Historical Materialist Approach Research Articles

Time Background and Theoretical Pursuit: Comparison of Arendt's and Marx's views of labor

Marx's and Arendt's views of labor are rooted in different contexts. Marx's theory originated in the 19th century during the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism in Europe, and by inheriting Hegel's dialectic, he developed a historical materialist approach, focusing on the elimination of exploitation under capitalism and the struggle for the emancipation of the working class. Arendt's view of labor was formed in the twentieth century during the crisis of modernity in the West, and, drawing from the European tradition of political philosophy, attempted to rebuild the community and reestablish the freedom of the individual through a call to political action. Although the two thinkers had different theoretical aims, together they demonstrated a deep reflection on human labor and social institutions.

A Historical Materialist Reading of the Contested Relations between Greece and Turkey

ABSTRACT This article examines the contested relationship between Greece and Turkey from a historical materialist approach. It seeks to explain the very essence of this contestation rather than merely focusing on its surface forms. While doing this, we eschew intra-Marxist theoretical debates not to exceed the research scope. The article argues that the foreign policies of Greece and Turkey have indeed been subject to considerations of the dominant bourgeois classes in both countries that have been stimulated as well as bound by Euro-Atlantic imperialism. It considers the relative comparative advantages of Greece and Turkey’s relational and possessional capabilities. It puts forward that the historical materialist approach has better explanatory power and offers an alternative reading. It elaborates upon the tense relations between the two countries, showing the interwoven connections with imperialism at national and international levels. It underlines how the contestation between Greece and Turkey has been encouraged and delimited by Euro-Atlantic imperialism.

A. L. Morton’s English Utopia and the Critical Study of Apocalypticism and Millenarianism

A. L. Morton (1903–1987) was a popular, pioneering historian and literary critic in the British Marxist tradition. Morton was an influential figure in the historical study of religious radicalism, millenarianism, apocalypticism, and utopianism, yet his contribution is typically overlooked today in favour of his more illustrious counterparts who emerged from the Communist Party Historians’ Group from 1946–1956. This article seeks to re-establish Morton’s place in this scholarly tradition, using his work The English Utopia as a starting point for understanding the important critical developments taking place in the 1950s. Focusing especially on his analysis of seventeenth-century movements, we will then see how Morton shifted from an unsentimental historical materialist approach to religious radicalism to a rethinking of heroic failures and thinkers ahead of their time. As Norman Cohn famously brought liberal criticisms of millenarianism to the fore in the 1950s onward, Morton should likewise take his place as an influential thinker in Marxist understandings of such phenomena.

Agrarian change through speculation: Rural elites as land brokers for mining in Colombia

AbstractThis paper studies the connections between the expansion of mining capital, speculative forms of land grabbing and agrarian transformation. It is argued that in periods of commodity boom, the landowning rural elite benefits from mining through speculative land deals with mining companies. They act as ‘land brokers’ for the mining firms, helping them to overcome a significant barrier to land accumulation through the de facto abolition of landed property. The analysis is based on a qualitative case study on the expansion of coal mining in central Cesar in northern Colombia. To develop my arguments, I refer to the concept of accumulation by dispossession as defined by Michael Levien, and historical materialist approaches on rent, and speculative land dispossession. In addition, I use concepts developed for studying coercive land grabbing and agrarian elite participation in armed conflicts to analyse the mechanisms applied to (coercively) acquire rights to land. It is concluded that with high global prices for minerals, metals and fossil fuels, the expansion of mining in the countryside fosters a process of agrarian change through land speculation that is articulated in a reconcentration of landed property, a re‐strengthening of the rural landowning elite and the dissolution of peasant agriculture.

Feminism and Finitude

This essay examines the ideological parallels between the transhuman pursuit for immortality and xenofeminism’s call for biological manipulation. Paying particular attention to the patriarchal legacy of technoscience, I identify eugenic principles embedded in the discursive emphasis on anti-naturalism, freedom, and alienation. My intention is to recuperate xenofeminism’s more radical manoeuvres by resituating its aims through a historical materialist approach. Specifically, I suggest a reinterpretation of nature as inherently technological. In so doing, I argue for an alliance between xenofeminism and ecofeminist political economy to engage a discursive redirection toward degrowth and dealienation. I then build on Rosi Braidotti’s (2013) posthuman theory of death to suggest an uncomfortable biopolitical expansion: a biopolitics for the Anthropocene should not only seek an equal right to live, but also an equal predisposition to death. My countervailing materialism centres a politics of finitude through an analysis of the vital-fatal entanglement in the body’s reproductive capacities.

