Collapse Of Marxism Research Articles

On the Threshold of Mystery: Tomáš Halík on Cultural Witness in an Age of Uncertainty and Change

Tomáš Halík (born 1 June 1948) has established himself as one of the most thoughtful commentators on public cultural witness in a time of change and uncertainty, especially in central Europe. As an academic at Charles University (founded 1348) and a Catholic priest in the “Academic Parish of Prague”, Halík played an important role during and following the collapse of Marxism in Czechoslovakia in the “Velvet Revolution” of November—December 1989, even being mentioned as a possible successor to Czech President Václav Havel, while at the same time offering reflections on religious engagement with a complex and changing secular culture. This article engages some leading themes of Halík’s approach to cultural witness, focusing especially on cultural quests for false certainties, the need for churches to create liminal spaces enabling seekers to grasp what lies at the heart of the Christian faith, the dangers of romanticizing a lost past of faith which encourages disengagement with the present, and the need to understand faith in terms of a constant movement of thought rather than a fixed system of ideas. The article considers how these ideas can find wider application in engaging the challenges of cultural witness, particularly in a European context, and what can be learned from them.

ГЕГЕЛЬ КРИТИКУЕТ КАНТА (И ПРЕОДОЛЕВАЕТ ЕГО?)

The article considers the alleged – or actual – philosophical victory of Hegel’s absolute idealism over the subjective idealism and agnosticism of Kant. These great philosophers, who were at the same time great scientists, have three essential features in com-mon: they are idealists, rationalists, and dialecticians. However, they have many differences: in particular, Kant’s philosophy is closer to science, Hegel’s system is closer to religion; at the same time, Hegelian dialectics wins in consistency and completeness; Hegel portrayed the picture of the world historical and philosophical process much better, etc. In our time, Kantianism is more popular, which can be explained, first, by the influence of positivism and postmodernism as its cultural background, both based on Kant, and secondly, by the collapse of Marxism which was essentially founded by Hegelianism. Hegel’s philosophy is therefore in need of a new reappraisal and, in a certain sense, rehabilitation. The article touches upon the comparative evaluation of the laws of nature, the two-stage division of thinking and the consideration of the functions of experience by both classics.

РАДИКАЛЬНАЯ ГЕОГРАФИЯ, ИСТОРИЯ И СОВРЕМЕННОСТЬ (I)

The concept of radical geography emerged in the late 1960s and became very popular in America and Europe in the 1970s. Radical geography is a problem-oriented research area in the geographical science united by the ‘concept of social justice’ (D. Harvey). It has distinctive features as follows: a) the uniqueness of the themes, these being concerned with spatial and ecological problems generated by man’s violence against man and against nature; b) signs of ‘scientific underground’ (V.M. Kotlyakov – V.S. Preobrazhensky); c) the ‘leftist’ political orientation of theory and methodology. Radical-geographical intensions have always been present in culture and science. The article traces their evolution from the Greek antiquity to the 1970s. The paper presents and justifies the viewpoint that at the historical stage of ‘modernity’ the transformation of radical geographic ideas is conditioned by a) the historical collapse of Marxism as a project of future society, b) emergence of the newest egalitarian and antiestablishment doctrine of ‘postanarchism’, c) cardinal transformations of historical process connected with the adoption of network principles (in a broad sense) in modern society and eschatological expectations of ecological disaster. Modern geography cannot but be radicalized.

Engenharia epistêmica: Entrevista com Murilo Seabra, parte 2

Para entender a trajetória e as ideias de Murilo Seabra, é preciso retomar o polêmico “Discurso aos Estudantes sobre a Pesquisa em Filosofia”, de Oswaldo Porchat Pereira, professor recentemente falecido da Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil. A tese central de Porchat é que existe uma diferença incontornável entre sentar para escrever um trabalho filosófico e sentar para escrever um trabalho de história da filosofia. Na presente entrevista, realizada por e-mail entre os dias 23 setembro e 22 de dezembro de 2018, Murilo Seabra conta um pouco de suas experiências como estudante, defende a radicalização do discurso de Porchat, fala da importância de se combater o racismo e o sexismo na academia, discute a ascensão do pós-estruturalismo e a derrocada do marxismo durante a Guerra Fria e analisa o papel da filosofia na atual conjuntura política brasileira. Apesar de ter sido realizada antes da posse do novo presidente Jair Bolsonaro, a entrevista mostra uma presciência notável. “Já tínhamos uma filosofia sem o Brasil”, escreveu Murilo Seabra. “Agora corremos o risco de ter um Brasil sem filosofia”. A pedido dos editores, alguns momentos agressivos foram suprimidos e as críticas ao presidente Jair Bolsonaro foram moderadas. Por conta de sua extensão, a entrevista foi dividida em duas partes.

