MARX AT 200 WORKSHOPABSTRACTS FOR PROPOSED PAPERS

David Bates (Canterbury Christ Church University)‘Abjection, Interpellation and the Lumpenproletariat: Some Critical Thoughts on Marx’s 18th Brumaire’

In this paper, I re-read Marx’s comments on the ‘lumpenproletariat’ through the theories of mis-interpellation (Althusser, 1968; Martil, 2017) and social abjection (Tyler, 2017). In doing this, I also offer some thoughts on Marx’s theory of class more widely, and emancipatory ‘agency’ specifically.

On a first reading, Marx’s comments on the lumpenproletariat would seem more at home in the pages of the Daily Mail, than in radical social theory. Marx’s views on the lumpenproletariat have been compared with Murray’s account of the ‘underclass’. (Murray provides a ‘moral’ account of the underclass – the underclass being defined by its immorality, its fecklessness. Marx’s account is more nuanced and playful – but still problematic.) Yet Marx’s comments on the underclass provide an important attempt to open a space to re-interpellate abjection. In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx subverts his Daily Mail account of the lumpenproletariat. ‘They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented (Marx, 1852)’, he wrote about the social base of Louis Bonaparte’s dictatorship. Bonaparte had called up the forces of reaction to destroy the emancipatory impulse embodied in the new proletarian vanguard. Socially useless waste (Marx and Engels call the lumpenproletariat ‘scum’) stymied the proletariat in its quest to throw of its fetters and realise its productive and potential. Rosa Luxemburg was later to suggest two possible outcomes of the struggle against capitalism – ‘socialism or barbarism’. In Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s France, it seemed that the forces of barbarism had won the battle, if not the war.

What was the character of this barbaric regime? Marx commented that ‘history repeats itself, first time as tragedy and the second time as farce’ (Marx, 1852). Bonaparte’s regime was farcical; albeit a violent farce. Bonaparte was King (or rather Prince) of the lumpenproletariat; he was the real ‘social scum’, the ultimate opportunist. Accordingly, to refuse his populist representation was to disrupt the interpellation of the ‘lumpenproletariat’ as a force of reaction. Thus, it was the farcical show that was Bonaparte which allowed the violent potential of the lumpenproletariat to be directed to the cause of reaction. (My paper will make use of Marx’s assessment of the figure of Louis Bonaparte to start to venture an analysis of the contemporary dangerous farce who goes by the name ‘Donald Trump’.)

The paper goes on to make three claims: First, the lumpenproletariat as a class category should be considered a fictional ‘other’ which serves to give positive meaning to ‘the proletariat’. Second, Marx underestimates the extent to which marginalised groups outside the proletariat can be forces of progressive social transformation. Third, mis-interpellation must be considered as key to any challenge to the reproduction of capitalist ideologies (including ideologies of abjection).

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David Bates is Professor of Contemporary Political Thought and Director of the Politics and International Relations Programme at Canterbury Christ Church University. His interests are focused primarily in the area of contemporary radical political thought, especially: 1. The constitution of modes of political subjectivity (in ‘radical’, liberal, neo-liberal and conservative forms), and the relationship with dominant economic structures and forms of social identity; 2. The practices through which such modes of subjectivity can be challenged (especially in artistic practice as a site of refusal); 3. The link between modes of labour (material, affective, virtual etc.) and projects of emancipatory change; 4. The theoretical understanding of social movements (including anti-globalisation, anti-capitalism, Occupy, etc.) with specific reference to Marxist, post-Marxist, post-anarchist, and autonomist perspectives. Recent publ;ications include: ‘Agency’ in B. Franks, N. Jun and L. Williams (eds) Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach (Palgrave, 2018); ‘Anarchism’, in Paul Wetherly (ed) Political Ideologies (Oxford University press, 2017); ‘Situating Hardt and Negri’, in A. Prichard, R. Kinna, S. Pinta and D. Berry (eds) Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red (PM Press, 2017); (with Matthew Ogilvie and Emma Pole), ‘Occupy: In Theory and Practice,’ Critical Discourse Studies (2016); (with Iain MacKenzie and Sean Sayers (eds), Marx, Religion and Ideology: Themes from David McLellan (Routledge, 2016).

