Marx's Thesis Research Articles

Sartre: Tarihin İtici Gücü Olarak “Bunaltı” ya da “Bulantı”

If we consider Jean-Paul Sartre's position in the history of philosophy through his own method of reading history, it would not be wrong to identify him as a philosopher of a period of crisis. Sartre reads history by focusing on periods of crisis or crisis in theory and practice, and in doing so he follows the Marxist thesis that every theory is determined by practice. The period of crisis Sartre lived in, however, did not produce the conditions and means for the transcendence of Marxist philosophy, nor did it make it possible to embrace Marxist philosophy as it is. This study will try to show how "nausea" or "depression" can be seen as an important element that can provide a basis for historical and philosophical movements when Sartre's intellectual work is considered in its entirety. Because, although nausea is an individual experience, it points to the common existential crisis of human beings as a species, and social crisis situations feed this feeling. In this respect, it will be argued that the inextricability of the deep crisis and depression that the earth and humanity are in, in our age, is precisely due to the lack of the feeling of "nausea" in humans. Keywords: Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, History, Western Marxism, Crisis, Existentialism.

Analysis of the Relationship between Marx's Doctoral Thesis and Modern Enlightenment Thought

Marx's Doctoral thesis, as the starting point of Marx's thought, has always been the focus of domestic scholars' attention. Marx's thought is the product of enlightenment, although Marx did not specifically discuss the inheritance of Enlightenment thought in the texts left by Marx, so in what sense Marx's thought inherited the Enlightenment thought is a topic worth exploring. In his Doctoral Thesis, Marx's analysis of Epicurean philosophy in ancient Greece is a key to understanding the relationship between Marx and Enlightenment thought, and the principle of agency in Epicurean philosophy can be regarded as the key to Epicurean philosophy. The relationship between Epicurus, enlightenment and Marx has become an inescapable topic in understanding Marx's thought.

Motion, Matter and Dialectics: From Marx's Doctoral Thesis to Engels' Dialectics of Nature

There is an underlying continuity between Marx's doctoral thesis and Engels' Dialectics of Nature. Although the two works are far apart in terms of time, style of writing, and specific topics, an exegesis of the core arguments reveals similar underlying interests: a focus on the materiality of motion; an identification of repulsion (and attraction) as the main dialectical feature of motion; and the philosophical implications of this dialectical interaction. The results of this exegesis raise once again the question of how we may understand the division of labor between Marx's main concern with human history and Engels' later concern with natural history and the hard sciences.

The Political Practice and its Subjects in of New Critical Theories: Complicities and Points of Adversity

These four theoretical bets on the “multitude” (Hardt and Negri), on the political subject as fidelity to an event (Badiou), on the “people” as a hegemonic interaction of heterogeneous demands (Laclau and Mouffe), on the political subject as an emergent subject of an egalitarian irruption (Rancière), illustrate the seek for new political subjectivities after abandoning the Marxist thesis that gives a decisive role to the working-class in the process of social transformation. Apart from this binding nucleus, they present divergences that place the question about the subject of emancipation in a field of confrontations, and bifurcation points. This work aims at delimiting the lines of combat, voices of consent and dissent found in these new critical theories regarding the connection between political subjectivity, and economic relations, the issue of the strategy, the nationalism/internationalism dilemma and the disjunction between statism and anti-statism.

О ПЕРЕВОДЕ 11 ТЕЗИСА КАРЛА МАРКСА О ФЕЙЕРБАХЕ: СООТНОШЕНИЕ ТЕОРИИ И ПРАКТИКИ В ИСТОРИИ И ПОЛИТИКЕ

The purpose of the article is to analyze the translation into Russian of Karl Marx's 11-th thesis on Feuer-bach. The main content of the study is the analysis and interpretation of Marx's judgment content on the correlation between theory and practice in the life of a man and society. Based on the results of the re-search the author concludes that the currently used version of Karl Marx's 11-th thesis on Feuerbach translation significantly changes its meaning. The study conducted made it possible to substantiate thoughtfully the necessity to change Karl Marx's 11-th thesis translation in his work «Theses on Feuer-bach» and give a new version of its translation, reflecting the essence of the German original text word-ing.

