Non-Philosophy is a rigorous practice that can have useful applications for academic researchers and political activists alike. Utilizing its methods and frameworks, it is possible to bring Peace into the endless War of sectarian tendencies in which "the Left" is mired. In the following paper, we apply the technique of Non-Philosophy to Josh Moufawad-Paul's pamphlet "Maoism or Trotskyism," taking it as an instance of occasional material to be transformed. An important aspect of this analysis is a syntactical deployment of (...) Non-Philosophy not always found in non-philosophical texts: here our dualysis proceeds by double superposition. We effectuate two non-philosophical clones, using the first in order to recursively effectuate a second. First, we transform Trotskyism by isolating its philosophical and auto-positional structure, then we use this radicalized Trotskyism in order to transform Moufawad-Paul's Maoist polemic. The result is a radicalized Maoism-Trotskyism opening the way towards a productive and integrative Peace between Trotskyism and Maoism. (shrink)

In their criticism of Maoism, contemporary Soviet philosophers follow the basic structure of the orthodox presentation of Marxism — Leninism and use the whole panoply of polemical tools which the Leninist heritage offers them. Thus far, this anti — Maoism is generally maladroit and often self-contradictory.

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)

Although Chinese Marxism—primarily represented by Maoism—is generally seen by Western intellectuals as monolithic, Liu Kang argues that its practices and projects are as diverse as those in Western Marxism, particularly in the area of aesthetics. In this comparative study of European and Chinese Marxist traditions, Liu reveals the extent to which Chinese Marxists incorporate ideas about aesthetics and culture in their theories and practices. In doing so, he constructs a wholly new understanding of Chinese Marxism. Far (...) from being secondary considerations in Chinese Marxism, aesthetics and culture are in fact principal concerns. In this respect, such Marxists are similar to their Western counterparts, although Europeans have had little understanding of the Chinese experience. Liu traces the genealogy of aesthetic discourse in both modern China and the West since the era of classical German thought, showing where conceptual modifications and divergences have occurred in the two traditions. He examines the work of Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, Qu Qiubai, and others in China, and from the West he discusses Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Marxist theorists including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse. While stressing the diversity of Marxist positions within China as well as in the West, Liu explains how ideas of culture and aesthetics have offered a constructive vision for a postrevolutionary society and have affected a wide field of issues involving the problems of modernity. Forcefully argued and theoretically sophisticated, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Marxism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and modern Chinese culture, politics, and ideology. (shrink)

This paper uses Martin Luther and Mao Zedong's translation strategies to philosophize anew the dialectic between the national and the global in the history of revolutions. Luther and Mao each instigated a "revolution" by translating a universal faith into a vernacular; the end product in each case was the globalization of his vernacularized faith and the export of his local revolution all over the world. By vernacularizing a universal faith, Luther and Mao respectively inaugurated a new national idiom, a new (...) national identity and, in the case of Mao, founded a new nation. The far more intriguing phenomenon which I identify – and on which I seek to make my most original contributions is: Protestantism and Maoism developed global reach not despite, but because of, their insistence on a local translation-articulation of a universalist ideology. My paper attends to both the similarities and differences between Luther and Mao. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s theoretical work maintains an ambiguous relation to Marx’s critique of political economy. In seemingly refusing the Marxian analytical strategy of displacement and referral across the fields of politics and economy, Badiou is frequently seen to be lacking a rigorous theoretical grasp of capitalism itself. In turn, this is often seen as a consequence of his understanding of political subjectivity. But the origins of this ‘lack’ of analysis of the social relation called ‘capital’ in his work can also be (...) investigated by means of a detour into the economic writings of theUnion des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste, the political organisation in which Badiou played a leading rôle throughout the 1970s in particular. By excavating this theoretical work of the 1970s, we can identify more precisely the historical and political reasons behind Badiou’s ambiguous relation to Marx and specifically to Marx’s systematic grasp of the logic of capital. This excavation will consequently lead us to a reflection on the limits and openings in Badiou’s thought for the Marxian critique of political economy. (shrink)

As scholarly interest in the experience of French Maoism has been undergoing something of a renaissance, it is unsurprising that the Maoist practice of investigations has elicited varying degrees of attention in recent years. But this attention has tended to be subsumed within, if not overshadowed by, much broader historical and exegetical undertakings. This paper seeks to redress this limitation in the literature by focusing on the lengthiest and most detailed summary of Maoist investigations among peasants in the French (...) countryside,The Book of Poor Peasants, published by Alain Badiou’s Group for the Foundation of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist in 1976. This book vividly demonstrates the difficulties and limitations associated with the practice of investigations. It thus affords a more critical appreciation of this practice. The book also casts Badiou’s shift toward a ‘politics without party’ in a new light. (shrink)

Wang Guangyi, one of the stars of the new wave of Chinese art, has artistically addressed major philosophical trends in Western philosophy while drawing on Taoism, Marxism and Maoism. By bringing together a team of experts in the philosophy of art to discuss his work, The Philosophy and Art of Wang Guangyi presents the first philosophical exploration of Wang's art, his thought and his analysis of Chinese society. -/- From his use of words in images to his reference (...) to the classics of Western painting, contributors set Wang's work against key questions in contemporary art. As well as answering what makes the language of pop art successful, they examine whether art and its history have come to an end, as Hegel posited, and if it is possible or even necessary to rework a new narrative for the history of contemporary art. The Philosophy and Art of Wang Guangyi marks an important contribution to understanding the background, work and ideas of a 21st-century political artist outside the West. (shrink)

