Open Marxism Vol. 1: Dialectics and History

This volume contains the following articles:

Introduction - Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn, Kosmas Psychopedis
Dialectical Theory: Problems of Reconstruction - Kosmas Psychopedis
Between Philosophy and Science: Marxian Social Economy as Critical Theory - Hans-Georg Backhaus
Social Constitution and the Form of the Capitalist State - Werner Bonefeld
The Global Accumulation of Capital and the Periodisation of the Capitalist State Form - Simon Clarke
The Bourgeois.State Form Revisited - Heide Gerstenberger

Adam Szetela - Remembering Erik Olin Wright

Erik Olin Wright, a University of Wisconsin–Madison sociologist and former president of the American Sociological Association, died from acute myeloid leukemia on January 23, 2019. He was 72.

Wright’s body of work is voluminous. He began in 1973 with a study of prisons in the United States. From there, he edited and wrote almost two dozen books on class and capitalism. From the “Utopia and Revolution” seminar he initiated and led as a graduate student at the University of California–Berkeley to the book he finished in the intensive care unit of Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, Wright developed one of the most sustained understandings of class and capitalism since Karl Marx. Like his forebear, Wright believed in the moral impetus to struggle against capitalism and to envision alternatives.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/remembering-erik-olin-wright

Стефан Саюк - «Широкое обсуждение» и увесистые дубинки

Вот уже два месяца люди в жёлтых жилетах каждую субботу наводняют центральные улицы городов, выходят на перекрёстки и к платёжным терминалам. И вот уже два месяца в высказываниях членов правительства и в публикациях в СМИ звучит критика в адрес этого протестного движения, направленная на то, чтобы дискредитировать его в глазах народа. За это время самые выразительные эпитеты, которыми награждали «жёлтых жилетов», приобрели оскорбительный характер и теперь их называют «реакционерами», «путчистами», «бунтовщиками», «озлобленной толпой», «гомофобами», «антисемитами»...

А они продолжают начатое и по-прежнему пользуются большой народной поддержкой. Да, доля их сторонников уже не дотягивает до 70 % населения, как это было в первые недели протестных выступлений, но, вопреки сильнейшему идеологическому давлению, уровень поддержки «жёлтых жилетов» по-прежнему очень высок. И некоторое укрепление позиций исполнительной власти объясняется скорее поддержкой со стороны определённой части правого электората, превыше всего ценящей порядок (+ 13 % сторонников у республиканцев), чем спадом движения или успешной социальной политикой.

http://humanite-russie.ru/politic/1190-shirokoye-obsuzhdeniye.html

Rene Raphael, Ling Xi - Discipline and Punish: The Birth of China’s Social-Credit System

In Hangzhou and throughout Shandong province, gold stars and black marks have begun to shape public and private behavior.

https://www.thenation.com/article/china-social-credit-system/

Erik Olin Wright - Compass Points: Towards a Socialist Alternative

Erik Olin Wright, the great Marxist sociologist and pioneering scholar of class in capitalism, died from acute myeloid leukemia on January 23, 2019. He was 72. In this article, originally published in the New Left Review, Wright gives a lucid and elegant introduction to his "Real Utopian" view of the socialist project.

Throughout most of the twentieth century, socialism constituted the central ideological matrix for thinking about alternatives to capitalism and giving direction to anti-capitalist struggles, even where the establishment of a socialist order was not an immediate political goal. If the particular institutional arrangements historically associated with socialism are now seen as incapable of delivering on their promises, many of the traditional socialist criticisms of capitalism seem more appropriate than ever: inequality, economic polarization and job insecurity are worsening; giant corporations dominate the media and cultural production; politics is increasingly run by big money and unresponsive to those without it. The need for a vibrant alternative to capitalism is as great as ever.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4218-erik-olin-wright-compass-points-towards-a-socialist-alternative

Solidarity and Support for Zapatista Resistance and Autonomy

The Mexican government is planning a series of mega-projects that threaten the autonomy of Zapatista communities and ways of life of indigenous peoples.

