Ali Rattansi

Bio: Ali Rattansi is an academic researcher from University of Leicester. The author has contributed to research in topics: Emancipation & Capitalism. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 11 publications receiving 687 citations.

The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Abstract: The central unifying theme in the Manuscripts is the alienation of labour under capitalist conditions of private ownership and its transcendence and abolition under communism. The doctrine of total emancipation which, as I have argued, was crucial in enabling Marx to assimilate ‘class’ and the ‘division of labour’ in his work is much more clearly articulated here and eloquently expressed. Communism, Marx argues, is ‘the positive transcendence of all estrangement’; the abolition of private property, communism: is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature — the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and knows itself to be this solution.27 The vision of communism Marx unfolds in the Manuscripts derives much of its force from his remarkable analysis of the alienation of labour and is clearly underpinned by a preconception of truly human, free productive activity. Man’s productive interchange with nature is in fact taken as the defining characteristic of the species: ‘the productive life is the life of the species’; and Marx is careful to point out that while an animal can also be said to engage in production it ‘only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young’.

The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)

Abstract: The immediate occasion for the composition of this work was the publication of Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a self-taught intellectual from Besancon who had started life as a printer, was at this time an important figure in the radical movement and he had met Marx in Paris in the winter of 1844–5.4 Proudhon may have had some influence on Marx’s views at that point, but by the time he published System of Economic Contradictions or The Philosophy of Poverty it seems clear that he and Marx had decisively parted company on theoretical and political grounds. Nearly twenty years later Marx recalled that just before Proudhon published The Philosophy of Poverty he wrote to Marx announcing this ‘in a very detailed letter in which he said, among other things: “I await the lash of your criticism”. This soon fell upon him in my Misere de la Philosophie’, Marx continued, ‘in a fashion which ended our friendship for ever.’5

Production in General, the Labour Process and the Division of Labour

Abstract: It has been my argument that in transforming his theoretical starting point from exchange to production in the 1850s and 1860s, Marx found himself compelled to reflect afresh upon the conditions of existence of human production as such and its relation to the exigencies of what he referred to as ‘large-scale’ production, abstracted from their concrete realisation in social formations, characterised by forms of commodity production and class relations, and that the first fruits of this retheorisation are evident in the Introduction to the Grundrisse. It is also the contention here that this led Marx, in turn, to revise his earlier belief in the possibility of a complete emancipation from the division of labour in a future classless society and that in Capital and subsequent writings Marx’s remarks on the transformation of the division of labour in future society should primarily be understood as referring to one fundamental aspect of the differentiation of productive tasks: the division between intellectual and manual labour.

The Capitalist Transformation of the Division of Labour

Abstract: The development of capitalism brought in its wake a quite unprecedented multiplication of productive forces and a fundamental reorganisation of the labour process and the division of labour. Marx’s account of these profound transformations remained unmatched until the recent resurgence of interest in the capitalist labour process. Yet the brilliance of Marx’s analysis does not derive merely from the shrewd use of contemporary documents. Its discursive conditions of existence lie in a thorough reworking of the concept of mode of production, in turn deriving from a reconceptualisation of production in general (of which the specification of the labour process is an outstanding example) and the integration of this latter form of analysis with the theory of surplus value. Thus the delineation of the capitalist transformation of the division of labour can only be understood in the context of Marx’s more general remarks on the structure of modes of production, while its sophistication is inexplicable except as the result of the theoretical transformation which decisively separates the mature works from earlier texts.

The Early Socialists

Abstract: To treat the early socialists as a homogeneous group would be highly misleading. A wide gulf separates Fourier, for example, from Thompson and Hodgskin, or Saint-Simon and the Babouvists. What unites these different strands is their opposition to the individualist liberalism of the day and their critique of laissez faire, of the notion that competitive capitalism could be left to regulate itself without conscious intervention, planning and the development of cooperative institutions to counteract the anarchism and egoism of market society.103 Another commonality also needs emphasis, though it is of a different kind for it serves to distinguish the early socialists from the Marxist tradition: very rarely do their writings contain the argument that the establishment of socialism required the revolutionary expropriation of the bourgeoisie, or that the main actor in this drama would be the mass of propertyless factory labourers or proletariat. Suggestions of this kind were hinted at but did not become the core doctrine of any socialist school until the industrial working class began to emerge as a significant political and economic force in Britain and France in the 1830s.

A Theory of Access.

Abstract: The term "access" is frequently used by property and natural resource analysts without adequate definition. In this paper we develop a concept of access and examine a broad set of factors that differentiate access from property. We define access as "the ability to derive benefits from things," broadening from property's clas- sical definition as "the right to benefit from things." Access, following this definition, is more akin to "a bundle of powers" than to property's notion of a "bundle of rights." This formulation includes a wider range of social relationships that constrain or enable benefits from resource use than property relations alone. Using this fram- ing, we suggest a method of access analysis for identifying the constellations of means, relations, and processes that enable various actors to derive benefits from re- sources. Our intent is to enable scholars, planners, and policy makers to empirically "map" dynamic processes and relationships of access.

On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism.

Abstract: Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions. Although surprisingly common, anthropomorphism is not invariant. This article describes a theory to explain when people are likely to anthropomorphize and when they are not, focused on three psychological determinants--the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation). This theory predicts that people are more likely to anthropomorphize when anthropocentric knowledge is accessible and applicable, when motivated to be effective social agents, and when lacking a sense of social connection to other humans. These factors help to explain why anthropomorphism is so variable; organize diverse research; and offer testable predictions about dispositional, situational, developmental, and cultural influences on anthropomorphism. Discussion addresses extensions of this theory into the specific psychological processes underlying anthropomorphism, applications of this theory into robotics and human-computer interaction, and the insights offered by this theory into the inverse process of dehumanization.

The history of technological anxiety and the future of economic growth: Is this time different?

Abstract: Technology is widely considered the main source of economic progress, but it has also generated cultural anxiety throughout history. The developed world is now suffering from another bout of such angst. Anxieties over technology can take on several forms, and we focus on three of the most prominent concerns. First, there is the concern that technological progress will cause widespread substitution of machines for labor, which in turn could lead to technological unemployment and a further increase in inequality in the short run, even if the long-run effects are beneficial. Second, there has been anxiety over the moral implications of technological process for human welfare, broadly defined. While, during the Industrial Revolution, the worry was about the dehumanizing effects of work, in modern times, perhaps the greater fear is a world where the elimination of work itself is the source of dehumanization. A third concern cuts in the opposite direction, suggesting that the epoch of major technological progress is behind us. Understanding the history of technological anxiety provides perspective on whether this time is truly different. We consider the role of these three anxieties among economists, primarily focusing on the historical period from the late 18th to the early 20th century, and then compare the historical and current manifestations of these three concerns.