'Marxism' tag archive

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 […]

Bernard Harrison, Inconvenient Fictions: Literature and the Limits of Theory Genevieve Lloyd Len Doyal and lan Gough, A Theory of Human Need Roger Harris Gregor McLennan, Marxism, Pluralism and Beyond Kevin Magill Krishnan Kumar, Utopianism Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia Ernst Bloch, Heritage of Our Times Vincent Geoghegan Ellie Ragland Sullivan and Mark Bracher, […]

Marxism, Moral Theory and Moral Truisms: A Response to Nielsen Rodney Peffer The first thing that should be noted about Kai Nielsen’s ‘Does a Marxian Critical Theory of Society Need a Moral Theory?’ (RP 59) is that he is not proposing that we should jettison morality altogether when it comes to making judgements about social […]

Does a Marxian Critical Theory of Society Need a Moral Theory? Kai Nielsen To show Marx is not a moral philosopher is not to show that he is not a moralist, i.e., one having or propounding moral judgements and views . R. G. Peffer As the image of actually existing socialism becomes more and more […]

Lacan in Slovenia An Interview with Slavoj Zizek and Renata Salecl One notable result of the recent politicalferment in Central and Eastern Europe has been the emergence of new theoretical currents, often combining strands of thought which – to West European eyes – appear as starkly incompatible . Nowadays, one can meet young Soviet philosophers […]

The Lonely Hour of the Last Instance LOUIS PIERRE ALTHUSSER, 1918-1990 Against what common sense, the common sense of financiers and lawyers, tell us, there are many writings that blow away, but a few words that remain. No doubt because they have been inscribed in life and history. Louis Althusser on Jean Hyppolite, 1968 The […]

Cornelius Castoriadis An Interview The following interview with Cornelius Castoriadis took place at the University of Essex, in late Feburary 1990. Castoriadis is a leading figure in the thought and politics of the postwar period in France. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s he was a member of the now almost legendary political organization, Socialisme […]

The Situationist International: A Case of Spectacular Neglect Sadie Plant The recent exhibitions of Situationist art and paraphernalia in London, Paris, and Boston, have given the Situationist International (SI) an unprecedented academic and cultural profile. Even during the movement’s most active period, when many of its ideas and practices were realised in the events in […]

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 […]

Marxism and Psychoanalysis An Exchange Joe/ Kovef and fan Craib foel Kovel has become increasingly well known to a British public over recent years, firstly with the publication in 1977 of A Complete Guide to Therapy (Harvester) and then with the publication by Free Association Books in 1988 of four titles: The Radical Spirit; White […]

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak An Interview Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born in Calcutta. She now teaches English and Culture Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her translation of Derrida’ s Of Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), with a long and authoritative introduction, remains a controversial event in the recent history of philosophy and cultural theory, […]

Marxism, Romanticism and Utopia: Ernst Bloch and William Morris Ruth Levitas t Marxists have generally been antagonistic to anything that could be described as utopian, justifying this on the basis of Marx ‘s and Engels’ strictures on the ‘utopian socialists’. In recent years, several writers have pointed out that neither Marx nor Engels was totally […]

Humanism = Speciesism Marx on Humans and Animals Ted Benton INTRODUCTION This paperl is intended to fonn part of a more extended exploration of some key texts ofMarx from the standpoint of the so-called ‘new’ social movements (though some of these pre-date the Marxist tradition itself!). Here, I shall be focussing on the early work […]

The Eupsychian Impulse Psychoanalysis and Left politics since ’68 Barry Richards My purpose here is to offer some reflections on the part flayed by psychoanalysis in Left politics in Britain since 1968. I will attempt a broad and critical characterisation of the major uses to which psychoanalytic theory has been put in political discourse during […]

Interest in the role of Hegelian philosophy in Marxism seems to have waned considerably since the ’70s. Fashions come and go in philosophy as elsewhere, of course, but the stark force of Lenin’s dictum remains: ‘It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital… without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic.1 In […]

Beyond Objectivism and Relativism Ingvar Johansson One very important line of division in todayt s philosophy is between those who want to go beyond the dualism between objectivism and relativism and those who still think this dualism is a live option. On this issue t I side with Richard Rortyts view in Philosophy and the […]

Place and Time in Socialist Theory Michael Rustin Sources of Contemporary Pluralism Pluralism has become fashionable on the left. This new-found enthusiasm for diversity and choice is in part a defensive response by socialists to the decline of the mass support hitherto provided by the working class, to the ‘Forward March of Labour Halted’ 1, […]

Ethics and Group Conflict: Between Marxism and Liberalism Carl Hedman Consider the following case: As Jones is driving home from a union meeting, he sees an injured motorist lyirYg in the ditch. He stops to help, but as he steps into the ditch he realizes that the person he is about the help is Smith, […]

Marx’s “Social Revolution” and the Division of Labour Istvan Meszaros Marx was well aware of the burden of class de terminations which tend to subsume the individuals under their own logic; from his early writings to the Grundrisse and Capital he never stopped defining the task of emancipation as belonging to the social individual. Equally, […]

The Narration of an Unhappy Consciousness: Lukacs, Marxism, the Novel, and Beyond Keith Ansell-Pearson Parmenides said, ‘one cannot think of what is not’; – we are at the other extreme, and say, ‘what can be thought of must certainly be a fiction.’ – Nietzsche (1) Introduction J. M. Bernstein has written a book that merits […]

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 […]