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George Boss (University of Bristol)‘Capabilitarian Marxism: A Contradiction in Terms?’

The transformative socialism of Karl Marx might seem a strange bedfellow for the liberal and reformist capabilities approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, and yet the two share several synergies and an intertwined history. Marx’s quest for progress, human flourishing and the growth of human capacities resonates with capabilitarian approaches to human development, and to a degree the former has been source of inspiration for the latter. Both Sen and Nussbaum pay tribute to Marx as a major contributor to their thought, and recently some - notably Mozaffar Qizilbash, Paul Raekstad and Pablo Gilabert - have gone so far as to characterise Marx’s project as overlapping with that of the capabilitarians. It is the possibility of such a synthesis that will be the focus of this paper. I will consider two areas of tension. Firstly, capabilities presuppose a chooser; that individuals will (and should) make an autonomous choice between the competing possible sets of functionings available to then. Marx’s historcised notion of human social consciousness, by contrast, questions this abstract notion of freedom dependent on an ‘isolated’ individual abstracted from a historical, social setting. Some capabilitarians have provided novel adaptations that bring the capabilities approach closer to Marx. Marx himself, however, goes further, and argues that the transformation of consciousness is an aspect of development itself. Secondly, it has often been argued that a commitment to liberal individualism is a core component of the capabilities approach. This commitment clashes with Marx’s conception of powers and capacities as fundamentally social phenomena; they are collectively social/historical, not timelessly individual. What is more, the capabilities approach - by focusing solely on the assessment of individual capabilities - fails to properly understand the ways in which our capabilities can relate to each other and thus generate a collective form of unfreedom. In response to these problems, I explore possible modifications and find them wanting, or at best under-developed. I thus conclude that capabilitarian Marxism is indeed a contradiction in terms.

George Boss’s work focuses on the political philosophy of human needs, and in particular on developing an alternative, Marxian approach to understanding needs, under the supervision of Professor Terrell Carver and Dr Jonathan Floyd. His background involves an undergraduate degree from Oxford (PPE) and a Masters degree from Birkbeck, University of London (MRes Politics). Prior to commencing my PhD he spent nine years teaching politics, economics and philosophy. His previous work has focused on the history of political thought and Marxism, with an analytic methodology.

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Gary K. Browning (Oxford Brookes)‘Hegel and Marx: The Question of Influence’

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How do we understand the relations between social and political theorists? A standard way of doing so is to imagine the two theorists to be discrete individuals and to establish how one has constituted an express and conscious influence upon the other. This construal of the relationship of influence has been subjected to many forms of critique. Skinner has urged its susceptibility to challenge in that its causal claims standardly lack sufficient corroborating evidence. If A influences B, for Skinner, we need to know that B recognised the influence and that the connections between A and B are causal and supersede merely coincidental similarities. reasoning. Other forms of analysis such as the deconstruction of Foucault and Derrida and a Marxist perspective, relegating the supposed autonomy of the merely intellectual to economic and social developments, have reduced the credibility of studies in influence. And yet the Marx Hegel relationship continues to be presumed to register the influence of one thinker, namely Hegel, upon another, namely Marx, whereby Marx takes what he sees as positive from Hegel but rejects what is unhelpful for his project. Hence Hegel is commonly held to have influenced Marx by bequeathing a dialectical method, which was turned upside down by Marx, so that Hegel’s idealism is rejected in favour of a materialism that reflects the realities of class conflict. The story is a familiar one but is it true? Can we assume this narrative of the intellectual explanation of the Hegel and Marx relationship. In contrast to this individualised analysis, I see them as operating within a discourse of left-Hegelianism in which clear lines between them are not to be drawn. Marx’s materialism is not dichotomously related to Hegel’s idealism. Their forms of idealism and materialism are nuanced just as their social perspectives share many elements. Marx and Hegel differ but their differences and affinities are not to be explained by Marx’s individual determination of what is to be taken from Hegel and what is to be abandoned. He shares a discourse with Hegel and the assumptions, ambiguities and possibilities of that discourse supersede he express commentary of either Hegel or Marx.