ОСМИСЛЕННЯ ПРОБЛЕМИ СПІВВІДНОШЕННЯ РЕЛІГІЇ І КУЛЬТУРИ В УКРАЇНСЬКОМУ РЕЛІГІЄЗНАВСТВІ РАДЯНСЬКОЇ ДОБИ

The article deals with the transformation of comprehension of the problem of correlation be-tween religion and culture in Ukrainian scientific atheism. The author found out that the initial po-sition for Soviet atheists was the Marxist thesis that religion as a part of spiritual culture depends on social and economic relations. Only negative assessment to religion was given in early 1970’s. Relations between religion and culture were defined as conflict, and cultural progress was associated with secularization. Religion was understood as outdated, retrograde, remnant of the past, incompat-ible with any progress.The author of the article found out that in the texts of the mid-80’sthe development of culture in historical perspective was connected with religion. But such a statement can’t be defined as a step ahead, because scientific atheism admitted the existence of religion in the past through social reasons. These reasons – as it was believed – will vanish in the future, in the time of communism. The authors who wrote on the influence of religion on culture in the past had to show its negative impact. In the book Culture. Religion. Atheism (1991) the author of the article found critical state-ments toward some “atheistic dogmas”, revision of methodological bases and rejection of some ideological thesis. Attitude towards religion of the authors had changed. In some way it reflected the changes in Soviet society in general. The author concludes that being permanently researched by the Soviet scientific atheists the problem of correlation between religion and culture has transformed radically during the Pere-stroika.

Transformations of scientific atheism in Ukraine during Perestroyka

The article deals with the changes in theory and methodology of the Soviet Ukraine scientific atheism of the second half of the 1980's. Three factors affecting transformations in scientific atheism are distinguished by the author: liberalization of state-church relations, desecularization, and public critique of atheism. Published books and articles as well as archives of atheistic institutions are examined on displaying three topics: approaches to religion, the place of religion in public space of the Soviet society and self-representation of scientific atheism. Tolerant attitude to religiosity, believers, and Church is found in Perestroyka's scientific atheism texts. Nevertheless, secularist and atheist guidelines were still present there - religion should pass away and atheism is a truthful worldview. Beside this it was found that scholars dissociated themselves from the classic Marxist thesis on religion and social history (e.g. class conflict approach), in that way overcoming atheistic dogmatism of the 1960-1970's. During Perestroyka the atheism has become one of the main research objects - the scholars of atheism had to ground its existence in the future society - society without religion. Whereas the scientific atheist didn't believe in the vanishing of religion in the nearest perspective. The author concludes that Perestroyka's scientific atheism was exposed to methodological transformations drawing it closer to the academic study of religion (Religionswissenschaft).

Crisis, and the Impacts of Crisis, on the Inhabitants of Rural Space: The Case of a Village in North West Portugal

<p>In 2011, Portugal, suffering the impact of the 2008 crisis, both for internal and external reasons, requested financial assistance from the <em>Troika</em> (IMF/ECB/EU). The Portuguese experienced company bankruptcies, cuts to salaries and pensions, rising unemployment and job insecurity and difficulties in paying their mortgages. Despite severe austerity programs and formal exit of the <em>Troika</em>, Portugal failed to reduce public debt. In this article, after giving a brief overview of development models, we will focus our attention on the impacts of the crisis in rural areas and the diverse perceptions of crisis by different groups and families. As a case study, we will consider the strategies employed by residents of a parish in the municipality of Barcelos (Braga, Minho), to reduce the damage caused by the crisis. Against the mainstream liberal perspective and the traditional Marxist thesis we sustain that rural people adopt an attitude of resiliency in relation to the austerity program and on the basis of empirical qualitative research methods we can witness creative familial strategies to survive: migration, exploiting the potentialities of the land, taking advantage of artisanal and commercial opportunities in order to cope with the difficulties caused by the crisis. </p>

