‘time‐bound’ fashion. In particular, the paper will examine Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation of a concept of ‘desire’ and its employment in relation to subjectivity, time, capitalism, representation, and the radical ‘therapeutic’ practice that they refer to as ‘schizoanalysis’. Moreover, nearly 40 years after the events of May 1968 and against possible doubts concerning the contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis, it will be suggested that psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex are to be understood as symptomatic of a wider ‘malaise’ that can be discerned within psychiatry, psychotherapy, and contemporary capitalist society itself, and that it is this that forms the broader target of the book’s critique. Accordingly, by providing an accessible and critical introduction to Anti‐Oedipus, the paper also hopes to stimulate further discussion and research regarding both the critique and the contribution that the work can make to contemporary psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Capitalism on Edge aims to redraw the terms of analysis of the so-called democratic capitalism and sketches a political agenda for emancipating society of its grip. This symposium reflects critically on Azmanova’s book and challenges her arguments on methodological, thematic, and substantive grounds. Azar Dakwar introduces the book’s claims and wonders about the nature of the anti-capitalistic agency Azmanova’s ascribes to the precariat. David Ingram worries about Azmanova’s deposing of “economic democracy” and the impact of which (...) on the prospect of radical change she advocates. William Callison casts doubt over the empirical plausibility of Azmanova’s vision of crisis-free transition out of democratic capitalism. Eilat Maoz interrogates Azmanova’s emancipatory project from the historical standpoint of (de)colonization and global imperialism. In her reply to these criticisms, Azmanova accepts some and parries others, while bringing their points closer to her anti-capitalist vision. (shrink)

This article illustrates how racial capitalism can enhance understandings of data, capital, and inequality through an in-depth study of digital platforms used for intervening in gender-based violence. Specifically, we examine an emergent sociotechnical strategy that uses software platforms and artificial intelligence chatbots to offer users emergency assistance, education, and a means to report and build evidence against perpetrators. Our analysis details how two reporting apps construct data to support institutionally legible narratives of violence, highlighting overlooked racialised dimensions of the (...) data capital generated through their use. We draw attention to how they reinforce property relations built on extraction and ownership, capital accumulation that reinforces benefits derived through data property relations and ownership, and the commodification of diversity and inclusion. Recognising these patterns are not unique to anti-violence apps, we reflect on how this example aids in understanding how racial capitalism becomes a constitutive element of digital platforms, which more generally extract information from users, rely on complex financial partnerships, and often sustain problematic relationships with the criminal legal system. We conclude with a discussion of how racial capitalism can advance scholarship at the intersections of data and power. (shrink)

한국 사회와 사람들을 지배하는 힘의 원천이 경제와 시장의 논리, 언론 권력, 그리고 학벌 체제라는 점은 어렵지 않게 동의할 수 있다. 자본 권력, 언론 권력, 교육 권력은 시민을 훈육하고 통제하는 주권 권력이라고 말해진다. 이러한 주권 권력이 훈육과 통제를 통해서 보통 사람들에게 강력한 영향력을 미치고 지배하는 논리와 구조가 될 때 제국 또는 제국주의가 탄생한다. 우리나라도 이러한 제국적 질서와 권력의 지배를 받는다는 점에서 제국적 현실을 살고 있다. 이 점에서 제국은 우리의 삶의 스타일이다. 사실상 우리는 제국적 현실을 자동적으로 살아가는 제국적 주체들이라고 할 수 있다. (...) 그렇다면 이러한 자동화된 주체화 방식 말고 다른 주체화의 방식을 찾는 것은 제국의 시대를 사는 현대인들에게 던져진 도전장이다. 이것은 개인의 자유 의지가 반제국적 주체성으로 전환될 수 있는 자아의 테크놀로지를 구성하는 문제이다. 자본 제국과 국가 제국의 현실이 긴박하게 돌아가면 갈수록 이에 대응하는 새로운 주체성을 구축하는 일이 절실하다. 세계 제국과 국가 제국의 지배와 통제가 교묘하게 실현되는 만큼 신자유주의적 자아 지배 이데올로기를 비판하고 저항할 수 있는 새로운 주체성의 개발과 형성은 극히 요긴한 과제이다. 제국적 현실에 복종하고 종속하는 예속적인 주체성이 아니라 전지구화된 신자유주의 경제 질서와 시장 논리에 대항할 수 있는 독립적인 정치적 주체의 구성이 긴박한 과제이다. 이러한 문제의식에서 나는 이 글에서 제국적 현실에 대해 포스트모던적으로 주체성을 구성하는 것이 한계가 있음을 보이고 기독교의 관점에서 예수의 주체성을 제국적 질서와 현실을 비판하고 부정하는 반제국적 저항적 주체성으로 제시하며 결론적으로 이러한 반제국적 주체성을 이 시대가 필요로 하는 대안적 주체성임을 주장하고자 한다. (shrink)

