Karl Marx

Making sense of Marx Jon Elster

by michael maidan

Rethinking Human Nature and the Place of (Wo)Man in the world: Anthropology between Philosophy and Science. A Manifesto

by Giacomo Pezzano

We are knowing more and more about (Wo)Man, but the determination of her/his nature is still problematic: asking «What... more We are knowing more and more about (Wo)Man, but the determination of her/his nature is still problematic: asking «What is (Wo)Man?» is paradoxically possible only in the space left open by (wo)man’s erasure. Whatever human nature is, (wo)man wants to know her/himself, because if (s)he does not know who (s)he is, (s)he can not know where to go: moving from hominitas to humanitas requires a definition of (wo)man’s nature, of her/his «place» in the world, in view of describing ex-istence as a modulation of the «World Openness» and an attempt to find a way of articulate the possibilities, as intrinsically «medial» and «modal» since it is founded on «referral» and «relationship with the outside»

The All-Penetrating Ether of Society: Adorno, Exchange, and Abstract Social Domination

by Chris O'Kane

Paper presented at the Annual Historical Materialism Conference, London United Kingdom. 

The Universal Character of the Fetish: Critical Theory and Social Crisis. Presented at the 5th Annual Rome Conference on Critical Theory.

by Chris O'Kane

Da Gramsci a Marx. Ideologia, verità e politica

by Fabio Frosini

Review of 'Virtue and Politics: Alasdair MacIntyre's Revolutionary Arsitotelianism' edited by Kelvin Knight and Paul Blackledge

by Jan Kandiyali

This review if forthcoming in the Journal of Moral Philosophy

Boni patres familias. Towards a Critique of Political Ecology

by Matej T. Vatovec

La contraddizione assoluta del Capitale.

by Stefano Ulliana

Politics.

Capitalism has made of itself an absolute contradiction. Capitalism has made of itself an absolute contradiction.

Why Elster’s Methodological Individualist Critique of Marx Fails

by Timothy F. Stolz Jr

"Marx, Mil e il paradosso della libertà democratica. Interpretare l'America dopo Tocqueville"

by David Ragazzoni

ABSTRACT: Fellow citizens in London for more than twenty years (1849-1873), Karl Marx and J. S.Mill extensively... more ABSTRACT: Fellow citizens in London for more than twenty years (1849-1873), Karl Marx and J. S.Mill extensively commented on the features and contradictions of American democracy after Tocqueville’s pivotal work. In particular, both of them devoted a consistent number of letters, articles and systematic writings to the issue of slavery and to the events of the Civil War at the beginning of the 1860s. The literature has never compared their questioning of post-Tocquevillian America nor has it investigated the continuities and ruptures of both with the philosophical-political landscape drawn by the French historian. In reaction to this silence, the Author specifically focuses on Mill and Marx’s American pages and triangulates them with Tocqueville’s work. He suggests that, through the critique of slavery and its connections with capitalist economy, they questioned the relation between Europe and the States as part of a broader perspective over the fate of democracy and political modernity. In particular, the Author argues that the aristocratic liberalism of Tocqueville, the democratic liberalism of Mill and the anti-liberalism of Marx conveyed three diverging yet critical understandings of democratic government: Tocqueville criticized democracy to contain it, Mill to educate it, Marx to overcome it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Un dialogo mai avvenuto: un esercizio eccentrico di storia e storiografia filosofica?
2. Studiare la natura degli uomini e il carattere delle società prima delle istituzioni: Mill e l’umanità in catene dell’America democratica
3. La libertà degli eguali e l’illibertà dei diseguali: la «Democrazia (incompleta) in America» di Marx
4. Tocqueville, Mill, Marx: una democrazia e tre diversi assetti della modernità politica. Considerazioni conclusive

Policante, A. “Vampires of Capital: Gothic Reflections between Horror and Hope”, The Cultural Logic, 1, 2012.

by Amedeo Policante

At the beginning it is creativity, living labour. At the beginning, it is the free play of human beings transforming... more At the beginning it is creativity, living labour. At the beginning, it is the free play of human beings transforming the life-world of nature through the productive power of their minds and of their bodies. Through his own actions the worker “develops the potentialities slumbering within nature” and “subjects” the play of its forces to his own sovereign power.” At the end, it is capital: “dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” Capital furtively rises among the living and, from then on, “sucks up the worker’s value creating power” “transforming the worker into a crippled monstrosity.” But how can a dead body rise up and live off the living, how can “le mort saisit le vif”? This is for us the fundamental question of Capital. This is also the juncture through which it will be possible to bridge discussions of political economy, subjectivity/subjectification and commodity fetishism into one gothic metastructure.

The Rezeptionsgeschichte of the Paris Manuscripts in Karl Marx as Historian.

by michael maidan

Harald Bluhm (ed.) Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels: die deutsche Ideologie

by michael maidan

Review of Sean Sayers 'Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes'

by Jan Kandiyali

A slightly shorter version of this article was published in Radical Philosophy, Mar-Apr, 172.

Colours in Late Bronze Mesopotamia. Some Hints on Wall Paintings from Dur Kurigalzu, Nuzi and Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta

by Sara Pizzimenti

in: R. Matthews et al. (eds), Proceedings of the 7th ICAANE, 12-16 April 2010, the British Museum and UCL, London, Vol. 2, Wiesbaden 2012: 303-318.

Archaeological excavations of Mesopotamian palaces usually give us a monochrome image faded by time. Rare discoveries... more Archaeological excavations of Mesopotamian palaces usually give us a monochrome image faded by time. Rare discoveries of plaster whose colours are well preserved allow us to reconstruct the original colours of these images. The second millennium BC provides more examples of palatial wall paintings belonging to the three prominent cultures of the Late Bronze period: Mitannian, Kassite and Middle-Assyrian. The respective palaces at the sites of Nuzi, Dur Kurigalzu and Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta have in fact preserved some of the wall paintings which originally decorated their rooms. By analysing these fragmentary painted plasters and the careful reconstructions made by different scholars, it is possible to note some differences in the use of colours and in drawing patterns according to the different cultures.
The aim of this paper is: a) to analyse and compare wall paintings belonging to these three main cultures and attempt to find analogies and differences, and b) to investigate, within the context of each culture, the role of colours and their significance.

Les horizons marxistes de la reconnaissance

by Jean-Philippe Deranty

Marxism and Education

by David Mellor

Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism. Critical Discourse Studies.

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies... more Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

Newton Duarte - Education as Mediation

by Newton Duarte

Classes and nations in recent historical sociology

by Daniel Chernilo