Marxist Concept Research Articles

СОВЕТСКИЙ ПРОЕКТ ЭМАНСИПАЦИИ ЖЕНЩИН: ДОСТИЖЕНИЯ, ПРОБЛЕМЫ, ИТОГИ

The task of the article is to present a reconstruction of the idea and practice of the Soviet experience in «solving the female question». The topic seems relevant in connection with the growing interest in the Soviet past, on the one hand, and the lack of knowledge about this among modern youth – on the other. The article is based, firstly, on a general analysis of the Marxist concept of emancipation of women, which served as the theoretical basis of the Soviet project; secondly, on the description and reconstruction of political documents and campaigns of the Soviet period; thirdly, on the assessment of the real economic and social policies of the Soviet state, sociological and statistical data. As a methodological basis, a gender approach is used, the concept of deconstruction by J. Derrida, the symbolic capital of P. Bourdieu. The author comes to ambiguous conclusions. On the one hand, the Soviet project for the emancipation of women was certainly revolutionary for its time, both in terms of the goals put forward and in the methods of active state policy used. On the other hand, from the very beginning it was marked by internal contradictions that directly stemmed from its Marxist understanding – to make women «assistants to the proletariat». Formally expanding women's rights, public policy has never declared the goal of achieving real gender equality. As a result, a hybrid type of gender system arose in the USSR, combining traditional and modernization norms and institutions. Modernized social institutions continued to be based on traditional perceptions that the natural biological differences between women and men determined their social inequalities. Having freed women from the «power of men,» the state actually and legally appropriated this power to itself. Of course, this alienation of male rights to women in favor of the state not only contribute to the reduction of patriarchal principles of social structure, but also reinforces them. And, unfortunately, in post-Soviet Russia, these trends are only increasing.

Dinheiro como relação social: uma leitura do poder monetário do Estado na MMT

Resumo Este artigo discute as seguintes ideias propostas pela Modern Money Theory (MMT): i) o postulado da moeda como uma criatura do Estado; ii) de que o crescimento econômico pode ser obtido por meio de déficits fiscais; e iii) de que a ação do Estado pode possibilitar o alcance do pleno emprego. Tais ideias implicam significativo papel monetário do Estado, papel que avaliamos à luz de uma concepção marxista do dinheiro como relação social. Destacamos o poder hierarquicamente superior do Estado nesse particular, mas também seus limites, apontando algumas barreiras à aplicação das prescrições da MMT. De um lado, demonstramos que podem haver efeitos substantivos das políticas fiscal e monetária sobre a produção real; por outro, problematizamos a noção de pleno emprego à luz dos limites impostos pelas lutas de classe ao papel do Estado como empregador em última instância.

С. В. Бахрушин в Институте Красной профессуры: Лекции по истории народов Сибири. 1936 г.

The publication is to introduce into scientific use two lectures read by the historian Sergei V. Bakhrushin to his students at the Institute of Red professors in 1936. The published document thematically falls within the field of history and ethnography of Siberia. Bakhrushin’s contribution to this scholarship was significant: he provided a holistic view on the development of Siberia in the 16th–17th centuries and on situation of the peoples inhabiting it; and introduced into scientific use a rich body of archival documents. Thus, any unpublished materials from his heritage are of great interest, particularly, data on his work in the higher school. The document illustrates his manner of presenting historical material and his style of communication with his audience. Bakhrushin began lecturing to the “red professors” after his exile under the Academic Trial. In contrast to his published works and lectures, the document, being a written reproduction of oral speech, includes some errors and inaccuracies. The lectures are important for understanding historical geography and history of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. However, topical contribution of these lectures is greater: they reveal the foundations of the Marxist concept of colonization and economic development of Siberia, which turned into an interesting synthesis of Marxism and national concept of the Russian colonization of the 17th century. The document has been found in the Russian State Historical Archive (GARF). It is being published according to the modern rules of spelling and punctuation, but some errors and inaccuracies in the historical terms and toponyms are preserved and corrected in footnotes. Сommentary preceding the publication of the document is of particular importance, as it brings the source up to date and characterizes the specifics of dialogue in the communist institute in the mid-1930s.