Gary Browning is Professor of Politics and Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. He is a member of the REF Panel for UofA 19 Politics and International Studies (2018-2021). He was General and Founding Editor of the journal Contemporary Political Theory (2001-2010). His publications include: Murdoch On Love and Truth (ed) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Why Iris Murdoch Matters (Bloomsbury, 2016); A History of Modern Political Thought- The Question of Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 2016); Plato and Hegel: Two Modes of Philosophising about Politics, (Routledge, 2012 [1991])(New revised edition); Dialogues with Contemporary Political Theorists (ed with R. Prokhovnik and M. Dimova- Cookson) (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2012); Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011); The Political Art of Bob Dylan, (co- edited with Professor David Boucher), Revised Paperback Edition, with new features, revised and new chapters (Imprint Academic, 2009 [2004]); Critical and Post-Critical Political Economy, (with A Kilmister) (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006); Rethinking R. G. Collingwood: Philosophy, Politics and The Unity of Theory and Practice (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004); Politics: An Introduction (Revised Edition), joint author with B. Axford, R. Huggins and B. Rosamond (Routledge, 2002 [1997]); Lyotard and the End of Grand Narratives (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2000); Understanding Contemporary Society- Theories of the Present, (co-edited with Abigail Halcli and Frank Webster) (Sage, 2000); Hegel and the History of Political Philosophy (Macmillan, 1999); Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reappraisal (ed.) (Kluwer, Utrecht, 1997).

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Mark C. Cowling ‘Sean Sayers and the Neo-Hegelian Approach to Continuity in Marx.’

The first publication of Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts in German in 1932 immediately raised a question which has been controversial ever since that time. The Manuscripts included references to alienation and to Hegel, and present a version of Marx’s theories which is at variance with the dominant account at the time. Whether in the more social democratic or the more Leninist version, the dominant view saw Marxism as scientific socialism.

The main tendency of authors who emphasise the role of the Manuscripts is to stress that the theory of alienation continues to be found in Marx’s later work. However, another possibility is to emphasise continuities between Marx and Hegel, so that the later Marx appears as retaining a strong Hegelian influence. Perhaps the most prominent British representative of this approach is Sean Sayers. In the current paper I start by giving a basic

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exposition of the Sayers approach. I then indicate some reasons for doubting its merits as a textual interpretation. It does not take sufficient cognizance of the theoretical changes inaugurated by the development of the materialist conception of history; it fails to analyse the role of Feuerbach in Marx’s development; and it is possible to argue that the alienation theory plays less of a role in the older Marx than is often imagined.

However, the main purpose of the paper is to look at the theories which Sayers particularly, but also others working with the same approach, adopt, and to consider them on their own merits. Do they offer valuable insights about the role of labour, particularly with the rise of capitalism based heavily on the processing of knowledge? Did Hegel have ideas about the role of labour which can be found reflected in Marx, including his later writings? Does this approach provide an understanding of Marxism and justice which is superior to one influenced by Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy? What about its claims to overcome the is-ought distinction?

My general approach is one which respects Sayers as an excellent and energetic exponent of the neo-Hegelian interpretation, but which rejects many of his conclusions, both as interpretations and as theories in their own right.

Mark Cowling is a retired professor of Criminology and Marxism at Teesside University. He has been one of the conveners of the PSA Marxism Specialist Group since 1983, and has been the editor of Studies in Marxism. His most recent book is Norman Geras – from Marxism to Human Rights: Controversy and Analysis, Palgrave, 2018 (alas, its price is grossly extortionate).

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Nye Davies (Cardiff University)‘A Blueprint for Political Action: Aneurin Bevan and Marxism’

In his book In Place of Fear (1952) Aneurin Bevan wrote of the debt he owed to Karl Marx and the ideas of Marxism. He wrote that “Marx, and the school which he founded, put into the hands of the working class movement of the late nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries the most complete blueprints for political action the world has ever seen”.

