Marxist Standpoint Research Articles

Reductions in the Working Week: Labour Intensity and Productivity in Chile from a Marxist Perspective

ABSTRACT The initial outright rejection of shorter working hours by many employers has been replaced by their sustained campaign to recoup lost time by raising the work intensity of their employees and its impact on fixed capital. But longer working hours imposed in some countries as part of the neoliberal globalized attack on the living standards of workers since the 1980s, have called into question both marginalist and Marxist explanations of the reasons behind falling and rising working hours. This article investigates—from a Marxist standpoint—the combined impact of shorter working hours, rising productivity and labour intensity both theoretically and in practice, during the first two decades of this century in Chile. This article investigates the probable impact on the economy and its division into wages and profits, of a cut in the working week and changes in labour flexibility.

Subverting the Civilising Mission in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) is often presented as one of the harshest indictments of the colonial entreprise in Africa. Yet, a large number of critics consider that it perpetuates the colonial discourse in several ways. The aim of this paper is to critically look at the colonial discourse in Conrad’s novella from a postcolonial and Marxist standpoint. To be specific, we demonstrate the limitations and contradictions of the theory of the civilising mission, which portrays Africa as the “heart of darkness” and Africans as uncivilised individuals who need to be enlightened by Europeans. The analysis concludes that, above their moral corruption, the colonists, through the atrocity of their actions and their greed, are a perfect reflection of a Western civilisation corrupted by the capitalist spirit that underpins it. In this sense, they are proof that the theory of the civilising mission is a fallacy. The real savages are those who think that they bear the light of civilisation. Black people are savages only in the Western imagination. In reality, they are the victims of the savagery, the darkness inherent in Western materialistic culture.

The classes and class struggles contents of the Bangsamoro question

PurposeThere is a noticeable dearth of literature offering Marxist perspectives and analyses on the Bangsamoro struggles for self-determination, ethnic and religious identities and social justice. A reason for this may lie in the general derision of bourgeois academics and conventional commentators on the supposed paucity of Marxist theories on nationalism, ethnicity and religion. This may have influenced, ironically, Filipino Marxist thinkers into being indifferent to this research topic. Far from the truth, however, that Marxism is essentially an economic determinist social conflict theory, its historical materialism offers a rich treasury of analyses and perspectives on nationalism, self-determination, religion and ethnic identity within the context of class struggles as the acme of the theory of scientific socialism. The paper, therefore, offers a scientific analysis of the Bangsamoro Question from a Marxist standpoint beyond the perspectives of psychologism, naturalism and ethno-racialism, which are usually deployed by traditional and uninformed commentators in analyzing ethnicity questions and quests for separatism.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs the historical and class analysis of the dynamics, relationships and struggles of classes in the history of the Bangsamoro struggles against colonialism and the subsequent postcolonial regimes up to the present time.FindingsAs a scientific paradigm, historical materialism presents itself as a general scientific social conflict theory. Using this framework through historical and class analyses, the paper proves the improbability of the Moros’ quest for separatism or genuine autonomy at this historical point. It, therefore, asserts the linking of the Moro struggles to the more immense struggles of the Filipinos for national and social liberation from imperialism.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is limited to the historical and class analyses of classes’ dynamics and struggles. It is, therefore, far from an exhaustive analysis of the Moro struggles using different non-Marxist social conflict theories.Practical implicationsThe research can be considered a practical guide in analyzing and predicting the trajectories of the Moro struggles in Mindanao and Sulu.Social implicationsThe work addresses the question from radical and Marxist premises.Originality/valueThis is a highly original and valuable work from the point of view of Marxist social conflict theory.

