Determination and Consciousness in Marx

1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Philosophical Writing ◽  
Scientific Status ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

There has been a dramatic increase over the past decade in the volume of Anglo-American philosophical writing on Marxism, with the 1978 publication of G.A. Cohen’s trail-blazing Karl Marx’s Theory of History being a convenient landmark. What has come to be called ‘analytical Marxism’ is now well-established, and valuable clarificatory work has been done on such traditionally murky subjects as the theory of historical materialism, the nature of ideology, Marx’s views on ethics, the character of Marx’s epistemology, the ‘scientific’ status of Marxism, and the problematic interface between Marxism and normative liberal political theory.

Classical Liberalism and Rawlsian Revisionism

1977 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 95-119
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rapaport
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Systematic Revision ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right ◽  
Competitive Economy

A certain view of Anglo-American liberal political theory has been commonplace for a couple of generations. It is said that the philosophical foundations of contractarian liberalism lie in the 17th century, chiefly in the formulations given to it by Hobbes and Locke. But for two distinct reasons these 17th century formulations fail to provide an adequate basis for contemporary political theory. First, the development of our political and economic institutions in the past two or three hundred years has made it impossible to accept a theory which assumes a minimal, laissez-faire state and a highly competitive economy. Second, the individualist psychological and moral assumptions of the theory are highly dubious if not clearly false.In A Theory of justice John Rawls attempts to provide the systematic revision which liberalism so clearly needs. The revisionist intent of Rawls’ work has not received the attention it deserves, except by critics of the right who deny that such revision is needed.

Analytical Marxism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Vrousalis
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Scientific Research Program ◽  
Protective Belt

Marxists believe that an understanding of human society presupposes an understanding of the nature of the production of its material surplus and the nature of control over that surplus. This belief forms part of the “hard core” of the Marxist scientific research program. This hard core is complemented by a set of auxiliary hypotheses and heuristics, constituting what Imre Lakatos has called a scientific research program’s “protective belt.” The protective belt is a set of hypotheses protecting a research program’s hard core. Over the past century and a half, Marxists have populated the protective belt with an economic theory, a theory of history, a theory of exploitation, and a philosophical anthropology, among other things. Analytical Marxism is located in Marxism’s protective belt. It can be seen as a painstaking exercise in intellectual housekeeping. The exercise consists in replacing the tradition’s antiquated, superfluous, or degenerate furnishings with concepts, methods, and auxiliary hypotheses from analytic philosophy and up-to-date social science. The three most influential strands in analytical Marxism are, roughly: its reconstruction of Marx’s theory of history, historical materialism; its philosophical anthropology, including the theory of freedom; and its theory of exploitation, including the theory of class.

Modernism Under Review: Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-194
Author(s):  
Marjorie Perloff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
First World

This essay offers a critical re-assessment of Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era. It argues that Kenner's magisterial survey remains important to our understanding of Modernism, despite its frankly partisan viewpoint. Kenner's is an insider's account of the Anglo-American Modernist writing that he takes to have been significant because it sought to invent a new language consonant with the ethos of the twentieth century. The essay suggests that Kenner's impeccable attention to the Modernist renovation of language goes beyond formalism, since, for him, its ‘patterned energies’ (a term derived from Buckminster Fuller's theory of knots) relate Modernism to the larger complex of artefacts within which it functions and, beyond these, to what he takes to be the great works of the past and to the scientific-technological inventions of the present. But the essay also points out that Kenner's is an eccentric canon, which makes no room for Forster, Frost, Lawrence, or Stevens. Furthermore, Kenner's emphasis on the First World War as a great cultural rupture, while plausible, works less well for Joyce and Williams than it does for Pound and Eliot.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Valls
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Color Blind ◽  
American Society ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The persistence of racial inequality in the United States raises deep and complex questions of racial justice. Some observers argue that public policy must be “color-blind,” while others argue that policies that take race into account should be defended on grounds of diversity or integration. This chapter begins to sketch an alternative to both of these, one that supports strong efforts to address racial inequality but that focuses on the conditions necessary for the liberty and equality of all. It argues that while race is a social construction, it remains deeply embedded in American society. A conception of racial justice is needed, one that is grounded on the premises provided by liberal political theory.

