Capitalist Relations Of Production Research Articles

Reconsiderando gramsci: hegemonia no direito global

"Entre direitos iguais, a força decide", proferiu karl marx ao descrever a antinomia do direito em situações antagônicas das relações de produção capitalistas, em que "o direito [oferece resistência] ao direito" nesse ponto, marx aborda uma questão que se situa no centro de todas as teorias jurídicas críticas: que tipo de violência é velada por meio do mecanismo de ocultação denominado "direito"? Para responder a esta questão, tentar-se-á, a seguir, tornar a teoria da hegemonia de antonio gramsci e seu modelo de direito hegemônico produtivos para o campo da teoria do direito. Tal tarefa tem de lidar com a dupla dificuldade de que, por um lado, gramsci não foi um teórico do direito no sentido mais estrito, razão pela qual o potencial de sua teoria para uma análise do direito raramente foi utilizada. Por outro lado, sua abordagem só pode ser empregada por meio de uma crítica às restrições relacionadas a seu tempo. isso se aplica especialmente à sua concepção de economia como a base e a núcleo essencialista oculto (laclau; mouffe, 2001:69), assim como à sua ideia de 'classismo' sob a forma de um enfoque unilateral das classes, em que há preferencialmente mais de um "pluralismo de poder" e inúmeras lutas (litowitz, 2000: 536). Recuperar-se-á, consequentemente, argumentos-chave, ampliando-os pela utilização das recentes descobertas feitas pelas abordagens feminista e neomaterialista da teoria jurídica, bem como as análises de foucault acerca das tecnologias de poder. por fim, uma interpretação da teoria sistêmica das autonomizações comunicativas.

RECONSTRUCTING THE HOUSEHOLD: THE NORTHERN CAPE COLONY BEFORE AND AFTER THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

ABSTRACTA major component of the South African War, the imperialist conflict that gave birth to modern South Africa, was the violence that occurred between white settlers and indigenous black populations. This article seeks to understand the particular nature of this violence in the northern districts of the Cape Colony. The war intruded into a region in which memories of conquest were alive, and where recently established settler authority was extremely fragile. Here, the war has to be seen as the final chapter in the closing of a nineteenth-century colonial frontier. The conflict was one between masters and servants in a region where capitalist relations of production had yet to take hold. Conflict continued in the years immediately after the war, and an essential task of the post-war state was to calm disgruntled black subjects.

Agrarian Relations, Property and Law: An Analysis of the Land Code of 1858 in the Ottoman Empire

Contrary to the prevalent tendencies of ‘state-centrism' and legal formalism in the literature, this article studies the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 not as an initiator of trends but as a product of social change. The Code recognized private property on land, enlarged liberties of landholders, and pushed inheritance rules further towards gender equality. Deeply influenced by the uneven development of the capitalist relations of production, agrarian conflict, and the complex matrix of the interests of ruling groups, Ottoman land law in the nineteenth century unmistakably evolved in the direction of modern law based on the abstract individual and full commodification of land.

Minzhu guanli: the democratization of factory management in the Chinese revolution

From 1948 to 1951, the Chinese Communist Party attempted to implement a policy of ‘democratic management’ in urban industry. Minzhu guanli entailed various, sometimes contradictory elements including worker participation in management organs, the rationalization of factory production, and improvements in worker welfare. It was hoped that such reforms would not only help to build up working-class support for the revolutionary party, but would also improve production by relying on the initiative and creativity of the ‘worker masses’. Although short-lived and largely unsuccessful, experiments with democratic management in state-run factories in the early years of the People's Republic represent one of the most ambitious efforts to overcome capitalist relations of production. Although the CCP never went so far as to advocate worker control along syndicalist lines, minzhu guanli was aimed, in part, at overcoming alienation and the separation of decision making and implementation at the factory level. This paper draws upon diverse sources reporting on experiments with ‘democratic management’ throughout China. It assesses the conditions surrounding the implementation of participatory forms of factory management in order to determine which factors facilitated or hindered such reforms. The discussion includes a wide range of industrial enterprises and groups of workers in order to illuminate the underlying structures that conditioned the success or failure of democratic management. The concluding section traces the fate of minzhu guanli to the present day and assesses the implications of these experiences for China's experiment in socialism.

