Social Justice as an Incentive and a Brake on Economic Development: The Contradictions of the USSR as Challenges for the Future

The article examines the experience of the USSR in the field of solving the problem of correlation between social justice and economic efficiency. The characteristics of those aspects of Soviet experience in the sphere of implementation of social justice principles in the sphere of labor and distribution, which have potential for application in the conditions of modern capitalism to respond to the current challenges, are outlined. Firstly, it is noted that social justice is not reduced to inequality of income and distribution of wealth but is considered in connection with the human factor of economic development. In an expanded understanding, social justice includes a measure of access to basic resources such as labour, housing, education, health and other areas of human development. The experience of the USSR is characterised by the fact that, on the one hand, the universal availability and security of these basic resources (public goods) created the grounds for stimulating human development. On the other hand, the violation of these declared principles in practice (due to the development of bureaucratic privileges and benefits, the shadow economy, etc.) caused serious negative incentives, which became one of the elements in the system of reasons for the departure of “real socialism” from the historical scene. Secondly, the article points out that the Soviet system of income generation based on the principles of labour distribution was a combination of planned-normative and market-capitalist principles designed to create economic “egoistic” incentives. To the extent that this system was implemented, it succeeded in stimulating productivity and labour (but not market) initiative. But the manifestation, and in later stages of the USSR's development – in some cases the predominance, of bureaucratic-voluntarist foundations in the system created rather negative incentives. Relations of alienation in the sphere of appropriation and disposal of public property undermined socialist incentives to work and social innovation. The author concludes that some of the achievements of the Soviet system in the realisation of social justice are possible and effective in meeting the challenge of sustainable development in the 21st century. In particular, practices that were developed in the Soviet system, such as the provision of basic goods that are publicly available and free to users, the use of forms of work organisation based on a combination of competition, solidarity and self-government, etc., remain important.

Communication Technologies and the History of the Spectacle

The chapter presents a historical account and a first theoretical approach on the rise of the society of the selfie. Our historical exposition concerns the global spread of the material and cultural developments of capitalist society, including the recent rise of the digital and Web 2.0. In Wallerstein’s concept of ‘geoculture’, the world-system is not just economic; the culture of modern capitalism is extended into regions when and where the global market extends. Using this framework, in chapter 1 we focus on the place of communication technologies in the global economic and cultural changes from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Describing these changes, we explore Guy Debord’s theory of ‘the spectacle.’ In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the rise of information technologies and the World Wide Web dovetailed with neoliberalism and spectacular capitalism, amplifying a cultural trend already well under way: the movement away from substance and depth, toward images, surfaces, and superficial appearances. We argue that in the age of social media, much interpersonal communication is mediated and fragmented through social media via likes, comments, tweets, and so on. Users construct alternate, ‘spectacular’ versions of themselves that circulate online. The ‘selfie’ is a perfect symbol for this new state of culture.

Camera Obscura or the Way Things Appear: Some Remarks About Marx’s Economic Writings

I analyse the foundations of Marx’s analysis to examine the applicability of Marx’s theory of the capitalist economy to the study of current economic events. In this paper, I do not present critique the interpretations of Marx’s works made by contemporary economists; however, much of modern Marxian economics is invalid in terms of Marx’s own method and inappropriate for understanding modern capitalism. The paper is concerned with topics that have been the subject of contemporary debate and are central to Marx’s own economic writings. Here I present only textual evidence of the main tendencies in the development of capitalism discovered by Marx. There are limits to value (= time) as the sole criterion of economic expediency; the constant reproduction of a scarcity of jobs amid an abundance of goods; enlargement of material commercial relations on the other spheres of social life; development of monetary relations – the emergence of derivatives of money, i. e., ersatz money, digital money. The main conclusion that I came to is that some societies are gradually losing value and moral guidelines, threatening the very development and even the existence of other communities or peoples.

‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s wartime novel The Corner that Held Them (1948), about a nunnery during the Black Death, reflects on female community and bonding in a period of male fascist violence. The novel explores the shift from pacifism to acceptance of the need for anti-fascist war which characterised Warner’s intellectual beliefs from the 1930s into wartime, probing the arts of peace in compositional practice. Such a dialectic of war and peace is considered in relation to what Maud Ellmann has described as the outward turn to collective choral consciousness in mid-century modernism. This article explores both the staging of fascism as plague and the feminist daring and limits that Warner saw as operative in female witnessing and withstanding of Nazi ideology and menace. It closely reads key scenes from the panorama of a novel (notably Alianor’s stillness as her husband is killed, Alicia’s plans to withstand the economic impact of the Black Death and the cure of Ralph’s plague symptoms) to register the satirical and allegorical substance of Warner’s rescripting of Woolfian notions of resistance to warmongering misogyny by a society of outsiders. The readings seek to consolidate a varied and multiple sense of the book as a Marxist historical novel that gives voice to the ruled. In doing so Warner analyses the Black Death as a moment in history that saw the emergence of early modern capitalism and labour relations out of the feudal system, even as the religious framework that had structured medieval Europe gave way to more secular beliefs in autonomy, self-determination, citizen and collective dreams, projects and affects. At the same time the plague as a political trope, rooted in anti-fascist rhetoric that turns Nazi anti-Semitic uses of the Black Death motif on their head, triggers readings that bring those historical scenes into allegorical relation with the ways in which the Second World War was experienced by marginalised female communities.

