Capitalism, Competition and Profits: A Critique of Robert Brenner's Theory of Crisis

1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Calliinicos
Keyword(s):  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Economic Evolution ◽  
Marxian Economics ◽  
Theoretical Structure ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Rate Of Profit

AbstractThe Marxist theory of crisis has fallen on hard times. Marx's ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ (TRPF), generally seen, at least in recent times, as the basis of the theory, is now widely rejected by economists who regard themselves as broadly working in his tradition. This state of affairs is in large part a consequence on the larger assault on mounted on the theoretical structure of Capital by self-proclaimed supporters of Piero Sraffa during the 1970s. Analytical Marxism, during its brief efflorescence in the 1980s, took for granted the validity of the Sraffian critique. One of this school's more vulgar advocates published an ‘obituary’ of the TRPF which dismissed Marxists' attachment to the theory as a result of the influence of ‘“extra-scientific” considerations’ on them. The editors of a dictionary of Marxian economics expressed the hope not long ago that the resolution of the debate provoked by the Sraffian critique would be to ‘release Marxian ideas on crises, growth, imperialism, the social and economic evolution of forms of production, and so on, into the mainstream of economics’.

scholarly journals Exploring the Mechanical Life in Literature through Marxist Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 932-939
Author(s):  
Cristina Guarneri
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Mechanical Characteristics ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Environmental Setting ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Hard Times

The Victorian Era of writings of works such as Charles Dickens Hard Times used the social and environmental setting by which the characters live in; it is created by a philosophy that adds fuel to sustain the advancement of industrialization. The philosophy mirrors the mechanical characteristics of industrialization and how they are expressed is of great importance to the mechanical perceptions, such as objective utilitarianism. The mechanization that is found in the lives of the characters has an evil presence of depriving them of human dignity by living a mechanical lifestyle. It was the mechanical lifestyle that can be explained through Marxist theory to explain the key characteristics of the Industrial Era and its importance to materialism, as it represented political power. Marxism provides a theory for requiring the working class to concentrate on working in factories in Coketown and the “bourgeois” to separate themselves as competing agents of self-interest. It is a goal of the wealthy social class to maximize utility as a consumer and profit as a producer within the mechanical world. Keywords: Victorian Era; Mechanical Thinking; Marxist Theory

Moral economy: What’s in a name

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G Carrier
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
Empty Symbol ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Moral Economic

The idea of moral economy has been increasingly popular in the social sciences over the past decade, given a confusing variety of meanings and sometimes invoked as an empty symbol. This paper begins by describing this state of affairs and some of its undesirable corollaries, which include unthinking invocations of the moral and simplistic views of some sorts of economic activity. Then, referring especially to the work of EP Thompson and James C Scott, this paper proposes a more precise definition of moral economy that roots moral economic activity in the mutual obligations that arise when people transact with each other over the course of time. It thus distinguishes between the moral values that are the context of economic activity and those that arise from the activity itself. The solution that the paper proposes to the confused state of ‘moral economy’ can, therefore, be seen as terminological, as the sub-title suggests, but it is intended to have the substantive benefits of a better approach to economic activity and circulation and a more explicit and thoughtful attention to moral value.

Social and Affective Development of Children: A Programmatic Perspective

1983 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice J. Elias ◽  
Charles A. Maher
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Instructional Program ◽  
Affective Development ◽  
Instructional Format ◽  
Cognitive Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Affective Domains

The development of handicapped and nonhandicapped children in the social and affective domains is considered as a potentially important, yet presently neglected aspect of Public Law 94–142. Given this current perceived state of affairs, the social-cognitive problem-solving approach is presented as a necessary and viable means for ensuring social and affective development of all children in public schools. Within this context, the utilization of a television-based instructional format to facilitate children's social and affective development is described, and application of that approach is illustrated by an actual example of a television-based instructional program.

scholarly journals How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedy

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Aarons ◽  
Marc Mierowsky
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Noticeable Effect ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Standup Comedy

How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedyIn How to Do Things with Words (1962), the philosopher John Austin claimed that we use words to do things in the world, not merely to express a state of affairs. This proposal introduced speech acts, and essentially initiated the study of linguistic pragmatics. Speech acts in everyday communication include persuading, apologizing, criticizing, humiliating, complimenting and a host of other intended behaviours. Austin accentuated the idea of speaker intention, on one hand, and hearer’s response to that intention if successfully conveyed, on the other. We consider some of the speech acts used in the work of selected standup comedians to analyse the way they determine the relationship of performer and audience. We argue that there is a reciprocal relationship between the licensing of certain speech acts in standup comedy, and the success of these speech acts in shaping the social lives of the audience. We show that this relationship is at the forefront of standup comedy’s social impact and that it can generate heightened consciousness of the social and political environment of the time.  Finally, we consider the question of whether socially critical standup can have any noticeable effect on the attitudes or behaviour of both live and digitally mediated audiences.

scholarly journals Evaluation of personnel of the State border service of Ukraine

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 49-59
Author(s):  
Nataliia Lipovska ◽  
Mykola Malanchii
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
The State ◽  
Professional Standard ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Method Of Evaluation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Holistic Description

