Marxist Tradition Research Articles

Worker Empowerment and Alternative Models of Socialism: A Comparative Investigation

Recently, David Laibman presented a comparative framework to analyze how different models of socialism might empower workers. In the Marxist tradition, popular control over the material conditions of life requires the ability to determine the rate of investment, plan the production of use values, and create an egalitarian system of distribution. In addition, both Marxist and market socialist advocates argue that workers should have the ability to manage the operations of the enterprises in which they work. These goals are not unproblematically compatible since workers within the enterprise must always operate under constraints. The Bolshevik experience with worker's control of enterprises clearly demonstrates this tension. Despite this proviso, the three models of socialism we consider which place popular planning at the center of the socialist project could, in principle, meet all four criteria of worker empowerment. On the other hand, the market socialist alternative permits planning but not the detailed form of democratic planning traditionally advocated by Marxists. In addition, a market socialist model will have difficulty creating an egalitarian distribution system. Despite these drawbacks, the paper concludes by arguing that the market socialist model provides the best framework for empowering workers during a period of transition to a more robust planning regime.

Solidarity: Memory work, periodicals and the protest lexicon in the long 1960s

This article examines the lexical memory work performed by the British New Left as it differentiated itself from the organised labour movement post-1956. It argues that activists use memory to reframe the meaning of keywords in the ‘protest lexicon’, and that this is an important, though usually implicit, activist cultural practice. Based on previous work in conceptual history and cognitive science, it begins by situating lexical memory work as an activity on the border between narrative historical memory, semantic memory and implicit collective memory. It then discusses the resignification of the word solidarity during the long 1960s, when lexical work was a key feature of the New Left’s apostasy from traditional Marxism. Finally, it examines the case of the British heterodox Marxist journal, Solidarity, outlining how it intervened in the protest lexicon by wrenching free the keyword solidarity from previous meanings, changing its historical referent and, ultimately, resignifying it.

Mending the Red-Black Thread: Marxism, the Black Radical Tradition, and the Robinson Thesis

Cedric Robinson's increasingly popular and influential work Black Marxism is best understood as a project of post-Marxist critique. Robinson's book, now regarded as a classic, asks a series of important questions of Marxism, but each of its major arguments marks a fundamental departure from the theoretical perspectives of both European and Black Marxists. The book exists in a historical moment of crisis for the left and intellectual retreat from Marxism; Robinson's relationship with Marxism and his place in the political tradition to which he gave a name, the Black Radical Tradition, suggests three main arguments. First, Robinson's critiques of the classical Marxist tradition — focused on its apparent economism and Eurocentrism — are based on a flattening of this tradition and a marked break from Marxist methodology. Second, Robinson's critique does not neatly align with the perspectives of the radical Black intellectuals whom he discusses, and indeed his conclusions are frequently in conflict with them. Third, the emancipatory project of Black Studies and the research programs convened under Robinson's influence will be best served by cautious and critical engagements with Robinson's seminal work. The generative questions that Robinson asks will be better answered through a materialist account of Black history, a syncretic understanding of Black culture, and a nonreductive, revolutionary Marxism providing the guide for political action.

Value and Productive Labour in the Era of Digital Technologies

This article revisits the so-called digital labour debate to clarify and problematise the many different positions in this debate. Synthesising the most promising arguments from the different positions in the debate, the article outlines a theory of digital media usage as exploited, value-producing labour. In doing so, the article criticises the Autonomist Marxist tradition and argues for the utility of a value-form theoretical approach to the question of free digital labour. In conclusion, the article argues for more analytical attention to the ways in which technological developments in contemporary capitalism can engender new processes of production and thereby also new types of unpaid value-producing labour.

Ideological Constitutionalism

A renewed interest in the concept of ideology is evident in recent constitutional theory. Ideology has featured prominently not only in restatements of traditional Marxist positions and attempted retrievals of the material conception of the constitution, but also in democratic critiques of liberal constitutionalism and theories of constitutional identity. The intention of this article is twofold. Firstly, the article defends the explanatory power of a conception of constitutional ideology that is centred on political domination and the ‘universalisation’ of contingent power relations, rather than more diffuse notions like the symbolic construction of reality or worldviews. Secondly, the article considers distinctive ideological dimensions of modern constitutionalism. An analysis of these dimensions, I contend, confirms modern constitutionalism's strong ideological ‘potential’.