A Book on the History of Sweden in the Context of Soviet-Swedish Relations at the Turn of the 1940s — 1950s

The paper refers to the authorship of the foreword to the Russian edition of “The History of Sweden” by Ingvar Andersson, published in 1951. The foreword was written by the Latvian Soviet historian Janis Zutis. According to the content and tone of the text the foreword is clearly divided into two parts. The bulk of the foreword, together with the commentary on Andersson's text, looks like Zutis’ review of the book, written from the Marxist standpoint, but in a benevolent manner. But the first few pages of the preface speak about Sweden's aggressive policy toward Russia and the Soviet Union from the Middle Ages until the mid-20th century. So, this part of the foreword is perceived as a kind of political statement in an anti-Swedish spirit. The author of the article points out that the manuscript of the book arrived at the publishing house at the end of 1950, but the foreword mentions the “Riksdag of Peace”, which took place in Stockholm on March, 3—5, 1951. As the manuscript was signed for print on March 15, 1951, the part of the preface which mentions this event must have been written between these dates. It seems that such a politicized addition to the foreword was made at the request of the censor or the publishing house management in order to comply with the official point of view on the foreign policy of the Swedish authorities in those years. But Zutis himself was actively engaged in scientific and social activities in Riga in those days and had no opportunity to divert to the addition of the foreword in the Moscow publishing house. Obviously, this work was done by someone else, not caring about the consistency of style between this part and the scientific one of the foreword.

New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory by Monika Kaup

Reviewed by: New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory by Monika Kaup Brent Ryan Bellamy Against the Linguistic Turn, Against New and Old Materialism, Ontology Now and Forever! Monika Kaup. New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory. Edinburgh UP, 2021. 346 pp. $29.95 pk & ebk, $130 hc. Monika Kaup's New Ecological Realisms builds on philosopher Markus Gabriel's claim that new realism is a periodizing term for what comes after postmodernity (196). Kaup launches an assault on the linguistic turn and offers admission to an exhibit on the "rehabilitation of ontology," conveying renewed interest in philosophical realism. Well worth the price of admission, Kaup's study provides a clarifying overview of the thinkers, their views, and their relationships, including but not limited to Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. Kaup assembles four new realist theories to elaborate "realisms of organised wholes" (5) across her chapters: Bruno Latour's political ecology, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's autopoietic theory, Markus Gabriel's ontology of fields of sense, and Jean-Luc Marion's and Alphonso Lingis's return to phenomenology in the wake of poststructuralism. The book proceeds by way of comparative study to explore the suggestion that "grasping reality" requires "mapping worlds and exploring contexts" rather than "making a collection of everything that there is" (5). Kaup selects Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy (2003-2013), José Saramago's Blindness (1995), Octavia E. Butler's Parable books (1993-1998), and Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) precisely for their specific deployment of post-apocalyptic narrative. New Ecological Realisms argues that post-apocalyptic novels are a singular art form that reformulates how apocalyptic narrative works. Kaup relies on Derek Attridge's affirmation of the singularity of the literary artwork. Kaup writes, "Apocalyptic thinking is inherently ontological: it is about the world as a whole" (6). Moreover, she highlights the inevitability of narrative's drive to a specific predetermined end: "Its overt orientation towards an overall purposive design makes apocalypse the epitome of narrative as such" (57). In the case of Kaup's chapters, the novels discussed each envision "new collectives" that set aside "competition and domination" for "cooperation and ecology": "a trans-species ecological collective of human survivors and artificial species (Atwood); an organised society of the blind (Saramago); a post-apocalyptic religion built on loss and uprootedness (Butler); and a postapocalyptic self founded on passionate commitment (McCarthy)" (78). This is not a book about sf, although it will be of interest to some sf critics. Kaup relies on Darko Suvin's formulation of cognitive estrangement and holds with a distinction between serious sf and futuristic fairy tales. Colson Whitehead's Zone One offers an example of the latter, as Kaup claims that "the fantastic device of a zombie apocalypse serves as a means to evoke horror and serial combat of the action-adventure type rather than the critical [End Page 568] extrapolation of real-world trends" (65). American studies scholar Priscilla Wald's work on outbreak narratives appears in the book (176), as does Tom Moylan's concept of the critical utopia (222-23). Given Kaup's critique of the linguistic turn, it is no wonder that Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren (1974) is avoided here for its arch-postmodern inflections (despite its inarguable status as a singular text!), yet as Jessica Hurley reminds us in Infrastructures of Apocalypse: American Literature and the Nuclear Complex (2020), Delany spent time in narratologist and fellow linguistic-turn traveler Frank Kermode's office writing Dhalgren. Kermode makes an appearance here as well, specifically for Kaup's theorization of postapocalyptic time. Though justified by Kaup's logic and methods, such selections remind me of film-studies scholar Rick Altman's observation of film genre writing: scholars can define genre precisely by how they select examples and which texts constitute edge cases. On my read, Kaup's decision about what information can count as meaningful given the discussion is discerning at best and idiosyncratic at worst. For instance, much care is given to narrate the intellectual history of Bruno Latour's oeuvre, yet Fredric Jameson, whose work presents serious challenges from a Marxist standpoint to the...

