Editors: Ali Yalçın Göymen, Çağlar Dölek, Fuat Ercan, Melehat Kutun
The Twentieth- Century Origins of the Class Debate: Lukács, Poulantzas, and E.P. Thompson
Cihan Özpınar
This article examines the twentieth-century origins of the class debate within the tradition of
historical materialism. By situating the class approaches of György Lukács, Nicos Poulantzas, and
E.P. Thompson on the main axis of its investigation and contrasting one approach with another,
it discusses how different epistemological approaches underlying the Marxist theory of class can
give birth to different sorts of analysis of concrete conditions, and how they can be put in relation to different political strategies. Taking these theories and debates in their historical contexts, it goes on with seeking answers to following questions: how the notions of class consciousness, class structure and class formation, and the conceptions that enact those notions, handle and define the class agency; in which ways the relationship between class agency and political strategy is organized and what consequences this relationship produces; what contributions these debates provide us with in terms of formulating a more rigorous Marxist theory of class, as well as the praxis in organic relation to this theory.
Keywords: class consciousness, class structure, class formation, agency, structure, Eurocommunism.
The class unconscious: The bearer of class objec tivitiy, the driving force of class subjectivitiy, and the soil of class consciousness
Baran Gürsel
This article aims to make a contribution to the efforts in making the notion of “class unconscious” as an object of theory, research and political reconstruction. Devoted to recognition and definition of the notion of class unconscious, this discussion will firstly deal with the double character of class experience, i.e. “being determined” and “determinig”. In this regard, the article interrogates whether the class unconscious fits in the “determined” dimension of class experience. Such an interrogation will make a particular emphasis on the necessity to adequately address the place of the consciouss and the unconcious within the dialectical interplay between subjectivity and objectivity. With a view to better comprehend this dialectical interplay, the article will porpose a model that would be the basis of making sense of the question of the “class unconscious” in relation to class experience. On this basis, the article contends that the class unconscious carries the imprints of class subjectivity, functions as a driving force of class subjectivity, and exists as a precondition as well as soil of class consciousness.
Keywords: class unconscious, experience, determination, subjectivitiy, objectivitiy.
Problematizing the Subject in Social Analysis
Vedat Ulvi Aslan
Knowledge of the social is categorically different from that of the material. Making a distinction between these two categorical formations as objects of knowledge is of methodologically crucial importance. These two objectivities also presuppose two different subjectivities. The discussion of what these subjectivities are occupies a central place in Marx’s conceptual analysis. In Marx’s analysis, this issue is implicitly handled by problematizing the question of subjectivity. The lack of discussion on this issue leads to important conceptual problems in social analysis. One of the most obvious consequences of this lack can be observed in the approaches that do not problematize the subjectivity, and where objectivitiy is taken as a thing in itself.
Keywords: subject; objectivity; subjectivity; social analysis.
The Permanence of “Ursprüngliche Akkumulation”, Mediated Domination and the State
Siyaveş Azeri
Marx’s concept of “ursprüngliche akkumulation” is a constituent of capitalism, which does not signify the prehistory of capitalism as much as it signifies its present. This article argues the continuity of capitalist accumulation process, the essential interrelation between the class, the class struggle, the state and “ursprüngliche akkumulation”, where the latter signifies the separation of the immediate producers from the means of production, and the bourgeois state as a non-sine qua constituent of capitalist accumulation. In the “appendix” section, a new Turkish term will be proposed as a proper equivalent to “ursprüngliche akkumulation”.
Keywords: “Ursprüngliche akkumulation”; accumulation; original accumulation; class; state.
Marxism and International Relations: A Praxis- Oriented Dialectics
Can Cemgil
International Relations has traditionally come to be one of the areas where Marxist theorizing has been the weakest. Despite successive attempts by Marxist scholars from theorists of imperialism to the world systems approach, Marxism is yet to offer a satisfactory resolution to the problems associated with theorizing international relations without isolating it from historical sociological and political economic processes. This article, accordingly, problematizes the possibility of a non-reductionist theory of international relations. Critically engaging with the world-systems approach, critical theory and the theory of Uneven and Combined Development, it argues that a Marxist theory of international relations is not possible if it is externally related to other disciplines of social sciences. Thereby, the article contends that a research question-guided method based on praxis and dialectics, where concrete determinations of so-called “international” affairs are taken into account regardless of which “field” they emanate from, is the most suitable method for Marxism.
Keywords: method in International Relations; Marxist dialectical method; praxis; strategies of social reproduction; ontology and epistemology in social sciences.
The Question of Form: Methodological Notes on Dialec tics and International Law
Umut Özsu
This article offers a comprehensive critical analysis of the edited volume, International Law on the Left: Re-examining Marxist Legacies, edited by Susan Marks in 2008. Interrogating methodological possibilities for the formulation of a dialectical social theory of the international legal form, the article positions itself against the crude instrumentalism which has so frequently undergirded “vulgar” Marxism as well as the kind of rote, pre-reflexive formalism which remains curiously pervasive in international legal scholarship. It draws upon Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of law in order to conceptualize the international legal form as a field of power. This yields a theory of international law that, on the one hand, roots it in relations of domination without reducing it to them, and, on the other hand, illuminates the force of its formal structures without absolutizing them. This theoretical project is accompanied with a methodological one that reconsiders politico-economic analysis in conjunction with Foucault’s discourse analysis.
Keywords: International law; form; dialectics; Marxism; Bourdieu; Foucault.
An Inquiry into the Methodological Insights of Marxism for Social Sciences: Formation of the Housing Market and the State in Turkey
Ezgi Doğru
A simple argument guides this article: Marxist scientific methodology, through its distinct way of formulating research questions, its approach to the unit analysis, and the process of abstraction, offers a powerful tool for research in social sciences. Using the housing questions as a case, this article considers the concepts of the philosophy of internal relations and the critical realism to frames stages of Marxist abstraction to show an alternative style of reasoning for conducting empiric research. This article elaborates on three stages of Marxist abstraction in conversation with the housing question. In the first stage, “real concrete”, my discussion visits a basic assumption that the housing question must be considered within a network of relations in its richness rather than an atomized occurrence. In the second stage of abstraction- ‘concrete in thought’- the following question is formulated with reference to Marx’s labour theory of value: ‘Why this content (the housing question) take this particular form (Turkish Mass Housing Administration)?’. In the third stage of abstraction, ‘the concrete in thought’, my discussion moves on to concrete again to identify the relationship between different fractions of capital and the state as they play out in the formation of housing sector. Drawing on the Marxist theories of state and the circuits of capital approach that enable my discussion to conceptualize both contradictory and complimentary the relationship among the actors, this article meditates on a tentative alternative forms of existing housing question.
Keywords: Marxism; philosophy of internal relations; critical realism; abstraction; housing; the state.
Critical Interrogations on the Relationship between Art and Capitalism
Fuat Ercan
In the recent debates on art, increasing commodification of art has been widely emphasized. Accordingly, it is claimed that the current process of commodification affects the art negatively and even brings it to the end. This paper mainly aims to criticize such interpretations. Our starting point is the determinants of the concept of commodity. We argue that the art and peculiar characteristics of artists cannot be treated on the basis of the concept of commodity. We highlight that under suppressing conditions, the art has the ability to create itself again and again by utilizing historical/contemporary sources.
Keywords: Art; artist; art product; commodity; capitalism; criticism; Marxist methodology.
Beyond “Good” and “Evil”: An Essay on Viewing People Who Live within a Dystopia
Sinan Kadir Çelik
