CHAPTER TWO. Foundational Principles of a Fair Capitalist Society

Based on analyses of a 2016 German survey, this article contributes to debates on ‘societal nature relations’ by investigating the systematic differences between socially specific types of social relations with nature in a flexible capitalist society. It presents a typology of ten different ‘syndromes’ of attitudes toward social and environmental issues, which are then grouped to distinguish between four ideal types of social relationships with nature: dominance, conscious mutual dependency, alienation and contradiction. These are located in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) social space to illustrate how social relationships with nature correspond to people’s positions within the totality of social relations. Understanding how people’s perceptions of and actions pertaining to nature are shaped by their positions in these intersecting relations of domination – both within social space and between society and nature – is an important precondition for developing transformative strategies that will be capable of gaining majority support in flexible capitalist societies.

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“A critical theory of communication in capitalist society?” A review: Communication and capitalism: a critical theory

Information Communication & Society ◽

10.1080/1369118x.2021.1912139 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-2

Author(s):

Juan Pablo Melo

Keyword(s):

Critical Theory ◽

Capitalist Society

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The Pedagogy of Porter: The Origins of the Reformatory in the Cape Colony, 1882–1910

The Journal of African History ◽

10.1017/s0021853700023288 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 481-495 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Linda Chisholm

Keyword(s):

Economic Transition ◽

Capitalist Society ◽

Commercial Agriculture ◽

Distinctive Character ◽

Colonial Society ◽

Merchant Capital ◽

Internal Operations ◽

The Way

This article explores the origins and nature of the reformatory in Cape colonial society between 1882 and 1910. Born in a period of economic transition, its concern was with the reproduction of a labouring population precipitated by colonial conquest. Unlike the prison and compound, which gained their distinctive character from the way in which they were articulated to an emerging industrial capitalist society, the reformatory was shaped by the imperatives of merchant capital and commercial agriculture. Although based on the English model, local social realities quickly began to mould the particular nature of the reformatory in the Cape Colony. Firstly, classification for the purposes of control came to mean segregation in a colonial context. secondly, the needs of commercial agriculture meant that in Porter there was a much greater stress on the apprenticing of inmates than there was in the internal operations of the British reformatory.

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Women in the First Capitalist Society: Experiences in Seventeenth-Century England

Tulsa Studies in Women s Literature ◽

10.2307/464195 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 158

Author(s):

Margaret W. Ferguson ◽

Margaret George

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Capitalist Society

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Rethinking Pullman

Social Science History ◽

10.1017/s0145553200010063 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 7-26

Author(s):

Janice L. Reiff

Keyword(s):

Los Angeles ◽

Capitalist Society ◽

Dual Roles ◽

South Side ◽

Social Experiments ◽

Large Numbers ◽

The Town

For the residents of the former model town of Pullman, Illinois, 1994 was an important year. In May, 100 years earlier, a strike had broken out that pitted workers at the Pullman Car Works against George M. Pullman and the company that bore his name. Before the strike finally collapsed in August, it shutdown railroad traffic across much of America, brought federal troops into Chicago and cities as far away as Los Angeles, and led to the imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs, the president of the American Railway Union (ARU). It also brought to a close the long-standing debate on the most famous of the company’s social experiments: the model town located on Chicago’s far south side. Since 1880, George Pullman had trumpeted the architecturally and socially crafted town and life inside it as solutions for the problems of urban, industrial America, and large numbers of observers had concurred with that evaluation (Wright 1884; Smith 1995: 177–270; Reiff and Hirsch 1989: 104–6). For almost as long, its critics had excoriated the town as representing the worst excesses of a capitalist society where one man and his company could dominate every aspect of a worker’s life in their dual roles as landlord and employer (Ely 1885; Carwardine 1973 [1894]).

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How Not to Go Beyond Marx: A Reply to Worrell and Krier

Critical Sociology ◽

10.1177/0896920516649419 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 44 (2) ◽

pp. 241-257 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Tony Smith

Keyword(s):

Social Theory ◽

21St Century ◽

Social Life ◽

Capitalist Society ◽

Critical Social Theory ◽

Sociological Analysis ◽

General Direction ◽

Fatal Flaw ◽

The Right ◽

Political Imaginary

Worrell and Krier’s ‘Atopia Awaits! A Critical Sociological Analysis of Marx’s Political Imaginary’ raises serious issues regarding Marx’s legacy. They hold that a fatal flaw in Marx’s framework can be detected in his account of a post-capitalist society, which reveals a theoretically impoverished and politically dangerous neglect of essential features of social life. I argue that there are good reasons to reject Worrell and Krier’s thesis that Marx got immensely important things horribly wrong. Marx’s limited remarks on post-capitalist society are certainly inadequate in numerous respects. However, they point in the right general direction, and Worrell and Krier fail to offer a satisfactory alternative. The prospects for a critical social theory adequate to the immense challenges of the 21st century would be harmed if their readers agreed with the paper’s main thesis.

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