Collective Memory: Between Values and Historical Knowledge

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.

On Relativism

On Relativism Avery Cardinal Dulles S.J. (1918–2008) IN A NEWSPAPER COLUMN after the first year of the Pope’s pontificate, John Allen wrote: “In terms of content, no one has to speculate about Benedict XVI’s most important teaching concern. He told us, the day before his election, in his homily Pro Eligendo Papa on April 18, 2005: the challenge to a ‘dictatorship of relativism’ in the developed West.”1 Allen’s prediction finds support in a long series of documents. As Prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger frequently pointed to the evils of relativism. At Hong Kong in 1993, he called it “the gravest problem of our time,” and at Guadalajara in 1996, he called it “the central problem of faith for our time.”2 Ratzinger returns to the theme of relativism in several books published in English since he became pope, notably Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures and Without Roots: Europe, Relativism.3 From [End Page 729] these and a few other sources, we can piece together a fairly complete description of his critique. Origins of Relativism Relativism holds that mutually opposed points of view can all be valid. According to Ratzinger, relativism is an outgrowth of the metaphysical agnosticism of Immanuel Kant (TT, 126, 135). Rejecting the possibility of metaphysics in the usual sense, Kant held that the human mind can properly know only sensory “phenomena” or what can be logically deduced from them. Knowledge is therefore conditioned by appearances, which are relative to the observer. The absolute, Kant maintained, cannot be found within history or validly deduced from it, though earthly realities may be interpreted as pointing to it. Kant himself, while denying that we can strictly know eternal and necessary principles, avoided relativism by affirming that there were universal and necessary a priori forms of the intellect and postulates of practical reason that enjoyed the same universality. Making use of these postulates, the enlightened person could, in Kant’s opinion, construct a system of morals and a viable religion within the limits of reason alone without appeal to the supernatural. But Kant continued to hold that there can be no knowledge properly so called of transcendent realities.4 Nineteenth-century thinkers in the West, sharing Kant’s agnosticism, likewise stopped short of relativism. The dominant outlook was scientific positivism, a system that attempted to account for all reality on the basis of fixed mechanical laws. This system eliminated morality as a specific category. The favored theory was utilitarianism, which assessed the goodness and badness of human acts not on grounds of transcendental precepts or intrinsic values, but on the basis of their beneficial or harmful consequences.5 Moreover, socialists of various types attempted to construct a fully scientific explanation of society. Marxism was the last great effort to found a universally valid code of behavior and to lay the foundations of a new society. The collapse of Marxism in central and eastern Europe in 1989 brought about a profound disillusionment. Relativism has filled the resulting vacuum (TT, 116–17). [End Page 730] In WR, co-author Marcello Pera discusses two forms of contemporary philosophical relativism: contextualism and deconstructionism (Pera in WR, 11–22). Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers represent the first. They maintain that different cultures have their own rules of thinking and speaking. Different linguistic universes, they say, are incommensurable. What one community holds to be true, beautiful, and good is only so according to the criteria by which that community guides its judgment. There are no meta-criteria by which to judge what is universally true, beautiful, or good. Since all the criteria are contextual, relativism, they argue, must in the end prevail. The second form of relativism derives from Nietzsche and is masterfully represented by Jacques Derrida, who deconstructs supposedly universal concepts and assertions to show that they are self-contradictory. For this school of thinkers, there are no facts, only interpretations. The meaning of a text depends entirely on the subjectivity of the reader. Wittgenstein and Derrida have their disciples and peers in the United States. The names of Willard Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Richard Rorty, and John Caputo come to mind. But I shall not...

