Issue Alert
RETHINKING MARXISM
Vol. 16 No. 4
(October 2004)
IN THIS ISSUE
Editors’ Introduction
In
this issue we inaugurate an exciting new section of the journal,
under the editorial guidance of Jack Amariglio. Our goal in
“art/iculations”is to encourage the formulation and dissemination of
distinctively Marxian discourses concerning contemporary art and
culture.
SYMPOSIUM on Global Economy, Global Justice by George DeMartino
The End of Welfare Economics As We Know It: A Review Essay
by William Milberg
The legitimacy crisis of the new international economics has opened a new, atheoretical era in mainstream economics. This new generation of research has strengths and weaknesses: it asks practical questions (appropriate for policy), but it has left a theoretical void (especially concerning social welfare). Neoliberalism has rushed through the open door. One of the great contributions of George DeMartino's Global Economy, Global Justice is to make explicit the normative principles underlying neoliberalism, to explore alternative normative principles, and to pose the question, "what makes for a good economic outcome?"
Subjects of Justice?
by Julie Graham
In Global Economy, Global Justice, George DeMartino calls us to imagine a new international order, one in which the global marketplace supports rather than undermines social justice. Courageously and inventively, DeMartino takes on neoliberalism, moral absolutism, cultural relativism, and theoretical quietism, outlining a number of just and feasible international trading regimes. What we are asked to supply for ourselves is a vision of the politics and subjects of this new order. This is a challenge that we can happily take on, given the hopeful, practical, and well thought out platform provided by DeMartino.
Dreaming Big: Democracy in the Global Economy
by Maliha Safri and Eray Düzenli
This review essay offers a reading of George DeMartino's Global Economy, Global Justice from a radical democracy perspective as elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. It explores a specific construction of capabilities as an empty signifier, and discusses the potential role of this concept as a criterion to evaluate the justness of international economic policies.
On the Politics of Global Economy, Global Justice
by George Demartino
In this paper I respond to the symposium on my book Global Economy, Global Justice: Normative Objections and Policy Alternatives to Neoliberalism, with contributions by William Milberg, Julie Graham, Maliha Safri, and Eray Düzenli. This paper explores a topic just briefly mentioned in Global Economy, Global Justice--namely, the politics associated with the pursuit of the form of justice that I advance in the book. I argue that the book's principal arguments are informed by the theoretical perspectives in evidence in the papers of Milberg, Graham, and Safri and Düzenli, though I had chosen not to explore these perspectives in detail.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
Recovering Feudal Subjectivities
by Serap Ayse Kayatekin and S. Charusheela
Poststructuralism and postmodernism have helped Marxist political economy criticize and transform its determinism and teleology in order to avoid reliance on modernist categories. However, the question of (class) subjectivity, especially in noncapitalist exploitative contexts, has remained underdeveloped. This paper fills this theoretical gap, conceptualizing feudal class subjectivity. Adapting Gramsci's notion of hegemony, we propose that notions of hierarchy and reciprocity between the exploiters and exploited help us understand hegemony under feudal class relations. An analysis of sharecropping relations in the Southern states of the postbellum United States is used to enrich and deepen our analysis of feudal subjectivity. We end by discussing, without any reliance on modernist conceptions of the rights of the individualist subject, how agency as the ability to challenge hegemony can emerge from within the world-view of such subjectivities.
Socialism and the Workers Party in Brazil: An Interview with Carlos Nelson Coutinho
translated by Maria do RosÔø‡rio Gomes Lima da Silva and David F. Ruccio
This interview with Carlos Nelson Coutinho was conducted by the Jornal do Brasil, one of the two leading newspapers in Brazil, and published in its 14 December 2003 edition. Coutinho explains why he left the Brazilian Workers party, the possibility of forming an alternative political party, and the prospects for socialism in Brazil. He raises questions about Lula's government, especially its economic program, and related problems faced by the Workers party, including its relationship to the government and the decisions it has taken that distance its program from socialist transition.
