The wages of sweat: A social history perspective on the fight against sweatshops

The social history of the fight against sweatshops casts light on the current movement in favor of corporate social responsibility. But making the head of a chain of subcontractors responsible for seeing to the well-being of those at the end of the chain is not contemporaneous with present-day globalization and North/South relations. Since the 19th century, when the sweatshop system appeared, those who champion the workers have pointed a finger at those who, though they only exercise indirect control, profit from their exploitation. As our historical analysis emphasizes, though in other contexts the issue of poor working conditions sometimes found solutions that (partially) avoided holding the principal liable, what characterizes the anti-sweatshop movement in the context of globalization is its nearly exclusive focus on bringing pressure to bear on the contractor at the head of the chain.     

Marx,Irigaray, and the politics of reproduction

Both the concept and practice of reproduction have been newly configured, with reproductive labor assuming an abstract value as social labor and women around the globe work to produce baby commodities which enter the market along with other domestic and imported products. This situation dictates that surrogacy not be treated as an aberration. One must instead reconceptualize the maternal body as a reproductive resource and rethink the relationship between mother and fetus. This paper attempts to develop a materialist analysis of reproductive labor by offering a strategy for renarrativizing the mother. It briefly explains what feminists involved in the pro-abortion movement could gain by incorporating a Marxist understanding of reproductive labor as productive in the strictest sense, and then suggests, through an analysis of the work of Luce Irigaray, the simultaneous need for a self-reflexive renarrativization of the maternal body which may account for women's role as reproductive laborers. Sections are on reproduction, maternal as mimetic matrix, and reproductive ethics and sexual rights.     

The Invention of Work in Modernity: Hegel,Marx, and Weber

In the modern era, a wide range of human activities has been redefined as work. This essay traces a genealogy of the modern conception of work, from early Protestant ethic of work as worship of God, through secularization of this ethic and the emergence of the idea of progress, to the later model of work as personal duty and source of stability. Analyzing Hegel, Marx, and Weber's interpretations of the growing centrality of work in the modern epoch, as well as later reflections on these interpretations by Kojève, Arendt, and Foucault, the paper argues that in modernity work is no longer a mere instrument of power and tool for repressing human life, but a mode of power of its own accord: a privileged means of shaping life by cultivating and regulating its productive potential. Modern society is reorganized according to the principles of productivity, efficiency, and economic welfare of population as a whole that recalibrate individual existence and posit virtually all activities as a form of work.     

Marx,formal subsumption and the law

Recent work rethinking the place of the law in Marxian analysis of capitalist society provides us with a foundation for a renewed look at the labor process. Drawing on this literature, which emphasizes the materiality of institutions through which labor is exploited, and returning to Marx’s discussion of formal subsumption in Capital, I argue that the law was central for subordinating labor. I then present three case studies from industries in Victorian England to demonstrate the diverse ways in which law was implicated in formal subsumption. The case studies focus on the ways in which capitalists used master and servant law, the key law governing the workplace, to subordinate labor. I conclude by considering how these cases provoke us to consider the materiality of the law in labor relations more broadly, and such questions might be pursued in developing capitalist economies such as China.     

Letter to the Editor: A reply to Klein and Stern

Klein and Stern (hereafter KS-2007) have several problems withour article ("Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony"), with themost general being their contention that we "misrepresent" theirwork. Most of this hinges on their claim that, while they studiedthe proportion of faculty who register or vote Democratic orRepublican (their D:R ratio), we treated this as equivalentto a measure of liberalism versus conservatism. KS-2007 go onto say that we "impute ideological content" to their resultswhile they themselves claim the intellectual high road as havingbeen very careful not to conflate voting or party registrationwith     

Marx,labour and emancipation in South African sociology: a preliminary rethinking

In a university and disciplinary environment where knowledge is increasingly commodified, this paper sketches a reconstruction of the mature Marx’s analysis of capitalism. I argue that his understanding remains methodologically powerful and helps to ground sociological analyses of the present. While accepting that there are good grounds for questioning the relevance of Marx in the wake of the South African political transition and the Post‐Fordist transformation of labour, this interpretation departs significantly from how Marx has generally been interpreted by sociologists and other social scientists in the country by foregrounding the commodity as the starting point of his social critique. Indeed, I argue that ‘class’ and ‘workplaces’, long a focus of radical sociologists, are on their own inadequate to grasp Marx’s concept of capitalism. Finally, drawing on the Frankfurt School, I suggest the importance of a critique of labour and the recognition of contradiction as the starting point of an emancipatory project.     

Reflexivity,Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction in Marx,Tonnies and Weber*

