As civil liberties are shredded and powerful corporate and political force engage in a range of legal illegalities, the state itself becomes a model for corruption and violence. Violence has become not only the foundation of corporate sovereignty, it has also become the ideological scaffolding of common sense. Under casino capitalism, the state has become the enemy of justice and offers a prototype for types of misguided rebellion that mimic the lawlessness enshrined by corporate sovereignty and the repressive state apparatuses. (...) Under such circumstances, the force of action does not reside in deliberation, compassion, justice, equality and freedom. The state of exception has become the rule serving to legitimate illegality and normalizing violence and force as the only mediating dynamic worth utilizing to solve problems. In addition, subjectivity itself has become both hyper-masculinized, transformed, and subordinated to the celebration of an aggressive, violent and hyper-competitive war machine. Evidence of the hardening of the culture and the ongoing visibility of a pathological form of hyper-masculinity abounds in polices that amount to a permanent war on the poor, women, immigrants, workers, public servants, Muslims, poor minorities and those adults marginalized by class and race. Casino capitalism's paranoiac and increasingly repressive institutional and ideological apparatuses live in fear of dissent, critical rationality and the possibility of collective struggles moved by the desire for justice and a radical democracy. This is precisely where questions about education and resistance connect to broader debates about producing critical agents capable of acting as engaged and responsible citizens in a substantive democracy. Neoliberalism, as a dominant ideology, changed not only ways of thinking, but, consequently, practices. Evidently, a process of transformation like the one imposed by the hegemony of neoliberal ideology does not take place without resistance-conscious or not-and here it is the role of the State (and its ideological apparatus) in the subjection of individuals. For Fisher, there is no element that shows that the public actually embraced neoliberal doctrines with enthusiasm. For Mark Fisher, capitalist realism is \\\"an expression of class decomposition, and a consequence of class disintegration\\\". The phenomenon resulting from this discontent that finds few ways to express itself that are not individual is named by Mark Fisher as the \\\"privatization of stress\\\", which easily converts into depression and other psychological suffering. Although both its neoliberal and neoconservative components are opposed to bureaucracy in favour of privatised decentralisation, in practice capitalist realism involves the normalisation of bureaucracy and the creation of additional and unnecessary labour. Although pyramidal hierarchies are flattened, the increase and establishment of constant communication through technology has led to people at the same level surveilling each other. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s psychological theory of the drives calls into question two common assumptions of ideology critique: 1) that ideology is fetishistic, substituting false satisfactions for true ones, and 2) that ideology is falsification; it conceals exploitation. In contrast, a Nietzschean approach begins from the truth of ideology: that capitalism produces an authentic contentment that makes the concealment of exploitation unnecessary. And it critiques ideology from the same standpoint: capitalism produces pleasures too efficiently, an overproduction of desire that is impossible to sustain (...) indefinitely. Nietzsche’s concept of the drives (Trieben) is grounded in his theory of the will to power. In contrast to Freud’s view that drives aim at satiation, pleasure through stimulus reduction, in Nietzsche’s view, they aim primarily at the “feeling of power” and the “happiness of high tension.” Nietzsche sees the desire for satiation as a symptom of weakness, a secondary, contingent aim that is incompatible with the fundamental drive to sustain and heighten the feeling of tension that accompanies strong desire. While the Freudian subject desires satisfaction, the Nietzschean subject is paradoxically frustrated by satisfaction, finding happiness in desire sustained by resistance and tension. If individuals desire desire as such, then exploitation and immiseration are not necessarily incompatible with their happiness. Consequently, we must reject the view that ideology is fetishistic: capitalism does not depend on an ersatz satisfaction in the commodity, a transferal of value from quality to quantity, use value to exchange value. Capitalism authentically satisfies desire precisely through its exploitative economic structure. The independence and unpredictability of the value of commodities and the immiseration of laborers produces discontents that enhance rather than frustrate desire. By continually introducing new, initially inaccessible commodities, then overcoming their inaccessibility through overproduction, capitalism sustains and intensifies desires. It promotes happiness not by satisfying wants but generating them, feeding the desire for desire, for the intensity of feeling that the brief pleasures of satiation would destroy. The commodity is not, then, a fetish, not a false satisfaction or aim, but a means, a prop that supports and sustains satisfaction as continued desire. Consequently, we must also reject the view that ideology is falsification: capitalism’s efficient production of happiness obviates the need to conceal its nature. Individuals tolerate capitalism not out of ignorance of exploitation but indifference to it; they prefer real happiness to a merely possible justice that might come at its expense. The critique of ideology must begin by acknowledging its truth. Rather than deny the real satisfactions of capitalism, it must demonstrate that they are unsustainable. (shrink)

The relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis has been frequently debated; nonetheless, one rarely comes upon a thoroughgoing, in-depth treatment of this connection. The Capitalist Unconscious is therefore a belated but welcome inquiry into the points of intersection between the two, a project whose contours could be traced back to the works of Marx and Freud. It is in the work of Lacan, however, that this correlation between Marxism and Psychoanalysis becomes visible. This article explores Samo Tomšič’s analysis of the (...) logical, epistemological, and political continuity of Marx’s critique of political economy and Freud’s theory of libidinal economy, meanwhile appraising the possible emancipatory potential of this project. (shrink)

Global capitalism is the politico-economic structure that subjects everything to its interests. It creates unimaginable poverty, ecological crisis, the ongoing pandemic, wars without end, and other horrors that humans can inflict against each other. Within this capitalist configuration, an idea and a political movement emerged that seeks to destroy the foundation of this system. Communism is this idea and political movement. The foundation of capitalism that they wanted to dismantle is private bourgeois property. In general, the Bolshevik revolution did (...) destroy that foundation, but this was not enough. It only resulted in the eventual transformation of the party as the collectivized bourgeoisie with its authoritarian state apparatus. It transformed this bourgeois-liberal capitalism into state-run capitalism. The revolutionary class that was supposed to be emancipated, remained as they were in capitalism, producer of the means of subsistence and surplus value. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean that the idea of communism is already dead. It should have been the perfect time to reassess the theoretical foundations of communism and test the ideas of Marx and others in their practical-idealistic form. The production and reproduction of capitalist social relations create everyday consciousness for all capitalist subjects, even to passionate communist revolutionaries. This is how ideology works. But the continuing havoc of global capitalism continues. The Left goes on with their same old traditions. They do not see that precisely ii their unceasing failure is one of the conditions for capitalism and its state apparatus to have the capacity to reinvent itself. In Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slovenian-born philosopher and global thinker Slavoj Zizek said that capitalism is incapable of solving the Covid-19 crisis. In his more than a thousand-page book paradoxically called Less Than Nothing, he said that ‘really existing’ socialism failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism. Can we utilize this Zizekian idea of communism, an idea that generates criticism both to capitalism and 20th-century communism to reinvent communism for it to revitalize its struggle against global capitalism? To answer this question, I employed Critical Theory through the ideas of communism of Zizek. I started with capitalism’s totality. It manifests itself in the world of commodities. Commodities are everywhere and almost in everything. Commodification not only involves things that man uses but humanity herself is commodified. Then I elaborated on the notion of the proletariat because she is the “commodified man” personified. The identification of the proletariat almost exclusively with factory workers is the prevailing idea in the Left movement. I tried to show that the proletariat is the overwhelming majority in every industry. Capitalism, I claim is both producing employment and unemployment. And the unemployed, not only are included as members of the proletarian class, but looking at it objectively, they may play a significant role in the political struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, as I tried to describe in quite a detailed fashion the various industries of capitalism and the sub-groups of the unemployed, it becomes evident that even without mentioning it, the proletariat is the class that almost everyone belongs to, except, as might be expected, the bourgeoisie. -/- Then I mustered the audacity to question Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. I also tried to imagine what will happen to the economic categories in Marx’s Capital in communism. My objective was to identify what is lacking in Marx that may explain the Left’s unending failure. I think I succeeded, although in a very superficial manner, in trying to locate what was missing in Marx’s theory. It was not enough to transform the bourgeois property into public property, but this transformation must stop commodity production itself. Commodity production is this self-perpetuating character of capitalist production. Then it led to further elucidation of the metamorphosis of commodity production to the production of human needs. Another idea is the double negation of the communist revolution. Communism must not only negate the bourgeois class but the proletariat herself. Marx only emphasized the dissolution of the bourgeoisie but failed to relate this dissolution to the proletariat’s self-negation. Absolutely, the significant reduction of working hours is fundamental for communism. This reduction must result from the conscious expansion of the workers' free time. Expanding free time is at the same time reducing time for production. Essentially, this is the process of the self-negation of the proletariat. I also tried to put forward an idea that directly links reform and revolution. They are directly linked with each other because both are communistic. A communist campaign for higher wages is directly involved with the communist expansion of political power. Communist reform becomes revolutionary. Concomitantly, the notion of revolution also changes. The communist revolution, instead of it being a sudden, external, and most often violent event, becomes an internal transformative process and possibly less violent. I concluded by transforming the concepts I think Marx missed into political possibilities. That is why I expounded on the immediate aims Marx and Engels enumerated in the Communist Manifesto and tried to claim the probability of the impossible in the communist struggle for political power and Man’s eventual freedom. -/- Marx's description of factory work creates no illusion about the status of freedom in capitalism. In Capital, he said that “factory work... confiscates every atom of freedom, both bodily and in intellectual activity.” And I think Marx made clear that the only way to freedom is ultimately to destroy capitalism. These words of his in Capital will cast no doubt, “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” And to signify who are those experiencing this unfreedom, Marx and Engels summon the subject of the revolution in their famous lines in the Communist Manifesto and urge them to fight, “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Today is the time for philosophy because it is the age of declining freedom. But the prevailing capitalist structure is necessitating this unfreedom. And for philosophy to become what it is, communism should become philosophy. (shrink)