The (Un)Making of a Worker Poet: The Case of Md Mukul Hossine and Migrant Worker Writings in Singapore

This article discusses the migrant worker poet Md Mukul Hossine. Showing Mukul as the representative migrant worker poet also severely restricted and complicated his process of ‘becoming’ a poet. From a Marxist standpoint, the Singaporean literati’s dismissal of Mukul reveals the predicament of being a working-class writer in today’s neoliberal market. The particular bourgeoise ‘production mode’ of working-class literature in Singapore first ‘made’, then ‘consumed’ and ultimately ‘condemned’ Mukul. First, I examine the publication process of Mukul’s poetry and its success followed by a series of problems. In the second section, I offer a close reading of Mukul’s poems understanding Mukul’s poetics and struggles as a migrant worker poet as his poetry is seldom examined in literary criticism. Finally, I argue that the representation of migrant workers writers such as Mukul is problematic due to the nature of the whole system: how they are empowered in such a context equally does harm to them. This mode again reproduces the systematic structure of power hegemony and social inequality through the field of literature.

Work process in Family Health Program: the potential of subjectivity of care for reconfiguration of the care model

This is a study with a qualitative approach that aims to analyze the subjective dimension of the Family Health teams' practices conducted in order to reconfigure the care model, using the work process in health as the fundamental analytical category from the Marxist standpoint. The data gathering tool used was the focus group, applied in 13 Family Health teams in Maceió, Alagoas. Thematic analysis combined with principles of hermeneutics and dialectics was used for treatment and interpretation of the data. The results indicate that the user´s needs identified by the teams are multiple and permeated by a lack of sympathetic care, and that the user repeatedly wishes to be "heard." The teams show that they are open to the use of soft technologies of compassionate care, although they do not legitimate them as instruments of their work. Clinical knowledge and techniques are prioritized in the work process, which limits the potential of its subjective dimension in order to (re)configure a care model which attends the user´s needs and is sustained by integrated care.

Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement by Simon Avenell

Reviewed by: Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement by Simon Avenell Timothy S. George Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement. By Simon Avenell. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017. 328 pages. Hardcover, $65.00. In his second monograph, historian Simon Avenell goes beyond the nation-level analysis of his earlier work, Making Japanese Citizens.1 Tracing Japanese environmentalists’ global engagement from the 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century, he argues that their “transnational” activism was both informed by the local experiences of victims of environmental tragedies in Japan and transformed by the reflexivity brought on by the global impact of the country’s policies, which complicated the victimization narrative of Japanese pollution activists. Chapter 1 begins by briefly tracing major cases of industrial pollution in Japan, including not only the well-known “Big Four”—the outbreak of mercury poisoning in the city of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, that became known generally as “Minamata disease”; the same illness in Niigata Prefecture; itai-itai disease (from the Japanese for “it hurts, it hurts”), mass cadmium poisoning that occurred in Toyama Prefecture; and “Yokkaichi asthma” in Mie Prefecture, caused by air pollution—but also the tainting of Morinaga Milk products with arsenic in 1955 and of Kanemi rice-bran oil with PCBs in 1968. Several works in English describe these incidents and the responses by patients and their supporters, journalists, companies, local and national governments, and the legal system.2 While this existing literature has already made it clear that these experiences gave Japan’s environmentalism what [End Page 143] Avenell calls an “anthropocentric perspective,” what he adds here is the significance of how this perspective “deeply informed later transnational involvement” (p. 36). The rest of the first chapter, together with the second and third chapters, constitutes one of Avenell’s most important contributions: a focus on key members of the Research Committee on Pollution (RCP), founded in 1963 by economist Tsuru Shigeto (1912–2006) and seven other progressive academics. Avenell traces the research, activism, and thinking of Miyamoto Ken’ichi (1930–), Ui Jun (1932–2006), Harada Masazumi (1934–2012), and Tsuru up to and beyond the landmark 1972 United Nations Conference on Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm. Their stories have long deserved to be told at this length in English. Economist Miyamoto Ken’ichi published Osorubeku kōgai (Fearsome Pollution) with fellow RCP member Shōji Hikaru in 1964. The book is often compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which was published two years earlier, but as Avenell rightly notes, this combination of scientific discussion by Shōji and analysis of the political economy of pollution by Miyamoto served as more than a wake-up call, providing not only motivation but also a vocabulary and even guidelines for antipollution movements. Miyamoto started from a Marxist standpoint before realizing that pollution existed in socialist countries as well. He eventually came to share “an affinity with later global discourses on human rights . . . , in which groups subject to injustices because of race, gender, sexuality, or even the environment would become part of” what Ernesto LaClau and Chantal Mouffe called a “chain of equivalence,”3 but need not “surrender their unique identities for a shared subjectivity of class” (p. 45). Through Miyamoto, Avenell shows us two of the major characteristics of antipollution movements in Japan: a focus on injustice and on links with victims of other injustices and a hesitant and incomplete affiliation with the established radical left, including the Communist and Socialist parties. Ui Jun was a chemical engineer whose concern with the mercury pollution in Minamata in the late 1950s led him to become Japan’s best-known activist environmental scientist. Avenell rightly calls him “arguably the most important figure in transnational environmental activism in postwar Japan” for the way in which his work to understand and combat the poisoning and discriminatory treatment of victims in Minamata and Niigata impelled him to global research and activism (p. 46). Ui spent a good deal of time in Europe in the 1960s investigating pollution there as well as spreading awareness of Japan’s pollution problems as warnings to other industrialized countries. Beginning in 1970 he organized the Independent Lectures on Pollution...

Speech upon Receiving the World Marxian Economic Award (I)

