Одной из особенностей прагматизма является, как известно, трактовка познания, свободная от апелляции к корреспондентной теории истины и постулирования независимой (от человека) реальности. Все прагматисты, к каким бы воззрениям по частным вопросам они ни склонялись, придерживаются операциональной концепции познания. Согласно этой концепции, достаточным основанием знания является его применимость на практике. Данный аспект неоднократно затрагивался в ходе дискуссий о сходствах и различиях марксизма и прагматизма. Несмотря на существенное расхождение между прагматизмом и марксизмом в понимании природы знания, многие исследователи пытались провести параллели между (...) этими двумя интеллектуальными традициями. В частности, Бертран Рассел указывал на близость философии Дьюи «доктрине другого экс-гегельянца, Карла Маркса, как она была сформулирована в его “Тезисах о Фейербахе”». По мнению Рассела, если не придавать слишком большого значения терминологическим нюансам, Марксова теория деятельности, или праксиса, в главных моментах «едва отличима от инструментализма». Этот взгляд получил распространение даже среди прагматистов, а также американских марксистов (точнее, троцкистов), которые в конце 40-х годов прошлого века трактовали прагматизм Дьюи как прямое продолжение и развитие марксизма. Дж. Новак, к примеру, утверждал, что «самым выдающимся современным мыслителем, впитавшим в себя все лучшее, что было у Маркса, является Дьюи». В. Ленина — как практика, а не теоретика — Новак считал, в свою очередь, «скрытым последователем» Дьюи. Согласно бывшему марксисту С. Хуку, прагматизм — это философия «экспериментального натурализма», т. е. теория, «развивающая наиболее здравые и продуктивные идеи Маркса о мире». В статье (с опорой главным образом на аргументацию советских марксистов) критически пересматривается философский диалог между марксизмом и прагматизмом. Основное внимание уделяется понятию деятельности, или праксиса, а также взаимосвязи субъекта и объекта в познании. // It is well-known that pragmatism advocates an approach on cognition without appealing to man-independent reality and truth as correspondence with reality. Instead, pragmatists, notwithstanding the diversity of their particular views, hold an operational conception of knowledge, according to which all that is needed is knowledge to have a suitable kind of correspondence with practice. This point has been scrutinized in the long standing discussion about the convergences and deviations between Marxism and pragmatism. The profound divergence between Marxism and pragmatism with regard to the aforementioned issues was not enough to prevent philosophers from attempting to trace affinities between these two distinct intellectual trends. For example, Bertrand Russell pointed out the “close similarity” of Dewey’s doctrine to “that of another exHegelian, Karl Marx, as it is delineated in his Theses on Feuerbach.” Russell thinks that Marx’s concept of activity or praxis is in spite of differences in terminology “essentially indistinguishable from instrumentalism.” This line of reasoning seems to be quite influential, even among pragmatists. Notably, some American Marxists (especially Trotskyists, to be exact) at the late 40’s overemphasized the affinity between Dewey’s pragmatism and Marxism, and even understood Dewey’s pragmatism as a continuation of Marxism. For example, G. Novack comments that “[t]he most outstanding figure in the world today in whom the best elements of Marx’s thought are present is John Dewey,” and presents Lenin as “an unavowed disciple of Dewey in practice.” According to S. Hook, a former Marxist who turned to pragmatism and became one of the most influential philosophers who discussed the relation between Marxism and pragmatism, the latter is “the philosophy of experimental naturalism” which can be regarded “as a continuation of what is soundest and most fruitful in Marx’s philosophical outlook upon the world.” In this paper, I intend to critically reassess this philosophical dialogue between Marxism and pragmatism, by further deploying the argumentation provided mainly by Soviet Marxists with regard to the aforementioned issues, focusing especially on two of them: the concept of activity (or praxis) and the interrelation of subject and object in cognition. (shrink)

K. Marx’s 200th jubilee coincides with the celebration of the 85 years from the first publication of his “Mathematical Manuscripts” in 1933. Its editor, Sofia Alexandrovna Yanovskaya (1896–1966), was a renowned Soviet mathematician, whose significant studies on the foundations of mathematics and mathematical logic, as well as on the history and philosophy of mathematics are unduly neglected nowadays. Yanovskaya, as a militant Marxist, was actively engaged in the ideological confrontation with idealism and its influence on modern mathematics and their (...) interpretation. Concomitantly, she was one of the pioneers of mathematical logic in the Soviet Union, in an era of fierce disputes on its compatibility with Marxist philosophy. Yanovskaya managed to embrace in an originally Marxist spirit the contemporary level of logico-philosophical research of her time. Due to her highly esteemed status within Soviet academia, she became one of the most significant pillars for the culmination of modern mathematics in the Soviet Union. In this paper, I attempt to trace the influence of the complex socio-cultural context of the first decades of the Soviet Union on Yanovskaya’s work. Among the several issues I discuss, her encounter with L. Wittgenstein is striking. (shrink)

The influence of religious beliefs to several leading mathematicians in early Soviet years, especially among members of the Moscow Mathematical Society, had drawn the attention of militant Soviet marxists, as well as Soviet authorities. The issue has also drawn significant attention from scholars in the post-Soviet period. According to the currently prevailing interpretation, reported purges against Moscow mathematicians due to their religious inclination are the focal point of the relevant history. However, I maintain that historical data (...) arguably offer reasons to cast reasonable doubts on this interpretation. In this paper, by reviewing the relevant literature, I raise some methodological and philosophical concerns, in an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of the issue. I maintain that an efficient line of reasoning is to discuss issues in the context of their making, taking into consideration the specific features of each era’s culture. Thus, by focusing on P.A. Nekrasov’s case, I attempt to point to an alternative interpretation, in which the different treatment of religious inclined mathematicians by Soviet authorities is explained in the context of the ideological confrontation between two contrasting worldviews, as part of the ongoing class war in the several phases of Soviet history. (shrink)

What does a Marxist theory of human psychology look like? Kyrill Potapov sheds light on this topic by showing how the works of Soviet thinkers like Lev Vygotsky and Evald Ilyenkov relate to more modern research on collective intentionality and niche construction.