Thinking Capital and Colonialism in South Africa : The Problem of Justice

Abstract Notwithstanding the epistemological problems with the dominant appreciations of human rights, the problem with dominant ways of understanding justice for colonial repression post colonialism is that they misplace the logic whence the repression stems. In this paper I propose a revisiting of the historical materialist approach to justice, as a way to strengthen the scholarship on justice in South Africa. I essentially deal with two contending arguments on the debate on justice in South Africa, namely transformative constitutionalism, the position of constitutional romantics, and Azanian political thought, propounded by what are termed constitutional abolitionists in this paper. Moreover, using Bernard Magubane's critical socio-historical explanation of South Africa and Evgeny Pashukanis' legal theory of Marxism, I offer a third way which opens up some of the theoretical deficiencies of transformative constitutionalism as it pertains to South Africa. Ultimately, in this paper, I attempt to move from a descriptive and ideological appreciation of justice, to a conception of justice rooted in the materiality of social relations.

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

Economia Política da Uberização: A Exploração dos Trabalhadores conforme as Três Formas de Intermediação do Trabalho nas Empresas-Plataforma

Abstract A wide range of studies has emerged on the precariousness of uberized jobs. Nonetheless, there is a gap regarding how these precarious jobs are integrated into the global movement of private valuation and appropriation of the workforce. Thus, this essay aims to apprehend the movement of capital reproduction whose material base occurs in the digital platform dynamics, demonstrating the different forms of intermediated work engendered in the global accumulation process. Using a historical materialist approach, we analyze the phenomenon of uberization in the expansion movement of the production and circulation of goods, scrutinizing the dynamics of big platform companies regarding their relationship with workers and customers, revealing mediations in the movement of values, which culminates in three forms of labor intermediation: (a) Form 1: as a commodity for individual consumption; (b) Form 2: as part of the work processes of industrial capital; and (c) Form 3: as a moderator of exchange relationships. We conclude by indicating that the three forms of uberized products help us to understand how this commodity production process submits men and women to precarious working conditions and increased exploitation. Furthermore, forms 2 and 3, which are more complex and mediated, demonstrate how uberization spreads across the production chain and facilitates the extraction and attraction of surplus value elsewhere, denoting the imperialist character of capitalist dynamics today.

Nature’s Value: Evidencing a Moldovan Terroir Through Scientific Infrastructures

ABSTRACT Terroir can increase the exchange value of wine in competitive markets in global capitalism. Relying on ethnographic research in Moldova, this article shows how value is produced through infrastructures that evidence the environmental features of a wine’s place of origin in the form of terroir. In these processes, genericness and uniqueness prove to be mutually constitutive. While the Soviet wine industry used evidencing infrastructures such as laboratories and measuring devices to produce decent and affordable table wine, old infrastructures have been adapted and new ones introduced to evidence terroir through analyses of soils and yeasts. The focus on scientific infrastructures of value connects new and historical materialist approaches in the conceptualisation of human-environment relations. It contributes to a new historical materialist understanding of value by highlighting the interrelation of political economic, environmental and technological dimensions in the making of terroir, through evidencing, measuring and standardising physical features of the environment.

Labour realities at Amazon and COVID-19: obstacles and collective possibilities for its warehouse workers and MTurk workers