This article focuses on applying some of Žižek’s theoretical work to a specific space within the capitalist conjuncture, the pub. Jürgen Habermas’ influential conception of the public sphere has shown the important role of the caffeine-centric cafés of the past in producing a lively democratic movement. As most any trip to a post-modern coffeehouse will attest, however, such locations have become little more than outlets for free and always individualized Wi-Fi. But the local pub, in the current political climate, has (...) attained something more. The central argument here is that pub culture, built on neither action nor reaction, is the last bastion of anti-capitalism. Indeed, if Bartleby’s “I’d prefer not to,” was an effective response to the demands of capitalism in the work place, then “I’d prefer another” does such duty with even more resistance and relevance for the present. To make this case, and explore its implications, I will turn to key insights from theorists such as Žižek, Lawrence Grossberg, and Deleuze and Guattari, while also comparing and contrasting today’s global pub culture to that of the historical role of the café. (shrink)

This book discusses how rational choice theory grew out of RAND's work for the US Air Force. It concentrates on the work of William J. Riker, Kenneth J. Arrow, James M. Buchanan, Russel Hardin, and John Rawls. It argues that within the context of the US Cold War with its intensive anti-communist and anti-collectivist sentiment, the foundations of capitalist democracy were grounded in the hyper individualist theory of non-cooperative games.

Islamic sociologist Ali Shariati is a leading figure of the reconstruction of religious thought in the Islamic world known especially for his anti-capitalist stance and leftist reading of Islamic history. In the philosophy of history that he developed, he classified religions as religions of tawheed and religions of shirk. According to this new reading of history, the main struggle is not between religion and secularism but between religions of tawheed and of sheerk. The issue of the gaining and the (...) distribution of the property is central to his classification. Shariati argued that followers of tawheed and of sheerk can be found in all religions including Islam. To support his argument Shariati explored how capitalistic understanding of Islam has been developed and legalised while anti-capitalist messages and orders of Islam were marginalised and illegalised just after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. He analysed the rivalry between his close companions over the content of a proper Islamic economic order and how this rivalry gave way to two contradicting understanding of Islam, marks of which can be seen today in the contemporary Muslim world. He coined the term ‘abluted capitalism’ to define the economic policies of Muslim sovereigns to make Islam compatible with capitalist economic principles. (shrink)

A critical examination of the figure of Oedipus in psychoanalysis and Western culture as it relates to the history of society and capitalism.