In the 1950s, embryology in socialist China underwent a series of changes that adjusted the disciplinary apparatus to suit socialism and the national goal of self-reliance. As the Communist state called on scientists to learn from the Soviets, embryologists’ comprehensive view on heredity, which did not contradict Trofim Lysenko (1898–1976)’s doctrines, provided a space for them to advance their discipline. Leading scientists, often trained abroad in the tradition of experimental embryology, rode on the tides of Maoist ideology and repositioned their (...) research. Some of their creative realignment of previous research questions, materials, and traditions to Marxist philosophy and agricultural objectives generated productive programs. In particular, Tong Dizhou (1902–1979) translated Engels’s dialectics of nature into a research question about cytoplasmic inheritance. His continuing investigation on it led to the first goldfish “clone” through a nuclear transplantation experiment; Zhu Xi and his associates transferred a goldfish model in embryology into studies on improving carp aquaculture, leading to a rare success in the Great Leap Forward of 1958. These directions for embryology continued well into the 1960s. At a time when global embryology was diversifying and began to be molecularized, eventually forming “developmental biology,” socialist embryology took shape in China with a different set of epistemic and practical commitments. The history of its development challenges and enriches our understanding of the concrete process of change in one discipline under Mao, showing ways in which scientists creatively adapted state-sanctioned ideologies and visions to do productive work outside the framework of molecular biology during the Cold War. (shrink)

In the 1950s, embryology in socialist China underwent a series of changes that adjusted the disciplinary apparatus to suit socialism and the national goal of self-reliance. As the Communist state called on scientists to learn from the Soviets, embryologists’ comprehensive view on heredity, which did not contradict Trofim Lysenko ’s doctrines, provided a space for them to advance their discipline. Leading scientists, often trained abroad in the tradition of experimental embryology, rode on the tides of Maoist ideology and repositioned their (...) research. Some of their creative realignment of previous research questions, materials, and traditions to Marxist philosophy and agricultural objectives generated productive programs. In particular, Tong Dizhou translated Engels’s dialectics of nature into a research question about cytoplasmic inheritance. His continuing investigation on it led to the first goldfish “clone” through a nuclear transplantation experiment; Zhu Xi and his associates transferred a goldfish model in embryology into studies on improving carp aquaculture, leading to a rare success in the Great Leap Forward of 1958. These directions for embryology continued well into the 1960s. At a time when global embryology was diversifying and began to be molecularized, eventually forming “developmental biology,” socialist embryology took shape in China with a different set of epistemic and practical commitments. The history of its development challenges and enriches our understanding of the concrete process of change in one discipline under Mao, showing ways in which scientists creatively adapted state-sanctioned ideologies and visions to do productive work outside the framework of molecular biology during the Cold War. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a rethinking and renewal of Marxism on various levels, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s when New-Left movements in the developed capitalist countries combined with Maoist, Guevarist, and other Third-World liberation struggles to challenge the ossified theory and practice of Soviet-style communism and traditional social democracy. More recently, the rethinking of Marxism has been driven largely by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its official Marxist ideology, and by the movement toward neoliberal ‘free (...) market’ policies on a global scale, which together have brought forth a tidal wave of frankly pro-capitalist as well as ‘postmodern’ left varieties of ‘end of history'-type thinking. The contemporary challenge to Marxism, however, also has a positive side in the form of popular revolts against the neoliberalisation of the global economy – the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, the December 1995 public sector upheavals in France, and many others, not to mention the heroic struggle of the Cuban people against the threat of recolonisation by US and global capital. Here the challenge is to incorporate the changing forms of working-class movement, and their new prefigurations of post-capitalist society, into the theory and practice of Marxian communism. (shrink)