The rationality of the human being applied in science-technique in the contemporary capitalist system is distorted; the purpose, which is the good life for human beings, has become the means to sustain and feedback the technicist system of technological capitalism. Thus, the modus operandi of science, aims only to legitimize technology, apart from the ethics applied in this relationship between technology and human beings, and cut off from critical philosophical thinking. With the result presented, the problem lies in the (...) reason of the contemporary human being, who seeks to satisfy his desires and envisions the good life (eudaimonía) in material goods, suppressing the contemplative leisure of life (ataraxia); becoming a slave to the system it fosters. The objective is to demonstrate the need to reformulate the modern system, in order to earn a good life for human beings as a purpose of technical science, which should be the means for this and as technological advances in favor of the quality of human beings. and, not for capitalist reproduction. The research methodology is an exploratory bibliography, exposing and dialoguing with authors on the subject in order to forge our conclusion, that pleads for science-technical that enjoys ethics and human reason in favor of eudaimonia. (shrink)

Despite the seemingly neutral vantage of using nature for widely-distributed computational purposes, neither post-biological nor post-humanist teleology simply concludes with the real "end of nature" as entailed in the loss of the specific ontological status embedded in the identifier "natural." As evinced by the ecological crises of the Anthropocene—of which the 2019 Brazil Amazon rainforest fires are only the most recent—our epoch has transfixed the “natural order" and imposed entropic artificial integration, producing living species that become “anoetic,” made to serve (...) as automated exosomatic residues, or digital flecks. I further develop Gilles Deleuze’s description of control societies to upturn Foucauldian biopower, replacing its spacio-temporal bounds with the exographic excesses in psycho-power; culling and further detailing Bernard Stiegler’s framework of transindividuation and hyper-control, I examine how becoming-subject is predictively facilitated within cognitive capitalism and what Alexander Galloway terms “deep digitality.” Despite the loss of material vestiges qua virtualization—which I seek to trace in an historical review of industrialization to postindustrialization—the drive-based and reticulated "internet of things" facilitates a closed loop from within the brain to the outside environment, such that the aperture of thought is mediated and compressed. The human brain, understood through its material constitution, is susceptible to total datafication’s laminated process of “becoming-mnemotechnical,” and, as neuroplasticity is now a valid description for deep-learning and neural nets, we are privy to the rebirth of the once-discounted metaphor of the “cybernetic brain.” Probing algorithmic governmentality while posing noetic dreaming as both technical and pharmacological, I seek to analyze how spirit is blithely confounded with machine-thinking’s gelatinous cognition, as prosthetic organ-adaptation becomes probabilistically molded, networked, and agentially inflected (rather than simply externalized). (shrink)

Polanyi’s concept of “embeddedness” has been the subject of debate. Various authors have argued that it reveals a contradiction. They contend that Polanyi states that all economies are always embedded, while simultaneously maintaining that the modern market economy is exceptional because it is disembedded. Others claim that there is no contradiction in Polanyi’s thought but that he is merely describing a contradiction of the market economy. In this text, I argue that both sides fail to discern two different concepts: “institutedness” (...) and “embeddedness.” “Institutedness” denotes the idea that economic behavior is always dependent on and the result of certain forms of social organization. In turn, the distinction between embeddedness and disembeddedness is inspired by the Aristotelian distinction between natural and unnatural economic behavior. This distinction refers to the finality of economic behavior: is it directed at the thriving of an ethical community or is it instead directed at wealth acquisition as an end in itself? I argue that both institutedness and (dis)embeddedness fulfill a crucial, though different, role in Polanyi’s critique of market capitalism. I conclude by giving a preliminary outline of what could be the implications for a (neo-)Polanyian political economy of my analysis. (shrink)

According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media (...) malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper will argue that we continually refrain from the very question(ing) that would call these companies to account: what does the algorithm desire? In approaching this question, this article will draw from Lacan’s ‘hysterical’ position in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization in social media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in social media algorithms. In so doing, the case will be made that an account of interpassivity can help lay bare the hysterical significance underscoring our digital subjectivization. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to Laury Naranch’s and Mary Caputi’s discussion of my book Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism (2017). In response to Naranch, I clarify how the political subject-in-outline translates into collective political action through the figure of the Chicana working-class woman. I also explain why the proletariat, more so than the precariat, implies a radical political imaginary if we rethink this concept in the context of my idea of the political subject-in-outline. I also clarify that my (...) chapters on Marx expose how Adorno and Marx have problematic imaginations of the working-class woman, which counter their otherwise radical imaginary. In response to Caputi, I clarify the meaning of capitalism in my book and underline that we need a rigorous critique of capitalism to counter the rise of the Far Right. I also explain why the fluid subject does not have agency and why the subject-in-outline is a better way to theorize transformative feminist agency. I also clarify that my conception of feminist political subjectivity does not assume a privileged vantage point outside power structures. (shrink)

