Domination rests to such a degree on the society/nature duality that no liberation struggle will ever succeed unless that duality is overcome. In 1845, shortly after he published the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx wrote his Theses on Feuerbach. The Theses were his first attempt at building a materialist philosophy that was…
There is a considerable debate about the value of Marx’s earlier philosophical works relative to his mature period writing the three volumes of Capital. Some believe that they are of great importance for understanding Marx, while others such as Althusser[1] famously believed that the early works were mere preparation for presenting the full science of…
On an emerging phenomenon in the field of political affairs. On the Road to the Cybernetic World War Energy is essential for the production and movement of “things”. Using an assemblage of machines the industrial revolution exponentially increased the energy available to human society; however, such machinery required human supervision and control to attain its…
(or some quickly gathered thoughts) Thesis 1. Contemporary capitalism rarely appears simple. Back in 1848 Marx wrote in the opening of The Communist Manifesto about how “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two…
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution (RR) and also the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Karl Marx’ Das Kapital. Combining the two historic dates may seem strange because Marx never wrote in detail about the revolution and communist society and, even if he had, it is…
English version of interview with Brenna Bhandar* by Olivier Chassaing, translated by Chayma Drira for Période, the French online journal of Marxist theory, available here. Olivier Chassaing (‘OC’): By studying law, one can explore how capitalist societies rest upon and strengthen different social hierarchies: class, gender, race dominations, as well as persisting colonial structures and…
The defence of capitalism as a system of economic organization often takes the form of strangely pious declarations about how we have strayed from the path. This could involve over taxation, limiting incentives, government takeovers of industry. Crises, it is claimed, emerge from our failure to allow the market to work its miraculous power divorced…
On work, theft and the age of automation through a reading of Johnny Cash’s classic song Johnny Cash’s One Piece at a Time is a song about how he makes his own dream Cadillac by smuggling out all the parts from the factory over twenty years. It’s essentially about stealing from work but that’s not…
SYRIZA is calling for a ‘true democracy’ that simultaneously gives rise to an image or a dream of how a polity could look once the State withers away. All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. — E. A. Poe In an interview that Alexis Tsipras gave to the journalist…
Podemos is is a new kind of party, a movement-party, or rather a party-movement; the end result of a learning process from the South that made it possible to creatively channel the outrage on the streets of Spain. Can a Podemos wave spread to other countries? The countries of Southern Europe are extremely diverse, both…
Mark Neocelous is Professor of the Critique of Political Economy at Brunel University, UK. Author of several books incl. most recently ‘War Power, Police Power’ (2014 EUP), ‘Anti-Security’ (2011 Red Quill Books) and ‘Critique of Security’ (2008 EUP/McGill). Many of his articles can be freely accessed here.This interview was originally conducted in March 2014 for Kampfplatz (a…
As I mentioned in the last post, one of the most perplexing circumstances that surrounded the appearance of the ghost in the refuge was that it occurred at the precise moment at which the group of IDPs formally entered into the realm of the official. It could have easily occurred earlier, when they were protesting,…
In the preamble of the Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels made the famous dictum: A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. History has proven…
Toni Negri reflects on the recent #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO, insisting upon the re-appropriation and disruption of capitalist modes of development and thought.The Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (MAP) opens by noting the depth of the current crisis – “cataclysm” – and a negation of the future by “coming apocalypses”. No need for alarm however: there is…
Each generation of “human rights” has its origins in revolutionary struggle, and that is why they remain, unlike black-letter law, so powerful and so scandalous.David Renton’s thoughtful and trenchant article in SL64 [Ed: republished 18 Nov 2013 on CLT] has done us all a great service, opening up questions of crucial importance to the Haldane Society. That…
Socialists should demand what is absolutely incompatible with the conditions of capital and the State: the right not to be exploited.An obvious starting point is Karl Marx’s position on human rights. We can begin with his response in 1844 to Bruno Bauer’s pamphlet The Jewish Question, in which Bauer opposed Jewish demands for political liberation…
Like an empty vessel, an abstract practice floats aimlessly in suspense of its navigator. Once boarded, it acquires a direction, an intention – the first instance of its ethical contamination. The navigator harnesses the vessel’s potential for something, injecting it with purpose, and sets sail. Then, there is the matter of its handling, how it…