This thesis, titled ‘Across May ’68; Reading friendships in Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination and Glas’, challenges the claims of a ‘political turn’ occurring for only the first time in Jacques Derrida’s writings in the 1980s, with many citing his ordeal in Prague in 1981 as catalysing this turn. While his writings may be thought to become more explicit in the 1980s and 1990s—a turbulent decade that indeed encompassed polemics against and, even within, the coterie of Deconstruction, over the Paul de Man (...) and Martin Heidegger revelations —Politics of Friendship, and Spectres of Marx being examples, this leaves much of his earlier work unconsidered in terms of its impact on Derrida’s later political outlook. The thesis rereads and contextualises two texts, 1972’s Dissemination and 1974’s Glas, in conjunction with a selection of contemporaneous essays, reading these retrospectively through Politics of Friendship and Spectres of Marx, and traces Derrida’s diverging relationships with Philippe Sollers and the journal Tel Quel, against the intense political period in France now known as ‘May 1968’. My thesis reads in chronological order each essay from Dissemination as representing stages of a developing written praxis Derrida will call ‘dissemination’, arguing that, in the context of his relationship with Sollers and Tel Quel, the text Dissemination marks the political hinge in his writings, constitutive of a radical supplementary political praxis that, ultimately, did not finish even with his departure from Tel Quel in early-1972 but continued some years after in his work in providing a vital impetus to the writing of Glas. My thesis provides a socio-historical and political context to Derrida’s philosophy—from the time of his working in tandem with Sollers, through to writing as a supplementary political praxis to Tel Quel following his departure. In ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’. My thesis traces, in the Polis, a link between writing and political friendships and ‘phallogocentrism’. The thesis connects ‘Double Session’ and its discussions of Mallarmé’s ‘mimicry without referent’ to Derrida’s interrogation into then-current modes of philosophico-literary writing; especially those of Tel Quel. The thesis then reads ‘Dissemination’ and its review/rereading of Sollers’ 1968 novel Numbers—which is itself a text informed by the intellectual reactions and reflections to the politicised context of 1960s Paris. Derrida ‘opens’ Numbers, dissipating its ideological fervour for a political community that is inherently homogeneous and closed to the ‘other’, by placing key motifs in the text under chiasma, opening up its writing to the infinite ‘otherness’ of metaphysics. My thesis reads ‘Outwork’ as a discussion of writing that unravels demarcations and limits between inside and out. In doing so, I argue, Dissemination anticipates the multi-surfaces and margins of Glas and its discussion of stratified politics limits. My thesis reads Glas as a culmination and perpetuation of the praxis developed in Dissemination that proposes a political encounter of the ‘other’ based upon distance as well as proximity, and dialogue through its paratextual and symbolic typography. Glas is read as antecedent of a deconstructed political community, an ethics, and a responsibility that gestures an openness to dialogue with Sollers and Tel Quel, while also disproving Derrida’s purported political silence around May 1968. My thesis argues Glas is open to futurity, hopeful for a renewed political encounter, even if this involves a betrayal of the very notion of friendship for the sake of an-other friendship not tied by bonds of political solidarity, and ultimately reactionary aspirations for a shared communitarian project that, inevitably, represses difference. The thesis argues that this period initiates the emergence of a deconstructed politics by Derrida based upon a profound understanding of the structures underpinning the popularist riots—particularly as a re-evaluation of the Marxist and Maoist discussions that were prevalent in the intellectual reactions to the period. (shrink)

Mao has responded to the challenge of adapting Marxism to traditional Chinese thought through his two creative developments of Marxism: the ideological definition of class and the concept of permanent revolution, based on intra-personal class-struggle.

Mao has responded to the challenge of adapting Marxism to traditional Chinese thought through his two 'creative developments' of Marxism: the ideological definition of class and the concept of permanent revolution, based on intra-personal class-struggle.

This article examines how Maoist theory and practice were imported to France during the 1960s. A syncretic phenomenon, as notions developed in the Chinese cultural context were adapted to the very different Gallic situation, French Maoism proved to be especially influential among students at the École normale supérieure at the rue d’Ulm in Paris, where the Marxist theoretician, Louis Althusser, was teaching. Maoist philosophy facilitated critiques of the Moscow-aligned French Communist Party and its student union; it enabled Althusser's rethinking (...) of the Marxist tradition, and it ultimately provided ammunition for his students’ eventual break with his “theoreticism.” Maoism's fecund contribution to French intellectual culture in the 1960s, helping to lay the groundwork for the events of May 1968, derived principally from its dual theoretical and practical nature. This article highlights two specific Maoist tenants—the inevitably violent nature of revolution and the ersatz-empiricist method of the “investigation”—and suggests how, after 1968, French Maoism ultimately surrendered the former as the latter proved more useful to direct democratic politics. ☆ Thanks to Geoff Goshgarian for his well-informed comments on part of this essay. (shrink)

Philosophy and philosophical workers play very important roles in the socialist society of the People's Republic of China. No longer is philosophy treated as an object of speculation; nor is it regarded as merely a method of applying theory. It is now considered to be a process of learning from the practical experience of the masses, a process of enriching the concrete life of the people, and a process of solving specific problems in remaking society and changing the world. Briefly (...) speaking, philosophy plays the important role of eliminating alienation and the possibility of alienation among men. On this basis, philosophical workers, like other intellectuals, are urged to unite with and learn from the masses — the industrial workers and the peasants. Many writings have focused on this Maoist point, which is exemplified in this issue by Kuan Feng's article. From this point of view, traditional philosophy, which fails to eliminate alienation and which in fact tends to create and justify alienation as defined by Marxist and Maoist ideology, is subjected to severe criticism. (shrink)

