Aneivas and Nişancıoğlu’s provocative book,How the West Came to Rule, attempts to provide an alternative account of the origins of capitalism to both ‘Political Marxism’ and ‘World-Systems Theory’. By making uneven and combined development a universal dynamic of human history and by utilising a flawed concept of ‘Eurocentrism’, however, they introduce a high degree of causal pluralism into their analysis. Despite important insights into the specific dynamics of different pre-capitalist forms of social labour, their account of the origins of (...) capitalism inHow the West Came to Rulesuffers from causal indeterminacy and historical inaccuracies. (shrink)

Theory as History brings together twelve essays by Jarius Banaji addressing the nature of modes of production, the forms of historical capitalism and the varieties of pre-capitalist modes of production. Problematic formulations concerning the relationship of social-property relations and the laws of motion of different modes of production and his notion of merchant and slave-holding capitalism undermines Banaji’s project of constructing a non-unilinear, non-Eurocentric Marxism.

Daniel Gaido’s The Formative Period of American Capitalism provides a thorough accounting of classical Marxist writing on the history of US capitalism. He combines insights from the classical Marxist and US Trotskyist traditions with an engagement with a selection of recent historical research to produce a provocative interpretation of the origins and rise of capitalism in the US. However, his failure to critically interrogate the classical Marxist and US Trotskyist traditions on the US or engage with the growing historical research (...) on the origins and trajectory of US capitalism weakens his contribution. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau’s Marxist and post-Marxist works are best understood when they are embedded in the history of Argentina’s National Left. This socialist-populist current underpinned his strategic horizons onward of at least 1963. While purely theoretical interpretations of Laclau can sometimes be enlightening, they tend to lose sight of the historical density of the Argentine’s thought. Over the course of his working life, Laclau’s theories presented the Argentinean Left with a challenge concerning how to engage with Peronism: specifically, how to (...) develop a leftist hegemonic project in an era when the working class remained stubbornly linked to a Peronist political identity. Laclau’s political trajectory and his understanding of Marxism are analysed here in order to explain the nature of his post-Marxism. (shrink)

A detailed examination of post-Marxist political theory, focusing especially on the work of Laclau, Habermas, and Derrida. Devenney identifies common concerns between these theorists and demostrates how the respective strenghts of each compliment the weaknesses of the other.

Marxism's collapse in the twentieth century profoundly altered the style and substance of Western European radical thought. To build a more robust form of democratic theory and action, prominent theorists moved to reject revolution, abandon class for more fragmented models of social action, and elevate the political over the social. Acknowledging the constructedness of society and politics, they chose the "symbolic" as a concept powerful enough to reinvent leftist thought outside a Marxist framework. Following Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Adventures of the (...) Dialectic, which reassessed philosophical Marxism at mid century, Warren Breckman critically revisits these thrilling experiments in the aftermath of Marxism. The post-Marxist idea of the symbolic is dynamic and complex, uncannily echoing the early German Romantics, who first advanced a modern conception of symbolism and the symbolic. Hegel and Marx denounced the Romantics for their otherworldly and nebulous posture, yet post-Marxist thinkers appreciated the rich potential of the ambiguities and paradoxes the Romantics first recognized. Mapping different ideas of the symbolic among contemporary thinkers, Breckman traces a fascinating reflection of Romantic themes and resonances, and he explores in depth the effort to reconcile a radical and democratic political agenda with a politics that does not privilege materialist understandings of the social. Engaging with the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Marcel Gauchet, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek, Breckman uniquely situates these important theorists within two hundred years of European thought and extends their profound relevance to today's political activism. (shrink)

Psychoanalytic structuralism in the Cahiers pour l'analyse -- Bachelard, Lacan and the impurity of formalization -- Science, suture and the signifier -- Discourse and ideology in post-rationalism: Althusser, Badiou, Lacan, Milner -- Canguilhem, Deleuze and the problem of life.