This is Part 1 of an article aimed at defending Marx against orthodox Marxists to reveal the possibilities for overcoming capitalism. It is argued that Marx’s general theory of history as technological determinism along with his call for the dictatorship of the proletariat is inconsistent with his profound insights into alienation and commodity fetishism as the foundations of capitalism. Humanist Marxists focused on the latter in opposition to Orthodox Marxists, but without fully acknowledging this inconsistency and its implications, failed to (...) realize the full potential of Marx’s work. The outcome has been the triumph of “neoliberalism,” effectively a synthesis of the worst aspects of capitalism with Soviet managerialism. Here I argue that eco-Marxists should combine humanistic Marxism with the defence of genuine science to revive a tradition of thought going back to Aleksander Bogdanov and Ernst Bloch, and to Marx himself. However, traditional Marxists’ lack of appreciation of the importance of the “superstructure” has hindered even eco-Marxists from developing the culture required to replace capitalism. In Part 2 I will argue that the call for an “ecological civilization” brings into focus what is required: a realistic vision of the future based on ecological concepts. -/- . (shrink)

This book offers an historical study and critique of Marxism as it was developed in the Soviet Union, then outlines and defends a version of process philosophy on the basis of which a form of eco-Marxism is defended.

Born in 1898 in South-West Germany, the son of a lumberjack, a student of Karl Korsch in Jena, a colleague of Georg Lukács in Moscow, a militant of the Communist Part of Germany (KPD), and later a member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPB), Schmückle was a prominent Marx expert, a literary critic and an editor of the first Marx- Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA1). This article examines whether Schmückle can be called a Western Marxist. To this end, it first investigates (...) the theoretic, geological and social patterns of Western Marxism and then detects similarities and differences between Schmückle and some pioneering figures of Western Marxism. My main contention is that Western Marxist historiography potentially excludes much of what stands and falls with Schmückle’s intellectual biography and political identity. The way Western Marxism would read Schmückle leads to the conclusion that Schmückle was a Westerner and a Marxist, but hardly a Western Marxist. This suggests that either Western Marxism applies to him in a very loose sense or, alternatively, the term can be empirically falsified in Schmückle’s case. (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István Losonczy 29 // (...) ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

By utilizing words, photographs, and motion pictures, this multimodal and multisited project traces a rhizomatic genealogy of Russian Cosmism—a nineteenth century political theology promoting a universal human program for overcoming death, resurrecting ancestors, and traveling through the cosmos—throughout post-Soviet techno-utopian projects and imaginaries. I illustrate how Cosmist techno-utopian, futurist, and other-than-human discourse exist as Weberian “elective affinities” within diverse ecologies of the imagination, transmitting a variety of philosophies and political programs throughout trans-temporal, yet philosophically bounded, communities. With a particular (...) focus on the United States and Ukraine, and taking an apophatic analytical position, I dissect how different groups of philosophers, technologists, and publics interact(ed) with Cosmism, as well as how seemingly disparate communities (re)shape and deterritorialize Cosmist political theology in an attempt to legitimize their constructed political imaginaries. (shrink)

This dissertation describes and assesses post-1961 Soviet discussions of the nature of the person. It focuses on post-1961 literature because the volume of Soviet material on the nature of the person increases dramatically following the 22d Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . At that congress the CPSU declared that the USSR had become a socialist nation and that the country would now build a communist society. According to the CPSU, building communism required educating (...) persons capable of living in communist society. ;Unlike many Western theories on the nature of the person, Soviet theories do not proceed from the proposition that a person's consciousness or self-consciousness differentiates him from all other kinds of entity. They proceed rather from the proposition that a person is different from all other kinds of entity because he is social. Soviets attempt to describe what makes persons social. ;Soviets have argued among themselves concerning a number of issues regarding the nature of persons. During the early 1960s some argued that no general theory of the person was possible and that theories must center on persons of particular classes and historical eras. In the late 1960s Soviets came to believe that a general theory of the person is possible. ;General theories of the person presented by Soviets sometimes distinguish between persons, humans and individuals. This distinction is most clear when these are conceived as properly social, bio-social, and properly biological entities, respectively. There is no general agreement concerning this distinction, however, and this lack of agreement has carried over into discussions of the essence of Man. This essence is said to consist in social relations. ;Soviets have attempted to account for a person's social nature by concentrating on his ethical behavior, his social roles and his activity. None of these accounts succeeds in describing what makes persons social. ;Since social relations are considered the essence of Man, Soviets attempt to characterize them. The best attempt to do this describes social relations as relations between conscious entities. This attempt fails because it is inconsistent with Marxist dogma that consciousness is a consequence--not a cause--of Man's social nature. It also fails because it does not exclude some apparently non-social relations. ;Research for this dissertation was conducted at the libraries of Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Moscow State University and Leningrad State University, and at the Library of Congress and the Lenin Library. (shrink)

Can Marxist-Leninist philosophy disregard dialectical materialism, the analysis of material and social contradictions, the need to overcome and resolve them in the service of revolutionary transformation? ‘Does the lecturer acknowledge that the philosophy of Marxism is dialectical materialism’, as Lenin asked Bogdanov one day in May 1908? What had 'official Soviet Marxism' really become, capable of combining ideological dictatorship with militant philosophical ignorance, in turn justified by the achievements of modern science, skilfully used as an instrument of (...) domination and preservation of the established order? How can one conceptually dominate reality and its contradictions, knowing well that knowledge is never neutral but is class-based? These questions are answered by Evald Ilyenkov, one of the greatest Marxist philosophers of the 20th century, re-examining Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism at the end of the 1970s with a text entitled Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism, still unpublished in Italy, and identifying in the revolutionary leader an exceptional theoretical ally. Just as Lenin had had to fight the attacks promoted by the theories of Bogdanov, who approached the empirio-criticism of Mach, Avenarius and Berman, seeing it as dogmatic and reactionary materialism directed against the natural sciences, so Ilyenkov fought against the penetration of positivism into Soviet politics and philosophy, criticizing the rejection of the dialectic only functional to the technocratic project of building 'socialism' in the Brezhnev era, a disguised heir of the empirio-criticism denounced by Lenin as the natural metaphysical conclusion to the logic of positivism. (shrink)

