‘Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences’ Marx on the Economic Cell Form of the Capitalist Mode of Production

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Bob Jessop*

Lancaster University, UK
b.jessop@lancaster.ac.uk

 
 
Abstract: Marx and Engels followed the natural sciences closely and held that there was only one science: history, embracing nature and society. This contribution notes the influence of Darwinism, thermodynamics and cell biology in Marx’s critique of political economy and examines the least-discussed of these influences: cell biology. For Marx eventually settled on the value-form of the commodity, described as the economic cell form of the capitalist mode of production (CMP), as the starting point for Capital. At stake here is Marx’s deep interest in the natural sciences … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in NUMERO 5, Questioni di metodo | Lascia un commento

Le note del Capitale su Lucrezio e Darwin.

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Vittorio Morfino

Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca
vittorio.morfino@unimib.it

 
Abstract: The article takes into consideration the notes of the Capital in which Lucretius and Darwin are quoted. The author, carefully reconstructing the theoretical context in which the Latin poet and the English naturalist are mentioned, proposes an interpretation, which goes from the certain to the conjectural, of the Marxian strategy that commands these notes.
 
Keywords: Lucretius; Darwin; Spinoza; mechanicism; organicism
 
 
 
Proporrò nel breve spazio di questo articolo un’analisi del riferimento marxiano a Lucrezio e Darwin nel primo volume del Capitale. Si … Continua a leggere

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Abstract Labour and Labouring

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Werner Bonefeld*

University of York, UK
werner.bonefeld@york.ac.uk

 
 
Abstract: The paper argues that the critique of political economy amounts to a comprehension of economic categories from the actual, given relations of life, which is critique of economic things as perverted social forms. In this context, the comprehension of abstract labour is specific. Instead of conceiving of it as a capitalist modality of labour in general, it expounds abstract labour as purely social in character. Abstract labour is the value producing labour because it is the socially necessary labour, which is a real abstraction. The time of … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in NUMERO 5, Rileggere il primo libro del Capitale | 2 commenti

Il Capitale e il suo punto cieco: il denaro come tecnica di misura

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Frank Engster*

frankengster@googlemail.com

 
 
 
Abstract: In the 1960s, a logical-categorial reading of Marx’s Capital began, especially with focus on the value-form analysis, from which the so-called «New Marx Reading» in Germany was one of the outcomes. These readings on the one hand found, with the necessity of synthesizing the theory of value with that of money, the key to opening up the further development of the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, they stayed fixed on money’s second function as a medium of exchange and on money-mediated commodity exchange, remaining trapped … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in NUMERO 5, Rileggere il primo libro del Capitale | Lascia un commento

‘La bestia è l’azienda, non il fatto che abbia un padrone’. Commento al quinto capitolo del Capitale

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Massimiliano Tomba*

Università di Padova
massimiliano.tomba@unipd.it

 
 
Abstract: The first chapter of the third section of Capital, Volume 1, constitutes in many ways an Archimedean point of the entire work. In this chapter the many theoretical questions investigated in the first section are reconfigured from the perspective of the labor-process and valorization-process, acquiring a new political color. In my reconstruction, by putting the use-value at the center, I explore the diverse theoretical layers of this chapter in light of their political implication.
 
Keywords: value; use value; commodity; socially necessary work; corporeity; production; circulation… Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in NUMERO 5, Rileggere il primo libro del Capitale | 1 commento

La giornata lavorativa

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Maria Grazia Meriggi

Università degli Studi di Bergamo
mgmeriggi@fastwebnet.it

 
 
 
Abstract: Marx found the comparison among the slaves owner, the feudal lord and the capitalist owner, to show their voracity of time of life of the workers. The limitation of the working day is possible only with a double trial: contractual strength of the organized workers and productivity of the worked time.
 
Keywords: plus value; strength’s relationships; productivity
 
 
 
Parlerò da storica soprattutto e quindi cercando di dare conto della pertinenza delle analogie ed esemplificazioni storiche che Marx fornisce intorno al tema … Continua a leggere

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La scoperta del plusvalore relativo

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Maria Turchetto

Università Ca’ Foscari
turco@unive.it

 
 
 
Abstract: We analyze the Chapter 10 of Capital’s Volume I «The Concept of Relative Surplus-value» highlighting come important concepts: 1) the industrial and mass character of production as consequences of the relative surplus-value; 2) extra-profits and dissemination of innovations; 3) the combined operation of absolute and relative surplus-value.
 