I am very grateful to WAPE for awarding me the World Marxian Economics Award 2013. I am unable to attend the Brazil conference due to my age. So I will have to rely on this unorthodox way to share with you some of the experiences and reflections concerning my life as a Marxist economist.I was born in October 1925 in a poor village of Wutai county, Shanxi province. I did farm work with my parents when I was young, and was very familiar with peasants' poverty and suffering. The Japanese army occupied my hometown in 1938 when I was in the primary school, which stopped my schooling for four years. I witnessed the Japanese army's violence of rape, plunder and murder. During that time, I did cleaning work at a drug store and worked as a coolie in Taiyuan to make a living, and felt the humiliation and sorrow of an underclass labor. This goaded me to two future ambitions: first, to gain know-how, to change my own fate, and to help the poor be heard; and second, to fight against invasion and create a strong nation of China. For these reasons, I changed my given name Xiangui (rich and famous), given by my primary school teacher, to Xinghua (prosperity of China).Then I went to Jinshan middle school in the second military area of west Shanxi province. The headmaster, Zhao Zongfu was a secret member of the CCP (his father was the governor of Shanxi province). I started a mimeographed newspaper to propagate progressive and anti-Japanese-invasion ideas. This impressed Zhao, who gave me a lot of support and help, as well as influencing me in terms of political views. The school went back to Taiyuan after the victory against Japan. I became involved in secret revolutionary work and decided to devote myself to ending the old system and establishing a new one. I was put in jail for that, but kept the Party's secrets. Before the liberation of Taiyuan, more than ten of my comrades were arrested and killed. I escaped the tragedy due to my early return to the liberated area via Beijing.I am relating this experience to indicate the link between my economic, social and political history as well as my ambitions and belief on the one hand, and on the other, my persistence in upholding the Marxist standpoint and method as well as socialist theory and practices during my teaching and research for more than 60 years, during which I have publicly defended and developed Marxist and socialism. Marx called his economics as opposed to capital economics. The former is the for the liberation and benefits of laborers while the latter is the one supporting capitalism. I naturally chose and believed in the former.In 1948, I entered Huabei University, which became Renmin University after the establishment of the People's Republic of China. As the first graduate majoring in political in New China, I systematically studied Das Kapital and other works of Marx and Engels. I tried my best to use the Marxist standpoint and method to analyse economic society and judge theories and practices. Before the opening and reform, I failed to follow the ultra-left tide and was treated as a right-wing figure, so that I suffered a lot in all political movements. For my Marxist belief and research responsibility, I wrote some economic articles under pressure. To avoid the ultra-leftist attacks, I selected Das Kapital and other classic works as my research targets, since no one at the time would question, criticize and deny Marx's, Engels', and Lenin's theories but there existed misunder- standings and distortions of their views. So I focused my research on the labor theory of value, law of value, distribution according to labor, land rent theory, commodity economy, and so on. I loved independent thinking and exploration, so I often presented unique views very different from prevailing opinions. For example, in the 1950s, I questioned the view in textbooks that abstract labor belonged to commodity economy and currency had class nature, and believed that this view accorded neither with Marxist economics, nor economic practices. …

The Problem of Privacy in Capitalism and the Alternative Social Networking Site Diaspora*

In this paper, l examine the alternative social networking site Diaspora* from a Marxist standpoint. The investigation focuses on privacy, and contributes to a better understanding of this issue within the context of capitalism in general. First, I describe Diaspora*’s way of production by pointing out its alternative character as part of the free software and copyleft movement. Second, dominant theories of privacy related to individual control, exclusion, and property are introduced. Third, the problem of privacy in capitalism is described wherein dominant concepts of privacy will be contextualised on behalf of a critical political economy analysis that refers to the Marxian concept of ideology critique, Marx’s differentiation between a societal sphere of production and a societal sphere of circulation, and his analysis of capitalist fetishisms. Fourth, taking into account the problem of privacy in capitalism, the alternative potential of Diaspora* is evaluated. Finally, a brief outline of a Marxist theory of privacy is proposed.

Pensar o Cone Sul num mundo globalizado

Trata-se de repensar a globalização segundo uma abordagem marxista, de forma a destacar o processo concreto de dominação econômica hegemônica, em oposição a reflexões e especulações sobre soluções universais, com particular ênfase na situação latino-americana. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – América Latina. Globalização. Marxismo. Universalismo.

György Lukács 1902–1918: His way to Marx

At the end of his life Gyorgy Lukacs described his intellectual career as ‘my way to Marx’ [mein Weg zu Marx]. By this he meant that his professional life can be interpreted as an attempt to get to the real Marx. In this paper I use this expression in a narrower and more direct meaning: I attempt to present the road at the end of which the young Lukacs arrived at a Marxist standpoint.

Response to Steinmetz, Riley, and Pedersen

This article addresses three critiques that pull at the loose ends ofLogics of History, revealing weaknesses and bringing new theoretical resources to problems raised by but not satisfactorily resolved in the book. Each critic suggests reformulations of my claims about how structures, events, and social transformations should be theorized: George Steinmetz from wide-ranging and theoretically eclectic perspectives, Dylan Riley from a broadly Marxist standpoint, and David Pedersen from a perspective that is predominantly Peircian. While agreeing with aspects of their critiques, I also reaffirm certain features of my own arguments.

