Politics in a Tragic Key

In memory of Joel Olson (1967–2012) In the quarter-century or so since the obscure disaster of the Soviet bloc’s collapse, two words have been pinned to that of ‘communism’ with liberal abandon: ‘tragedy’ and ‘transition’. Tragedy, to signify the magnitude of suffering, but not the greatness of the enterprise; the depth of the fall, but […]

Nietzche reception today

Nietz5che reception today Pauline Johnson I want no ‘believers’. I think I am too malicious to believe in myself; I never speak to masses. – I have a terrible fear that one day I shall be pronounced biological’ revolution was enticingly projected in contrast to the ‘superficial’, ‘external’ social revolution. 2 holy. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce […]

István Mészéros: Marxism Today

Marxism Today An Interview with Istvan Meszaros /stwin Meszaros left Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956. He recently retiredfrom a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. He established his reputation in the English-speaking world with his widely translated Marx’s Theory ofAlienation (1970), which was awarded the / saac Deutscher Memorial Prize. His […]

Reification, Class and ‘New Social Movements’

Reification, Class and ‘New Social Movements’ Paul Browne All significant social movements of the last thirty years have started outside the organised class interests and institutions. The peace movement, the ecology movement, the women’s movement, solidarity with the third world, human rights agencies, campaigns against poverty and homelessness, campaigns against cultural poverty and distortion: all […]

Philosophy as Exile from Life: Lukács' 'Soul And Form'

Philosophy as Exile from Life: Lukacs’ ‘Soul And Form’ Paul Browne As ethical explorations of the world of literary and philosophical works, Georg Lukacs’s essays are so many restatements of a fundamental question: what are the relationships between such works, the lives of their individual creators, and social existence in general? In giving new expression […]

Karl Marx, Death and Apocalypse

Karl Marx, Death and Apocalypse Joanna Hodge Thoughts occasioned by reading Wayne Hudson, The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch (Macmillan, 1982) and Julian Roberts, Waiter Benjamin (Macmillan, 1982) There are five grand’ ‘o’ld me~ of’ twentieth-century European Marxism: Adorno , Benjamin , Bloch , Lukacs , and Marcuse . Their works loom bulky and ominous […]

On Materialism

On Materialism· Wal Suchting TEACHER SI FU TEACHER SI FU TEACHER SI FU Si Fu, name the basic questions of philosophy. Are things external to us, selfsufficient, independent of us, or are things in us, dependent on us, non-existent without us? What opinion is the correct one? There has been no decision about it …. […]

Lukács, Heidegger and Fascism

sacrificing the majesty of the masses and the positivity of their practices to the discourses and the illusions of a few dozen ‘non-representative’ individuals. In the labyrinth of their real and imaginary travels, I simply wanted to follow the thread of two guiding questions: What paradoxical route led these deserters, who wanted to tear themselves […]

31 Reviews

REVIEWS Philosophies of African Liberation Journal of African Marxists, Issue No.l, November 1981, Zed Press, London, twice yearly, Sub: £2. This ·new and attractive journal aims to provide a forum for progressive African intellectuals, and all those committed to African liberation, to discuss the struggle against neocolonialism and racism. The allAfrican editorial board, supported by […]

Objectification and Alienation in Marx and Hegel

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 Crucially, linguists do not agree. Mounin, G., Clefs pOUY’ la linguistique, Seghers, Paris, 1971, p.ll. See above, ‘Process Three – The Oedipus Complex, the Father and Social Rules’ . Identified by, amongst others, E.P. Thompson. Turkle, S., Psychoanalytic Politics, Burnett Books, New York, 1979. For […]

27 Reviews

REVIEWS Skillen: Ruling Illusions Joe McCarney Anthony Skillen, Ruling Illusions: Philosophy and the Social Order, The Harvester Press Ltd, 1978, 177pp, £7.95 and £3.50 This book appears in the ‘Philosophy Now’ series which is described by its general editor, Roy Edgley, as seeking ‘in one way or another to push philosophy out of its ivory […]

Lukács and the Marxist Criticism of Sociology

Lukacs aacl tbe MaJlxist Ca-iticislll of Sociology IanCraib This paper is situated in the context of three interrelated arguments. The first and central issue is epistemological, concerning the grounds upon which one theory of ‘point of view’ claims to be superior to others, to represent ‘the truth’, to be ‘scientific’, to produce ‘knowledge’. The last […]

The Marxist Theory of Truth

THE mARHI5T THEORY OF TRUTH Peter Binns One of the main problems facing marxist theory is that of its own status. On the one hand the theory of the formation of ideology seems to suggest that all beliefs are relative to the believer’s society; while on the other hand there is the assumption that marxism […]

Is There a Marxist Sociology?

lU[IEn IiOlDmAnn 15 THERE AmARHI5T 50[IOl06Y? Translated and IntradlHed bV Ion the socially relevant, like so many practitioners of the ‘sociology of literature’. When Lucien Goldmann’ s essay , Is There a Marxist Sociology?’ first appeared in Les Temps Modernes in 1957, it made an important contribution to the revival of a serious consideration of […]