This paper analyses the interpretation of the Marxist dialectic proposed by three important French philosophers of the twentieth century: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Raymond Aron (1905-1983). Starting from different theoretical and political points of view, they criticize the historical determinism of the Marxist dialectic and propose three different “philosophies of freedom.” In the Adventures of the Dialectic (1955), Merleau-Ponty criticizes a theory of human history based only on economic structure, and denounces the violence of the Soviet (...) communism. He also accuses his friend Sartre – who had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism – of “ultrabolshevism.” Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist Left. The existentialist philosopher Sartre always sympathized with the Left, and supported the French Communist Party (PCF) until the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. In his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), Sartre also underlined the failure of the Soviet revolution, and criticized the violence of Marxist revolutionary thought. The last part of this paper deals with the philosopher and political sociologist Raymond Aron, who had a lifelong, sometimes fractious, friendship with Sartre. He always defended a “skeptical and anti-ideological” liberal position. In his best known book The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955), Aron argues that in post-war France, Marxism was the opium of the intellectuals. In this book, Aron chastised French intellectuals for what he described as their harsh criticism of capitalism and democracy and their simultaneous defense of Marxist oppression, atrocities, and intolerance. In opposition to the dialectical ideology of Marxism, Aron proposes an antitotalitarian philosophical and political theory based on the development of individual liberties. (shrink)

Adam Schaff was one of the most important Marxist philosophers in Poland. His work well documents the time, when Marxism was an 'official philosophy', burdened with political responsibilities and problems of strategy. The text is a critical analysis of Schaff's political writings. It highlights the most specific traits of his often paradoxical position, that was termed in literature as 'orthodox-revisionism'. Schaff tried to meet double and often conflicting requirements: tried to develop Marxist theory by posing problems unforeseen by the (...) classics, and to stay faithful to what he understood as strategic interests of socialist countries at the same time. It will be argued, that even in its theoretical shortcomings, his writings are still among the most important resources for reflection on complex and tragic history of the Left in 20th Century. (shrink)

The spectre of global environmental destruction is before us, the legacy of the expansion and domination of the world by European civilization. Not even the threat to the continued existence of humanity is enough to move the members of this civilization to alter its trajectory. And Marxism, which had held out the possibility of creating a new social order, has been swept from the historical stage by the failure of Eastern European communism. Nihilism Inc. is an attempt to overcome (...) this crisis. Examining the relationship between metaphysical assumptions, ideas, social practices, institutions and economic processes in the formation and evolution of European civilization, it offers a genealogy of its current nihilism. The theory and practice of Marxism are analysed to show why the Soviet Union proved even more environmentally destructive and even less responsive to the environmental crisis than the West. These analyses reveal the need for a radical cultural transformation, a transformation which can only be effected on the foundation of a new metaphysics. The final part of this work offers the required metaphysics, clearing the way for the creation of an environmentally sustainable civilization. (shrink)

The article analyzes the views on the philosophy of Azerbaijan Enlightenment, the famous Azerbaijani historian of philosophy of the XX century, Enver Mirzekulievich Akhmedov (1920-1984). E.Akhmedov was one of the first scientists who studied the Azerbaijan philosophy of enlightenment in stages and systematically. He briefly referred to the legacy of almost every author, thoroughly studied by him during the period of Azerbaijan Enlightenment. E.Akhmedov managed to create a general philosophical picture of the era of enlightenment in Azerbaijan, which was formed (...) from the beginning of the XIX century and went through a difficult path of development until the 20s of the XX century. Despite the fact that in his works on the history of philosophy he tried to preserve scientific objectivity as much as possible, there is an ideological line of that time in his legacy, which is observed among most of our scientists who conducted research in the field of social sciences during the Soviet period. This moment makes it impossible, without a critical approach, to comprehend within the framework of the modern scientific paradigm, the rich legacy of E.Akhmedov and other historians of philosophy of the Soviet era. The obligatory Marxist-Leninist line of the Soviet era, the search for materialism and atheism in every period and thinker of the history of philosophy, unfortunately, undermines the scientific objectivity of research at this stage. The interpretation of such factors in the legacy of E.Akhmedov and our other scientists, based on scientific and philosophical critical analysis, allows the works of our historians of philosophy of the Soviet period to remain relevant in our time. (shrink)

In 1931, Evgeny Pashukanis, the distinguished Soviet jurist, author of “The General Theory of Law and Marxism”, following an invitation to celebrate the centenary of Hegel’s death, published an assay entitled “Hegel, the State and Law” (Гегель. Государство и право) aimed to demistify, through a brief retrospective of Hegelian’s philosophy, its specific use, something achieved through the bourgeois ideology which, at some point in history, abandoned Kantism and its followers to embrace Neo-Hegelianism as a philosophy of domination and (...) social control. In this unpublished text, Pashukanis reflects, from a Marxist and Leninist point of view, on the ability to use Hegel as a bourgeois defense tool, when a particular society, specifically the one from the 1920s to the 1930s, began to be affected by the fear of communism and by the crises that endanger its very survival. From this angle, the capitalist interest - following Pashukanisian interpretation of Hegel - will only develop in the terms of a scientific elimination of all those subversive potentials that the economic crisis is destined to produce, thus reformulating the notions of State and Law which, in between obedience, discipline and defense of the homeland, come to assert the official recognition of the inexorably crushed proletariat in a condition in which all relations of production and social reproduction are transferred to the realm of exploitation, as its definitive subsumption to capital. (shrink)