Populism, or, politics at the edges of democracy

Neopopulism and neocorporatism are regular entries in our political lexicon, yet the meaning assigned to the prefix ‘neo’ is not as clear in the former as it is in the latter. The rather unambiguous meaning of neocorporatism derives from the conceptual stability of its classical referent in the mainstream literature of political science. In the case of neopopulism, the prefix has not fared as well, partly due to the contested status of populism as such. One only needs to look at the cluster of meanings associated with the term. The account offered by the sociology of modernization prevailed throughout the sixties, at least in the developing world. A classical exponent of this approach is Germani, who sees populist mobilization as a deviation in the standard path from traditional to modern society. Di Tella proposes a modified yet equally functionalist interpretation. For him, populism is the result of the convergence of two anti-status-quo forces, the dispossessed masses available for mobilization and the educated elite that resents its status incongruence—the gap between rising expectations and job satisfaction—and broods on ways of changing the current state of things. More generally, theoretical interpretations range from this functionalist view of populism as a road to modernize class-divided, traditional societies, to Lasch’s claim that populism is a response to the crisis of modernity; from Laclau’s initial neo-Gramscian approach to populism as a dimension of the popular-democratic imaginary whose class-nature varies in accordance with contending discursive constructions, to Cammack’s revival of a Marxist standpoint that associates the phenomenon with resistance to neoliberal capitalism, albeit with a functionalist twist whereby the changing status of neopopulism is read according to the weathervane of capitalist reproduction. Moreover, as Worsley maintains, the term is wide enough to encompass rightand left-wing variants, to appear in advanced and in developing countries, in towns and in the countryside, and amongst workers and the middle classes as well as peasants. It includes political phenomena ranging from the Russian narodnichestvo of the nineteenth century to William Jennings Bryan and small farmer movements in the USA during the thirties and the classical Latin American populism of the forties and fifties. The latter, exemplified by Argentina under Peron and Brazil under Getulio Vargas, was characterized by strong nationalism; the perception of the state as both a political bounty and the prime mover of economic activity; economic programmes based on subsidies and price

Beyond dependency or beyond capitalism? A critique of New Zealand's drive towards workfare

This paper attempts to critique, from a Marxist standpoint, the move towards workfare in New Zealand by examining the neo‐liberal assumptions underlying the concept of ‘welfare dependency’. Its focus is the Beyond Dependency Conference organized by the NZ department of Social Welfare, among other organizations, in April 1997, to promote the ideology of ‘well‐being’ resulting from work. The Beyond Dependency Conference brought a number of ‘overseas’ experts to NZ as part of the Coalition Government's drive towards the Community Wage, which is designed to replace the Unemployment Benefit. The paper concludes that this is a clear move to provide an ideological justification for forcing the unemployed into the reserve army of labour, in order to reduce the labour costs facing NZ employers who must now compete in an open, deregulated market. The paper also critiques the most common market‐liberal responses to the market‐liberal policies and finds that the Keynesian assumptions on which welfare‐liberalism rests, while always deficient in their grasp of how capitalism works, have been outmoded by the demands of the global economy on the NZ state. It concludes that a revolutionary transformation of the social relations of production will be necessary in order to go beyond dependency, and beyond poverty.

"A Very Eden of the Innate Rights of Man"? A Marxist Look at the European Union Treaties and Case Law

In this paper I approach the European Union Treaties (Rome and Maastricht) and the European Court of Justice's jurisprudence from a Marxist standpoint. I argue that the treaties and case law of the European Union (EU) revolve around the rights of things (commodities), rather than of people. People primarily gain rights within the EU by demonstrating that they embody exchange value and are therefore personified commodities; people are not accorded rights merely for being human. In essence, the treaties and case law have enshrined Marx's notion of commodity fetishism, which Marx asserted to be a social mystification, into transparent law. Focusing on the grand scheme of the treaties' jurisdiction in this manner also illuminates the role of the court as it struggles to balance the demands of capital's self-valorization with fundamental human rights. I then consider the consequences of this balancing act for the EU integration process. I argue that this phenomenon as a whole also carries implications for EU civil society and for notions of legal equality among persons.