The rationality of the human being applied in science-technique in the contemporary capitalist system is distorted; the purpose, which is the good life for human beings, has become the means to sustain and feedback the technicist system of technological capitalism. Thus, the modus operandi of science, aims only to legitimize technology, apart from the ethics applied in this relationship between technology and human beings, and cut off from critical philosophical thinking. With the result presented, the problem lies in the (...) reason of the contemporary human being, who seeks to satisfy his desires and envisions the good life (eudaimonía) in material goods, suppressing the contemplative leisure of life (ataraxia); becoming a slave to the system it fosters. The objective is to demonstrate the need to reformulate the modern system, in order to earn a good life for human beings as a purpose of technical science, which should be the means for this and as technological advances in favor of the quality of human beings. and, not for capitalist reproduction. The research methodology is an exploratory bibliography, exposing and dialoguing with authors on the subject in order to forge our conclusion, that pleads for science-technical that enjoys ethics and human reason in favor of eudaimonia. (shrink)

This essay will explore three main themes. Firstly, I shall explore Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment in order to illustrate how the initial aftermath and destruction of World War Two required the necessity for western philosophy to become critical of Enlightenment’s negative side affects. Secondly, I shall illustrate how in consumerism and global capitalism the human subject becomes reduced to a commodity object that strives for social acceptance through economic activity. Thirdly, by analyzing Derrida’s account of western global domination (...) and its ‘autoimmunity’ as an account of western self destruction, I shall be able to declare the necessity for philosophy to transcend from its ‘ivory tower’ role to that of an international agency capable of rejuvenating the flawed political systems of today into systems that promote world peace, stability and most importantly heightening the awareness of individual subjects. (shrink)

There has been a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of cosmopolitanism in Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace,” viewing it as a qualitative break from the bellicose natural law tradition preceding it. This misunderstanding is in part due to Kant’s explicitly critical comments about colonialism as well as his attempt to rhetorically distance his cosmopolitanism from traditional natural law theory. In this paper, I argue that the necessary foundation for Kant’s cosmopolitan subjectivity and right was forged in the experience (...) of European colonialism and the (pre-Kantian) theory it engendered. It is in this context that we witness the universalization of subjectivity and the subjectivization of right, emerging from the justificatory needs of extra-national jurisdiction and resource appropriation. This form of cosmopolitanism, whose emergence necessarily tracks the rise of global capitalism, continues to exert great and often uncritical influence on theories and practices of peace today. (shrink)

First, the book does not have an original thesis. The thesisthe author wants to argue is that Smith is different from his current caricature, a legacy of his nineteenth-century image, according to which he would argue that: i) man is a maximizer of utility; ii) man is ordinarily moved by a narrow selfish interest, or at least is indifferent to the interests of others; iii) human beings are social atoms; iv) a perfectly competitive market is morally a free zone (pp. (...) 4-5). The author recognizes that these interpretations "are being questioned by many scholars". contemporary", however, reiterates his conviction that these interpretations are still prevalent, and cites in this regard the abuse of the name of Smith by the Chicago school (p.6). If the author's aim is to challenge a caricature, still common among non-experts but no longer shared by Smith's scholars, one may wonder whether this justifies a new book. Secondly, the author does not demonstrate mastery of the state of the art. She wants to demonstrate the non-existence of Adam Smith Problem, not only without any direct knowledge of German literature but ignoring an important article by Heilbroner from 1981 and a fundamental essay by Dickey from 1986 that explicitly advocate an exhumation of the "Adam Smith problem" in a new form. Thirdly, the author lacks the ability to understand concepts and problems in contextual terms: where she mentions Adam Smith's 'Newtonianism' she does not prove to be familiar with the literature on the subject, citing Lindgren as the only authority and ignoring, among others, Moscovici, Skinner, Hetherington and Freudenthal, but also seems to understand by Newtonianism an equivalent of deterministic and materialistic mechanicism (pp. 48-51). Besides, every time she uses the term utilitarianism he confuses it with the terms hedonism, economicism, selfishness (p. 155). (shrink)

Not-I/Thou: The Other Subject of Art and Architecture is a series of essays delineating the gray areas and black zones in present-day cultural production. Part One is an implicit critique of neo-liberal capitalism and its assault on the humanities through the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-empirical biases of academic and professional disciplines, while Part Two returns to apparent lost causes in the historical development of modernity and post-modernity, particularly the recourse to artistic production as both a form of mnemonics and periodic (and (...) renascent) avant-garde agitation. In-between these twin systems of taking the measure of things, Art and Architecture, as forms of speculative intellectual capital, emerge from the shadow-lands of half-conscious and half-unconscious forces to become gestures toward a type of knowledge that has no utilitarian or generic agency. Defying the tendencies of such discourses to fall prey to instrumental orders that effectively neuter the inherent radical agenda of both, Art and Architecture are represented in this series of essays as noetic apparatuses, operating at the edge of authorized systems of knowledge, quietly and secretly validating and valorizing the shadowy and recondite, collective and personal operations of intellect in service to no particular end. (shrink)

A reflection on overcoming Natur vs Geisteswissenschaften oppositions in thinking about the 'cultured brain' and plasticity.

La idea detrás del presente trabajo es intentar demostrar que el logocentrismo occidental se hegemoniza en el mismo proceso de individuación. Analizar el devenir del cuerpo a través de los textos sería hacer una deconstrucción del sistema capitalista y de la sociedad de mercado actual. Sin duda, este sistema es la consagración de la idea de individuo que fue gestándose a lo largo de múltiples acontecimientos y que nos permite no solo rever la aparición del sujeto como tal sino del (...) individualismo como corriente cultural. Nos permite también observar cómo se fueron dando los distintos procesos de individuación y algunos factores adquirieron mayores jerarquías, se impusieron sobre otros, los cuales quedaron relegados, ocultos, negados. -/- Abstract: The idea behind this work is to demonstrate that Western logocentrism hegemonizes in the same process of individuation. Analyze the evolution of the body through the texts would be to make a deconstruction of the capitalist system and the current market society. Undoubtedly, this system is the consecration of the idea of individual that was increasing along multiple events and allows us, not only review the appearance of the subject as such, but also as appearance of the individualism as cultural current. Also it allows us to observe how they were giving various processes of individuation and like some factors have become higher hierarchies were imposed on others, which were relegated, hidden, denied. -/- . (shrink)

The idea behind this work is to demonstrate that Western logocentrism hegemonizes in the same process of individuation. Analyze the evolution of the body through the texts would be to make a deconstruction of the capitalist system and the current market society. Undoubtedly, this system is the consecration of the idea of individual that was increasing along multiple events and allows us, not only review the appearance of the subject as such, but also as appearance of the individualism as (...) cultural current. Also it allows us to observe how they were giving various processes of individuation and like some factors have become higher hierarchies were imposed on others, which were relegated, hidden, denied. (shrink)

This article performs a Lacanian and philosophical re-reading of Weber’s thesis on the structural affinity between Calvinism and early capitalism. My discussion of the emergence of the capitalist subject is framed in the temporality of predestination.

