Commentary archive

COMMENT A New Marxist Paradigm? Joseph McCarney I agree with a great deal in Gregor McLennan’s review of Jon Elster’s Making Sense of Marx (RP42), and most of all with his idea of the book’s importance. He may well be right in thinking it ‘likely to dominate discussions of Marx and Marxism for the next […]

Comment Soris Frankel More on Market Socia.lism I In Radical Philosophy 39 Alec Nove rejected my argument concerning the historical obsolescence of market soclallsm. Nove particularly emphasised that my lack of an alternative model was no substitute for his own ‘feasible soclallsm’ model. While I plead guilty to lacking an elaborate blueprint of the future […]

Feminism: History and Morality Jean Grimshaw Janet Radcliffe Richards’ book The Sceptical Feminist (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, £12 hb) is an attempt to extricate feminism from what she sees as ideological commitments that are not essential to it, and serve merely to confuse feminists themselves, and alienate potential supporters. The image of the feminist […]

Powell’s 1968 speeches, this has been the approach that has organised Tory responses. The fact that it is not shouted out loud at the moment should not fool us. For it js there within common-sense thinking all the time, and it is to be found at work in the critical places. Also in June of […]

The Real Meaning of Conservatism Andrew 8e/sey After the Affluent Fifties, the Swinging Sixties and the Doubting Seventies, what – the Authoritarian Eighties? Events around the world – in the Soviet Union, in the United States, in Thatcherite Britain, in South America, in Iran, Korea, Turkey and plenty of other places – suggest that aggressive, […]

COMMENT Nuclear Disarmament Kate Soper The Editorial Collective regards nuclear disarmament as an extremely important issue at the present time. It therefore decided that the following piece by Kate Soper should be given prominence in Radical Philosophy 27. The views expressed are Kate’s: they do not represent the unanimous opinion of the Collective. While millions […]

The third point is that the ideology of the Right now appears strong not only because the media are adept at disguising the crudity of right-wing ideas. The Right plays also on those issues where the Left has hitherto been weak; and these are issues which we cannot simply ignore. Foremost among them is the […]

THE TROUBLE WITH CONTRADICTIONS Joe In a critical comment in Radical Philosophy 16 Russell Keat has raised some interesting objections to Ray Edgley’s account of the significance of the dialectic for social science (1). Pro.minent among them is the charge that while this account ‘succeeds in showing the critical practical function of scientific knowledge’ the […]

THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE CLASSROOM: A ..epo… f .. om r .. aDce Colin Gordon & Jonathan Ree Aboul GREPB The supplement ‘Philosophy from Below’ in RP15 raised once again the question of whether Radical Philosophy can be content with trying to change the content of philosophy in this country or whether it must also […]

• The ImporlaDce of . SlockhauseD’s IINORl’ Gabriel losi2Qvici On Wednesday 23 Octob-e-r-I-=9=’=7=-4=–a-n-e-v-e-n-t-o-t-o-u-t-s-t-a-n-d—–t-~-:-‘o-n-s-t-o~b-e-u-n-de-r-t-a-k=–e-n-,-g-e-s-t-ur-e-s-t-o–b-e-ma-d-e-,-w-o-rds ing artistic importance took place at the London Coliseum: th~ first English performance of Stockhausen’s latest work, Inori, subtitled ‘Adorations for Soloist and Orchestra’. The soloist on this occasion was a mime, the extraordinary Elisabeth Clarke, and I am not sure whether […]

27 28 29 individual as a matter of course, or else it offers only inapplicable good advice and is therefore not worth a brass farthing to people who are without these means. To avoid misunderstanding, let me say that (i) I don’t see much danger of revolutionary organisations propagating the ideas of the official bourgeois […]

The examined life is nol worlhliving George Molnar The sort of tests which involve graded assessment of students for purposes of certification, I’ll call examinations. Examinations characteristically, though not invariably, issue in little or no feedback on the details of the performance to the student. For purposes of present discussion I shall not in general […]

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 […]

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 […]

TIB QUBSTIOI or BB8BI1011 G. lowell Smith The question of hegemony can be posed as a political problem. How does it come about that a class or group struggling to free itself from oppression or exploitation remains subordinated politically to the group which oppresses or exploits it? And how does it break free from this […]

Against this apparatus, which does not merely reproduce bourgeois relations in the form of ideological representations but controls access to knowledge and the instruments of power, the subordinate social groups have, traditionally, little to offer. However, two things can happen or be made to happen. One is that the hegemonic apparatus, so massively and yet […]

our kind of society people are taught to completely obey their parents simply in virtue of biological status, which by itself is no guarantee of wisdom. Injunctions from whatever source should only be considered reasonable if they are means to some rational end and this is something not at all determined by mere authority. The […]

nOTES state, and therefore teach people not to depend on and fetishize the State as an omnipotent and eternal form on which they depend? In the absence of a coherent theory, situated in the debates that have occupied Marxists (or maybe even Anarchists) for a hundred and some years, I really don’t see that Radical […]