Politics as construction of the unthinkable

Abstract This article is the English translation of a text originally published by Ernesto Laclau in French in 1981 as part of the proceedings of the colloquium Materialités Discursives held in Nanterre on 24–26 April 1980. In this text, Ernesto Laclau reflects on the subject of hegemony as a discursively constructed phenomenon. Building on research on the discursive construction of the acceptability of popular front politics in 1935 during the Seventh Congress of the Komintern, the author proposes a number of broader arguments on the notion of antagonism and on some of the problems related to the Marxist conception of totality.

The antinomies of the modern imaginary and the double dialectic of control

Cornelius Castoriadis made a significant and distinctive contribution to the development of the notion of the dialectic of control. In the first instance, Castoriadis formulated an important reconceptualization and restatement of the Marxist conception of the central contradiction of capitalism. He argued that capitalism depended on the creativity of workers while excluding them from effective control. Similarly, Castoriadis sought to extend the Marxist analysis of those tendencies present within the structuration of the labour process that may prefigure a socialist reorganization of production. Castoriadis’s analyses of capitalism during the phase of his involvement with Socialism or Barbarism are likewise informed by his assessment of state socialist regimes. In particular, this assessment provided important insights into the modalities of control in modern society and the complications of transcending forms of institutional domination in modernity. It will be argued that some of the distinctive intentions of Castoriadis’s later elucidation of the social imaginary can be traced to his interpretation of bureaucratic capitalism and that this is evident in his subsequent accounts of the capitalist imaginary. In his later theory, Castoriadis interprets the problem of the dialectic of control in terms of the relationship between instituting and instituted society. Castoriadis’s analysis of capitalism during the period of Socialism or Barbarism will be situated in the wider debates over capitalism at that time. Similarly, Castoriadis’s departure from some of the philosophical sources that influenced the development of the notion of the dialectic of control will be explored.

ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ ИДЕИ ТОТАЛЬНОСТИ ВЛАСТИ В ДИСКУРСЕ ПОСТСТРУКТУРАЛИЗМА (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ЦИКЛА «АПОФЕОЗ МИЛИЦАНЕРА» Д.А. ПРИГОВА)

Statement of the problem. The paper analyzes transformation of an image of power totality in the conditions of the openness of the information society system, according to the Moscow conceptualism of D. Prigov. The purpose of the article is to provide an assessment of the representation of a positive image of power in the Soviet mass media, through legislative acts (the law on the Soviet police) and its further deconstruction in the works of Moscow conceptualists. Research results. The article demonstrates the importance of a policeman as a power representative within paradigm of social semiosis of J. Baudrillard’s simulacra – through the formation of a simulacrum in its stages; of J. Deleuze’s simulacrum – as an image devoid of similarity, considering the simulacrum through the paradigm of Plato’s vision of being; of J. Bataille’s simulacrum – as a meaning that deforms being itself – in the original ontological sense of the concept of simulacrum; and of S. Zizek’s social theory of post-Marxism – as an illusory “objective necessity”, continuing the Marxist concept of alienation in the broadest sense. The author considers the representation of power in the image of a policeman from the third order of simulacra: in the need to conceal the absence of the original actual meaning, to the fourth order – in the totality of simulation. Conclusion. The problem of the totality of power and its representation in the literature is raised symbolizing the crisis of the existing ontology of identity and the transition to the ontology of differences where the signified is no longer identical to the signifier, where the policeman stands and “does not hide”.

On the Education Countermeasures of Marxist Concept of Happiness for College Students in the New Era--Based on the Perspective of Family Education

Family is the basic cell of society, and the first school in life. No matter how great the times change, no matter how big the change of life pattern is, we should all attach importance to family building. Parents’ educational ideas, educational methods and family environment are the important factors affecting college students’ happiness. Therefore, we should attach importance to the basic role of family education and give full play to the auxiliary role of family in the education of College Students’ happiness concept, so as to effectively improve the actual efficiency of the education of College Students’ happiness concept.