Anti-racist debate today remains polarised between ‘class reductionist’ (any attempt to address racial disparities reinforces capitalist class relations) and ‘liberal identity’ (disparities in racial representation can be resolved without questioning class inequality) politics. Both positions share a common perspective – racial oppression and class exploitation are the products of distinctive social dynamics whose relationship is historically contingent. This essay is an initial step toward characterising a structurally necessary relationship between capitalism and racial oppression. The essay draws upon Anwar (...) Shaikh and Howard Botwinick’s elaboration of Marx’s political economy, and Ellen Wood’s analysis of the specificity of capitalist imperialism. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Part I Philosophical Methods and Capitalist Processes: -- Means, Definitions, Intentions -- 1. The Evasiveness of Corporate Capitalism -- 2. The Political State -- 3. The Capitalist Corporation -- 4. The Contradictions of Capitalism -- 5. Intentional Systems --Part II Reasons, Causes and Practices in Contemporary -- Corporate Capitalism -- 6. Classical Sociology andManagerialism -- 7. Management Discourses -- 8. The Macro Issues Behind Executive Pay -- 9. Corporatism and the Corporate Capitalist State (...) -- 10. Corporate Capitalist States and International Relations --Part III The Disabled Political Will and Anti-Political -- Philosophy -- 11. The Mechanics of Disablement -- 12. The Anti-Political Self-Defeat of Mannheim -- 13. Popper's Anti-Political Philosophical Tendencies -- 14. Hayek and the Mature Anti-Political Philosophy -- 15. Nozick's Anti-Political Philosophy -- 16. Fukuyama's Anti-Political Philosophy -- 17. The Need for Rational Utopian Thinking. (shrink)

This article reviews Alex Anievas and Kerem Nişancıoğlu’sHow the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism(2015). It argues that the book offers a stimulating and ambitious approach to solving the problems of Eurocentrism and the origins of capitalism in growing critical scholarship in historical sociology and International Relations. However, by focusing on the ‘problem of the international’ and proposing a ‘single unified theory’ based on uneven and combined development, the authors present a history of international relations (...) that trades off methodological openness and legal complexity for a structural and exclusive consequentialism driven by anti-Eurocentrism. By misrepresenting the concept of social-property relations in terms of the internal/external fallacy, and by confusing different types of ‘internalism’ required by early-modern jurisdictional struggles, the book problematically conflates histories of international law and capitalism. These methodological problems are contextualised by examples from the Spanish, French and British empires’ conceptions of sovereignty and jurisdiction and their significant legal actors and processes. (shrink)

What capitalist economics call business or trade cycles with their recessions and depressions, and Marxists, in terms of surplus value and exploitation, call crises are fundamental misunderstandings of what Bernard Lonergan conceives as the true intelligibility of the rhythms of production and monetary circulation of the advanced exchange economy. In his circulation analysis he expresses the intelligibility of macroeconomic dynamics in terms of a pure cycle that involves the anti-egalitarian flows proper to new surplus or productive goods expansion and (...) the egalitarian flows proper to basic or consumer goods expansion, which Marxists correctly complain are not fully carried out. Crucial to the smooth expansion are (1) the crossover payments between surplus and basic monetary circuits in harmony with the phases of economic development, (2) the re-understanding of profit not as a criterion of economic activity but as involving a group interest that does not strictly 'belong' to capitalist entrepreneurs, and yet cannot be negotiated by a socialist bureaucracy. The issue is not greed on the part of either capitalists or workers but ignorance, which this analysis tries to correct. /// O presente artigo mostra de que modo aquilo que na economia capitalista é considerado como um ciclo de negócio ou de comércio com as suas respectivas reces-sões e depressões, e os Marxistas, interpretando o fenómeno em termos de mais-valia e de exploração, chamam de crises, é concebido por Bernard Lonergan nos termos de uma verdadeira inteligibilidade dos ritmos de produção e da circulação monetária próprios à economia de mercado avançada. Lonergan exprime na sua análise da circulação económica a inteligibilidade da dinâmica macroeconómica em termos de um puro ciclo que envolve as cadências anti-igualitárias próprias a novos excedentes comerciais ou expansão dos bens produtivos e as cadências igualitárias próprias à expansão dos bens básicos ou de consumo, o qual os Marxistas, com justiça, consideram que no capitalismo não são completamente cumpridas. Lonergan mostra, assim, que crucial para uma expansão equilibrada é necessário (1) o cruzamento de pagamentos entre excedentes e circuitos monetários básicos em harmonia com as fases do desenvolvimento económico, (2) uma nova compreensão do lucro não como critério da actividade económica, mas como envolvente do interesse grupal que não pertence estritamente a empresários capitalistas, e contudo não pode ser negociada por uma burocracia socialista. Deste modo, mostra-se que o problema fundamental da economia não é o egoísmo da parte dos capitalistas ou dos trabalhadores, mas sim a ignorância, problema este que Lonergan, mediante a sua análise, tenta corrigir. (shrink)

