Showing papers in "Economy and Society in 1975"

On the economic identification of the new middle class

Abstract: This essay attempts to define the new middle class from an economic standpoint, with particular reference to the capitalist production relations. These relations bind the three elements of the capitalist production process and can be regarded from the view point of the ownership of the means of production, of productiveness, and of the function performed (i.e. whether the agent performs the function of capital or the function of labour). Thus, the capitalist production relations are the relations binding (1) the non-owner of the means of production/the producer/the labourer (2) the owner of the means of production/the non-producer/the non-labourer and (3) the means of production. Thus, the element of the function performed is introduced within the capitalist production relations. A sizable part of the essay attempts to define precisely what is the meaning of performing the function of labour (i.e. to be the labourer) and of performing the function of capital (i.e. to be the non-labourer). Once this has be...

The destruction of natural economy

Abstract: The necessities of the expanded reproduction of capitalism result in the articulation of the capitalist mode of production with ‘precapitalist’ modes. The nature of this articulation and its consequences for the ‘pre-capitalist’ mode of production is a function, first and predominantly, of the needs of the capitalist mode and second, of the internal structure of the ‘pre-capitalist’ mode. This proposition is demonstrated through an examination and critique of Rosa Luxemburg and of Pierre-Phillipe Rey and is illustrated by two contrasting examples of the articulation of capitalism with two different ‘pre-capitalist’ modes of production in Peru.

Reproduction of social classes at the level of production relations

Abstract: This article starts with a discussion of the capitalist production relations which are defined as the relations binding two types of agents of production and the means of production. These relations are considered from the point of view of ownership, expropriation of value, and function performed. The ownership element is given the determinant role in the sense that the owner of the means of production is also the expropriator of surplus value (exploiter) and he who performs the function of capital (non-labourer). Vice versa for the non-owner of the means of production who is also the exploited and the performer of the function of labour (labourer). There is in this case correspondence between the determinant and the determined elements. Thus the two fundamental classes under capitalism are defined in terms of correspondence among the three aspects of the production relations. But the concept of determinantion implies both correspondence and contradiction between the determinant and the determined element...

The specificity of the political: the Poulantzas-Miliband debate

Abstract: (1975). The specificity of the political: the Poulantzas-Miliband debate. Economy and Society: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 87-110.

Anthropological texts and ideological problems: an analysis of Cohen on Arab villages in Israel ∗

Abstract: Anthropological texts, like all ideological products, are related in complex ways to social practice. Abner Cohen's Arab Border Villages in Israel is analysed as an ideological specimen which embodies contemporary anthropological practice in its typical form—the field monograph—and objectifies a specific historical reality in a politically charged manner. For understanding this text a distinction must be made between (i) its conscious analytic concerns (rooted in anthropology as a discipline dealing with colonized peoples) and (ii) its unconscious political ideological determinations (connected primarily with the Zionist Colonial character of Israel). It is argued that the coherence of Cohen's text at the unconscious, political level is the very condition of its failure at the conscious, analytic level. It is suggested that in order to be adequate at the theoretical level, Cohen would have had to break radically with anthropological practice and attack the political reality which he attempts to reflect

Facing reality—A critique of Karl Popper's empiricism

Abstract: Popper's epistemology is an attempt to RESOlve the difficulties which stem from the creation within philosophy of an abstract problem of knowledge via the antithesis of a knowing subject and a known real object. He attempts to RESOlve these difficulties by installing ‘controls’ on the knowing subject. But, even within the circle of his empiricist presuppositions, the operation of these controls is dependent upon a certain organisation of knowledge. And, more fundamentally, Popper always imposes his philosophical preconceptions about the nature of knowledge upon the theoretical discourses which he considers. Popper fails to establish the scientificity of the natural sciences and the non-scientificity of Marx and Freud.

Social theory and social action

Abstract: Modern social thought identifies social science with the conception of (1) ‘social action’ and (2) the ‘rationality’ of social action. This identification is central to the specificity of modern social thought as opposed, in particular, to Marxian social theory. In this paper we present a critical appraisal of these fundamental categories of current social science and trace out the contradictions which they entail for the theoretical comprehension of social phenomena. The contradictions intrinsic to the social action methodology, once made explicit, provide the necessary starting point for the critique of modern sociology and economics.