Automation and Labor: Is Marx Equal to Adam Smith?
by Benedito Moraes-Neto (Translated by Paula Matvienko-Sikar)
The qualifications for employment within the modern microelectronic-based, automated systems can be understood as a negation of the Marxist claim that work would come to demand less skill as technology developed. This paper attempts to criticize this interpretation by seeking the work-deskilling concept in the writings of Marx himself. The result is the proposition that that which is observed in the modern factory--that is, the radical dispensability of living work--really mirrors work deskilling according to Marx. The more usual idea of work deskilling, attributed erroneously to Marx, is in reality Smithian in nature. Based on this analysis, a critical analysis is made of Labor and Monopoly Capital by Braverman, which has become accepted as the definitive interpretation of the ideas of Marx on the subject. The sole cause for confusion arising from equating the Marxist and Smithian analyses concerning technology and work should be attributed to an incorrect understanding of Taylorism and Fordism. Here we propose that recent technological developments in reality signify an end to the mistake of equating Marx with Smith, and also indicate the great relevance of Marx today.
Marx's 1844 Manuscripts as a Work of Art: A Hypertextual Reinterpretation
by Gary Tedman
The essay investigates, unveils, and freshly interprets the "eccentric" physical design structure and format of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts, drawing upon research conducted by Margaret Fay and on experience designing a Web-based version of the famous document that takes into account and discloses these neglected features. It takes issue with interpretations both for and against its subject matter that assume it is a humanist text interested in "Spirit," and reemphasizes Marx's sensual materialism to disclose his artful method of "immanent critique," similar in many respects to the work of avant-garde visual artists. The neglect of these aspects is thought to be the effect of a dominant, logocentric world-view and a resultant aesthetic lacuna in traditional interpretations of Marx and Marxism. Concepts useful to a nonhumanist Marxism are thereby legitimated even from this, hitherto unlikely, source. Other texts by the author (Tedman) revert to this interpretation as a basis for extrapolating an aesthetic (sensual, felt) level to human social practice, and to corresponding Aesthetic State Apparatuses, that link with Althusser's concept of an ideological level and Ideological State Apparatuses.
art/iculations
by Charity Scribner
On the occasion of Alexander Kluge's receipt of the BÔø‡chner Prize, this article considers the Kulturphilosophie of this influential German author, filmmaker, and television producer who has been central to Marxist criticism in the postwar period. Special attention is devoted to Kluge's use of subtitles and captions in his recent collection of works, the Chronicle of Feeling.
REMARX
Clifford L. Staples
In this paper I report on a recent attempt to teach about "class exploitation" in a social inequality course. My experience suggests that students welcome, somewhat warily and uncertainly, discussions of class exploitation and nonexploitive alternatives, are able to imagine nonexploitive alternatives to their current (or recent) employment, and in some extraordinary cases are ready to make such alternatives happen. These responses suggest that students--and perhaps students who are also workers in particular--need and deserve our best efforts, and that they can, in turn, bring important experience, energy, and insight to the challenge of rethinking Marxism.
REVIEWS
Karl Marx and the Classics, by John Milios, Dimitri Dimoulis, and George Economakis, represents both an original interpretation of and an accessible introduction to Marxian value theory. That is the verdict of reviewer Alfredo Saad-Filho who, notwithstanding his ‘‘minor disagreements’’ with specific claims made by the authors, recommends that their book ‘‘be read widely.’’The other book reviewed in this issue is the revised edition of Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism. According to Elizabeth Ramey, Hudson has successfully updated his original study of U.S. financial diplomacy to take into account the events subsequent to Nixon’s 1971 closing of the dollar window and their implications for the current global monetary system.
Naturalizations: Media Defacements
Peter Lasch
The photograph of a hooded prisoner standing on a box, electrodes attached to his outstretched arms, has no doubt become the icon of the abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison—and, given its recognizability and symbolic meanings, it has rapidly been reproduced, appropriated, and transformed throughout the world. Scattered throughout this issue, readers will find a series of other hooded, masked, and “defaced” images that were selected from the media and altered by Peter Lasch as a continuation of his project of “Naturalizations.”
Notes on Contributors
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