Western Marxism, since its Western deviation and theoretical development in the 1920s, developed in diverse ways that has reflected the broader philosophical environment. First, a theory of conscio...

ABSTRACT Radical democracy was, at its inception, a polemical alternative to the hegemony of Marxism over the political discourse of the Left. This is particularly striking in the work of two of its figureheads, Miguel Abensour and Chantal Mouffe. Whereas C. Mouffe advocates for radical democracy to break free from the rigidness and the determinacy of Marxism, M. Abensour goes back to the young Marx’s plea for a “real democracy”. It results in radical democrats locating differently the radicality (...) of their approaches. While post-Marxists emphasize the crucial and dynamic role of divisive conflicts within the political community and consequently grant the State a role as their arbitrator, “Young Marxists” emphasize a constant struggle against an abusive institutionalization of the State. As a result, they advocate for a form of political spontaneity that is complicated to reconcile with consideration of the political community’s inner conflicts. The regrouping of disparate critical works under a single label makes us shortsighted to some of its internal contradictions. (shrink)

Marxism and Moral Advocacy Socialist thought in the late twentieth century is assailed by inner uncertainty as never before. In view of earlier attitudes ...

The post-colonial has often functioned as a code word for a form of French post-theory. In more recent efforts to reconstruct linkages between metropolitan Marxism and counter-colonialism, the post-colonial refers to an open-ended research field for investigating the present weight of colonial histories. But even in these reformulations, post-colonial research presents formidable challenges to Euro-American urban Marxism. In this context, this paper redirects Henri Lefebvre’s work to analyse post-colonial situations. It traces in particular (...) the notion of ‘colonisation’ as it develops from his critique of everyday life to his work on the state. We argue that Lefebvre’s notion of ‘colonisation’ presents a promising opening to understanding the ‘colonial’ aspects of urbanisation today. Still, for this promise to be realised, Lefebvre’s notion must be refracted through dialectical-humanist counter-colonial traditions. (shrink)

Hegemony and Education explores how the educational insights implicit in Antonio Gramsci's historical materialist outlook have been reconciled to the post-Marxist theory of 'radical democracy.' The author argues that there is an urgent need to redefine the dynamics of hegemony as a theory centering on the problem of cognitive and moral submissiveness; that is, a problem indicative of the pathologies of capitalism with respect to democratic theorizing.

Hegemony and Education explores how the educational insights implicit in Antonio Gramsci's historical materialist outlook have been reconciled to the post-Marxist theory of "radical democracy." The author argues that there is an urgent need to redefine the dynamics of hegemony as a theory centering on the problem of cognitive and moral submissiveness; that is, a problem indicative of the pathologies of capitalism with respect to democratic theorizing.

This article aims to bring together post-Marxist discourse theory and the critique of political economy in the context of the debate on the Marxian theory of value. Although Laclau and Mouffe criticized Marxism for its economic reductionism, they did not connect this to a comprehensive critique of Marx's writings on value and labor. The merit of considering the theory of value in more detail is underscored by discourse theory's relative silence on the capitalist economy. By drawing on the (...) work of Postone and Elson, it will become clear that there are largely two ways to interpret Marx's theory of value: either as an essentialist theory of price and exploitation, or as a historically specific theory of the constitution of social labor relations in capitalist society. By teasing out Laclau's implicit understanding of Marx's value theory, the article argues that it is in fact his essentialist interpretation of the labor theory of value that constitutes an obstacle toward grasping the social relations of labor and commodity production from a discourse-theoretical perspective. This clears the ground toward approaching Marx's value theory from a post-Marxist perspective, which would grasp the social relations of abstract labor as a hegemonic formation. (shrink)