How Therborn's Theory of Ideology Enhances Bourdieus's Theory of Fields

AbstractPierre Bourdieu's theory of subjectivity is perhaps the most elaborate within the broad constructivist tradition, and Göran Therborn's is perhaps the most elaborate within the Marxist tradition. These traditions emphasize opposite components and tend to produce different explanations on micro‐cognitive levels. But this article demonstrates a striking complementarity and ventures elements of synthesis. The two theorists are contrasted on four broad areas of social science: consciousness versus unconsciousness, identity formation, class, and discourse. Bourdieu emphasizes unconscious dispositions generally unamenable to individual control, whereas Therborn emphasizes formation of conscious beliefs. By bracketing the unconscious processes that Bourdieu captures, Therborn omits key mechanisms of social reproduction. Yet the mechanisms he does capture fit almost seamlessly into Bourdieuian theory on the mutual constitution of individual‐level subjectivity and societal‐level reproduction. Each theorist supplies what the other is missing for a theory of subjectivity with greater explanatory power than either offers alone.

Marxism and the Critique of Antisemitism

Abstract Antisemitism is an increasingly prevalent aspect of public life in the West, both as a consequence of the growth of the far right across the board and through its mobilisation against Palestinian liberation and Palestine solidarity activism. While synagogues are targeted and far-right politicians revive ideas of Jewish global power, it is the left, Muslims, and Palestinians that are continuously constructed as the source of the current rise in hatred and violence against Jews. If historically the Marxist tradition engaged actively with the so-called Jewish question, in recent decades the subject has receded from focus. This shift took place as other forms of racism – directed at Muslims, Black populations, or migrants – became the basis for reactionary politics in the West. This article argues that while some of the assumptions that underwrote classical Marxist texts on the issue have been found wanting – perhaps most notably the inevitable (or desirable) character of the trend towards assimilation – they remain important starting points for making sense of our present, both by their method and their political commitment to liberation.

New cold war or ‘world civil war’? Wertkritik and the critical theory of capitalism in an age of conflict

This article explores the contribution of Wertkritik, a contemporary tendency in German critical Marxist thought, to the theorisation of capitalism, and in particular its relationship with geopolitical conflict and war. Against traditional Marxist and liberal determinism, Wertkritik emphasises how the rationally organised ‘forces of production’ do not motivate the historical development of capitalism, but rather the forces of destruction. This article suggests that Wertkritik illuminates contemporary capitalist development insofar as it lays bare how the apparent ‘post-neoliberal’ turn to state-driven industrial policy is motivated less by a drive to unleash the productive forces in pursuit of a more dynamic or green economy and more by the management of the unfolding destructive forces represented in the new forms of conflict and competition arising between warring military and economic powers. The explanation this offers of the cultural dynamics shaping a context of authoritarian convergence provides vital materials towards a critical theory of a capitalism conditioned by increasing geopolitical tensions. Offering the concept of a ‘world civil war’ as an alternative to the rationalisations inherent in prevailing notions of a ‘new’ or ‘second’ cold war, this theorisation also offers pointers for an emancipatory praxis attuned to the current context.

Chinese embedded globalization: social-economic formations in dispute in world reordering

ABSTRACT This contribution focuses on a reconceptualization of the term globalization, drawing on world system theories and the dialectical concept of countermovement. The focus is the Social-Economic Formation (SEF) concept elaborated by the Marxist tradition to understand and analyse the contemporary ascendance of China and its power projection. Based on dialectic methodology, we argue that globalization is a contradictory process of interconnectivity between SEFs in different historical eras with substantive changes in the space–time relationship. Thus, the embryonic Embedded Chinese Globalization is emerging as a historical negation of Neoliberal globalization (NG)

THE EMERGENT R/ANTIWORK REVOLUTION AND MANAGERIAL ALLIES

The subreddit r/Antiwork and the eponymous movement it launched has introduced phrases like ‘Quiet Quitting’ and ‘Act your Wage’ into the media lexicon and garnered the attention of businesses from Goldman Sachs to Kellogg’s for its threat to labor force participation. Heralded by some as the successor to #OccupyWallSt, Antiwork is the other side of the Great Resignation for those who cannot afford to leave their livelihood. Yet it differs from #OccupyWallSt in its scope, which critiques capitalism as a whole rather than money in politics; its scale, with 2.7M members globally on Reddit alone; its longevity, ongoing for ten years; and its varied demographics whereas Occupy protesters tended to be educated white men. As Occupy sought collective mobilizations at government buildings, Antiwork fosters individual, less public forms of resistance to capitalism. James Scott referred to such ‘infrapolitics’ as weapons of the weak, as the lack of capital of the oppressed in all its forms often precludes more direct forms of protest. In this paper, drawing from digital ethnography and interviews, I examine the potency of r/Antiwork for impacting workplace behaviors among community members who are managers in their professional lives. In doing so, I explore the possibility of a broader class consciousness with an historically unlikely ally that transcends the traditional Marxist proletariat-capitalist binary and portends greater efficacy for the American labor movement than in the past 50 years.