In this paper, the West, "Mao Zedong study" some scholars exaggerate the impact of traditional culture of Mao Zedong, Marxist Philosophy in China as "Confucianism" point of view, by focusing on traditional Chinese philosophy of Mao Zedong and the creative transformation of the absorption of specific analysis, reveals the philosophy of Mao Zedong's cultural identity. On this basis, that: exaggerate the impact of traditional culture of Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong's philosophy of originality exaggerated and its Marxist philosophy dissimilarity between, in (...) fact, is a fragmented Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought, to the historical development, see also Marxism is not a continuous open system, which also reduces Marxism in China's cultural significance, does not help us to correctly understand and grasp the philosophy of Mao Zedong's cultural identity. In response to some western Maoist scholars who overstate the role of traditional Chinese cultural ingredients in the ideology of Mao and attribute the development of Marxism in China totally to the process of "Confucianization", the essay aims at revealing the cultural characteristics of Mao's philosophy by way of a detailed analysis of Mao's indebtedness to and innovation of traditional Chinese philosophy. Furthermore, the essay holds that various overstatements of the role that traditional Chinese culture has played in Mao Ze-dong's idea and of the discrepancy between Maoist philosophy and Marxist philosophy mean to cut off the connection between Marx-Leninism and Mao's thought. In consequence they overlook the openness of Marxism, and degrade the significance of the development of Marxism in China and also prevent us from understanding the dual influence of Mao's philosophy. (shrink)

In the Western media, stories about China seem to fall into one of two categories: China’s astounding economic development or its human rights abuses. As human rights discourses follow increasingly hegemonic conventions, especially with regard to China, many of their key assumptions remain unexamined. This special issue—the second in a two-part series beginning with “Cosmologies of the Human”—critically investigates the relationship between China and the human as it plays out in law, politics, biopolitics, political economy, labor, medicine, and culture. The (...) contributors interrogate the evolving meanings of “China” and “the human,” both inside China and internationally. The issue tracks the ways in which global discourses treat China—still officially socialist—as similar to, different from, and alternative to Western capitalist modernities. Several essays probe the modern theoretical underpinnings of human rights abuses in China, including a crucial distinction between “the human” and “the people.” Others review the impact of Maoism on Marxist debates in China and in the West, as well as the specific influences of Mao’s writings on French politics and theory in the 1960s. A visual dossier compares eight contemporary Chinese artists, directors, and public image-makers in order to discuss the figure of the human from Tiananmen Square to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. While many contributors discuss China and the West comparatively, the issue interrogates the universalizing claims of both Western and Chinese norms of the human by privileging the local, particular, and eccentric. Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Michael Dutton, David L. Eng, Doug Howland, Petrus Liu, Camille Robcis, Teemu Ruskola, Shuang Shen, Shu-mei Shih, Wang Xiaoming David L. Eng is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of _The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy_ and _Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America_, both also published by Duke University Press. Teemu Ruskola is Professor of Law at Emory University and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Shuang Shen is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese at Pennsylvania State University. (shrink)

What and how should individuals resist in political situations? While this question, or versions of it, recurs regularly within Western political philosophy, answers to it have often relied on dyads founded upon dogmatically held ideals. In particular, there is a strain of idealist political philosophy, inaugurated by Plato and finding contemporary expression in the work of Alain Badiou, that employs dyads (such as the distinction between truth and doxa or the privilege of thought over sense) that tend to reduce the (...) complexities of practices of resistance to concepts of commitment. Although these dyads have been challenged by, amongst others, poststructuralist theorists, this has often been at the cost of losing their structuralist heritage. This thesis develops an ontology proper to structuralism that engenders non-idealist and non-dogmatic, yet ethical, practices of resistance against commitment orientated accounts of resistance and the return of classical ontological dyads. The thesis begins with an examination of the extent to which a dogmatic use of idealism grounds the work of a prominent contemporary theorist, Alain Badiou. In developing his neo-Maoist metapolitics, Badiou follows both Platonic ontology and the Marxist tradition of dialectics by claiming that political practice can only be carried out in truth by paying fidelity to an event that ruptures the presented order of things. Chapter one opens with an exploration of Badiou's mathematic meta-ontology to draw out its three foundational dyads (truth/doxa; sense/intelligibility; is/is not). It is argued that although Badiou makes important criticisms of the preponderant trends of political philosophy, he is unable to support his own account of politics due to his dogmatic reliance on idealist principles. Chapter two begins by developing two accounts: first, of the relations between Badiou's work and that of his former teacher Louis Althusser and, secondly, the relations between Althusser's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his reading of David Hume. Discussion centres around the importance of the role that time plays within the works of all three authors, particularly in regard to the idea of the void. The chapter concludes with the argument that Hume's temporal idea of human nature is the key to a symptomatic reading of Althusser that accounts for the persistence of ideas in the latter's social theory. In chapter three, Deleuze's reading of Hume's idea of relations is developed to take into account Bergson's theory of time. Read in contrast to Quentin Meillassoux's speculative realism, the chapter argues that Deleuze's account of temporal relations informs Althusser's social theory to create the ontological grounds for non-dogmatic and non-idealist practices of resistance. These practices are developed in chapter four with an unlikely turn to John Stuart Mill's idea of genius, the metaphysical property of the individual that signifies the discovery of new truth. The chapter begins with an argument that there is an under-developed account of ethics in Deleuze's work. Distinguishing the idea of genius from both Mill's moral philosophy, as well as from utilitarian thought more generally, the idea of genius is sutured onto Deleuze's ontological account of individuation. Read alongside Althusser's social theory, which accounts for the non-idealist conceptualisation of situations, this suture creates an ethically oriented structuralist ontology. The thesis concludes with the argument that the idea of genius is the ethical imperative that motivates practices of resistance. When individuals are understood as embodied within situations, practices of resistance are conceptualised not against other components of a situation, but contra them, taking them into account in order to amplify, multiply and transform the individual's potential within a situation. (shrink)

