Marxist Social Theory Research Articles

The Absence of Myth: Writings on Surrealism

For Bataille, 'the absence of myth' had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had 'lost the secret of its cohesion', Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and the beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of profound reflection in the wake of World War Two. The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andre Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be. Introduced and translated by Michael Richardson.

Reviews: Review Essay: The Lonely Hour of the Last Word: Marx, Althusser, and the Critical Critics Dialectical Investigations: Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory, Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of US Cities, Industrial Property: Policy and Economic Development, Managing Fast Growing Cities: New Approaches to Urban Planning and Management in the Developing World, Acting on Ethics in

Reviews: Review Essay: The Lonely Hour of the Last Word: Marx, Althusser, and the Critical Critics Dialectical Investigations: Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory, Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of US Cities, Industrial Property: Policy and Economic Development, Managing Fast Growing Cities: New Approaches to Urban Planning and Management in the Developing World, Acting on Ethics in

Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory.

The writings of the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and his associates have figured prominently in the development of contemporary social theory. The Althusserian school of Structural Marxism and Modernism, which has produced a large body of work that extends across the human sciences and the humanities to engage a wide variety of cultures, theoretical problems and political issues. Despite the fact that Althusser himself is widely recognized as a major figure, the breadth, coherence and achievements of Structural Marxism as a whole have gone largely unrecognized. The author provides a comprehensive and thematic introduction to the work of Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, Emmanuel Terray, Terry Eagleton, Goran Therborn, Renee Balibar, Perry Anderson, Pierre-Philippe Rey, Michel Pechaux, Guy Bois and others. Resch's study demonstrates the enormous significance of Althusser's modernist renewal of Marxist and social theory and its ongoing challenge to post-Marxist movements such as post-modernism and neo-liberalism.

Die Philosophie und das Marxsche Erbe

What is the fate of philosophy as the spiritual weapon of the proletariat in changing reality when it is clear that the communist experiment has failed? The question pertains above all to the heritage of Marx's theory, not to Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. The latter are party-inspired and -dominated and aspire to be schools of philosophy, whereas Marx did not seek to create a philosophy but to realize philosophy in the material world. For Marx, philosophy and emancipation go hand in hand: man is emancipated when philosophy is realized in the world. The fate of the Marxian idea is set off against the development of dialectical materialist philosophy and Marxist social theory. In this way, the ground is laid for the conclusion that what is properly philosophical in Marx is restricted to a philosophy of history attendant on a theory of economic development. The conclusion is subject to the caveat that as yet unpublished notes by Marx about the true nature of dialectic may in fact reveal a more far-reaching philosophical conception. The realization of philosophy seems like a romantic illusion against the background of the events in Germany in autumn 1989. The working masses have elected capital as the basis of their future social existence, thus putting paid to the Marxian theme of class struggle. The fundamental conclusion is that Marx's vision of the task of philosophy is vitiated by a deep-rooted ambivalence: on one hand it is the ‘head’ of emancipation but on the other hand it neglects, indeed supresses, historical details, as shown by the example of the dialectic of class struggle and class exchange. This kind of suppression, neglect, comes to the fore in Marx's writing whenever he substitutes his romantic vision of the deprived proletariat for social science. This blind eye to detail is at the root of the later ideologization of Marxist theory and its subordination to local party interests.

The Premature Demise of Postmodern Urbanism

The articulations of the global and local have long exercised geographers, anthropologists, and others concerned with the spatial structure of society. This globallocal dialectic has recently been rendered acutely problematic by the burgeoning postmodern hyperspace, the coordinates of which are, according to Jameson (1984), so far only dimly perceived. Thus it is of some consequence that two prominent Marxist geographers have recently published books on postmodern urbanism. The appearance of Edward Soja's Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (1989) and David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (1989) provide an opportune template for examining the prospect of a postmodern urban theory. Marxists have, by and large, been highly critical of the postmodern turn (see, for example, Callinicos 1990). In keeping with this heritage, Harvey mounts a sustained, hostile attack on postmodernism and postmodernists; by contrast, Soja celebrates the cross-fertilization between the two realms. Both authors ultimately devise a thoroughly modernist reconstruction of urban theory. What interests me in this article are the ramifications of their responses. How were these modernist reconstructions achieved? What emasculations of postmodern thought were necessary to enable the authors to rescue the modernist project? And what are the principal consequences of Soja's and Harvey's encounters with a postmodern urbanism? I shall attempt to answer these questions by examining the authors' respective readings of postmodernity; their representations of contemporary urban process; and, finally, their reconstructions of a modernist urbanism via Marxian social theory. In concluding, I shall argue that Soja and Harvey have obtained their coherent visions of urban theory by adopting Enlightenment strategies that effectively foreclose on the promise of postmodern urbanism.'

