Marx's last battle

Conclusion Marxism developed increasingly from a scientific to a Critical Marxism that was much more voluntaristic and stressed consciousness and conscious organization — rather than emphasizing a spontaneous economic evolution that first develops the forces of production. This long-term shift in Marxism is visible in Leninism: Leninism formulates a conception of a vanguard revolutionary organization more nearly akin to Bakuninism than to Marxism and adapts the old conspiratorial secret society to a Marxist rhetoric of theory and science by speaking of the vanguard cadres as professional revolutionaries. It also devoted increasing attention to the peasantry as an ally of the proletariat with a revolutionary potential. This increasing world drift of Marxism, toward a less economistic and more voluntaristic theory, has more usually been called a critical Marxism, when found in Western Europe. Critical Marxism has, therefore, seemed to some, such as Merleau-Ponty or Perry Anderson. a distinctively Western Marxism. This, how-ever, misses the point of the greater political success of Critical Marxism in the Third World. In less industrially advanced countries, Critical Marxism's reliance upon the peasantry has been even greater and its convergence with Bakuninism even more obvious. In Asia — including Tsarist Russia and other less developed regions, Scientific Marxism's insistence upon a prior industrialization made it seem irrelevant and generated apathy and passivity among revolutionaries who did not want to spend their lives making a bourgeois revolution. This shift suggests that there was a potential mutual transformability of Marxism into Bakuninism. Each might, under certain conditions, become the other.My point, then, is that Bakuninism and Marxism cannot be understood as two adversaries, each external to the other. Rather, they were doctrines which had certain communalities and overlapped at important points. Each had a living part of his enemy in himself. I have already indicated that, in one part, Bakunin was a Marxist, and ready to acknowledge this debt generously. Indeed, the authoritarianism of some of Bakunin's organizational schemes sometimes went far beyond the most extreme ambitions of the dogmatic and dictatorial Marx.The war between Marx and Bakunin was so bitter because it was something of a civil war within the soul of each. The enemy was all the more dangerous and had to be squashed without qualm because he was already within the fortress of the self. Marxism and Bakuninism, then, each had an interface with the other. Each — to its own horror — could become the other under certain conditions.To characterize the development of Marxism as an evolution, is to imply that its earlier and originary forms — no less than later, more recent forms were partly an adaptation to the changing circumstances in which it found itself, including the competitive situation of its leadership. Marxism was thus never simply the outgrowth of earlier theories. The forms it took were never simply the result of an intellectual borrowing from the past but were also and always a response to a larger practice in the present. The problem of the forces that shaped Marxism's character thus never reduces itself to the theories it borrows or adapts, or to their truth. Anything that enabled Marxism to survive repeated failures and changed conditions, and thereby to move on, edged its way into Marxism's doctrine and political rules. To characterize Critical Marxism in particular as the product of an evolution in which it is a successor to Bakuninism is surely not to define it as identical to Bakuninism; for that, of course, would not be an evolution but mere reproduction. Finally on this point, to characterize the development of Marxism as an evolution is not at all to define it merely as responding to the force of circumstances. It was also a process entailing a selective response mediated by human consciousness and theoretical commitment. Yet the presence of consciousness did not preclude a good measure of blindness and false consciousness in the evolutionary process through which Marxism developed. Indeed, it is the very nature of consciousness which, in part, allows and requires that very unconsciousness.     

Reconfirming Karl Marx's rate of surplus value

In Van Den Berg and Smith's comment that precedes this reply, I note their concession to the major conclusions of my 1982 comment. They no longer directly challenge my conclusions 1 / that there has been a general increase in the exploitation of labour by capital in the twentieth century despite fluctuations from decade to decade, nor 2 I the positive correlations between the rate of surplus value and strikes, especially between 1945 and 1966. Instead, they concentrate on minor methodological points that have little bearing on the thrust of my research. In this lies their major weakness: by narrowly focusing on a partial 'critique' of my critique of their 'critique' of my original research (Cuneo, 1978), Van Den Berg and Smith lose sight of the original research hypotheses, and end up trying to defend errors committed in their original commentary.     