Introduction to Max Weber and the Political Sphere

[MWS 9.1/9.2 (2009) 7-15] ISSN 1470-8078 Introduction to Max Weber and the Political Sphere Hirmerk Bruhns and Patrice Duran The scope of Max Weber's work is immense and influences all the social sciences. Regularly crossing the boundaries of history, law, economics and sociology, he himself defines them as Wirklichkeits wissenschaften (sciences of reality) to emphasise their empirical base. He sought to combine the elucidation of social regularities with the explanation of the particularity of historical processes, developing powerful research perspectives which are still right at the heart of the way in which social scientists from various disciplines think, showing how porous disciplinary boundaries are. The place of Max Weber in the social sciences in France is so con siderable that, as the presenters of a special issue of the Revue fran çaise de sociologie (Chazel and Grossein 2005) devoted to his work, state: 'it has now become a matter of good form to claim to be a Weberian', even if, as also noted, it is often difficult to distinguish legitimate academic links from the mere appropriation of prestige. In France and elsewhere, the collapse of Marxism and its multi ple variants and the disaffection with both structuralism and post structuralism has opened wide the path to rediscovering, indeed in many cases discovering the great German thinker. The sociology of action has now become highly dominant, although this common label masks very different research perspectives. It undoubtedly crystallises the new research orientations which exerted such a profound influence on the transformation of the intellectual cli mate in the social sciences in the 1980s. It would appear to be gen erally accepted today that it is difficult to ignore the subjectivity of the actors even if there remain many differences as to how this is applied and the methods for accessing it. The relative fading of national traditions has happily brought an end to misunderstand ings and the sterile opposition between Dürkheim and Weber is© Max Weber Studies 2010, Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University, 31 Jewry Street, London, EC3N 2EV. 8 Max Weber Studies a thing of the past in France. In-depth analyses of the two writers show how simplistic and counter-productive it is to lock oneself into a rigid epistemological distinction between individualism and holism. The same applies to the classic controversy between expla nation and understanding, at least in its French version, which has it that Durkheimian sociology is the exemplary illustration of the former, whereas Weber is the archetypal case of the latter. The sup posed validity of the vulgate was clearly denounced by Catherine Colliot-Thélène (2001). In the last analysis, as we now know, the opposition between the two sociologists is nowhere as great as has been claimed. Although Dürkheim gave a masterly demonstration of 'sympathetic interpretation' of the social in Suicide, Weber per sistently stresses, as Charles-Henry Cuin (2000) underscores, the incomplete adequacy of the explanations which are solely 'mean ingful'. The problem is that in France interpretative sociology is very often confused with the hermeneutic tradition. It is impor tant, however, to recall that understanding in the Weberian sense of the term has virtually nothing to do with hermeneutic proce dures and in no way implies intuitionist epistemology. For Weber, the understanding of the motivations for an action is intrinsically a form of causal explanation and the definition of sociology hinges on the logical and causal link between understanding and expla nation. The indisputable originality and the strength of Dürkheim and Weber's classic work reside in their repeated desire to combine theoretical breadth with empirical studies. The collection of articles that we present in this double issue of Max Weber Studies reproduces in English a good half of the book Max Weber et le politique (Bruhns and Duran 2009). The aim of this work was not to give an overview of the considerable output of the great German thinker but to give specific consideration to his contribu tion to the analysis of the political —its nature, forms and actions. The political has a particular status in Weber's work, since it is both the object of sociological analysis (historical...

The Tapestry of Language and Theory

Since the collapse of Marxism as the dominant tradition of radical critique in the 1980s, varieties of post-structuralism have emerged as the most influential form of critical analysis in Thai studies, both in Thailand and the West. However, like previous generations of Marxist-inspired analysts, contemporary post-structuralists need to address epistemological questions about the validity of using theory derived from the Western cultural and intellectual tradition in studying a South East Asian society. Issues regarding the translation, transculturation and localization of theory are just as important for twenty-first-century post-structuralist Thai studies as they were for twentieth-century Marxist Thai studies. This study is a critical review of Rosalind Morris's post-structuralist analyses of modern Thai culture. Through an assessment of the work of a prominent advocate of post-structuralist approaches to interpreting modern Thai culture, it highlights the interrelationship between the practice of translation between languages/discourses, on the one hand, and the epistemological status of Western theory in Thai studies, on the other.