Space, particularity and the socialisation of production

Abstract Since the 1980s, there has been a considerable effort in critical analyses to design a particular research agenda centred on singularity and diversity in the name of avoiding “essentialistic and universalising claims.” The relations between generality and particularity are then not adequately taken into consideration while social and spatial objects are linked with each other only in external ways. In contrast, it is possible to analyse social reality in its both universal/general and particular aspects beyond their dualistic understanding. To do this, I suggest rethinking the Marxist concept of ‘socialisation of production’ by tracing the dialectical interplay between socialisation and value across geographies.

Understanding Marx's Concept of Justice

Did Marx's critique of capitalism involve a concept of distributive justice? This question arose in a dispute that started in the 1970s, based on the argument by U. S. analytical Marxist Allen Wood. The dispute lasted for decades, and spread to China. But if we follow Marx's thinking, we see that this controversy already appeared then, in Marx's critique of capitalism. Marx's theory formed in response to the viewpoints of the Young Hegelians, the National Economists, and others. Some key points of the dispute can be clarified by tracking Marx's critical thought, from the standpoint of both its historical and its normative dimensions, juridical judgment and value judgment, the theoretical dimension and the dimension of reality. The research draws in particular on the text of the new MEGA.

Toward a Marxist Concept of Community

Abstract In this paper, it is argued that even though the concept of community does not play a significant role in Marxist theory, Marxism needs a notion of community, and the paper sets out to theorize how to make sense of this concept in a Marxist theoretical setting. The paper claims that Althusser’s philosophy, especially his elaboration of the concept of practice, may assist us in this task, and it sets out to explore what can be gained by redefining community in terms of practice. In Althusser’s theory, practice and ideology are very closely linked. While recognizing the importance of Althusser’s theory of ideology, the paper then subsequently explores an alternative configuration of the concepts community and ideology. Finally, it is claimed that this analysis may help us to better understand ideologies such as racism and nationalism.

The pre-history of the communist future in Czechoslovakia: Case studies in architecture and revolutionary socialism before 1948

Scholars have recently written about the importance of Marxism and political agitation within architectural discourses of post-war East Central Europe. Less attention has been paid to the period before World War II and the ways in which Marxist language and concepts were already infused into interwar avant-garde practices and debates. This essay argues that a necessary corrective to this gap in the historiography is to write new histories of interwar revolutionary socialist architecture that do not presuppose the failures of the socialist project itself. These histories emerge from a time in Europe when Marxism offered an enticing alternative vision of the future in a region where economic and social deprivation was real and urgent. Three case studies in Czechoslovakia will be discussed: Karel Teige’s engagement with Hannes Meyer, the discourse of the Architectural Working Group, and early experimentation with the collective housing typology in Litvínov, Prague, and Zlín.

Understanding Fascism Today: Nationalism, Group Psychology, and the Return of the Old

This essay attempts to grasp the implications of thinking the Freudian concept of the return of the repressed alongside the Marxian concept of the return of primitive accumulation. By examining the ambivalence of the totemism that results from trauma and then juxtaposing this incipient nationalism with the process of primitive accumulation, the essay attempts to show the inadequacies of traditional understandings of fascism. It not only becomes untenable to reduce fascism to the juridical and political phenomena of a single nation state, it also becomes impossible to deny just how much contemporary liberalism is complicit in the intensification of the fascist social condition. When one accordingly compares the racist and sexist features of the colonial period to those of the postwar period and present historical moment, one is forced to conclude that we are living in the midst of the latest instantiation of an old process.