Rethinking Land Grab Ontology

The current bout of land annexation expresses a particular moment in modern history—specifically the condensation of a series of linked crises. Arguably the world is at an ecological tipping point, and how land resources are managed now is of paramount concern. Of course, land management has variable meaning, with quite different ontological consequences. The difference registers in the distinct visions expressed, for example, by the World Bank and the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur, Olivier de Schutter, regarding the implications of the land grab for global food security. While the bank proposes responsible investments in “land acquisition,” the rapporteur argues that this is a way of “responsibly destroying the world's peasantry.” The former, concerned with governing the rights of capital, expresses a form of neoproductivism, signaled in the concept of “sustainable intensification” increasingly underwritten by agribusiness. The latter, concerned with protecting the material rights of rural inhabitants, expresses an ontology centered on the sustainability of agroecological methods used by farmers who know and value their landscapes. More than simply alternative visions, these represent different responses to the combined food, energy, and climate crises, informing quite distinctive ontologies concerning the relationship between “food security,” environmental crisis, and land management, which I address in this article in terms of the “ecology of food security.”     

Zombies and a Decaying American Ontology

What would it mean to take zombies seriously? Cultural savants have noted the rise of the zombie in American popular culture in the twenty‐first century. And many scholars have found the zombie useful as a lumbering, empty‐headed metaphor that could signify just about anything. The zombie might look like a loved ovne, but their flesh is rotting and their individualism has tragically withered away. Before I came to zombology, I was already fascinated by an American obsession with preventing the decay of the corpse through an exceptional devotion to embalming. I argue that the intersection of the new zombie‐ism, the rapid decline of embalming, and the mass trauma of 9/11 is significant. Playing with zombies along a spectrum from fright to humor allows Americans to work through not a crisis of meaning, but a crisis of being. The cult of individualism no longer needs a perfect biological body.     

Ontology and Method in Cognitive Sociology

The sociology of cognition could serve as a more effective bridge between sociology and other disciplines, and more of a two‐way thoroughfare, if we would consider doing the following two things, which we are already doing here and there. First, we need to take a stand in philosophy of social science debates. Second, we need to show how what we do contributes to sociological methods, and not only say that what we do contributes to sociological theory, however fundamental that contribution may be.     

马克思交往理论对网络交往的经济启示

交往是人类生活的必要方式,人作为交往活动的主体在生产力和生产关系矛盾的推动下,通过生产实践实现社会的和谐稳定。随着数字化科技的发展,人们在社会实践中的网络交往也日渐呈现开放性、共享性的特点,但是网络交往的经济方面所呈现的利弊也日益凸显,在实现现代化强国的过程中要认识马克思交往理论的重要性,在全球化和信息化高速发展的新时代,结合中国的具体国情,用马克思主义交往理论指导网络交往的发展,推动网络交往的健康发展。     

Learning Difference

SUMMARY

This paper explores some of the relationships between the ways in which (White) dominant group children learn about racial differences and the ways in which difference is represented within gay and lesbian families. Research in the latter area has typically provided two dominant (though contrasting) accounts of difference within gay or lesbian families: (1) that children of gay or lesbian parents will have a better understanding of difference; and (2) that there are no significant differences between heterosexual and gay or lesbian families. In order to explore the implications of this current research in regards to constructions of difference within predominantly White gay and lesbian families, an analysis of storybooks aimed at children with gay or lesbian parents was conducted. The findings suggest that representations of difference within such books often reinforce a White heterosexual norm for parenting. To counter this, it is proposed that a shift is required in research focusing on gay and lesbian families, the intent being both to examine the simultaneous ways in which race privilege and sexuality-based discrimination shape the lives of White lesbian or gay parents and to broaden the scope of research in this area to more adequately reflect the diverse communities it seeks to represent.     

Understanding Marx's theory of value: an assessment of a controversy

Trois écoles principals de théorie de valeur marxienne sont identifiées et situées par rapport à des sujets essentiels oú il existe une controverse en matiére de valeur, en particulier le postulat que le travail vital est l'unique source de valeur nouvelle. L'effondrement de la théorie de valeur de l'école ‘orthodoxe’ (Ricardo-marxiste) est attribuée aux raisonnement erroné d'une conceptualisation de la valeur de ‘travail exprimé, une approche rejetée de la même façon par les théoriciens de la valeur ‘néo-orthodoxe’ et ‘fondamentaliste’. Cependant la comparaison des écoles néo-orthodoxe et fondamentaliste révèle que seule cette derniére est compatible avec les objectifs et les postulats essentiels de la théorie de Marx. En même temps, on indique que l'approche fondamentaliste ne pêut etre soutenue que par un engagement explicite à l'idée que le travail abstrait (essence-même de la valeur) existe en tant qu'universel structurel spécifique au capitalisme. Three major schools of Marxian value theory are identified and situated in respect to some pivotal issues of the value controversy, in particular the postulate that living labour is the sole source of new value. The collapse of the ‘orthodox’ (Ricardian-Marxist) school of value theory is attributed to the fallacies of an ‘embodied labour’ conceptualization of value, an approach which has been rejected by ‘neo-orthodox’ and ‘fundamentalist’ value theorists alike. However a comparison of the neo-orthodox and fundamentalist schools reveals that only the latter remains consistent with the objectives and essential postulates of Marx's theory. At the same time, it is argued that the fundamentalist approach can only be sustained through an explicit commitment to the idea that abstract labour (as the ‘substance’ of value) exists as a structural ‘universal’ specific to capitalism.     

