Marxist Interpretation Research Articles

Мир объективного знания и социально-экономическая реальность (К. Поппер & К. Маркс)

The growing specialization and formalization of economic knowledge threatens to break away from the general scientific base that forms the worldview of the researcher. An urgent task is presented in the reintegration of basic methodological principles and categories of science into modern social science and economic theory. The article conducts a comparative analysis of the works of K. Marx and K. Popper, who made revolutionary changes in the methodology and ideological attitudes (conceptual frameworks) of scientific knowledge. Marx’s contribution focuses on dialectical and historical materialism, the doctrine of the economic basis of society and the change of socio-economic formations; Popper’s contribution focuses on his trial and error method with falsifying interpretation of results and the concept of successive three worlds of the universe. Popper’s criticisms of Marxist doctrine (essentialism, elements of mythology, teleologism) and the counterarguments of consistent Marxists are evaluated. The paper characterizes Popper’s positions on the realism of scientific knowledge, the world of predispositions, flexible management in animate and inanimate nature, the world of mental states of consciousness and the world of the objective content of thinking. Their commonality with the provisions of dialectical and historical materialism (the material nature of objective reality, the theory of reflection, the role of objective mental forms and ideological social relations) in the formation of the ‘world of objective knowledge’ is shown. The insufficiency of Popper’s epistemology for the study of the economic basis of social life is revealed. Based on a structural and logical analysis of the methodological principles and theoretical positions of Marx and Popper, the paper outlines the paths to the development of a system of concepts that brings together the complementary results of their apparently opposing research programs. Also presented are sources showing the relevance of the ideas of Marx and Popper in modern methodological and socio-economic literature. It is concluded that the world of objective knowledge (the key category of Popper’s social science) is part of the socio-economic life of society (in its Marxist interpretation), which, in turn, is incomplete without taking into account the realities of this world and needs additional study from the appropriate angle.

Book Review

Abram Leon, The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, Pathfinder Press, 2020, £15.00

Engels' Theoretical Contribution to Historical Materialism and its Contemporary Value Implication

As Marx's close comrade-in-arms and revolutionary partner, Engels undertook the major mission of perfecting Marxist philosophy in defense of Marx after Marx's death, but Engels's interpretation of Marxism caused scholars to explore the academic relationship between Marx and Engels, and his book Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (hereinafter referred to as Engels’Ludwig Feuerbach of 1888) became the focal point of the research on the academic relationship between the two. The work presents Engels' systematic interpretation of the materialist conception of history, his innovative formulation of Engels' theory of historical synergy and the fundamental question of phi-losophy, and is a strong proof of the consistency between the ideas of Marx and Engels. Engels' theoretical contribution to the materialist conception of history in the work still has valuable theoretical value in contemporary times, and inspires us to hold on to Marxism without wavering, and to innovate without stopping, in order to better guide our practice.

Modality and Actuality: Lukács’s Criticism of Hegel in History and Class Consciousness

Abstract The present article tries to show the originality of Lukács’s theory of Actuality (Wirklichkeit) by comparing it with the same notion in Hegel’s Logic. It results that Lukács’s interpretation of Marxism and the Russian Revolution depends on a clear and independent theoretical position with regard to Hegel and his Idealistic theory of Modality. Particular importance is given to the new conception of the Dialectical interplay between the notions of Objective Possibility and Historical Necessity.

Theorising Digital Dispossession: An Enquiry into the Datafication of Accumulation by Dispossession

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of work and labour was being deeply pondered upon. The demarcations that emerged out of this juncture led to a bifurcation of labour into ‘essential workers’, who are pushed into precarity from the threat of disease and contractual uncertainty in employment, and those who ‘work from home’. While geo-spatial segregation of these distinctions is contingent upon the specific relation of the nature of work with datafication, we are impelled to ponder upon the role that the accumulation of surplus value plays in this process. More specifically we must ask, what role does digital labour play in the datafication and datafied reorganization of work and workplaces? The inadequateness of data colonialism as a theoretical tool that accounts for the historical-materialist and dialectical roots of extraction and accumulation of user data requires a retheorization of the process. In this paper, I shall examine the ontological inadequacies of the metaphors of colonialism, and its extractivist logic, being transposed and mapped onto the studies of datafication. Following this I shall explore ‘digital dispossession’ as a convergence of Digital Capitalism and the neoliberal reorganization of digitized social labour, alongside its necropolitical implications. Drawing upon David Harvey’s theorization of ‘Accumulation by Dispossession’, I argue for a classical Marxist interpretation of datafication as a new reorganization of capitalist accumulation that acts and appropriates surplus generated by prosumers through the unpaid and discursive digital labour performed on digital platforms.