The article reveals the technology of assessing the professional suitability of officials to perform their functions on the basis of the method of modeling and comparing assessments with the necessary parameters for the position, ie with the model. The term "model" is used as a holistic description of the coordination of the requirements of the social system (SS) with the possibilities of their implementation. The model in this case is a professional standard, which is developed for each position. The professional standard is the agreed standard by which employees should work. This method - the method of evaluation using a professional standard, is the result of the implementation of the principle of consistency in the construction of the model. According to the authors, the method is not only novelty approach, but also versatility. It is possible to estimate by means of a professional standard not only the expert, but also group, potential of collective, it is possible to make comparisons, to define weaknesses and strongnesses of the organizations. The technique developed by authors is offered that allows to carry out various necessary variations with the estimated signs, including visual display of results in various forms.Job modeling refers to ideal or imaginary modeling (as opposed to material, substantive, when modeling physical and mathematical objects) and is based largely on the idealization of the object. In our opinion, at no stage can the model be embodied in an absolutely accurate copy due to the unforeseen influence of many external factors.Modeling of evaluation characteristics in personnel activity is a necessary element in the real assessment of the state of affairs in the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. That is why their importance is growing in the context of its reform, taking into account the impact on it of both negative and positive factors.

Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism and the Social Science of Marxian Economics

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Westra
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Marxian Economics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific

This article supports claims that critical realism philosophy of science, as refounded in the hands of Roy Bhaskar, offers valuable knowledge enhancing insight into the advancement of Marx’s research program. However, it maintains that key principles set out by Bhaskar have not been adequately assimilated by those working with critical realism in the field of Marxist studies. When they are properly considered, they point to the necessity of reconstructing Marx’s corpus on a divergent basis from the conventional form it has assumed since the codification of “Marxism” by Karl Kautsky in the late nineteenth century as an overarching theory of history or historical materialism, wherein Marx’s economic studies in Capital are portrayed as but a subtheory. The article summarily breaks down three cardinal scientific principles elaborated by Bhaskar, which carry the most vital implications for Marxism. These are the bringing of ontology “back in” to theory construction, the robust case made for social science as a capital-S science, and the specification of retroduction as strategy for scientific discovery. It then explores the principles with regard to three abiding and interrelated questions of the Marxist research program: first is the very condition of intelligibility of economic theory; second is the question of the raison d’être for the dialectical architecture of Capital; third is the social scientific implications of the cognitive sequence in Marxism. In this endeavor the article introduces work in the Uno-Sekine tradition of Japanese Marxism. It shows how Uno’s reconstruction of Marxism is closely supported by Bhaskar’s fundamental criteria for science in a way that serves to strengthen Marx’s own scientific claims for his work.JEL Classification: B51, B400

Queer as Materialism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Noyé ◽  
Gianfranco Rebucini
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
The Social

Since the 2000s, forms of articulation between materialist and Marxist theory and queer theory have been emerging and have thus created a “queer materialism.” After a predominance of poststructuralist analyses in the social sciences in the1980s and 1990s, since the late 1990s, and even more so after the economic crisis of 2008, a materialist shift seems to be taking place. These recompositions of the Marxist, queer, and feminist, which took place in activist and academic arenas, are decisive in understanding how the new approaches are developing in their own fields. The growing legitimacy of feminist and queer perspectives within the Marxist left is part of an evolution of Marxism on these issues. On the other side, queer activists and academics have highlighted the economic and social inequalities that the policies of austerity and capitalism in general induce among LGBTQI people and have turned to more materialist references, especially Marxist ones, to deploy an anticapitalist and antiracist argument. Even if nowadays one cannot speak of a “queer materialist” current as such, because the approaches grouped under this term are very different, it seems appropriate to look for a “family resemblance” and to group them together. Two specific kinds of “queer materialisms” can thus be identified. The first, queer Marxism, seeks to theorize together Marxist and queer theories, particularly in normalization and capitalist accumulation regimes. The second, materialist queer feminism, confronts materialist/Marxist feminist thought with queer approaches and thus works in particular on the question of heteropatriarchy based on this double tradition.

IMPACT OF ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE REGION ON THE LEVEL OF SOCIAL TENSION

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-209
Author(s):  
A.A. ALEKSEYENOK ◽  
◽  
Yu.V. KAIRA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Social Tension ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Correlation Tables

The purpose of the article is to determine the influence of the socio-economic and socio-political situation in the Orel region on the level of social tension. The research methodology is a sociological analysis of the respondents' answers about the socio-economic and socio-political situation in the region, as well as the level of social tension using two-dimensional analysis and correlation tables. As a result, the importance of conducting monitoring sociological studies of the main indicators of the social development of the region has been substantiated. It was revealed that the population of the region believes that the state of affairs in the economic sphere in the region is much worse than in the country as a whole. Despite the fact that the majority of respondents note an improvement in the political situation in the region, the fact that every third resident of the region declares that it has deteriorated is quite alarming. The authors come to the conclusion that dissatisfaction with the socio-political and socio-economic situation directly affects the civic position of the population, affects the growth of social tension. It is summarized that social tension is a complex multifactorial phenomenon that cannot be interpreted unambiguously. Therefore, to monitor it, constant research should be carried out.

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