Marxist theories of international relations at the beginning of 21st century

After one hundred years since the Russian October Revolution, it seems appropriate to consider and point out some of the key topics, dilemmas, and theoretical considerations of Marxist theories of International Relations. The cyclical movement of global capitalism in the period from 1990 to 2017 contributed to the revival of the Marxist thesis about capitalism and the search for ways to overcome it. Most of the solutions are connected to the more equal distributions of capital and competition, less in socialist revolutions. That is the reason why in the future we can expect more attention given to the original Marx?s theses. Research questions that Marxist thought in international relations today consider are: Redirection of the focus from the East-West relations to the North-South relations, which are characterized by inequality, injustice, dependency and exploitation of the countries of the South by the developed countries of the North; The changed role of the state - the transformation of state functions to fit the needs of transnational capital (transnational state); The combination of force and consent in the creation of a hegemonic world order; The global economic crisis of 2007-8, the crisis of the Euro?zone in 2011 and the crisis of the developing economies, especially after 2015; Application of austerity measures in response to said crisis, which leads to the impoverishment of the already poor, and a large gap between rich and poor; Strengthening anti-capitalist and ?anti?system? organization, movements and political parties, and their unification at the international level, as well as their links with countries such as Russia and Latin American countries. The study of these questions is addressed through the Neo-Marxist and the Post-Marxist approaches, with additional consideration of the ?New Marxism?, which represents a re-reading of Marx, his texts that have not been analysed by now and attitudes toward the non-European area. A response to the current crisis is such that the policies of states are being nationalized and tend to become the opposite of what was advocated at the end of the Cold War by the leaders of liberalism. By 2016, such a shift is made that the leader of globalization and the spread of international organizations - the United States - have found itself in the opposite position of what it stood for - open markets, democracy and integration. China is trying to bring other countries in the fight against climate change and supports the continued functioning of the global open market and Russia is becoming a major initiator of the creation of new international institutions in the Asian, European and Latin American continent. The struggle between these new contradictions can only be overcome in some new synthesis - the new world order.

The Schizoid Dialectic

Bringing together Anderson's work as a cultural activist in performance (the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home (www.twoaddthree.org)) and his role as Branch Chair of his institution's union for teaching staff (University and College Union), this performative paper will argue that a dialectical, agonistic blurring of boundaries across the borders of conflicting identities and interests is not only productive and desirable, but also liberatory and could constitute a small act of social justice. From lived experience the paper stages a series of arguments - in dialogue form - between Gary the anarchist art-activist and Gary the reformist trade unionist branch chair. Whilst both would agree that social justice is the 'bottom line' neither would agree that the task of institutional transformation is in part to recognise the dialectical flux inherent in their (Gary's) conflicting identities. Yet, this is what emerges when these identities are juxtaposed to engage in agonistic debate. The dialogues focus on the institutional context of higher education in particular, and suggests that agonistically robust debate produces not a winner and a loser, but a dialectical schizoid (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004) who occupies both positions, more or less, simultaneously. The dialogues deploys two texts: Karl Marx's Theses on Feuerbach (1845) - of which the union chair is enamoured - and the rewritten Theses on Winning the Union Back - which the art-activist performance artist has vandalised. The paper contains the full text of the rewritten Theses on Winning the Union Back.