What is Economic Democracy? An Inquiry Into French Cooperatives

Democratic norms and principles, as they are manifest in the context of specific institutional practices, are often a site of contention, contestation, and contradiction. Damien Rousseliere's article What is Economic Democracy? An Inquiry into French Cooperatives explores the historical development of notions of economic democracy within French cooperatives, mutual societies, and voluntary organizations. His article enriches our theoretical understanding of debates that have informed the concept of economic democracy. In his comprehensive analysis of the French social economy, Rousseliere critically interrogates the extent to which contemporary organizations adhere to the principles and practices of economic democracy in the light of monumental shifts in capitalist relations of production.

Paradoxes in the Communist Theory of Marxism

AbstractIn their work The German Ideology, the founders of Marxism assert that the prerequisite of post-capitalist (defined by them as communist) society is the universal development of human abilities and all social relations. But then on the same page, contrary to this statement, it is alleged that the abolition of private property is not only highly topical but it is also an imperative history-making task. In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels explain that economic crises recurrently shaking capitalist society expose an apparent contradiction between the productive forces and the capitalist relations of production – therefore, these relations must be eliminated for the preservation of society. Nonetheless, the same treatise affirms that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without revolutionizing not only the productive forces but also the relations of production. But in this case it stands to reason to recognize that there is no conflict between productive forces and production relations, and, therefore, there is no crisis of the capitalist system, either. Paradoxes in the communist theory of Marxism stem not merely from erroneous conceptions but reveal the fact that Marxism as an ideology comes into conflict with its scientific social theory. Hence, these paradoxes disclose the relative independence of the social theory of Marxism from its ideological postulates.

A dessubjetivação do trabalho: o homem como objeto da tecnologia

Este trabalho visa a apresentar uma reflexão crítica sobre a tecnologia a partir da obra de Marx. A tecnologia é compreendida como forma de organização do processo de trabalho sob as relações de produção capitalista. O processo de trabalho capitalista é apreendido como um duplo processo de objetivação e dessubjetivação do trabalho, sendo este último resultado da aplicação ao processo de produção das ciências que tem o homem como objeto.

Les paradoxes de la théorie marxiste du communisme

In their work The German Ideology the founders of Marxism assert that the prerequisite of post-capitalist (defined by them as communist) society is the universal development of human abilities and all social relations. But then on the same page, contrary to this statement, it is alleged that the abolition of private property is not only highly topical but it is also an imperative history-making task. In Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels explain that economic crises recurrently shaking the capitalist society expose an apparent contradiction between the productive forces and the capitalist relations of production - therefore, these relations must be eliminated for the preservation of society. Nonetheless, the same treatise affirms that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without revolutionizing not only the productive forces but also the relations of production. But in this case it stands to reason to recognize that there is no conflict between the productive forces and the production relations, and, therefore, there is no crisis of the capitalist system, either. Paradoxes in the communist theory of Marxism stem not merely from erroneous conceptions but reveal the fact that Marxism as an ideology comes into conflict with its scientific social theory. Hence, these paradoxes disclose relative independence of the social theory of Marxism from its ideological postulates.