We, intellectuals, academics, artists, activists and others in solidarity, as well as organizations, associations and collectives from across the world, express our solidarity with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in this critical moment in its history, and condemn the ongoing campaign of disinformation, lies, and slander directed against the Zapatistas.

For us, and for many others around the world, the Zapatista struggle is a key referent for resistance, dignity, integrity and political creativity. 25 years ago, the cry of Ya Basta! was a historically transcendent event and one of the first categorical rejections of neoliberal globalization at a planetary scale, because it opened the way toward the critique and refusal of a model that at that time seemed unquestionable. It was, and continues to be, an expression of the legitimate struggle of indigenous peoples against the domination and contempt they have suffered for centuries and for their rights to autonomy.

https://roarmag.org/2019/01/24/solidarity-support-zapatista-resistance-autonomy/

Open Marxism Vol. 2: Theory and practice

Introduction - Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn, Kosmas Psychopedis
Against Historical Materialism: Marxism as First-Order Discourse - Richard Gunn
Historical Materialist Science, Crisis and Commitment - Joseph Fracchia and Cheyney Ryan
Interpretation of the Class Situation Today: Methodological Aspects - Antonio Negri
The Inversion of Class Perspective in Marxian Theory: From Valorisation to Self-Valorisation - Harry Cleaver
Crisis, Fetishism, Class Composition - John Holloway

David Calnitsky - A Model for Us All

The eminent Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright was serious about understanding and changing the world and was generous, curious, and kind while doing it.

Erik liked to quote Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach (“Hitherto philosophers have sought to understand the world, the point however, is to change it”), but he interpreted it somewhat atypically.
Yes, the point is to change it, and indeed, Erik believed deeply that changing it for the better requires understanding it. But he also emphasized the tension inside the famous dictum: the desire to change the world can infect our understanding of it. For Marxists and fellow travelers, the power of wishful thinking is more seductive than it is for others without such normative commitments.

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/01/erik-olin-wright-obituary-marxism-sociology

Open Marxism Vol. 3: Emancipating Marx

Introduction: Emancipating Marx - Werner Bonefeld, Richard Gunn, John Holloway, Kosmas Psychopedis
Capitalism and Reproduction - Mariarosa Dalla Costa
Emancipating Explanation - Kosmas Psychopedis
Why did Marx Conceal his Dialectical Method? - Helmut Reichelt
Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Marx's Critique: A Reassessment - Robert Fine
The Dialectics of Rights: Transitions and Emancipatory Claims in Marxian Tradition - Manolis Angelidis
The Complicity of Posthistory - Adrian Wilding
From Scream of Refusal to Scream of Power: The Centrality of Work - John Holloway
Capital as Subject and the Existence of labour - Werner Bonefeld

Shoshana Zuboff - Surveillance Capitalism and the Challenge of Collective Action

In our time, surveillance capitalism repeats capitalism’s “original sin” of primitive accumulation. It revives Karl Marx’s old image of capitalism as a vampire that feeds on labor, but with an unexpected turn. Instead of claiming work (or land, or wealth) for the market dynamic as industrial capitalism once did, surveillance capitalism audaciously lays claim to private experience for translation into fungible commodities that are rapidly swept up into the exhilarating life of the market. Invented at Google and elaborated at Facebook in the online milieu of targeted advertising, surveillance capitalism embodies a new logic of accumulation. Like an invasive species with no natural predators, its financial prowess quickly overwhelmed the networked sphere, grossly disfiguring the earlier dream of digital technology as an empowering and emancipatory force. Surveillance capitalism can no longer be identified with individual companies or even with the behemoth information sector. This mutation quickly spread from Silicon Valley to every economic sector, as its success birthed a burgeoning surveillance-based economic order that now extends across a vast and varied range of products and services.

https://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2019/01/22/surveillance-capitalism/