Batavia shipwreck timbers reveal a key to Dutch success in 17th-century world trade

Ocean-going ships were key to rising maritime economies of the Early Modern period, and understanding how they were built is critical to grasp the challenges faced by shipwrights and merchant seafarers. Shipwreck timbers hold material evidence of the dynamic interplay of wood supplies, craftmanship, and evolving ship designs that helped shape the Early Modern world. Here we present the results of dendroarchaeological research carried out on Batavia’s wreck timbers, currently on display at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle. Built in Amsterdam in 1628 CE and wrecked on its maiden voyage in June 1629 CE in Western Australian waters, Batavia epitomises Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) shipbuilding. In the 17th century, the VOC grew to become the first multinational trading enterprise, prompting the rise of the stock market and modern capitalism. Oak (Quercus sp.) was the preferred material for shipbuilding in northern and western Europe, and maritime nations struggled to ensure sufficient supplies to meet their needs and sustain their ever-growing mercantile fleets and networks. Our research illustrates the compatibility of dendrochronological studies with musealisation of shipwreck assemblages, and the results demonstrate that the VOC successfully coped with timber shortages in the early 17th century through diversification of timber sources (mainly Baltic region, Lübeck hinterland in northern Germany, and Lower Saxony in northwest Germany), allocation of sourcing regions to specific timber products (hull planks from the Baltic and Lübeck, framing elements from Lower Saxony), and skillful woodworking craftmanship (sapwood was removed from all timber elements). These strategies, combined with an innovative hull design and the use of wind-powered sawmills, allowed the Dutch to produce unprecedented numbers of ocean-going ships for long-distance voyaging and interregional trade in Asia, proving key to their success in 17th-century world trade.

Accounting for Who We Are and Could Be: Inventing Taxonomies of the Self in an Age of Uncertainty

Self-trackers are confronted with economic and cultural uncertainty as two fundamental traits of late-modern capitalism. Coping with uncertainty in this context means the calculative quest for discovering the representational forms by which the plurality of individual capabilities as well as the plurality of the cultural forms of living can be inscribed into common registers of worth. Drawing on Foucault as well as the Sociology of Critique, this paper emphasizes the moral and cognitive conflicts accompanying the emergence of self-quantification and points to the contradictions and ambivalences this involves: self-inspection as a form of enabling accounting and emancipation, on the one hand, versus an extension of instrumental rationality to hitherto incommensurable and incalculable entities, on the other.

Three problems of neo-Marxism, or What you need to know before using a neo-Marxist approach

The maturity of the neo-Marxist approach in cognition is determined not only by the heuristics of its theoretical and methodological foundations, but also by self-critical reflection. Three initial problems of the neo-Marxist approach are identified, which are useful to take into account when using it in scientific research: excessive criticism of neo-Marxist cognition, ideological bias of the neo-Marxist approach, conceptual uncertainty of capitalism as an object of neo-Marxism. It is proved that the ideological component is falsely identified with all neo-Marxism, and the critical component is treated trivially. The problem of the neo-Marxist approach lies not in the fact of a negative judgment about the reality under study, but in the level of theoretical and methodological support for the critical approach. It is necessary to distinguish criticism as a negative judgment and criticism as a dialectical logic of negation. The researcher can avoid the critical and ideological component of neo-Marxist research within the framework of the scientific tradition of neo-Marxism. This tradition does not deprive the researcher of the possibility of scientific search for new socio-economic reasons for the transformation of capitalism or new political ones by the subject of anti-capitalist resistance. The difference is that the ideological goal setting orients the researcher to the construction of the revolutionary situation of capitalism, and the scientific one – to the knowledge of the revolutionary factors of the existing «capitalist construct». More complex problem of the neo-Marxist approach is the conceptual uncertainty of capitalism. This problem requires a solution at the level of the community of neo-Marxist theorists. The unresolved nature of this problem affects the initial positions of new neo-Marxist studies. It does not allow us to define capitalism as an object of neo-Marxist research of any subject orientation. There are two options for a research strategy in this situation. First, it is possible, based on the conventional concept of truth, to join some neo-Marxist definition of modern capitalism and implement one’s subject research within the framework of the tradition of a particular neo-Marxist theorist. Secondly, it is possible to use the hypothetical-deductive method and proceed from the chosen understanding of capitalism as a hypothetical position, where the author’s subject of research is constituted as a consequence of this hypothesis and requires a verification check for truth. The solvability of general neo-Marxist epistemological problems means that there are no obstacles to the widespread application of neo-Marxism in social cognition.