Interpreting and/or changing the world, and the dream of a lost Eden

Marx's famous thesis on interpreting and changing the world can lead toserious problems when the political desire to change the world determines or judgesthe interpretation of the world. In the hard sciences this is called Lysenkoism, but itis much more common in the fields of history and criticism, as may be seen in therecent projects of "bashing the bourgeois subject' and "rewritingthe Renaissance' to serve present political ends, and also in feminist and racialEdenism, which constructs an idealized life in the past that we lost, due to theactions of a demonized enemy, and which we should strive to regain. This outpouringof politics-driven histories and criticism over the past two decades raises the questionof whether they have actually produced the political effects that are claimed forthem. There is no evidence that they have helped the Marxist movement during thisperiod, which saw the collapse of Marxism as a theory and praxis; but they mayhave helped the liberation movements of women, people of colour and gays, whoduring this same period made significant gains, and also, unlike the Marxists, reallyhave political programmes of action. One reason for this difference is that changingpeople's attitudes has a much more important role in the other three movementsthan in Marxism, which is related to the anomalous status of class in theclass-race-gender-sexuality tetrad, since it claims to be more equal than the otherthree but turns out to be less equal.

Occupational Sociology, Yes: Class Analysis, No: Comment on Grusky and Weeden's Research Agenda

An initial question is that of why G&W should think that class analysis is in need of reconstruction, at all events of the very radical kind that they propose. Their reading of the present situation would appear to go something like this (cf. Grusky & Sorensen 1998). With the failure of the 'Marxist project', politically as well as intellectually, class analysts have 'discarded comprehensive class-based theories of history' (Grusky and Weeden 2001:205) and have indeed so scaled down their ambitions that their work now amounts to 'little more than describing the micro-level association between class membership and life chances of various kinds' (p. 212). In particular, issues of class formation or, as G&W would rather say, of 'structuration', are avoided. Consequently, it becomes difficult to mount any strong resistance to claims of the 'death of class' or to oppose the postmodernist 'retreat from the productive sphere' (p. 214). If class analysis is to be salvaged, G&W then contend, it will have to be 'ratcheted down' to a level where there is a better chance of 'structuration' being observed. And most promising here, in their view, is the occupational level, where it is possible for 'real social groupings' to form 'around functional niches in the division of labour' (p. 203). I have two comments to make on this account. First, there appears to be no place in it for a tradition of class analysis within which many European sociologists would see themselves as working. This tradition developed long before the collapse of Marxism, and in fact has stood as a major alternative to, and basis for criticism of, Marxism including at times when Marxism has been in high academic fashion. Thus, I for one have not 'discarded' Marxist or marxisant theories of class for the simple reason that I never adhered to them, and indeed have consistently opposed them (e.g. Goldthorpe 1972, 1990). This non-Marxist tradition of class analysis with which American sociologists have never easily engaged is, I would maintain, alive and well, not in need of radical reconstruction but developing according to its own dynamic.' This brings me to my second comment. Within the non-Marxist tradition, an interest in class formation, broadly understood, has always been present. However, not only is the historical inevitability of class formation rejected but so too in effect is the idea that class formation in G&W's more limited sense of structuration has to be empirically demonstrated before class analysis can take on any significant intellectual interest or socio-political relevance. In other words, the existence of this tradition serves as a basis for questioning G&W's assumption that structuration i.e. the process through which economic categories become 'real social groupings' (cf. Giddens, 1973:107-112) is the sine .2 qua non of class analysis. It is true that, as G&W remark, for sociologists working in the non-Marxist tradi-

Legacies of the Collapse of Marxism. Ed. John H. Moore. Fairfax: George Mason University Press, 1994. xix, 255 pp. Paper.

Legacies of the Collapse of Marxism. Ed. John H. Moore. Fairfax: George Mason University Press, 1994. xix, 255 pp. Paper.

In search of faith: The metaphysical dialogue between Poland's opposition intellectuals in the 1970s