Steven Klein - Socialism and Freedom: Karl Polanyi’s Early Writings

Socialism is back — a phoenix rising from the ashes, or a vampire emerging from the crypt, depending on who you ask. So real is the threat that the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors recently devoted their considerable resources to writing a report, “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism,” warning of the dangers of a socialist system, one in which the state spends other people’s money. Adding to the sense of déjà vu, much of the report concerns itself, not with the policy proposals of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, but with the disastrous collectivization of agriculture under Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/socialism-and-freedom-karl-polanyis-early-writings/#

Wolfgang Abendroth - Short History of the European Working Class

A flat, lumbering Marxist summary of the vicissitudes of working-class parties and trade unions in Europe from the abortive 1848 workers' rebellion to the post-World War II ossification of Social Democracy. Abendroth, Professor of Politics at the University of Marburg in West Germany, outlines the major schisms within the First and Second Internationals and charts the post-World War I gains of the SPD, the British Labour Party and the loosely knit French socialists. The ideological errors of the Proudhonists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, Bakuninites and others who departed from orthodoxy are duly noted, and the SPD is scored for permitting organizational strength to cover up political cowardice. For this period Jugen Kuczynski's The Rise of the Working Class (1967) is a far better guide to the growth of laboring-class consciousness than Abendroth's arid survey. For the inter-war years, Abendroth blames Stalinist ""distortions,"" capitalist cunning and the rift between Communists and Social Democrats for the triumphs of Fascism and attributes the sepulchral pace of Social Democratic advances after World War II to the lingering ""widespread belief in the stability of the capitalist order in the West."" In gauging working-class consciousness and experience Abendroth who rarely looks beyond electoral figures sees a frail hope that pressure from students and trade unions may yet regenerate moribund parliamentary parties which at present don't ""reflect the new spirit at the base."" A drab, cliched account of political and economic victories and losses narrowly computed.

George Ciccariello-Maher - Venezuela: Call It What It Is a Coup

The power grab of the right’s Juan Guaidó is brazenly unconstitutional.

https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-coup-guaido-maduro/

Сиприан Боганда - Нет, во Франции нет никакой реиндустриализации!

«Самый сложный этап кризиса позади, нас ждёт экономический подъём», – в один голос твердят эксперты и чиновники из правительства. На самом же деле производства продолжают разоряться, хотя в последнее время темпы банкротства несколько снизились (по сравнению с начальным периодом кризиса). К концу 2018 года в стране насчитывалось 53 496 предприятий, чьё положение было близко к критическому, что на 2,7 % меньше, чем в аналогичный период 2017 года. Самые скандальные прошлогодние истории такого рода по-прежнему находятся в центре внимания СМИ. В конце прошлого года министр промышленности Брюно Ле Мэр надеялся объявить о возрождении завода «Форд» в коммуне Бланкфор, производившего коробки передач, но руководство американского автогиганта было непреклонным. Твёрдо придерживаясь стратегии постепенного отказа от обязательств, оно одним росчерком пера распорядилось не возобновлять производство коробки передач Punch Powerglide, вызвав этим бурное недовольство 870 сотрудников и повергнув правительство в некоторое замешательство.

http://humanite-russie.ru/ekonomika/1191-reindustrializaciji-net.html

Телекоммунистический манифест

Какой может быть классовая борьба и как может пониматься собственность в эпоху международных коммуникаций, глобальной миграции и становления информационной экономики? Телекоммунистический манифест, впервые опубликованный в 2007 году, до сих пор остается одной из самых серьезных критических работ по политэкономии информационных сетей и культурного интернет-производства.

https://syg.ma/telekommunist

Wendy Brown - When Firms Become Persons and Persons Become Firms

In the United States, the extension of civil liberties to corporations is transforming democracy through rights adjudication. Best known in this regard is Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court decision permitting corporate funding to flood the U.S. electoral process on the basis of corporate rights to free speech. In 2014, Burwell vs Hobby Lobby granted firms the right to the free exercise of religion, and hence the ability to withhold insurance coverage of abortions and abortifacients for their employees. This lecture explores the neoliberal logic of the Hobby Lobby decision, makes an argument about the transformations of democracy these decisions entail, and concludes with a critique of Foucault’s formulation of the relation of law, state and economy in neoliberalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHvGsKXqL8s