Keywords: Marx; Capital chapter 10; relative surplus-value; industry; mass production
 
 
 

«il capitalismo non produce calze per regine».
(Schumpeter 1971)

 
 
 
1. Tra la terza e la quarta sezione
 
Il cap. 10 del Libro I … Continua a leggere

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Dall’anima semovente al ‘soggetto automatico’. Stratificazioni filosofiche nel concetto di ‘capitale’ e nell’analisi marxiana del sistema di macchine

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Luca Micaloni

Università La Sapienza
luca.micaloni@uniroma1.it

 
 
 
Abstract: In this paper the Author examines the philosophical implications of the Marxian analysis of the «automatic system of machinery». In the first part, he shows that the notion of «automaton» cannot be univocally assimilated to a passive and heteronomous kind of movement. In fact, it displays (both etymologically and conceptually) an affinity with the notion of «self-motion»: an «automaton» is something that finds within itself the sources and the principles of its movement. In the second part, the Author argues that Marx’s definition of «capital» as «automatic Subject» … Continua a leggere

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Tempo di lavoro e salario

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Carla Filosa

Università popolare Antonio Gramsci
asolif@tiscali.it

 
 
 
Abstract: The aim of this article is to clarify the meaning of «wage» and «labour-power» concepts, according to Marxian analysis. The feature of the labour-process as human action aimed at the production of use-values is first highlighted. It is the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence. Indeed, the process of creating surplus value is nothing but the continuation of the boundless producing value process. Thus, the prolongation of the working-day beyonds the limits of the natural day – encroaching on all life’s time – has mainly the purpose … Continua a leggere

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Una storia complessa. La teoria dell’accumulazione in Marx

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Roberto Fineschi

Siena School for Liberal Arts
r.fineschi@sienaschool.com

 
 
 
Abstract: «Accumulation» is a crucial concept in Marx’ theory of capital. Next only to the value form, this is the part that underwent the most significant changes in the different drafts of his work, since it plays a crucial role in its general structure. Its function, more than the transformation of values into prices of production, is the key point to think the continuity/discontinuity between the different abstraction levels of the theory. In this essay, we shall try to show this development and explain its more general … Continua a leggere

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La teoria marxiana dell’esercito industriale di riserva come teoria della politica economica

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Guglielmo Forges Davanzati*

Università del Salento
guglielmo.forges@unisalento.it

 
 
Abstract: This paper deals with the relation between labour market deregulation and the path of employment in Italy, based on Marx’s theory of the industrial reserve army. It will be shown that the increase in labour flexibility negatively affected the employment rate in the 2000s. Moreover, it is argued that as unemployment increases, workers’ bargaining power decreases not only in the labour market but also in the political arena, allowing the Government to implement further policies of labour flexibility. The evidence confirms this conjecture.
 
Keywords: Marx; … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in NUMERO 5, Rileggere il primo libro del Capitale | 1 commento

L’accumulazione originaria: genesi del modo di produzione capitalistico tra storia e struttura

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Sebastiano Taccola

Normal School of Pisa
sebastiano.taccola@sns.it

 
 
 
Abstract: This paper proposes a re-examination of the Marxian primitive accumulation. In the first two parts, I will sum up the Marxian exposition of the primitive accumulation as a diachronic process, which is capable to explain the historical genesis of the capitalist mode of production, especially as it took place in England (through the Enclosures Acts, the clearing of the estates, and so on). Then, I will focus on the permanence of this kind of accumulation, on the one hand (part three), as a lever that drives the … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in NUMERO 5, Rileggere il primo libro del Capitale | Lascia un commento

Da Hegel a Marx: fenomenologia dello Stato moderno capitalistico

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Carla Maria Fabiani*

carla_fab@libero.it

 
 
Abstract: In Chapter 24 of the first book of Capital, Marx deals with the modern capitalist State, emphasizing the existence of complex factors which affect it. The theoretical basis of his reflection is to be found in Hegel’s Phenomenology. He points out the violent methods that the State use against workers – the eslege proletariat – and the subsumtpion of the State to capital.
 
Keywords: State, capital, system, rabble, eslege proletariat, pauperism
 
 
 
1. Definire lo Stato: prima Hegel e poi Marx
 
È bene soffermarsi su … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in NUMERO 5, Rileggere il primo libro del Capitale | 1 commento

Divagazioni intorno al 25° capitolo del I Libro del Capitale

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Edoarda Masi (1927 – 2011)*

 
 
 
Abstract: This paper deals with Marx’s theory of colonization. It is argued that – in constrast with E.G. Wakefield’s view – Marx proposed a complete a consistent approach to the role of colonization in the dynamics of capital reproduction. In particular, he emphasized the transformation of free men in “underdeveloped” economies into wage workers.
 
