Posts tagged: marxism

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  "Is there an option to go beyond racism?": Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein on Race, Nation, Class

  On the 31st August, renowned sociologist and the inaugurator of world-systems analysis Immanuel Wallerstein died aged 88. Alongside his monumental four-volume series on The Modern World-System, one of his most influential works was Race, Nation, Class, written in dialogue with Etienne Balibar. In this interview, conducted by Manuela Bojadžijev, Balibar and Wallerstein discuss how the volume came about, and its continuing relevance thirty years later.

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  A Revolutionary from the OECD - the Castoriadis/Poulantzas debate

  In 1977, an intense debate raged in the Greek press between Nicos Poulantzas and Cornelius Castoriadis, sparked by remarks made by Poulantzas in an article that questioned Castoriadis political commitment to ending the dictatorship in Greece, and his position as a high-level economist for the OECD. Here, published in English for the first time, is the record of the debate – published with an introduction by Dimitris Psarras and Dimitris Karidas.

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  “But didn’t he kill his wife?”

  If there is one thing that everyone knows about Louis Althusser, it is that he killed his wife - the sociologist and résistante Hélène Rytmann-Légotien. In this article, William S. Lewis asks how should this fact effect the reception of Althusser's work, and how should those who find Althusser's reconceptualisation of Marx and Marxism usefully respond? 

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  Socialist Strategy and the Capitalist Democratic State

  How we understand the capitalist state effects how we think about power and what a socialist transition would mean. In this article, Stephen Maher and Rafael Khachaturian argue that the left in the US needs to move beyond both the Leninist and the social democratic conceptions of the state in order to develop a democratic socialist politics for the 21st century.

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  Seven Theses on the Capitalist Democratic State

  What is the capitalist democratic state and how should it be confronted? The left has typically seen the state either as an instrument of class rule that needs to be "smashed" or, as with social democracy, as a neutral medium which can be wielded by functionaries with the correct ideas. In this, a series of seven theses on the nature and function of the capitalist state, Michael A. McCarthy argues that both are wrong and that we need a reinvigoration of the late work of Nicos Poulantzas for a full, democratic understanding of the state.

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  David Harvey on Karl Marx

  In the introduction to The Limits to Capital, David Harvey explains his rationale and genesis of this major rereading of Marx's seminal text.

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  David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Capital

  In this excerpt from A Companion to Marx's Capital: The Complete Edition, David Harvey discusses Marx's method and urges readers to "hang on like crazy" through the first three, arduous, chapters of Capital, Volume I.

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  Zombie Manifesto

  This critique of identity is absolutely and emphatically not a proposal that race should be put second or waved away. It is an insistence on recognizing the material reality of race as a social relation, and forming a more adequate theoretical understanding of it that can be useful for struggles against racism.

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  Marxism’s Living Soul?: A Reply to Paul Saba

  The main reason to look back at the history of the New Communist Movement is to glean any lessons that can be useful for rebuilding a revolutionary left under today’s dramatically changed conditions.

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  Third World Marxism and African Socialism

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  Beyond Eurocentrism: on José Carlos Mariátegui

  Aníbal Quijano, the renowned Peruvian scholar and one of the founders of Decolonial Studies, died last month at the age of 87. In this text, an introduction to José Carlos Mariátegui’s essential writings on socialist politics and culture, published in 1991 by Fondo de Cultura, Quijano underscores the powerful influence that Mariátegui held over the theoretical development of Latin American critical thought

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  Prisons and Class Warfare: An Interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore

  Ruth Wilson Gilmore discusses the function of prisons under racial capitalism, abolitionist organizing, mass incarceration and class struggle, and what has changed since the publication of Golden Gulag.