Domestic and foreign Marxist tradition of the Northern Ireland conflict origins definition (1969–1998)

The article examines the perspectives of Soviet and foreign Marxist researchers in relation to the underlying causes of the beginning and escalation of Northern Irish conflict (The Troubles). The significance of this research lies in comprehending the lesser-explored Marxist heritage within the contemporary study of historical events in Great Britain and Ireland. The scientific novelty lies in addressing the scarcity of historiographical works dedicated to this issue, the depth of analysis they provide, and the absence of comprehensive comparative experiences. The research aims to investigate specific processes in the intellectual history of the USSR and other countries during the latter half of the XX century, focusing on instances of interaction or lack thereof between various Marxist schools of thought and trends. This is achieved by utilizing the Marxist historiography of the Northern Ireland conflict as an illustrative case. To fulfill this objective, the study undertakes a comparison of extensive sets of historiographical sources and internal subgroups of approaches present within Eastern and Western scholarly traditions that explore aspects of the Northern Ireland conflict within the context of Marxism. The primary theoretical framework draws upon the works of foreign and Russian Marxist scholars devoted to the issue of intercommunal conflict in Northern Ireland. The key finding of the research highlights the existence of evident similarities, encompassing logical, substantive, and linguistic-rhetorical aspects, between the works of Western and Eastern Marxists, despite the lack of direct citations between them. The research postulates several hypotheses concerning the origins of this phenomenon, including the potential impact of distinct methodologies on researchers’ perceptions of social processes and historical events, irrespective of the array of available source material. Furthermore, the research does not negate the possibility of implicit interactions between proponents of the English-language and the Russian-language Marxist academic traditions.

Reframing So-Called Primitive Accumulation for Settler Colonial Contexts: Ancestral Enclosures and Spatial Conceptions of History

ABSTRACT The question of land must be centered if anti-capitalist and anticolonial camaraderies are to be sustained between settler and Indigenous peoples. This essay suggests that enclosures of Indigenous homelands, or what might be called primitive accumulations in the Marxist tradition, are not always understood by settlers who are inclined to transpose European experiences onto Indigenous ones. Enclosures of Indigenous homelands cut people off not only from the “means of production” and material foundations forming a way of life, but also from their national futurity, living kin, and spiritual relationships. For the purposes of this essay, this experiential difference is marked by the concept of ancestral enclosures. Theorizations of settler colonialism as a temporally fluid and ongoing system of domination synchronizes with recent Marxist scholarship on primitive accumulation from Harvey (accumulation by dispossession), De Angelis (the continuity of primitive accumulation), and others. My argument emphasizes that the temporal continuity of primitive accumulation must be understood alongside heterogeneous ontologies, attending not only to the "when" but also the "what" of primitive accumulation. The concept of ancestral enclosures is therefore crucial for settler colonial contexts where it is not only the “means of production” that is seized, but also a living, breathing ancestor.

Stuart Hall and the Introduction of Althusser in Cultural Studies: A Thinker of Difference

This article focuses on Stuart Hall’s reading of Louis Althusser’s main theoretical works. Since the early 1970s, Hall has undertaken a critical confrontation with Althusser’s ‘structural Marxism’, rescuing those useful concepts to think cultural difference and identity, without failing to criticize his ‘superstructuralist’ interpretation of Marx. However, what Hall will retain as Althusser’s most important contribution is, above all, his theory of ideology. In this context, I follow an idea formulated by Hall that could be read as summarizing the theoretical and political scope of Althusser’s contribution to Cultural Studies: ‘he enabled me to live in and with difference’. By complicating classical interpretations schemes in the Marxist tradition, Hall’s Althusser may be read as a ‘thinker of difference’ who opens up a whole research program to reconsider class conflicts as traversed (or ‘overdetermined’) by gender, racial or colonial conflicts.

Secular stagnation: a Classical–Marxian view

We study a model of secular stagnation, income and wealth distribution, and employment in the Classical–Marxian (CM) tradition, with the purpose of drawing a contrast with established Neoclassical accounts of the topic (Piketty 2014, Gordon 2015). In these explanations, which assume full employment of labor at all times, an exogenous reduction in the growth rate g increases the difference with the endogenous rate of return to capital r. The capital–income ratio rises and, if the elasticity of substitution is above one, the wage share falls. Our explanation does not presuppose full employment, and features a crucial tension between profit-driven capital accumulation and wage-driven labor-augmenting technical change: both these features are defining for CM economics and have been emphasized in recent heterodox macro literature. Institutional or technological shocks that lower the wage share initially foster capital accumulation – which is profit-driven – and increase wealth inequality. However, the effect on long-run growth is negative, because a reduction in the wage share lessens the incentives by firms to introduce labor-saving innovation, which is wage-driven. The capital–income ratio must rise in order to restore balanced growth and stabilize employment in the long run; and the increase in wealth inequality is permanent. The ultimate effect on long-run employment depends on the relative strength of the response of technical change versus real wage growth to labor market institutions: we identify a simple condition that delivers either a wage-led or a profit-led long-run employment regime. We then test the model using time-series data for the US (1960–2019): impulse responses from vector error-correction model (VECM) estimators lend support to the main predictions of our model, and point to the employment–population ratio being wage-led.

Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction: The Black Worker and Racist False Consciousness

Abstract For W.E.B. Du Bois, the greatest factor preventing the unity of the working-class—both in the US and in the international scale—was racism. In this paper, I argue that Du Bois’s analysis of racism (along with the American assumption) is best understood as a form of what the Marxist tradition calls false consciousness—a comprehensive ideological operation whereby the dominant social order reflects itself in a topsy-turvy appearance integral for the reproduction of the existing state of affairs. A paradoxical situation arises—while united class struggle is stifled by these forms of false consciousness—only through class struggle can they be overcome. The destruction of false consciousness in general—and racist false consciousness in particular—is a process, not a singular spontaneous event. It is attained through the transformation in the mode of life one is engaged in when they dedicate their life to the struggle for the working-class’ conquest of political power. In the process of developing his analysis of the U.S. class struggle and the role of the struggle against racism within it, this paper argues that Du Bois grasps the pulse of the determinate forms the class struggle takes in the U.S. in a manner which prompts his labeling as the founder of ‘American Marxism.’

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

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

The Historical Specificity of Capitalism, and Its Consequences: Reflections on Postone’s Reading of Marx and Marxism

"Whether we think history has a definite logic of its own, or is merely the emergent quality of an irreducible contingency – it is usually taken as granted that it the same way in all its course. This is the case with some philosophers who argue against a conception of history as having an inherent logic. In this paper I present Postone’s critical reexamination of Marxian categories and argue that based on his project, we can criticize the presupposition of the “sameness” of history. For although there is no transhistorically valid “logic of history”, something like it is constituted by the functioning of capitalism’s elementary categories. Keywords: history, historical time, logic of history, capitalism, traditional Marxism, Moishe Postone"

Reexamining Race and Capitalism in the Marxist Tradition – Editorial Introduction

Abstract The question of capitalism’s relationship to issues of race, racism and processes of racialisation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary debates. This special issue of Historical Materialism on ‘Race and Capital’ seeks to intervene in these debates. In this Introduction, we situate the special issue within this wider political, historical and theoretical context. We begin by reconstructing some of the key tensions and fault lines within contemporary discussions of race and racism, particularly in relation to the Marxist tradition. Against those who claim a primarily oppositional relationship between the Marxist tradition and anti-racist thinking, we chart a historical account of key moments in which Marxist movements and thinkers have attempted to articulate distinctively historical-materialist accounts of race and racism. We then situate the key themes of the special issue – and the various articles that compose the issue – against this background.

Utopia After the “End of History”: Addressing the Crisis of Future in Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s Philosophy of Praxis

ABSTRACT This article engages in the contemporary discussion on utopia by exploring Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s philosophy. The fall of the Berlin Wall has led to debates about the “end of history” and to doubts about the possibility of achieving the ideals and values embedded within the Marxist utopia. To deal with this challenge, contemporary scholars have revisited Marxist tradition to recover the hope stemming from utopia. However, these readings have not taken into consideration Sánchez Vázquez’s contribution to this topic. With a view to addressing this omission, this article analyzes philosophical assumptions underlying Sánchez Vázquez’s approach. By exploring his Philosophy of Praxis and by highlighting its anthropological assumptions, this study demonstrates the extent to which his works provide theoretical underpinnings and resources for contesting contemporary discourses on the “end of history” and for recovering utopia after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Colonial Capitalist Heterochronicity: Socio-Ecological Rhythms of the Sugar Plantation and the Formal Subsumption of Historical and Cultural Difference

The Black and Third World Marxist tradition have demonstrated that colonialism is inseparable from historical accounts of global capitalism. This paper contributes to that project through an account of heterochronic capitalist time by indexing both its uneven incorporation of socio-ecological temporalities and its disciplining of enslaved people. To illustrate this, I examine how Western industrial temporal relations are generative of, and imposed through, its conflictual relations with Indigenous Taíno and enslaved West African socio-ecological forms of time within the Caribbean sugar complex. In addition, I emphasize that despite colonial capitalism seeking to merge African and Indigenous socio-ecological temporal knowledge into abstract labour, it is never a totalizing process. In effect, while colonial capitalism wields various techniques to incorporate Indigenous and African life worlds, there are always phenomenological remainders of cultural temporal difference that do not reproduce the logic of capital. Highlighting two contrasting postcolonial readings of Marx’s notion of subsumption, I argue that we can index the existence of a multiplicity of non-linear and cyclical forms of eternal time that comingle and link past, present and futurity. Inscribing their own emergent dialectics, however, I caution that preserved forms of temporal difference can potentially be taken up in service to reactionary political projects.