This article makes two main claims: that Debord’s concept of the ‘integrated spectacle’ is related to end of History narratives; and that the related concept of ‘disinformation’ is manifested in new forms of media-driven warfare. These claims are substantiated through a comparative analysis between Debord’s texts and contemporary politics, primarily as described by Adam Curtis and by the RETORT collective. The resulting understanding of our contemporary politics is a situation where subjects who appear to be free, are in fact only (...) free to choose between competing brands of neo-liberalism that manipulate and baffle in order to obfuscate their true agendas. This situation is termed a ‘spectacular malaise’. The article then critiques post-Marxist claims to a re-birth of History and therefore a potential end to the spectacular malaise. It argues that the Arab Spring and Occupy movement did not signal an end to the end of History, as they were unable to articulate an alternative vision. This situation is compared to the last days of the Soviet Union, when change also seemed unimaginable. It identifies Mark Fisher’s call for activists to demonstrate alternative possibilities and reveal contingency in apparently natural orders to counter the spectacular malaise. Three art collectives are considered as potential candidates to take up this challenge: Women on Waves, Voina, and SUPERFLEX. The article concludes that while making actual social and political change is useful for demonstrating alternative possibilities, it is art’s symbolic value that reveals contingency and strikes at the heart of the spectacular malaise. (shrink)

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed (...) by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a point) so that they can manipulate it for profit. Their survival in the marketplace often depends on their competitive success in doing so. The fact that their interventions into nature, driven by class interest, often succeed, is evidence of the reliability and truth of their natural scientific theories. -/- With social science, capitalists have a partial interest in understanding the world, so that they may maintain their class power, ideological hegemony, and a reasonably stable and self-reproducing economy. Some bourgeois social science, Marx thinks, is therefore vindicated the same way that natural science is, because of, not despite, its success in promoting the class interests that cause it. But the capitalist class, Marx thinks, also has an interest in obfuscating the truth about the social world. It would undermine the stability of capitalism, for example, for the bourgeoisie to adopt what Marx thinks to be the correct social theory, Marxism, and proclaim to the world that capitalism is exploitative and unstable. Capitalism creates a a need for ideological social theories that, driven by class interest, represent capitalism as just, natural, inevitable, and unalterable. If Marxism is correct, while these theories may further capitalist interests, they will not withstand the test of time as capitalist exploitation and instability engenders countersystemic political action. -/- How, then can we know, according to Marx, that Marxism is correct, as applied to itself? In part it is whether it succeeds in further the class interests that cause it. If workers adopt bourgeois theories and Marxism is right, they will find themselves frustrated in pursuit of goals that they have, such as improving their well-being, and if Marxism is wrong, then those theories will help them further their own goals. Similarly with Marxism: if it is right, then workers who adopt it should in the long run have more success in furthering their own goals, and if not, then not. But it is question begging to say that our confidence in the reliability of Marxism is enhanced by its successful promotion of goals that capitalists do not have but (according to Marxism) workers do. To avoid this problem it is necessary to compare the relative success of each sort of theory in promoting the interests and needs that the respective classes have independently of the theory, as well as by the usual criteria of scientific theory choice. -/- Thus the Soviet variant of Marxism was fairly decisively refuted by its failure to generate the support of its own designated constituency necessary to grow and survive. Whether the same is true of other varieties of Marxism or of capitalist social theory, it is, as Zhou En Lai said when asked whether the French Revolution had succeeded, too soon to tell, at least in any definitive way. However, and this is the point of the paper, an objective test of Marxism is possible even though Marxism says that all theory is informed by class interest. The question is whether the interests are in discovering or obfuscating the truth. The point is not limited to Marx, but applies to any self-referential social scientific theory that includes itself in its scope. -/- Keywords: ideology, self-referential theory, self-reference, reliabilism, objectivity, Marx, Marxism, sociology of science, class interest, classes, capitalism, bourgeoisie, workers, working class, social theory of knowledge, confirmation of scientific theory. (shrink)

The book is a philosophical reflection on the history of the USSR based on the civilization approach. It is interpreted in terms of Ortodox civilzation rather than in terms of the marxist philosophy of history. "Long-run" civiliaztion dominants of Orthodox Christianity determines the "Soviet period" in th Orthodox "longue durée". This philosophical viewpoint leads to a radical reinterpretation of the history of the USSR ...

Our planet contains 194 independent states and much more nations. They share membership of the United Nations and in consequence they subscribed the Universal Declaration of Rights. These are rooted in the modern universal conception of states and human rights formulated by philosophers of the Enlighten Age like Locke, Kant., Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. Concepts like democracy are mirrored to the organization of the political life as it was developed in North America and Europe at the end of the 18th (...) and the 19th century. Universality was deeply rooted in the Western intellectual, moral and religious tradition of that part of the world. Even globalization of the economic and social life is governed by the same Western standards and worldwide consumed basic goods like prime matter,. food and energy is expressed in terms of Western currency like dollar, pound sterling or euro. Despite this economic globalization there were two contradictory political evolution to discern: At the one hand more than 70 new states where created and on the other hand 28 European states started to integrate to a political European Union. The latter trend was based on a deep economic integration and since the creation of the euro also a financial integration. Basic idea was the creation of a free economic market as bases for a political unified Europe. Euro criticism is not only identified with conservatism, nationalism, narrow mind and even racism, euro criticism is deprived from any intellectual significance. However other trends put some shadow on the European project. First the Soviet experience around Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism unified more different nations than the European Union but ended in a complete political and economic chaos. Secondly the financial euro crisis involves only the tacit undermining of the national political independence of the member states, but does not make room for a deep analysis what the fundamentals are of this crisis such as lack of confidence of the citizen in the created unified political and financial market and its main instruments like banks that we consider as the fundamental boundary conditions of the worldwide globalization of goods, power and all aspects of human life. Furthermore we claim that this market in al its aspects is the worst answer to the inconvenient yet unavoidable truth that Western way of life of consumption includes a ecological footprint that exceeds since many years the sustainability of our planet. -/- . (shrink)

Review of 'Nihilism Incorporated: European Civilization and Environmental Destruction.

