Introduction to Marx: Key Concepts

Nash/Blackwell, 2004

Marxists have analysed power relations in many ways. But four interrelated themes typify their overall approach. The first of these is a concern with power relations as manifestations of a specific mode or configuration of class domination rather than as a purely interpersonal phenomenon lacking deeper foundations in the social structure.

Political Studies, 1982

The bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian one. ' I N an article in the December 198 1 issue of this journal Michael Levin seeks to demonstrate that the strategy for Germany presented in Part IV of the Manifesto is incompatible with the general theory presented in Part I of that work.* Whereas the one allows for the introduction of Communism in a backward country, the other restricts its introduction to advanced countries. This claimed incompatibility is rightly said to raise 'crucial questions concerning not just the coherence of the Communist Manifesto itself but also of Marxist theory as a ~h o l e ' .~ These questions have been examined in two recent books on Marx's politics, both of which deny for entirely different reasons the claimed tension between the general theory and the particular strategy. Richard Hunt adopts an 'economic determinist' interpretation of the general theory similar to Levin's: on this interpretation, the strategy presented in the Munijesto is a problem because it calls for a 'premature' revolution in backward Germany. Although Levin accepts this inconsistency, Hunt denies it. According to .Hunt, there is a marked contrast between the strategy presented in the Munijesto and Marx's actual strategy. Just as the former contradicts the 'economic determinist' nature of the general theory, so the latter confirms it. In the actual strategy there would be no 'premature' revolution in Germany. Indeed, the revolution would be delayed until capitalism was mature. Alan Gilbert, in contrast, finds such 'arcane' arguments superfluous as a means to reconciling the general theory and the particular strategy. The one is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the other at face value. In the general theory, 'politics' is not reduced to some merely secondary role, and the constraints of 'economic' conditions are drawn very loosely. It is argued by Gilbert, moreover, that particular strategies are not simply deduced from the general theory, but are the product of a conjunction between that theory and the appropriate set of 'auxiliary statements'. These are elicited from the study of the specific setting, using the insights of the general theory to capture particular and salient features. This conjunction between the general theory and auxiliary statements

Marxist approaches to power are distinctive in focusing on its relation to class domination in capitalist societies. Power is linked to class relations in economics, politics, and ideology. The aim of much recent Marxist analysis has been to show how class power is dispersed throughout society, in order to avoid economic reductionism. In capitalist societies the state is considered to be particularly important in securing the conditions for economic class domination. Marxists are also interested in why dominated classes collude in their oppression and address issues of resistance and strategies to bring about radical change. In this chapter, as well as a summary of the main trends in contemporary Marxism, Jessop also offers a brief assessment of its disadvantages as a sociological analysis of power: its neglect of social domination that is not directly related to class; a tendency to over-emphasize the coherence of class domination; the continuing problem of economic reductionism; and the opposite danger of a voluntaristic account of resistance to capitalism.

This paper does two things. First, against post-Marxism and postmodernism, it recognizes the crisis of Marxist theory posed by the crises of capitalism and socialism but argues both that Marxist theory remains essential in the struggle against domination and for liberation and that at least one tradition of Marxism has developed in such a manner as to be useful for these purposes. Not only does the theory of that tradition grasp the globality of the problem and provide the means to understand the separations and connections that account for our weaknesses and our strengths, it also provides a framework within which we can recognize and analyze the emergence and autonomy of new social subjects supposedly beyond the purview of Marxist theory. Second, the paper discusses the limits to the ability of Marxist theory to conceptualize and provide positive theories appropriate to those emerging social subjects and therefore the need to develop revolutionary theory by taking account of the autonomous development of ideas within the struggles of emerging social subjects. As an example of the kind of assessment we need to do, the second part of the paper examines, with a view to discovering common ground as well as identifying differences, one feminist attempt to construct a theoretical alternative to the Marxist theory of labor.

Socialist Register, 1979

In Marx’s Laboratory. Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse, 2013

Political Philosophy and Public Purpose, 2019

This series offers books that seek to explore new perspectives in social and political criticism. Seeing contemporary academic political theory and philosophy as largely dominated by hyper-academic and overly-technical debates, the books in this series seek to connect the politically engaged traditions of philosophical thought with contemporary social and political life. The idea of philosophy emphasized here is not as an aloof enterprise, but rather a publicly-oriented activity that emphasizes rational reflection as well as informed praxis.