Marxism's collapse in the twentieth century profoundly altered the style and substance of Western European radical thought. To build a more robust form of democratic theory and action, prominent theorists moved to reject revolution, abandon class for more fragmented models of social action, and elevate the political over the social. Acknowledging the constructedness of society and politics, they chose the "symbolic" as a concept powerful enough to reinvent leftist thought outside a Marxist framework. Following Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Adventures of the (...) Dialectic, which reassessed philosophical Marxism at mid century, Warren Breckman critically revisits these thrilling experiments in the aftermath of Marxism. The post-Marxist idea of the symbolic is dynamic and complex, uncannily echoing the early German Romantics, who first advanced a modern conception of symbolism and the symbolic. Hegel and Marx denounced the Romantics for their otherworldly and nebulous posture, yet post-Marxist thinkers appreciated the rich potential of the ambiguities and paradoxes the Romantics first recognized. Mapping different ideas of the symbolic among contemporary thinkers, Breckman traces a fascinating reflection of Romantic themes and resonances, and he explores in depth the effort to reconcile a radical and democratic political agenda with a politics that does not privilege materialist understandings of the social. Engaging with the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Marcel Gauchet, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Žižek, Breckman uniquely situates these important theorists within two hundred years of European thought and extends their profound relevance to today's political activism. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's attempt to approach Marxism, undertaken in the post-war years, is passed through by continuous ambiguity. Notwithstanding the philosopher's purpose of joining the Marxist theory, his political analysis are far from his intentions. Conceiving history as an "adventure" which escapes any rational scheme, Merleau-Ponty questions, since his first writings, Marxist dialectics between logic and contingency in history. The inner tension that lacerates the author's texts during the 40's, proclaiming the refusal of the theory of revolution, which would later (...) appear in The Adventures of the Dialectics, permits us to inquire wheter the dénouement of the 50's would not have been - instead of a cutting in the heart of the work - the necessary result of this problematic attempt to approach Marxism, departing from categories which are alien to it .A tentativa merleau-pontyana de aproximação do marxismo, empreendida nos idos do pós-guerra, é perpassada por constante ambigüidade. Não obstante o propósito do filósofo de se filiar à teoria de Marx, suas análises políticas revelam-se distantes de suas intenções. Concebendo a história como uma "aventura" que escapa a qualquer esquema racional, Merleau-Ponty questiona, desde seus primeiros escritos, a dialética marxista entre lógica e contingência na história. A tensão interna que dilacera os textos do autor nos anos 40, anunciando a recusa da teoria da revolução estampada mais tarde nas Aventuras da Dialética, permite indagar se esse desfecho dos anos 50 não teria sido, ao invés de um corte no interior da obra, o resultado necessário dessa tentativa problemática de aproximação do marxismo a partir de categorias que lhe são estranhas. (shrink)

Much of leftist political philosophy has uncritically accepted the logic of capitalism, which is a logic of conservation that presents itself as a logic of “production.” Many leftist political philosophers subscribe to capitalism’s fundamental myth—that capitalism produces the new. This appearance of proliferation, however, masks an underlying stasis. This article interrogates this trend in the apparently disparate projects of contemporary accelerationism and Jacques Rancière. The accelerationist project of immanence allows for newness only in quantity and not in quality, while Rancière, (...) coming closer to thinking radical newness in his account of politics, forecloses the possibility of a radically emancipatory society. I suggest an open ontology, which Marx offers, provides a better framework for thinking revolutionary newness. (shrink)

A critical study of Zizek's recent ideology critique and political philosophy.

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have attempted to save the concept of ?hegemony? from its economistic and essentialist Marxist roots by incorporating the linguistic influences of post?structuralist theory. Their major Marxist detractors criticise their trajectory as a ?descent into discourse? ? a decay from well?grounded, material reality into the idealistic and problematic realm of language and discourse. Both sides of the debate seem to agree on one thing: the line from Marxism to post?Marxism is the line (...) from the economy to language, from ?reality? to discourse. This article focuses on Gramsci?s writings on language to argue against both sides of this debate. It illustrates how language is central to Gramsci?s historical materialism and that he does not oppose it to materiality. It argues that Gramsci adopted the very term hegemony substantially from his university studies in linguistics ? the debates from which Ferdinand de Saussure also developed structuralism. For Gramsci, such linguistic issues were directly related to the ?questione della lingua? and Italian unification. Moreover, language lies at the centre of Gramsci?s understanding of the relationship between coercion and consent. This not only troubles Laclau & Mouffe?s reading of Gramsci, but it illuminates a more productive conception of hegemony that can address recent debates around post?structuralism and the use of ?hegemony? to analyse globalisation and an increasingly technological and electronic world. (shrink)