Althusser's view of the place of ethics in Marx's thought

Karl Marx's social theory has often been thought to raise ethical questions at the outset. Yet many economists and social scientists believe social theory should be value-free and positive. Louis Althusser takes this view in arguing against the humanist interpretation of Marx. He advances a theory of reading for interpretation of Marx, and concludes that the “problematic” of Marx's later thought—as it arises from Marx's own distinctive philosophy—is inconsistent with the humanist interpretation. The article argues against this reading via this same philosophy, and defends a revised humanist view of Marx.

New Middle Class and Later Capitalist Society

Understanding the nature of'new middle class', which has expanded its size in almost all the advanced capitalist societies over the twentieth century, has been one of the most difficult problems for social theory as a whole. Marxist social theory has also tried to settle this problem, but failed to explain it except on'descriptive'levels. To submit a'theoretical'answer to this embarassing puzzle within Marxist theoretical framework, it is necessary to identify the 'concept' of this class. This article will analyze the location of the new middle class in the production process in terms of the circulation (distribution) process, using value-theory and examining the other recent theories on this issue. Thereafter we will be able to constitute a model that will show why this class has extended so far and how the existence of this class has contributed to reproduce later capitalist societies.

The Exaction of Song: Louis Zukofsky and the Ideology of Form

The principle of austerity has taken many forms in modernist art: masks, pure geometric form, the armadillo surfaces of Marianne Moore or the minimalism of Wallace Stevens, the hieratic sculptures of Jacob Epstein or Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Often postmodern poetry attempts to reintegrate the sentimentality denied by modernist aesthetics. In Louis Zukofsky's epic A, this shift in sensibility is displayed in his turn away from both formalism and a Marxist theory of value. An excessive formalist rigor is present in the early movements: the sonnet sequence of A -7 and the first canzone of A -9 are principally formal experiments, while the collage texts of A -6 and A -8 exhibit another kind of formal austerity. In the second half of A -9, Zukofsky dramatically overturns the Marxist theory of value developed in A 's first eight movements. Its Spinozist defense of love and sentiment prefigures the open forms, sentimentality, and increasing hermeticism of A 's later movements. Already in the first half of A -9 there are elements which strain against Zukofsky's overt Marxism. On questions of the origin of value and the nature of language, Zukofsky wavered between Marxist social theory and romanticism.

For Every Knight in Shining Armor, There's a Castle Waiting To Be Cleaned: A Marxist-Feminist Analysis of the Household

Households and their profound influence upon modern society have been badly and unjustifiably neglected in Marxian social theory. However, that theory and particularly its class analytics can be applied to contemporary households to help remedy that neglect. Feminist theories of gender, of the social construction of what “male” and “female” are supposed to mean, can likewise yield original insights into the dynamics of households today. We propose here to combine the two approaches into a distinctive Marxist-Feminist theory of the household.

Afterword: Remarks on the Roots of Progress

Analytical Marxists stress that Marx did not just want to provide a plausible historical narrative but sought ‘to provide a theory,’ as Debra Satz well put it, ‘which explains the real causal structure of history.’ But it is also the case, as Richard Norman stresses, that ‘Marxism claims to be a systematic theory, whose various elements hang together in an organized way.’ It claims to be able to trace the connection between different aspects of social existence where these aspects are not viewed as merely conventional or ideological connections but ‘real, objective connections... to be established by an examination of historical facts...’ For Marxists, analytical or otherwise, historical materialism is central in such an account. It is for Marxists the theory which seeks to explain in a systematic scientific way epochal social change. Keeping this firmly in mind, I want to start from a series of issues emerging principally from a consideration of three essays in this volume which both significantly complement and conflict with each other. Seeing how this works out points to a way Marxian social theory can be developed. I then want to set such an account against more discouraging conclusions for Marxist social theory pointed to in Allen Buchanan’s careful survey article on analytical Marxism as well as some remarks with a similar overall thrust by Jon Elster.2 The three articles in question are Sean Sayers’s ‘Analytical Marxism and Morality,’ Richard Norman’s ‘What is Living and What is Dead in Marxism?’ and Debra Satz’s ‘Marxism, Materialism and Historical Progress.’