In the United States the Civil Rights Movement emerging after World War II ended Jim Crow racism, with its legal segregation and stigmatization of black people. Yet black people, both in chattel slavery and under Jim Crow, had provided abundant labor subject to racist terror; they were workers who could be recruited for work others were unwilling to do. What was to replace this labor, which had been the source of so much wealth and power? Three federal initiatives helped to (...) create new workers without rights: the welfare reform law of 1996 and the changes in immigration and crime law and policy both starting in the mid-1960s. These changes re-created vulnerable labor, disproportionately marked and stigmatized as black or Mexican. These workers create a central strength of U.S. imperialism: cheap food. Because workers without rights have an important function in a capitalist economy, a society where all workers can flourish is not capitalist but communist. (shrink)

This short conference paper serves as a distillation of a keynote address delivered at the the Second National Conference on Management and Higher Education Trends & Strategies for Management & Administration hosted by Bangkok-based Stamford International University (Thailand) on November 1, 2014. Innovation is discussed as the heart of entrepreneurial processes occurring in today's capitalist economic systems, including transition economies like China and Vietnam, which underscores economic competitiveness of firms and economies. But the innovation effort and process also face (...) dilemma of "entrepreneurial curse of innovation". Advantages and disadvantages are weighed for a more balanced view, especially in the context of outnumbering SMEs and given existence of pitfalls and traps along the innovation path of development. Toward the end, the value of the market is once again stressed amid the concern of subjective assumption and illusion about availability of market opportunities in the mind of innovators, which may contrast totally with the dismal outcome the actual market realities may show ex post. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Axel Honneth’s normative reconstruction of the market as a sphere of social freedom in his 2014 book, Freedom’s Right. Honneth’s position is complex: on the one hand, he acknowledges that modern capitalist societies do not realise social freedom; on the other hand, he insists that the promise of social freedom is implicit in the market sphere. In fact, the latter explains why modern subjects have seen capitalism as legitimate. I will reconstruct Honneth’s conception of (...) social freedom and investigate how it is realised in the sphere in which Honneth sees it most successfully at work, the sphere of interpersonal relations. I then move on to the sphere of the market economy and discuss two related problems of this view that stem from his interpretation of Hegel. Next, I consider Honneth’s method of “normative reconstruction” and his reconstructions of the sphere of consumption and, finally, the labour market. My conclusion will be that market institutions cannot realise social freedom, and that this insight should orient the philosophical direction of critical social theory. (shrink)

In contemporary democracies, global capitalism exerts a significant influence over how state power is exercised, raising questions about where political power resides in global politics. This question is important, since our specific considerations about justifiability of political power, i.e. political legitimacy, depend on how we characterize political power at the global level. As a partial answer to this question, I argue that our notion of global political legitimacy should be reoriented to include the structural power of the Transnational Capitalist (...) Class as its subject matter. Structural power is a social relation in which the institutional context makes some agents comply with others’ preferences regardless of actors’ intentional efforts to bring about such outcomes. Even when global business elites do not intentionally exercise power to obtain political control of global governance, their structural power has recognizable effects that partly enforce the world order. To advance my claim, I utilize the radical realists’ argument that the notion of legitimacy is applicable to a broader range of social practices that are beyond dyadic power relations, i.e. rulers intentionally exercising power over subjects. (shrink)

In this Article, I propose a novel law and economics explanation of a deeply puzzling aspect of business organization in market economies. Why are virtually all firms organized as capital-managed and -owned (capitalist) enterprises rather than as labor-managed and -owned cooperatives? Over 150 years ago, J.S. Mill predicted that efficiency and other advantages would eventually make worker cooperatives predominant over capitalist firms. Mill was right about the advantages but wrong about the results. The standard explanation is that (...) class='Hi'>capitalist enterprise is more efficient. Empirical research, however, overwhelmingly contradicts this. But employees almost never even attempt to organize worker cooperatives. I critique the explanations of the three leading analysts of the subject (N. Scott Arnold, Henry Hansmann, and Gregory Dow), all of whom offer are different transactions cost accounts, as logically defective and empirically inadequate. I then propose an explanation that has been oddly neglected in the literature, that the rarity of cooperatives is explained by the collective action problem identified by writers such as Mancur Olson. Labor management is a public good that generates the n-person prisoner’s dilemma which gives rational actors the incentive to create it in suboptimal (or no) amounts. I support this by reference to the empirical facts about the origin of existing cooperatives and show that this explanation requires no strong version of a questionable rational choice theory. This explanation is supplemented by the mere exposure or familiarity effect derived from social and cognitive psychology, which turns on the fact that labor managed firms are rare, in part because of the public goods problem, thus unfamiliar, which makes them less attractive and thus more likely to be rare. My account points advocates of labor management towards solutions such as institutional changes in incentives, which, however, themselves involve public goods issues. (shrink)

György Lukács’s Marxist phase is usually associated with his passage from neo-Kantianism to Hegelianism. Nonetheless, Nietzschean influences have been covertly present in Lukács’s philosophical development, particularly in his uncompromising distaste for the bourgeois society and the mediocrity of its quotidian values. A closer glance at Lukács’s corpus discloses that the influence of Nietzsche has been eclipsed by the Hegelian turn in his thought. Lukács hardly ever mentions the weight of Nietzsche on his early thinking, an influence that makes cameo appearances (...) throughout his lifetime writings. During the period of his adherence to a Stalinist approach to communism, his new subjectivity seems to be re-constituted through a disavowal of his earlier romantic anti-capitalism. Implicit in Lukács’s attack on Nietzsche in the Destruction of Reason (1952) is an acerbic reaction to the mute presence of the latter in his earlier thought. Apart from his ignorance of the unreliability of the collection of the Will to Power edited by Peter Gast and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, his battle against the anti-proletariat Nietzsche in the Destruction is waged on a metaphysical, non-historical plain. Lukács’s pre-Marxist works (Soul and Form, On Poverty of Spirit, and The Theory of the Novel) in a sense betray the instance of a writer who writes most of someone where he omits his name. Thus perceived, Lukács’s early corpus lends itself to a symptomatic reading. -/- This essay seeks to extract the Nietzschean undercurrents of Lukács’s work through a reflection on the romantic anti-capitalist tendencies that the young Lukács shared with Nietzsche. For although it may appear that Nietzsche lacked a clear politics, his criticism of the bourgeois ethos as a structure based on debt/guilt [Schuld], and his critique of modern value-system and nihilism paved the way for the emergence of Lukács’s theory of reification. Nietzsche’s category of 'transvaluation of values’ suggests a total transfiguration of reality, a radical rupture with the ordinary state of things, and as such carries within itself a revolutionary promise. Drawing a distinction between political romanticism and romantic politics, I argue that romantic anti-capitalism contains a potential for the latter. The essay further traces the link between Lukács’s ‘romantic politics’ and the persistence of a thought of the tragic (a ‘tragic vision’) in his texts that, despite its temporary decline during his realist period, is undismissable in different constellations of his thought. (shrink)

This article considers the novel approach for epistemological interpretation of biomimetics or bionics and biosimilarity in different abiogenetic works with the terminological correction for elimination of the reifications (concretisms, hypostatizations), simplified metaphors and the results of metonymy. In the last part of this article one can see the analysis of the mistakes and problems of complex abiogenetic or supramolecular evolution projects within the aspects of the Conway law and the social organization of science and publishing sphere in subjective postmodern capitalistic (...) conditions. (shrink)

Kate Crawford presents AI as “both reflecting and producing social relations and understandings of the world”; or again, as “a form of exercising power, and a way of seeing… as a manifestation of highly organized capital backed by vast systems of extraction and logistics, with supply chains that wrap around the entire planet”. I interpret these material insights through a Marxist understanding of ideology, with reference to Marx/Engels, Guy Debord and Louis Althusser. In the German Ideology, Marx and Engels present (...) ideology as the alienated and alienating discourse of exchange, dissimulating the material forces of production and its science. Guy Debord presents the spectacle as the further representation of capital. The spectacle is a total Weltanschauung, pure appearance, where “whatever appears is good and where what is good, appears.” Above all, the spectacle is ideology, representing “the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life”. Louis Althusser presents ideology as essential for the reproduction of labor-power and capital. His notion of “interpellation” explains the subjective uptake of ideology, how we respond, “yes!” to its call. The algorithms of AI are enactments of surplus value generating capital as data. The AI data-world is the spectacle, “the autonomous movement of non-life” (Debord) where the proletariat/consumer is the producer of their own ideological subjection. Is resistance possible? What form might it take? And if AI is understood as ideology, i.e. as a language that obscures the true conditions of real life, then what are those true conditions? What is “real life”? (shrink)

Revisiting May 1968, this paper highlights the critical nature of Guy Debord's Marxism. Fifty years after the French events, the question then arises: “To what extent does the Situationist definition of anticapitalist subjectivity still preserve its historical-critical relevance?” The answer is not simple. After all, it amounts to the evaluation of the critical Marxism of Debord, in order to distinguish, in its regard, what is living and what is dead.

