In the Marxian Workshops

In the Marxian Workshops
Author: Sandro Mezzadra
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2018-09-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786603608

Theorists have often returned to the work of Marx, to interpret and better understand global developments and current political and economic crisis. In the Marxian Workshops: Producing Subjects combines an attempt to develop a specific reading of Marx with a set of interventions on high stakes topics in contemporary critical debates. Sandro Mezzadra offers a close reading of Marx on the ‘production of subjectivity’ as a crucial test for assessment of some of the most important Marxian concepts and of their potential for grasping the present, from the point of view of radical transformation.

Approaches to Class Analysis

Approaches to Class Analysis
Author: Erik Olin Wright
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2005-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781139444460

Few themes have been as central to sociology as 'class' and yet class remains a perpetually contested idea. Sociologists disagree not only on how best to define the concept of class but on its general role in social theory and indeed on its continued relevance to the sociological analysis of contemporary society. Some people believe that classes have largely dissolved in contemporary societies; others believe class remains one of the fundamental forms of social inequality and social power. Some see class as a narrow economic phenomenon whilst others adopt an expansive conception that includes cultural dimensions as well as economic conditions. This 2005 book explores the theoretical foundations of six major perspectives of class with each chapter written by an expert in the field. It concludes with a conceptual map of these alternative approaches by posing the question: 'If class is the answer, what is the question?'

The Dangerous Class

The Dangerous Class
Author: Clyde Barrow
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2020-10-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472128086

Marx and Engels’ concept of the “lumpenproletariat,” or underclass (an anglicized, politically neutral term), appears in The Communist Manifesto and other writings. It refers to “the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society,” whose lowly status made its residents potential tools of the capitalists against the working class. Surprisingly, no one has made a substantial study of the lumpenproletariat in Marxist thought until now. Clyde Barrow argues that recent discussions about the downward spiral of the American white working class (“its main problem is that it is not working”) have reactivated the concept of the lumpenproletariat, despite long held belief that it is a term so ill-defined as not to be theoretical. Using techniques from etymology, lexicology, and translation, Barrow brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent component of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the historical origins of capitalism. However, a proletariat that is destined to decay into an underclass may pose insurmountable obstacles to a theory of revolutionary agency in post-industrial capitalism. Barrow thus updates historical discussions of the lumpenproletariat in the context of contemporary American politics and suggests that all post-industrial capitalist societies now confront the choice between communism and dystopia.

Law/Society

Law/Society
Author: John Sutton
Publisher: Pine Forge Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2001
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780761987055

A core text for the Law and Society or Sociology of Law course offered in Sociology, Criminal Justice, Political Science, and Schools of Law. * John Sutton offers an explicitly analytical perspective to the subject - how does law change? What makes law more or less effective in solving social problems? What do lawyers do? * Chapter 1 contrasts normative and sociological perspectives on law, and presents a brief primer on the logic of research and inference as it is applied to law related issues. * Theories of legal change are discussed within a common conceptual framework that highlights the explantory strengths and weaknesses of different arguments. * Discussions of "law in action" are explicitly comparative, applying a consistent model to explain the variable outcomes of civil rights legislation. * Many concrete, in-depth examples throughout the chapters.

The Social Thought of Karl Marx

The Social Thought of Karl Marx
Author: Justin P. Holt
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-06-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1483316076

Part of the SAGE Social Thinkers series, this brief and clearly-written book provides a concise introduction to the work, life, and influences of Karl Marx, one of the most revered, reviled, and misunderstood figures in modern history. The book serves as an excellent introduction to the full range of Marx’s major themes—alienation, economics, social class, capitalism, communism, materialism, environmental sustainability—and considers the extent to which they are relevant today. It is ideal for use as a self-contained volume or in conjunction with other sociological theory textbooks.

Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx

Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx
Author: Thierry de Duve
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2012-10-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0226922391

Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Yves Klein, and Marcel Duchamp form an unlikely quartet, but they each played a singular role in shaping a new avant-garde for the 1960s and beyond. Each of them staged brash, even shocking, events and produced works that challenged the way the mainstream art world operated and thought about itself. Distinguished philosopher Thierry de Duve binds these artists through another connection: the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy. Karl Marx provides the red thread tying together these four beautifully written essays in which de Duve treats each artist as a distinct, characteristic figure in that mapping. He sees in Beuys, who imagined a new economic system where creativity, not money, was the true capital, the incarnation of the last of the proletarians; he carries forward Warhol’s desire to be a machine of mass production and draws the consequences for aesthetic theory; he calls Klein, who staked a claim on pictorial space as if it were a commodity, “The dead dealer”; and he reads Duchamp as the witty financier who holds the secret of artistic exchange value. Throughout, de Duve expresses his view that the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy is a phenomenon that should be seen as central to modernity in art. Even more, de Duve shows that Marx—though perhaps no longer the “Marxist” Marx of yore—can still help us resist the current disenchantment with modernity’s many unmet promises. An intriguing look at these four influential artists, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx is an absorbing investigation into the many intertwined relationships between the economic and artistic realms.

Classes, Strata and Power (RLE Social Theory)

Classes, Strata and Power (RLE Social Theory)
Author: Wlodzimierz Wesolowski
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2014-08-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317652045

Professor Wesolowski presents a detailed study of Marx's theory of class structure and compares it with non-Marxist theories of social stratification, in particular the functionalist theory of stratification and the theory of power elite. He is also concerned to develop and extend the Marxist approach to the study of class structure and social stratification in a socialist society. The book begins with a thorough and original reconstruction of Marx's theory of class domination in a capitalist society, and goes on to show that contemporary non-Marxist theories of power elites complement rather than contradict Marx's concept of class domination. The author examines in detail the functionalist theory of stratification, but rejects it, preferring the Marxist approach. Finally, though, he demonstrates the complementary nature of the two approaches to the study of class structure by expounding a comprehensive paradigm for empirical research based on Marxist theory but including some elements of contemporary stratification theories as well.

Understanding Marx: Class Struggle

Understanding Marx: Class Struggle
Author: Hercules Bantas
Publisher: Reluctant Geek
Total Pages: 4
Release:
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Many of Karl Marx's social and economic theories have the concept of class struggle at their core. This essay length guide examines Marx's concept of class struggle in some detail, and explains its role in the revolutionary process. Topics covered include a definition of class, the dialectic development of society, and the formation of the capitalist state from the remnants of feudalism, and the creation of a classless society.

French Socialists Before Marx

French Socialists Before Marx
Author: Pamela M. Pilbeam
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780773521995

How to put socialism into practice was as fundamental a concern for nineteenth-century socialists as it has been for their successors. In French Socialists before Marx Pamela Pilbeam explores the development of and changes in socialist ideas, revealing how the Fourierists of the 1830s and 1840s changed Fourier's ideas on the family and sexuality, preferring public works programs to model communities. She focuses on the practical contributions of early socialists, including the efforts of working women to run schools, worker associations, and newspapers.

Knowledge, Class, and Economics

Knowledge, Class, and Economics
Author: Theodore A. Burczak
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2017-10-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351798081

Knowledge, Class, and Economics: Marxism without Guarantees surveys the "Amherst School" of non-determinist Marxist political economy, 40 years on: its core concepts, intellectual origins, diverse pathways, and enduring tensions. The volume’s 30 original essays reflect the range of perspectives and projects that comprise the Amherst School—the interdisciplinary community of scholars that has enriched and extended, while never ceasing to interrogate and recast, the anti-economistic Marxism first formulated in the mid-1970s by Stephen Resnick, Richard Wolff, and their economics Ph.D. students at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The title captures the defining ideas of the Amherst School: an open-system framework that presupposes the complexity and contingency of social-historical events and the parallel "overdetermination" of the relationship between subjects and objects of inquiry, along with a novel conception of class as a process of performing, appropriating, and distributing surplus labor. In a collection of 30 original essays, chapters confront readers with the core concepts of overdetermination and class in the context of economic theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, continental philosophy, economic geography, economic anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary theory/studies. Though Resnick and Wolff’s writings serve as a focal point for this collection, their works are ultimately decentered—contested, historicized, reformulated. The topics explored will be of interest to proponents and critics of the post-structuralist/postmodern turn in Marxian theory and to students of economics as social theory across the disciplines (economics, geography, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, political theory, philosophy, and literary studies, among others).