The Tough Test and the Thin Theory: The Minimal Conditions Required for Capitalism to Exist

The Tough Test and the Thin Theory: The Minimal Conditions Required for Capitalism to Exist

Reconsidering Social Theory: A Debate

A recent editorial in this journal addressed the role and significance of social theory in an era of “new conservatism”. The editorial prompted a specific defence of Marxian social theory and its relevance for contemporary analysis, which in turn led to a series of commentaries which amount to nothing less than a wide-reaching reconsideration of the whole realm of social theory in urban and regional analysis.

The Marx-Darwin Question: Implications for the Critical Aspects of Marx's Social Theory

This article deals with the implications of recently revived analogies between Marx and Darwin for the critical aspects of Marx's thought. Good prima facie reasons exist to be suspicious of such analogies, since they seem to ignore the distinction between sciences of natural objects and Marx's critical theory - an approach that relates explanations of social processes to the intentional and reflexive qualities of human practices. This article argues, however, that the analogy between Marx and Darwin presents no threat to the critical elements of Marx's thought. More specifically, the article claims (1) that consequence explanations of the Darwinian kind are both useful and formally compatible with Marx's, (2) that this formal compatibility highlights both the nature and limits of Marx's explanatory claims, and (3) that the critical elements of Marx's thought stem from the fact that he relates a form of explanation similar to Darwin's to a human subject.

Legalisation, Communication and Strategy: A Critique of Habermas' Approach to Law

Since his first book in 19621 one of the guiding ideas in Habermas' social thinking consists in the re-establishment of the intersubjective component of human action and the recognition that intersubjectivity follows a development logic of its own. He argued that the critical programmes of Marx and Freud had been understood by their authors all too objectivistically and scientistically.2 Whilst historical materialism and psycho-analysis are critical of dialetical programmes because of their potential to develop from 'general interpretations' into forms of social (of the proletariat, the client), their authors primarily focused on the 'objectivist roots' of their discoveries. They neglected the important mechanism which could make their interpretations accepted and understood by the actors themselves, although this process of social recognition was an essential prerequisite for the emancipatory success of their insights.3 Combining Fichte's concept of 'selfreflection' with hermeneutics, Habermas develops a reconstructed historical materialism in which the always already subjective, interpreted social reality, which is reproduced by social actors, is taken into account.4 In that regard Habermas aims at escaping the mere negative subject/object dialectics and the of consciousness of Adorno and Marcuse. They were driven towards a mere negative and solitary concept of emancipation and dealienation in their critiques of marxist social theory, because of their unilinear philosophy of history and their monological concept of the revolutionary act.

Images of Barriers to Social Development in Polish Sociological Thought

This article examines the image of barriers to development and change of socialist society, as seen by Polish sociologists. The question of planning and directing social development is of crucial meaning for socialist ideology. Therefore revealing how the ideal type of socialist society confronts both the reality of social pressures and of political restraints illuminates the state of the theory of socialist society. Three types of theories are examined here: general (Marxist) social theory; social structure theory and theory of social systems. The reasons for which the issue of socialist development does not hold independent epistemological status are then analysed.

