Moral Relalions,PoIilical Economy and Class Ilmggle Philip Corrigan & Derek Saver In a critical comment on the Comtists (in a draft for his The Civil War in France) Marx declares: Poor men! They do not know that every social form of property has ‘morals’ of its own~ The strategy of analysis involved in this sharp […]

formations from a particular, materialist and thoroughly experimental basis., The material base of socialism is simultaneously its moral base: how direct producers are, and the thousand’s of struggles involved in understanding what it is to be a direct producer under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Above all, socialist revolution is not equivalent to a regime […]

Brnsl Casslrer lohnIbbett This is the third article in a series on neglected .1r misunderstood philosophers. The others have been on Dietzgen (in RP10) and Merleau-Ponty (in RP11). Articles on r:ollingwood and Foucault are planned; other suggestions would be welcome. Although the works of Ernst Cassirer are readily available in English, I suspect they only […]

immediately; he cannot see it, as it were, face to face •.• Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the […]

inst~d of the insignificant and useless knowledge In sum radical philosophy’s attitude to both so often produced. And some research has clearly science and common sense is the same: where it been dangerous, e.g. in biological warfare and helps, use it; where it doesn ‘.t, criticize it; eugenics. where…;i.t gets in the way, remove it. […]

Lellen Foucauh’s Romanticism Dear Editors The Cahiers du cinema interview with Foucault on ‘film and popular memory’ which you published is full of interest in its discussion of the possibility of presenting popular struggle in a positive and combative manner. The problems involved in maintaining the autonomy of popular historical memory against bourgeois manipulation, and […]

Social inertia being what it is revolutions are resisted and hence infrequent. The small caucus which always provides the spark for a popular revolution must be fully aware that a successful revolution will only come about if there prevails a profound dissatisfaction wi~ the status quo. In a sentence whose political profundity makes it strangely […]

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 […]

‘ Radical Philosophy :Thl.. leell Wlllch, WIII,gellslelll alld Ma.. xlsm ~. Ted Benton A Introduction This paper suffers from a certain ‘instability’ deriving from its having been written some years ago, and then substantially modified more recently to serve quite different purposes. This modification,has, unfortunately, been insufficiently thorough, although the instability of the paper may […]

” What ue lhe llbas of Science? Aaron.Sloman I ~ , If we are to understand the nature of science, ·”course much wider than science. We all, including we must see it as an activity and achievement of infants and children, aim to extend our knowledge the human mind alongside others, such as the a~d […]

In Defence of Inlemai Relalions -Beriell OIlman 11 Most of the criticisms of Alienation have centered on my account of Marx’s philosophy of internal relations. I would like to take advantage of the appearance of a second edition to develop my defence of this philosophy beyond the brief remarks found in the appendix on this […]

contradictory claims r~ard1ng freedOm and necessity in the same work. An alternative approach to the determinism debate is the one adopted in Alienation which underscores the elastic meaninq of ‘ciCuse’ and ‘detelllLine’, but this doesn’t bring out adequately the reasohs for such variations. If Marx’s materialist conception of history, then, deals with the determining role […]

whether they are considered as individuals or subgroups, spontaneously create ahierarc~ic structure. All primate communities are hierarchic structures, otherwise they would not be communities. For this reason I believe that a hierarchy of responsible leadership, ~adres and teachers will continue to function in the develoPment and stabilizing of a grass-roots democratic communism in China (providing […]

Reviews industry demands more than narrow special ism. Gorz analyses the growth of student militancy in this context, but beyond students he sees the contradiction as the source by the social democratic parties of the ‘real needs’ of the ‘modern that came to power in Europe during worker, the needs that will lead to the […]

Radical PhilosoRh:y rou..teen Dialectics In this iss!.le we are publishing two articles on dialecticd. The topic aroused considerable interest at our January conference, and at the open meeting on 13 March (see news section), we decided to try to initiate a co-ordinated scheme of collective work on the topic, leading up to a conference next […]

This paper is the first stage of an attempt to answer the question ‘What is dialectic?’ I assume no prior knowledge of the subject and only a minimal prior knowledge of philosophy. I am aware that this task has been attempted many times before. But one of the things which I have found particularly confusing […]

as I ~have already said, this seems too banal and obvious. Hopefully not that’ everything is always changing’, since this is false. There is stability within change. We cannot describe change except by talking about ‘things which change’, and to say that a thing is changing is . to imply that within the process of […]

Philosophy in China What Can We Learn From It ? Jonathan Ree China and Chinoiserie I went on a three-week general tour of China in November 1975. I know very well that this does not make me an expert on China; nevertheless many of the rumours about China that circulate in the West derive from […]

Reviews Anarchy, State and Utopia R A Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Blackwells, 1974 367pp £5.50 By elaborating A theory of Justice in terms of a general social, political and moral theory, and by arguing specifically for a form of welfarestate liberalism, John Rawls brought political philosophy back to the academic groves from the wilderness. […]