In Escape from Leviathan, Jan Lester sets out a conception of liberty as absence of imposed cost which, he says, advances no moral claim and does not premise an assignm..

Is socialism morally preferable to free market capitalism? G. A. Cohen (2009) has argued that even when the economic inequalities produced by free markets are not the result of injustice, they nevertheless ought to be avoided because they are community undermining. As free markets inevitably lead to economic inequalities and Socialism does not, Socialism is morally preferable. This argument has been the subject of recent criticism. Chad Van Schoelandt (2014) argues that it depends on a conception of community that is (...) incompatible with pluralism while Richard Miller (2010) argues that it rules out individualistic pursuits. I will show that both of these objections rest upon a misreading of Cohen’s argument. (shrink)

In this chapter I seek to provide a theoretical defense of workplace democracy that is independent from and outside the lineage of Marxist and communist theory. Common to the council movements, anarcho- syndicalism and many other forms of libertarian socialism was the idea “that workers’ self- management was central.” Yet the idea of workers’ control has not been subject to the same theoretical development as Marx’s theory, not to mention capitalist economic theory. This chapter aims to contribute at a (...) theoretical level by providing a justification and defense of self- managed workplaces that is independent of the particular historical tradition of the council movements. There is a clear and definitive case for workplace democracy based on first principles that descends to modern times through the Reformation and Enlightenment in the abolitionist, democratic and feminist movements. By the twentieth century, the arguments had been scattered and lost – like the bones of some ancient beast scattered in a desert – partly due to misconceptions, mental blocks and misinterpretations embodied in Marxism, liberalism and economic theory. When one has worked through some of these intellectual roadblocks, then one may be better able to reassemble the case for workplace democracy from well- known first principles developed in the abolitionist, democratic and feminist movements. (shrink)

Is the Right to the City (RTTC) still a useful framework for a transformative urban politics? Given recent scholarly criticism of its real-world applications and appropriations, in this paper, we argue that the transformative promise in the RTTC lies beyond its role as a framework for oppositional struggle, and in its normative ends. Building upon Henri Lefebvre's original writing on the subject, we develop a “radical-cooperative” conception of the RTTC. Such a view, which is grounded in the lived experiences of (...) the current city, envisions an urban society in which inhabitants can pursue their material and social needs through self-governed cooperation across social difference. Growing and diversifying spaces and sectors of urban life that are decoupled from global capitalism are, we argue, necessary to create space for this inclusionary politics. While grassroots action is essential to this process, so is multi-scalar support from the state. (shrink)

This study focuses on the ideas of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, the most influential thinkers of recent period, about the concepts of the Empire, Multitude and Biopolitical production. These concepts being at the center of contemporary political discussions problematise the ideaitonal foundations of the idea of Empire evaluated as a new form of sovereignty, the economic transformation in the contemporary capitalism and the new form of subjectivity in this age. To Negri and Hardt, Empire is seen as a (...) logic of network operating at global level and a new logic of sovereignty and governance going beyond the political boundaries of nation states as form of sovereignty. In this regard, multitude is evaluated as a collective and joint social subject against the power and command forms of empire. As for biopolitical production, it is defined as the production of life in which feelings, symbols, communication and cooperation go beyond the understanding that centers the production of tangible goods within the capitalist production and work organization. These three concepts draw an important framework in terms of understanding the economic, political transformation of the contemporary world. In this study, it was aimed at interpreting the nature of global changes brought forward by the Negri and Hardt thought within the boundaries of these three concepts. (shrink)

This study focuses on the ideas of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, the most influential thinkers of recent period, about the concepts of the Empire, Multitude and Biopolitical production. These concepts being at the center of contemporary political discussions problematise the ideaitonal foundations of the idea of Empire evaluated as a new form of sovereignty, the economic transformation in the contemporary capitalism and the new form of subjectivity in this age. To Negri and Hardt, Empire is seen as a (...) logic of network operating at global level and a new logic of sovereignty and governance going beyond the political boundaries of nation states as form of sovereignty. In this regard, multitude is evaluated as a collective and joint social subject against the power and command forms of empire. As for biopolitical production, it is defined as the production of life in which feelings, symbols, communication and cooperation go beyond the understanding that centers the production of tangible goods within the capitalist production and work organization. These three concepts draw an important framework in terms of understanding the economic, political transformation of the contemporary world. In this study, it was aimed at interpreting the nature of global changes brought forward by the Negri and Hardt thought within the boundaries of these three concepts. (shrink)

This study focuses on the ideas of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, the most influential thinkers of recent period, about the concepts of the Empire, Multitude and Biopolitical production. These concepts being at the center of contemporary political discussions problematise the ideaitonal foundations of the idea of Empire evaluated as a new form of sovereignty, the economic transformation in the contemporary capitalism and the new form of subjectivity in this age. To Negri and Hardt, Empire is seen as a (...) logic of network operating at global level and a new logic of sovereignty and governance going beyond the political boundaries of nation states as form of sovereignty. In this regard, multitude is evaluated as a collective and joint social subject against the power and command forms of empire. As for biopolitical production, it is defined as the production of life in which feelings, symbols, communication and cooperation go beyond the understanding that centers the production of tangible goods within the capitalist production and work organization. These three concepts draw an important framework in terms of understanding the economic, political transformation of the contemporary world. In this study, it was aimed at interpreting the nature of global changes brought forward by the Negri and Hardt thought within the boundaries of these three concepts. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical (...) frameworks for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

