EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES (continued)
Am I digging a trap for Marxist political economy? If public space is essential for
capitalist reproduction, and its cannibalization a crisis for that system, why should we defend that space? Most Science & Society readers, I think, will see the dialectical essence
of this issue, which is to recognize that capitalist social relations are inherently contradictory: to defend public space, the working-class household, and, indeed, whatever autonomy
and protections have been achieved within the workplace, is to challenge, not shore up,
the entire capitalist process. Crisis provides opportunities, but it is the response to crisis
that propels lasting change, and that response requires strong foundations in our
workplaces, our political organizations, our communities, our families -- and our public
spaces. If the owners of the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York fear a T-shirt that
reads "Give Peace a Chance," imagine how they would fear the multicultural,
multinational, anti-racist, spatially confident, mutually supporting, American, and
democratic coalitions of working people envisioned in the images of the Popular Front!
Grasping the deep material roots of social transformation, I think we need not worry too
much about possible co-optation or stabilization of status quo realities resulting from the
social, cultural, economic and political empowering of working people; the transformative
potentials of this empowering are so much more important in the long run.
D. L.
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CALL FOR PAPERS
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
MARXISM AND LOVE
In the cultural life of contemporary capitalism "love" occupies a central position. It is
supposed that this emotion is the answer to a range of social and personal dissatisfactions.
As the Beatles put it, "all you need is love." Indeed, as Marxists we are tossed between our
skeptical view that "love," like all dominant ideologies, has been constructed to support
capitalist domination, and our own individual hopes for the satisfactions of a personal life
which can be shielded from that domination.
As early as the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels addressed the relationship
between the development of capitalism as a mode of production and the ways in which
capitalism sets the framework for people's experience of their personal as well as their political and economic lives. Since the time of the Manifesto, however, the Marxist tradition
has been uneasy in engaging this relationship. Some Marxists held that socialism would
solve the contradiction between labor and capital only, and everything else would have to
take care of itself. Others, especially those concerned with the position of women,
attempted to engage the issue more directly.
There are still many unanswered questions. For this special issue of S&S we are
looking for papers that address the problem of love within an explicit Marxist framework.
The topics engaged by S&S throughout its history -- the nature of capitalism, the history
and development of the workers' and radical movements, what socialism might offer as an
alternative -- are among the themes writers should address. Among possible topics: the
nature of the household in the capitalist economy; the role of love and romance as
mystification; popular culture and the idealization of love; feminist and queer perspectives
and their relation to the Marxist tradition; and changing gender roles in relation to
personal experience. We are also interested in book reviews that relate to this general area
of investigation.
We do not want to foreclose on the process of development by announcing
deadlines and anticipated publication date prematurely; watch this space for further details.
In the meantime, please contact the Guest Editor for the issue, Paul Mishler, with
proposals and suggestions, at Division of Labor Studies / Indiana University-South Bend
/ 1700 Mishawaka Avenue, RS 128 / PO Box 7111 / South Bend, IN 46634;
pmishler@iusb.edu.
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CHRISTOPHER HILL (1912-2003)
Marxism lost a stellar voice with the death of English Marxist historian Christopher Hill
in February of 2003. Hill was a member of the Communist Historians Group during the
1940s and 50s, along with E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm and others whose work
brought a serious commitment to Marxist analysis to their scholarship on topics as varied
as the history of labor and radical movements, the transition from feudalism to capitalism,
and the relationship between popular insurgency and radical politics. Hill, like Thompson,
left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1956, but maintained his Marxist historical
and political commitments.
Hill was less well known in the United States than were Thompson and Hobsbawm,
in part because his research was focused on the period of the English Revolution of the
1640s. His work contested the conservative views of English history by focusing on the
revolutionary aspects of the English Civil War. In particular, he brought renewed attention to the radicals of that period, who fought for real economic equality and political
democracy, and who were finally suppressed by Cromwell.
Christopher Hill was one of the early British supporters of SCIENCE & SOCIETY. His
articles on the English Revolution and the rise of capitalism appeared in Volumes 12, 13,
14 and 18. He participated in S&S' well-known "Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism" debate in 1950. He wrote 21 book reviews for the journal, the latest appearing in
1963.
