Marx's Open-Ended Critique

Foster, John Bellamy

doi:10.14452/mr-070-01-2018-05_1

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…There is no a priori reason to privilege epistemological convergence over divergence. However, as several Marxist interlocutors argue, Marxism's capacity for what Harvey (2000) terms “intellectual fire” when engaging with other perspectives stems from it being a theoretically rigorous yet necessarily incomplete tradition characterized by an “open-ended, materialist analysis” (Foster, 2018). In particular, “Open Marxism” is viewed as able to reconcile the perceived essentialism of Marxism with the situated emphasis of post-structural and feminist scholars within labor geography (Ekers and Loftus, 2020; Ekers et al, 2020; Hart, 2018; Gray and Clare, 2022).…”

Section: Labor Geography's Epistemological and Ontological Journeymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Engaging also with Gramsci (1971) and Ollman (1971, 2003), these scholars stress core Marxist categories of dialectics, alienation, articulation, and historical-spatial conjunctures. Open Marxism is considered as being closer to Marx's understanding of the political and social nature of capitalism in the Grundrisse (Ekers et al, 2020: 1581) in which he minimized the essentialist “violence” of abstraction by it always being subject to the material or concrete (Foster, 2018). 2 As such, the concrete is viewed as a “product of multiple relations and determinations,” including its discursive representations (Hart, 2018: 388).…”

Section: Labor Geography's Epistemological and Ontological Journeymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond engaged pluralism? The question of labor in labor geography

Rutherford

2023

Human Geography

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Labor geography is a vibrant, variegated subdiscipline, but there are also concerns over its lack of theoretical coherence. In this paper, I examine Open Marxist approaches that engage with post-structuralism and feminism based on Marx's concepts of abstract and concrete labor to frame a review of recent labor geography and related contributions on (a) social reproduction, difference, and class; (b) work, technology and precarity; and (c) labor's agency. I make three main arguments. First, while many conceptual tools for the analysis of social reproduction and difference exist within Marxism, because of their engagement with feminism and post-structuralism, these are being more fully developed. Second, Open Marxist contributions to this dialogue require greater emphasis upon the dialectical relationship between concrete, non-wage workers struggles against abstract labor and wage worker struggles of abstract labor within the totality of capitalism. Third, while important engagements are ongoing between Marxism, post-structuralism and feminism greater integration is neither needed nor desirable precisely because of Marxism's unique combination of conceptual coherence and open-endedness, which means that this interaction is a source of its theoretical development.

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Section: Labor Geography's Epistemological and Ontological Journeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Labor Geography's Epistemological and Ontological Journeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond engaged pluralism? The question of labor in labor geography

Rutherford

2023

Human Geography

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“…Most evidence to date suggests that the answer to this question is no [12,13]. Despite advances in scientific thought and methodology that have brought to attention mounting issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, toxic contamination, and resource depletion, little substantive progress has been made in addressing their causes (see, for instance, the disparity between the severity of the ecological crises and the politically viable measures proposed to address them [1]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability and Metabolic Revolution in the Works of Henri Lefebvre

Napoletano

Clark

Foster

et al. 2020

World

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Humanity’s present social–ecological metabolic configuration is not sustainable, and the need for a radical transformation of society to address its metabolic rifts with the rest of nature is increasingly apparent. The work of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, one of the few thinkers to recognize the significance of Karl Marx’s theory of metabolic rift prior to its rediscovery at the end of the twentieth century, offers valuable insight into contemporary issues of sustainability. His concepts of the urban revolution, autogestion, the critique of everyday life, and total (or metabolic) revolution all relate directly to the key concerns of sustainability. Lefebvre’s work embodies a vision of radical social–ecological transformation aimed at sustainable human development, in which the human metabolic interchange with the rest of nature is to be placed under substantively rational and cooperative control by all its members, enriching everyday life. Other critical aspects of Lefebvre’s work, such as his famous concept of the production of space, his temporal rhythmanalysis, and his notion of the right to the city, all point to the existence of an open-ended research program directed at the core issues of sustainability in the twenty-first century.

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“… 5. Lefebvre's approach to the dialectic is an open dialectic, as in Marx's materialist dialectic, which is distinct from the Hegelian attempt at dialectical closure. On this issue, see Fracchia and Ryan (1992) and Foster (2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Henri Lefebvre's conception of nature-society in the revolutionary project of autogestion

Napoletano

Torres

Clark

et al. 2022

Dialogues in Human Geography

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Henri Lefebvre's intricate material-dialectical approach to the nature-society problematic, taken together with his advocacy of a praxis oriented to total transformation from the ground up through autogestion, offers a unified, critical, and dialectical approach to political ecology. Unfortunately, his work in these areas has too often been interpreted as divided and fragmentary, splitting his radical analysis of the production of space-time from his critical praxis related to autogestion. We offer a corrective to this by elaborating briefly on his use of Marx's material-dialectical approach, outlining how Lefebvre brings this method to bear on the nature-society problematic, and how his theorization of autogestion points to a radical praxis aimed at overcoming the social-ecological contradictions of capital. His engagement with Marx's theory of metabolic rift, and his advocacy of a radical project of autogestion as part of the critique of everyday life, serve to place the underlying issue of alienation in spatial terms, offering geography a transformative perspective that avoids positing closed systems and attempting to exhaust the various meanings assigned to nature. In this, Lefebvre demonstrates how the nature-society problematic overflows issues of ontological framing and language, calling for a unity of radical theory and practice to overcome the separations.

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Marx's Open-Ended Critique

Cited by 14 publications

References 4 publications

Beyond engaged pluralism? The question of labor in labor geography

Beyond engaged pluralism? The question of labor in labor geography

Sustainability and Metabolic Revolution in the Works of Henri Lefebvre

Henri Lefebvre's conception of nature-society in the revolutionary project of autogestion

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