1. The most original discovery in Beauvoir’s book is one more Columbus’s egg, namely that it is far from evident that a woman is a woman. That is, she discovers that a woman is the result of a process that made so that she is like she is. The paper discusses two aspects of the so-to-say ‘ideology’ inspiring the work. The first is its ideology in the proper, Marxian sense. My claim is that the work still pays a heavy price (...) to the dominating ideology. It leaves still too much unquestionedof what was assumed at the time to be obvious, necessary, and unchanging. This ballast depends firstly on the inherited prevailing climate of opinion, corresponding to a situation of alienation, producing two distorted views of the male and female gender. On the other hand, it depends on an unquestioned legacy from the modern episteme (in Foucault’s sense of the word) carrying presupposed Cartesian dualism. The other side of the work’s ideology, that is, the positive program presented or better the utopia it formulates is less innovative than it could be, In a few passages, where she seems to make use of suggestions from Merleau-Ponty, she points at a view where the bodily and emotional dimension is rescued from its negation in the male-dominated Capitalist society. Still, these suggestions are forgotten in the bulk of the work. -/- 2. The making of a philosophical work does not depend just on the kind of philosophical influences behind it. A book is also the product of an author with a story living in one society at a given time of social history. In this case, the book was written in the afterwar time when women were pushed back home again from the wartime labor market and when several of the goals reached by the first phase of feminist movements had gone lost in several European countries under Fascist or semi-fascist regimes and were being eroded in America by the reactionary climate of McCarthyism. It was a book written by an intellectual young woman in almost total isolation. These circumstances account for some more naïve suggestions from work: for ex., the idea that the alternative to the strategy once adopted by nineteenth-century emancipationist movements should be an individual inner process of transformation confined within the boundaries of one woman’s consciousness, or also, the idea that the goal of women’s liberation should be to bring all women to a condition similar of Simone de Beauvoir herself who, as an educated woman, earning her life by her work, and living in an allegedly equal state with an enlightened man (Jean-Paul Sartre!) in a relationship free from constraints (an unmarried couple!), was already exemplifying what a liberated woman’s life would be. -/- 3. The reconstruction of the idea of femininity is still the most fruitful part of the work. It rejects the notion of femininity as an essence depending on biology or other factors and explores the making of this image as a result of a condition made of the social and economic state of affairs but as revived and actively mirrored through and by the consciousness of the very subjects suffering an oppressive situation. And the main novelty is the ‘discovery’ of asymmetry between the self-image of the male and the (self)-image of the woman, an asymmetry depending on the fact that the woman sees herself through the other’s eyes. -/- 4. Later feminist writers such as Shulamit Firestone remarked that 'The Second Sex' heavily depended on several key-ideas from Sartre existential ontology. One crucial aspect is accepting the mind-body dualistic framework without any suspicion that such dualism could have been itself a projection of the basic experience of the male-female duality. I suggest that the philosophical legacy inherited from Sartre is on occasion an asset for Beauvoir’s innovative existential analysis of the feminine ‘condition,’ but on several occasions, it creates unnecessary obstacles for her project of a new comprehension of the feminine ‘situation,’ aimed at rescuing women from an 'inauthentic' self-definition. -/- 5. The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things,’ thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions, and culture. -/- 6. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as dialectics without synthesis. This is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts, in so far as it accounts for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. But it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any kind of relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. -/- 7. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach of positive value of the bodily dimension as such, and hence of the feminine body, are evoked here and there but never fully spelled out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies de-empathizing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Besides, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that biological differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such a step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation.The first among these poisoned gifts is Sartre’s idea of the individual as pure freedom and project. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism is well-known: Sartre draws a picture of the world as containing no more than ‘human beings and things’, thus denying any substance to social relations, institutions and culture. The second is Sartre’s reconstruction of dialectics, understood as a dialectic without a synthesis. This view of dialectics is an enlightening tool when used to describe conflicts. It may account for the emergence of the ‘other’ as what is excluded. However, it becomes a boomerang when used to interpret any relationship, leading to equate inter-subjectivity with conflict. Suggestions coming from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach would tend to admit that the bodily dimension as such has a positive value, and hence the feminine bodily dimension is not just indifferent, but instead gives women a point of view on the world different from the male point of view. These suggestions, yet, are evoked here and there but never fully spelt out. The most shocking consequence of acceptance of the Cartesian or Sartrean dualist view is an almost total de-evaluation of sexuality, understood as an activity involving just one tiny part of the human body, going with the idea that overcoming the oppression of women implies understressing biological differences that are after all tiny and devoid of value. Furthermore, Beauvoir falls back into the trap of grounding claims of equality between men and women on the assumption that physical differences are of limited relevance. The eventual reason for such step back is the distorting Cartesian mirror into which Beauvoir still looks in the vain hope of discovering a disembodied self as the (Cartesian) subject of an impossible kind of liberation. -/- . (shrink)

Neoliberalism has installed an unending competitive struggle in the economy. Within this context activists have pushed for a reappraisal of laziness and inactivity as forms of resistance. This idea has been picked up by Maurizio Lazzarato and Giorgio Agamben in different ways. I start with explaining the former’s appraisal of laziness as a release of potentialities unrealizable under financial capitalism. Lazzarato’s appraisal of laziness however resembles neoliberal theories of innovation, because both share the conceptual persona of a subject whose potentialities (...) exceed the current status quo. Potentiality is thus not an unambiguous antagonist of capitalism, as Lazzarato suggests. In order to adequately oppose neoliberalism, Lazzarato should question the role of potentiality in capitalism. Agamben has undertaken such a project. In the second part of the essay I consequently argue that Agamben’s philosophy of inactivity as impotentiality is able to circumvent neoliberalism and the society of the spectacle. (shrink)

The article addresses the treatment given to the notion of subject in Slavoj Žižek and Robert Kurz. Without aiming at a synthesis between the two radically opposed positions, they are played against one another in order to reveal the unidimensional stances and false steps in the field of the constitution of the struggle for a concrete negation of capitalist society.

What is the role of attention in the dialectics of memory and communication? How far is attention functioning as a medium? Which role does attention play in the information management practices? Attention is not only fundamental to human existence but also to the process of understanding. If understanding is mediated by memory and communication then attention can be identified with the medium. So whenever you search to explain the role and mechanisms of memory in the information society, the question of (...) attention is asked immediately. Furthermore, attention can be analyzed under the following topics: as cognitive process, as subjective, intersubjective and cultural phenomenon, and as resource and medium within an 'Attention Economy'. Whereas the first aspect has to be seen in the context of empirical studies in psychology and cognitive sciences, the phenomenological, cultural, and economic aspects seem to have common points and similar implications in their theoretical approaches. In the last twenty years, the notion of attention has been the central core of several discourses in German phenomenology, economy and cultural studies. Similar to Georg Franck's theory of mental capitalism, the idea of an attention economy also was followed up in the American discourse. This article is supposed to explore the role of attention and its function as a medium within communication, cultural memory and science. (shrink)

This essay will first present a vignette of Luxemburg’s life and work, referring to classic and recent biographies. Following that, section 3 examines concepts of the state and nation in Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The subject of section 4 is Luxemburg’s substantial work of political economy, The Accumulation of Capital. It is a most significant achievement, analyzing the contradictions of the capitalist state and its role in driving imperialist expansion and colonialism. Section 5 traces how Luxemburg’s political economy (...) in Accumulation underwrites her interventions in the heated debates over Polish independence. And section 6 concludes with remarks on Luxemburg’s significance for philosophy and political thought. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921), we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. (...) Second, RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s (1921) approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment (whether risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity) they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation (such as prototyping and market research) in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

In this article, the notion of entropology introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss is applied and developed in the context of Georges Bataille’s anthropological philosophy: Bataille’s project is defined as entropological. Four philosophical vectors are chosen for this: the theory of general economy, the concept of decay, the idea of extinction and the notion of inhumanism. The theory of general economy allows us to understand the immanent terrestrial nature of humanity and the negative – entropic – side of the capitalist economy. (...) The concept of decay gives access to the thought of bodily disintegration and decomposition, which is temporality and mortality that split the subject. The idea of extinction speculates on the consequences of humanity’s destructiveness, libidinally charged inertia, and the extreme perspective of entropy’s impact on the planet. The notion of inhumanism suggests a radical rethinking of the human relationship with alienation and exteriority: Bataille’s philosophy is reinterpreted as inhumanist. I conclude that the Lévi-Strauss’s neologism – entropology – can be productively articulated and actualised within the framework of Bataille’s philosophy. (shrink)