Woman as Manager: A Seductive Ontology

Much of the women in management literature has, quite rightly, problematized women's relationship to dominant masculinist organizational practices and cultures, these debates being underpinned by extensive data revealing women's extreme numerical marginalization at senior management level across both public and private sectors. One such site where women have long been under‐represented is education management. Recent research, however, indicates some significant shifts in this regard, specifically in the UK further education sector where the number of women principals has increased sixfold in the past six years. In one sense then, equal opportunity as a political objective might be seen as ‘working’ in one public sector site, with education management no longer a ‘gender exclusive zone’. Drawing on poststructuralist understandings of identity, this article examines this phenomenon with respect to the seductive aspects of management and the issues of ontological security which surround women and men's investment in ‘frantic organizational cultures’. The article discusses some of the tensions, ambiguities and opportunities which might exist for many women managers as they ontologically invest in the ‘secure systems’ of a masculinist organizational culture.     

Dilemmas of Difference:

This paper examines the contemporary intersection of postmodernism and feminist theories of gender difference. Three strategic forms for posing the relationship between western feminism and the Enlightenment legacy of humanistic rationalism are examined: feminist rationalism, feminine antirationalism, and feminist postrationalism, and feminist postrationalism. It is argued that the theoretical rigor of postrationalism. It is argued that the theoretical rigor of postrationalism is obtained at the cost of a deracinated politics, while themore tangible political appeals of rationalism and antirationalism reproduce mirrored naive accounts of the relationship between women and modern western culture. The aim of this paper isto open up, rather than to resolve, questions concerning the relationship between feminism, modernity, and postmodern theory.     

Cultural Competency as New Racism: An Ontology of Forgetting

This article argues that cultural competency promotes an obsolete view of culture and is a form of new racism. Cultural competency resembles new racism both by otherizing non-whites and by deploying modernist and absolutist views of culture while not using racialist language. Drawing on child welfare, cultural competence is shown to repeat what Lowe (1993) calls an ontology of forgetting Canada's history of colonialism and racism. A recommendation is made for jettisoning cultural competency and emphasizing instead a self-reflexive grappling with racism and colonialism.     

Phantasy and Social Movements: An Ontology of Pro-Space Activism

Psychoanalysis has a long history of influence in the study of collective behaviour, and this paper argues that it has a great deal to contribute to the study of one vitally important and under-researched aspect of social movement activity; the fantasies activists have about life in the social worlds they would like to see in the future. The paper uses empirical research findings to show that, in the case of activists campaigning to further the human exploration, development and settlement of outer space, these fantasies can be fundamental to activists' motivation. Psychoanalysis helps us understand these fantasies as conscious manifestations of unconscious phantasies. However, the paper also addresses the criticisms social movement theory has made of reductionist psychoanalysis, arguing that the study of activists' fantasies must include accounts of the ways in which social forces influence unconscious processes, the discourses used by activists to understand their cause, and the organization of the movement.     

The Commonality of Difference:

This paper discusses a study undertaken to determine the perceptions of new field instructors about the impact on the teaching/learning relationship of differences between them and their students. The differences and similarities arising in the tutorial relationship often parallel those in practice and provide many "teachable moments" about the significance of diversity for social workers. In a metropolitan social work program, new field instructors representing a wide range of fields of practice responded to a question asking them to consider the impact on the educational experience of "cultural, ethnic, gender, class, and age characteristics, and the implications of these similarities and/or differences for the teacher/learner relaionship." Asking the question succeeded in focussing the attention of field instructors on the significant but often unacknowledged impact of diversity in the educational encounter. A tendency for these field instructors to minimize differences may derive from their efforts to avoid stereotyping or stigmatization. The paper presents numerous examples of field instructors' perceptions and discusses the potential effect of differences and similarities in age, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation on the tutorial relationship. The study findings have implications for field teaching and performance evaluations as well as for social work advocacy around agency policies.