Benjamin's fragment 'Capitalism as Religion', written in 1921, was only published several decades after his death. Its aim is to show that capitalism is a cultic religion, without mercy or truce, leading humanity to the 'house of despair'. It is an astonishing document, directly based on Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but – in ways akin to Ernst Bloch or Erich Fromm – transforming Weber's 'value-free' analysis into a ferocious anticapitalist argument, probably inspired by Gustav Landauer's (...) romantic and libertarian socialism. This article analyses Benjamin's fragment and explores its relationship to Weber's thesis, as well as to the tradition of romantic anticapitalism. (shrink)

Eric Hobsbawm is a man of the Enlightenment: does he not define socialism as the last and most extreme heir of the eighteenth century's rationalism? So it is not surprising that the distinction between ‘modern’ and ‘primitive’ or ‘archaic’ has an important place in his work. However, examining some of his writings, and in particular the three books from the period 1959-69 devoted to so-called archaic forms of revolt, it is evident that his approach differs markedly from the ‘progressive’ orthodoxy (...) in its interest, sympathy, even fascination - these are his own words - for ‘primitive’ movements of peasant antimodern (anti-capitalist) resistance and protest. I refer to Primitive Rebels (1959), Bandits (1969) and Captain Swing (1969). (shrink)

On Marx et Marxisms. In response to the questions addressed by Jacques Bidet and Bruno Tinel, Gérard Duménil, Michael Löwy and Emmanuel Renault here outline the approach they adopted in their two recently published books on Marx, and on Marxisms . The questions raised here mainly hinge on the articulation between the political, the philosophical and the economic dimension of Marx’s writings, and the way these can be mobilised within contemporary debates.

Rosa Luxemburg est une des principales représentantes du marxisme occidental. Le présent article vise à donner quelques éléments précis sur l’histoire de la réception de Rosa Luxemburg dans différents pays. Outre la France, où elle bénéficia d’une réception particulièrement remarquable, il est question dans cet article de l’appréciation de son œuvre dans les deux Allemagnes pendant la guerre froide (1949-1989), en URSS, mais aussi aux États-Unis et au Brésil. Sans prétendre à l’exhaustivité, l’article présente donc un panorama du « luxemburgisme (...) » à l’échelle internationale. (shrink)

The Progress of the Left in Latin America: Governments, Social Movements, the Struggles of the Amerindian Populations Gérard Duménil and Michaël Löwy here interview Michel Lemoine about the nature of the governments currently in office in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Venezuela. What contribution can these governments make to the task of establishing an anti-imperialist front? What are the specific features of the Latin American resistance to neo-liberalism, in view of the articulation between this resistance and the struggles of the (...) Amerindian populations? How is one to assess the manner in which Chavez defines and attempts to implement his project of a “socialism for the twenty-first century”. These are the principal questions addressed here. (shrink)

Two paradoxes seem to characterise the method of the critique of ideology. The first has to do with the fact that ideologies are “both true and false” (Adorno). The second has to do with the fact that the critique of ideology seems to carry both a normative and a descriptive dimension. The article argues that these two paradoxes disappear when the critique of ideology is addressed by way of a Hegelian mode of immanent critique. Such an approach highlights both the (...) specific normative claim of the critique of ideology and the specific problematic which it exemplifies. (shrink)

The ideas of Jewish Messianism and libertarian utopia hold a decisive place in the work of Franz Kafka and while it is possible to recognise the selective tendency which links them, their orientation derives from radical negativity. The sympathy for libertarian utopianism which led Kafka to become involved in the activities of Prague anarchist circles in 1919-1922 did not take on the same form in his novels and short stories. In them it is purely negative, a critique of a world (...) devoid of freedom, of the meticulous absurd and arbitrary logic of some all-powerful "apparatus". The structural homology with "negative theology" is striking: in both cases the positive reverse of the established world - a libertarian utopia or messianic redemption - is totally lacking and it is this absence that defines the life of people as fallen, lost or devoid of meaning. The subconscious selective tendency between the two "negative" configurations leads to a convergence which can be seen in the structure of the novels (The Trial, The Castle) and short stories: this is what the crushing of the individual and the total refutation of freedom indicates - the redemption of the world. (shrink)