How Propaganda Became Public Relations pulls back the curtain on propaganda: how it was born, how it works, and how it has masked the bulk of its operations by rebranding itself as public relations. Cory Wimberly uses archival materials and wide variety of sources — Foucault’s work on governmentality, political economy, liberalism, mass psychology, and history — to mount a genealogical challenge to two commonplaces about propaganda. First, modern propaganda did not originate in the state and was never primarily located (...) in the state; instead, it began and flourished as a for-profit service for businesses. Further, propaganda is not focused on public beliefs and does not operate mainly through lies and deceit; propaganda is an apparatus of government that aims to create the publics that will freely undertake the conduct its clients’ desire. Businesses have used propaganda since the early twentieth century to construct the laboring, consuming, and voting publics that they needed to secure and grow their operations. Over that time, corporations have become the most numerous and well-funded apparatuses of government in the West, operating privately and without democratic accountability. Wimberly explains why liberal strategies of resistance have failed and a new focus on creating mass subjectivity through democratic means is essential to countering propaganda. This book offers a sophisticated analysis that will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, Continental philosophy, political communication, the history of capitalism, and the history of public relations. (shrink)

Özet -/- Bu çalışmada modern endüstri toplumlarında teknolojinin, bireylerin ve bir bütün olarak toplumun rasyonalitesini nasıl etkilediği ve bunun da ötesinde nasıl belirlediği incelenecektir. Bu inceleme Herbert Marcuse’nin Tek Boyutlu İnsan adlı eserinde ortaya koyduğu teknolojiye ilişkin görüşleri üzerinden yapılacaktır. Rasyonalite, bilgi ve deneyim arasındaki ilişki teknoloji üzerinden irdelenecek ve daha sonra Marcuse’nin ‘teknolojik rasyonalite’ kavramı Claus Offe’nin eleştirileri bağlamında çözümlenecektir. Son olarak Marcuse’nin teknoloji eleştirisi günümüzde ortaya çıkan toplumsal pratiklerle ele alınarak değerlendirilecektir. -/- Anahtar Terimler Teknoloji, Bilgi, Eleştiri, Pratik, (...) Kapitalist Toplum, Politika, Rasyonalite. -/- Rationality, Experience and Knowledge in the Age of Technology: Problems & Criticisms -/- Abstract -/- The question of how human potential is imprisoned in contemporary capitalism is one of the central topics of the analysis on social reality by every social theory which claims to be critical. This question which can be concretized as a systematic occupation with the cultural-technical forms which caused by contemporary capitalism and as an analysis of new types of social subjectivity which emerge as a result of these forms, essentially includes the effort to specify at what level and by using what kind of tools the current system grabs the individual by the throat. Frankfurt School tradition as one of the foremost traditions which conducts such an investigation, discusses the analysis of society over fragility of the bourgeois individual. -/- According to Frankfurt School, the individual in contemporary capitalism is extorted from bourgeois ideals and is out of breath as a result of blockade of overgrown structures in social context in which s/he lives. In other words, the bourgeois individual has been erased. In the late capitalist society where personal histories are melted away, technological progress is one of the processes that led to the deletion of the individual. The clearest expression of this emphasis finds correspondence in the introduction of Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Marcuse proposes two opposite theses in this work which he examines advanced industrial societies: 1) Advanced industrial society have a structure that it can control the qualitative changes in predictable future, 2) However, trends and forces which can reverse this situation (which can break this limitation and destroy capitalist society) also exist. First one claims that relations of domination in the social structures are sustainable in the future; and the other thesis emphasizes that the opportunity of emancipation of people by getting free of these power relations is still possible. However, Marcuse does not dwell on too much on the latter (which is the claim about possibility of powers and trends that can change the current situation). Moreover it could be argued that his arguments relating to technological rationality and one-dimensionality draws us into the impossibility of attaining any moment of a positive social transformation. -/- The book is dominated by an atmosphere of immense feeling of being encircled and hopelessness, thus it follows from the work of Marcuse that in the system that we live in it is even impossible to breathe freely. Although in follow-up studies after the One Dimensional Man (especially in writings in which vitality of 68 movement and the axis of New Left), it can be observed that there is an attempt to convert despair into hope, it is clear that Marcuse’s designations regarding technological life mechanisms should be discussed again given the technological advancements of our times. Within this context, in the study, how the technology affects and furthermore determines the individuals and society as a whole in the modern industrial societies has been investigated. This investigation has been carried out through Herbert Marcuse's views on technology which are presented in his work One-Dimensional Man. The relationship between rationality, knowledge and experience has been examined on the basis of technology, and then Marcuse's concept of ‘technological rationality’ has been analysed in the context of Claus Offe's criticisms. -/- Finally, Marcuse's critique of technology has been assessed by considering the emerging social practices in this day and time. Herbert Marcuse refers to the rationality which is created by technology and is directly based on submissive efficiency, as ‘technological rationality’. Thinker argues that what is considered to be rational in a society is subject to change with technological developments, and social rationality is directly connected to the technological advancements. There are three different projections of technological rationality approach which are in turn ontological, epistemological and ethicalpolitical approaches. Claus Offe claims that it is possible to group these different dimensions under three theses. According to the first one; scientific rationality has become the organizational principle of domination. -/- According to Offe, in his second thesis Marcuse mentions the emergence of technology sui generis i.e. as a distinctive autonomous technological rationality. And the third thesis proceeds on the line of the argument that socialist societies are under the impact of technological rationality as well as capitalist societies. According to Offe, even though these three theses are consistent with each other, Marcuse has been violated the most fundamental principle of the Critical Theory by not offering any possibility of social transformation which are aimed at the problems of extensive manipulation and pacified existence that brought about by technological rationality. Hence although Marcuse's work is of utmost importance with regard to his analysis and the issues that he has covered, it would not be wrong to say that a problematic argument from the point of the tradition of Critical Theory has been proposed. The main reason for this is the argument which asserts that the technology turned into a mechanism of domination which is almost irreversible and unchangeable. Therefore, such mechanism does not offer any resistance point where human can take a breath. As a result of this, emancipation which is the main political purpose of the Critical Theory has been invalidated. What could be the problems which are created by the negative situation that results from Marcuse's thesis on technology? For instance, how could the basis for the existence of opposing movements which are organized over the internet or the foundations of anti-capitalist radical critique be explained on the axis of Marcuse’s thesis? -/- There is a fundamental problem that has to be solved: if we declare only the validity of oppressive, central and ideological functions of technological devices, then the idea which is referred by authoritarian governments that current opposing movements or rebel groups organized over internet might be organized from a centre which is defined as imperialist power or external power becomes an affirmable argument. In other words, does Marcuse's technological determinist approach serves to legitimize the discourses such as "foreign powers or imperialist enemies," and so on which authoritarian powers frequently resort to. Is it possible to think of another alternative with regard to the problems produced by this rationality apart from the negative comments that revealed by the concept of technological rationality. From what frameworks this question can be answered In the conclusion of the study, answers to these questions have been searched. -/- Keywords: Technology, Knowledge, Criticism, Practice, Capitalist Society, Politics, Rationality. (shrink)