TÉCNICA, MODERNIDADE E EDUCAÇÃO FORMAL PÚBLICA

A educacao formal oferecida pelas escolas publicas estaduais paulistas, em seus niveis fundamental II e medio, sofre com inumeros problemas para se realizar plenamente. Acreditamos que o principal deles seja a incidencia da perversa logica industrial e de mercado sobre o comportamento dos alunos quando estao fora daquela instituicao publica. Tendo seu inicio no periodo a que se convencionou denominar ? ?modernidade ? ?, a logica da maxima eficiencia em conseguir o maior ganho no menor espaco de tempo possivel atingiu a totalidade das relacoes sociais no mundo contemporâneo e se utilizou da tecnica e da ciencia para lograr esse objetivo. A configuracao economica erigida pelas relacoes de producao capitalistas produziu um ambiente onde a tecnica, transformada em instrumento, objetos e padrao na forma de agir, molda o comportamento dos seres humanos viventes de modo a facilitar atividades cotidianas: reduzindo etapas, diminuindo a necessidade de um pensamento complexo e elaborado para realiza-las e instaurando um automatismo. Alem disso, a aceleracao do ritmo de producao das fabricas ultrapassou seus muros e atingiu a vida dos seres humanos fora dela criando um clima social e cultural de alta velocidade. Nosso objetivo e demonstrar que este e um cenario propicio para tornar a educacao formal desinteressante, pois desnecessaria, ja que o comportamento irrefletido e, portanto, apenas de submissao e adaptacao, e o exigido socialmente da maioria dos seres humanos – em especial, os jovens. A conclusao a que chegamos e a de que o clima cultural produzido pela formacao social e totalmente avesso ao necessario para a educacao formal. Palavras-chave : educacao formal, razao instrumental, tecnica, sistema produtor de mercadorias Abstract Technique, modernity and public formal education The formal education provided by the Sao Paulo state public schools in their levels II and basic medium, suffers from many problems to complete. We believe that the main of them are coming from industrial and perverse logic of the market that dominates the contemporary world. Since its beginning in the period to which may be called modernity, this logic, the maximum efficiency in achieving the greatest gains in the shortest time possible, reached all the social relations in the contemporary world and is used in technology and science to achieve this goal. The configuration erected by the economic relations of capitalist production, in order to achieve its movement of reproduction, built an environment where the technique, transformed into a tool, object technology and form of action, shapes the behavior of human beings living in order to facilitate daily activities: reducing steps, creating patterns to perform them and reducing the need for complex thinking and prepared. Moreover, the acceleration of the pace of production from factories exceeded its walls and reached the lives of humans outside creating a climate of social and cultural high speed. Our goal is to demonstrate that this is a scenario which to make formal education uninteresting, as unnecessary, since the behavior is reckless required that the majority of human beings - especially the young. The conclusion we reached is that, for formal education, thought, reflection - and the slow pace to chisel both - is fundamental, but the actual human being has great potential to become totally averse to them. Key words : formal education, instrumental reason, technology, goods-producing system

Estrategias campesinas de reproducción social. El caso de las Tierras Altas Jujeñas, Argentina

This article analyzes peasantry persistence in a context of deepening of the capitalist relations of production, as given by the diffusion of neoliberal policies in periphery countries. The case study focuses on crisis and recreation of peasant’s social reproduction strategies in the Puna and Quebrada de Humahuaca, Argentina. The article analyzes the new economic strategies of peasantry, focusing on its logics of accumulation and conversion of capitals. Results suggests that the productive conversion was oriented towards strengthening typical peasant activities such as farming and handicraft production —whereas the main followed mechanism against decapitalisation was the accumulation of social capital for its further conversion in other types of capitals. Nevertheless, the implementation of these strategies has been conditioned by structural and social factors that make difficult the consolidation of a commercial agriculture in peasant systems in these regions.

A Class Approach to Municipal Privatization: The Privatization of New York City's Central Park

AbstractThe privatization of New York City's Central Park in 1998 was among the most high-profile municipal privatizations in the US during the 1990s. Since then, the park's privatization has been cited as an exemplary model of privatization. This essay develops a unique class approach to municipal privatization and uses it to reconceptualize Central Park's privatization. In doing so, it argues that the park's privatization involves an important contradiction—one that regards its ostensible status as one of the nation's most famous and treasuredpublicgoods against its production as acapitalist commodity. This class approach to the park's privatization yields four insights. First, it underscores the limitations of the hegemonic cost-efficiency calculus that has long informed the municipal privatization discourse. Second, it raises important questions regarding the troublesome relationship between democratic principles and capitalist production relations. Third, it offers an alternative to a wage-led approach to privatization. Finally, and paradoxically, it provides a framework for theorizing “progressive” privatizations.