Animist materialism in Femi Osofisan’s <i>No More the Wasted Breed (1983) </i>and <i>Once </i><i>Upon Four Robbers (1991)</i>

In his oeuvre, Femi Osofisan challenges class inequalities by upbraiding the materialistic predilections of the upper class. Therefore, critics view his plays as revolutionary manuscripts designed for social awakening and interpret them from a Marxist perspective. Marxist interpretation has, to a good degree, undermined other ideological potential and evident discursive engagements which abound in multiple hierarchies in his plays. This study advances the frontiers of interpretations in Osofisan’s plays by providing alternative meanings in them besides Marxism. Through the theoretical praxis of Material Culture, I argue that beyond Marxist, class proclivities, Osofisan in No More the Wasted Breed (1983) and Once Upon Four Robbers (1980) commits to cultural rebirth in Africa through animist materialism, a spiritual, sociocultural appropriation process which inputs lifeforce to natural objects like rivers, plants, and animals. In addition to their material, totemic, sublunary significance, these natural objects acquire mystical and magical essence, thus contributing to the reification of African spiritual practices found in the plays. The spiritual practices rehabilitate African culture, promoting and re-enchanting its symbolic orthodoxy in the modern world. The study demonstrates that, instead of rejecting modernity, animist materialism as an African spiritual practice accommodates aspects of modernity, incorporating them as part of Africa’s cultural heritage.

ЛЕВЫЙ ПОВОРОТ В КОНСЕРВАТИВНОЙ МЫСЛИ Г.П. ФЕДОТОВА

The article is about an issue of combining two political vectors, conservative (right) and revolutionary (left) in the works of G.P. Fedotov. The research focus of the paper is on the philosophical anthropology of the Russian thinker. The author suggests considering the figure of the subject, which is the point from which the divergent political lines originate. G.P. Fedotov describes person in the interpretation of Christian anthropology, where the essential features are connection with the divine and rootedness in the historical. In such a system, the conservative position is associated with the protection of the individual from any encroachments by the “other”, whether it is the arbitrariness of the revolutionary crowd or the rigid organization of the pro-fascist states of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. The position of the revolutionary vector, traditionally associated with the left movement, is of a liberating nature, the source of which G.P. Fedotov also founds in the Christian anthropology. The category of alienation plays an important role in this case, both in the Hegelian interpretation (objectification of the world) and in the Marxist interpretation. Overcoming alienation by a historical subject in various variations is the conceptual point at which both the right and left political vectors converge.

Social theory and overinterpretation

ABSTRACT Theory is the use of abstraction in the pursuit of understanding. In the human sciences, theory is a talmudic process of reading and conceptual dispute that carries the colligation of evidentiary signs (minimal interpretation) towards riskier, but more insightful and widely relevant, interpretations of the meanings, causes, and significance of human events (maximal interpretation). Yet, in making possible such maximal interpretations of society, politics, literature, and so forth, theory also introduces the possibility of overinterpreting evidence. Judgments that overinterpretation has occurred are made collectively within communities of inquiry. After developing Umberto Eco’s theory of overinterpretation as part of a hermeneutic-semiotic account of theory in the human sciences, this paper conducts a case study of the rise and partial fall of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution. This reveals aspects of the process whereby patterns of maximal interpretation, carried through several academic generations, allow the development and refinement of knowledge and insight about an object of inquiry, on the one hand, and yet are subject to judgment as overinterpreted, on the other. Much more than a matter of falsification and/or the politics of intellectuals, the decline of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution involved a complex series of judgments about the degree to which an abstract theoretical terminology could continue to produce new and deeper understandings. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the talmudic aspect of social theory has affinities with the universal human capacity for thinking.