This article analyses in detail Wittgenstein’s ‘Cambridge period’ from his return to Cambridge in 1929 until his decease in 1951. Within the ‘Cambridge period’, scholars usually distinguish the ‘middle’ (1929–1936) and the ‘late’ (1936–1951) periods. The trigger point of Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge and philosophy was his visit to Brouwer’s lecture on ‘Mathematics, Science, and Language’ in Vienna in March 1928. Dutch mathematician Brouwer influenced not only Wittgenstein’s ability to do philosophy again but also the development of some of his (...) ideas. Namely, for Brouwer, language was a natural development of the social history of human beings. With the help of his friends, F. P. Ramsey, J. M. Keynes, G. E. Moore, and B. Russell, in 1929 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge. The author argues that this was the crucial turning point in his philosophy that led to the revision of some of his ideas. Wittgenstein returned from self-isolation in remote villages of Lower Austria to the intellectual academic environment, where he could discuss his ideas with intellectual interlocutors and receive their valuable remarks and comments. This article is organised in chronological order: it describes the very ‘early’ middle period of 1929–1935 involving the development of Wittgenstein’s ‘phenomenology’ and the origin of the ‘language-games’ concept in the Blue and Brown Books; 1935–1936 period of ‘romantic’ enthusiasm for Soviet Russia and a trip there; Wittgenstein’s life and work during the WWII-time; resign from teaching in Cambridge in 1947 to finally finish his Philosophical Investigations. The author suggests that the ‘romantic areal’ about the USSR was formed by Wittgenstein’s predilection for Russian poetry and literature of the nineteenth century, i.e., Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin. Analysing the development of Wittgenstein’s ideas on language in his Cambridge period, the author mentions the influence of N. Bakhtin and P. Sraffa. Also, the author touches upon the topic of the possibility of Marxism’s influence on Wittgenstein’s life and thought. (shrink)

The notion of ecological civilisation has become central to Chinese efforts to confront and deal with environmental problems. However, ecological civilisation is characterized by its proponents in different ways. Some see it as simply an adjunct to the existing system designed to deal with current ecological crises. Its more radical proponents argue for a socialist ecological civilisation that should be developed globally and transform every part of society, changing the way people perceive, live and relate to each other and to (...) nature, and the goals they aspire to. Ecological civilisation is a translation of the Russian notion of ecological culture, and tracing the history of ecology and the concept of culture in the Soviet Union, particularly in the 1920s, I will support this more radical view, arguing that ecological civilisation is not only underpinned by eco-socialism; it provides the means to clarify the meaning of socialism generally in a way that accords with deep assumptions of Marx’s critique of capitalism. That this notion has been officially embraced within China establishes a tradition of socialist thought that now has the potential to challenge and replace global capitalism. (shrink)

The collapse of the Soviet Union, all hope that Eastern European communism might somehow be transformed into a more attractive, less environmentally destructive social order than the liberal democratic societies of the West has been destroyed. The description of the modern predicament by Alvin W. Gouldner has become even more poignant: "The political uniqueness of our own era then is this; we have lived and still live through a desperate political and social malaise, while at the same time we (...) have outlived the desperate revolutionary remedies that had once been thought to solve them." If this is the case, there is reason to examine the failure of the Soviet Union more closely. Was it possible that things might have worked out differently; and if so, does this provide any orientation for the present? In this paper I will show how an alternative path for Soviet society had been charted, and partly implemented, in the 1920's by the radical wing of Bolshevism, a path which made environmental conservation a central issue. And I will suggest that this is the path which holds most hope for the future. (shrink)

In ‘Equity and Marxist Buddhism,’ Tzu-wei Hung engages with the Marxist Buddhism developed by Taiwanese philosopher Lin Qiu-wu in the 1920s, brings this underexplored theory to the table and discusses a few merits and insights of the theory. Building on Hung’s analysis, this paper paper elaborates on the lessons and insights that Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism provides for modern times. The first three lessons are distinctive points that Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism brings to the discussion on combining Marxism and Buddhism: the (...) connections between the ethical and political, the responsibility for pursuing social justice and the nonviolence means towards social justice. The last lesson comes at the meta-philosophical level, focusing on how Hung’s engagement with Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism sheds light on the issue of diversifying the discipline philosophy. Overall, I argue that Taiwanese Marxist Buddhism not only makes contributions to theoretical frameworks while providing a practical means for pursuing equity and social justice, but it also manifests the epistemic and moral values for engaging with under-represented philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity appears to defend a distinctly existentialist, deontologically-constrained version of consequentialism. On that interpretation, her belief that freedom consists in the real possibilities provided by our concrete situation leads her to reject Kantian autonomy to allow for some consequentialist decisions, while her belief that our situation derives its meaning from freely-chosen projects leads her to limit such choices to their consequences for situated freedom rather than general happiness. However, I will argue that Beauvoir’s view is better understood (...) as a non-deontological, internal critique of consequentialism, rooted in Marx’s historical materialism rather than her existentialist commitments. Beauvoir challenges consequentialism’s tendency to evaluate decision-making over actions, and intended or predicted consequences over actual ones, considering consequences during a limited time-frame despite their variable, contingent future value. In other words, consequentialism is insufficiently consequentialist, a view rooted in historical materialism in two ways. First, her materialist understanding of freedom as situated possibility requires an ethics that prioritizes real rather than projected consequences. Materialist consequentialism acknowledges outcomes are never final and so refuses to assign unambiguous moral value. A decision’s ethical value is preserved only to the degree that the value of its real consequences for existing individuals’ projects is maintained into the indefinite future. Second, her view that value is historical, a human creation based in our actual situation’s contingent utility to our individually chosen projects, denies that any consequence has a fixed value independent of the historical development of humanity as realized through individual choices. Historical-materialist consequentialism demands moral agents retroactively reassess the moral status of every action in order to repair consequences that have, because of changing human purposes, become obstacles to freedom. Together, these historical materialist constraints ground Beauvoir’s demand for an ethics that is ambiguous in principle as well as practice: no decision, action, or consequence has a fixed moral value because consequences are always incomplete and, even when they do not change, the projects that give them value change. While compatible with existentialist conceptions of freedom, responsibility, and authenticity, her ethics does not require such commitments, making it more Marxist than existentialist in character. (shrink)