It is expected that industrial heritage actually tells the story of the emerging capitalism highlighting the dynamic social relationship between the “workers” and the owners of the “production means”. In current times of economic crisis, it may even involve a painful past with lost social, civil, gender and/or class struggles, a depressing present with abandoned, fragmented, degraded landscapes and ravaged factories, and a hopeless future for the former workers of the local (not only) society; or just a conquerable ground for (...) controversial investments. This is certainly an emotionally charged subject matter, with multiple readings and interpretations. However, this view is only partial when facing landscape during its historical evolution process. A diachronic study, thus, embraces all resources that probably gave rise to a variety of human activities; all of them embody heritage values -“subjectively” or “objectively” perceived- their evaluation, though, is a matter of an on-going process of the civil society. Greece's landscape accommodates a diversity of diachronic productive practices that may overlap historical periods, technological evolutions and social transformations. Pre-, early and industrial exploitation of resources does not remain firm but vary according to time and the needs of each society. The comparative scale of certain resource exploitation is highlighted as the key for the assessment methodology in close relation to the specific frame of a local landscape and a historical period. Even though archaeological evidence may possibly reveal and document continuity in a range of sustainable productive processes without conflicts, great controversies emerge when new investments are “offered” as an antidote to economic crisis -not harmonized to the local scale, traumatizing thus the “spirit” of the landscape. Suggestions for incompatible productive use and investment planning imply irreversible and irreparable effects on the environment, society and economy of a region and are only faced through social awareness. Case studies of passive and/or active involvement of local communities, in synthesizing and enhance landscape’s “spirit”, its diachronic industrial heritage and the embedded tangible and intangible values, will support a pragmatic -not a suspended- step towards a sustainable future. Quoting Neil Cossons (TICCIH Congress 2012) “Industrial imperialism ensures its position and protects its future not by the conquest of distant lands as by the securing of its sources of raw materials ... The modern world is as much under the control of the major industrial powers as it ever was during the colonial era”; if such a case can the industrial heritage sector remain apolitical? (shrink)

The utterance of morals or morality within a communist space is one that may, in the best of cases, raise a few eyebrows or, in the worst of cases, summon calls for condemnation or accusations of being unscientific. The subject of communist morality is one that is often ignored within the broader revolutionary left, while at the same time—especially within our current insurrectionary moment—beckons to be engaged with. As the hydra of neoliberalism begins its inevitable collapse, throwing capitalism once more (...) into a global crisis—and thusly its imperialist head begins to twist fascistically from the periphery back inward toward the United States and Europe—these categories that before seemed abstract and idealistic suddenly become vivid and tangible. Evil is how these injustices are described—in a non-hyperbolic fashion—by those engaged in the frontlines of revolutionary activity. So why is morality eschewed and denounced in left academic discourse? Are morals solely the provenance of the reactionary right or the dreamy idealist? (shrink)

This paper introduces post-place branding in the context of the post-representationalist turn in marketing research by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987) theory of nomadology. By engaging critically with fundamental concepts in the place and destination branding literature, post-place branding offers an alternative perspective to entrenched definitions of subjectivity, place, and event experiencing, by effecting a paradigmatic shift from processing monad to nomad, from event as symbolic structure to (...) micro-events, from pre-constituted place to spacing in the process of deand reterritorializations. Post-place branding is illustrated by re-imagining the brand architectural components of the experiential events of 70,000 Tons of Metal and The Boiler Room. The analysis culminates in a metaphorical modeling exercise that draws nomadological guidelines for brandcomms’ message strategy. (shrink)

This article discusses the precariousness of labor relations in Brazil, focusing on the concept of “Uberization”. To this end, an analysis is made of the Brazilian sociological reality concern-ing formal and informal work relationships, seeking to understand the said problem and its implications for the social subjects directly involved with this new form of work. Thus, a map-ping of specialized theoretical production is used to account for the discussion of recent transformations in capitalism and modes of production in a critical (...) and current way. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek and Violence -/- Žižek’s book is fundamentally about understanding violence and the way it is represented in global society, especially in relation to economic interests. He draws a distinction between what he calls subjective violence and objective violence. Subjective violence refers to violence that is inflicted by a clearly identifiable agent of action, as in the case of criminal activity or terrorism. Objective violence, on the other hand, has no clear perpetrator and is often overlooked in the background (...) of subjective violence outbreaks. For example, the objective violence of global poverty cannot be blamed on any one entity and, even if financial elites were to be identified as culpable, they could still be exonerated by their subjugation to a system of capitalist finance that makes the rise of an elite financial class inevitable. While Žižek further subdivides objective violence, the core difference illustrated here reflects Žižek’s interest in establishing the way certain forms of violence are represented and perceived in the general social consciousness. -/- . (shrink)

This paper centers on the implicit metaphysics beyond the Theory of Relativity and the Principle of Indeterminacy – two revolutionary theories that have changed 20th Century Physics – using the perspective of Husserlian Transcedental Phenomenology. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) abolished the theoretical framework of Classical (Galilean- Newtonian) physics that has been complemented, strengthened by Cartesian metaphysics. Rene Descartes (1596- 1850) introduced a separation between subject and object (as two different and self- enclosed substances) while Galileo and Newton (...) did the “mathematization” of the world. Newtonian physics, however, had an inexplicable postulate of absolute space and absolute time – a kind of geometrical framework, independent of all matter, for the explication of locality and acceleration. Thus, Cartesian modern metaphysics and Galilean- Newtonian physics go hand in hand, resulting to socio- ethical problems, materialism and environmental destruction. Einstein got rid of the Newtonian absolutes and was able to provide a new foundation for our notions of space and time: the four (4) dimensional space- time; simultaneity and the constancy of velocity of light, and the relativity of all systems of reference. Heisenberg, following the theory of quanta of Max Planck, told us of our inability to know sub- atomic phenomena and thus, blurring the line between the Cartesian separation of object and subject, hence, initiating the crisis of the foundations of Classical Physics. But the real crisis, according to Edmund Husserl (1859-1930) is that Modern (Classical) Science had “idealized” the world, severing nature from what he calls the Lebenswelt (life- world), the world that is simply there even before it has been reduced to mere mathematical- logical equations. Husserl thus, aims to establish a new science that returns to the “pre- scientific” and “non- mathematized” world of rich and complex phenomena: phenomena as they “appear to human consciousness”. To overcome the Cartesian equation of subject vs. object (man versus environment), Husserl brackets the external reality of Newtonian Science (epoché = to put in brackets, to suspend judgment) and emphasizes (1) the meaning of “world” different from the “world” of Classical Physics, (2) the intentionality of consciousness (L. in + tendere = to tend towards, to be essentially related to or connected to) which means that even before any scientific- logical description of the external reality, there is always a relation already between consciousness and an external reality. The world is the equiprimordial existence of consciousness and of external reality. My paper aims to look at this new science of the pre- idealized phenomena started by Husserl (a science of phenomena as they appear to conscious, human, lived experience, hence he calls it phenomenology), centering on the life- world and the intentionality of consciousness, as providing a new way of looking at ourselves and the world, in short, as providing a new metaphysics (as an antidote to Cartesian metaphysics) that grounds the revolutionary findings of Einstein and Heisenberg. The environmental destruction, technocracy, socio- ethical problems in the modern world are all rooted in this Galilean- Newtonian- Cartesian interpretation of the relationship between humans and the world after the crumbling of European Medieval Ages. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) comments that the modern world is going toward a nihilism (L. nihil = nothingness) at the turn of the century. Now, after two World Wars and the dropping of Atomic bomb, the capitalism and imperialism on the one hand, and on the other hand the poverty, hunger of the non- industrialized countries alongside destruction of nature (i.e., global warming), Nietzsche might be correct: unless humanity changes the way it looks at humanity and the kosmos. The works of Einstein, Heisenberg and Husserl seem to be pointing the way for us humans to escape nihilism by a “great existential transformation.” What these thinkers of post- modernity (after Cartesian/ Newtonian/ Galilean modernity) point to are: a) a new therapeutic way of looking at ourselves and our world (metaphysics) and b) a new and corrective notion of “rationality” (different from the objectivist, mathematico- logical way of thinking). This paper is divided into four parts: 1) A summary of Classical Physics and a short history of Quantum Theory 2) Einstein’s Special and General Relativity and Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle 3) Husserl’s discussion of the Crisis of Europe, the life- world and intentionality of consciousness 4) A Metaphysics of Relativity and Indeterminacy and a Corrective notion of Rationality in Husserl’s Phenomenology . (shrink)