Hill's book about 17th-century English radicals, The World Turned Upside Down
(1972), showed a world that those of us who had experienced the combination of popular
utopianism and political struggle that characterized the late 1960s could easily recognize.
We could see ourselves, with all of our extreme hopes and militant expectations, as part of
a revolutionary moment. For that, and for his extensive body of work, Marxists and all
radicals will miss Christopher Hill.
P. M.
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IN THIS ISSUE
The present period of reevaluation and recuperation of traditions on the left exhorts us to
re-think -- without necessarily rejecting -- elements in the past that were previously
considered sacrosanct, or at least sufficiently "firm" so as to escape significant modification
(a bit like digits in a number being subjected to increasing precision that no longer change
in the process). In the 20th century, many of us were sure that all roads led from Marx to
Lenin, and from Lenin to whatever followed; there was no need to question the essentials
of these two foundations of "Marxism-Leninism."
Perhaps not everyone will agree with Paul Zarembka's critical re-examination of
Lenin's political economy ("Lenin as Economist of Production: A Ricardian Step
Backwards"), but its careful scholarship and attention to detail will undoubtedly provoke
useful thought. At issue is whether in his preoccupation with production -- certainly a
pressing concern in the conditions in the years immediately following the 1917 revolution
-- Lenin erred in ignoring the qualitative and social-relational aspects of accumulation,
and placed disproportionality too much at the center of his theory of crisis. Although
Zarembka does not explore this aspect in his paper, Lenin's theory of imperialism must also
be re-evaluated in the light of this question. In any case, there is no warrant for the
assumption that Lenin is "orthodox" in his political economy or any other aspect of his
thought, or that his theory is "the" Marxist theory in the early 21st century.
We move from Lenin to Gramsci (mentioned above in connection with the popular
front conceptualization), this time in connection with Turkey. Ahmet Öncü
("Dictatorship Plus Hegemony: A Gramscian Analysis of the Turkish State") draws a major
element from Gramsci while developing a theoretical framework for understanding Turkish
political history in the 20th century. Öncü's novel use of Gramscian concepts contributes
to understanding the complexity of state formation in Turkey, whose capitalist
development takes on particular forms resulting from the country's insertion into a regional
and global structure dominated by external capitalist powers. It also has critical
implications, elaborated in the article, for the "state autonomy" theoretical tradition,
which does not stand up well in the light of the Turkish experience.
"Communications" in this issue include a continuation of the "transnational
capitalist class" (TCC) discussion (see the symposium in our Winter 2001-2002 issue),
this time by Jerry Harris, co-author of "Towards a Global Ruling Class" (Spring 2000).
Here Harris makes the intriguing point, against his own earlier work and that of other TCC
theorists, that the military class fraction poses particular problems for capitalist
transnationalization. His discussion of class fractions and the nature of the military is
consequential for current realities of war and imperial conflict, in the Middle East and
elsewhere.
George Economakis writes on the theory of absolute rent in Marx, arguing
persuasively that the technical problems in rent theory (and in political economy
generally?) seem insurmountable until we realize that they ultimately rest upon issues
concerning class power, social relations, and class struggle. "Absolute rent is political" may
not seem as compelling as "the personal is political," but it is a point well worth making.
Finally, the distinguished Italian-American historican, Philip Cannistraro, offers
a research note on the identification of "Maria" -- Maria Guidice -- in the writing of
Angelica Balabanoff. Both women were important figures in the Italian socialist and, later,
communist movements. Sorting out their lives and resurrecting their contributions
illuminates the history of socialist movements in Italy in mid-20th century.
The final item (excepting book reviews, of course) is a review article by William
Robinson on Justin Rosenberg's The Follies of Globalization Theory. Robinson, co-author
with Jerry Harris of the article, cited above, that started the current round of TCC theory
discussion, here surveys a major contribution to the critique of the massive "globaloney"
industry; his review essay is thus another entry in the current debate aiming to provide
thinking about globalization with solid Marxist foundations.
D. L.
