Mute Compulsion

Mute Compulsion PDF Author: Søren Mau
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839763507
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
A new Marxist theory of the abstract and impersonal forms of power in capitalism Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century lingers on. To understand capital’s paradoxical expansion and entrenchment amidst crisis and unrest, Mute Compulsion offers a novel theory of the historically unique forms of abstract and impersonal power set in motion by the subjection of social life to the profit imperative. Building on a critical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s unfinished critique of political economy and a wide range of contemporary Marxist theory, philosopher Søren Mau sets out to explain how the logic of capital tightens its stranglehold on the life of society by constantly remoulding the material conditions of social reproduction. In the course of doing so, Mau intervenes in classical and contemporary debates about the value form, crisis theory, biopolitics, social reproduction, humanism, logistics, agriculture, metabolism, the body, competition, technology and relative surplus populations.

Mute Compulsion

Mute Compulsion PDF Author: Søren Mau
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839763507
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book

Book Description
A new Marxist theory of the abstract and impersonal forms of power in capitalism Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century lingers on. To understand capital’s paradoxical expansion and entrenchment amidst crisis and unrest, Mute Compulsion offers a novel theory of the historically unique forms of abstract and impersonal power set in motion by the subjection of social life to the profit imperative. Building on a critical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s unfinished critique of political economy and a wide range of contemporary Marxist theory, philosopher Søren Mau sets out to explain how the logic of capital tightens its stranglehold on the life of society by constantly remoulding the material conditions of social reproduction. In the course of doing so, Mau intervenes in classical and contemporary debates about the value form, crisis theory, biopolitics, social reproduction, humanism, logistics, agriculture, metabolism, the body, competition, technology and relative surplus populations.

Mute Compulsion

Mute Compulsion PDF Author: Søren Mau
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839763469
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
A new Marxist theory of the abstract and impersonal forms of power in capitalism Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century lingers on. To understand capital’s paradoxical expansion and entrenchment amidst crisis and unrest, Mute Compulsion offers a novel theory of the historically unique forms of abstract and impersonal power set in motion by the subjection of social life to the profit imperative. Building on a critical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s unfinished critique of political economy and a wide range of contemporary Marxist theory, philosopher Søren Mau sets out to explain how the logic of capital tightens its stranglehold on the life of society by constantly remoulding the material conditions of social reproduction. In the course of doing so, Mau intervenes in classical and contemporary debates about the value form, crisis theory, biopolitics, social reproduction, humanism, logistics, agriculture, metabolism, the body, competition, technology and relative surplus populations.

A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays

A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays PDF Author: Ib Gram-Jensen
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 8743045030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The two first essays in A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays are critiques of Mau and Meiksins Wood for misreading Marx on the inevitability of the supersession of capitalism by socialism and eventually classless communist society. The third one discusses Hindess & Hirst: Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production as a link between Althusserian Structural Marxism on the one hand and Laclau & Mouffe's discourse analysis and Keith Jenkins' postmodernist rejection of history on the other. The fourth one summarises some main points made in the author's Structure, Agency and Theory, critique of which is countered in the fifth one. The sixth one defends some points made in his Experience and Historical Materialism, while the seventh and last one adds some further comments on the problem of reading Marx.

A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays

A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays PDF Author: Ib Gram-Jensen
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 8743021840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The two first essays in A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays are critiques of Mau and Meiksins Wood for misreading Marx on the inevitability of the supersession of capitalism by socialism and eventually classless communist society. The third one discusses Hindess & Hirst: Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production as a link between Althusserian Structural Marxism on the one hand and Laclau & Mouffe's discourse analysis and Keith Jenkins' postmodernist rejection of history on the other. The fourth one summarises some main points made in the author's Structure, Agency and Theory, critique of which is countered in the fifth one. The sixth one defends some points made in his Experience and Historical Materialism, while the seventh and last one adds some further comments on the problem of reading Marx.

