当代资本主义基本矛盾发展趋势刍议

在对经典作家关于资本主义基本矛盾的论述深入理解的基础上,文章分析了当代资本主义基本矛盾及其表现出的诸多矛盾的发展趋势,阐述了在当代资本主义诸多矛盾中抓住主要矛盾的思想．     

建国后党对资本主义的认识及政策

正确认识和对待资本主义,直接影响着中国革命和建设的兴衰成败.建国后党对资本主义的政策经历了一个从利用、限制、改造、消灭再到利用的过程,对资本主义认识的变化,直接关系到我国向社会主义过渡的形式和进程.     

Capital,conflict and convergence: a political understanding of neoliberalism and its relationship to capitalist transformation

ABSTRACT

In this article we argue against influential analyses of neoliberalism that prioritize variegation and the role of ideas as key theoretical foci relevant to understanding neoliberalism’s diffusion into myriad national and political settings. Rather, we contend that crucial to understanding neoliberalism is the role of politically-produced convergence around market rationality that reflects two core processes: the reorganization of production and the ascendency of financialization. We present a theorization and analysis of neoliberalism’s political production and diffusion over time, explaining its contested evolution and impact across diverse settings (both ‘North’ and ‘South’) and emphasizing its ever-intensifying symbiotic relationship with the consolidating world market in which the former has increasingly come to serve as the latter’s operating system (OS). Further, we posit that neoliberalism’s form, function and impact demand analytically prioritizing the leverage of constellations of ideological and material interests within the contradictory context of consolidating relations of production and financialization. Our analysis thus challenges many previous expositions of neoliberalism for their failure to locate neoliberalism’s manifestation as arising out of social conflict within particular junctures that privilege certain social forces and ideas over others. We also distinguish our position by highlighting how manifestations of neoliberalism in various settings have combined to yield a greater world market in which variegation has gradually given way to ever-intensifying disciplinary pressures towards market-policy conformity (mono-policy). While current populist movements may well turn out to be important counter movements to neoliberal hegemony, especially if they can internationalize, the disciplining effect of the world market renders many nationally-oriented policy alternatives costly and politically fraught.     

“Creative Reconstruction” and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games: How Does the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games Influence Japan's Neoliberal Social Reform?

This article critically examines the vision of Japanese society expressed in the idea of a legacy for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games primarily for an internal, domestic audience. This legacy is consistent with the national reconstruction policy adopted after the Great East Japan earthquake of 11 March 2011. The specific issue I focus on here is the centrality of the term “creative reconstruction” to the legacy discourse on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. By interweaving discussions about three places—the Tohoku disaster area, the Tokyo Olympic venue, and Japanese society—this discourse creates an apparently mutual interdependence between the three. Here I assess the idea of this ideological Olympic legacy where these relationships of interdependence are represented as a blueprint for restructuring the system of capital accumulation in Japan. The structure of the article is as follows. First, I provide an overview of creative reconstruction in Japan in comparison with other terms recently used to assess sports mega‐events such as the Olympics. Next, I briefly outline the political transformation of the social integration system from the mid‐1990s, when the phrase creative reconstruction was first used to the present. In the following three sections I discuss the way that each of the key terms in the discourse—Tohoku, Tokyo, and Japan—has been deployed. This article concludes with reflections on the social and political implications of this discourse for Japanese society in the build up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.     

Actions,habits and forms of life

After a survey on the work of prominent philosophers within the Western tradition, it can be noticed a tendency to view habits as automatic, unfree and unconscious behaviour. In this context, this article attempts to show that habits are actually much closer to the characteristics that are otherwise attributed to actions. That is, following the dialectical approach of Sartre, I develop arguments to support that habits are conscious actions carried out with a sense of identification towards the form of life that actions, in turn, project as a whole; in this way, each form of life requires a set of habits that the agent performs freely and rationally, understanding the latter as the dialectical procedure by which the act itself brings about a totalizing identity. This vision implies that habits are interrelated and codependent within a network of social behavior, so they cannot be discarded without discarding the form of life to which they belong. That is, a change of habit requires a change in the totality of which it is a part. But that change can only occur if social agents become aware that their habits are a product of their free acceptance and not of necessity. In the article, this latter is paradigmatically exemplified by neoliberal capitalism as a form of life.     

Envisioning the power of data analytics

It could be argued that the power of data is located in what they are used to reveal. Yet we have little understanding of the role played by the emerging industry of data analytics in the interpretation and use of big data. These data analytics companies act as intermediaries in the digital data revolution. Understanding the social influence of big data requires us to understand the role played by data analytics within organisations of different types. This particular article focuses very specifically upon the way in which data and data analytics are envisioned within the marketing rhetoric of the data analytics industry. It is argued that to understand the spread of data analytics and the adoption of certain analytic strategies, we first need to look at the projection of promises upon that data. The way that data and analytics are imagined shapes their incorporation and appropriation into practices and organisational structures – what I call here the data frontiers. This article draws upon a sample of 34 data analytics companies in order to explore the way in which data analytics are envisioned within that increasingly powerful industry.     

