Theories of Private Property: Ownership and Social Justice

Author(s): Ľuboš Blaha / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

In the following study I will take a closer look at the concept of ownership, which is the real cause for concerns by Libertarians with regard to the concept of social justice. In general, we can talk about three basic methods of argumentation in favour of private ownership - immanent, desert-based and consequentialist. The first of them speaks of ownership as a fundamental human right, e.g. Nozick´s theory. The basic problem of Nozick´s argumentation is his assumption of equal rights of all people to ownership. One´s right to ownership, however, may distort the right to ownership of the others. The second reasoning, the desert-based theories, usually consider the entrepreneurial initiatives, investments or the energy expended the legitimation for the private property. However, the advocates of private property fail to prove that the deserts of the owner are in comparison with the workers in proportion to their often immeasurably higher rewards and power. The third way of argumentation is offered by the consequentialist theories of ownership. The mainstream argument is based on the Aristotelian-Thomistic argument that the private ownership motivates the owner to care about his own with greater tendency and interest. However, the managerial revolution within corporate capitalism shows that ownership is not directly linked to efficiency, and therefore the private ownership can be replaced by other forms of ownership, especially the cooperative ownership which I defend as the social just alternative to the classical private property models.

“What Ghosts are Haunting us Today?” Slavoj Žižek’s The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto in Post-Pandemic Capitalist Realism. The Revolutionary Subject and Work

Author(s): Vlad-Eugen Neagu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

However controversial a topic, Marxist thought still remains the most complex tool for the critique of Capitalism. Derrida calls Marxism “hauntological”, always reappearing as a spectre of the past, always quasi- present, but also as a potential lost future. After the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the relevance of The Communist Manifesto seemed to have slowly waned, in a world that adopted the tenets of Neoliberali sm partly as a defense against authoritarian regimes, and partly as a mean to converge toward the countries at the forefront of the global system, that had already accrued a massive lead in economic and social development. The Covid-19 virus has shocked the world to its core, but it remains to be seen whether it has brought about a paradigm shift or it has merely accentuated some of the past problems, while also triggering a kind of forced nostalgia for the apparent normality of a system that was already ridden with issues. Mark Fisher points out that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (Fisher 1), thus indicating the need for criticism and measures against a neoliberal monopoly on thought itself. As for Žižek’s The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto, it remains to be analyzed whether it can revive the interest in the original text, as to begin compounding a viable alternative for a post-pandemic global system that does not yet seem to fully grasp that it is running out of time.

Power Transitions and Conflict in the 20th and 21st century

Author(s): Sanjay Pooran / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2022

The geopolitical axis of the 21st century is indicative of a new world order that reflects power transitions as a vehicle for accelerated conflict. However, precedent rests not with historical analysis but with global changes towards political polarizing agendas. This article refutes the proposition that power shifts, such as those which caused so much conflict in the twentieth century, will be a key driver of conflict in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, the case is put forward that the fundamental ontological, and therefore epistemological, conditions of the international system have changed so radically in the last hundred years that the kinds of outcomes witnessed in the previous century, and previous system, are extremely improbable in the current day. For a case study, this paper looks at the clash between Western and Islamic civilisation, paying close attention to the rise in Islamism generally, Islamic terror groups specifically, and the confluences – in civilisational terms – between these two phenomena. In conclusion, the paper asserts that much evidence is available to support the contention that a clash between these civilisations will be a potent driver of conflict in the immediate future.

Barbarism – The Active Dystopia

Author(s): Jack Palmer / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2022

In this article, I argue that dystopia also has an ambivalently “active” function in Bauman’s sociology. Across his work, as a counter-image to the “active utopia” of socialism, the traces of the “active dystopia” can be tracked, defined as a pointed elucidation of the possibilities for barbarism latent within the present, the clearest expression of which is presented in Modernity and the Holocaust (1989). The article proceeds roughly in three steps. Firstly, I revisit the arguments in Bauman’s foundational cultural and critical sociology that developed alongside his revisionist reading of Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s, on epistemologies of the future, common sense and the limitations of the predictive ambitions of social science. Then, I develop a particular focus on an unpublished, though essential, typescript entitled “Is the Science of the Possible Possible?”, suggesting that it is usefully read in terms of the emphasis on possibility and potentiality in Modernity and the Holocaust. Throughout these sections, I intersperse a reading of Modernity and the Holocaust in the light of this foundational work, presenting it as an exemplary form of critical sociology as active dystopia, which elucidates the possibility for barbarism residing within modern societies. Finally, I consider how his thinking situates him in a lineage of critical thought animated by the “active dystopia”, arguing that what is often mistaken for gloominess and pessimism is, in fact, a crucial resource for sociology in its speculative imagination of possible futures.