Merleau-Ponty and “Dirty Hands”: Political Phronesis and Virtù Between Marxism and Machiavelli

ABSTRACT Despite rarely explicitly thematizing the problem of dirty hands, this essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s political work can nonetheless make some important contributions to the issue, both descriptively and normatively. Although his political writings have been neglected in recent times, his interpretations of Marxism and Machiavelli enabled him to develop an account of political phronesis and virtù that sought to retain the strengths of their respective positions without succumbing to their problems. In the process, he provides grounds for generalizing the problem of “dirty hands” beyond Michael Walzer’s influential understanding that pertains primarily to “emergencies” and singular time-slice actions, and addresses concerns about the coherence of the very idea that there is justified action that one ought to do which remains wrong. Merleau-Ponty does this by emphasizing the diachronic relationship between theoretical principles and concrete political action over a period of time, thus imbuing the problem of dirty hands with a historicity that is not sufficiently recognized in the more static and action-focused discussions.

Capabilities approach and the marxist interpretation of the political conception of justice. reflections on the after-war restoration of Ukraine

Marxism as a normative position is critical of liberalism. However, the problems of justice and alienation that Marxism draws attention to can be solved by liberalism without the implementation of a Marxist political project. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the thesis that Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach (one of the versions of political liberalism) is a more inclusive and rational method of theorizing about the basic principles of justice than Marxism. By analyzing Elizabeth Anderson's theory of liberal egalitarianism "democratic equality", I show that some of Marxist approaches that (1) do not deny the existence of justice and (2) are concerned with the problem of alienation, can apply the arsenal of the moral theory of political liberalism to solve these problems. I also criticize Rawls's and Nussbaum's theories of political liberalism for their procedural vagueness and non-inclusive theory of justice. I present an outline of my position, which I propose to call «extended political liberalism» (hereafter EPL). EPL is currently represented by two arguments: 1) the paideia argument and 2) the argument of the interdependence of the good and the right. The first allows talking about the actual implementation of basic rights and freedoms only when citizens are aware of them and have the opportunity to change their views regarding the personal conception of the good. This is impossible without qualitative basic education. Also, one of the central concepts of EPL is presented within the framework of Paideia's argument - the interpretation of the political conception of justice. Because of this concept, it makes sense to talk about the possibility of citizens' reflection on the reconciliation of the current political conception with the personal conception of the good. This can also be done through the analysis of other conceptions of the good. The second argument is a continuation of the first, appearing as a theoretical mechanism that allows supplementing the existing political conception in case of serious social changes. In conclusion, if we take into account the advantages of the capabilities approach and my criticism of its weaknesses, then a theoretical position will emerge that is quite acceptable to some representatives of Marxism. Moreover, the latter will not have to give up their basic beliefs. The peculiarity of my concept presented in this text is that it is not so much a critique of Marxism as an analysis of the basic normative judgments of political liberalism, with which some Marxists can agree. With this article, I also want to illustrate the strengths of such a concept and point to its prospects for further attempts to interpret the political conception by other normative positions.

Interpreting an escape from an eviction trap as a social account: A Gramscian reading of a credit union’s policies in support of social housing tenants

In capitalist economies, residences that have value as homes are also commodities. Use of Gramsci’s concept of historic bloc highlights how in the current, neoliberal period, governments’ increasing perception of houses as commodities has affected allocation of social housing and contrasts with the earlier social democratic period when social housing’s use as homes was a more prominent consideration. Policy changes in the neoliberal period reduced social housing stock, increased rents and the precarity of income of many people dependent on social housing, particularly in London. Such policies created a trap of eviction if tenants accrued rent arrears. Empirical research reports one credit union’s initiatives to ameliorate the threat of tenants’ eviction. Marxist interpretations of social accounts are used to understand the eviction trap and evaluate the credit union’s initiatives.

Od narodowych fantazji do teorii więzi: krytyka kultury Lauren Berlant w świetle brytyjskiej psychologii rozwoju człowieka

The article surveys Lauren Berlant’s ideas concerning the emotional functioning of the human being in the context of neoliberal capitalism and argues for their limitation resulting from Berlant’s focus on the society-ideology axis while overlooking the significance of the early bonds in the development of one’s emotional regulation. Contrary to the multiple Marxist interpretations of culture, Berlant emphasizes that politics is effective by shaping human fantasies of desire rather than merely producing ideology. In the case of the United States this mechanism mainly refers to creating a collective hope for a “good life”, which is carried on within the paradigm of the Weberian protestant ethics: through hard work, perseverance and self-reliance, that is according to the myth of the American dream. Simultaneously, authors working within the field of developmental psychology demonstrate the key significance of human early attachments for the shaping of one’s self-trust and emotional balance, which enables a more critical attitude towards the cultural norms of happiness and makes it possible to find satisfaction not through responding to the fantasies generated by culture, but through relationships with other empirically existing human beings. The article thus maintains that works by psychologists such as Donald Woods Winnicott, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth fill in a significant void in Berlant’s writings and give hope for an overcoming of the “cruel optimism” impasse.