The influence of Marx and Marxism on Bevan’s intellectual development has been discussed by different authors, with competing claims over whether his thought has been characterised by Marxism. Bevan’s biographer John Campbell described him as a “parliamentary Marxist”, while David Marquand disputed this, instead arguing that if “we want to understand Bevan we should see him, not as a philosophical Marxist, but as a wonderfully articulate, though distinctly opportunistic, dissenting radical, dressed sporadically and unconvincingly in Marxist clothes”.

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between Bevan and Marxism and the extent to which his political thought has been shaped by Marxist ideas. It will argue that Bevan’s conception of economic power and the historical development of the working-class were highly informed by classical Marxism, whereas his understanding of political power was shaped by his belief in British parliamentarianism.

Nye Davies is a PhD student at the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University and a member of the Wales Governance Centre. He is conducting research into Aneurin Bevan’s political thought, treating him as a political thinker and attempting to establish the key themes and ideas within his thought. His thesis is being supervised by Professor Richard Wyn Jones and Dr Peri Roberts.

His research has encompassed many different topics including political theory, socialist political thought, Wales and the Labour Party. As a member of the Wales Governance Centre he has also had the chance to research and learn about issues relating to devolved government in Wales.

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Vincenzo Di Mino‘Coalition as Dilemma: Genealogy and Actuality of Class Organization Through Marx’

A genealogic inquiry on the origin and the use of the category of ‘class’ in the work of Karl Marx, can be useful to project its effects on actuality. In the work of the German thinker, indeed, class is considered as that subjectivity founding itself inside the conflictual event: while political economy thinks class as a mere effect of wealth distribution, Marxian discourse gave back to the worker political and heuristic strength. Class, indeed, is an aleatory subjectivity, connecting different figures of labour-force, giving them collective power of expression and political force to affected power relationships: composition, through workerism and autonomous Marxism developed in Italy, becomes the device for reading the mutations of labour-force, capable to transform its political potentialities in strike force. What is class, today, in the middle of the dynamics represented by digital capitalism? Process of proletarization and pauperization, on the one hand, silenced the voice of the labor force, on the other hands they are open to new experiments of connection and coalition among different class’ fragments displaced on the whole social textures. Therefore, rethinking the terms of class organization, starting from Marx, means taking up the methodology of coalition, investigating from the connections developing within different race and gender lines which characterizing the currently class struggles, in order to verify its efficacy measures up to challenges posed up by capital. Becoming-class, hence organized subjectivity, through the intersectionality of struggles and desires of social transformations.

Vincenzo Di Mino has a degree in “Political Science” at University of Rome “La Sapienza” with a thesis on Saint-Just’s project of Republican Institution (“Architetture della Felicita: Saint-Just e le Istituzioni Repubblicane”). He is an independent researcher in political theory and political philosophy (connecting also social history, social science, constitution theory in modern and contemporary age). Among his publications: “I segreti laboratori della produzione” tra disciplina e conflitto: percorsi di lettura su crimine e devianza in Karl Marx” in “Devianze e crimine- Antologia ragionata di teorie classiche e contemporanee”, (edited by C.Rinaldi and P.Saitta, Pm Edizioni,Varazze 2017) and “Egemonia e istituzioni come macchine collettive di enunciazione del General Intellect’ su ‘Lo Sguardo-Rivista di Filosofia’, XXV, 2017, pp. 51-67.

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Hanifi Djamila (University of Algiers)‘Marxism in Arab Thought’

Some of the major questions which have haunted the Arab thinkers are: what are the reasons behind the decline of the Arab-Islamic civilization? And how can it be revived or rather reconstructed in order to achieve modernity and a better future. In an ambitious attempt to provide an answer, some have turned to history and endeavored through a critical process to reread the colossal writings of Islamic heritage. Their aim is to provide a new interpretation of the past events and texts, however, they differ in their bids to solve the questions previously mentioned. These scholars fall into two different broad trends, liberals secularists, either Marxists or non-Marxists, on the one hand, and conservatives, either fundamentalists or non-fundamentalists, on the other hand. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the works of some distinguished intellectuals, who embraced the Marxist thought and became its most representatives in the Arab world; Hussein Murwah (1910-1987), Mahmud Amin Al-Alim (1922-2009),Taib Tizini (B. 1934), and Abdallah Laroui. With a comprehensive analysis, they have endeavored to respond to the urgent need for a new interpretation of the past by applying Marxist analysis.

