PROKLA - Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft
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Chinas neue Rolle im globalen Kapitalismus
Get PDFThe article provides a general overview on the current debate on the rise of China in global capitalism. In this discussion, a distinction between two theoretical currents can be made: On the one hand, most world-systems analysts assume that US power already is on the wane, while China is becoming a super power. On the other hand, some critical IPE scholars such as Leo Panitch argue that there is a continuity of US hegemony. Both arguments are tested on the basis of empirical data on China’s development and China’s power in global political economy. Also, the article discusses whether China’s potential rise may lead to violent conflicts. It is concluded that even though China might ascend to the status of being the primary economic power in the near future, structural power in global capitalism could continue to favor the West for a long period of time
Streikwelle in China: Der Anfang vom Ende des Niedriglohnmodells?
Get PDFReferring to the main theoretical approaches to the Chinese labour movement, it is argued that the recent strike wave has been exceptional due to the predominance of offensive demands, its degree of diffusion across a considerable number of factories, and the high degree of sustained worker’s activity which also translated into demands for democratic representation in some cases. Accordingly, the strike wave is interpreted as a progress towards unified class action although many obstacles and divisions remain to be overcome. The current debate about a law on collective bargaining is discussed as an important criteria in this respect because its outcome determines the state’s ability to institutionalize class conflict to a great extent
Hartz IV oder: Armut anerkannt, gefördert und gefordert
Get PDFThere is poverty in Germany; it is not only existent, though, but functional as to its competitive impact on the labour-market. By abandoning former social policies relating to the working class and a standard of living for the unemployed, German legislation affirms competition, and thus lasting poverty as a means to its end, while public opinion is occupied with issues of abstract justice beyond the nature of the specific sources of revenue
Marx und die politische Philosophie der Gegenwart
Get PDFIs Marx a „real” political thinker? Political philosophers often raise the objection that the understanding of law and politics as superstructure is incompatible with serious political reflection. The objection doesn’t note the common theoretical foundations of liberalism and Marxism. The theory of Marx nonetheless turns out to be an analytical tool which allows a better understanding of liberalism’s contradictions, as comparisons with Kant, Tocqueville, Rawls and Habermas may clarify
Elemente neuer Bürgerlichkeit: Bourgeois und Citoyen in der postdemokratischen Elitenherrschaft
Get PDFThe traditional characterization of the so called Black-Yellow coalition as a „bourgeois coalition“ elicited a broad debate over the relationship between citizens and bourgeoisie members. This debate was essentially characterized by a suppression of the connection between „bourgeois society“ and capitalism. The article recalls the relationship between “citoyen” and “bourgeois” and in this context reflects upon post-democratic attempts at „liberating“ capitalism from its vessels of democratic (class) representation. In this historic moment, citizen opposition alone will prove to be harmless. In defence of democracy it is of paramount importance to reestablish the concept of class as a political term
Postkoloniale Theorie und politische Praxis: Die Dekolonisierung Boliviens
Get PDFThe article gives a brief overview of the Latin American debates on postcolonial approaches, followed by a recent empirical example of decolonization politics in Bolivia. Finally, the scope and explanatory power of postcolonial categories will be examined in order to understand cultural diversity and social developments in Bolivia
Marxsche Theorie und Imperialimus
Get PDFFor more than a century ‘imperialism’ has been a key concept in theoretical discussions and politics, never denoting a single theoretical approach. In classical Marxist theories imperialism was seen as the notion deciphering capital’s global trajectories, to the extent that the different nation-states were not fading away despite the global character of capitalism. Many subsequent narratives of international capitalism represent alternative attempts at conceptualizing the very same problem of the ‘lack of correspondence’ between the territory of the national state on the one hand and the sphere of operations of capital. In our view, all these theoretical strategies share a common point of departure: namely, the rejection of the Marxian concept of social capital. This rejection has significant consequences for the way of understanding how class power is organized within a social formation and so the way in which we should understand imperialism. The concept of the imperialist chain opens up a fertile theoretical terrain in an endeavor to extend the Marxian problematic
China als neuer Mittelpunkt der globalen Arbeiterunruhe
Get PDFContrary to the common thesis in the literature on globalization, that the rapid growth of manufacturing in China has launched a race to the bottom concerning wages and working conditions, the rise of class struggles in China provides evidence in support of the thesis: where capital goes, labor-capital conflict shortly follows. The world historical impact of the rise of class struggle in China is evaluated by looking on different and overlapping responses by capital: geographical relocation (spatial fix), modernizing of technology and work organization, and the trajectory of the product cycle. These analytical tools are used to interpret the findings of recent fieldwork by Zhang in automobile manufacturers in China, which hint to the fact, that a stable social compact is unlikely to be reached in the „standardization phase“ of the product cycle. The implications of the further rise of labor unrest in China for the global labor movements are not yet clear. What is missing is a vision of new forms of labor organization in face of the threat of a catastrophic collapse of global capitalism
Kritik der Politik als Politikwissenschaft? Zur Aktualität der Staatstheorie von Johannes Agnoli und den Chancen einer kategorialen Marxrezeption
Get PDFAccording to most of the present exponents of a critical theory of the state, the recent transformations in statehood have to be analyzed as results of social struggle und political strategies. But most of them lack a social theory of the specific historical character of heteronomy and the relationship between structure and agency in capitalism. Therefore they tend to overestimate the degree of social contingency and the possibilities for an intrinsic reform of capitalism. The article tries to outline an alternative, but nevertheless non-functionalist, model of the specific logic of the transformations in statehood which is linked to a concept of the historical core dynamic of capitalism in general. In this way the article aims to contribute to an understanding of the vast historical changes from liberal, to Fordist, and then to neo-liberal modes of capitalism by offering a theoretical perspective to analyze the dynamic character of the capitalist reproduction of modern society
Stoffwechsel, Energie und Entropie in Marx’ Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie:: Jenseits des Podolinsky-Mythos (Teil 1)
Get PDFUntil recently, most commentators, including ecological Marxists, have assumed that Marx’s historical materialism was only marginally ecologically sensitive at best, or even that it was explicitly anti-ecological. However, research over the last decade has demonstrated not only that Marx deemed ecological materialism essential to the critique of political economy and to investigations into socialism, but also that his treatment of the coevolution of nature and society was in many ways the most sophisticated to be put forth by any social theorist prior to the late twentieth century. Still, criticisms continue to be leveled at Marx and Engels for their understanding of thermodynamics and the extent to which their work is said to conflict with the core tenets of ecological economics. In this respect, the rejection by Marx and Engels of the pioneering contributions of the Ukrainian socialist Sergei Podolinsky, one of the founders of energetics, has been frequently offered as the chief ecological case against them. Building on an earlier analysis of Marx’s and Engels’s response to Podolinsky, this article shows that they relied on an open-system, metabolic-energetic model that adhered to all of the main strictures of ecological economics – but one that also (unlike ecological economics) rooted the violation of solar and other environmental-sustainability conditions in the class relations of capitalist society. The result is to generate a deeper understanding of classical historical materialism’s ecological approach to economy and society – providing an ecological- materialist critique that can help uncover the systemic roots of today’s “treadmill of production” and global environmental crisis