In Replacing Truth, Scharp takes the concept of truth to be fundamentally incoherent. As such, Scharp reckons it to be unsuited for systematic philosophical theorising and in need of replacement – at least for regions of thought and talk which permit liar sentences and their ilk to be formulated. This replacement methodology is radical because it not only recommends that the concept of truth be replaced, but that the word ‘true’ be replaced too. Only Tarski has attempted anything like it (...) before. I dub such a view Conceptual Marxism. In assessing this view, my goals are fourfold: to summarise the many components of Scharp’s theory of truth; to highlight what I take to be some of the excess baggage carried by the view; to assess whether, and to what extent, the extreme methodology on offer is at all called for; finally, to briefly propose a less radical replacement strategy for resolving the liar paradox. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is fairly modest. I obviously do not claim that there has never been or could never be an instance of irrational or fallacious appeals to quotations from canonical sources in the marxist tradition. Instead, I claim that the practice of using quotations from canonical sources is not, as such, irrational. If we understand the epistemological infrastructure of the practice -- the rational underpinnings of it -- we can grasp how these citations appeal to the presumptive (...) authoritativeness of formulations that condense or concisely convey the core of insights that emerged from learning processes that the intellectual tradition of marxism has already traversed. The rational underpinnings of the practice include, first, the neo-Hegelian idea that we can justify a view we now hold by rationally reconstructing the insight-motivated learning process from which it emerged, and second, the convention that these rational reconstructions do not have to be elaborated in each insistence, but can be invoked in a short-form way, such as by citing the name of a decision or a concise statement of it (like a short quotation), as is common in the epistemologically similar practice of precedential reasoning in common law juridical justification. No claim is true just because of who made it; but a claim might be presumptively authoritative in cases where it was made at the end of a learning process, which has not been overtaken by a change in the circumstances or further learning. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Marxist Buddhism may provide a novel approach to envy in society. It has been argued that envy arises in response to socio-political inequality, which is considered a problem given the social and moral harms associated with envy. Thus, achieving equality is expected to solve the problem of envy. However, anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that is not the case, and that, in particular, societies inspired by Marxist ideals are not envy-free—if anything, the opposite seems (...) true. Buddhism has traditionally condemned envy. It shares with Marxism the idea that individual wellbeing can be obtained, paradoxically, only through lessening emphasis on individuality—Marxism by means of economic collectivism, Buddhism by means of a spiritual transformation. Both aim at shrinking the self and are keenly aware of how quickly an emphasis on one’s own desires leads to greed and exploitation of others. However, Marxist ideals have failed to yield successful large-scale flourishing communities, while Buddhism is a religion practiced by millions of people but has not advanced a politically progressive agenda in particular. Marxist Buddhism—argue—may perhaps bring together the best of the respective traditions to solve the problem of envy. However, I end by cautioning against such a radical reshaping of our psychological makeup, especially given the evidence that shows that there are morally and prudentially good types of envy, and sketch the profile of a Buddhist-friendly type of envy as an alternative to total eradication. (shrink)

My paper refers to Leszek Kołakowski’s Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origin, Growth, and Dissolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987). Kołakowski’s intention was to write a textbook on the history of Marxism based on his lectures but his book is much more than that. It is a philosophical treatise in which Marx’s doctrine of mankind and the program of its liberation are critically analysed and reinterpreted. The core of Marx’s philosophy is the idea of man and the belief that (...) the real existence of humans is not identical with their essence. Kołakowski shows that this belief is rooted in mythological thinking, the Platonic tradition, and in the Christian thought. A moral that follows from Kołakowski’s critical analysis of Marx’s doctrine is that man has never lived in a paradise and yet he perceives himself as banished thereof; that he will never enter a paradise and yet he cannot live without the faith that this is somehow possible. Therefore, what he should do is to have a minimum of common sense and skepticism related to it, for they would protect him against the traps laid by false prophets repeatedly asserting that they know the means to construct the paradise today or at least tomorrow. (shrink)

Losurdo analyzes the debate which took place in 1954 between Galvano Della Volpe and Palmiro Togliatti (the General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party) over the relationship between Marxism and liberalism. Della Volpe championed the standard position that liberalism enshrined formal (negative) freedom which Marxism seeks to preserve while also extending social rights (or positive freedom). Togliatti recognized the main problem with this view: the majority of people who lived under the rule of states which purportedly adhered to (...) Western liberalism were colonized peoples who did not share in the experience of exasperation with the merely formal nature of bourgeois negative freedom, because it was never extended to them in the first place (pp. 94–95)! In a sense, we can say that the problem with Marxism in its Eurocentric form is that it is too charitable towards liberalism. It attributes to liberalism achievements that it is innocent of (p. 216). Losurdo remarks on the irony of the date of this debate, for 1954 was the year of the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ when the Việt Minh forces defeated the French in a war of independence which was fought, at least partly, in the name of the formal bourgeois freedom which Western liberal states had, according to Della Volpe and other Western Marxists, already actualized in the world. (shrink)

In the article the author describes theoretical reasons that stood behind Kołakowski's transition from being an orthodox Marxist to become an actual leader of the polish revisionist movement. His intention is to concentrate on those aspects of Kołakowski's thought that have not changed, apart from any biographical and psychological reasons. (1) First of those features is Kołakowski's inability of completability, the anti-code disposition. (2) The second trait is the moral attitude, an intention to influence on people's morality by convincing them (...) that social and internal (necessarily bound with social) changes are desirable; that an existential calm demolishes morality. (3) Third feature concerns the fact that Kołakowski did not attempt to create his own philosophy, he was rather a historian of ideas, a skeptic, and a critic. (shrink)