El perfil fetichista de la contabilidad mercantil

Las frecuentes crisis del sistema capitalista con sus nefastas consecuencias para la sociedad y el ambiente han motivado la relectura y ponderación de las tesis marxistas. Una mirada retrospectiva a la economía y la política, en interacción con la contabilidad, revela cómo esta siempre ha desempeñado un papel alineado con los intereses del capital, ocultando verdades y maquillando realidades, con lo que puede calificársele de contabilidad fetichista. El presente artículo realiza un examen crítico de la contabilidad y sus principales autores a través de la historia, auscultando bajo la lupa de los planteamientos marxistas que delatan la plusvalía como resultado del proceso de intercambio de mercancías, para encontrar que la doctrina contable en ninguna época ha acompañado desde su trinchera epistemológica, ni en la práctica, los serios y científicos planteamientos de Marx para alcanzar una vida digna. El seguimiento juicioso efectuado a las diversas teorías y técnicas de la contabilidad desde lo propuesto por Pacioli hasta nuestros días muestra que su estructura apenas vino a tener avances importantes en los últimos cincuenta años, si consideramos que los diseños fundamentales de la disciplina apenas se han mejorado en su técnica en virtud de las nuevas tecnologías. Se plantea la necesidad de darle una restructuración a la contabilidad tanto en su conceptualización y corpus teórico, como en su quehacer pragmático y funcional, de manera que se avance hacia una disciplina que no cohoneste con la injusticia y el robo que propicia el capitalismo, en detrimento de los actores que durante toda la historia han sido desconocidos, como son el trabajo, la sociedad y el ambiente.

LA INFLUENCIA DEL MARXISMO EN EL PENSAMIENTO DE ENRIQUE DUSSEL

El objetivo principal del siguiente trabajo es evidenciar los puntos de encuentro entre Enrique Dussel y Karl Marx, desde lo económico y cultural, y mostrar como Dussel desarrolla más satisfactoriamente algunas tesis marxistas.

Materijalistička istorija ideja i studija arhitekture i urbanizma - slučaj Martina Džeja

History of ideas is a sub-discipline of history that deals with description and interpretation of creative work of thinkers and artists of the past. Martin Jay, as a central aspect of his theoretical work points out two Marxist thesis. 1. Ideas have, as products of intellectual labor, their own material foundation: this means that social reality is determined by those products as much as by economy - in that way, materialist history of ideas is constituted on the shift from the analysis of the economy (base) to the analysis of culture (superstructure). 2. Ideas are related to social practices: ideas within a society are not separate from material reality, but they actively shape social relations, i.e. there is a link between intellectual labor and political conditions of life within a given historical society. The paper examines the connection that Jay established between the history of ideas and the history of architecture and urbanism.

Fascism, liberalism and revolution

Marxist theory has always maintained that a strict continuity exists between liberalism and fascism, and has even proclaimed that there is a causal connection between the two. Therefore fascism comes to be portrayed as the ‘armed wing’ of the bourgeoisie. The Marxist thesis is weak for two reasons: first, because the connection between liberalism and fascism, though it doubtless exists, is considerably more complex, mediated and contradictory than it suggests; and second, because it axiomatically denies the revolutionary nature of fascism, which despite what Marxists claim, represents a rupture with the liberal tradition and demonstrates a relative autonomy from it. In the case of Italy, this autonomy arises from the fact that Fascism was born from the turmoil surrounding the genesis, the course and the outcome of the Great War, and was fed by fragments of philosophies and political theories radically opposed to liberalism, democracy and Marxism (though not to socialism) which arose in Europe at the turn of the 19th century. A birth in such a turbulent cultural and political climate could not give rise to an internally consistent and coherent ideology. The theoretical works of philosophers such as Giovanni Gentile encouraged liberalism to fool itself into seeing in fascism an unruly brother who could be put to good use by opposing socialism. This delusion enabled the rise to power of Mussolini. The revolutionary side to Fascism could draw on Italian populism’s latent revolutionary tradition which developed in the 50 years following unification as a transfiguration of ideological currents which contributed to the Risorgimento but which had been defeated by Cavourian liberalism. These included Mazzinianism and a particular type of radical anti-monarchism.