La plupart des discussion sur l’internationalisme radical de Rosa Luxemburg s’intéressent surtout, et parfois uniquement, à son attitude négative – en effet très discutable – envers les droits politiques des nations. Ce qui manque dans cette approche, c’est le côté positif de son point de vue, sa riche contribution à la conception marxiste de l’internationalisme prolétarien, et son refus obstiné de céder aux sirènes du nationalisme et du chauvinisme. Un internationalisme qui se traduit notamment par son refus de l’Union sacrée (...) belliciste en 1914-1918 et son soutien aux luttes émancipatrices des peuples colonisés. (shrink)

Critical Irrealism There is much relevance in the concept of critical realism, but it tends to become exclusive: too often realism appears as the only acceptable form of art, and the only one having a critical edge towards the existing social reality. Are there not many non-realist works of art which are valuable and contain a powerfull critique of the social order? In other words: does it not exist a category of artistic creations that could be defined as critical irrealism? (...) is term obviously does not exist in any dictionary, but it is helpful in describing a vast area of the literary landscape which has been neglected. (shrink)

José Carlos Mariátegui was one of the first Latin-American Marxists to put forward a critical appraisal of the continent’s Indian question. By this we refer to an analysis which not only recognizes the decisive role of the indigenous peasant masses as subjects of a revolutionary social transformation, but which also sees in the indigenous cultures and traditions one of the principal sources of an Indo-American socialism.

The Progress of the Left in Latin America: Governments, Social Movements, the Struggles of the Amerindian Populations Gérard Duménil and Michaël Löwy here interview Michel Lemoine about the nature of the governments currently in office in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Venezuela. What contribution can these governments make to the task of establishing an anti-imperialist front? What are the specific features of the Latin American resistance to neo-liberalism, in view of the articulation between this resistance and the struggles of the (...) Amerindian populations? How is one to assess the manner in which Chavez defines and attempts to implement his project of a “socialism for the twenty-first century”. These are the principal questions addressed here. (shrink)

The Marxist Theory of the Party This paper examines the conceptions of the revolutionary party among some of the most importantMarxist thinkers of the XXth century, through three interrelated essential issues : 1) the levels of classconsciousness ; 2) the relationship of the party to the masses, in particular during a revolution ; 3) theinternal structure of the party. In our view, the chosen authors – Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Gramsci,Lukacs, Trotsky – belong to the same « current » in Marxism, (...) a current which tries to develop, considering the conditions of the XXth century, Marx’s theses on the communist revolution and theproletarian self-emancipation ; a current which is contradictory and diverse, inside of which Leninand Luxemburg represent two partially opposed and partially complementary poles. (shrink)

This article attempts to show that, by comparing Bertolt Brecht’s play Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1931) with some observations by Friedrich Engels on the Salvation Army, we can appreciate the writer’s contribution to a Marxist sociology of religions.

_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 1, pp 95 - 104 Martin Buber was a creative and heterodox socialist thinker. His socialist utopia was based on the idea of a new community that does not hark back to ancient forms, but wants to overcome modern society while incorporating its achievements, such as the principle of individual freedom. It is not bound, like the old _Gemeinschaft_—the tribe, the clan, the religious sect—by one single word or opinion that soon freezes into dogma and (...) rigid law, but by a common life characterized by freedom and creativity, which require a diversity of opinions. (shrink)