We shall see that as the Master of suspicion, Marx rejects capitalism, which he considers to be a system of bourgeois oppression, absurd and decadent. The latter eludes the importance of the social question in the historical future of a society. Trampling on the lyrical illusions of practical rationality, he insists on the rigidity of economic and social determinisms, to which he confers an overdeterminent role in sub-estimating the impact of cognitive and/or psychological mechanisms on the exercise of state power. (...) We will explain how dialectical materialism in Marx joins in many respects the methodological revolution initiated by Nietzsche, particularly as regards its requirement to contextualize a real understood as a fabric of forces, in order to understand the origin of the dominant values and that of the capitalist system. Moreover, it will be important to develop the idea that within a civil society, itself prey to a crisis of the sittlichkeit (the ethical life), history tends to separate the interests in favor of imperceptible cowards perverse become legion, while insidiously affecting a social body incapable of escaping from material contingencies. We will then have the right to question the way in which revolutions occur? (shrink)

This paper argues that the recent 'mini-renaissance' in Marxist educational sociology as propounded in particular by Rikowski (1996, 1997) is fatally flawed, not only denying the sui generis (autonomous) properties of the educational system but also precluding practical social theorising per se . The reason for this centres on the adoption of a universal internal relations social ontology, which results in the reduction of concrete social reality to the narrow abstraction of the omnipresent 'Capital Relation'. At the same time, such (...) theorising remains conspicuously silent on the issue of the feasible alternatives to capitalism implied by the (albeit flawed) explanatory critiques of such recent Marxist theorising within the sociology of education. (shrink)

This article deals with women-centred prose texts of the 1990s and 2000s in Russia written by women, and focuses especially on generation narratives. By this term the author means fictional texts that explore generational relations within families, from the perspective of repressed experiences, feelings and attitudes in the Soviet period. The selected texts are interpreted as narrating and conceptualizing the consequences of patriarchal ideology for relations between mothers and daughters and for reconstructing connections between Soviet and post-Soviet (...) by revisiting and remembering especially the gaps and discontinuities between (female) generations. The cases discussed are Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s ‘povest’ Vremia noch [The Time: Night] (1991), Liudmila Ulitskaia’s novel Medeia i ee deti [Medea and her Children] (1996) and Elena Chizhova’s novel Vremia zhenshchin [The Time of Women] (2009). These novels reflect on the one hand the woman-centredness and novelty of representation in women’s prose writing in the post-Soviet period. On the other hand, the author suggests that they reflect the diverse methods of representing the Soviet era and experience through generation narratives. The texts reassess the past through intimate, tactile memories and perceptions, and their narration through generational plots draws attention to the process of working through, which needs to be done in contemporary Russia. The narratives touch upon the untold stories of those who suffered in silence or hid the family secrets from the officials, in order to save the family. The narration delves into the different layers of experience and memory, conceptualizing them in the form of multiple narrative perspectives constructing different generations and traditions. In this way they convey the ‘secrets’ hidden in the midst of everyday life routines and give voice to the often silent resistance of women towards patriarchal and repressive ideology. The new women’s prose of the 1980s–90s and the subsequent trend of women-centred narratives and generation narratives employ conceptual metaphors of reassessing, revisiting and remembering the cultural, experiential, and emotional aspects of the past, Soviet lives. (shrink)

The present book is an in-depth study of Lukács’ musical aesthetics and, more specifically, of his essay on music from The Specificity of the Aesthetic (Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen, 1963). Lukács’ problematic in this essay revolves around a central issue in the history of Aesthetics: the problem of mimesis in music. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle music has been regarded as a mimesis (an imitation) of reality. However, this theory of music as mimesis presents major difficulties which have (...) long been the subject of philosophical thinking: how is it possible that an art so far removed from reality, an art that employs sounds (not images or concepts) be considered as an imitation of reality? This is the main question that concerns Lukács in this essay. The present book seeks, through the detailed examination of Lukács’ central argument, to demonstrate and clarify Lukács’ solution to this problem of musical mimesis and to highlight its significance for the contemporary debate on Aesthetics. (shrink)

Th is work is a companion piece to "The American Worker," Karl Kautsky's reply to Werner Sombart’s Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (1906), first published in English in the November 2003 edition of the journal Historial Materialism. In August 1909 Kautsky wrote an article on Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, on the occasion of the latter's first European tour. Th e article was not only a criticism of Gompers’s anti-socialist "pure-and-simple" unionism (...) but also part of an ongoing battle between the revolutionary wing of German Social Democracy and the German trade-union officials. In this critical English edition we provide the historical background to the document as well as an overview of the issues raised by Gompers' visit to Germany, such as the bureaucratisation and increasing conservatism of the union leadership in both Germany and the United States, the role of the General Commission of Free Trade Unions in the abandonment of Marxism by the German Social-Democratic Party and the socialists’ attitude toward institutions promoting class collaboration like the National Civic Federation. (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.