“A Very Eden of the Innate Rights of Man”? A Marxist Look at the European Union Treaties and Case Law

In this paper I approach the European Union Treaties (Rome and Maastricht) and the European Court of Justice's jurisprudence from a Marxist standpoint. I argue that the treaties and case law of the European Union (EU) revolve around the rights of things (commodities), rather than of people. People primarily gain rights within the EU by demonstrating that they embody exchange value and are therefore personified commodities; people are not accorded rights merely for being human. In essence, the treaties and case law have enshrined Marx's notion of commodity fetishism, which Marx asserted to be a social mystification, into transparent law. Focusing on the grand scheme of the treaties' jurisdiction in this manner also illuminates the role of the court as it struggles to balance the demands of capital's self-valorization with fundamental human rights. I then consider the consequences of this balancing act for the EU integration process. I argue that this phenomenon as a whole also carries implications for EU civil society and for notions of legal equality among persons.

Introduction to Walter Benjamin's "Doctrine of the Similar"

Walter Benjamin's Doctrine of the Similar was composed in Berlin early in 1933. He did not return to this text until the following summer in Ibiza.' By that time personal and political circumstances had changed dramatically. He was in exile, separated from his books and manuscripts, and the earlier text had to be retrieved from Gershom Scholem, who returned a copy of the original from Jerusalem. The second version, On the Mimetic Faculty, was not completed until Benjamin's return to Paris, after a bout with malaria, in the fall of 1933.2 Many of the formulations of the second manuscript follow those of the Doctrine of the Similar. Yet, it is not simply a first draftthere are important differences of emphasis in the later text. A comparison of the Doctrine of the Similar and On the Mimetic Faculty reveals both an essential unity and consistency of theological motifs in Benjamin's theory of language throughout, but it also shows the growing impact of his interest in historical criticism. Benjamin recognized as early as 1931 that his philosophy of language did contain the possibilities of a mediation to the mode of perception of historical materialism, but this course was full of tension and problematic(GS, II, 3, p. 950). Nowhere is the complexity of Benjamin's ideal of redemptive critique, the reconstruction of the hidden presence of the Messianic impulse in the present, more evident than in his philosophical concern with language. But, at the same time it is apparent that he saw no clear and simple antagonism between his self-consciously theological ideas and his Marxist standpoint. As he once remarked: My life as well as my thought moves in extreme positions. The Doctrine of the Similar develops the program for a philosophy of language first set out 17 years earlier in the 1916 essay On Language as Such and on the Language of Man. 3 There Benjamin articulated, on the basis of his reading of the first chapter of Genesis, a theory of linguistic origin rooted in the divine act of creation: God rested when he had left his creative power to