Post-Marxism emerged in the 1970s and 80s as a way to retain certain insights from Marxism while disposing of its indefensible and destructive elements, especially the tendency to reduce all social change to the economic base. This book offers a new and critical reading of post-Marxism, arguing that whilst it convincinly deconstructs the prevalent economism in Marxism as the necessary logic of social reproduction, it nonetheless still retains an ontology of a closed capitalist economy, (...) inhabited by a set of necessary logics. Through a careful symptomatic reading of the works of influential post-Marxian thinkers, Ernesto Laclau and Étienne Balibar, the book argues that while post-Marxian positions have constructed a theory of social contingency, it has failed in different ways to dislodge the constitution of class and capitalist reproduction from essentialist narratives. (shrink)

Hardt and Negri interpret contemporary sovereignty and politics in the light of a theory of contemporary globalization that is taken to supersede Marxism and former ideological standpoints of the Left. In particular, Hardt and Negri highlight how their reading of empire and multitude breaks with the teleology of Marxism and accepts the openness of events. They advertise the novelty, which is held to consist in their recognition of a thoroughly socialized and globalized world in which there exists no (...) predetermined historical subject of liberation. Hardt and Negri, however, exemplify the continuity between Marxist and post?Marxist ideological standpoints. The continuity between classical Marxism and Hardt and Negri's notion of empire and its supersession resides in the affinity between the normative values that shape Marx's reading of history and the emancipatory character of the multitude, which frames the notion of empire. Hardt and Negri offer a radical Leftist reading of globalization that contrasts with alternative ideological notions that inform more orthodox interpretations of globalization, and thereby points to the ideological character of theories of globalization. (shrink)

Critical theory as a Post-Marxist discourse is a category of academic thought that broadly involves theoretical scholarship aimed at interrogating the structures and discourses of power. As such, i...

This book traces the crystallisation of post-Marxism as a specific theoretical position in its own right and considers the role played in its development by post-structuralism, postmodernism and second-wave feminism. It examines the history of dissenting tendencies within the Marxist tradition and considers what the future prospects of post-Marxism are likely to be.

The most successful games today do not use a pay-for-product model, but involve complex and aggressive modes of monetizing their content (downloadable content, skins, in game currencies and markets, seasonal passes, etc.). While this has already been scrutinized, there are further consequences for games themselves and the economization of play. In my paper, I show how this strategy creates a conceptually novel situation, where playing can be considered to constitute reproductive labor-power and behavioral capital. In other words, playing here represents (...) not only consumption but also the very production of such consumption, insofar as the main reason behind the massive success of these games is precisely their massive pool of players and data concerning their activity. Firstly, I analyse PUBG: Battlegrounds as an example of the most successful model of monetizing games and maintaining a large number of players and interaction. I focus both on the economic incentives as well as on the gameplay that is generated or tailored towards aggressive monetization. Later, I set a theoretical context for my analysis stemming from ludocapitalist discourse (itself combining Marx with poststructuralism) and the concept of surveillance capitalism. I conclude my text with a systematization and definition of my original concept of behavioral capital and an attempt to formulate art critique and usage of games as a form of cultural production exposing several examples from contemporary art. (shrink)

This is the first source-book for this cross-disciplinary area. It takes students through a wide range of readings from philosophy, politics, and sociology, to human geography, international relations, and feminist studies. Bringing together statements from leading twentieth-century thinkers such as Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Laclau and Mouffe, and with the editor's substantial introduction, this is an ideal teaching text, inspiring debate about the future of Marxism as a cultural theory.

