Marxist Research Articles

Henri Lefebvre and the spatial revolution that never ends: Towards the reconciliation of anarchist and Marxist approaches in geography?

AbstractIt is widely accepted that Henri Lefebvre's Marxism had anarchistic traits, but few have tried to specify what these traits are, or what they mean. This paper argues that Lefebvre's work should be seen as first and foremost an anti‐authoritarian theory that uses space, rather than a spatial theory. Written from a position that refuses to be either just ‘Marxist’ or just ‘anarchist’, this paper makes a claim to the possibility of a radical geography that can engage with and beyond both.

Capture, commodify, kill: Legitimized harms and industrial meatpacking in the united states

AbstractSlaughtering and processing animals on an industrial scale are complicated activities that are both highly prominent in the food system and intentionally concealed from the public. The structural violence enacted within this industry deserves attention as a direct form of state-corporate harm. To this end, this paper invokes Tombs and Whyte’s imaginaries of corporate crime to understand what they might call the” ceaseless repetition” through which harms against workers, animals, and the environment in the meatpacking industry are enacted. From this application in the context of a Marxian analysis of primitive accumulation, we have determined the importance of capital’s ability to capture, commodify, and kill (CCK) – concepts we offer together as a heuristic device to highlight the types of harm done to labor, animals, and land, and to explain how these harms are accomplished. Drawing on the copious literature on meatpacking, as well as our own direct observations of the industry, this paper emphasizes the role of food systems for white-collar and corporate crime specialists interested in policy and social change.

Unravelling settler ideology: navigating treaty dynamics in settler-colonial contexts

ABSTRACT Indigenous activism in North America often hinges on the conceptual apparatus of the treaty relationship between Indigenous peoples and the settler state to ground struggles waged in a wide array of political, cultural, and social sites. Yet, a persistent question lingers: Why do Indigenous activists continue to emphasize treaties, despite a history of broken promises by the settler state? This article scrutinizes the ideological role of treaties as a means of concealing the underlying systemic violence of settler colonialism through Marxist ideology critique. I challenge the notion that treaties can supply a solid foundation for decolonial justice, and further suggest that a heavy focus on treaties and rights-based discourse risks inadvertently offering an ideological alibi to the settler state and legitimizing its claims to sovereignty and territory. This deeply complicates struggles for reconciliation and justice within the socio-political context of settler colonialism, and there is an urgent need to encourage exploration of alternative strategies for achieving decolonial justice beyond the structures of settler colonialism.

Clandestine Issues

Abstract To this day, materials surrounding the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution that live in the archives of Addis Ababa University are designated as “clandestine literature.” Their publication was a clandestine affair; critiquing the emperor of the then-oldest Christian kingdom in the world and eventually professing Marxist thinking, they amounted to blasphemy. However, building an argument for Ethiopian revolution was premised on another heretical proposition: that Ethiopia, world-famous for having eluded European colonial rule, was a client state of US imperialism during the mid-century age of decolonization. This article employs a selection of Ethiopian revolutionary papers—including magazines, newspapers, and journals produced and distributed across Ethiopia, North America, and Europe—to provide a genealogy of “US Imperialism in Ethiopia,” a composite, hand-transcribed document of the late 1960s that has since been destroyed. Assembling materials marked by both their refutation of and proximity to US empire, this article argues that building the case for US imperialism in Ethiopia was a necessary step to clarify and link Ethiopian revolutionary struggle to anticolonialism. In the process, the article thinks with and extends the archival designation “clandestine” as both the conspiracy of alleging US imperialism in Ethiopia and an analytic for reading other transnational networks of revolutionary papers.

