Introduction -- Karl Marx's concept of alienation -- Objectification, alienation, and estrangement -- Other origins of alienation and objectification -- Marx's account of alienation : from early to late -- The alienated object of production : commodity fetishism -- The alienated means of production : machine fetishism -- Machines and the transformation of work -- Marx's energeticist turn -- The first law of thermodynamics -- From arbeit to arbeitskraft -- The second law of thermodynamics -- Machines in the communist future (...) -- Technology and the boundaries of nature -- Material wealth and value : the Grundrisse's fragment on machines -- The strife between technology and capital : the fall in the rate of profit -- Enjoyment not value : challenging the logic of exhaustion -- Man himself as fixed capital -- Class kinship and the redistribution of the means of production -- Machines in the capitalist reality -- Between thermodynamics and humanism : approaching capital -- Machinery as an historical category of production -- Machines, trains, and other capitalist monsters -- Rough, foul-mouthed boys : women's monstrous laboring bodies -- Wage labor and race -- Wage labor and sexuality -- Machinery and revolution -- Alienation beyond Marx -- Science and technology in Marx's excerpt notebooks -- Karl Marx and Charles Babbage -- Machines and temporality : the treadmill effect and free time -- Technophobia and technophilia -- Technophobia and twentieth-century theory. (shrink)
Karl Marx claims that alienation inheres in all wage labor. I raise questions about the applicability of this claim to subjects of patriarchy. In the first section, I discuss industrial wage labor and its allure for women who were trying to escape the norms of familial patriarchy. In the second section, I extend this criticism of Marx’s claim by considering the racially enslaved subjects of the Antebellum American South, for whom economicallyrecognized wage labor was still a bloody political battle. Finally, (...) I turn to the identification of working class women and sexuality, in order to show how wage labor offered liberation from narrow bourgeois sexual strictures. I conclude by reassessing the viability of Marx’s critique of alienation, taking into account the standpoints from which wage labor itself was a considerable political achievement. (shrink)
Marx claims that economic crisis is endemic to capitalism and will worsen as capitalism develops. The article situates Marx’s crisis theory within the discipline of political economy, explains its relationship to mainstream economics, charts economic crises that have happened since the 1840s, and explains Marx’s crisis theorem of the fall in the rate of profit. In conclusion, the 2008 economic crisis, and the notion of crisis in general, are speculatively considered. Special attention is given to the affective desire to own (...) a home, particularly as this is desire is developed by capitalism, in relation to the sub-prime mortgage credit crisis. (shrink)
Essay Review of New Waves in the Philosophy of Technology (Olsen/Selinger). Treats issue of difference of technology in Marx and Heidegger at some length.
The concepts that organize our thinking wield, by virtue of this fact, a great deal of political power. This book looks at five concepts whose dominion has increased, steadily, during the bourgeois period of modernity: Labor, Time, Property, Value, and Crisis. These ruling ideas are central not only to many academic disciplines— from philosophy and law to the political, social, and economic sciences— but also to everyday life.
Amy Wendling contends in this book that Marx’s concern with alienation is not restricted to his early, more explicitly Hegelian writings, and that it can be seen to evolve throughout his work in tandem with his interest in technology. This evolution, according to Wendling, is marked by his transition between two successive scientific paradigms, both of which pertain to the status of labour and machinery within society. Wendling claims that Marx uses the distinction between them as a (...) means of conducting an immanent critique of capitalist ideology. Consequently, although it is primarily a work of intellectual history, this book offers an interesting contribution to the hermeneutics of Marx’sCapital. In addition, it also bears relation to contemporary discussions concerning real subsumption and the abolition of labour. The book’s general argument raises questions as to the degree to which a conception of alienation must rely upon notions of human essence, and upon an idea of a ‘natural’ and ‘authentic’ humanity. Wendling’s responses to those questions are described as problematic within this review, but they are also acknowledged to be both pertinent and intriguing. (shrink)
Neste artigo, argumento que a abordagem de Amy Allen a respeito da questão de gênero em The Politics of Our Selves é precária e parcial na medida em que é focada em uma análise da sujeição que visa explicar “como indivíduos subordinados se tornam psiquicamente atados à sua própria subordinação”. Embora este seja um aspecto inegável da subordinação de gênero, não expressa a complexidade das suas causas materiais e simbólicas. A minha tese central é a de que Allen não oferece (...) o melhor modelo para a Teoria Crítica feminista à luz das complexidades das sociedades capitalistas, muito menos, ouso dizer, para as lutas feministas no Sul Global, profundamente marcado pela pobreza, pela desigualdade social, pelo racismo e outros tipos de violência contra a mulher. (shrink)
Of general interest, this study confirms the syntactic manifestation of the interpersonal dynamics of the participants in discourse and of their high-level cognitive processes therein. More specifically, this study formalizes categories of the Spanish indicative and subjunctive in a cognitive map based on the deictic organization of the Spanish mood system. This cognitive map, based on a pragmasyntactic approach to mood use, allows us to view mood in Spanish as a mechanism that establishes metaphorical distance from the individual¿s here and (...) now. This study treats the indicative and subjunctive moods of Spanish with special attention to the so-called ¿factive¿ clauses [those clauses subordinated to matrices of subjective comment such as me alegro que (I am glad that), es bueno que (It is good that), no me gusta que (I don¿t like it that), etc. and mental act matrices such as darse cuenta de que (to realize that), tomar en consideración que (to take into account that), etc.]