Alienation

Alienation PDF Author: Bertell Ollman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521290838
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Revised throughout with an entirely new chapter, "In Defense of Internal Relations," and with replies to critical comments on the 1st edition, which the N.Y. Review of Books called "a remarkable book...brilliant and illuminating."

With and Against

With and Against PDF Author: Dominique Routhier
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804292575
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The little-known story of the Situationist International’s struggle against the automation of everyday life No other art movement has so profoundly influenced radical politics as the Situationist International. But beyond the clichés about its purported leader Guy Debord, the "society of the spectacle," détournement and dérive, lies a more complex story about key historical shifts in the composition of capital, work, labor, art, and revolutionary theory during the 1950s and 60s. With and Against reframes the history of the Situationist International as a struggle to come to terms with the then-emerging ideologies of cybernetics and automation. Through each of the book's four chapters, Dominique Routhier dissects Situationist pamphlets, documents, artworks, and objects that refract elements of a "cybernetic hypothesis": the theoretically hyperbolic belief that technological progress, computers and automation make class struggle and the idea of revolution obsolete. With equal attention to aesthetic detail and to the broader contours of political economy, this book serves as a critical intervention in art history as well a call to reconsider, more broadly, the contemporary lessons of the most political of all artistic avantgardes.

What Gender Should Be

What Gender Should Be PDF Author: Matthew J. Cull
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350329002
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
What is gender? What should gender look like in the 21st century? This book brings together philosophy with insights from feminist and transgender theory to argue for gender pluralism: that there should be more than two genders, and that each gender term should have multiple meanings. Developing an explicitly political version of conceptual engineering, What Gender Should Be contains novel and powerful arguments both against existing theories of gender such as family resemblance accounts and against gender abolition, underlining how each is insufficient for thinking about and doing justice to contemporary transgender identities and politics. Instead, Matthew J. Cull argues that we should be pluralists about gender, putting forward and advocating for a position that is more apt for contemporary transgender and feminist activism. The 21st century requires a new way of thinking about gender. What Gender Should Be sets out to provide it.

A Revised Historical Materialism

A Revised Historical Materialism PDF Author: Ib Gram-Jensen
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 8743086861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The three essays in this volume can be read individually, but all turn on the case for a revision of Marx' and Engels' historical materialism and for a less arbitrary way of reading their texts. The first one deals with the major weaknesses of Marx' and Engels' historical materialism and how to develop a better alternative without losing the critical and revolutionary edge of the original version. The second one demonstrates how Hal Draper misread some crucial passages in The Communist Manifesto, and offers a more cogent representation. The third one is a mere sketch, but suggests how the revised historical materialism outlined in the first essay makes it possible to understand the phenomenon of war.

Marx's Inferno

Marx's Inferno PDF Author: William Clare Roberts
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691180814
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Marx’s Inferno reconstructs the major arguments of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading of a seminal classic. Rather than simply a critique of classical political economy, William Roberts argues that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement. Understood in this light, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. Placing Marx against the background of nineteenth-century socialism, Roberts shows how Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno, and how Marx, playing the role of Virgil for the proletariat, introduced partisans of workers’ emancipation to the secret depths of the modern “social Hell.” In this manner, Marx revised republican ideas of freedom in response to the rise of capitalism. Combining research on Marx’s interlocutors, textual scholarship, and forays into recent debates, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce, the experience of labor, the power of bosses and managers, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world.

Capital City

Capital City PDF Author: Samuel Stein
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786636387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
“This superbly succinct and incisive book couldn’t be more timely or urgent.” —Michael Sorkin, author of All Over the Map Our cities are changing. Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion dollar industry, worth thirty-six times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms sixty percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world—the president of the United States—made his name as a landlord and developer. Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy newcomers, but by the state-driven process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the ways the state uses and is used by capital, and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real estate values and rising rents. Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable power of planning to reclaim urban life.