A Marxist Analysis of the Metrification of Academic Labor: Research Impact Metrics and Socially Necessary Labor Time

Research impact metrics have proliferated in the context of the commodification of academia and academic research, being widely applied for the evaluation of the performance of academic workers. The existing literature on this question has so far failed to satisfactorily explain two key questions in relation to research impact metrics, namely, what dimension of academic labor they refer to and measure, and how their deployment in evaluation processes interweaves with the extension of capitalist relations of production in academia. Examination of the social constitution of research impact metrics from a Marxist perspective shows that metrics are indexes of socially necessary labor time, so that they indicate whether a given expenditure of academic labor has resulted in a use-value and has been undertaken according to the prevailing conditions of production and the average degree of intensity and skill. This analysis will also shed light on why research impact metrics have become so prominent in contemporary academia. The reason lies in the private and independent form taken by social labor in the wake of the unfolding of capitalist relations of production in academia. In conditions of private and independent production, the social validation of labor occurs ex post, namely, once that labor has been expended.

The Political Economy of Disability and the Nursing Home Industry in the United States

While the mass of Covid-19 related deaths in nursing homes has begun to draw attention to the corruption of the industry, the existing literature focuses primarily on the post-productive population (the elderly), or on the unpaid and underpaid care workers, while the discussion of the young and disabled, making up over 15% of residents in U. S. nursing homes, is largely absent. What can a Marxist analysis of disability tell us about both the nature of disability oppression and of the nursing home industry in the United States? Why are 16.9% of nursing home residents young disabled people? How are nursing homes in the U. S. funded? What political conclusions can we draw from this analysis? Building on the work of the late disabled socialist activist Marta Russell, I argue that the trapping of young disabled people in nursing homes is a result of their absorption by the nursing home industry due to capitalism's “compulsory unemployment” of the disabled and the segregation of those who cannot produce surplus value (Russell, 2019). Furthermore, private nursing homes do not “extract” from the disabled, as some have argued, as surplus value can only be extracted from the living labor of nursing-home and other workers. The incorporation of the non-working, institutionalized disabled into class struggle, then, is the only path to ending capitalist exploitation of the entire working class.

‘Beyond the nation state’: does China’s ‘new era’ education facilitate an international orientation to citizenship education?

ABSTRACT Despite a strong commitment to patriotic education, China has attempted to adopt an international perspective in its education policy for the Xi administration’s ‘new era’. This to some extent echoes China’s traditional culture and the Chinese Communist Party’s embrace of Marxism. Developing students’ international vision is one of the learning objectives of the current administration’s new-era educational campaign, with the aim of cultivating a worldview within the framework of Marxist ideology. Through an analysis of compulsory civics teaching materials supplemented by interviews with a group of youth educators, this study reveals how internationalisation has been envisioned in China’s recent educational campaign to balance commitment to the nation with the development of a worldview.

Social Evils and Its Impacts on Class Conflicts in Mulk Raj Anand’s Major Novels: A Marxist Study

This paper focuses on the impacts of socio-political evils and class conflicts portrayed in the novels of Mulk Raj Anand. Three novels by Anand—Coolie, Untouchable, and Two Leaves and a Bud have been selected for this work which has a connection with the Marxist approaches. These novels highlight the dehumanizing contradictions within the colonized Indian society. Through his writings, Anand reveals capitalism in addition to foreign colonialism, where exist layers of colonialism and bourgeoisie within the Indian community. This system develops intra-communal clashes to enhance the gap between the haves and the haves-not. Similarly, the caste system and the previous economic system, i.e., feudalism combined with capitalism, create a harsh reality for the oppressed community. Thus, this paper considers capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, feudalism, and casteism as socio-political evils that legitimize a process to dominate the society. It creates a contradictory social relation which is blissful for the colonizers but a curse to the working class. The consequences of these appliances bring class conflict, exploitation, poverty, hunger, cruelty, and many others into practice. Anand sets his protagonists—Munoo, Bakha, and Gangu – in front of the demeaning, hostile world which depends mainly on the bounty of the moneyed class. This paper makes a critical study to unveil the consequences of exploiting the evils and class struggle through the lens of Marxist criticism. On the other hand, it can be said that the paper emphasizes Anand’s attention in portraying intra-social clashes in colonial India based on economic exploitation and its consequences.