Other People's Struggles

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Owen
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
British History ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Do So

Other People’s Struggles is the first attempt in over forty years to explain the place of “conscience constituents” in social movements. Conscience constituents are people who participate in a movement but do not stand to benefit if it succeeds. Why do such people participate when they do not stand to benefit? Why are they sometimes present and sometimes absent in social movements? Why and when is their participation welcome to those who do stand to benefit, and why and when is it not? The work proposes an original theory to answer these questions, crossing discipline boundaries to draw on the findings of social psychology, philosophy, and normative political theory, in search of explanations of why people act altruistically and what it means to others when they do so. The theory is illustrated by examples from British history, including the antislavery movement, the women’s suffrage and liberation movements, labor and socialist movements, anticolonial movements, antipoverty movements, and movements for global justice. Other People’s Struggles also contributes to new debates concerning the rights and wrongs of “speaking for others.” Debates concerning the limits of solidarity—who can be an “ally” and on what terms—have become very topical in contemporary politics, especially in identity politics and in the new “populist” movements. The book provides a theoretical and empirical account of how these questions have been addressed in the past and how they might be framed today.

‘Inevitable and Unacceptable?’ Methodological Rawlsianism in Anglo-American Political Philosophy

1998 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Norman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Parallel Tasks ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
English Speaking World

This article attempts two parallel tasks. First, it gives a sympathetic explication of the implicit working methodology (‘Methodological Rawlsianism’) of mainstream contemporary political theory in the English-speaking world. And second, principally in footnotes, it surveys the recent literature on justification to see what light these debates cast on the tenets of this methodology. It is worth examining methodological presuppositions because these can have a profound influence on substantive theories: many of the differences between philosophical traditions can be traced to their methodologies. My aim is to expose the central features of methodological Rawlsianism in order to challenge critics of this tradition to explain exactly where and why they depart from the method. While I do not defend it at length, I do suggest that methodological Rawlsianism is inevitable insofar as it is basically a form of common sense. This fact should probably lower expectations about the amount of progress consistent methodological Rawlsians are likely to make in grounding comprehensive normative political theories.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

The Origins of Temporal Legitimacy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Santos Campos
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fundamental Distinction ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Normative Political Theory

Historical analyses of the relations between political theory and time often hinge on two claims. The first is that political theorists have until recently put less emphasis on the future than the past when debating political legitimacy and obligation. The second is that the history of political theory draws a fundamental distinction between theories that invoke time to legitimate political structures and theories that reject temporal considerations in favor of timeless principles. This chapter disputes these two claims by maintaining that competing languages of legitimacy harbor different and interrelated conceptions of temporality. A survey of time conceptions in the history of political philosophy shows that normative political theory is inherently multitemporal, involving double regard for the past and the future. And, since even tenseless principles of legitimacy often depend on temporally related forms of formulation and application, considerations about time seem inescapable in normative political theory.

Jerzy Topolski’s Marxist Anthropocentrism

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-377
Author(s):  
Ewa Domańska ◽  
Paul Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
The World ◽  
Separate Discipline

Abstract In this article I demonstrate that the ideas outlined in Jerzy Topolski’s Methodology of History (Polish 1968, English translation 1976) could not only offer a reference point for and indeed enrich ongoing debates in the philosophy of history, but also help to set directions for future developments in the field. To support my argument, I focus on two themes addressed in Topolski’s work: 1) the understanding of the methodology of history as a separate discipline and its role both in defending the autonomy of history and in creating an integrated knowledge of the past, which I read here through the lens of the current merging of the humanities and natural sciences; and 2) the role of a Marxist anthropocentrism based on the notion of humans as the creators of history, which I consider here in the context of the ongoing critique of anthropocentrism. I point to the value of continuing to use concepts drawn from Marxist vocabulary, such as alienation, emancipation, exploitation and overdetermination, for interpreting the current state of the world and humanity. I stress that Marxist anthropocentrism, with its support for individual and collective agency, remains crucial to the creation of emancipatory theories and visions of the future, even if it has faced criticism for its Eurocentrism and might seem rather familiar and predictable when viewed in the context of the contemporary humanities. Nevertheless, new manifestations of Marxist theory, in the form of posthumanist Marxism and an interspecies historical materialism that transcends anthropocentrism, might play an important role in redefining the humanities and humanity, including its functions and tasks within human and multispecies communities.

Real-World Global Egalitarianism

2018 ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
Darrel Moellendorf
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Egalitarian Justice

This chapter notes that normative International Political Theory (IPT) developed over the past several decades in response to political, social, and economic events. These included the globalization of trade and finance, the increasing credibility of human-rights norms in foreign policy, and a growing awareness of a global ecological crisis. The emergence of normative IPT was not simply an effort to understand these events, but an attempt to offer accounts of what the responses to them should be. Normative IPT, then, was originally doubly responsive to the real world. Additionally, this chapter argues that there is a plausible account of global egalitarianism, which takes the justification of principles of egalitarian justice to depend crucially on features of the social and economic world. The account of global egalitarianism applies to the current circumstances in part because of features of those circumstances.

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