Зарубежная библеистика в советской историографии: формирование и эволюция критического нарратива

Author(s): A. A. Popova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2022

The critical narrative, which was part of the unified canon of Marxist biblical studies, took shape under the impact of both external (USSR anti-religious policy) and internal (scholarly research, discussions, and polemics) factors. In the 1920s, anti-religious propagandists determined its development. Subsequently, in the late 1930s, it was legitimized in the academic field by the program articles of biblical scholars. Thus, a core of cited and criticized authors was established by the late 1930s, as well as key topics, methods of criticism, and principles of text design. This structure remained practically unchanged until the end of the Soviet era, when the state policy on religion became ambiguous and blurred the anti-religious discourse. Consequently, the unified narrative of Soviet biblical studies began to disintegrate, thereby forcing scholars to look for ways out of it. However, the views held by Soviet biblical scholars soaked the basics of the anti-religious discourse, so it was difficult for them to move away from the long-standing patterns. For this reason, they only tried to bring a fresh perspective to their reasoning: they avoided giving direct answers to the basic questions of biblical scholarship and changed the tone of criticism toward western authors or refused it. At the end of the Soviet era, most biblical scholars rejected the outdated and tendentious ideas of Marxism, but they still addressed almost the same scope of issues, partly the elements of Marxist methodology and terminology as its integral part.

Sorry We Missed You Filminde Yabancılaşma: Karl Marx Perspektifinden Bir Değerlendirme

Author(s): Seda Dilek Göğüş,Hakan Kılınç / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 15/2023

This study examines the movie Sorry We Missed You in the context of Karl Marx's concept of alienation. Known for his films on the working class, Ken Loach presents the exploitative relations of employees and capital owners, the problems arising as a result, loneliness and alienation, in all its reality, in order to create surplus value and ensure its own existence and continuity in the capitalist system. Alienation is a phenomenon that Marx developed by pointing to the capitalist mode of production and has a burning and destructive effect in the social process in which the workers are physically and mentally involved. While developing his arguments about alienation, Marx makes an analysis over the proletariat. However, in this film, which is processed on the precariat example, an order in which alienation is even deeper today is criticized. As a matter of fact, the movie Sorry We Missed You tells the struggle and the process of elementary family trying to cope with the economic difficulties struggling in the whirlpool of capitalism. The issue of alienation, which is visible in such a capitalist order, manifests itself in various forms around different characters throughout the film. Therefore, in this study, the focus will be on the content of the film, the messages given and the theme, rather than the technical elements specific to the film in question.

Разделение на неделеното

Author(s): Marcel Drach / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2002

Není stále jasné, co jsou to protisocialistické síly

Author(s): Petr Andreas / Language(s): Czech Issue: 02/2021

In this study, the author focuses on the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), its discourse on the enemy, and its rhetoric against it in 1967–1970. In terms of domestic and foreign policy relations, the Czechoslovak reform, and Prague Spring consisted in the fact that the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubček, weakened and negated the rhetoric against the enemy and reduced the traditional conceptual apparatus to suppress the enemy, used by his predecessor, Antonín Novotný. This caused a disagreement with the allies. Their political and military pressure, including the intervention, was intended to encourage the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to ‘see’ the enemy again and speak a common language about it. Under the pressure of ‘Normalization’, the Communist Party leadership gradually enlarged the circle of the party’s enemies (right-wing, Liberalism, and Conservatives) to include those unaccepted by the allies led by the Soviets (anti-socialist forces, anti-Sovietism), and conversely, it ceased to oppose those who were aligned with the Soviets (Conservatives). Conceptually, the domestic terminology concerning the enemy adapted to the Soviet terminology and eliminated the remains of the domestic political traditions. At the rhetorical level, the Czech Communist representatives remained firmly enclosed in a framework which I call the Marxist-Leninist conceptual-rhetorical model of thinking about the enemy, and with the attributes indicating the individual groups of enemies, they also adopted concepts such as anti-social forces, the vagueness of which enabled them to bridge the discrepancies between the domestic and Soviet concepts of the enemy. Anti-Sovietism became the key term which enabled the transfer of power in the Communist Party leadership in April 1969.