The Eventually Lost Wind: A Marxist Interpretation of Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, as a representative novel in the transformation of British society in the 19th century, reflects the transition of English literature from romanticism to realism. “Wind,” as an important image, appears many times in the novel, runs through the full text, and has important symbolic significance. From the howling wind accompanying Heathcliff’s appearance to the resentment of the wanton wind beating Thrushcross Grange during his revenge, to the wind calming down after Heathcliff’s death, the raging wind is completely integrated with the characters of the novel. Its rise, roar, and calmness all reflect the author’s thoughts on the social reality such as the violent resistance of the yeoman class, the contradiction and union between the peasant group, the land aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, and the gradual annihilation of the yeoman class by the capitalist trend. This paper intends to discuss the image of “wind” in the novel, analyze the theme from the perspective of Marxist criticism, and try to reach the following conclusion: “wind” represents the power of the yeomanry class headed by Heathcliff. It is revolutionary to some extent, but it also has the inherent weaknesses and limitations of the yeoman class. The failure of the yeoman class has its profound social reasons and historical inevitability. At the same time, it also enlightens us that in a capitalist society, the poor people will never get real democracy and freedom.

Odczytanie marksizmu przez Antonio Gramsciego i jego znaczenie dla współczesnej kultury

Italian Marxist – Antonio Gramsci – is known primarily from the new interpretation of Marxism. We can say, that he has set a framework for a new cultural revolution. Center of gravity, in his opinion, no longer based on the material means of production, but on the culture. He was convinced that the “pacification” of cultural differences (not material as Marx expected), could provide the expected, universal equality. Gramsci proved that unifying element of society is not the organization of work, but the culture and in the culture of the most important is the role of religion. Wishing to create a new culture (without hitting directly in religion), as the basis of change to the new order, he accepted mechanism for the gradual annihilation of the old values. The legacy of cultural Marxism, which created the foundations of Gramsci, took over the Frankfurt School, whose idea was continued in both the USA and Europe. Ideological base developed by Gramsci, become a tool of depreciating the existing structure of society and the decay of contemporary culture.

Концепт социалистической цивилизации в позднем советском политическом дискурсе. (Размышления над книгой М.П. Мчедлова «Социализм – становление нового типа цивилизации»)

This article is not a classic review, it is more like an essay, better to say, a reflection on the book and on the era associated with it. The main topic of the article is the fate of the concept of “socialist civilization” in the Soviet era. This excursus will focus on Mi­ran Mchedlov’s book “Socialism – the formation of a new type of civilization” [14], that came out in 1980. This book, written by a Soviet scientist, presents in a concentrated form the experience of conceptualizing the category of “socialist civilization” in the Marxist interpretation. It also reveals the possibilities of representation, shows the potential for the theoretical development of this concept, which were characteristic of Soviet political thought. The main idea of Miran Mchedlov is socialist civilization it­self as the first stage of communist civilization. This idea in Soviet times was not seri­ously evaluated and developed sufficiently. It did not evoke a strong reaction in Soviet political discourse although it should have caused a reaction in the scientific world. This was caused by a decline in attention to the problems of socialist civilization, which was central to the book under review. Around the same time, when did this book come out, the process of gradually replacing the Marxist formational approach with a civilizational approach began. The new approach was opposed to the classical Marxist one, based on the theory of socio-economic formations. Radical changes took place in the Soviet pic­ture of the world, in the public mind of Soviet people. After these changes, not only the formational approach was called into question, but also the Marxist-Leninist doctrine as a whole. That is why the book by Miran Mchedlov is of great interest, as this is one of the last attempts to build the concept of socialist civilization within the framework of the Soviet Marxist picture of the world in the Soviet era.