Habermas on rationality

The work of Jfirgen Habermas represents an attempt to develop and defend a "critical theory of society" with "practical intentions": the liberation of human beings from all forms of unnecessary domination. With the aid of an analysis of modern societies and an assessment of the developmental possibilities of the human species, the theory is directed at overcoming the distortions of thought, speech, and action that inhibit the self-understanding of social groups capable of an emancipatory transformation of social life. The object domain of the theory is social practice, which it aims not only to describe, but to criticize and change. Central to the theory is a recognition of the social and historical contextuality of all modes of human knowledge and action. Because of this recognition and its special relationship to its object domain, "critical theory" cannot be classified either as pure empirical science or as pure a prioristic philosophy. In Habermas's phrase, "critical theory" is located between "philosophy and science. ''1 This understanding of social theory derives from the Frankfurt school (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) and their critical appropriation of Marx and Freud, and serves as the starting point for Habermas's reformulation of critical theory? The major problem to which Habermas has directed his attention is the clarification and justification of the unique combination of descriptive, normative, and political elements present in critical theory. In particular, Habermas has been concerned with providing a justification for the normative component. This component contains standards that can be used to criticize the social conditions revealed by the descriptive component. In Marx's social theory, as well as in the social theory of the Frankfurt school, these standards were supposed to be "internal." For example, if a society legitimates its power by appeal to norms such as "freedom" and "justice," it can be criticized for a failure to realize,

Marxist Social Theory

On April 26, 1985, the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) sponsored a conference on Marxist social theory. Dedicated to fostering and refining Marxist theory and practice, the AESA holds monthly meetings in Cambridge or Amherst, Massachusetts and a yearly conference, this being the third. It was a busy day filled with four two-hour sessions from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. that brought together more than one hundred Marxists and radicals, primarily from schools in New England. is a logical place for such a conclave. For the past decade or so the Economics Department at the Univer sity of Massachusetts has been a center of Marxian political economy in all its varieties and permutations. Those who expected lively exchanges between neo Althusserians and eclectics, the major wings in what Sam Bowles referred to as the Amherst School, were not disappointed. The opening session on Power, Property, and Class heard papers by Bowles and Herbert Gintis and by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, as well as a comment by Bob Ackerman. Bowles opened by observing that he and his neo-Althusserian colleagues shared the common project of countering the es sentialist economism that has weighed down Marxist theory and hobbled the foot soldiers of the left. There were nods of approval, but agreement ended there. He and Gintis put forth an alternative notion of class, one that envisions coexisting social hierarchies grounded in property, patriarchical, and race rela tions that operate according to rules set by elites. Relations between the oc cupants of each hierarchy are undemocratic, oppressive, and therefore in ten sion and conflict over power and authority. Bowles and Gintis acknowledged their debt to liberal theory, but asserted they went beyond it by rejecting de fenses of property, the sine qua non of liberalism, and by insisting that strug gle be collective and in the name of democracy. Wolff and Resnick countered with a critique of class theories derived from power, property, or conscious ness. Drawing upon Althusser, they took a structuralist position that anchors class in the extraction and distribution of surplus labor, the first being a fun damental class process that gives rise to fundamental [read productive] classes and the second being a subsumed class process that underpins

Marx's Social Theory

Marx's Social Theory

Marxism, social psychology, and the sociology of mental health.

The political activism of the 1960s brought with it activism in the mental health field, broadly defined as antipsychiatry. Included in this social phenomenon are R.D. Laing and his colleagues, mental patients' rights activists, movements against psycho-technological abuses such as psychosurgery, Marxist and radical critiques of mainstream psychiatric practices, and feminist therapy. Some aspects of this broad movement have been influenced or even directed by Marxist perspectives. When Marxist influences have not predominated, antipsychiatric points of view still have much affinity with Marxism. This broad-based criticism of mental health practices and ideologies not only influences the mental health field, but also affects general Marxist social theory, adding to traditional Marxism a concern with feminist issues and the politics of personal and family life. This article explores the progress made by these antipsychiatric perspectives, and examines their limitations as well. Four schools of thought in Marxist psychology--Freudo-Marxism, orthodox-economist Marxism, see Marxist medical model, and "ideology-critique"--are explored to see how they can contribute to the further production of Marxist psychological theory and practice.

Book Review: The Political Economy of Socialism: A Marxist Social Theory, by Branko Horvat. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1982. In Search of Democracy in Socialism: History and Party Consciousness, by Svetozar Stojanovic. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1981. The State and Socialism: Political Essays, by Mihaly Vajda. London: Allison & Busby, 1981

Book Review: The Political Economy of Socialism: A Marxist Social Theory, by Branko Horvat. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1982. In Search of Democracy in Socialism: History and Party Consciousness, by Svetozar Stojanovic. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1981. The State and Socialism: Political Essays, by Mihaly Vajda. London: Allison & Busby, 1981