Shopping cartHistorical Materialism
Volumes & issues:
-
Editorial Introduction to Vittorio Morfino
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
Reading 'Capital''s promotion of the Spinozist sources of Marxism has stimulated a series of important studies in several major zones of Marxist theoretical work. A more general reassessment of Spinoza's thought in the project of a 'radical Enlightenement' provides the opportunity to consider critically the contribution of these studies to the elaboration of Marxist political theory. Vittorio Morfino, well known Italian scholar of Spinoza and Althusser, proposes to study Engels's reading of Spinoza in the context of the inheritance of classical German idealism in the Marxist theory of history. He argues that Spinoza provides resources for rethinking Marxist notions of temporality and structure. The result is a theory of conjunctural analysis, in distinction from 'normative' and 'prescriptive' perspectives.
-
Causa sui or Wechselwirkung: Engels between Spinoza and Hegel
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
The essay takes its point of departure from Monod's reading of dialectical materialism in Chance and Necessity. A passage of Engels's Dialectics of Nature, which identifies Spinoza's concept of causa sui with the Hegelian concept of interaction [Wechselwirkung], provides the opportunity to examine the consequences of Monod's claims more closely. Using Spinoza's philosophy as a litmus test, the essay attempts to demonstrate the debt of Engels's materialism to Hegel's Science of Logic by tracing the development of the concept of Wechselwirkung in classical German philosophy. A profound difference between the Spinozan and Hegelian concepts becomes apparent: while the concept of Wechselwirkung implies a totality present to itself as simultaneity, permitting the flow of a linear, homogenous and empty time upon which stages of development can be inscribed, the concept of causa sui implies a totality without closure, a totality whose eternity is identified with the necessary and infinite network of modal durations. The essay concludes by suggesting that Spinoza's concept of causa sui allows us to rethink the relation between freedom and necessity in the Marxist tradition in conjunctural and aleatory terms.
-
Lost in Transition: the German World-Market
Debate in the 1970s- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
The persistence of economic and geopolitical conflicts beyond the 1990s has revived interest in explanations that analyse international conflicts in relation to capitalism. In this debate, many contributors have accepted one or another version of a strong globalisation theory, which reflects the hopes for an age of peace and prosperity as a largely co-operative process. This paper attempts to question this thesis by introducing an almost forgotten debate: the German world-market debate of the 1970s. This approach attempted to show how the general laws of motion of capitalism prevail under changing conditions. Furthermore it pointed to the existence of many states, which again and again reproduces the reality of multipolar competitive capitalism, albeit in changing forms. In the following we outline the central – sometimes diverging – insights, before subjecting them to a critical appraisal and identifying a number of points where the theses could be developed further. Taking up the threads of that debate without repeating its weaknesses could prove productive for today's discussion.
-
The Disguises of Wage-Labour: Juridical Illusions, Unfree Conditions and Novel Extensions
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
Once we shift the intension of the concept of wage-labour from juridical attributes of negative ownership and contractual freedom to the actual performance of capital-positing labour, the extension of the concept – the cases that fall under it – changes as well. Once the concept of wage-labour is intensively re-defined as capital-positing labour, it becomes evident that the history and the geographical scope of wage-labour have not been well understood. This shift in the intension of the concept of wage-labour also disjoins the association between capitalism and freedom.
-
Here Is the Rose, Dance Here!
A Riposte to the Debate on the Argentinean Crisis- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
This article aims to contribute to the debate on the short- to medium-term political implications of the 2001 Argentine crisis (see issues 10.4, pp. 5–38 and 14.1. pp. 155–248 of this journal). The bulk of the argument deals with the criticism of the notion of 'reinvention of politics'. The article presents the theoretical premises and empirical data which sustain this proposal. It is argued that in order to appreciate the political innovation brought about by the events of December 2001, it is important first to consider the political, social and economic forms of capitalist transformations and crises that shaped them. Secondly, to locate this event in historical perspective, as a constitutive node within a non-teleological continuum of resistance. Thirdly, to view capitalist crises as presenting open opportunities for the reinvention of the forms of resistance, and to underscore that reinvention occurs as a result of simultaneous struggles against capital and for self-affirmation and recognition. By using examples of organisational innovation and social intervention by the piquetero movement it is suggested that December 2001 led to new practices or facilitated the development of existing forms of collective action that have often been overlooked by those disappointed by the ensuing political developments. The article also discusses the problem of periodisation, addressing the relationship between Marxism and the use of data produced by non-Marxist researchers, and calls into question the adequacy of Cartesian rationality for understanding December 2001 and the meaning of political change in Argentina.
-
The Podolinsky Myth: An Obituary Introduction to 'Human Labour and Unity of Force', by Sergei Podolinsky
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
The relationship between Marxism and ecology has been sullied by Martinez-Alier's influential interpretation of Engels's reaction to the agricultural energetics of Sergei Podolinsky. This introduction to the first English translation of Podolinsky's 1883 Die Neue Zeit piece evaluates Martinez-Alier's interpretation in light of the four distinct but closely related articles Podolinsky published over the years 1880–3. This evaluation also emphasises the important but previously underrated role of energy analysis in Marx's Capital. Engels's criticisms of Podolinsky are found to be quite justified from both political-economy and ecological perspectives. From the standpoint of Marx and Engels's metabolic and class-relational approach to production, Podolinsky's attempt to reduce use-value to energy is fraught with problems. Podolinsky's energy reductionism does not even come close to representing an alternative value analysis – let alone a groundbreaking perspective on ecological history – as was suggested by Martinez-Alier. Far from Marx and Engels's vision of communism as an ecologically sustainable and coevolutionary human development, Podolinsky's conception of human labor as an energy accumulation machine seems to uncritically mimic the standpoint of the capitalist interested in using nature only to extract as much energy throughput (work) as possible from the labour-power (potential work) of the worker.
-
Human Labour and Unity of Force
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
-
Ulrike Meinhof und die deutsche Verhältnisse
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
-
Der 'homo oeconomicus' und sein Kredit bei Musil, Joyce, Svevo, Unamuno und Céline
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
-
Immanence
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
-
Notes on Contributors
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
-
Historical Materialism
Research in Critical Marxist Theory (volume 16, issue 2)- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
-
Back Issues
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
back to top