Presentation to the translation of Max Horkheimer's "On the Sociology of Class Relations".

ABSTRACT Donald Trump’s thinking is too erratic and scattershot to count as a real system of ideas. Steve Bannon’s version of populism seems significantly more focused, more self-conscious, and hence more open to theory-based critical analysis, which this paper attempts to provide. That is not at all to say, however, that Bannon’s ideas achieve intellectual coherence or consistency. Close examination of the defining components of his worldview suggest the opposite. Still, engagement with contemporary right-populism cannot, or should not, avoid Bannon (...) and his attempts to cook up a new ideology. (shrink)

Adam Tooze’sThe Wages of Destructionhas received a fair amount of scholarly attention since its publication in 2006, particularly among historians. What has received much less attention, however, are the many theoretical insights to be gleaned from Tooze’s history of the inner-workings of the Nazi war economy in the lead-up to the Second World War. This is particularly true of the numerous theoretical subjects and themes covered by Tooze of direct relevance to Marxist theories and understandings of Nazism. From his analysis (...) of the relationship between Nazi economic policies and Hitler’s geopolitical objectives to the relations between capital and state to the specificities of Nazism as a distinct ideological and cultural apparatus to the role of the Nazi regime in triggering the 1939 cataclysm – in all these ways, Tooze’s work speaks to a number of core issues at the heart of Marxist debates on Nazism, fascism, and the causes of the Second World War. This introduction outlines a number of these themes and more in Tooze’s work, contextualising them within extant Marxist debates on Nazism, before then going on to highlight some of the main arguments and criticisms advanced in the symposium. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to investigate the connection between the Frankfurt School and the events of 1968. Accordingly, the paper focuses only on those important members of the School whose philosophical, ideological or practical influence on the events is clearly detectable. This means dealing with four thinkers in three sections: the influence of Adorno and Horkheimer is treated in the same section, whereas the work of Marcuse and Habermas is examined in separate sections. The three sections represent three (...) different approaches. Adorno and Horkheimer are passive onlookers of the events their passivity being rooted in their skeptical philosophical thinking. The initially also passive and pessimist Marcuse slowly rises to the role of the ’prophet’ of the students. And the early Habermas’ critical analysis paves the way for his initially pessimist, but later more optimistic reformist attitude. The paper is structured accordingly: after introductory thoughts, the mentioned thinkers are treated in separate sections that contain historo-philosophical analysis of their relevant works. (shrink)

Hobbes's Leviathan transformed forever the meaning of the term, long debated by Biblical commentators. Alternatively, in the Book of Job chapter 41, a great chthonic beast, or Lucifer?like ?King of all the Children of Pride?, Leviathan for Hobbes was a figure for the modern state. Recent work by Quentin Skinner and Noel Malcolm treats Leviathan as in part a story about representation. But by juxtaposing the thesis of Carl Schmitt, juridical architect of the Third Reich, and author if his own (...) startling Leviathan, which reads the Biblical Beast as representing the state as demonic machine, we see not only Hobbes's purpose in invoking the God of fear, but also how it served as a self?fulfilling prophecy. (shrink)

An analysis of theological and philosophical understandings of debt and its role in contemporary capitalism. Max Weber’s account of the rise of capitalism focused on his concept of a Protestant ethic, valuing diligence in earning and saving money but restraint in spending it. However, such individual restraint is foreign to contemporary understandings of finance, which treat ever-increasing consumption and debt as natural, almost essential, for maintaining the economic cycle of buying and selling. In The Debt of the Living, Elettra Stimilli (...) returns to this idea of restraint as ascesis, by analyzing theological and philosophical understandings of debt drawn from a range of figures, including Saint Paul, Schmitt and Agamben, Benjamin and Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and Foucault. Central to this analysis is the logic of “profit for profit’s sake”—an aspect of Weber’s work that Stimilli believes has been given insufficient attention. Following Foucault, she identifies this as the original mechanism of a capitalist dispositif that feeds not on a goal-directed rationality, but on the self-determining character of human agency. Ascesis is fundamental not because it is characterized by renunciation, but because the self-discipline it imposes converts the properly human quality of action without a predetermined goal into a lack, a fault, or a state of guilt: a debt that cannot be settled. Stimilli argues that this lack, which is impossible to fill, should be seen as the basis of the economy of hedonism and consumption that has governed global economies in recent years and as the premise of the current economy of debt. Elettra Stimilli is research fellow of theoretical philosophy at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. Arianna Bove is the translator of many books, including Factory of Strategy: Thirty-Three Lessons on Lenin, by Antonio Negri. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 139-157, June 2022.

This article turns to the issue of political representation that I argue is central to all forms of political thought and practice of the modern period. Taking political representation as its object, I argue that its crisis—that comes to a head in the travails of the Weimar Republic—provided the opportunity for forms of neoliberal representation to displace political representation with purportedly “neutral”, non-partisan and thus “fair” representational tools. In contrast, I seek to develop the idea of “self-representation” with a discussion (...) of paths not chosen at Weimar and via Italianoperaismo’s reflections on “class composition”, which combines collective self-representation with political organization. Representing each member of a collective to another as it develops epistemic and cartographic tools, it constructs group solidarity, organization and the capacity to act as it reclaims the collectivity alienated in modern political forms of representation and excluded from neoliberal ones. (shrink)

This Introduction to Rosenberg’s essay starts with a brief synopsis of his life, then summarises the key arguments of the essay itself before looking briefly at the twin issues of the social base of the fascist parties and the passive complicity/compliance of ‘ordinary Germans’, as the literature now terms whole sectors of the civilian population that were defined by their apathy or moral indifference to the horrors of the Nazi state.

The article examines Hans Kelsen's and Carl Schmitt's lines of thought concerning the relationship between constitutional and international law, with the aim of ascertaining their respective ability to capture developments affecting that relationship, even those of a contradictory nature. It is significant that, while the rise of wars of humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War era has evoked Schmitt's concept of the bellum iustum, the evolution in the direction of the “constitutionalisation of international law” has drawn attention to Kelsen's theoretical (...) approach. However, these assumptions rely heavily on the opposing objectives that the two authors claimed to pursue, such as, respectively, the search for the ultimate seat of political power and a pure theory of law. Things are more complicated, both because these objectives by no means exhaust Kelsen's and Schmitt's lines of thought, and because the conception of sovereignty as omnipotence, at the core of the Weimar controversy, is now behind us. (shrink)

El artículo aborda la Teoría de la Constitución de Carl Schmitt, atendiendo a su doble acepción de teoría general de la constitución moderna y cuerpo de doctrina acerca de la constitución de Weimar. El primer apartado presenta la sistemática de la teoría positiva de la constitución moderna, reponiendo sus dos elementos estructurantes: la forma política resultante de la aplicación de los principios político-formales de identidad y representación, y las formas de legislación y gobierno propias del Estado de derecho burgués. La (...) segunda parte se centra en el cuerpo de doctrina acerca de la constitución de Weimar que Schmitt desarrolla apelando a las categorías presentadas en la primera parte. En especial, se analizan sus implicancias para comprender la posición de Schmitt respecto a los principales desafíos doctrinarios de la época, contrastando sus posiciones con las de otros grandes juristas contemporáneos. Finalmente, se recapitulan las conexiones de sentido entre los criterios que informan la teoría general de la constitución moderna y la doctrina de la constitución de Weimar, destacando las peculiaridades del esfuerzo de Schmitt por subrayar la integridad de la constitución frente a los diversos modos de relativización que atribuye tanto al positivismo jurídico como a ciertas posiciones políticas de su época. (shrink)