Pandemic, Exception and the Law: Notes on the Shattered Nomos of Europe

In this article I propose a critical evaluation of the current European politico-legal landscape that unfolds under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. My aim is to off an analysis of the symbolic status of legality in this context and to reflect on its historical trajectory, by introducing it in a longer historical timescale than usually proposed as well as by insisting on the specific nexus between emergency legislation and authoritarian ideologies within Europe. In doing so I propose a new genealogy of the state of exception apt to articulate the relationship between the force of law, legal normativity, and ideology in modern capitalism. The thesis that I defend here is a simple one: the ongoing pandemic has operated a historical acceleration that the law, understood here as medium that articulates power symbolically in a public and ostensible manner, is not able to catch up with. To substantiate this thesis, I venture first to take stock of the existing theories, analyses and narratives on the relation between the pandemic and the politico-legal landscape of Europe. In doing so I shall focus fi on traditional constitutional law accounts and on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s criticism of the legal responses to the pandemic. Following this analysis, I move towards a situation of the pandemic within the sphere of the multiple crises befalling Europe that have become visible since 2015. At this stage I draw attention to the manifold layers of emergency legality and states of exception that have been sapping the liberal democratic nomos putatively defended within Europe. In a third move, I embark on a synoptical clarification of the relationship between law, ideology and the history of class struggle. In a fourth and last intervention I intend to assess the current nexus between the pandemic, exception and the law as a specific form of dissolution of the liberal nomos.

MAX WEBER ON THE “SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM”. ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE ANTECHAMBER OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

<p align="center"><strong>ABSTRACT</strong><strong></strong></p><p>The paper has a fresh look at the work of Weber. The emphasis is on his “Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism”, which is frequently misrepresented. It is argued that Weber’s focus of attention is the historical importance of Protestant ideas to the extent to which they shape human action; the treatise does not seek to explain capitalism since its beginnings, but concentrates exclusively on “modern capitalism”; it deals with economic growth and development in the antechamber of the Industrial Revolution; it concerns essentially what Marx had called the production of “absolute” as opposed to relative surplus value. Weber’s argument is rephrased with the help of economic theory and its limitations are pointed out. </p><p align="center"> </p><p align="center">MAX WEBER SOBRE EL “ESPÍRITU DEL CAPITALISMO”</p><p align="center">CRECIMIENTO ECONÓMICO Y DESARROLLO EN LA ANTESALA DE LA REVOLUCIÓN INDUSTRIAL</p><p align="center"><strong>RESUMEN</strong></p><p>El artículo presenta un punto de vista nuevo sobre la obra de Max Weber. El énfasis está puesto en su “Ética Protestante y el ‘Espíritu’ del Capitalismo”, obra con frecuencia interpretada mal. La atención de Weber está en la importancia histórica de las ideas protestantes en cuanto perfilan la acción humana; no pretende explicar el capitalismo desde su origen, sino que se concentra sólo en el “capitalismo moderno”; trata del crecimiento y el desarrollo económico en la antesala de la Revolución Industrial; esencialmente de lo que Marx llamó producción de plusvalía “absoluta” por oposición a la relativa. Su argumento es reformulado aquí con la ayuda de la teoría económica y se hacen notar sus limitaciones.</p>

IN(TER)DEPENDENCE IN PLATFORMED CREATION

In recent years, a variety of cultural industries have been transformed by platformization – a process in which technology companies serve as intermediaries connecting different parties (most importantly cultural producers and audiences) through websites and applications. From music to book publishing, movie production, and the visual arts, cultural production has undergone massive changes due to platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Goodreads, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Etsy, etc. In most cultural sectors, creators now have to grapple with the platforms that make their work visible to online audiences. This often means paying close attention to the quantitative infrastructure of platforms, namely their algorithms and analytics, which drive visibility and commercial success. This panel examines what these economic and technological changes imply for the independence of cultural production. Classical studies of culture often emphasized the role that the values of independence and autonomy play in shaping artists’ worldviews and practices. From Bourdieu’s analysis of “fields of cultural production” as “the economic world reversed” to Becker’s theory of “art worlds” where internal dynamics redefine external constraints, or the Frankfurt School’s critical take on the demise of aura through mechanical reproduction, sociological approaches have paid close attention to the threats to independence emerging under modern capitalism. In fact, most classical sociology saw cultural producers in the mass cultural industries as having little independence, often assuming (sometimes without empirical research) that the massification of culture would destroy original and critical art works. Here we revisit the question of independence in the context of platformed creation – a term that embraces all forms of cultural production that are mediated, in part or completely, through digital platforms. By bringing together scholars studying different aspects of platformed creation and reflecting on the concept of independence through diverse disciplinary lenses, we ask: what does independence look like in the context of platformed creation? What are some of the theoretical and methodological tools available to scholars for making sense of cultural, economic, and technological independence in the case of platformed creation? And how do these evolving forms of independence affect the kinds of art works and cultural tropes that circulate online? These different studies aim to put the concept of independence in dialogue with the question of interdependence (among cultural producers, audiences, and platforms) in a mediated digital world.