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.’ .,er [ to neuro-biological or physical schemes and that in Lacan the model, the reference, has been mainly Zinguistia (or more recently topo~ogiaa~) does not affect the radical particularity and separate existence of the fundamental psychoanalytical concepts which refer to a specific experience and are created in order to designate this experience. That this […]

NEWS R.P. Day School on Dialectic On 19 June Goldsmiths College played host to another Radical Philosophy Day School. The speakers were Istvan Meszaros (The Cunning of History in Reverse Gear); Joe McCarney (Social Science and Dialectic); and Sean Sayers (Materialism, Realism, and the Theory of Reflection). The presentations were exceptionally clear and provided a […]

NEWS French Socialism and Philosophy Since May 1981 Has the new French Socialist Government made any moves to alter the position of philosophy in French education where (in spite of a diminution of the proportion of philosophy in the syllabus in the mid-seventies) philosophy still retains a role in school education not entirely unlike that […]

the worker tries to gain mastery over the labour process). The contradictions arising directly from this type of work are arguably near-maximal for free labour: labour allows negligible mastery of skills; the efficacy of labour is felt to be external to the labour process and is located in the spheres of circulation and exchange. It […]

right sources to draw on, and I am in general sympathy with Pilling’s approach. However, it must be said that he does not go beyond his sources. Much of the book consists in the rehearsal of familiar passages from Marx. I would say therefore that the book is likely not to be too exciting for […]

NEWS Co-ordinating Left-Wing Intellectuals A number of editors of Radical Philosophy took part in a meeting in June to discuss the formation of a society to bring together the activities of the various left-wing intellects’ groups in Britain and co-ordinate their activities politically. The society is provisionally known as the Socialist Society. Many questions about […]

NEWS R P Dayschool Over 50 people attended a lively and stimulating RP sponsored dayschool held at Sussex University on a rather cold and snowy November Saturday. The topic was ‘Recent Issues in Marxist Philosophy’. The day began with John Mepham and David Ruben discussing the recent Harvester series which they edited, with Jonathan Ree […]

This lies, first, in the clarity of his presentation of the various approaches to ideology, and his critical discussion of each. Secondly, it lies in the questionopening form of many of his comments. For example, he criticises (p120) Goldmann’s attempt in the critique of literature to distinguish that which is expressive of a worldview of […]

NEWS a COMMENT BIOLOGISM DA Y SCHOOL About 40 people attended the third RP day-school” on sociobiology, which was held at Goldsmiths’ College on Saturday 10 November. In the morning, Martin Barker gave an introduction to sociobiologic· al theory, focussing especially on Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene, and this was followed by a general […]

‘POLITICS AND THE PRODUCTION OF THEORETICAL JOURNALS’ In February 1979, the Radical Publications Group organised a conference at the ICA in London about current problems and opportunities for left publishing in Britain (see Radical Philosophy 22). The conference concentrated on questions of marketing (how to get a firm subscription base; how to expand shop sales; […]

such things as human motivation, human development and selfhood, and so on. There is still, I think, an i.mplicit tendency in Kathleen Wilkes’ book to regard everyday explanations of behaviour as interesting, perhaps, and practically essential in the conduct of life, but otherwise as rather inferior and unsatisfactory if co.mpared with anything that can be […]

NEWS a: COMMENT RADICAL PUBLICATIONS GROUP CONFERENCE On Saturday 17 February there was a conference on ‘Publishing and Politics’ at the ICA in London. It was organised by the Radical Publications Group, a federation of left/alternative magazines including Radical Philosophy. The idea was to consider the whole field of publishing – books as well as […]

NEWS Althusser. the Party, Marxism (1) Since the defeat of the left in the recent legis1ative elections, a wi:iesprea:i :iebate has developed within the French CP, reflecting the dissatisfaction felt by many militants with the lea:iership’s conduct of the electoral campaign. Although this debate is by no means confine:i to the party’s intellectuals, they provide […]

NEWS Local groups There is little to be said tulder this heading at ,present. Bristol group seems to have declined as nobody from there has yet replied to requests for information, although it is known that the only staff participant in the group has recently decided to withdraw from active involvement in Radical Philosophy because […]

I¥ternational the notion that western societies were the only model for the building of socialist society. Lenin wished to adopt the hl.rgel scale industry of Western countries, to catch_ up and surpass them. He argued (as did Trotsky) that there .w~ no need to invent Some original way of organIzIng labour as capitaUs m had […]

1977, hc £10.00 B. M. G. Reardon, He”el’s Philosophy of Reliijon, London, Macmillan, 1977, hc £ 8. 95 J.Rosenbaum, ed., Rivette: Texts and Interviews, London, BFI, 1977, pb O. 75p J. Schwartz, ed., The Subtle Anatomy of Capitalism, Santa Monica, Calif., Goodyear Pub Co, 1977, pb np M. Smith, The Underground and Education, London, Methuen, […]

way it feeds the craving it attempts to satisfy – where do we go from here? One feels that Ken Coates’ apt description of I. S. as ‘a rather shrill, if also intellectually infertile, sectarian grouping’ would find echoes in all the groupuscules, but has anyone done a close enough analysis of them to really […]

symphonies, which so often submit to the imposed falsehood of a , soc iali st-optimist’ programne, nevertheless stand up ~s authentic creations of the sUffering artist, voicing an imminent critique of dominant ideology through the sheer -~nbalance and rebarbative crudeness of their structure. In these interpretive matters, where aesthetics meets with the phenome~­ olegy of […]

Ne~s Doctor Althusser In June Louis Althusser, of international reputation and after having taught for twenty-five years at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, travelled to Amiens to defend his doctoral ‘thesis’ before a local jury. It has not been explained 1Io1hy Al thusser bQthered to do this or what it mea~t to him personally […]

, good vse of Habermas’s theory of knowledge-constitutive interests; and his specification of the forms of political practice consonant with critical social theory resonates with the concepts of self-reflective critique and undistorted communication developed by Habermas in his examination of Freud. The greater part of the book (chapters 2 and 3) is taken up by […]

~ ‘Nevertheless (Austin) did succeed in haunting most of the philosophers in England, and to his colleagues it seemed that his· terrifying intelligence was never at rest. Many of them used to wake up in the night with a vision of the stringy wiry Austin standing over their pillow like a bird of prey. Their […]