{"title":"Negativity as the Compass of Revolution: A Marxist Rejection of the No-Alternative Ethos","authors":"Saladdin Ahmed","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.3.409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.3.409","url":null,"abstract":"While the famous Thatcherian slogan “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) has been widely internalized, Marxism remains capable of negating capitalism. The no-alternative ethos may be countered, from a Marxian philosophical perspective, by means of a negativity thesis framed around the following two intertwined arguments. First, capitalist hegemony is itself a reason for a revolutionary project that aims at a world in which alternatives are not thought to be impossible. Second, Marxism does not offer a prefigurative model for communism, and this is not a shortcoming but a merit: communism cannot be known positively under the limiting conditions of capitalism. Given that communism is historical, expecting an a priori model of the communist society amounts to committing an idealist fallacy.","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114547457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transnational Rivalries and Left Politics: An Amsterdam School Perspective on Turkey's “Ergenekon” Trials","authors":"M. G. Senalp, M. Küçüker, Esra Şengör Şenalp","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.3.343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.3.343","url":null,"abstract":"The Ergenekon trials were among the most controversial issues in the recent political history of Turkey. It is still worth reconsidering the liberal, nationalist, and socialist-left circles' variegated responses to the subject matter. The first two were doomed to fail since each attached itself to one side of the intra-state struggles. Although the socialist left's approach was enlightening in many ways, there is a significant shortcoming in its theoretical references to explain the inherent transnational rivalries. An alternative research agenda offered by the Amsterdam School could enrich its conceptual toolkit in more comprehensive ways. To evaluate this potentiality, we need to engage in two conceptual problems regarding the theory: 1) Could the concept of state-class be helpful to analyze the political economy of Turkey's Ergenekon trials? 2) Could any key social/class force be distinguished to shed light upon the transnational aspect of the process?","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131142788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Household Production, Household Activity, and Human Development","authors":"Paddy Quick","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.248","url":null,"abstract":"In a socialist mode of production, human activity is no longer constrained by the capitalist need to maximize surplus labor, and correspondingly minimize necessary labor. The guiding principle for its organization can therefore be the development and realization of human potential. Some idea of what this could consist of can be derived from observations of the struggle by both wage laborers and household laborers for such goals within the capitalist mode of production, a struggle that is distinct from that necessary to resist the capitalist appropriation of surplus labor. In so doing, it directs attention to the large proportion of the human activity of the working class within capitalist societies that takes the form of household labor, relative to wage labor, and thus its potential significance for the restructuring of human activity in a socialist mode of production.","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124296327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negotiated Coordination and Socialist Democracy","authors":"P. Devine","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.140","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131345443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Three Stages in the Development of Socialism","authors":"Enfu Cheng","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.159","url":null,"abstract":"Socialism passes through three stages, which capture the qualitative transformation of the relations of production caused by changes in the productive forces. Specifically, the primary stage = public ownership as central (private ownership as supplement) + market-based distribution according to labor as central (distribution according to capital as supplement) + state(plan-) dominated market economy. The intermediate stage = multiple forms of public ownership + multiple commodity-type distribution according to labor + state-dominated planned economy (market adjustment as supplement). Finally, advanced socialism = singleform public ownership by entire society + product-based distribution according to labor + complete planned economy. Communism = single-form public ownership by entire society + product-based distribution according to need + fully planned economy. By contrast, the modern capitalist economic system = private ownership + distribution according to capital + state-directed market economy. This new theory of the three stages of socialism reasonably coordinates the various systemic criteria in the Marxist classics, and helps reveal the inherent connection between the primary stage of socialism and the great systemic goal of communism.","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"117 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124142094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Systemic Socialism: A Model of the Models","authors":"D. Laibman","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.225","url":null,"abstract":"Ameliorative socialism is a set of democratic, egalitarian and humane values. Systemic socialism, by contrast, projects the general features of a social structure distinct from capitalism — a qualitatively different and superior way of organizing the core metabolic processes of society's production and reproduction. Diverse models of systemic socialism have been debated. These vary widely in their conceptions of organization — from highly central to completely decentralized; and in the mode of regulation envisioned — from entirely quantitative to reliant on qualitative political relations. It is now high time to search for the connections among the various models, in the interest of convergence toward an inclusive and rigorous scientific foundation for democratic advance and ever-greater fulfillment of human potential. The proposed model, “Multilevel Democratic Iterative Coordination” (MDIC), offers the best prospects for synthesis and progress in the envisioning of systemic socialism.","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115919363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"(En)Visioning Socialism IV: Raising the Future in Our Imaginations Before Raising It in Reality","authors":"","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.137","url":null,"abstract":"We pre-suppose labor in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. — Marx, Capital, Vol. I, ch. 7, sec. 1","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133142604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Participatory Economy: What Have We Learned?","authors":"R. Hahnel","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.145","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116324410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Potentials and Limits of Computing Technologies for Socialist Planning","authors":"Güney Işıkara, Özgür Narin","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.269","url":null,"abstract":"The notion of productive forces is usually grasped from a narrow perspective which reduces its content to technology and productivity. The distinction between force (Kraft) and its expression (Äußerung) plays a key role in Marx's dialectical analysis. Insofar as force is the outcome of a relation in dialectics, productive forces comprise an active element, namely labor. It is through the mediation of this active element that relations of production intervene in the process of expression of productive forces, which indicates the agency, that is the subversive subject, its empowerment and possibilities. Under capitalism, all aspects of individual and social life are reduced parameters to serve the overriding principle of profit maximization. Only the empowerment of working people can avoid such parameterization of society, which requires the abolition of the law of value as well as private property in the means of production, but is not granted by this abolition. The empowerment of workers is not an outcome of the advancement of productive forces, but is rather a significant element of the latter.","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"104 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117188636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Work Emancipation and Human Creativity: The Wage-for-Life Alternative","authors":"Ingrid Hanon","doi":"10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2022.86.2.204","url":null,"abstract":"The crises of the present call for us to envision a communist alternative aiming at emancipating work and liberating human creativity: a mode of production for which wealth is the development of the “universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures,” of “creative potentialities” and “all human power” (Marx, 1993, 488). For this purpose, the wage-for-life system, built off the proposal of the French economist and sociologist Bernard Friot, can play a crucial role. Friot conceived a communist mode of production based upon expansion of the wage socialization mechanisms of the welfare institutions and the constitution of an alternative measure of wealth. Imagining a radically different mode of production and set of social relations, Friot's model addresses the need for subverting the category of value itself, making it the starting point for the conception of a new society in which work can be autonomous, creative, free.","PeriodicalId":132404,"journal":{"name":"Science & Society","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121593534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}