Dans cet article, on évalue la pertinence de diverses représentations du ruralisme et de l'urbanisme chez Marx, Tonnies et Weber, dans la mesure où elles se rapportent à la documentation actuelle sur la question de la réflexivité en sciences sociales. Étant donné l'influence linguistique dans la recherche en sciences humaines, le nouvel examen de ce discours n'est pas fait dans le but de définir la ruralité de façon «essentialiste». L'analyse porte plutôt sur la signification des tentatives que font Marx, Tonnies et Weber pour élaborer un concept de ruralité qui permet de démêler la façon dont fonctionnent les négations et les oppositions dans leurs textes. On prétend que le discours rural/urbain est structuré autour d'une modernité qui cherche àétablir un dialogue avec l'altérité et à questionner les limites. On montre aussi la difficulté qu'éprouve l'esprit de la modernité devant la nécessité de préserver un sens à l'altérité tout en l'engageant dans un processus relationnel sans pour autant se l'approprier. Plusieurs études canadiennes, qui font appel à la distinction rural/urbain, sont citées pour illustrer la difficulté conceptuelle du domaine. L'auteur affirme qu'un aspect de cette difficulté face à l'altérité, dans ce cas-ci l'altérité du rural, tient de l'objectivité scientifique, laquelle exclut la réflexivité du processus de recherche. La réflexivité, inhérente et nécessaire au processus de recherche en sciences humaines, est donc ici à la fois sujet et ressource. This paper assesses the relevance of various representations of ruralism/urbanism in Marx, Tonnies, and Weber as these pertain to the current literature on the issue of reflexivity in social science. Acknowledging the linguistic turn in human science inquiry, the re-examination of this discourse does not attempt to develop an “essentialist” definition of rurality. Rather the analysis is concerned with the meaning of the attempts by Marx, Tonnies, and Weber to develop a concept of rurality which involves teasing out the way negations and oppositions operate in their texts. The paper argues that the rural/urban discourse is structured by a modernist interest in engaging otherness and questioning limits. It also shows the difficulty a modernist consciousness has with preserving a sense of the very otherness it needs to engage. Several Canadian studies, which draw on the rural/urban distinction are cited to illustrate the field's conceptual predicament. The paper argues that part of the problem which modernity has with otherness (in this case the otherness of the rural) lies in the scientific requirement that, by virtue of a commitment to objectivity, reflexivity be excluded from the process of inquiry. Reflexivity, as intrinsic and necessary to the process of human science inquiry, is therefore both a topic and a resource for the paper. a … disquieting quality of modernism: its taste for appropriating or redeeming otherness, for constituting non-Western arts in its own image, for discovering universal, ahistorical “human” capacities. (Clifford, 1988: 193)     

The critique of intelligent design: Epicurus,Marx, Darwin,and Freud and the materialist defense of science

A new version of the age-old controversy between religion and science has been launched by today’s intelligent design movement. Although ostensibly concerned simply with combating Darwinism, this new creationism seeks to drive a “wedge” into the materialist view of the world, originating with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and manifested in modern times by Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Intelligent design proponents thus can be seen as challenging not only natural and physical science but social science as well. In this article, we attempt to explain the long history of this controversy, stretching over millennia, and to defend science (especially social science) against the criticisms of intelligent design proponents – by defending science’s materialist roots.

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Hegel's universal in Marx,Durkheim and Weber: The role of Hegelian ideas in the origin of sociology

The theoretical origins of the conflict, functionalist and organizational paradigms in sociology are usually seen as distinct. Common elements in the social theories of Marx, Durkheim and Weber are usually seen as common responses to the development of industrial, capitalist, democratic, bureaucratic structures. However, in all three milieus, Hegel's social theory, particularly his theory of the break-up of feudal society, was a looming point of reference. Thus, an inventory of the respective common elements and breaks from Hegel of founding sociological theorists represents one of the simplest ways of relating Marx, Durkheim and Weber to each other and to neighboring disciplines.     

The subject of objects: Marx,new materialism, & queer forms of life

Abstract

This article examines two interrelated themes in the scholarship categorized as ‘new materialism’: first, the aim to undermine the subject/object distinction; second, the proposition that agency exists across the material world. While new materialists, such as Jane Bennett, conceive of their approach as an intervention against the injurious effects of capitalism, I argue that destabilizing the object/subject binary and endowing inanimate objects with vitality and agency is actually a constitutive feature of capitalism itself. To illustrate this point, I turn to Marx’s analysis, providing a queer reading of his theorization of commodities. Revisting Marx’s account of commodity fetishism in tandem with new materialism yields fresh insights into the logics of capitalism, specifically, the manner in which it thrives on concurrently producing and erasing subjectivities, thereby distorting social materiality and material sociality.     

From Marx to Bonger: Socialist Writings on Women,Gender, and Crime*

Contemporary socialist criminologists concentrate their analysis of crime on production relations, ignoring the co-determination of reproduction and thus the role gender plays in crime by men and women. The author argues that this omission has occurred by reason of the theoretical work of Marx and Engels, as well as other socialist “criminologists” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The importance of the paper lies in its demonstration that the questions raised by these early socialist theoreticians are inadequate for developing a comprehensive theory of crime.     

The concept of development: Smith and Marx revisited

This paper attempts to provide a framework for understanding and analyzing the social origins of underdevelopment in contemporary third world societies. In critically examining Adam Smith, Karl Marx, the dependency school, and the sociological modernization theories, it shows that the considerable dispute between the two commonly advanced explanations, “conservative” modernization theory and “radical” dependency theory is spurious. It is argued that neither Smith and the modernization theories that draw upon him, nor the dependency school, provide an appropriate framework for analyzing the historical rise of capitalism and examining the obstacles thereto.     

Marx and the Category of Individuality' in Communist Society*

Marx was one among the great humanist philosophers who, like the humanists from the Renaissance up to those of our day, have stressed the idea that all social arrangements must serve the growth and the unfolding of man; that man must always be an end and never a means; that each individual carries within himself all of humanity; that human progress in science and in art depends upon freedom; that man has the capacity to perfect himself in the process of history…. It is an ironical fact that the main accusation against Marxism in the capitalist countries has been his “materialism”; this is ironical because it was precisely Marx's aim to fight the materialism engendered in bourgeois life and to create a society in which man—the creative, “self-active” human being—is the summon bonum, in which the rich man is the one, as Marx put it, who is much, and not the one who has much.     

Marx and the Method of Successive Approximations*

Karl Marx's sociology has been interpreted incorrectly as the consequence of the application of a “dialectical” method to social phenomenon. In this paper, I discuss his actual method of theory construction (a rather more complicated phenomenon than the simple reversal of the Hegelian dialectic), the Ricardian method of successive approximations. This method involves three steps or stages-observation, model formation, and model testing and revision. Marx's Capital is reviewed in the light of his use of this method.