Confessions of a Sometime Opium Eater

Life can be frustrating. For others, not for me. I am thinking of “others” faced with me, the rhetor(ician). Let me explain this: so far I have lived my rhetor(ician)’s life by observing others getting caught in a state of “admiration.” Whenever I reply to the unthinking question “And what do you do?” with “I am a professor of rhetoric,” I wait for the reaction, I smile inwardly, sometimes pour myself a drink, and watch “admiration” enfold. Descartes: “Admiration is a sudden surprise of the soul that makes it focus its attention on objects that seem rare and out of the ordinary” (Les passions de l ’âme, 2:lxx, my translation). When, adding insult to injury, my interlocutor tries to get things back on an ordinary track and persists, asking “I see [do you?], you mean [no, I don’t] like [bad start for a definition] ‘communication’ [here, substitute a string of annoying approximations, as you please]?,” I don’t loosen the snare but rather tighten the noose: “No, rhetoric, just as the word says.” And I see how frustrating life can be for those who think and believe they know what rhetoric is—including that peculiar brand of unconfessed pedants: English teachers. I am at my worst, of course, when I am asked, “In French?” (they assume I teach elocution at a charm school). Indeed for Descartes “admiration” is one of the six architectonic passions. So, I make it my philosophical duty not to let my interlocutors off the hook on which they have snagged themselves. I should let go, I know, but I won’t. I want to exploit the kairos. The energy of “admiration” literally lies in “surprise” (and materially in Cartesian physiology); that is how the soul is “caught” unawares, forcing it to reset itself and its atoms, if it can. That energy (see how relentless Descartes is) is made of two components: novelty and forcefulness (“insofar as the impulse it triggers is powerful right from the start”). In sum: admiration has a knock-out effect, like a tennis backhand coming from nowhere and applied with full power right on contact, never mind the follow-through and all those courtly frills.

From Philosophical Anthropology to Social Ontology and Back: What to Do with Marx's Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach?

This essay is based on a reading of Marx's Theses on Feuerbach from 1845, especially Thesis 6 , which discusses its wording with reference to signifying chains tracing back to the constitution of Western Metaphysics. The claim that "the human essence is not an abstract being inhabiting the singular individual" not only rejects post-Aristotelian metaphysics, but also theologies of the interpellation of the subject. Saying that "in its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations" opens the possibility of a multifaceted ontology of relations. Further, it identifies a weakness in Marx's assessment of Feuerbach's philosophy of the "generic being." It is on this basis that applications to contemporary debates on philosophical anthropology should be reformulated.

Sobre prática e ponto de vista prático em Marx

O texto aborda as noções de prática e materialismo prático em Marx em uma relação de aproximação e distinção com as concepções do pragmatismo clássico norte-americano, a partir das Teses ad Feuerbach e da Ideologia Alemã, de Marx, e de formulações de Peirce, James e Dewey. De um lado, destaca a fecundidade da noção marxiana de prática e realidade como atividade sensível para uma interpretação renovada de noções como realidade, objetividade e conhecimento, e, de outro, chama a atenção para possíveis elementos essencialistas e transcendentalizantes no pensamento de Marx, que marcariam negativamente o conjunto de sua obra

Duration, Intensity and Productivity of Labour and the Distinction between Absolute and Relative Surplus-value

Marx recognized two distinct but also interrelated processes of increasing surplus-value extraction: absolute and relative surplus-value. Both these processes hinge upon the duration, the intensity and the productivity of labour, albeit in different ways. The increase of the duration of labour is indisputably related to absolute surplus-value and the increase of labour productivity to relative surplus-value. However, there is controversy regarding the position of the intensity of labour. Marx's argument that it belongs to relative surplus-value is disputed by many Marxists. This paper argues that Marx's thesis is correct because the intensification of labour and the increase of its duration are ultimately two opposing trends and thus should not be coupled in the same concept.