Global Governance, State Agency and Competitiveness: The Political Economy of the Commission for Africa

The Commission for Africa has been presented as a moral crusade, and linked by its proponents to the ‘anti-globalisation’ activism of such campaigns as ‘Make Poverty History’. But detailed analysis of the genesis and content of its report reveals direct continuity with EBRD and World Bank programmes from the 1990s onwards. It continues and extends a series of supranational initiatives aimed at endowing transitional and developing states with the capacity to pursue and legitimise capitalist development. Its principal focus is shown to be on the need to enhance the capacity of the state to impose and maintain the social relations of capitalist production. The emphasis on restoring rather than replacing state agency is identified as a constant feature of such projects, related to the promotion of competitiveness in the global capitalist economy. Finally, this is shown to be a feature shared with New Labour's programme for the ‘modernisation’ of Britain, and the broader theoretical implications are briefly explored.

G. A. Cohen and the Critique of Political Economy

Abstract G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History (KMTH) bears examination from the standpoint of the renewed critique of capitalism promoted by the anti-globalization movement. Cohen's own current view of his book places it firmly within the framework of rational-choice Marxism, which is characterized by a nihilist attitude towards the entire tradition of Marxist political economy. KMTH itself displays an ambivalent attitude towards Capital, simultaneously basing itself on a close reading of Marx's economic writings and seeking to make ever more explicit Cohen's rejection of the labor theory of value. This results in significant conceptual tensions, notably in Cohen's effort sharply to distinguish between the material and the social, but also weakens KMTH's account of the fettering of the productive forces by capitalist relations of production. The effect — particularly when combined with Cohen's espousal of rational-choice Marxism — is, regrettably, to shut him off from the current renaissance of Mar...

The masochistic fantasy made flesh: Michael Haneke's La Pianiste as melodrama

Since its release in 2001, Michael Haneke's La Pianiste has been the subject of conflicting responses and readings from various critical camps. Taking Robin Wood's 2002 critical analysis of the film as its starting point, this article explores how the film might be read as a contemporary take on the melodrama, or ‘women's film’. The two focal points of Wood's analysis—the film's reliance on a musical motif and its foregrounding of bourgeois society—can be used to situate the film within a generic context. While Haneke's film aligns itself in many ways with the melodramatic tradition, the ultimate unspoken question of the film is not, however, the taboo subject of women's sexuality (Creed), nor the capitalist relations of production and class (Kleinhans) but the spectator's relationship to modern society and to the cinematic apparatus.

‘Class’ and Political Theatre: the Case of Melbourne Workers Theatre

Traditionally, class has been an important category of identity in discussions of political theatre. However, in recent years the concept has fallen out of favour, partly because of changes in the forces and relations of capitalist production. The conventional Marxist use of the term, which defined an individual's class position in relation to the position they occupied in the capitalist production process, seemed anachronistic in an era of globalization. Moreover, the rise of identity politics, queer theory, feminism, and post-colonialism have proffered alternative categories of identity that have displaced class as the primary marker of self. Glenn D'Cruz reconsiders the role of class in the cultural life of Australia by examining the recent work of Melbourne Workers Theatre, a theatre company devoted to promoting class-consciousness, in relation to John Frow's more recent re-conceptualization of class. He looks specifically at two of the company's plays, the award-winning Who's Afraid of the Working Class? and The Waiting Room, with reference to Frow's work on class, arguing that these productions articulate a more complex and sophisticated understanding of class and its relation to politics of race and gender today. Glenn D'Cruz teaches drama and cultural studies at Deakin University, Australia.

Producing the Governable Employee

Workplace empowerment and the issues surrounding it have been well documented in the organizational literature on the topic, with critiques centered on the question of whether it is possible to craft an 'empowered' workplace where employees who are embedded within capitalist relations of production are actually able to exercise meaningful control over the environment in which they labor. Our contention in this paper is that workplace empowerment cannot be analyzed in isolation, but must be seen as a part of a broader managerial discourse that attempts to serve the organizational project. Following on from Foucault's delineation of the concept of governmentality and Gramsci's notes on hegemony, we read empowerment as a part of the modern operation of power, and as an integral component of a system of signification that is employed in order to produce a governable, organizational subject.