„Obecné dějiny“, „obsahová filozofie dějin“ a evoluční teorie

Author(s): Jan Horský / Language(s): Czech Issue: 02/2019

Horský in his discussion paper analyses the relation between ‘general history’ and ‘content-oriented philosophy of history’. This helps him approach the subject of the role of philosophy of history in historical and scientific research. He uses the term ‘content-oriented philosophy of history’ in a broad sense, that is, including its classical conceptions (August Comte, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx), its innovated forms (for instance Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of culture), as well as its variants which approach the subject from the perspective of historical sociology (Max Weber, Alfred Weber, Norbert Elias). Aside from that, the author investigates the relation between general history and other sciences or research directions which deal with development or processual changes (especially evolutionary biology) and their investigations to some extent overlap with some forms of content-oriented philosophy (‘history’, ‘life’, etc.). And last but not least, Horský investigates whether some claims (describing a state of affairs, developmental tendencies, and the like) made within the framework of ‘general history’ or against its background could also aspire to being true in a scientific sense of the term. It is concluded that there is indeed some overlap between ‘content-oriented philosophy of history’ and general history. General history can be a field where some concepts originating in the ‘content-oriented philosophy of history’ can be (quasi)empirically checked and some of its parts can be translated into theories in a narrower sense of the term. Nevertheless, where ‘content-oriented philosophy of history’ or general (biological or culturological) theory of evolution is used as the background of general history, it must be taken into account, duly considered, and thereby also checked. The same holds if general history functions as a necessary background of any formulation of research-worthy subject of historical sciences: in such case, its presence or influence must likewise be duly reflected.

Después de Catar 2022: 7 tesis en torno al capitalismo migratorio contemporáneo

Author(s): Philippe Schaffhauser / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 1/2023

A few months after the celebration of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, this article sheds light on some controversial aspects related to this great event, which focus on the relationship between migration, capital and labor. In this sense, its objective is to build an analytical frame of reference to understand the geopolitical background of this world from the perspective of capital as theorized by Karl Marx and enriched by various Marxist traditions. Today, capitalism has become an immeasurable whole. Its empirical representation, through the inventory of its forms, remains the greatest theoretical challenge. It does not exist, but through its multiple effects: poverty, unemployment, pleonexia, ecocide, democratic authoritarianism, among others. Capitalism consists of a contradictory structure of historical relations of antagonistic forces that exercises supreme domination over human and natural life. In this article, it is intended to illuminate, from the work of Marx, one of its contemporary aspects that is migratory capitalism, through seven theses on contemporary migrations.

Kryzys uniwersytetu

Author(s): Paweł Bortkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 33/1/2023

In order to show the contemporary crisis of the university, the article presents the original concept of the university, which originated in the Middle Ages and has been subjected to historical transformations. Part of this transformation was the gradual reduction of classical philosophy and theology from the space of university thought. Particularly significant was the demand for the elimination of faith and theology from public life expressed emphatically in Marxist thought. Marxism, by proposing to grant man the attributes of the Creator, actually brought man to a level below humanity. In the face of these external threats, imposed ideologically, the role of the synthesis of faith and reason proposed throughout history by Christian and non-Christian thinkers, and brought out in modern times by St John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et ratio and in the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI, becomes all the more clear. The de-emphasis of Pope Benedict XVI at La Sapienza University in Rome shows, at the same time, that contemporary threats to the synthesis of faith and reason can emanate from the human sciences themselves, which are becoming particularly susceptible to ideologisation and thus selfdestruction. This is confirmed by some contemporary currents in university thought, while at the same time pointing to the need to return to a synthesis of faith and reason that results in a realistic conception of man based on a realistic metaphysics.

ლევ ტროცკი ლიტერატურასა და რევოლუციას შორის

Author(s): Merab Ghaghanidze / Language(s): Georgian Issue: 24/2023

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), one of the leaders of the Bolshevik coup of 1917 and the subsequent Soviet state, resting at the government cottage in the summer of 1922, when he was People’s Commissar of Military Affairs of the Russian Federative Socialist Republic, decided to edit his previously published articles on literature and to publish them as a single collection, but then he resolved to gradually expand and postpone its completion to the following summer, 1923: during this time the collection was reworked, expanded, filled with new material and soon after the end of the work, in the autumn of the same year 1923, published as a book, titled: “Literature and Revolution”. At that time, Trotsky already held the position of the People’s Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, although not only this circumstance caused the work of the famous Bolshevik to receive a wide response in the Soviet Union and various countries of the world. The collection of articles was soon translated into many languages and gradually published in almost every country. The book, in an abbreviated form, was also published in Georgia in 1926.