The Life Process And Forgettable Living: Arendt and Agamben

Hannah Arendt makes no secret of her repulsion from what she calls 'the life process'--the folding of individual into species goals that she believes becomes dominant with civil society. The life process for her can only divert the individual's energy toward a reproduction with which the individual may be at odds. (1) Arendt thus reverses Marx's thesis that 'the perfected political state is, by its nature, the [Gattungsleben] of man' when that life is finally able to be taken up for its own benefit by the heretofore alienated individual. (2) In Marx, it is civil society that constricts humanity by placing private interests at the centre of its world (pp34, 43) and so preventing humanity from appearing as it could be. Under these circumstances species-life subsists only in the abstract form of the universal citizen that matches no actual person; when individuals really become universal citizens, human species-life would be actualised. While Arendt seems to agree with Marx that present society prevents the alienated individual from 'absorb[ing] into himself the abstract citizen', (3) for Arendt, it does so precisely by co-opting individuals into a life process that is itself inherently expropriative. For Marx, the alienated individual and species-life are on one side; for Arendt, species-life colludes malignantly with society. On Arendt's account, the possibilities for living are exhausted by a defensive 'humanity'--a protected circle of civilisation in which one can temporarily craft an identity--and an aggressive life process, associated with expropriative labour, that perpetuates itself through society without regard for individuals. As most readings of The Human Condition have seen it, Arendt's repulsion at the life process stems from her denigration of the labour that she associates with it, and this position in turn generates her argument that (cultural) 'work' and (political) 'action' attempt to compensate for coerced labour. Arendt's perception that the life process is not separate from society, and is expropriative, is original and valuable. Caught up in the intensity of her insight, however, she never reflects upon elements of living that are neither species-reproductive nor culturally significant. Such elements are forgettable and incessantly forgotten; Arendt dismisses them as 'meaningless', and overlooks the freedom they offer from life process and civil society alike. The Human Condition thus explores Arendt's version of a dilemma discovered by Kant, Nietzsche, and Freud in different ways--the dilemma of the misdirected organism, burdened with a drive that makes its own existence difficult. The environment she describes there bears the scars of her encounter with such a drive: it is a stark existential landscape in which feelings of shame dominate. If we suspend Arendt's rejection of 'meaninglessness', however, we may notice that The Human Condition suffers from its inability to incorporate the forgettable register of experience: it is the absence of that register that leaves the alternatives sounding so bare. Far from being unique to Arendt, the landscape of The Human Condition is one of the characteristic settings of modern thought about bios and society. In the last part of this essay I'll read passages of texts by Agamben, Adorno, and Claudia Brodsky to indicate how the Arendtian construction of a meaninglessness that is nonhuman leaves tracks in contemporary thought, often continuing to limit it. While Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz and Homo Sacer struggle to defend against meaninglessness--a struggle plausibly inherited from Agamben's reading of Arendt--his Coming Community releases it, and suggests en route that forgettable living furnishes a better figure for freedom from the expropriative life process than Arendt's alternatives of work and action. The Coming Community, however, is the earlier work, and its promising notion of 'whatever being'--along with related strands of Agamben's thought--remains obscurely related to his elevation, elsewhere, of a subjectivity based in consciousness and shame. …

Kalecki's Dilemma: Toward a Marxian Political Economy of Neoliberalism

The financial crisis provides us with an opportunity to rethink the neoliberal form of capitalism. From a Keynesian standpoint, neoliberalism manifests the power of the unproductive class of rentiers to effect an income redistribution so as to gain profits at the level of circulation. The emphasis in our analysis will shift from the sphere of circulation to that of production, a reminder of Marx's basic thesis that capitalist production is a process of generating surplus value. The work of Michal Kalecki, which is useful for its exposure of the limitations of the Keynesian problematic, formulates a dilemma that partially hints at this theoretical orientation. The essential point is that, failing to understand capital, Keynesians are incapable of understanding the essence of neoliberalism, which is particularly well suited for enforcing capital's aggressive exploitation strategies toward labor.