Abstract Up to now Chinese academia has been addicted to inviting the twin goddesses of democracy and science, but has regrettably ignored the innate incongruity between them, which has led to the rise of scientism. May 4th pioneers first introduced this value system, but tension between these values subsequently led to a prevailing preference for science over freedom. The early Marxists defined freedom as obedience to social laws formulated in Marxist ?science?, while Maoism finalized the Sinicization of Marxism (...) with a belief in iron?bound social laws and in human beings as mere political means, mercilessly suppressing any expression of free will. (shrink)

A translation of a Japanese text written by philosopher Tosaka Jun in 1935, at the moment the country had begun to embark upon a course of fascist authoritarianism that led to war and total destruction. Titled The Japan Ideology, the text purposely recalls its derivation and kinship with Marx and Engels's The German Ideology and expands on the role played by philosophic idealism in preparing the population for both the new politics of fascism and the demands of the eventual war (...) it brought. In its penetrating analysis of the relationship between philosophy and the formation of ideology in a politically critical and crucial historical time, this foundational work in the Japanese Marxist tradition remains accessible and timely, speaking forcibly to conditions that continue to persist in Japan and everywhere in today's world. (shrink)

This article analyses the intellectual and political trajectory of the Pasado y Presente group in Argentina, focusing on its main representative, José María Aricó (1931–91). Although usually described as ‘the Argentine Gramscians’, the ‘Gramscianism’ of the Pasado y Presente group was actually little more than a theoretical cover for its erratic political behaviour, which led them from Stalinism to Guevarism, from Guevarism to Maoism, from Maoism to Montoneros’s branch of Peronism, and from Peronism to Alfonsín’s Radicalism. Politically, their (...) weakest point was that they distanced themselves from Stalinism empirically, because of the popularity of foquism, without undertaking a thorough critique of Stalinism. This made them vulnerable to the ubsequent crisis of Stalinism, which they identified with a ‘crisis of Marxism’ sans phrase. What made them historically significant was that they articulated the radicalisation of a whole social layer in Latin America under the impact of the Cuban Revolution, as well as its subsequent deradicalisation and adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The article closes with an analysis of Aricó’s intellectual legacy, particularly his well-known book Marx y América Latina (1980). (shrink)

Iraqi Kurds have been involved in a liberation movement since the very beginning of the establishment of the Iraqi state by European colonizers. With the proliferation of communism in the 1960s and 1970s among liberation movements in the third world, the Kurdish liberation movement also adopted popular Marxist, Leninist and Maoist jargons. However, after the 1991 Kurdish uprising successfully liberated some areas of Kurdistan, the leftist rhetoric almost completely disappeared in the dominant Iraqi Kurdish discourse. I argue that, even from (...) the 1960s to the 1980s, the adoption of Marxist rhetoric by the Iraqi Kurdish leadership was inauthentic; it was neither rooted in nor tailored to Kurdistani society. Moreover, unlike the Kurdish liberation movements in Turkey and Syria, as well as Iran to some degree, the Kurdish movement in Iraq failed to recognize gender equality. Thus, while Kurdish women in Turkey and Syria took active roles in the liberation movement, their counterparts in Iraq remained marginalized. (shrink)

Marxism’s Unintentional Contributions to the Renewal of Human Rights in Post-1968 France. The years following May 1968 witnessed the end of a certain chapter of French Marxism and a return to the languages of human rights and liberalism. French Marxism itself unintentionally contributed to this development. This article examines three overlapping cases from the 1970s : Maoism and mobilization around prisons, the women’s movement and the law, and the New Philosophers’ undermining of a dialectical view of (...) history. (shrink)

This engrossing book by a prominent and doughty Marxist humanist falls into three distinct parts. The first deals with Hegel and an exposition and estimate of his influence upon both Marx and Lenin; the second part deals with the thought of Trotsky, Mao and Sartre; finally there is a discussion of various revolutionary movements within modern society, from Black power to Women’s Liberation. It is Dunayevskaya’s thesis that since the death of Lenin there has been a theoretical void at the (...) centre of left wing liberation movements. Where theories have been propounded people have been lured by the seductive but deadly siren voices of Maoism and Existentialism. This theoretical void may be overcome, Dunayevskaya argues, by a reappropriation of the Hegelian dimension of Marxism. (shrink)

The problem of the development of a Marxist-Leninist theory of value, and the need for a precise and rigorously scientific definition of the subject matter to be investigated, its conceptual apparatus and individual categories, and the determination of the place of these categories in the system of scientific knowledge, are matters which present themselves in connection with a number of pressing problems now engaging the attention of many Marxist philosophers. By no means of least importance in this regard is the (...) fact that these questions occupy a very prominent place in contemporary bourgeois philosophical and sociological literature. The various bourgeois axiological theories that now exist, which include not only "value concepts" but "value approaches" , deal with a large range of social problems - political, economic, socio-psychological, ethical, esthetic, religious, and others. These problems are distorted by bourgeois ideologists in idealist fashion, while their interpretation increasingly acquires an anticommunist tone, and continues to exert a stultifying influence on millions of philosophically unsophisticated persons in capitalist countries. (shrink)

