Robert Merton may not remember it, but in the 1930s we met in Cambridge and took one or more walks together – 1 think they were along Trapelo Road in Waltham, then a rural lane. Our conversation must have been interesting, since I remember the episode, but I can only guess at the subject. Since Merton was working on the sociology of science in Newton's day and I had a long standing interest in the relations between mathematics and society, especially (...) at the dawn of capitalism, it is very likely that we discussed the Hessen paper of 1931, published inScience at the Cross Roads. The paper had impressed me, as it had impressed several British scientists of the younger generation, including J. D. Bernal and Joseph Needham; Merton's dissertation, when it appeared, showed that Hessen's “provocative essay” had made its impression on his work as well. It also showed that he was aware of some of the oversimplifications of the Hessen lecture, as was G. N. Clark (see Clark 1937a; Clark 1937b, chap. 3). The almost total omission of the religious factor was one of them. (shrink)

In this article I reply to three critics. Responding to Cinzia Arruzza, I argue that capital encounters a large spectrum of differences of gender, religion and ethnicity, as well as differences generated by racism. Capital is able to use these differences to its own profit in order to differentiate wages and intensities of exploitation and thereby divide the working class. Responding to Peter Osborne, I contend that my temporal-layered framework elucidates how capital organises and synchronises different temporalities according to the (...) dominant temporality of socially-necessary labour time. I combine Bloch’s idea of ‘multiversum’ and Benjamin’s idea of history in order to show how conflicting temporalities can disclose new political possibilities of liberation. Responding to Harry Harootunian, I articulate the relationship between my reading of Marx and the Postcolonial critique. (shrink)

This article argues that the life-works of Norbert Elias and Franz Borkenau can best be understood together, as they were developed in close interaction during the 1930s. Deriving inspiration from Freud, they took up the project formulated by Weber at the end of his `Anticritical Last Word'. However, in two significant respects they went beyond the Weberian problematics. First, overcoming the centrality attributed to economic concerns, they rooted the Western civilizing process in the long-term attempt to harness the violence that (...) was escalated by the emergence and then collapse of the Roman Empire. Second, they emphasized the crucial importance of periods of transition that follow an overall dissolution of order and mark the possible future course of events. (shrink)