DISTINKCIJA GRAĐANSKOG I POLITIČKOG DRUŠTVA U DELU GRAMŠIJA

Author(s): Aleksandar Korolija / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2021

This work considers Gramsci’s understanding of civil and political society. Following Perry Anderson’s critique, an attempt was made to find a distinction between civil and political society which wouldn’t have a form of antinomy that Anderson attributes to it. In this representation, the reader can find arguments for and against Anderson’s claims. This is not the last word on this subject, we rather hope it is a further illumination of the problem and its reactualisation. The concept of hegemony that Gramsci built at the level of civil society and that implies consent also has a place within this consideration, while political society provides domination. In that division of levels, a specific problem is the place of the state which fluctuates between civil and political society. With the concept of ethical state, Gramsci signifies the transition of state from political society and domination to civil society and consent. This problematic is engaged in a totalized manner with the presentation of Gramsci’s insights into the relation of base and superstructure, hegemony, political and civil society, relations of force and state. These concepts can offer a closer insight into Gramsci’s understanding of ideological hegemony only when they are considered in their unity.

RAZVOJ I DOPRINOSI NJEMAČKE ISTORIJSKE ŠKOLE EKONOMIJE

Author(s): Marko Đogo,Milica V. Lopatić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 25/2023

THE ARTICLE IS RETRACTED DUE TO THE INSTANCES OF INADEQUATE REFERENCING THAT WERE ONLY NOTICED AFTER PUBLICATION. Die deutsche historische Schule der Wirtschaftswissenschaft war sehr lange eine umstrittene Schule, die nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg für viele Gräueltaten verantwortlich gemacht wurde. Allerdings galt sie als Abweichler in der Entwicklung des ökonomischen Denkens und ihre Gegner glaubten, dass diese Schule überhaupt keinen Beitrag leistete, weshalb auch ihre Vertreter beiseite gedrängt wurden. Mit dieser Arbeit haben wir gezeigt, dass diese Schule immer noch produktiv war. Allein die Tatsache, dass die Amerikaner diese Schule unterstützen und ihre Ideen durch die institutionalistische Schule weiterentwickelten, reicht dazu aus. Diese institutionalistische Schule galt als deren Nachfolger, in der sich ihre Ansichten widerspiegelten. Im 19. Jahrhundert kamen die Amerikaner gerne nach Deutschland (zwischen 1820 und 1920 kamen ca. zehntausend Personen), um eine höhere Bildung und neues Wissen zu erlangen. Aus historischer Perspektive haben wir mithilfe der induktiven Forschungsmethode gezeigt, dass die Deutschen sowie die deutsche historische Schule der Wirtschaftswissenschaft einen großen Beitrag zum Studium der modernen Wirtschaftswissenschaften geleistet haben. Die Arbeit selbst ist, in Übereinstimmung mit der Entwicklung der deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen, im Bereich der Wirtschaftswissenschaften in mehrere Phasen gegliedert. In der ersten Phase dieser Beziehungen hatten die Amerikaner einen großen Einfluss auf die Deutschen im Wirtschaftsbereich. Zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts begann die wissenschaftsphilosophische Richtung des Historizismus, in dem die deutsche historische Schule der Wirtschaftswissenschaft geboren wurde und die sich in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts als Reaktion auf das klassische Denken entwickelt. Den Grundstein für diese Schule legte Friedrich List, der auch für die ersten deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen verantwortlich war. In der zweiten Phase (von Mitte des Jahres 1840 bis Anfang 1860) wurde die Richtung des Historizismus sehr populär. Es folgten die Vertiefung seiner Ideen, aber auch intensivere Begegnungen mit den Amerikanern, die sich in Deutschland praktisches Wissen aus dem Bereich der Wirtschaftswissenschaften aneigneten, um die Industriali- sierung ihres Landes erfolgreich voranzutreiben. Die Verbreitung der Ideen der deutschen historischen Schule in den USA führte zur Gründung der neuen Schule, aber auch zur Verbindung des amerikanischen und deutschen Wirtschaftsdenkens. In der dritten Phase, nach dem Eintritt der USA in den Ersten Weltkrieg, wurden die Beziehungen zwischen der USA und Deutschland schlechter, was dazu führte, dass keine amerikanischen Studenten mehr zum Studium nach Deutschland kammen. Nachdem Deutschland aus dem Krieg als Hauptverursacher aller Unglücke hervorgegangen war, kam es zu einer Wirtschaftskrise. All dies hatte zur Folge, dass der Einfluss der deutschen historischen Schule der Wirtschaftswissenschaft geschwächt wurde. Auf der anderen Seite wird der Einfluss des Institutionalismus immer größer. In der vierten Nachkriegshase (nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg) verschwand die deutsche historische Schule vollständig. Einer der Gründe für das Verschwinden dieser Schule ist ihre Verbindung zum Nationalsozialismus. Allerdings sollte diese Haltung nicht verallgemeinert werden, da nicht alle Mitglieder der Schule Anhänger des Nationalsozialismus waren. Die Wahrheit ist, dass die deutsche historische Schule der Wirtschaftswissenschaft das Schicksal der gesamten deutschen Nation teilte.