Theories of new materialism have gained increasing traction in the social and human sciences in recent decades, as thinkers like Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett have reinvigorated the philosophical interest in topics such as the agency of nonhuman matter, the relational nature of existence and the limitations of anthropocentric forms of inquiry. However, these theories have faced criticism from post-Marxist critical theorists, who argue that theories of new materialism blunt social and capitalist critique and promote obscurity by (...) flattening the world to a single ontological plane. In this article, I argue that these critiques rely on mischaracterizations of new materialist scholarship and that theories of new materialism can in fact help us re-examine – not reject, as their critics suggest – the role of critique, responsibility and human politics in the context of the Anthropocene and its unfolding ecological crises. (shrink)

Marxism as an intellectual movement has been one of the most important and fertile contributions to twentieth-century thought. No social theory or political philosophy today can be taken seriously unless it enters a dialogue, not just with the legacy of Marx, but also with the innovations and questions that spring from the movement that his work sparked, Marxism. Marx provided a revolutionary set of ideas about freedom, politics and society. As social and political conditions changed and new intellectual (...) challenges to Marx's social philosophy arose, the Marxist theorists sought to update his social theory, rectify the sociological positions of historical materialism and respond to philosophical challenges with a Marxist reply. This book provides an accessible introduction to Marxism by explaining each of the key concepts of Marxist politics and social theory. The book is organized into three parts, which explore the successive waves of change within Marxist theory and places these in historical context, while the whole provides a clear and comprehensive account of Marxism as an intellectual system. (shrink)

Isabelle Garo’s study,Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser & Marx: La politique dans la philosophie, presents a historical approach to the French philosophy of the 1960s and 1970s and its relationship to Marx and the Marxist tradition. In her view, these authors were captured by a largely mistaken understanding of the resources present in Marxist thought, and were overly affected by the prejudices instilled by the French Communist Party. Speaking from a perspective of practical commitment, she traces a path from early French (...) class='Hi'>Marxism to an anti-totalitarian consensus. Her study renders Louis Althusser’s innovations the most pivotal in introducing a whole series of themes, with ambivalent effects on theoretical production today. Most significantly, she discerns a replacement of politics and political economy by philosophy and epistemology. She attends first to the mobilisation of psychoanalysis against humanism, which gave way to a vehement critique of the normative aspects of psychoanalysis itself. Re-reading Foucault and Deleuze as post-Althusserians, Garo suggests that this led to a championing of Friedrich Nietzsche’s viewpoints against Marx. Garo’s study is immensely valuable in contextualising the apparent innovations of poststructuralist thought. However, we can discern greater relevance for the insights of these thinkers for contemporary Marxist thought than Garo concedes, and her attempt to read them as a complete deviation from Marxist principles ultimately fails to convince. (shrink)

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 clear and concise book investigates the relation between materiality and the subject in Marxism, (post-)structuralism, and material semiotics. It introduces the three approaches in an accessible way and serves as an introduction to different kinds of materialism and theories of the subject. For each approach, the modalities of materiality of the respective materialism are defined and the relationship between these multiple materialities and the subject are presented as specific to the theoretical approaches discussed. Beetz argues for a (...) non-reductionist materialism, which conceives of materiality as more than matter or matter in motion. In such a materialism the subject is seen as an effect of material conditions, relations, processes, and practices. He shows how the constitution and decentering of the subject is conceptualized in the approaches presented and highlights the role of material instances in these processes. (shrink)

This is the first dictionary dedicated to the work of Jean Baudrillard. It explains and contextualises more than a hundred key concepts, terms, influences and topics within his thought. An essential reference for students and scholars of Baudrillard, it also serves as an authoritative overview of how his ideas have shaped a broad range of disciplines, from art, architecture, film and photography to sociology, philosophy, human geography, media studies and cultural studies. The entries are written by 35 leading Baudrillard specialists (...) from around the world, including Rex Butler, Mike Gane, Gary Genosko, Victoria Grace, Diane Rubenstein and Andrew Wernick. (shrink)