Dramatic differences

Exchange: Marx’s theatre of economic categories It is a privilege to read Asad Haider’s critical response to my article, ‘The Theatre of Economic Categories: Rediscovering Capital in the late 1960s’ in Radical Philosophy 2.08). 1 His enthusiastic defence of Althusser’s theoretical innovation allows one to witness the impact of Reading Capital on a disciple who […]

The human mask

Exchange: Marx’s theatre of economic categories All the characters in this misunderstanding are on stage here, each playing the part ascribed to it by the effect expected of this theatre. Louis Althusser, Reading Capital You too, my friend, should have come here in disguise – as a respectable doctor of scholastic philosophy. It’s my mask […]
The eyes of Karl Marx

Starting again from Marx

Let us start again from Marx. 1 Why? Is it because we are communists? No, this answer is not convincing. We could start again from somewhere else, from Lenin, or Mao; or, we could believe that current feminist or anti-racist struggles have no need for Marx; we could even think that Marx’s Eurocentrism makes him […]

Flickers

Bruno Bosteels, Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis and Religion in Times of Terror, Verso, London and New York, 2012. 326 pp., £19.99 pb., 978 1 84467 755 9. Bruno Bosteels is probably best known to readers of Radical Philosophy as translator of and commentator on the work of Alain Badiou – most […]

Inside the factory, and out

Fredric Jameson, Representing ‘Capital’: A Reading of Volume One, Verso, London and New York, 2011. 158pp., £14.99 hb., 978 1 84467 454 1. John Kraniauskas Fredric Jameson’s latest book, published hot on the heels of a monograph on Hegel’s Phenomenology (The Hegel Variations, 2010) and a large collection of essays on the dialectic (Valences of […]

Red years: Althusser’s lesson, Rancière’s error and the real movement of history: Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Red years Althusser’s lesson, Rancière’s error and the real movement of history Nathan brown The dissolution of the organizational forms which are created by the movement, and which disappear when the movement ends, does not reflect the weak‑ness of the movement, but rather its strength. The time of false battles is over. The only conflict […]

Reviewing Rancière. Or, the persistence of discrepancies: Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Dossier: The Althusser–Rancière Controversy

Reviewing Rancière Or, the persistence of discrepancies Bruno bosteels In the nearly four decades since its original publication, Althusser’s Lesson has acquired a certain mythical aura as the dark precursor of things to come. Even with the wealth of translations of Jacques Rancière’s work that have been published at an increasingly feverish pace over the […]

Value, Rationality and the Environment

Val ue, Rationality and the Environment Andrew Collier Today most people on the Left are aware that ecological damage, and the threat of ecological disaster, are among the foremost contradictions of capitalism, second only to the impoverishment of the Third World. In addition to ecology in the strict sense, the damage done to the material […]

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 […]

Labour and Labour-Power

Labour and Labour-Power fan Hunt Marx claimed that his principal theoretical achievements were the distinctions he drew between ‘concrete labour’ and ‘abstract labour’, and between ‘labour’ and ‘labour-power’. These distinctions have been the focus of subsequent interpretation and criticism of Marx’ s theory of the capitalist mode of production. In this paper I shall argue […]

Cutler on Laws of Tendency

Cutler on Laws of Tendency Ted Bentan Some Notes on Cutler et.al. on Laws of Tendency (Cutler et.al., Marx’s Capital and Capitalism Today, Vol.I, chapters 4, 5 and 6.) Cutler et.al. declare themselves opposed to the epistemological privileging of any level of discourse, but prefer, instead, to engage in discursive analyses of specific problems. Nevertheless, […]

Who Makes History?: Althusser's Anti-Humanism

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 […]

Intellectual and Manual Labour: An attempt at a materialistic theory

(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 […]