The paper will start by relocating the four thinkers in the general social and political context of modern Arab thought. Then, I will proceed to the examination of each project separately to see how the Marxist analysis was deployed, eventually, I will conclude with a reflection on the contemporary relevance of these Arab Marxist proposals.

Hanifi Djamila is an assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of Algiers 2, Abou Alkacim Saad Allah, where she currently teaches Western Philosophy, and where she has been teaching since 2004. She graduated from the department of philosophy at the University of Algiers 2, where she was awarded a magistere in 2002;

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her research topic was on John Dewey’ Method of social reform, then was awarded a PhD in 2012 on a thesis entitled: Modernity and Communicational Rationality in J. Habermas philosophy. In 2009 she graduated with a (licence) Bachelor of Art in English language.

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Gianmarco Fifi (University of Warwick)‘Marx, Lukács and Gramsci: The Relevance of Fetishism in the 21st Century’

This paper starts from the idea that the analysis of capitalism in general and neoliberalism in particular should start from the Marxist category of fetishism and by rethinking the history of this concept. My paper will start from the analysis provided by John Holloway (2010), in which fetishism is analysed through the categories of the done and the doing. Whilst the former symbolises crystallised social forms (e.g.: the state, money, economic and political institutions), the latter is the expression of human praxis in the world, also seen as the origin of the aforementioned ‘structures’. Societies based on class necessarily ‘involve the separation of done (or part of the done) from doing and doers, but in capitalism that separation becomes the sole axis of domination’ ( Ivi: 31). Capitalism functions as long as it is able to make ‘that objectification a durable objectification, on converting the done into an object, a thing apart, something that can be defined as property. This idea is common to several accounts within critical theory (Harvey, Negri, Bonefeld). However, we would fall in a reiteration of fetishism if we did not recognise that these very processes are effect of human praxis. In fact, as Holloway (1988: 99) puts it: ‘To speak of an external relation between the “objective laws of capitalist development” and class struggle does not make sense. The “laws of capitalist development” are nothing other than the movement of class struggle. As argued by Holloway (2010: 43), ‘[t]he force of the concept lies in that it refers to an unsustainable horror: the self-negation of doing.’ In this sense, ‘[t]he sundering of doer from done is inevitably the sundering of the doer himself’ (Ivi: 44). In a similar manner, Marx asks(1988: 73-5): ‘How could the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of production he was estranging himself from himself? […] This relation is the relation of the worker with his own activity as an alien activity not belonging to him.’

Failures to recognise such a reflexivity bring about the distortion of understanding fetishism (and thus capitalism) either as an imposition from the top-down (e.g.: Harvey, 2005; Klein, 2008) or as a pervasive mechanism detached from human activity (Bonefeld, 2017; Hardt and Negri, 2000). I shall argue that not only are such approaches uneasily combinable with Marxism, but they also reproduce a form of determinism that contemporary accounts openly try to challenge. The paper will then analyse the theory of the proletariat as subject-object of historical development as theorised by György Lukács as a consolidation of the problem of fetishism. Ultimately, I will argue that Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualisation of changes and stability within the capitalist society (particularly in relation to the dichotomy activity-passivity) can be read as a discussion on the continuation of (and rupture from) fetishism. This reading should be based on a renewed understanding of the Gramsci’s political theory itself. Against the general conceptualisation of current critical studies that think the Gramscian analysis of changes and stability as a top-down dynamic (see Morton, 2010; Callinicos, 2010), I argue that this is better understood as a bottom-up process – where the focus is placed on the passivity of a potentially transformative agency rather than on processes of change that are per se out of reach for the so-called subaltern classes. Returning to the Prison Notebooks, three overlapping dialectical relations are identified as being key to Gramsci’s understanding of passivity and activity (and thus of fetishism and anti-fetishism): at the ideational level, the dialectic between common sense and good sense; at the institutional level, the dynamic between bureaucratic and democratic centralism; at the level of class struggles, the dynamic between corporatism and universalism. Thus redefined, Marxist political theory can be seen as a valuable instrument for grasping the challenges of the current organic crisis of capitalism.

