Tag: #marxtheory
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Marx and the state (#marxtheory)
I recently argued that there is a common thread that connects (1) Marx’s analysis of material world and superstructure, (2) his prediction of the inevitability of communism, and (3) his underdevelopment of subjective political strategy. Now I want to suggest that these three themes are connected to a fourth: Marx’s treatment of the state as…
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If arrival is inevitable, then who needs a map? (#marxtheory)
Is there a positive relationship between the following three themes in Marx’s writing (in The Marx-Engels Reader): 1) his analysis of material world and superstructure (with the former determining the latter), 2) his forecast of the ultimate inevitability of proletariat revolution and communism, and 3) his underdevelopment of a theory of subjective political strategy? Before…
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Marx’s promise of a glorious hereafter (#marxtheory)
Marx (in Marx Later Political Writings) poses the observable revolutionary transition within industrializing societies from feudalism to capitalism as analogous to a predicted revolutionary transition from capitalism to communism. Where he does not discuss this analogy explicitly, it nonetheless serves as a foundational concept for his various descriptions, critiques, polemics, and predictions. Looking back, we…
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cooperative societies with state aid (#marxtheory)
That the workers want to create the conditions for co-operative production in all society, and hence first of all on a national scale, means only that they are working for the overthrow of present-day conditions of production, and has nothing in common with establishing co-operative societies with state aid! But as far as present-day co-operative…
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attaining salvation behind society’s back, privately (#marxtheory)
Amongst other things it [the Paris proletariat] throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, cooperative banks and workers’ associations, hence into a movement renouncing an overthrow of the old world by means of its own great resources, and instead seeks to attain its salvation behind society’s back, privately, within its own limited conditions of existence, and hence…
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the feeble found refuge in a belief in miracles (#marxtheory)
As always the feeble found refuge in a belief in miracles, believing that the enemy has been vanquished when they have only conjured it away in a fantasy, sacrificing any understanding of the present to an ineffectual glorification of the future in store for them, and of deeds that they had in their hearts but…
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Workers have no nation of their own (#marxtheory)
Communists have been further criticised for wanting to abolish the nation and nationalities. Workers have no nation of their own. We cannot take from them what they do not have. Since the proletariat must first of all take political control, raise itself up to be the class of the nation, must constitute the nation itself,…
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more comprehensive and devastating crises (#marxtheory)
And how does the bourgeoisie surmount these crises? On the one hand through the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other through the capture of new markets and a more thoroughgoing exploitation of old ones. How exactly? By preparing more comprehensive and devastating crises and diminishing the means for preventing them.…
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Marxist & Post-Marxist Theories of Politics (#marxtheory)
One of my classes this semester is called Marxist & Post-Marxist Theories of Politics. Dylan Riley is teaching the class. I’m going to post choice quotes from the readings and probably short blurb reflections here — with the tag #marxtheory. This week’s reading: Marx Later Political Writings.
Jonathan Matthew Smucker 