Seasonal migration, employer-worker interactions, and shifting ethnic identities in contemporary West Bengal

This article tells of changing social and spatial identities in the countryside of con temporary West Bengal. It draws on a study of interactions between those seeking wage work in agriculture and the people trying to recruit them. We find a continuing and nested process of both self-identification and categorisation. Unconscious as well as conscious ethnic affinities are consolidated and changed. At the same time, identities are used instrumentally by workers to make the outcome of negotiations less demeaning, and by employers to bargain more effectivelyfor the workforce they need. The context is one of the emergence of capitalist production relations in agriculture, presided over by a coalition government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The newly pros perous agriculture has been a source of wealth for capitalist employers, reinforcing constructions of difference in relation to the migrant workers they employ. At the same time, many employers are attracted by the prospects of urban,jobs and life-styles and invest in their children's education. Migrant workers show a similar ambivalence, being attracted by the potential earnings and consumption possibilities arising out of being employed in the West Bengal 'rice bowl', and simultaneously repelled by the dangers they associate with the place.

Asturias 1898-1914. El final de un campesinado amable

In contrast with the combative and insurrectionary model of the landless peasant in the south of Spain, a counter-model was developed in the Atlantic coast, an image of the peaceful, conservative and conformist small landholder. A variety of legal, historical and folkloric elements contributed to the forging of this image, in addition to literary sources in which the work of Palacio Valdes stands out for a variety of reasons. The image of Asturias depicted by this author —coinciding with similar portrayal of the Basque Country, Santander and Galicia—, in part reflected the social reality of small property-holding and «patriarchal» traditions. The commercialisation of this economy had made agrarian holdings more viable and profitable. However, the patriarchal image of the countryside was entirely false. The peasant, despite resorting occasionally to very traditional forms of community and collective action, sought to defend and relocate himself in a world increasingly penetrated by capitalist relations of production that generated new conflict over land.

American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934

The plantation as a socioeconomic model relies on an extensive historiography, yet it constitutes one of those inexhaustible and passionate themes that has stimulated scientific debate and surely will continue to do so in the future. César J. Ayala's book explores the nature, structure, and dynamic of the development of the sugar plantation in the twentieth century in the three Greater Antilles islands of the former colonial Spanish orbit. His analysis begins with a provocative assertion: in his opinion, North American investment in the creation of the system, far from consolidating and strengthening the old precapitalist relations, induced a radical transformation that launched an entirely different social and economic model. According to the author, an entire current of thought tends to undervalue the peculiarities of the Caribbean plantations in the twentieth century and, consequently, erroneously defines the essence of underdevelopment prevalent in the islands. He argues that a new type of underdevelop ment, founded on capitalist relations of production, emerged from the interaction between imperialist capital and the Antilles societies; it is not a result of the persistence of the old relations inherited from slave society. The under development is a new form whose source is the spread of salaried labor and modern mechanisms of economic organization, both integrated into the economic system of the United States. The result is that the author gets buried in his investigation of all the new elements that molded the plantation in the twentieth century: organizational models of capitalist enterprise, the interaction between the new owners of the economy and the social structure of the islands, and the subsequent transformation of the local class structure as a result of the movement of U.S. capital.

The Coal Heavers of Port Sa'id: State-Making and Worker Protest, 1869–1914

The coal heavers of Port Sa'id hold a distinctive place in Middle Eastern labor historiography as the first indigenous group of Egyptian workers to go on strike for higher wages (in 1882 and later). Existing accounts understand these protests in a somewhat objectivist and materialist way as the more or less inevitable outcome of the penetration of an otherwise rather passive Middle East by capitalist relations of production. This article revisits the protests of the coal heavers of Port Sa'id in the light of a rare glimpse of two documents authored by the coal heavers themselves. These documents show that coal heavers' protests were arguably linked to state-making, and were not simply the automatic product of capitalist development. The arrival of “guild” elections, intervention on taxation, regulative change, and reforming discourse operated in part to constitute worker grievance in Port Sa'id by providing a language in which to appeal, a “progressive” code against which to measure unjust contractors and employers, and a newly interventionist referee before which to make claims. Grievance formation was defined and constituted not just within economically defined “relations of production,” but also within a broader context of state-making and reform in late nineteenth-century Egypt.