Gianmarco Fifi is a PhD student at the University of Warwick.

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Robin Jervis (University of Brighton)‘Co-operatives, Socialised Finance and Marxist Theory’

This paper develops a theory of a co-operative socialised economy as an offshoot of Marx’s political thought and argues that the co-operative economy can represent both a transition towards socialism within the existing framework of capitalist social relations as well as a potential end-state of socialism. The paper presents a review of Marxist positions on co-operative political economy, focusing principally on the critiques levelled by Rosa Luxemburg and Ernest Mandel, as well as the more optimistic perspectives presented historically by Eduard Bernstein in the social-democratic tradition and more recently by Bruno Jossa in a more orthodox Marxist/Leninist approach. It locates two primary strands in the literature: the role co-operatives play in ameliorating the exploitation and alienation of capitalist work, acting as emancipatory institutions (or “islands of socialism”), and a second strand which critiques the co-operative as unable to compete in a capitalist market, lacking revolutionary potential and re-legitimising capitalist social relations, both through its attempts to sanitise capitalist wage labour, and through its commitment to an exclusionary form of common property. The paper aims to address these critiques.

Using these approaches (and building on work previously presented at the PSA annual conference in March) the paper argues that co-operatives can present a non-alienating form of work in terms of both worker-ownership and the act of labour itself. The paper then briefly argues that co-operative modes of finance, such as large-scale credit unions, can allow the endogenous growth and development of the co-operative sector in a capitalist economy. Finally, the paper concludes by examining the form of the state that would be necessitated by co-operative property rights.

Robin Jervis is a Lecturer in Politics in the School of Applied Social Science at the University of Brighton.

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David Lane (Cambridge University)‘Interpretations of Marx: From “Scientific” to “Active” Marxism’

For Marx capitalism delivered a modern society but was faulted: it could not achieve human liberation under conditions of capitalist economic exploitation. The socialist future would transcend capitalism by destroying exploitation and concurrently promoting emancipation. The method of historical materialism envisaged law-like tendencies (‘scientific’ Marxism) promoting the development of productive forces which would transcend capitalism. At the same time, a political praxis of ‘active’ Marxism required human intervention. Only political action can eliminate the conditions on which economic exploitation is constructed.

Capitalism gives rise to different social formations and types of social structure and is in perpetual change. Thus Marxist movements require different ideologies and organisational forms to attain political power to abolish economic exploitation and develop socialist relations. ‘Active’ Marxism involves not only the praxis of utilising Marx’s scientific theories to attain political power, but also an evaluation of ways to build socialism. An active Marxist position is open to divergent and contradictory interpretations. The criterion for appraisal is the extent to which economic exploitation is replaced by symmetric economic relations.

After the death of Marx, the shift in the locus of contradictions of capitalism (in a ‘scientific’ sense) moved to economically dependent territories of the imperial powers. Here revolutionary movements led and formulated, initially by Lenin, were widely adopted as a Marxist praxis. Such movements when in power were successful in reducing economic exploitation. But they did not eradicate other forms of domination.

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The paper addresses the relationship between the scientific and praxis components of Marxism in contemporary capitalism. It considers interpretations of the changing class structure, the evolving nature of capital, and alternative forms of socialist economic coordination (planning). It is contended that Marx’s approach has limitations. While forms of domination and discrimination (bureaucracy, patriarchy, racism, militarism and credentialism) cannot be equated with economic exploitation, they give rise to their own distinctive forms of power relations.