When people talk about religion, most soon mention the major religious traditions of our times, but then, thinking further, most mention as well the religions of Indigenous peoples and of such vanished civilizations as ancient Greece and Egypt and Persia. That is, we have come to understand that there are-and have been-many different religions; anthropologists estimate the total in the thousands. They also estimate that there have been thousands of human cultures, which is to say that the making of a (...) culture and the making of its religion go together: each religion is embedded in its cultural history. True, certain religions have attempted, and variously succeeded, in crossing cultural boundaries to "convert the heathens," but the invaded cultures usually put their unmistakable stamp on what they import, as evinced by the pulsating percussive Catholic masses sung in Africa. In the end, each of these religions addresses two fundamental human concerns: How Things Are and Which Things Matter. How Things Are is articulated as a Cosmology or Cosmos: How the natural world came to be, how humans came to be, what happens after we die, the origins of evil and tragedy and natural disaster and love. Which Things Matter becomes codified as a Morality or Ethos: the Judaic Ten Commandments, the Christian Sermon on the Mount, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Buddhist Vinaya, the Confucian Five Relations, and the understandings inherent in numerous Indigenous traditions. The role of a religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its attendant moral understandings. As a culture evolves, a distinctive Cosmos and Ethos appears in its co-evolving religion. For billions of us, back to the early humans, the stories, ceremonies and art associated with our religions-of-origin have been central to our lives. I stand in awe of these religions. I have no need to take on their contradictions or immiscibility, any more than I would quarrel with the fact that Scottish bagpipe ceremonies coexist with Japanese tea ceremonies. And indeed, the failure of Soviet Marxism to obliterate Russian Orthodoxy, and of Maoism to obliterate Buddhism, Confucianism, or Daoism, and of Christianity to obliterate Indigenous understandings, reminds us that projects designed to overthrow religious traditions face strong headwinds. (shrink)

Although Marxism and deconstruction of differences, but can be associated with. To associate Marxism and deconstruction, not only back to Marx's radical critique of capitalist ideology, the basic theory of Marxism screening of metaphysical factors, but also avoids Marx's logocentric misappropriation. Despite the divergent attitudes between Marxism and deconstruction, there exists a possible link between the two of them. A critical articulation of them can not only restore the radical edge to Marxism devoted to the (...) critique of bourgeois ideology, which is tainted with metaphysical presuppositions, but also be able to avoid the influence of the implicit logocentrism in Marxism. (shrink)

Originally published in 1982. Aside from Jacques Derrida's own references to the "possible articulation" between deconstruction and Marxism, the relationship between the two has remained largely unexplored. In Marxism and Deconstruction, Michael Ryan examines that multifaceted relationship but not through a mere comparison of two distinct and inviolable entities. Instead, he looks at both with an eye to identifying their common elements and reweaving them into a new theory of political practice. To accomplish his task, Ryan undertakes a (...) detailed comparison of deconstruction and Marxism, relating deconstruction to the dialectical tradition in philosophy and demonstrating how deconstruction can be used in the critique of ideology. He is a forceful critic of both the politics of deconstruction and the metaphysical aspect of Marxism (as seen from a deconstructionist perspective). Besides offering the first book-length study of Derrida in this context, Ryan makes the first methodic attempt by an American scholar to apply deconstruction to domains beyond literature. He proposes a deconstructive Marxism, one lacking the metaphysical underpinnings of conservative "scientific" Marxist theory and employing deconstructive analysis both for Marxist political criticism and to further current anti-metaphysical developments within Marxism. Marxism and Deconstruction is an innovative and controversial contribution to the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, and political science. (shrink)

Marxism and philosophy [1923].--The present state of the problem of 'Marxism and philosophy' [1930].--Introduction to the Critique of the Gotha Programme [1922].--The Marxism of the First International [1924].

Ashley J. Bohrer argues that it is only by considering race, gender, sexuality, and ability within the structures of capitalism and imperialism that we can understand power relations. Bohrer explains how the purported incompatibilities between Marxism and intersectionality arise more from miscommunication than a fundamental conceptual antagonism.

(1973). Pragmatic, Existentialist and Phenomenological Interpretations of Marxism. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 139-152.