Estado e políticas públicas para a juventude rural

Neste trabalho há a tentativa de promover uma breve revisão de literatura sobre algumas concepções de Estado e a atuação do mesmo em relação às políticas públicas voltadas para a juventude rural. Na primeira parte, há a exposição de algumas concepções de Estado, como as concepções contratualistas e marxista. Logo em seguida, discute-se sobre os sistemas liberais e neoliberais, bem como sobre o desenvolvimentismo e neodesenvolvimentismo na América Latina e Brasil, para demonstrar como esses sistemas adotados pelo Estado influenciam na organização econômico-social em relação às políticas públicas para a juventude rural do país que disputa por espaço na agenda pública. Como metodologia, foi utilizada revisão bibliográfica, com a leitura de autores como Manet (2015), Tocqueville (2010) que discutem sobre as concepções de Estado contratualista e liberal, bem como Engels e Marx (1986) que apresentam um contraponto a estas concepções por meio da teoria das lutas de classe; como também Dardot (2016), Castelo (2012) e Burginski (2018) que discorrem sobre os sistemas neoliberais e neodesenvolvimentistas. Para a abordagem sobre políticas públicas voltada para o jovem rural, o artigo dialoga, Barcellos (2015), Galindo (2014) dentre outros que permitem visualizar as dinâmicas das estruturas políticas do Estado na atuação da formulação de políticas públicas voltada para jovens rurais.

Translating and Transliterating Marxism in Indonesia

AbstractIn the 1910s and 1920s, when Indonesian communists first seriously engaged with Marxism, they faced the questions of how to translate Marx's concepts from Dutch, the language in which they generally encountered them, into Malay, the lingua franca of the Indonesian archipelago, and how to make these ideas relevant in an Asian and largely Islamic context. Focusing on three aspects of Marxism—the ‘scientific’ nature of communism, class conflict in feudal and capitalist society, and the relationship between communism and Islam—I argue that Indonesian communists alternated between transliteration and translation in their exposition of Marxism. Transliterating ‘universal’ Marxist categories such as proletarian (proletar) and capitalism (kapitalisme) allowed Indonesian communists to speak in global terms and strengthened their claim that Marxism was a science with a universal terminology. At the same time, there was a process of ‘localization’, whereby foreign Marxist materials were translated to bring them closer to local cultural norms. Malay substitutes were found for Marx's typology of classes and historical eras, while Arabic terms associated with Islam were used to add a moral dimension to the Marxist critique of capitalism. These translations grounded Marxism in Islam and Indonesian history, but also elevated vernacular terms to universal status by eliding them with Marx's categories. The resulting style of Indonesian Marxism was multilingual. From the 1930s, however, Indonesian nationalists consciously moved away from transliteration, devising a more thoroughly Indonesian political vocabulary to replace Marx's terms, though one still clearly influenced by Marxism.

O gerencialismo e a educação no Espírito Santo

Este artigo é parte de uma dissertação de mestrado e problematiza a política de Educação Básica e Profissional do Estado do Espírito Santo, com foco na função do programa “Escola Viva” no direito à educação. Fundamenta-se na concepção marxiana, entendendo o homem como sujeito histórico, cuja ontologia se revela na categoria trabalho e na luta de classes como possibilidade de transformação social e na concepção gramsciana que analisa o conceito de Estado ampliado e de hegemonia. Fundamentada no materialismo histórico-dialético, a análise documental e as entrevistas apontam as contradições que emergem esse objeto de análise. Há três resultados em relação à implantação do programa “Escola viva”: o processo de desmonte da oferta pública de Ensino Médio Integrado; a hegemonização da “Escola Viva”; e o fortalecimento das relações entre público-privado.
 

Music, Art, and Kinds of Use Values

This essay uses musical and artistic examples to raise questions about Marx's conception of the nature of use value. I uncover some respects in which concrete use values can be economically consequential in ways that go beyond simply constituting an abstract precondition (as the basis of demand) for the saleability of commodities. The categories of ‘production-tracking’ and ‘really unsubsumable’ use values are described and analyzed, also with the aid of considerations drawn from the realms of music and art.