Ideology and Utopia is a work which, in its conceptual and methodological apparatus, has a far greater debt to Marxism and to Lukacs than is evident from the few explicit references figuring in the text. The entire problematic of Standortgebundenheit, of the complicity between thought and social being, is the product of the successful grafting of Marxism onto an underlying historicism. This, in our opinion, is one of the most interesting intellectual contributions of Mannheim. The central sociological question in the (...) book is, furthermore a typically « Lukacsian » one: the question of the social position or locus best able to apprehend the truth. True, Mannheim’s answer is not that of Marxism: it is to the unconnected intelligentsia that Mannheim grants the privilege of cognitive legitimacy, in view of its aptitude to achieve a “dynamic” synthesis between the various perspectives. (shrink)

C’est le sociologue Karl Mannheim qui a donné sa formulation « classique » – et encore aujourd’hui la plus pertinente – de l’utopie : toutes les représentations, aspirations ou images de désir , qui s’orientent vers la rupture de l’ordre établi et exercent une « fonction subversive » .1La..

In this article an approximate profile of Mariategui´s thoughts on the importance of religion in marxist philosophy is presented. His philosophy is quite distant from the orthodox Marxist doctrine on the religious question, where it is seen as the opium of the poor. Mariategui considers that social..

L’élection du Pape François (Bergoglio) est un changement inattendu dans l’orientation de l’Église. Nous en prenons dans cet article pour preuve son encyclique « écologique » Laudato Si, qui dénonce l’actuel « système de relations commerciales et de propriété structurellement pervers » comme responsable des inégalités sociales et de la crise écologique.

Rosa Luxemburg and Communism. There are four topics in Rosa Luxemburg’s writings which are of particular importance from the perspective of a refoundation of communism in the 21th century : internationalism, an “open” conception of history, the importance of democracy in the revolutionary process, and the interest in the “pre-modern” communist traditions. This last aspect of Luxemburg’s thinking is less well known. By confronting the industrial capitalist civilization with the communitarian past of humanity, Rosa Luxemburg broke with linear evolutionism, positivism, (...) social-darwinism and with all the interpretations of Marxism which tend to reduce it to an advanced version of the philosophy of inevitable progress. The issue, in these texts, is, in the last analysis, the very meaning of the Marxist conception of history. (shrink)

Unusual Marx « Peuchet : vom Selbstmord » (1846 is to a large extent composed of – translated – excerpts from Peuchet, a former head of the French police archives under the Restoration. This small and almost forgotten article is, in fact, one of the most powerful indictments of womens' oppression ever published under Marx's signature and a precious contribution to a richer understanding of the evils of modern bourgeois society, of the suffering that its patriarchal family-structure inflicts on women, (...) and of the broad and universal emancipatory scope of socialism. (shrink)

We are used to classifying different thinkers according to their general orientation: progressive or conservative, revolutionary or nostalgic of the past, materialist or idealist. Walter Benjamin does not fit into these categories. He is a revolutionary critic of the ideologies of progress, a materialist theologian, and his nostalgia for the past is at the service of his Marxist dreams for the future. It is therefore not surprising that so many different and conflicting readings of his work have developed since his (...) death, some trying to bring him back into the usual frames of thinking, others trying to recruit him for the newest philosophical fads, and many simply damning him as ridden with contradictions and therefore an intellectual failure. But there are also some happy exceptions: those who try to take into account the irreducible singularity of his intellectual and political endeavours. These three books, quite different in object and method ‐ a collection of documents from his archives, a biography, and a ‘Benjamin Handbook’ ‐ belong to these exceptions. (shrink)

This article is an attempt at a ‘political’ reading of Kafka’s The Castle, as an ironical, radical critique - from a libertarian perspective - of the despotism of the modern bureaucratic apparatus. This reading is not self-evident. Like all Kafka’s unfinished novels, Das Schloss is a strange and fascinating literary document that creates perplexity and inspires various contradictory and/or dissonant interpretations. And like The Trial it has been the object of very many religious and theological readings. Michael Löwy concludes by (...) arguing that commentators have neglected the character of Amalia, one of the most impressive female figures in Kafka’s work, who is at the heart of the libertarian individualism of the Prague writer. (shrink)