Keywords: primitive accumulation; colonization; imperialism; China
 
 
 
1. Una lettura
 
Non riassumo il capitolo 25°, che è abbastanza breve e – mi sembra – di facile lettura. Marx è interessato … Continua a leggere

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Money as Money: Suzanne de Brunhoff’s Marxist Monetary Theory

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Rebecca Carson*

Kingston University, London
k1436908@kingston.ac.uk

 
Abstract: This article proposes the necessity to return to Suzanne de Brunhoff’s Marxist monetary theory in order to conceptualise the relationship between production and social reproduction within financialised capitalist social relations. De Brunhoff maintains a commitment to understanding «money as money» or money as an independent variable, with a focus on a monetary theory of credit. By representing un-valorised value, credit money cannot simply be understood as representative of reified forms of value and therefore corresponding subjection to the form cannot be interpreted from the point of view of the … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Letture, NUMERO 5 | Lascia un commento

Some Additional Reflexions on the Viewpoint of Suzanne de Brunhoff about the Critique of Political Economy

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Etienne Balibar

Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre / Kingston University, London
e.balibar@kingston.ac.uk

 
 
Bio-note: Etienne Balibar is Emeritus Professor of Political Philosophy at Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre, and currently Anniversary Chair of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. His published works include Reading Capital (1965), with Louis Althusser and others (new complete translation: Verso, 2016), and Citizen Subject. Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, Fordham University Press, 2017.
 
 
 
In this postscript to Rebecca Carson’s excellent essay, with which I have only points of agreement, I will not repeat what I had the possibility to write in a previous … Continua a leggere

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Il mondo mistico del Capitale: scienza, critica e rivoluzione in Lucio Colletti

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Gianluca Pozzoni*

Università degli Studi di Milano
gianluca.pozzoni@unimi.it

 
 
Abstract: Taking the cue from some of Lucio Colletti’s unpublished letters and writings, this article will focus on Colletti’s work from the 1967-1973 period. Here, Colletti interprets Marx’s theory of value in terms of a «real abstraction» – i.e. in terms of the alienation of individual private labours. By turning this abstraction into an object and by reifying it, capital becomes for Colletti an inherently “upside-down” social reality, whose knowledge can only be acquired through the critique and upturning of its idealism. The originality of Colletti’s Marxism … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Letture, NUMERO 5 | Lascia un commento

The Logic of Capital. Interview with Chris Arthur

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Christopher Arthur

(Formerly of the) University of Sussex
arthurcj@waitrose.com

 

Luca Micaloni

Sapienza Università di Roma
luca.micaloni@uniroma1.it

 
 
Bio-note: Christopher J. Arthur (1940 – ) studied at the universities of Nottingham and Oxford. For 25 years he taught Philosophy at the University of Sussex, UK. He is the author of: The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital (2002), and of Dialectics of Labour: Marx and his Relation to Hegel (1986). He edited and introduced: The German Ideology by Marx and Engels (1970; revised 1974); Law and Marxism by E. B. Pashukanis (third imprint, 1989); Engels Today: A Centenary AppreciationContinua a leggere

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Moishe Postone’s New Reading of Marx: the Critique of Political Economy as a Critical Theory of the Historically Specific Social Form of Labor

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Chris O’Kane

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
cokane@jjay.cuny.edu

 
 
Abstract: This article examines Moishe Postone’s new reading of the critique of political economy. Part One contextualizes the underlying justification of Postone’s interpretation of Marx by discussing his critique of traditional marxism and frankfurt school critical theory. Part Two exposits Postone’s interpretation of the fundamental categories of Capital in Time, Labor and Social Domination from this perspective: arguing that Postone attempts to rejuvenate Marxian critical theory by conceiving of the critique of political economy as a critique of the historically specific and contradictory dynamic of abstract … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Letture, NUMERO 5 | 2 commenti

The Adventures of Vergesellschaftung

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Riccardo Bellofiore

Università degli Studi di Bergamo
riccardo.bellofiore@unibg.it

 
 
 
Abstract: This paper engages in a dialogue with opposite approaches whose importance is that they take seriously the issues of abstract labour and capitalist ‘socialisation’ (Vergesellschaftung). On the one side there is Michael Heinrich’s view about the Marxian ‘monetary theory of value’, stressing the nachträgliche Vergesellschaftung, whereas abstract labour exists only in monetary circulation of commodities, hence in ex post ‘socialisation’, within a non-commodity money approach. On the other side, there is Roberto Finelli, insisting that labour is already immediately fully ‘social’. This latter position is untenable … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Letture, NUMERO 5 | Lascia un commento

Consecutio rerum 4, anno II (2/2017-2018)

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Patologie sociali

Percorsi nella teoria critica contemporanea

a cura di Giorgio Fazio

 
 

 
 … Continua a leggere

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Indice

Editoriale

Giorgio Fazio: Patologie sociali. Itinerari nella teoria critica contemporanea

Monografica

Roberto Finelli: L’estenuazione democratica della Scuola di Francoforte. Note critiche su Axel Honneth e Rahel Jaeggi
 