The paper discusses Beauvoir's interpretation of the Marxist and Freudian contributions to our understanding of the feminine condition. Several epistemological assumptions derived from Sartre's philosophy are pointed out. Beauvoir's reading of Marx, Engels, and Freud is discussed, claiming that her reading is biased by humanistic and historicist assumptions. This is an unpublished English version of Sergio Cremaschi, “Marxismo e psicanalisi in Il secondo sesso di Simone de Beauvoir”, Vita e Pensiero, 67 (1975), 3-4, pp. 510-525; reprint in E. De Marchi (...) (ed.), In nome della donna, Editrice Vita e Pensiero, Milano, 1976, pp. 510-525. (shrink)

Landon Frim and Harrison Fluss’s following article, “Reason is Red: Why Marxism Needs Philosophy” is a response to Aaron Jaffe’s, “Marxism, Spinoza, and the ‘Radical’ Enlightenment.' -/- It’s not that activism is of second-rate import. It’s that something as important as intervening in the world, and affecting people’s lives, requires sound justification. If we are committed to “the idea” of communism, then we’re also committed to its practical realization and all of the real-world consequences that this entails. Being (...) serious about ideas means confronting their flesh-and-blood impacts when they come to fruition. Intellectual maturity, then, demands an accounting of our political ideals. We have to care that we are right and that our enemies are wrong. And this means something more than being on the “right side” of a particular issue; it means knowing that your politics are grounded in an accurate conception of reality and of what is objectively good for human beings. (shrink)

Feminist theorists try to approach their philosophical perspectives from various systems. They approach it from the perspectives of liberalism, Marxism, radicalism, existentialism, postmodernism, etc. Whatever may be the system they use, their aim seems to be to divulge the oppressions undergone by the women. They use a method or adopt philosophical thinking so that they can spell out their cries in a philosophical manner. Using the philosophical systems does not mean that the philosopher who forwarded the system was aiming (...) at the liberation of women. I would like to present in this essay the utilitarian and Marxian perspectives on Feminism. For the utilitarian perspective, I base myself on Harriet Taylor Mill and the Marxian perspective is from the writings of Karl Marx. I also attempt to connect the philosophy of Harriet Taylor with the Iranian movie, The Day I Became a Woman, and the philosophy of Karl Marx with the illustrious play of Bertolt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. (shrink)

During the last two years, senior high school teachers struggled with course contents in a neoliberal education. While the Mass Training of Teachers (MTOT) focuses on pedagogical knowledge, their concern is to deepen their content knowledge. As a result, they face difficulty in teaching the subjects, one of which is Marxism under Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences (DISS). Enriching this paper, the query turns to the key participants of the sector and seek their insights. Then, critical analysis (...) applies what the literature says about the way Marxism is taught. (shrink)

There exists a real dearth of literature available to Anglophones dealing with philosophical connections between transhumanism and Marxism. This is surprising, given the existence of works on just this relation in the other major European languages and the fact that 47 per cent of people surveyed in the 2007 Interests and Beliefs Survey of the Members of the World Transhumanist Association identified as “left,” though not strictly Marxist (Hughes 2008). Rather than seeking to explain this dearth here, I aim (...) to contribute to its being filled in by identifying three fundamental areas of similarity between transhumanism and Marxism. These are: the importance of material conditions, and particularly technological advancement, for revolution; conceptions of human nature; and conceptions of nature in general. While it is true that both Marxism and (especially) transhumanism are broad fields that encompass diverse positions, even working with somewhat generalized characterizations of the two reveals interesting parallels and dissimilarities fruitful for future work. -/- This comparison also shows that transhumanism and Marxism can learn important lessons from one another that are complementary to their respective projects. I suggest that Marxists can learn from transhumanists two lessons: that some “natural” forces may become reified forces and the extent to which the productive apparatus is now relevant to revolution. Transhumanists, on the other hand, can learn from Marxist theory the essentially social nature of the human being and the ramifications this has for the transformation of the human condition and for the forms of social organization compatible with transhumanist aims. Transhumanists can also benefit from considering the relevance of Marx’s theory of alienation to their goals of technological advancement. (shrink)

This book provides the first detailed account of Gramsci's work in the context of current critical and socio-cultural debates. Renate Holub argues that Gramsci was ahead of his time in offering a theory of art, politics and cultural production. Gramsci's achievement is discussed particularly in relation to the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Bloch, Habermas), to Brecht's theoretical writings and to thinkers in the phenomenological tradition especially Merleau-Ponty. She argues for Gramsci's continuing relevance at a time of retreat from Marxist (...) positions on the postmodern left. Antonio Gramsci is distinguished by its range of philosophical grasp, its depth of specialized historical scholarship, and its keen sense of Gramsci's position as a crucial figure in the politics of contemporary cultural theory. (shrink)

Argument that Marx has a realist ontology and a correspondence theory of truth. His views are compared to both Hegel's and Kant's. This interpretation departs from more Hegelian, 'idealist' interpretations that often rely on misunderstanding some of the work of the early Marx. There is also a discussion and partial defence of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

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)

Aristotle’s account of natural slavery as presented in his Politics is often treated by historians of philosophy as an account that can be analyzed purely internally in terms of its argumentative structure without referring to social factors. Against this view, Aristotle’s account of natural slavery is seen to be ideological according to at least one variant of the Marxist concept of ideology, and cannot be understood without reference to Aristotle’s socioeconomic context. The ideological nature of Aristotle’s account of natural slavery (...) is especially evident in his “proto-racialization” of the category of the “natural slave.” The Marxist concept of ideology is demonstrably useful in the historical study of philosophy, as compared with internalist historians of philosophy who claim that referring to nonphilosophical factors such as class interests inevitably obscures the philosophical content of the texts that are the objects of analysis. (shrink)

In this paper, my main aim is to analyse Mao’s conception of Marxist theory and his Marxist subjectivity in theory construction in his three articles. While doing so, I will use two main approaches, first is the idea that Karl Marx’s method in understanding social relations and his theory of knowledge is in many aspects compatible and in continuation with an epistemological reading of Hegel’s subjectivity, and the second is the general structure about the relationship between the object and subject’s (...) process of knowing is similar in all three thinkers. While doing so, I will advocate the position that Mao’s epistemology is compatible with the Marxist understanding of Hegelian epistemology, and that from such an epistemological understanding it is possible to investigate Mao’s three texts in a way that yields, not an orthodox or “end result” Marxism, but instead a more general, meta epistemological understanding of Marx, that is understood better structurally. Eventually, I will claim that while using “scientific” or “orthodox” Marxism as a method to understand society, Mao further uses the subjective element in the same way as Hegel and Marx used it, although eventually he diverts the Marxist subjective manoeuvre to another direction. (shrink)