Since the communist system collapsed in 1989, the parting of ways between former friends and allies in opposition has been a prominent feature throughout Eastern Europe. Under the impact of political and economic change, previous beliefs and values have been questioned, and the assumptions and premises underlying past resistance subjected to sceptical, often cynical, reappraisal. What is certain, however, is that the overthrow of the communist system in the 1980s presupposed a united opposition, and that this owed a great deal in turn to the common ground achieved by diverse opposition figures during the previous decade. In Poland, the Solidarity union could look to the consensus of objectives and principles forged by intellectual discussions since the early 1970s, which had born fruit in the emergence in 1976 of the 'Komitet Obrony Robotnik6w' (KOR) (Committee to Defend the Workers), communist-ruled Eastern Europe's first organised opposition group. Sure enough, this process of encounter and rapprochement affected only a small core of dissidents. But most boasted the potential at the time to exert an influence within their respective milieux, and have since enjoyed an importance far outweighing their actual numbers. Today, for the first time since democracy returned to Poland, questions are being asked about what happened to the shared ethos embodied in Solidarity, to the normative values and common principles which were once so tenaciously defended. In this process, it is worth looking again at what the discussions of the 1970s entailed, and at the role played by the rediscovery of absolute values and religious beliefs in the articulation of political priorities. By mid-decade the search for absolute values had become a dominant theme of opposition discussions as the collapse of Marxism's materialist premises, brought to a head by the traumatic anti-intellectual clampdown of 1968, continued to impel disillusioned enthusiasts to search for spiritual alternatives. This process had coincided with what sociologists identified as a wider 'desecularising current', as the psychological and cultural impact of industrialisation over the previous 20 years gradually slackened, producing signs of a more widespread religious revival. While 90 per cent of all Polish citizens were baptised Catholics, the proportion of students and young intellectuals describing themselves as Christians had fallen to 62 per cent. But three-

The Longest Cultural Journey: Raymond Williams and French Theory

I want here to consider the problematic relationship between the thought of Raymond Williams and the tendencies in French literary theory since the nineteen-fifties.' It was Williams himself who remarked that the crossing of the Channel must be one of the longest cultural journeys in existence by comparison with the physical distance.2 In considering Williams's engagement with French thought of, broadly speaking, the structuralist and poststructuralist variety, we shall find an acute sense of that distance: a certain sympathy that is partly an antipathy to the enemies in Britain of that kind of thought, and partly perhaps a solidarity with some of those in Britain who make use of it, combined with a distrust of its potential to renovate the struggle with those problems of form and history in culture to which his own work is so signal a contribution. Increasingly Williams moved back towards the Marxist tradition he had distanced himself from in his path-breaking early works. In so doing, he was moving against the current. Just as many Marxists were beginning, in Lyotard's phrase, to drift away from the orthodoxy with which they had striven to coincide, Williams began more and more to systematize his relationship to the Marxist tradition. Now, when, all over the world, the collapse of Marxism is being proclaimed, as a result of events that took place less than two years after Williams's death, his loss seems more and more tragic and his never-to-be-formulated analysis of the collapse of actually existing socialism in Eastern Europe more actively perceived as a lack.

EDITORIAL

In this issue we have included the opening address of Taha Jabir Al-‘Alwani which was delivered at the First AMSS History Conference withthe theme of “Strategies for an Islamic Perspective on History and HistoricalWriting,” that was held on Dhu al Qidah 1-2, 1411/May 26-27, 1990.Al- ‘Alwani states that the collapse of Marxism all Over the world is a logicalconclusion of the philosophies which circulated in the West with a stampof undeserved academic authority and universality.Western thought, he says, will explain the fall of Marxism by trying torevive philosophies removed from Marxism and condemning Marxism asbeing opposed to human nature, antithetical to freedom and democracy, andopposed to the natural flow of history. But the alternatives to be projectedwill not be essentially any different. Therefore, Al- ‘Alwani warns, the gleewe witness in the West at the collapse of Marxism will be short-lived becausebefore too long the shortcomings of Westem thought will become more apparent.What is needed for removing the suffering of mankind is a comprehensivealternate philosophy that presents a realistic and satisfactory interpmtionof history, an overall conception of life, mankind, and the universe.Al-‘Alwani argues that the Qur’anic interpretation of time, life, theuniverse, mankind, history, and good and evil provides contemporary humanitywith a philosophical and civilizational alternative that is capable of leadingmankind out of the present crisis.It is in this context that the contributions of MISS become relevant. Ourwriters are engaged in providing a critique of the Wstern disciplines andthen highlighting the features oftheir Islamized versions. Abdul Rashid Motenattempts a contrast between the Western mode of political inquiry and theIslamic alternative. This underscores the fact that the methodology andepistemology of Western political science is built mund the seemingly limitlesspower of natural sciences. Moten exposes the subjective and ideological natureof political science in its own epistemic landscape from real life situations.He concludes that the instrumentalist conception of political community andthe final packaging of knowledge are all colored with the social, cultural,and historical experience of Western Christianity, which is also, paradoxically,materialistic and secular to the core. By identifying reason and revelationas the twin sources of knowledge, Islamic political thought is associated withsuch Qur‘anic concepts as Tawhid, Khilafah, ‘Ibadah, 'Adl, and the like ...