Classic Marxist
Controversies: Class, State,
Politics
Lovely old debates here about the
(in)adequacies of marxism in grasping
the modern context, largely before the
final flight from marxism towards new
'posts' . Still highly relevant today.
On the
State (aka the
Miliband-Poulantzas Debate. Conventional
British marxist understandings of the
State as an instituion colonised bythe
ruling class bump into Althusserian
marxist conceptions of the State as a
structure offering reproductive
functions for capitalism regardless of
class membership. Became a case-study to
both popularise and criticise
Althusserian stuff. Laclau intervenes
with some interesting asides about the
methodological issues involved in the
debate. Poulantzas has the last word.
Very relevant issues for today.)
Poulantzas 'The
Problem of the Capitalist State'
Miliband 'Reply
to Nicos Poulantzas'
Miliband
'Poulantzas and the Capitalist State'
Laclau 'The
specificity of the political: the
Poulantzas-Miliband debate'
Poulantzas 'The
Capitalist State: A reply to Miliband
and Laclau'
(and see also my notes on Poulantzas's
books on social
class and on the modern state)
Problems
With Marxist Theories (
especially as represented by the
substantial and influential critique of
Hindess and Hirst, which pointed to
serious incosistencies of a particular
kind in marxist theory. Just about every
marxist position, and most sociological
ones, came under fire.The selections
below focus on the implications for
class and the State.)
Hirst 'Economic
Classes and Politics'
Hindess
'Philosophy and Methodology in the
Social Sciences', ch. 7
Hall, S 'The
Political and the Economic in Marx's
Theory of Social Classes'
On
post-marxism (Part of the great
debate about the work of Laclau and
Mouffe whose work was to influence a
great deal of modernised 'designer
marxism' in Britain via various organs
such as Marxism Today. The
work also posed great problems for the
gramscians, because L&M drew from
Gramsci but took inotions like hegemony
one step further into 'discourse theory'
-- a step too far for the British
gramscians ( like S Hall) who saw this
as a move away from marxism altogether.
Judge for yourselves as you review this
interchange between Geras and L&M in
the pages of New Left Review in the
1980s and a much more recent commentary
by Townshend on what happend next).
Geras
'Post-Marxism?'
Laclau and Mouffe
'Post-Marxism Without Apologies' [a
reply to Geras]
Geras 'Ex-Marxism
Without Substance...' [a reply to
L&M's reply]
Townshend 'Laclau
and Mouffe's Hegemonic Project: The
Story So Far' [recent
critical commentary]
See also Collier
on marxist epistemology to see off
discourse theorists
State
and 'Legitimation Crisis' (This
section introduces some work by
Habermas and Offe on the state and
its crisis tendencies. The work
starts with a critical account of
the Welfare State characteristic of
social democracy in the 1970s and
1980s, and helped predict the
'neo-conservative turn'. The idea of
inherent crisis cheered up a lot of
marxists and others [I am
sidestepping the issues of whether
Habermas is a marxist], although
some bits of Habermas are as gloomy
as ever about the future. It also
introduces a theme which continues
to be of great importance in
Habermas's work -- the idea of a
'public sphere'.)
Offe 'Structural
Problems of the Capitalist
State...'
Offe and Ronge
'Theses on the Theory of the
State'
Habermas
'Legitimation Crisis'
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