The French Revolution: The Marxist Interpretation and the Revisionist Critic

Bu çalışmada Fransız Devrimi’nin Marksist yorumu ve buna getirilen Revizyonist eleştiri karşılaştırılacaktır. Bunun için nitel araştırma yönteminde kategorik ve sistematik içerik analizine başvurulacaktır. Çalışmada Fransız Devrimi, tarihin belirli bir zamanında meydana gelmiş tek bir vaka olma özelliği taşımaktadır. Marx ve takipçileri sosyalizmin kökenini Fransız Devrimi’nde aramışlardır. Bu da onları devrimin iktisadi dinamiklerine götürmüştür. Bu dinamikler içerisinde burjuvazi baskın bir unsurdur. 1950’li yıllarda revizyonistler bu yaklaşıma itiraz etmişlerdir. Revizyonist yazar ve düşünürlerin önde gelen şahsiyetlerinden Cobban, “Genel Meclis” (États Généraux)’te burjuvaziyi temsil ettiği iddia edilen “Üçüncü Sınıf”’ın burjuva bir karaktere sahip olmadığını öne sürmektedir. Bir diğer Revizyonist yazar, Furet, devrimle birlikte ortaya siyasal kültürün olayın doğru bir şekilde incelenmesini zorlaştırdığına dikkat çekmiştir. Marksistlerin iddia ettiğinin aksine feodal düzenin monarşi yargısının varlığı nedeni ile devrim öncesinde işlevini yitirdiğine inanmaktadır. 1789 yılına gelindiğinde feodal toprakların iktisadi mekanizması sürdürülebilir bir özellik arz etmemektedir. Devrimin, bu açıdan bakıldığında etkisi feodal dünyanın geriye kalan unsurlarını ortadan kaldırmakla sınırlı kalmıştır.

Furious Feedback and the Revolutionary Ode to Noise

Furious Feedback and the Revolutionary Ode to Noise

At the crossroads between Communism and Jewish nationalism: Ber Mark as historian of premodern Jewish society

ABSTRACT Ber Mark, the longstanding director of ŻIH (1949–1966), is generally considered a regime historian who adhered to the Communist Party line in his histories of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, most of which were significantly distorted by Communist bias. In 1957, however, he published a book dealing with premodern Jewish history. Di geshikhte fun yidn in poyln (bizn sof fun XV y[or]h[undert]) (The History of Jews in Poland [until the End of the Fifteenth Century]) represents an attempt by Mark to reconcile an orthodox Marxist interpretation of Jewish history with a Zionist Marxist construction, with its nod to Jewish nationalism. In this book, then, Mark had ultimately reached a crossroads in his writing of Jewish history. With its incorporation of a nationalist understanding of Jewish history in coexistence with a Communist one, Di geshikhte fun yidn in poyln marks the end of pure Marxist historiography in Yiddish.

The Making of Abstraction. Some Hypotheses on Money, Language, and Modern Literature

The question I have tried to answer is whether there is such a thing as linguistic alienation and what its consequences are for Marxist literary studies and for understanding the so-called "superstructure" in general. Relevant assumptions on this subject were elaborated, above all, in the sixties and seventies by Lefebvre, Rossi-Landi, Baudrillard and Latouche, through the tabulation of a parallelism between Marx's theory of value and Saussure's theory of sign. In my opinion, all these hypotheses failed to understand the specificity of the Marxist interpretation of money, which is a very different form of semiotics, because (as Finelli and Arthur, among others, have shown) it owes much to Hegelian logic. Therefore, I try to demonstrate that, putting certain categories of semiotics and philosophy of language to interpret the critique of Marx's political economy, money is not a sign but a code: paraphrasing Lacan, it could be said that capital is configured like a language. It is not, however, a neutral language, but a linguistic praxis capable of hiding a material situation through abstractions. If this is correct, we do not need to ask how a matter (the structure) acts on a series of semantic and ideological chains (the superstructure), but to what extent capital itself, considered as a text, functions as a formal model (using Marx's words: a formelle bestimmung) for the organization of all matter in which its domain of abstraction extends. The "structural causality" on which Jameson relies in The Political Unconscious is thus the result of the dialectical link between mechanical and expressive causalities.

NFTs and Value

NFTs and Value