David Lane is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and currently Emeritus Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge University; he was previously Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He has written extensively on the USSR and state socialism, Marxism and socialism. Recent publications include: Changing Regional Alliances for China and the West (With G. Zhu) (2018); The Eurasian Project in Global Perspective (2016); (With V. Samokhvalov) The Eurasian Project and Europe (2015); Elites and Identity in the Transformation of State Socialism (2014); The Capitalist Transformation of State Socialism (2014).

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Paul Raekstad (University of Amsterdam)‘The Politics of Self-Emancipation: A Marxist Critique of Vanguardism’

For just over a decade, we have seen another international capitalist crisis, re-igniting critiques of capitalism as a mode of production along with speculations about what to put in its place. We have seen the growth of a range of anti-capitalist and other radical social and political movements, from Occupy and the Movement of the Squares to Black Lives Matter and struggles for ecological democracy and justice. Connected with this, we see increased discussion of key Marxist concepts, such as alienation, exploitation, and class struggle, and of course a handful of new radical publications. This has brought with it new debates about Marxism, the meaning of socialism and communism, the role and nature of the party form, and more besides. I want to discuss a Michael Lebowitz’ socialist critique of what he calls Vanguard Marxism, identified with Lenin and the Bolshevik party in particular, developed in his book on Soviet-style ‘real socialism’, The Contradictions of Real Socialism: The Conductor and the Conducted.

I begin by reconstructing Lebowitz’ three critiques of Vanguardism. First, it is one-sided, in that it ignores the importance of human development and practice, in particular the ways in which capitalist and vanguardist relations deform human beings and hinder their development. This is connected to the second point, namely vanguard Marxism’s insufficiently dialectical world-view. Thirdly, vanguard Marxism takes on its own class perspective – not that of capitalists or proletarian self-emancipation, but that of the vanguard itself –which is authoritarian, and legitimates installing authoritarian vanguard relations instead of free and democratic socialist ones.

I argue that these critiques have important implications for thinking about revolutionary strategy today, especially on questions of prefigurative politics and the role of the party.

I go on to consider how recent scholarship on Lenin’s ideas and politics – especially by Lars Lih and Tamás Krausz – can be used to respond to these critiques. Specifically, I consider how their defences of Lenin and the Bolsheviks against charges of being authoritarian and anti-democratic can be used to respond to critiques such as Lebowitz’

Finally, although this latter scholarship offers many rebuttals of misconceived critiques of Lenin, I argue that they are insufficient to address the critiques that Lebowitz offers. They do not suffice to address the ways in which vanguardist approaches to social change hinder the development of revolutionary agency or give up, in practice, on the movement for universal human emancipation through working class self-emancipation.

Paul Raekstad is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam, working on methodological questions in political theory, radical conceptions of democracy, alternative economic institutions, and the politics of bringing them about.

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Camilla Royle (Kings College, London)‘Marxism and Ecology in an Anthropocene Epoch’

Marx and Engels based their analysis on an understanding of how human societies are both part of and relate to the natural world. Marx’s dialectical and historical method points to an understanding of the specific ways in ecological damage is rooted in the capitalist system. However, for much of the 20 th century the ecological implications of Marx’s thought were poorly understood. This paper will argue that, in the context of widespread human manipulation of Earth System processes – so profound in fact that some now argue that humanity has entered a geological epoch if its own making – an engagement with Marx’s ecology is absolutely necessary. However, there has been some debate in recent years about the ways Marxists might conceptualise the relationship between society and nature. Ecological Marxism has tended to swing between social constructionist and naturalistic interpretations. Therefore, this talk will touch on some of these debates as well as making a general case for the importance of Marx 200 years on.

Camilla Royle is nearing completion of a PhD thesis at King’s College London, entitled on Dialectical Biology: A Marxist Approach to Nature and Agency in the Anthropocene. Here publications include: 2017, ‘Complexity, Dynamism, and Agency: How Can Dialectical Biology Inform Geography?’ Antipode, 49, 5 (2017), pp. 1427-1445; ‘Marxism and the Anthropocene,’ International Socialism, 151 (2016), pp. 63-84; ‘Ecological Marxism,’ in Alex Callinicos, Lucia Pradella and Stathis Kouvelakis (eds), Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism (Routledge). Forthcoming.