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the literature on Analytical Marxism (AM) and analyses its relevance for social theory. AM is precisely defined and distinguished from Rational Choice Marxism (RCM). The different substantive implications of the two approaches are discussed: according to RCM, the role of Marxism in the social sciences is exhausted, whereas AM has reconstructed a set of propositions that aim to provide the foundations of a distinctive approach in social theory. The methodological debate (...) around and within AM is analysed and the shortcomings of methodological individualism and rational choice theory are stressed, raising doubts on the claim that RCM is the only scientific approach to Marx's theory. Yet, wholesale rejections on a priori methodological or exegetical grounds are questioned. A focused, immanent critique of RCM is developed, which emphasizes the lack of an adequate analysis of structural constraints and endogenous preferences in RCM models. It is argued that the analysis of endogenous preferences and structural constraints is consistent with an anti-reductionist AM approach and it may provide the outline of a fertile, distinctive research programme in explanatory social theory that builds on the core of Marxism identified by AM. (shrink)

It is reported that the moment anyone talked to Marx about morality, he would roar with laughter. Yet, plainly, he was fired by outrage and a burning desire for a better world. This paradox is the starting point for Marxism and Morality. Discussing the positions taken by Marx, Engels, and their descendants in relation to certain moral issues, Steven Lukes addresses the questions on which Marxist thinkers and actors have taken a number of characteristic stands as well as other (...) questions--personal relations and the moral virtues of the individual, for example--on which Marxism falls silent. A provocative exploration of the gray area where Marxism and morality meet, this book argues that Marxism makes a number of major moral claims and that its appeal has always been, in large part, a moral one. (shrink)

The interpretation of Hegel has been a focal point of philosophical controversy ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, both among Marxists and in the major European philosophical schools. Yet despite wide differences of emphasis most interpretations of Hegel share important similarities. They link his idea of Reason to the revolutionary and rationalist tradition which led to the French Revolution, and they interpret his dialectic as implying a latently atheist and even materialist world outlook. Lucio Colletti directly challenges this (...) picture of Hegel. He argues that Hegel was an essentially Christian philosopher, and that his dialectic was explicitly anti-materialist in both intention and effect. In contrast to earlier views, Colletti maintains that there is no contradiction between Hegel’s method and his system, once it is accepted that his thought is an exercise in Absolute Idealism stemming from a long Christian humanist tradition. He claims, on the contrary, that intellectual inconsistency is rather to be found in the works of Engels, Lenin, Lukás, Kojève and others, who have attempted to adapt Hegel to their own philosophical priorities. Colletti places his argument in the context of a broad re-examination of the whole relationship between Marxism and the Enlightenment, giving novel emphasis to the relationship between Marxism and Kant. He concludes by re-asserting the importance in Marxism of empirical science against the claim of “infinite reason,” while at the same time showing how Marx did transform key ideas in Hegelian thought to construct a consistently materialist dialectic. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as human nature? Sean Sayers gives an ambitious and wide ranging defence of the Marxist and Hegelian approach to uphold the controversial theory that human nature is actually a historical phenomenon.

'This book is a masterpiece of theoretical thought. It anticipates the actual achievements of much of what we now call sociolinguistics.

Contending that Marxism achieved its unique position in part by adopting the content and functions of Christianity, MacIntyre details the religious attitudes and modes of belief that appear in Marxist doctrine as it developed historically from the philosophies of Hegel and Feuerbach, and as it has been carried on by latter-day interpreters from Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky to Kautsky and Lukacs. The result is a lucid exposition of Marxism and an incisive account of its persistence and continuing importance.

A masterful survey of the history of Marxist philosophy of science. Now with a new afterword. Skillfully deploying a large cast of characters, Sheehan retraces the development of Marxist philosophy of science through detailed and highly readable accounts of the debates that have characterized it. Approaching Marxism from the perspective of the philosophy of science, Sheehan shows how Marx's and Engel's ideas on the development and structure of natural science had a crucial impact on the work of early twentieth-century (...) natural philosophers, historians of science, and natural scientists. From the ideas of Marx and Engels, those of the Marxist theoreticians of the Second International to the debates within Russian Marxism up to World War II, Sheehan masterfully surveys the history of marxist philosophy of science, concluding with a close analysis of the development of the debate among non-Soviet Marxists, placing particular emphasis on the contributions of leading British Marxists in the 1930s. (shrink)

Marxism began with the repudiation of philosophy, yet Marxists have often resorted to distinctively philosophical modes of reasoning. In recent years, Western Marxism has been more concerned with philosophy than with research or political activity, and in this book Callinicos explores the ambivalent relationship between Marxism and philosophy. Beginning with Marx and the legacy of Hegelianism, he surveys the schools of Marxist philosophy from Engels and the Second International through the revolutionary Hegelianism, of the 1920s, the Frankfurt (...) School, and the anti-Hegelian Marxism of Adorno and Althusser. (shrink)

Marxism has defined its key values in opposition to animals other than human in order to promote the interests of the most downtrodden human beings. Although it has characterized itself as a scientific historical and economic theory, sympathy for human suffering has provided its most powerful motivation as a political force. This capacity for sympathy, causing in modern times an extension of Marxist concerns beyond "class" in the original sense, is beginning to accommodate animals as are the theoretical concepts (...) of alienation, surplus value, and historical materialism. Marxism's inconsistencies are being resolved in favor of the side that, for human as well as animal benefit, favors individual sentience and other pro-animal values. So, in a truly dialectical progression, the same quality of sympathy that at first caused Marxism to denigrate animals is now coming out in their support. (shrink)

THE SIXTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS of the History of Science is scheduled to assemble in Bucharest, Rumania, in August 1981. To mark that occasion Isis is pleased to publish two essays on Marxism and the history of science.