. We propose an approach to analyzing mood use that is based on the information value of an utterance in discourse. In considering information value we take into account (a) Lambrecht¿s (1994) work featuring presuppositions as inherent parts of certain syntactical structures; (b) Mejías-Bikandi¿s (1994) claim that the subjective comment structure in Spanish (subjective comment + que + clause marked with subjunctive) inherently contains a pragmatic presupposition; (c) Mejías-Bikandi¿s reaffirmation that assertion is the role of the indicative and non-assertion is the role of the subjunctive in Spanish; (d) Lunn¿s (1988, 1989a & b) suggestion that the indicative is used to assert propositions with high information value while the subjunctive¿s role is to not assert propositions with low information value; and (e) Lambrecht¿s (1994) ideas on what constitutes information. We assume that non-assertion, including pragmatic presupposition, and asserted propositions work together to create the relative information value of utterances. We show how the information value of utterances can be organized by means of deixis to create a cognitive map. The graphic design for the three dimensional version, which incorporates the notion of the time line with that of metaphorical distance from any individual¿s deictic center, was inspired by Langacker¿s (1991) Cognitive Gram- mar. (shrink)
In nature, cells face a variety of stresses that cause physical damage to the plasma membrane and cell wall. It is well established that evolutionarily conserved cell cycle checkpoints monitor various cellular perturbations, including DNA damage and spindle misalignment. However, the ability of these cell cycle checkpoints to sense a damaged plasma membrane/cell wall is poorly understood. To the best of our knowledge, our recent paper described the first example of such a checkpoint, using budding yeast as a model. In (...) this review, we will discuss this important question as well as provide hypothetical explanations to be tested in the future. (shrink)
The paper examines the legal, ethical, and public policy issues involved in the Union Carbide gas leak in India which caused the deaths of over 3000 people and injury to thousands of people. The paper begins with a historical perspective on the operating environment in Bhopal, the events surrounding the accident, then discusses an international situation audit examining internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats faced by Union Carbide at the time of the accident. There is a discussion (...) of management of the various interests involved in international public relations and ethical issues. A review of the financial ratio analysis of the company prior and subsequent to the accident follows, then an examination of the second tragedy of Bhopal — the tragic failure of the international legal system to adequately and timely compensate victims of the accident.The paper concludes with recommendations towards public policy, as well as a call for congressional action regarding international safety of U.S. based multinational operations. (shrink)
Of general interest, this study confirms the syntactic manifestation of the interpersonal dynamics of the participants in discourse and of their high-level cognitive processes therein. More specifically, this study formalizes categories of the Spanish indicative and subjunctive in a cognitive map based on the deictic organization of the Spanish mood system. This cognitive map, based on a pragmasyntactic approach to mood use, allows us to view mood in Spanish as a mechanism that establishes metaphorical distance from the individual’s here and (...) now. This study treats the indicative and subjunctive moods of Spanish with special attention to the so-called ‘factive’ clauses [those clauses subordinated to matrices of subjective comment such asme alegro que,es bueno que,no me gusta que, etc. and mental act matrices such asdarse cuenta de que,tomar en consideración que, etc.]. We propose an approach to analyzing mood use that is based on the information value of an utterance in discourse. In considering information value we take into account Lambrecht’s work featuring presuppositions as inherent parts of certain syntactical structures; Mejías-Bikandi’s claim that the subjective comment structure in Spanish inherently contains a pragmatic presupposition; Mejías-Bikandi’s reaffirmation that assertion is the role of the indicative and non-assertion is the role of the subjunctive in Spanish; Lunn’s suggestion that the indicative is used to assert propositions with high information value while the subjunctive’s role is to not assert propositions with low information value; and Lambrecht’s ideas on what constitutes information. We assume that non-assertion, including pragmatic presupposition, and asserted propositions work together to create the relative information value of utterances. We show how the information value of utterances can be organized by means of deixis to create a cognitive map. The graphic design for the three dimensional version, which incorporates the notion of the time line with that of metaphorical distance from any individual’s deictic center, was inspired by Langacker’s Cognitive Gram- mar. (shrink)
In his provocative book War and Self-Defense, David Rodin criticizes attempts to justify national defense based on an analogy between the individual and the state. In doing so, he treats state personality as an analogy to the personality of the individual. Yet the state possesses the key attributes of moral personality, including a conception of the good life and a sense of justice. The state's unobservable – but nevertheless real – moral personality means that it also possessed the right to (...) defend the continued existence of that personality against an attack. Subject to the same constraints that are placed on individuals, such as necessity and proportionality, the state possesses the right to national defense based on its own personality. (shrink)
Recent scholarship has tied duties of distributive justice to the existence of coercive institutions. This body of work argues that, because the international system lacks institutions that can coerce individuals in the same manner as domestic institutions, there are no international obligations to address relative poverty and inequality. Proponents of this view use it to support the existence of a compatriot preference that requires us to meet the needs of compatriots before meeting those of the global poor. Even supposing distributive (...) justice to be linked to coercion, coercive institutions do exist at the international level. These institutions coerce states rather than individuals, but their ability to coerce gives rise to duties of economic redistribution between states. (shrink)
