News DISSIDENT INTELLECTUALS: EAST ANDWEST l.Yugoslavia: philosophers sacked According to press reports eight philosophy teachers have lost their jobs at Belgrade University as a result of political pressure. Mihailo l;larkovic, Ljubomir Tadic, svetozar stejanovic, and the 0th8rs, formed the Belgrade wing of the philosophical tendency associated with the journal Praxis. The Zabreb wing has also […]

Radical Philoso~~y_7_ __ ~I political and economic theory: and we want to develop awareness of the conditions in which philosophy is actually produced – which means bourgeois academic institutions. (See the article by Jon Davies on what it means to take a degree, and also parts of Ranci~re’s wide-ranging critique of his former teacher Althusser […]

On Ihelheo.-y of ideology Ithe politics of A.lthussel’) Jacques Ranciere ‘Certainly it is an interesting event we are dealing with: the Dutrescence of the absolute spirit (Marx: German Ideology Part 1) ‘All the mysteries which lead theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the understanding of that practice’. For a […]

Common sen’se State power conceal what it doesn’t want to know a ‘theoretical’ laboratory which has ‘been found to be well-equipped for this universal function of non-thought, the effects of which can be spotted as much in the discourse of Marxist scholars as in that of professional revolutionaries. ——————————————————–(Note added February 1973) Correct ideas, says […]

Nol in fronl of Ihe sludenls JonDavies ‘Because of the Welfare State’, wrote one of our first year students, ‘there has been a great increase in participation.’ (She had been reading a textbook). I asked her: ‘On what public issue or what public debate have you personally ever participated, even just by writing a letter […]

8 Ralf Dahendorf, quoted in Musgrove, op. cit. 9 R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure The Free Press, 1968 10 Basil Bernstein, ‘Sociological Aspects of Classifying and Framing Educational Knowledge’, quoted in Musgrove, op. cit. 11 C. Wright Mills, op. cit. 12 Ibid. 13 Anthony Ryle, Student Casualties, The Penguin Press, 1969. 14 […]

flock; but can any claim their exertions have sufficed? Nor was it only with England and her white colonies that Berkeley was concerned. His benevolence spread to all people of the earth, and especially to the savage natives of America. At a time when these savages are showing such a want of civic or spiritual […]

Y~~————————————————————————————————————- The Huntington File In June 1973, Samuel Huntington, Professor of Government at Hc.rvard University, former consultant to the Secretary of Defense, and distinguished advocate of ‘forced draft urbanisation’ (concentration camps) in Vietnam, came to Sussex University to give a lecture and a seminar. As a result of a demonstration organised by the Sussex Indochina […]

Discussion Leninism versus proletarian self-emancipation Norman Geras argues (RP6, pp20-22) convincingly that Marx’s theory of socialist revolution is grounded on the fundamental principle that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’. Marx held to this view throughout his entire forty years of socialist political activity, and it […]

LelleJls Dear Editors The trouble with most Marxists, would-be Marxists, left-wing intellectuals, and bannercarrying hangers-on, is that they live outside!the real classstruggle; they live in cloisters, like monks; and only very rarely do they ever descend into the suppurating wound where the organisms of inequality originate. There is sound reason for the belief.that no revolution […]

LelleJls Dear Editors The trouble with most Marxists, would-be Marxists, left-wing intellectuals, and bannercarrying hangers-on, is that they live outside!the real classstruggle; they live in cloisters, like monks; and only very rarely do they ever descend into the suppurating wound where the organisms of inequality originate. There is sound reason for the belief.that no revolution […]

News Swansea Swansea Radical Philosophy Group has been struggling with the Philosophy Department of University College Swansea for many months. The students have campaigned for various reforms, including the introduction of tutorials, reduction of emphasis on compulsory lectures, and democratic checks on the power of the head of the department. A pamphlet outlining the story […]

Radical Philosop-hy_6_ __ Orthodox English-language philosophy may be pretty boring, ignorant, and mystifying; but beyond this it is hard to make generalisations about it. One of the complications concerns its attitudes to the conceptions which characterise the minds of nonintellectuals or non-academics, to ‘common sense’ or ‘ordinary language’. On this issue, there have been two […]

Mo..al might be or are applied. To investigate the latter is to raise political or moral or religious, but not philosophical, problems or questions. 2 philosophy wilhoul ..o ..alily? Richard Norman I Of the traditional areas of philosophy, moral philosophy is one in which the inadequacy of recent work has been most obvious. The writings […]

3 The Object of Morality, p.17 4 Cf. Erich Framm: Man For Himself, ch.IV section 1. Despite its limitations, Fromm’s discussion, and the book as a whole, are a useful application of psychological ideas to philosophical ethics, and far more valuable than most recent moral philosophY,in the analytical tradition. S I have in mind such […]

became more apparent to him. Tern never acted wrongly ‘without feeling and suffering for it’. ~8 It will perhaps be evident to some readers that I am making a point parallel to the point which leads Wittgenstein to reject the possibility of ‘private’ assignments of names to referents. The parallel is cernplex, and hardly worth […]

Ma:rxlsm and pl’oletal’ian sel’emancipalion Norman Geras I claim no novelty for these ideas. Some of them are discussed in a recent article by Hal Draper. 1 They are treated at greater length, and in greater depth, in Michael Lowy’s book on Marx’s theory of revolution. 2 Going back to Marx himself, in 1864, in the […]

Whomakas hislory? Allhassel”s anli-hamanis.. John Mepham Introduction I am very much aware that in what follows I solve no philosophical problems. I attempt some conceptual clarifications and I propose some interpretations of theses of Louis Althusser. I hope this will at least make it possible to pose some problems more clearly than they are posed […]

(New Left Books 1973). But also read Macciocchi’s own contributions to this important and exciting book. Althusser on intellectuals: ‘It is extremely difficult for specialists and other bourgeois and petty-bourgeois “intellectuals” (including students). For a mere education of their consciousness is not enough, nor a mere reading of Capital. They must also make a real […]