Phantoms and Spectres: Capital and Labour at the Millennium

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Merrifield
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Social Movement Unionism ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Fictitious Capital ◽  
Political Economic

As the financial system tailspins and ‘Asian Flu’ reverberates everywhere and as 950 million people in South-East Asia struggle to get by on less than one dollar a day, Marx's ideas continue to nourish radical critique and action. If anything, his vision is more economically meaningful and more politically viable today than ever before. In this paper I try to bring Marx's insights on the “laws of motion” of modern capitalism to bear on prevailing global political-economic disorder. I discuss, more specifically, his theory of crisis and the dialectics of accumulation and circulation of “real” and “fictitious” capital as sketched out in the Grundrisse and Capital (volumes 1 and 3). I end with an exploration of the famous political prognosis from The Communist Manifesto of mass collective class struggle and the development of a “world literature”, and set all this within the context of a newly emerging workers' internationalism and social-movement unionism.

Living Labour and Social Movements: A Dialogue with Antonio Negri

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Chironi ◽  
Federico Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Antonio Negri ◽  
Financial Capitalism

In this interview, Antonio Negri first focuses on the possibility of defining the concept of ‘social movement’. By mobilizing a spectrum of references that goes from Carl Schmitt to the Weberian sociology of religion, he insists on the necessity, not to sociologically crystallize the concept, but, instead, to think about it in a historical manner. Social movements would then be attempts at activating ‘liberation processes’, which nowadays can only be thought of within the conditions of financial capitalism. Negri then proceeds to examine the relation between the concept of social movement and those of class and class struggle: he suggests a dynamic and relational interpretation of the Marxian concept of ‘living labour’ as a bridge between a class analysis of society and the study of social movements, movements which in the contemporary landscape are ready to take an ‘entrepreneurial’ connotation. The political and intellectual experience of Italian Workerism in the 1960s is then recalled as a fertile example of the application of this method of social analysis, but also as an exemplification of the principle of ‘unrepeatability’ of social movements. The author finally claims to be a ‘theorist of immaterial labour’ in order to then develop a radical critique of the idea of so-called ‘post-materialist’ movements and of the effects that such a notion has had on the sociology of social movements.

scholarly journals POLITICAL ECONOMICS MEDIA: AT THE BANTEN SELECTION OF 2011 BY RADAR BANTEN AND BARAYA TV

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nashrudin Priatna
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Head Region ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Media Institutions ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Economic

The mass media, whether print or broadcast (TV and Radio) plays a significant role in disseminating important messages to the public / society. Karl Marx said "that the media referred to as the class that set, in the system of modern capitalism. So therefore the media in the present era, into a commodity economy and politics, because of its function and because ownership massive by individuals (owners of capital). That allows, position the media and not only to function as a disseminator of information, but because of the ownership of such individuals, are very likely to be a tool for "political dealings", rather than as a function of social control. in the practice of political communication, media becomes a medium that is not inevitable in conveying messages politics, especially during the campaign, the elections political leadership, good legislative elections, presidential elections, and the elections. Radar Banten and Baraya TV is a media agency which is recognized as a great and influential in Banten province, which is a member of the Jawa Pos ( Java Post News Network) beperan menyerbarluaskan major messages of the prospective head region in the activities of the campaign. The phenomenon of political economic practices, be a gamble for the function and positioning to the two media institutions. Is capable of functioning media (read: news) or more tend to promote the business side, perhaps, their political position. Keywords: media, political communication, the Regional Head Election (Election) Banten, The political economy of the media

Marxist geography: A personal journey

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110494
Author(s):  
Waquar Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru

I am fascinated by Marx’s openness to learning and engagement with diverse intellectual traditions—political economic, German and Greek philosophy, utopian socialist tradition, and English literature to name a few. Marxism for me, hence, is engagement and conversations with eclectic ideas, with fidelity to the communist manifesto, and in turn, its commitment to equality and justice. In this paper, while highlighting my own journey as a student of Marx’s scholarship, I examine the key role hegemony plays in our society. Formal education, I argue, is hegemonic to the extent that it is geared at producing docile individuals, particularly from oppressed sections of the society, that internalize theories and concepts favorable to elites: it should not surprise us when the oppressed act or vote against their own interest. Yet some centers of learning are also epicenters of counter-hegemonic praxis—one such place is Jawaharlal Nehru University where I unlearn and re-learned my Marxism and began my journey as a Marxist geographer. Additionally, I examine the role of “vulgar Marxism” (unwillingness to engage with contemporary geographically specific challenges) that is often passed off as Marxist orthodoxy and argue that this has been a real threat to the spirit of the Communist Manifesto. I examine the decline of the Communist Party in Bengal in India to highlight how vulgar Marxism can subvert social justice and make the “Communist Party” unpopular.

J.M. Keynes as Sociologist

2019 ◽  
pp. 6-30
Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Sociology ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Social Tensions ◽  
Conflicting Interests ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter is concerned with J.M. Keynes’s analysis of the rentier, the ‘functionless investor’ in Britain (and Europe) in the interwar years. Even though Keynes had no coherent idea of who the rentier was, he was central to Keynes’s economics and to his political sociology. The rentier was also essential to Keynes’s political-economic account of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Hence, Keynes was forced to a view that while the rentier remained unchained society would be based upon conflicting interests and social tensions. Such a view undermined Keynes’s original allegiances to the kind of Liberalism associated with the former Liberal prime minister, H.H. Asquith, and the argument Keynes sometimes presented, that economic policy was determined by an intellectual muddle, not warring interests. Asquithian Liberalism, however, depended on notions of political agreement and social harmony and that was, in practice, not something Keynes ever believed characterized modern capitalism.

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