Endgame

COMMENTARY Endgame Joseph McCarney Every now and then an event occurs which brings a shift of perspective on the intellectual scene, relating familiar components in new ways and by its oblique light revealing the contents of dark corners and alleys. Such an event is the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s The End ofHistory and the Last […]

Philosophy and Social Work

15 with considerably more historical precision than Heidegger, who is more concerned with proving that reification is the permanent structure of the human mind. That not only this question but the whole book was largely conceived as a response to Luk§cs has been convincingly demonstrated by Goldmann, in Lukacs and Heidegger. But, as Lukacs has […]

Liberal democractic ideology under strain: Allende's Chile and 'The Economist'

Libe..al democ..alic ideology. unde.. sl..aln Allende’s Chile and IThe Economlsl’ John Krige In political, philosophical and ideological struggle, the words are also weapons and explosives or tranquillizers and poisons. Louis Althusserl This paper 2 explores some of the ways in which the ideological discourse associated with liberal democratic theory masks our cognitive access to social […]

The affinities of Richard Rorty and Edward Bellamy: A response to Jonathan Rée

In his defence of Richard Rorty against various ʻsalt-of-the-earth socialist internationalistsʼ such as Norman Geras, Roy Bhaskar and Terry Eagleton (ʻRortyʼs Nationʼ, Radical Philosophy 87) Jonathan Rée confesses himself puzzled by Rorty on one point. He ʻcannot quite understandʼ Rortyʼs ʻaffectionʼ for the bureaucratic collectivist utopia of the nineteenthcentury American socialist and novelist Edward Bellamy. […]

Sovereign democracy: Dictatorship over capitalism in contemporary Russia

Dossier: The Postcommunist Condition

Economists tell us that Russia is on its way to completing the transition to capitalism. The only problem remaining now is a political one – the paradise of a fully fledged ‘free-market’ economy is suspended by the lack of liberal democracy, while, conversely, the lack of a free market stops the development of liberal democracy. […]