‘‘Amnarjaʿ la wara (We are going backwards)’: Economic Reform and the politics of labour in agrarian Syria

ABSTRACT Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted in Syria between 2008 and 2011, this article explores the consequences of policies of economic reform and market liberalisation for agrarian relations of production in two different but interlinked agrarian contexts. The theoretical discussion of Marx's concept of subsumption is used as both a point of departure and arrival in the analysis. From this perspective, the Economic Reform emerges as a hegemonic project of rescaling and of reconstituting the subsumption of labour. This involved both a process of devaluation of agrarian work and workers' livelihoods, and of their disempowerment through the reorganisation of the state.

Ideology and Historical Concepts: the Evolution of Ideas about the Caucasian War in the XX – XXI Centuries

In the article, the authors attempted to consider changes in the general concept of the Caucasian war during the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, depending on the political and ideological attitudes inherent in various historical stages. The key moments of this complex and ambiguous phenomenon are analyzed, which still cause heated discussions in science and society (name, dating, reasons, Caucasian muridism, problems of Muhajirism).It is indicated that historiography of the beginning of the twentieth century, as in the earlier period, did not dispute the legality of the establishment of Russian orders in the region. It is shown that in the Soviet period, the assessment of the movement of highlanders in the East and West Caucasus depended not only on a change in the historical paradigm, but also on a change in the general direction of state policy in the field of ideology (“national liberation struggle against tsarism”, “Shamil is a protege of Sultan Turkey and British colonialists","the struggle against the colonial policy of tsarism and against their own feudal lords"). Attention is drawn to the fact that the collapse of the USSR, the destruction of the Marxist concept of history, the development of national and separatist movements, the beginning of the Islamic revival in the North Caucasus contributed to the beginning of the active process of revising the assessments and events of the Caucasian War, which was the most striking event in the history of many peoples.The article concludes that, despite the abundance of work, scientists have not only yet to illuminate the little-studied aspects of the Caucasian war, but also to give an objective interpretation to many of its stages, based on scientific approaches, and not following political orders for the sake of one or another ideology.

A sociologia do direito segundo Marx

Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir as concepções de Marx sobre o Direito, investigando a hipótese da existência de suporte teórico suficiente neste autor para considerarmos a existência de uma sociologia do direito marxiana. A discussão se justifica porque analistas de várias afiliações teóricas, como Weber, Luhmann e Habermas, por diferentes razões, acusam a sociologia de Marx de negligenciar o papel do Direito e, particularmente, o papel do Direito Positivo, tanto na estruturação da ação social quanto na manutenção da ordem nas sociedades complexas. Afirmamos pelo contrário que existe uma sociologia do direito em Marx, e pretendemos demonstrar a coerência interna dos postulados e a lógica do pensamento do autor sobre as relações jurídicas e seu significado nas sociedades segmentadas por classe. Os trabalhos de Marx que servirão de referência para a nossa discussão serão a Crítica da Filosofia do Direito de Hegel e A ideologia alemã.

A value-theoretic approach to economic dynamics and evolution\u2014synthesizing different Marxian modules in a simulation model

The background for the present elaboration is twofold: firstly, the ongoing debate about whether the Marxian theory of value has been damaged (or even destroyed) by the alleged impossibility of solving the ‘transformation problem’ and secondly, the fact that almost all of the (later) economic manuscripts of Marx are now accessible due to the new publishing activities in the MEGA project. In regard to the former, it can be concluded that the rationale of the Marxian value concept is distorted by its Ricardian elements (including the labour theory of value). In regard to the latter, the later economic manuscripts as well as the few economic monographs published during Marx’s lifetime indicate that Marx was figuring out different modules for his value theory which are not really related to each other, let alone thoroughly synthesized with one another. Hence, in this elaboration, an attempt is made to reformulate this contested and fragmented value-theoretic torso by focussing on the non-Ricardian essentials of the value theory. This (de-)construction is then used as a basis for linking the different value-theoretic modules in terms of their ability to explain economic evolution. With this perspective, the dynamic nature of these modules is emphasized. Hence, in addition to a conceptual discussion of the value-theoretic modules, a simulation model is suggested for their integration. In this way, it can be shown that the value theory can be substantiated in a consistent stepwise fashion, and the conditions for generating the long-term results expected by Marx can be specified.