Philosophical Study of "People-Centered" Thought in the Perspective of Marx's Thought

Tracing back to the source of the theory, the human thought explains the dialectical nature of human development from the perspective of historical materialism, which is an important theoretical basis for China to adhere to the "people-centered" development thought. Therefore, based on China's national conditions in the new era, exploring the important significance of "people's all-round development" in the "people-centered" development thought is conducive to exploring and sorting out the philosophical implications and contemporary value of Marx's "people-centered" thought.

Class, Marriage and Conflict in Alice Munro's "The Beggar Maid": A Marxist Approach

Class, Marriage and Conflict in Alice Munro's "The Beggar Maid": A Marxist Approach

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.

Irresponsibility in the Exercise of Political Power: A Marxist Analysis of Animal Farm

Irresponsibility is the quality of not being trustworthy or dependable. In political arena, it has more to do with the traits of a leader who lacks a sense of responsibility and does not feel accountable for their actions. Indeed, irresponsibility in politics leads mostly to the abuse of power, that is, the misuse of a position of power to take unjust advantage of individuals, organizations, or governments. What is irresponsibility and how is it depicted in Animal Farm? Who are the characters involved in the misuse of political power in Animal Farm? How is this power used abusively and what are the consequences of it? These are the questions that this paper analyses through the lenses of the Marxist criticism and proposes clues of good conduct for the benefit of society.

Commodity-form theory of law, the climate crisis, and the European Union

ABSTRACT This essay reflects on how the Marxist commodity-form theory of law can inform approaches to EU climate law. The commodity-form theory understands law as a central social relation in the capitalist mode of production. The essay combines this theory with a Marxist analysis of the relationship between capitalism and nature, arguing that the inherent features of capitalism are the root cause of the climate crisis. Applying this to the European Union, the essay argues that its response to the climate crisis tends to reinforce the structural features of capitalism that have led us to the brink of catastrophic climate change. The commodity-form theory offers a sceptical view of law and argues that it must be used strategically as part of a broader movement seeking to transcend capitalism.

Nobuo Okishio: The Theory of Accumulation: A Marxian approach to the dynamics of capitalist economy (Springer: Singapore, 2022)

Nobuo Okishio: The Theory of Accumulation: A Marxian approach to the dynamics of capitalist economy (Springer: Singapore, 2022)

Afterword

In this Afterword, I use the observations from the special issue 'Music, Affect and Politics' to discuss what I see are recurring questions in the studies of music and affect: (1) the tension between new materialism and historical materialism and its implications for theorizing the interrelations between music, sound, politics, and affect; and (2) the affective politics of music and sound as a field of ideological struggles. In doing that, I push further the reflection on affective politics of music in relation to the capitalist mode of production. Employing a Marxist analysis of affect’s circulation, affordances, and dispositions, I reflect on the ways authors in this issue consider the material realities of capitalist consumer society, class-based habitus, and commodified forms of life. I take a historically-informed, process-oriented approach to affect and put into dialogue the theory production and the sociopolitical condition of global capitalism that shape our epistemological approaches. This perspective, I argue, can led us to critical approach to affective politics of music in the interrelation between the micro- and macro-political and the much-needed critical dialogue between historical materialist and new materialist approaches.