The COVID-19 pandemic has only further magnified the already growing political-economic and societal power of platforms. This article delves into the different realities of platform workers by juxtaposing two cases: location-based Amazon warehouse workers and web-based Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers. Informed by a historical materialist approach that accounts both for the contextual conditions and the agency of workers, this article asks: how does the organisation of workers (location-based vs. web-based) relate differently to their labour organisation and mobilisation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic? By investigating agency through analysing the structural power of workers (that is, marketplace and workplace), this article argues that both Amazon warehouse workers and MTurk workers experienced a further dwindling of their already weak marketplace power as a result of larger co-evolving political-economic conditions. The former workforce did experience, however, an increase in their workplace power given the growth of Amazon during the pandemic. The fact that they are location-based plays a crucial role in framing their struggle vis-à-vis the direct health risks and their ability to mobilise to disrupt the circulation line. MTurk workers, on the other hand, experienced a further weakening of their workplace power. Given the challenges in disrupting web-based gig labour, workers continue to express their agency through more alternative forms by instrumentalising digital spaces to foster solidarity and support each other for better working conditions. These contrasting case studies shed light therefore on the wider repercussions of the nature of the platform and its relation to the political-economic conditions for labour’s agency.

Can dialectic materialism produce beauty? The “Great Aesthetic Debates” (1956–1962) in the People's Republic of China

AbstractThis article focuses on a set of aesthetic debates that took place in China in the late 1950s. By exploring the main arguments presented by different thinkers, particularly the writings of Zhu Guanqian and Li Zehou, this article demonstrates how the aesthetics took part in the ideological formation of the new socialist state. From the debates, we observe the tensions between the complexity of the material-political and the reductionism of the state ideology. We also recognize why and how aesthetics could be such an important site of political contestation in this young socialist country, and how the interactions between human senses and the material world are essential to arts universally. The dominant materialist aesthetics presented in the debate was less a theory of things than a theory of the social. This historical materialist approach might be useful as a social critique; however, when handled dogmatically, it not only rejects the autonomy of things, but also disallows art works to reflect the complex human interactions with the material world beyond economic power relations. We can find more sophisticated analysis in Zhu's aesthetic theory, which tries to incorporate the interactions between the subjects and the objects into materialism.

The Christ Myth Debate in Marxist Literature

Due to the inauguration of the Next Quest of the Historical Jesus and renewed interest in historical materialist approaches to early Christianity (such as the forthcoming volume from Myles and Crossley), the present paper seeks to elucidate the history of one of the most contentious debates in early Christian studies among Marxists: that of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. The article goes through the early debates and discussions on the subject and seeks to correct a number of misunderstandings about the history of this debate and also evaluate some of the present contributions on the matter, to see where Marxist historians generally stand. It starts with the earliest discussions of Jesus’ historicity among figures such as Albert Kalthoff and Karl Kautsky, then discuss­ing where Marxist mythicists gained majority positions in the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China, until reaching the present day and briefly discussing the contemporary interlocutors in this debate.

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY DURING THE SECOND REPUBLIC: LESSONS AND ALTERNATIVES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

This study examines the socio-economic and political foundations of Nigeria’s foreign policy during the Second Republic and their lessons in charting a new path in the 21st Century. It explores how neo-colonialism, within the context of an international capitalist economy, intensified class antagonism, socio-economic and political contradictions, which impinged negatively on the foreign policy initiatives and postures of Nigeria between 1979 and 1983. Drawing insights from the Marxist political economy approach, this fresh study departs from the common orientation of economic determinism by focusing on the complex interplay between the political, economic and social subsystems through the historical materialist approach to which little attention has hitherto been paid. The study made use of primary data through the conduct of interviews and also relied on secondary sources. The study found that the distorted and peripheral role of dependent neo-colonial Nigeria in the world capitalist economy, its sole reliance on oil and the neglect of agriculture generated socio-political and economic crises that constrained it from pursuing viable foreign policy goals during the period under study. The paper concluded that the pursuit of bold and impactful foreign policy goals by Nigeria depends on its ability to reactivate the non-oil sector of its economy, particularly the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

Alienating assemblages: Working the carbonscape in times of transformation

Energy geographers seem to agree that the carbon economy represents a symbiotic relationship between social and material components. There is less consensus, however, on how this symbiosis is best conceptualized. We critique the portrayal of carbonscapes as loosely associated, flexibly (re)arranged and easily enacted upon through small-scale radical innovation. Instead, we advocate for a historical materialist approach foregrounding people’s relationship to nature and to each other through the wage relation and systems of social reproduction. By assuming the vantage point of petroleum workers, we show how geographies of (de)alienation can inform a politics of reconnection in the carbon economy.

