Editors: Ali Yalçın Göymen, Melek Zorlu, Muammer Kaymak, Mustafa Kemal Coşkun
New Horizons by Marx’s Ethnological 
Notebooks: Clues about Marx’s Thought on the Oppression and Emancipation of Women
Melda Yaman
Although Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks were not completed, they provide some clues about his latest thoughts on the various aspects of social relations in primitive communal societies, the relationship between men and women, the process of transition from communal property to private property, the formation of classes and social stratification and the origin of the state. Many researchers have pointed to the emphasis on gender in the notebooks, and concluded that Marx returned to the issues of his early works. I agree with them and in this article, I will try to look at the Ethnological Notebooks from a socialist feminist point of view, and I will pursue the clues of Marx’s ideas about the oppression of women, the origins of patriarchy, the relations between women and men in history and the “human possibilities” of women’s liberation. However, I believe that this view may be further advanced, and I think that Marx was on the eve of a larger study which deals with issues such as the development of societies, the formation of classes and the state, the history of communal and private property together with the relationship between men and women and the family institution.
Keywords: Ethnological Notebooks of Marx, origin of the patriarchy, socialist feminism, women’s liberation.
Class Struggle and Law: In the Wake of Marx’s Method
Kasım Akbaş
The present article can be seen as an effort to reveal the means of a Marxian analysis of law. Dialectics shall be the methodological instrument for such a discussion, whereas political economy determines the limits of the relative autonomy of law as a super structural institution. Due to the understandings that “law directly reflects the economic base”, “it is an ideological formation”, and “it is a repressive apparatus of dominant classes”; within the Marxian literature, law is either given an inadequate place or seen as a secondary issue, which supposed to wither away. However, not only Marx and Engels provide a dynamic evaluation stand about the position of law within the class struggle, but also the national and international political developments ascertain the need for considering the concepts of law, rights, and justice as specific forms of class struggle.
Keywords: Class struggle, rights, form, methodology, dialectics, critical realism.
Abstract Labour as Real Abstraction and its Significance for Socialist Planning
Özgür Öztürk
As Alfred Sohn-Rethel has shown, one of the distinguishing aspects of Marx’s thought is the “real abstraction”. In contrast with the traditional philosophical approach that restricts the abstract to the domain of thinking, this concept expresses that social relations can also have an abstract quality. Indeed, commodity exchange is performed in abstraction from use value. Sohn-Rethel’s contribution is important, but his focus on circulation and exchange creates some problems because Marx’s real abstractions are not limited with the exchange abstraction; “abstract labour” is also a real abstraction. Moreover, there are some expressions of Marx that show that he does not conceive abstract labour only in relation with commodity exchange. What is more important, abstract labour basically means that, in capitalist production, labours of individuals are equalized in an abstract way. This fact has a huge importance for the socialist construction process. A planning system that tends towards equating everyone’s labour will make the calculation of labour time contents of labour products easier, as well as making it possible to eliminate the money form.
Keywords: Marx, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, real abstraction, abstract labour.
Marxism and Labor History : The Mist of the Cultural Turn Dissolves
İbrahim Sarıkaya
In this study, the historical development of Marxism and the transformation of labor historiography in resonance with the former is explained through various examples. Labor history has an intrinsic political content and this political nature is discussed through the Arif Dirlik’s concept of activist epistemology. I argue that cultural turn reduced class to a linguistic category and labor historiography to an academic variant of postmodern culturalism. For a historical review from classical labor history to cultural turn, F. Engels’s The Condition of English Working Class, E.P. Thompson’s The Making of English Working Class and D. Chakrabarty’s Rethinking Working Class History Bengal 1890 to 1940 are discussed in detail. Lastly, Global Labor History as a sign of cultural turn’s diminishing effect in labor history is discussed critically through the works of Marcel van der Linden who is a leading figure of GLH.
Keywords: Labor history, Marxism, historiography, cultural turn, activist epistemology.
Software: A Crossroad Between Real Subsumption, General Intellect and Relative
Surplus Value
Ahmet Gire
In this article, the current situation of production relations in software will be examined. In order to investigate this relations, the concepts of Marx will be discussed. First of all, it will be observed how computer programs, the final product in the field of software, are involved in the process of production and consumption, and secondly, the labor processes that operate the production of this product will be adverted. Thus, to examine how software affects general production relations, and to analyze how production relations are established within the software sector are aimed, finally.
General intelligence concept which belongs to Marx’s approaches will often be used for this debate. It is expected that general intelligence will be an important conceptual basis in understanding the effect of software production on the other sectors, and the effect that the flow which is software developers are included. On the other hand, the limitations of the concept of “immaterial labor” will also be one of the discussion topics of this article. The answers which is given by using immaterial labor will be tested with relations of production on the office. In conclusion, this article aims to demystify the software which is blurred by artificial intelligence and
Industry 4.0 discussions.
Keywords: Software, Marx, General Intellect, Surplus Value, Immaterial Labor, Agile.
Sexual Capitalism: Marxist Reflections on Sexual Politics, Culture and Economy in the 21st Century
Paul Reynolds
Between Marx, Marxism and Marxisms: Readings of Marx’s Theory
Ingo Elbe