Resumen: Desde el principio ha sido muy obvio que el capitalismo es un tipo de empresa engañosa. Por otro lado, el capitalismo ha estado vinculado a la acumulación masiva de riqueza. Como se indica, el capitalismo ha estado vinculado a la explotación, a una creciente desigualdad de la riqueza, a colapsos económicos y a conflictos internacionales. La economía política ha estudiado durante mucho tiempo cómo interactúan las dos caras del capitalismo. ¿Es posible arreglar los problemas del capitalismo preservando sus beneficios, (...) como afirman sus partidarios? Algunos anticapitalistas sostienen que limitar o eliminar el capitalismo es la única manera de acabar con él. La teoría tendrá el mayor impacto en el resultado de esta situación. Los economistas ven los mercados como un lugar en el que todos reciben un trato justo a la hora de valorar y recompensar las contribuciones económicas a la sociedad. El reino del mercado, en vez de culpar los defectos sociales e individuales de manera global, culpa la carencia del individuo manera particular. La clave para formular una predicción sólida de la caída del orden actual es la tesis marxiana de que las relaciones de producción constituyen la base de toda civilización. En otras palabras, las estructuras de clase sustentan las instituciones políticas, culturales e ideológicas. De ello se desprende que una sociedad postcapitalista sólo puede desarrollarse en la medida en que surjan nuevas relaciones de producción, o de clase (o más exactamente, relaciones “sin clases”). De forma similar a cómo surgieron nuevas relaciones económicas a lo largo del tiempo cuando Europa pasó de una sociedad feudal al capitalismo industrial, y cómo se construyeron nuevas sociedades sobre estos sistemas, en las próximas generaciones surgirán nuevas manifestaciones de crecimiento masivo de la producción para que la especie humana experimente menos épocas de crisis económica. A finales de 2007, la economía mundial se desplomó rápidamente, obligando a los bancos a declararse en quiebra y a necesitar rescates gubernamentales. La principal idea errónea de las economías de mercado, que se autorregulan de forma natural, quedó rebatida. La catástrofe brindó la oportunidad a los individuos de reevaluar cuestiones de larga data que habían quedado sin resolver porque desafió las nociones preconcebidas. La obra fundamental de Marx, “El Capital”, según las librerías de todo el mundo, tuvo un espectacular aumento de ventas tras la crisis. En algunos aspectos, el marxismo parece estar regresando. Debido a la tradición crítica que creó, que abarca las humanidades y las ciencias sociales, el marxismo no puede entenderse adecuadamente dentro del marco del siglo XIX. Marx fue capaz de influir en el agua que bebemos y en el aire que respiramos incluso en lugares donde fue rechazado. El marxismo es omnipresente, como han demostrado las dos primeras décadas del siglo XXI. Mientras sirvan de catalizadores para el bienestar y el desarrollo de la sociedad, las tendencias económicas contemporáneas como el espíritu empresarial y la libre empresa no son desalentadas por el marxismo moderno. (shrink)

Examines the relevance of Foucault's work for developing an understanding of those issues which lie beyond the limits of Marxist theory and analysis - issues such as 'individualising' forms of power, power-knowledge relations, the rise of ...

This article examines why Günther Anders, one of the 20th century’s most formidable critics of technology, deemed a critique of technology necessary at all. I argue that the radical philosophy of industrialism in Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (The Obsolescence of Human Beings) and related texts is a response to what Anders’s work presents as inadequacies of traditional Marxism, with its focus on class struggle and property relations. In effect, his critique of technology, which is more attentive to forms of (...) domination emergent with mechanization, would come to supplant classical Marxist thought. The piece concludes with some thoughts about how Anders’s ‘post-Marxist’ perspective provides insights for contemporary Marxism and, in turn, how the latter can throw light on problems in Anders’s philosophy of the machine. (shrink)

This volume examines various points of contact between Marxism and phenomenology. Although these traditions can appear conceptually incompatible, the contributors reveal productive complementarities on themes such as alienation, reification, and ecology, which illuminate and can help to resolve the crises of contemporary capitalism.

The relationship of Marxist thought to the phenomena of everyday life and utopia, both separately and in terms of their intersection, is a complex and often ambiguous one. In this article, I seek to trace some of the theoretical filiations of a critical Marxist approach to their convergence (as stemming mainly from a Central European tradition), in order to tease out some of the more significant ambivalences and semantic shifts involved in its theorization. This lineage originates in the work of (...) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then stretches to Georg Lukács and the so-called ‘Gnostic Marxism’ of Walter Benjamin (as mediated by the important figure of Georg Simmel), and culminating most recently in the work of Agnes Heller. Such a Marxist theory is inseparable from a political project that seeks to unveil and critique what it takes to be the debased, routinized and ideological qualities of daily existence under the auspices of modern capitalist society, but also attempts to locate certain emancipatory tendencies within this selfsame terrain, an orientation that can be summed up in the phrase ‘everyday utopianism’. Although there are occasional lapses into dualistic modes of thinking in the work of these writers, the key insight they present to us is the need to overcome the pervasive dichotomy between the everyday/immanent and the utopian/transcendental, of a sort that has bedevilled the work of many other theorists and intellectual traditions. (shrink)