Labour conflicts in the Global South: an introduction

ABSTRACT This article provides an introduction to the special issue on labour conflicts in the Global South. We will first conceptualize the internal relations between structure and agency on the basis of a historical materialist approach in order to assess the strategies of workers within a rapidly changing global capitalism. Second, in order to avoid economic reductionism we will conceptualize the internal relations between class, gender and race to account for the gender-specific manifestations of class as well as how racialization continues to underpin today’s global political economy and is fragmenting the working class and, thereby, undermines its potential for resistance. Finally, we will discuss where appropriate how dualist, binary constructions from Northern Industrial Relations, which are frequently applied in the analysis of labour struggles in the Global South, can be overcome.

Baltic labour in the crucible of capitalist exploitation: Reassessing ‘post-communist’ transformation

AbstractThirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this article re-assesses ‘post-communist’ transformation in the Baltic countries from the perspective of labour. The argument is based on a historical materialist approach focusing on the social relations of production as a starting point. It is contended that the uneven and combined unfolding of ‘post-communist’ transformation has subjected Baltic labour to doubly constituted exploitation processes. First, workers in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have suffered from extreme neoliberal restructuring of economic and employment relations at home. Second, migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in general, trying to escape exploitation at home, have faced another set of exploitative dynamics in host countries in Western Europe such as the UK. Nevertheless, workers have continued to challenge exploitation in Central and Eastern Europe and also in Western Europe, and have been active in extending networks of transnational solidarity across the continent.

From Revolution to Modernising Counter-Revolution in Russia, 1917–28

Abstract This article presents a historical-materialist approach to key issues of revolution and counter-revolution and uses it to analyse what happened in Russia between 1917 and the late 1920s. What took place in 1917 was indeed a socialist revolution. However, by the end of 1918 working-class rule had been replaced with the rule of a working-class leadership layer that was improvising a fragile surplus-extracting state of proletarian origin. The eventual transformation of that layer into a new ruling class represented the triumph of a modernising counter-revolution. The decisive determinants of these developments were material pressures acting, first, on a working class plunged into catastrophic social crisis and war and then, after the Civil War, on the party-state leadership layer that sought to maintain its state against both European capitalist societies and the classes from which it had to extract surpluses. However, aspects of Bolshevik ideology also played a role.

Contributors

Contributors

International Relations Perspectives on Technology

This paper addresses the literature of International Relations approaches to technology as a form of power in international politics in two stages: First, the current IR approaches to technological power in international politics which includes instrumentalism, essentialism and Social Construction of Technology (SCOT). Second, the historical materialist approaches to technological power in IR which includes instrumentalism, essentialism and critical theory of technology.

Whose Disability (Studies)?

This article is part of a larger inquiry into the production of disabled bodies due to violence. I examine processes of disablement in the global south, namely Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, by wars launched and nurtured by both the local nation-states in the Middle East as well as the global north - the United States, Russia, and Western Europe. Utilizing a dialectical and historical materialist approach, I studied the Iran-Iraq war, the longest war of the 20th century. I explore how the disablement of global southern bodies in imperialist and nationalist wars is persistently naturalized – that is, attributed to the natural state of affairs in those regions, with the inevitable consequence that they cannot be connected to the violence of ongoing global and regional imperialism. This paper briefly touches upon the theoretical framework and methodology utilized to conduct this research, as well as the “problem” of disability in Iran. Subsequently, it goes on to extensively discuss the living conditions of the surviving Iranian veterans and surviving civilians of the Iran-Iraq war told through their own resilient voices. The veterans’ narratives expose their post-war experiences, including poverty, unemployment, inadequate medical-care, lack of medication due to the U.S.-imposed economic sanctions, and the presence of a dysfunctional disability-measurement system employed by the Iranian state. As a survivor of this war myself, I invite the reader to bear witness to how the violence of imperialism and nationalism not only renders people disabled, but also fetishizes their disablement by masking/mystifying the socio-political and economic relations that mediate the violent processes that render people disabled. By focusing on the veterans’ actual living conditions, this paper seeks to defetishize disablement, shifting the narrative of disabled veterans and civilians from tales of terrorism, heroism, living martyrdom, and patriotism, towards recognition of disability of/in human beings in need of care and support.