Rahel Jaeggi: Patologie del lavoro
 
Martin Saar: La forma del potere. Immanenza e critica
 
Arvi Särkelä, Arto Laitinen: Tra normativismo e naturalismo: Honneth sul concetto di “patologia sociale”
 
Corrado Piroddi: Patologie della società e filosofia sociale: nuove prospettive dalla Finlandia
 
Emmanuel Renault: Critica sociale e conoscenza
 
Jean-Philippe Deranty: Una materialità rimossa: recuperare il materialismo nella teoria del riconoscimento di
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Patologie sociali. Itinerari nella teoria critica contemporanea

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Giorgio Fazio

Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
giorgiofazio77@gmail.com

 
 
1. Una quarta generazione della Scuola di Francoforte, non più solo tedesca
 
È merito di Axel Honneth, l’esponente di spicco della cosiddetta terza generazione della Scuola di Francoforte, aver rilanciato nel dibattito filosofico e sociologico degli ultimi anni il concetto di “patologie sociali”, offrendo così un quadro di raccordo teorico a tutto un filone di ricerca, che tuttora alimenta alcune delle direzioni più vivaci e avvertite del pensiero critico contemporaneo.

A partire dall’importante saggio del 1996 Patologie del sociale, in cui per la prima volta si è … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Editoriale | Lascia un commento

L’estenuazione democratica della Scuola di Francoforte. Note critiche su Axel Honneth e Rahel Jaeggi

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Roberto Finelli

Università degli Studi RomaTre
roberto.finelli@uniroma3.it

 
 
 
Abstract: The essay intends to present critical considerations on some limits and fragilities of the thought of Axel Honneth and Rahel Jaeggi, respectively. The Author maintains that the abandonment of the dialectical tradition, which is fully apparent in both authors, produces remarkable theoretical problems. Their strong exposure to the influence of American pragmatism and the acceptance, especially by Jaeggi, of Helmuth Plessner’s anthropology of indeterminacy, leads to an excessive emphasis on intersubjective relations and to a too simplified view of the infrasubjective complexity of human individuality. The … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Monografica | 1 commento

Patologie del lavoro

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Rahel Jaeggi

Humboldt Universität, Berlin
rahel.jaeggi@staff.hu-berlin.de

 
 
 
Abstract: Considering “pathologies of work” in the context of a historico-normative reconstruction of the meaning of work as social cooperation, the paper intends to establish a connection between a number of different problems. These include the continued existence of exploitation and alienation as well as the precariousness of work and long-term unemployment. Borrowing a phrase from Hegel, work is conceived as “sharing, participating or partaking in the universal resources of society”, where “resources” include wealth as well as competencies. e above-mentioned pathologies of work can then be understood as … Continua a leggere

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La forma del potere. Immanenza e critica

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Martin Saar

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
saar@em.uni-frankfurt.de

 
 
 
Abstract: Foucault’s analysis of power is still a key topic in contemporary social-political discussions. Insofar as power is inherent in every field of society, it permeates and shapes every social relationship. Consequently, freedom, the possibility of action and subjectivity can no longer be conceived as independent of power and opposed to it, but rather they turn out to be intrinsically connected to power. The aim of this article is to show that Foucault’s analysis and critique of power (understood as a theory of the “multiple forms” and of … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Monografica | Lascia un commento

Tra normativismo e naturalismo: Honneth sul concetto di “patologia sociale”

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Arvi Särkelä

University of Lucerne
arvi.saerkelae@unilu.ch

Arto Laitinen

University of Tampere, UTA
arto.laitinen@uta.fi

 
 
 
Abstract: Axel Honneth has revitalized the notion of “social pathology” as a critical concept for social philosophy and Critical Theory; he has even defined the task of social philosophy in terms of pathology diagnosis and that of Critical Theory as a diagnosis and therapy of social pathology. Social philosophy is then oriented towards a “deeper” layer of reality, a “higher” order of wrongs or the “society itself”. This level, which marks the jurisdiction of a distinctively social philosophy, would not be reached … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Monografica | Lascia un commento

Patologie della società e filosofia sociale: nuove prospettive dalla Finlandia

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Corrado Piroddi

University of Jyväskylä / University of Tampere
copirodd@student.jyu.fi

 
 
 
Abstract: The main aim of the paper is to illustrate the distinctive features of the Finnish school of critical theory and social philosophy. In this respect, it will provide a concise description of the philosophical work of some of its members: Onni Hirvonen, Heikki Ikäheimo, Arto Laitinen and Arvi Särkelä. In the first part, we will try to describe the ways these scholars have reinterpreted Axel Honneth’s paradigm of recognition. In the second part, we will clarify how the Finnish theoreticians have discussed Honneth’s reflections … Continua a leggere

Pubblicato in Monografica | Lascia un commento