The dynamic spatial effects of education investment on carbon emissions: heterogeneous analysis based on north-south differences in China

This article is based on panel data from 266 cities in China from 2009 to 2020. Classical economics theory and Marxist political economy theory are used as the theoretical basis for the study. Static spatial Durbin model regression and dynamic spatial Durbin model regression are conducted to analyze the impact of education investment on carbon dioxide emissions. The results show that education investment can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, not only through spatial spillover effects, but also through dynamic effects over time. The implementation of education investment in one city can have a positive impact on surrounding cities, thereby achieving a certain degree of reduction in carbon emissions. Additionally, the inhibitory effect of education investment on carbon emissions is more significant in the short term. Furthermore, the study found that there is significant heterogeneity in the effect of education investment on carbon dioxide emissions between northern and southern cities, with education investment in southern cities having a more significant effect. This may be related to the industrial structure and climate of southern cities. The conclusions of this study provide useful reference for the development of education policies and environmental protection policies. In the future, the government can increase education investment appropriately to achieve the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And research has shown that education investment can suppress carbon emissions by influencing changes in energy and industrial structures. Therefore, when using measures to reduce emissions in education investment, we can focus on these two aspects.

A Marxist Approach to Bostonian Missionaries in Hawaii

For centuries, the United States has euphemized their imperial endeavours across the North American continent as they have continued to rely on providential rhetoric to justify their means of colonial expansion. This research critiques beliefs of American exceptionalism in an attempt to expose the hidden ills of America’s colonial efforts. It looks at the activities of Boston’s missionaries in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the nineteenth century and examines the way American identity and understandings of their own exceptionalism manifested on the ground via imperial pursuits. Sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), Boston’s missionaries entered Hawaii in 1819 with the intent to civilize what they perceived as an uncivilized nation. In colonial Hawaii, we will see the extensive blurring of lines between informal and formal empire, which this paper positions as a deliberate transition pivotal for the archipelago’s 1898 annexation. These actions will be observed through a Marxists-based approach to examine how the gradual subjugation of Hawaii’s Indigenous population occurred through religious and educational institutions. Religion and education will therefore be observed as tools used for grander imperial pursuits in colonial Hawaii. As this paper attempts to deconstruct beliefs associated with American exceptionalism, it will look at its origins—that is, Christian belief structures that informed ideas of America’s superiority—and its practical workings on behalf of Bostonian missionaries.

Heresy and Hypocrisy of the Church: A Marxist Analysis of Okezie Nwoka's God of Mercy

Heresy and Hypocrisy of the Church: A Marxist Analysis of Okezie Nwoka's God of Mercy

THE ROLE OF CONFUCIANISM IN THE IDEOLOGICAL DOCTRINE OF MODERN CHINA

The article attempts to consider the complex and sometimes contradictory system of interaction that prevails in modern China between the Marxist ideology and the Confucian worldview, which is historically a priority for this state. The main tenets of Confucius’ teachings are presented: traditionalism, an internal system of moral and ethical values, and even a strict hierarchical system of social interactions. During the 20th and the first quarter of the 21st century, Confucianism and Marxism went through a complex and sometimes tragic system of relations. From the complete prohibition of Confucius during the period of acute socio-political reformation ("Movement for a new culture" and the "cultural revolution") to a relatively neutral attitude in the intermediate historical period. The current stage of development of the ideological model of Chinese society can be characterized as a creative symbiosis between Marxism and Confucianism.

Suspended meanings: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s and Ritwik Ghatak’s ‘epic melodramas’

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s encounter with India is well known, but India’s engagement with Pasolini’s work is much less considered. This article puts the work of Pasolini in dialogue with the work of Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak, one of the most important figures in Indian parallel cinema. Ghatak discussed the Italian director’s work on several occasions. More importantly, Ghatak’s intellectual path and films have notable similarities with Pasolini’s. Both directors, Ghatak and Pasolini, pursued a ‘heretical’ approach to Marxist ideology by contaminating it with a passionate identification with the marginalized communities of today’s Bangladesh and southern Italy, respectively. Drawing from film critic Bhaskar Sarkar’s notion of epic melodrama, I suggest an analysis of two coeval films, Mamma Roma () and Meghe dhaka tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) (), in order to expose the directors’ complex location between Brechtian aesthetic, epic-religious vision and melodramatic motives. This article argues that these epic-melodramatic films suspend a final interpretation, providing an aesthetic correlative to the unreconciled position of the people the directors aimed to represent.