Volume și broșuri de propagandă antireligioasă apărute în România (1950-1990). Bibliografie adnotată

Author(s): Dragoș Popescu / Language(s): Romanian,Moldavian Issue: 2/2022

Volumes and Brochures of Antireligious Propaganda Published in Romania (1950-1990). Annotated Bibliography (I)

POSTMARKSISTIČKO STANJE: KNJIŽEVNOST, POLITIKA I TEORIJA

Author(s): Vedran Jerbić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 20/2023

Review of: Postmarksističko stanje: književnost, politika i teorija, Zvonimir Glavaš, Durieux, Zagreb, 2023., 287 str.

Revolucija volje za život u kapitalizmu

Author(s): Vesna R. Stanković Pejnović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 38/2022

The paper proves that Nietzsche's will to live as the will to power, Marx's free work as an expression of life, and Deleuze's concept of desire as the will to power is the basis for the revolution of the will to live in capitalism Nietzsche advocates an educational and cultural revolution as a way out of the alienated world in which people are used as objects. By revolution, Marx does not mean only a political or economic change, or even a worldview change, but primarily a "radical change in man and society" in terms of opinion. The revolution is aimed at the abolition of all exploitation, but also the full realization, the highest form, and essence of practice as a free creative activity. Marx stands for a permanent revolution of the whole as a circular process of the absolute idea, the process of self-production mediated through all the special ways of producing objects, and the world as a whole is realized. Deleuze, in collaboration with Guattari, combines the opinions of Nietzsche and Marx and strives to develop a policy appropriate to the complexity of life, pointing out that capitalism is repressive in its uncontrolled imposition and accumulation of desires with the danger of equating man and machine. They advocate experimentation-life, the creation of a "new country" as a project that cannot be reduced to a political solution as the production of the real, the creation of life, through active, positive lines of escape because they open up desire. Desire, which according to Nietzsche is the will to power, is in itself a revolutionary process. The process of desire is joy, and its process takes place through deterritorialization as a line of escape as action because there is nothing more active than escape as "the encounter between two realms."

What is Engagement?

Author(s): Étienne Balibar / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2024

This text explores the nuances of choice and consequence through the philosophical lenses of Pascal and Sartre. It contrasts Pascal’s transcendental faith-based approach with Sartre’s terrestrial decision-making, emphasizing the inherent paradox of engagement beginning before choice. It argues that authentic choice demands embracing the unknown and its extreme consequences, rejecting the spectator’s role for active participation. The text also examines the intellectual’s duality, caught between bourgeois origins and subaltern solidarity, and the antinomy of integrating science and revolution. It concludes with reflections on the intellectual’s role in revolutionary movements, highlighting the necessity of continuous critical engagement and the interplay of truth and error.

The Not-So-Mean Streets of Hangzhou, China: Reflecting with Nietzsche, Freud and Marx

Author(s): Thomas Steinbuch / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

A Commentary on Shaw, D. B. (2017). Posthuman Urbanism: Mapping Bodies in Contemporary City Space. Rowman & Littlefield.

Est-ce que la philosophie critique peut-elle encore sauver la pédagogie critique?

Author(s): Claudiu Gaiu / Language(s): French Issue: 1&2/2024

This article takes note of the crisis in critical pedagogy. The success of so-called alternative pedagogies has led to the assimilation of Paulo Freire’s revolutionary theories to didactic methodologies, forgetting that the core of these conceptions requires a rewriting of the principles of the organisation of society through the learning of adults and children. The assimilation of education to the political act was the work of the Enlightenment thinkers. Given the current collapse of radical educational projects, we return to the intersection between politics and pedagogy in the writings of Immanuel Kant.