Notes and journal entries document Guattari and Deleuze's collaboration on their 1972 book Anti-Oedipus. "The unconscious is not a theatre, but a factory," wrote Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus, instigating one of the most daring intellectual adventures of the last half-century. Together, the well-known philosopher and the activist-psychiatrist were updating both psychoanalysis and Marxism in light of a more radical and "constructivist" vision of capitalism: "Capitalism is the exterior limit of all societies because it (...) has no exterior limit itself. It works well as long as it keeps breaking down."Few people at the time believed, as they wrote in the often-quoted opening sentence of Rhizome, that "the two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together." They added, "Since each of us was several, that became quite a crowd." These notes, addressed to Deleuze by Guattari in preparation for Anti-Oedipus, and annotated by Deleuze, substantiate their claim, finally bringing out the factory behind the theatre. They reveal Guattari as an inventive, highly analytical, mathematically-minded "conceptor," arguably one of the most prolific and enigmatic figures in philosophy and sociopolitical theory today. The Anti-Oedipus Papers are supplemented by substantial journal entries in which Guattari describes his turbulent relationship with his analyst and teacher Jacques Lacan, his apprehensions about the publication of Anti-Oedipus and accounts of his personal and professional life as a private analyst and codirector with Jean Oury of the experimental clinic Laborde. (shrink)

In Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari maintain that nature is a process in which there is neither nature nor human being, except as a single reality produced in the processes of production, distribution and consumption, where distributions are immediately consumed and the consumptions immediately reproduced. In its historical realization, this is the process of capitalism, which must be an effect of such processes, processes of nature and human nature. This gives rise to this question: given the rules (...) governing nature, including human nature, how much contingency is there and how much determinism? And ultimately, is capitalism inevitable? (shrink)

This chapter discusses and revisits the question of anti-Semitism as it emerges especially in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Dialectic of Enlightenment, then, articulates the history of figuration in which domination takes place, tracing the politicoeconomic forces of fascism and capitalism to a mode of representation that is the condition for their emergence as historical possibilities in the first place. The case of anti-Semitism is exemplary in this history and in the dialectic of individuals and social and cultural (...) forces. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno explain, anti-Semitism condemns individuals as Jews, in effect denying them their individuality, and yet condemns Jews because of their individuality or particularity. The potential for freedom from anti-Semitism thus lies in a strategic deployment of the position of this particularity. (shrink)

Discourse on food ethics often advocates the anti-capitalist idea that we need less capitalism, less growth, and less globalization if we want to make the world a better and more equitable place. This idea is also familiar from much discourse in global ethics, environment, and political theory, more generally. However, many experts argue that this anti-capitalist idea is not supported by reason and argument, and is actually wrong. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of (...) the Global Food System,” the main contribution of this essay is to explain the structure of the leading arguments against this anti-capitalist idea, and in favor of well-regulated capitalism. I initially focus on general arguments for and against globalized capitalism. I then turn to implications for the food, environment, climate change, and beyond. Finally, I clarify the important kernel of truth in the critique of neoliberalism familiar from food ethics, political theory, and beyond—as well as the limitations of that critique. (shrink)