Earth Vikalp Sangam: proposal for a Global Tapestry of Alternatives*

ABSTRACT

Globally there is a visible counter-trend to the destructive process of ‘development’ that the forces of capitalism, statism, patriarchy have imposed. Though still marginal and not yet able to make significant macro-level transformations, the resistance is growing. As is, often emerging from such resistance, there is a re-assertion of ways of life that respect, nature (including humans), co-existence, and justice. Such radical alternatives can be from ancient cultures, or be very new, but all have a core of ethical values that put life at the centre. One crucial barrier to these becoming a force for macro-level change is that they remain scattered, only sporadically learning from each other and becoming a greater critical mass. With this background, a Global Tapestry of Alternatives has been initiated in mid-2019, a kind of confluence of ideas and practices towards further collaboration and visioning. The idea has emerged from the Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) process running since 2014 in India.     

Conservative twist and challenges for Peru and Latin America: civilizing crossroads in a context of epochal change (reflections in process)

ABSTRACT

The paper takes stock of the WSF experience and the running out of steam of the pink wave in Latin America. It is written from the perspective of radical feminism in the region to interrogate the interrelations between the multiple systems of power formed by patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism and their impact on people’s lives, arguing that feminist struggles for sexual and reproductive rights, for the right to decide, for a secular state that breaks the religious tutelage over women’s bodies, along with many kinds of other struggles, demand not only recognition but also the defence of diverse ways of life and visions of the world. In these struggles, the paper claims, it is fundamental to expand the epistemological and social space and to recover other cultural matrices and frameworks of meaning.     

马克思主义生态哲学思想践行及其当代价值

马克思主义生态哲学包含着基础理论、现实需求、实践路径三个维度,本文从这三个方面对马克思主义生态哲学展开论述。马克思提出了“现实的个人”的核心概念,成为了马克思主义生态哲学的起点和前提,现实的人和物的关系进入了马克思考察的范围之内。在此基础上,马克思的思想发展为唯物史观,“实践”这一观点获得了其思想中统领和核心的地位,通过实践的视角和方法,在处理人与人、社会、自然三者之间的关系过程中发挥了连接现实的力量。恩格斯则将马克思主义生态哲学的具体阐释和方法总结为自然辩证法,通过对人类历史实践的具体考察,揭示出人与自然之间复杂关系的发展历程,提供了科学的方法论。马克思生态哲学尤其关注现实社会及其产生的生态危机,强调将剖析深入到资本主义社会中,探寻生态危机所产生的表象问题背后的根源在于资本逻辑。伴随着资本的产生和不断发展,一方面带来了生产力和社会的巨大发展和进步,一方面形成的资本逻辑不断作用于人、社会以及自然界,通过支配和利用不同形式的自然力进而控制和影响自然界。资本首先创造出一个普遍有用性的体系,并在效用性这一根本原则上对待自然界,造成人与自然界关系的异化。其次资本遵循无限增值的定律,自然界的资源被无限地投入资本生产中,加剧了资本主义社会的根本矛盾。最后资本对活劳动即劳动者个人的生存和发展也产生了极大的影响。当今中国社会也面临着严峻的生态环境问题,有着复杂的历史原因,在中国特色社会主义社会发展的新时期,矛盾又有着特殊的表现形式,为切实有效地解决所出现的问题,本文从三个方面尝试提出解决方案。一是实现“生态人”的转变,构建人的新型存在形式,克服资本逻辑对个人的消极影响,通过改变个人的经济行为和生活方式,使个人重新回归自身,实现自由发展。二是实施生态文明新举措,改善生态环境,在社会主义制度下,采取一系列符合我国国情的政策措施与法规,将会切实有效地改善当前的生态危机。三是通过共建“人类命运共同体”,实现生态文明的新发展,面向新的文明形态——生态文明,需要我们从人类社会与文明发展的大局出发,统筹考虑,需要各国各地区认清事实,通力合作。     

The coming revolution of biotechnology: A critique of Buttel

Frederick Buttel was one of the pioneers in studying the social impacts of biotechnology, claiming originally that it will involve profound changes in social structure. Recently Buttel turned around his argument proposing that, rather than revolutionary, biotechnology is more a substitutionist technological form to be applied to declining sectors of the economy than an epoch-making technology. This paper provides both external and internal critiques of Buttel's new position based on the concept of the third technological revolution, looking at the impact of new technologies as a global and interrelated phenomenon, and not on an individual case-by-case basis. The concluding section suggests the necessity of bringing into the analysis those living in the Third World: 60% of this population lives from agriculture and will be affected by the deployment of agricultural biotechnologies, whether through substitutionism or through totally new products.