Coming to Terms with Marxian Taxonomy

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Cedric J. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Global System ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
The Future

In this chapter, Robinson explores the development of Western socialism—its roots in English political economy, French socialism, and German philosophy—in order to show the contextually specific origins of Marxism. Robinson argues that Marx conflates phenomena that are particular to Europe with a uniform global system—capitalism—derived through his supposedly objective mode of analysis. The chapter argues that the historical materialism and Western socialism that is often taken as a scientific discovery was instead the result of Engels’ and Lenin’s interpretations of Marx’s own contextually (and nationally) specific writings. Marxism’s profoundest mistake, Robinson argues, is the conflation of deep social critique with the work of the intelligentsia, therefore making the work of socialism that of a small group of elites. Moreover, Marx equates realizable socialism with the arrival of capitalism. Robinson argues that this effectively ties the future of socialism with the existence of capitalism, thus diminishing the paths open to effective social struggle.

FISCAL PESSIMISM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: TOCQUEVILLE'S CROSS REVISITED

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Isabel Cepeda ◽  
Pedro Fraile Balbín
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Income Redistribution ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Economic Decision ◽  
Modern School ◽  
Economic Decision Making ◽  
The Future

ABSTRACT This paper explores Alexis de Tocqueville's thought on fiscal political economy as a forerunner of the modern school of preference falsification and rational irrationality in economic decision making. A good part of the literature has misrepresented Tocqueville as an unconditional optimist regarding the future of fiscal moderation under democracy. Yet, although he initially shared the cautious optimism of most classical economists with respect to taxes under extended suffrage, Tocqueville's view turned more pessimistic in the second volume of his Democracy in America. Universal enfranchisement and democratic governments would lead to higher taxes, more intense income redistribution and government control. Under democracy, the continuous search for unconditional equality would eventually jeopardise liberty and economic growth.

Rise and Fall

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 727-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn ◽  
E. Susan Manning ◽  
Thomas D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Global System ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
Early States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Regional System

The world-systems perspective was invented for modeling and interpreting the expansion and deepening of the capitalist regional system as it emerged in Europe and incorporated the whole globe over the past 500 years (Wallerstein 1974; Chase-Dunn 1998; Arrighi 1994). The idea of a core/periphery hierarchy composed of “advanced” economically developed and powerful states dominating and exploiting “less developed” peripheral regions has been a central concept in the world-systems perspective. In the last decade the world-systems approach has been extended to the analysis of earlier and smaller intersocietal systems. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills (1994) have argued that the contemporary global political economy is simply a continuation of a 5,000-year-old world system that emerged with the first states in Mesopotamia. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (1997) have modified the basic world-systems concepts to make them useful for a comparative study of very different kinds of systems. They include very small intergroup networks composed of sedentary foragers, as well as larger systems containing chiefdoms, early states, agrarian empires, and the contemporary global system in their scope of comparison.

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

The potential for a progressive paradigm shift

2021 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-177
Author(s):  
John McDonnell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Banking Crisis ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
The Future

The banking crisis and the pandemic have both demonstrated the potential for a progressive paradigm shift that could break with the hegemony of neoliberalism over Britain’s political economy. The Covid pandemic has demonstrated how many of the ideas and policies that formed the basis of the Labour Party manifestos of 2017 and 2019 are essential to tackling the current crisis of the pandemic and also for tackling the next crisis, which is the existential threat of climate change. For those on the left and progressives, the task is to discuss and plan the economy and society that will translate these lessons into a vision for the future of our society and into the concrete policy programme needed to achieve that vision. This article is based on a lecture given at the Marx Memorial Library on 23 June 2020 and we are pleased to reproduce it here.

Thinking with Trans Now

Social Text ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Aren Z. Aizura ◽  
Marquis Bey ◽  
Toby Beauchamp ◽  
Treva Ellison ◽  
Jules Gill-Peterson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Queer Of Color ◽  
The World ◽  
A Site

This roundtable considers trans theory’s status as a site of thinking racialization, empire, political economy, and materiality in the current historical, institutional, and political moment. We ask, what does it mean to think trans in a time of crisis?, and what is the place of critique in a crisis?, acknowledging that global crises are not insulated from trans, and trans is not insulated from the world. This roundtable looks to materialist formations to think trans now, including a new materialism premised on thinking about trans embodiment outside of trans as subject position, the materialism of objects and commodities, and a historical materialism shaped by queer of color critique.

Many Happy Returns? Investment Governance and the Political Economy of Time in UK Pensions Provision

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-246
Author(s):  
Craig Berry
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Pension Funds ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Pensions ◽  
Pension Schemes ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Uk

We are increasingly conscious that private pension schemes in the UK are primarily financial institutions. UK private pensions provision has always been highly financialized, but the individualization of provision means this dynamic matters more than ever to retirement incomes. Furthermore, individualization has occurred at a time when the UK economy’s capacity to support a long-term approach to capital investment, upon which pensions depend, has declined. The chapter argues that pensions provision essentially involves managing the failure of the future to resemble the present, or more specifically present forecasts of the future. As our ability to manipulate the value of the future has increased, our ability to tolerate forecast failure has declined. The chapter details how pension funds invest, and how this has changed, and provides an original understanding of several recent attempts to shape pensions investment, ultimately demonstrating the limitations of pensions policy in shaping how provision functions in practice.

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