In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari saw the difficulty of disentangling the question of Spinoza and, later, of Reich from the very limit of a system of representation by which they mean Oedipus. As A Thousand Plateaus would emphasize later, this limit brings out the question of the desire for democracy (‘democracies are majorities’). It desires Oedipus. In What Is Philosophy?, the limit question (Oedipus) gave way to the concept of a people to come. Fifty years since its publication, (...) class='Hi'>Anti-Oedipus remains a relevant text (apropos of its ‘strategic adversary’ identified by Foucault) against the background of the social pathology of neofascism, populist politics, and the rise of the alt-right and neoconservative movements in recent years. The paper tries to locate this inflexion point where the desire for democracy modulates into the bi-univocal plasticity of Oedipal desire whose dangers people already seem to know. They have unmasked Oedipus’ double impasse and have escaped it. They no longer desire fascism; they desire fascists, neocons, and right-leaning mob rousers. Fifty years since its publication, Anti-Oedipus confronts a type of people who have learned to behave like the enemies of capitalism, too careful not to overload desire and destroy its bi-univocality, its great balancing act on the Body without organs. Incidentally, in ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control,’ Deleuze spoke about a people who know how to ‘surf’ replacing the ‘older sports.’ This applies to people who could become either schizoidal or regress to its more familiar inversion, the simulacra of Oedipus. (shrink)

The Deleuze/Guattari text Anti-Oedipus burst onto the intellectual scene in 1972 as a radical new means to reconceptualise capitalism and its effects. At the heart of Anti-Oedipus and its analysis of capitalism is the concept of deterritorialization, and how it evacuates identities, culture, values, and, indeed, coherent thought itself, and it makes them susceptible to the equations and dynamics of capital flows. Anti-Oedipus presents the mechanisms with respect to how deterritorialization interacts with and to an (...) extent liberates desire as ‘desiring-machines’. This philosophy of education paper applies the workings of deterritorialization and desire from Anti-Oedipus to the dynamics of contemporary climate change education and the Anthropocene. As such, it posits this dynamic as being critical to present day approaches to the philosophy of education that wish to engage with capitalism and its effects, and at the same time positively enter the climate change debate. This paper suggests that understanding the matrix of deterritorialization, desire, climate change and learning, is perhaps the most important work that can be performed in the philosophy of education today and with respect to the future. (shrink)

Seventy years ago James Burnham (1905–1987) was a well-known American intellectual figure. Burnham’s 1941 book The Managerial Revolution, a cause célèbre, provided some of the conceptual framework for George Orwell’s 1984. Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) at the time was an obscure Greek-French political intellectual, writer and small-group organizer. He co-founded the left-wing Socialisme ou Barbarie in Paris in 1949 while Burnham was already on a rightward intellectual trajectory. The two, though, shared certain traits. Both emerged from Trotskyist milieus as critics of (...) bureaucratic collectivism. Both were anti-communists. Both were gifted writers and thinkers who were distinctly unorthodox in their approach, notably their scepticism about 20th-century managerial society and bureaucratic forms of capitalism. Then there were the divergences. At its inception in 1955 Burnham joined National Review, the principal organ of modern centre-right conservative opinion in the United States. Castoriadis became a leading figure of the French self-management left. Based on his Christian Gauss Seminar at Princeton, Burnham’s 1964 book Suicide of the West offered the most potent intellectual critique of left-liberalism ever produced. In ‘Proletariat and Organization 1’ (1959), Castoriadis referred to Burnham’s ‘pseudoanalysis’ of bureaucracy. Burnham was not a self-management advocate. As he abandoned Marxism his social philosophy drew on Vilfredo Pareto and other Machiavellian social theorists. The paper explores the affinities and the divergent political trajectories of two of the 20th century’s most interesting anti-bureaucratic thinkers. (shrink)

Cedric J. Robinson and others have criticized “Marxism” for “its inability to comprehend either the racial character of capitalism…or mass movements outside Europe.” Whatever the merits of this criticism for “standard Marxism,” Marx’s own thought is neither “economistic” nor Eurocentric, it does not deny historical agency to the struggle against anti-black racism in its own right, and it does not reduce that struggle to the European class struggle. By exploring Marx’s Civil War journalism and correspondence as well as (...) his critique of political economy, this essay demonstrates that Marx’s philosophy of liberation conceptualizes the revolutionary struggle to abolish slavery as an epoch-making worldhistorical freedom struggle, both as a Black liberation movement and also as a necessarycondition for the development of the international working class. A little known Blackled revolt in Bolivar, Missouri in 1859 is Marx’s clue to the meaning and significance of the American Civil War. (shrink)