Pragmatism versus Marxism: An Appraisal of John Dewey's Philosophy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 133 endeavor and have done much of the work that would still have to be done in using McKinnon's volumes. Although there is no denying the unique value of the latter, its limitations and its distinctive character vis-a-vis other Kierkegaard research tools should be clearly understood. A comprehensive index to the published works of Kierkegaard that will be useful to a wider circle of researchers--e.g., those who may not be Kierkegaard scholars and/or those who must confine their research to translations--still remains a desideratum. Indeed, McKinnon's work could even be a propaedeutic for such a more generally useful instrument. GEORGE L. STENGREN Central Michigan University Pragmatism versus Marxism: A n Appraisal of John Dewey's Philosophy. By George Novack. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975. Pp. 320. Cloth, $13.00; paper, $3.45) George Novack, for several years editor of the International Socialist Review and leader in the Socialist Workers Party, has written a detailed criticism of Dewey's pragmatism that serves to point up the radical difference between Dewey's philosophy and that of the Marxists, a difference that perhaps is most obvious in their respective conceptions of science. Novack, as a matter of fact, presents this book in fulfillment of his role as he sees it in light of Marx's scientific account of history. He argues that pragmatism is the national philosophy of the great American middle class and that Dewey is the foremost theoretician of pragmatism, towering "far above his fellow philosophers, not only in influence, but in moral stature" (p. 53). Dewey's pragmatism therefore represents to him the most thorough formulation of the latter stages of American bourgeois capitalism, including in its statement all of the weaknesses and errors that make necessary the next stage in philosophy and politics. Novack makes his case for the nature of science on the evidence of physics and biology and extends that notion of science to the Marxist theory of historical materialism. On this view, science proceeds by induction to the establishment of fixed laws that reflect the direct penetration of the working of nature, and these laws function as indubitable principles from which logical deductions lead to necessary conclusions (pp. 99-102). The nature disclosed by these principles and conclusions is a material universe precedent to and independent of life or human experience, a universe governed by causal laws, which operate only as efficient causation (p. 96). Among the characteristic human truths Novack recognizes as permanently established by science are (1) that matter is the efficient cause of mind (p. 90); (2) that the definitive law of history is that of class struggle in the pattern made clear by Marx (p. 158); and (3) that economic vaIue is the measureable embodiment in things of socially necessary labor time (pp. 105-106). In contrast with this conception of science, pragmatism is seen as a philosophy without orientation. "It is the habit of acting in disregard of solidly-based scientific rules and tested principles. In everyday life, pragmatism is activity which proceeds from the premise (either explicit or unexpressed) that nature and society are essentially indeterminate" (p. 17). The result, for Novack, is a philosophy that wanders inconsistently from one position to another, as he sees glaringly exemplified theoretically in Dewey's switch from the antimetaphysical position in his note "Some Implications of Anti-Intellectualism" to the development of a metaphysics in Experience and Nature. And Dewey's controversial personal stands with regard to the two world wars provide all the evidence Novack needs for the practical inconsistency inherent in pragmatism. Novack calls Dewey the bravest and best of his breed; but the breed, shaped by anachronistic middle-class values, waffles and compromises in the face of any real crisis. "In the matter of sticking to principles, pragmatism differs from Marxism as a jellyfish differs from a vertebrate" (p. 82). According to Novack, the wavering course of pragmatism is the necessary consequence of 134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the relativistic theory of knowledge common to all the pragmatists, the doctrine Peirce called fallibilism and which Dewey argued for at length in The Quest for Certainty. From this Marxist standpoint, over-emphasis...

Science and Ideology

To echo Denys Turner, the debate in New Blackfriars has by now ranged over so many different issues and mobilised so many separate arguments that it is impossible to answer every objection that has been raised against my position, nor shall I be able to take all the incidental points not raised directly in relation to my own views but which nonetheless warrant answers from a revolutionary Marxist standpoint. Equally it would be tedious (for anyone can read the debate for themselves) if I were to spend much time simply restating my earlier remarks and taking issue with every instance of their misinterpretation by my opponents.Therefore, I shall rehearse my argument only in very general form, and then attend to the issue which is central to the debate— the differential characteristics of science and ideology.My initial strategy was not to offer a substantive contribution to this debate but to carry out a reading of it, as it exists in certain texts, in order to expose the silences, incoherences and contradictions enforced on a writing that engages in what is, for the whole thrust of my argument, a project which has already failed even before its inception. Because, as I contend, Christianity is an ideology (as well, of course, as an ensemble of rituals, practices and institutions) and Marxism a science, and because they suffer a high level of mutual unintelligibility deriving from their very different epistemological statuses (the one, potentially at least, an object of the other), Marxism has no ‘contribution’ to make to this ‘debate’ except to define its character as an irresolvable ideological encounter.