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Valeria Vegh Weis (Free University of Berlin)‘Should We Go back to Marx and Engels to Understand Crime and Social Control?’

From a Marxist perspective, it is possible to understand criminology as the study of the complex relation between conflict and control (which is a relationship of mutual conditionality), as well as the evolving capitalist system of production. Both, conflict and control, need to be analyzed from the social and criminal perspectives. However, the criminological theories/ideologies/formulations developed until today have failed in addressing this complex perspective. This presentation proposes to understand the history of the criminological approaches as three separate scenarios: (i) before the mid-twentieth century when they concentrated only on the criminal conflict, (ii) the historic breaking point between 1950s and 1960s, when they focused on criminal control, and (iii) the more recent history where different theories have addressed one or two of these elements but not the whole. The paper proposes that a Marxist approach to the field can correct this oversight and collaborate to build a more accurate analysis of the evolving criminal system while clarifying the current scenario and its future potential. To this end, the second part of the research delves into the criticism held by most relevant criminologists to sustain the theoretical impossibility of a Marxist analysis of the punitive field. Finally, the paper overturns those critiques and invites the reader to rethink the criminal matter from a fresh theoretical perspective.

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Lawrence Wilde‘Reflections on Marx and Morality’

It is well known that Marx refused to engage with moral discourse beyond 1845. After his death, this anti-moralist position was justified by Kautsky in his Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History (1906), and became part of the orthodoxy of Marxist political movements of the twentieth century, both Marxist-Leninist and social democratic. The publication for the first time of Marx’s 1844 writings (in 1932) generated widespread interest in his philosophical humanism, resulting in multiple interpretations of Marx’s evaluative language, many of which identified it with different strands of moral theory – Kantian, utilitarian, Rawlsian and neo-Aristotelian. An old

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objection to exploring this moral dimension is commonly cited, namely, that it is of no practical political value. As this seems close to Marx’s post-1845 position, it clearly needs a response. This paper will offer some justifications for persisting with the development of a distinctively Marxist moral approach to the myriad social problems experienced in today’s capitalist world.

Lawrence Wilde is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory at Nottingham Trent University. He has published Thomas More’s Utopia: Arguing for Social Justice (2016), Global Solidarity (2013), Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity (2004), Ethical Marxism and its Radical Critics (1998), Modern European Socialism (1994) and Marx and Contradiction (1989). He is co-author, with Ian Fraser, of The Marx Dictionary (2011).

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Zahoor Ahmad Wani (Central University of Gujarat) and Manidipa Mistri (University of Kolkatta)‘Neoliberalism and the Oppression of Women: Marx Revisited’

This paper critically examines how superior masculine and inferior feminine identities were constructed and reproduced in the neoliberal era. It also examines how gender is made intelligible in order to better serve neoliberal ideals of marketisation, privatisation, deregulation and flexibilisation to aggravate and preserve the subordination or oppression of women. The study applies Karl Marx’s methodology, which is requisite for identifying: First, the neo-liberal structural conditions and macro-level processes that are the very foundations of gender inequality in neo-liberal societies; and, second, the restrictions of legal and political changes to end gender inequality. Marx strongly believed that only complete transformation in societal conditions could tackle the complications of gender inequality. His work help us to theorise the capitalist and neo-liberal foundations of women’s repression and dehumanisation, and the possibilities today open to feminist politics.

The paper argues that it is only revisiting Marx that we can comprehend the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary debates and discussions on the issue of gender and its relations with neoliberalism. His theoretical and methodological insights are very salient to grapple the suppression and subjugation of women under capitalism and neo-liberalism, and with the limitations, both these dominant discourses pose to feminist politics. The suppression, dehumanisation, and repression of women is visible, discernible effect (e.g., in bureaucratic authority structures, in the socio-economic stratification, in the labor market, the domestic division of labor, and discrimination in occupational and educational institutions ) of underlying affairs between two sexes determined by the verbalisation between the neo-liberal mode of production, and the organisation of social and physical reproduction among those who must sell their labor power to be alive.

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