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PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM OR THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION or HISTORY Alison Assiter Introduction ‘Marxism is a materialism’. This idea has become co.mmonplace. Usually, it amounts to placing Marx and Marxism inside a philosophical tradition; one whose roots lie in the atomistic philosophies of De.mocritus and Epicurus. Much r~cent ‘Marxist’ materialism imitates or reproduces many of the ideas […]

rather than sweep them away in a torrent of technical jargon. On the other hand, there can be no general recipe for clarity and good style, if only because the personal flair of the writer will always, and rightly, be a contributory factor, and because the nature of the material under consideration must to some […]

TOWARDS A MATERIALIST THEORY or mEOLOGY: The IQ Debale as a Case Sludy Les Levidow In the Race-IQ debate which has resurfaced in Britain and the USA since 1969, socialist critiques of IQ science have centred upon some notion or other of ‘ideology’. That term has been invoked largely as an insult, intended to mean […]

, UTOPIA OR PHANTASY • . A Reply 10 OlllDan on Man’s David Murray Vision of ConIlDunisID Anyone who has argued for the desirability of socialis m will be familiar with this response: There’s a lot wrong with our society, but it’s better than Russia – if that’s socialism, you can keep it. But anyway, […]

RACISM – THE NEW INIIIRITORS Martin Barker PART I – THE NEW RACISM “1 think the nation can expect that, when they are announced, the Conservative proposals on immigration will be common-sense proposals. ” (William White law , March 1978) “Common-sense is the practical ideology of the ruling class. ” (Gramsci) 1 Introduction The resurgence […]

AN INTRODUCTION TO DERRIDA DC.Wood Introduction In 1967 Derrida made an impressive entrance onto the French intellectual stage by publishing two collections of essays and a short study of the early Husserl (1967, 1,2,3). The importance of this intervention stemmed from the fact that while he endorsed the critical distance from phenomenology that was de […]

The atlack on civilrighlS in Wesl Germany Claudia van Braunmuhl Introductory note equated with ‘sympathy for terrorism’, protest against the policy has not been silenced, but continues to grow. The various groups in West Germany struggling to defend and recover basic democratic rights have repeatedly appealed for support and solidarity from other countries, noting the […]

ALTHUSSBR’S BPISTBMOLOGY: Ihe limils of Ihe Iheo..y of Iheo..elical p ..aclice PaulPatton concepts and theses which would permit the demarcation of science from other kinds of theoretical discourse. Dialectical materialism, then, was thought to be the philosophical theory Within which the scientific character of historical materialism could be demonstrated. Althusser’s marxist philosophy, however, was no […]

that needs to be put into question. For Althusser only repeats in Spinozist form the operation which is common to all epistemological theories of demarcation of science from other kinds of theoretical discourse. That is, to attempt to provide a philosophical justification for a particular social selection and hierarchical distribution of theoretical discourses, a certain […]

Kall. as a JRoblelD to.. Ma..xislD Martin Barker ,The relation between the thought of Immanuel Kant and the Marxist movement has been a distinctly problematic one. Kant, as the founder of the German idealist school, was recognised by Marx as one important precursor of his own theory in a general sense. But his understanding of […]

POST-MARXIST M I ‘) .. or PRODUCTION According to whoever wrote the editorial ‘notes’ for Radical Philosophy 17, ‘The present upsurge of fundamental Marxist researches may indicate an exit route from the circle of philosophy’s –deaths and re births , via which the problem of the specificity of “the philosophical” might be both subverted and […]

R2~ If I believed in the imminent collapse of capitalism from forces internal to the economy (falling rate of profit etc), then my evaluation of movements would be affected by this. But Hindess and Hirst, while pointing this out, insist that my calculation of consequences; is itself a function of my political position (evafuation). So […]

aCRlTlOUl or AUTlllNTICITY Roger ‘Wa.terhouse Central to the philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre is the call to be authentic. (1). They say ‘Examine your life; jon It you fool people, mislead them, hide yourself, live a lie? Don’t you fool yourself, pretend you are being altruistic, cover up your motives, hide from your own guilt? […]

NOTE ON TBllCllNTlnClTYOr rRlUD’IINTERPRlTATlON OrDREAMI KateSoper In Chapter I of Conjectures and Refutations, K. Popper raises the question of the scientificity of certain theories, which he then proceeds to reject as unscientific on the basis of the now celebrated criterion of falsifiability. Freud’s is one of these theories. (Those of Marx and Ad1er are the […]

Rims DEBIUlY IN ‘PRISON~ ON IllS CLASS a HIS COMMITMENT This article is not about what you will expect. It does not consider the theory of foci, the specificity of the class struggle in South American countries, or the role of the peasantry. All these things pose important theoretical questions. Moreover, it is for his […]

Rip Bwdkeley ‘At this time we arranged for a conference at West Lake, ‘Hangchow. This was early in 1922. The leading partieipants were Chen Tu-hsiu, Li Ta-chao, Chang Kuo-tao, I thi~, Chiu Chiu-pei, and one other, a very capable Hunanese student whose name I do not recall.’ Henk Sneevliet (alias Maring) to Harold Isaacs 1935 […]

Misadvenlures of Ihe Dialeclic Peter Dews I would like to offer some kind of critical response to the ideas on dialectic and social science which have been developed by Roy Edgley in articles published in Radical Philosophy (‘Reason as Dialectic’ RP15) and, more recently. in Critique (‘Dialectic: The Contradiction of Colletti’, Critique 7). As Edgley’s […]

r..e edom as Ihe Bfficacy of knowledge Andrew Collier In this paper, I am primarily concerned with freedom in the metaphysical sense, not with political freedom. Nevertheless, some of my examples will have political import, and I do believe that there is a relation of theoretical support between the conception of freedom which I am […]

Women and philosophy Michele Le Doeuf £ Let us avoid getting caught up in a mere lament about the fact that ‘woman’, in addition to being, from time immemorial, alienated, beaten and deprived of political, sexual and social rights and legal identity, last and least of all saw herself forbidden any access to philosophy: as […]

The political function 01 the intellectual Michel Foucault ~. The text here translated consists of extracts, published in Politigue Hebdo No. 247, 29 November 1976, from a preface to the Italian translation of a collection of articles and interviews by Michel Foucault, entitled ‘Microphysics of Power’, to be published shortly by Einaudi, Turin. The preface […]

Birth of the Subject Colin Gordon Since 1970 Michel Foucault has published three books, L ‘Ordre du Discours (The Order of Discourse), Surveiller et Punir (Surveillance and Punishment) and La volonte de savoir (The Will to Knowledge), none of which has yet appeared in English in this country. 1 This body of untranslated work, which […]