Wednesday, May 08, 2019

FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS

Capitalism and climate change - can we avert disaster? - video

At a London public meeting, Elaine Graham-Leigh explains why climate change is a product of capitalism and the solution has to be one that confronts the system

Reification in the 21st Century

Lukacs’ Dialectic – the First Hundred Years

2008 is a centenary of sorts for the great Hungarian philosopher George Lukacs (1886-1971). A centenary because a hundred years ago, in Budapest, Lukacs produced his first work, a prize-winning study of German drama. In 1922, following his leading participation in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, Lukacs published his most influential work, a collection essays entitled History and Class Consciousness. Lukacs’ ‘problematic’ of a reified ‘false’ consciousness – which can only be grasped in relation to its non-reified liberatory alternative – deeply impacted on the philosophers of the 20th Century: especially Adorno, Sartre, Marcuse, Merleau-Ponty, Debord, Edward Said – and maybe even Heidegger. Lukacs continues to engage thinkers in various fields, even if most of them see his socialist “solution” as “class-bound” and therefore historically invalidated by the collapse of the Stalinist system he subsequently embraced and eventually hoped to see reformed democratically.

Reification and hegemony : the politics of culture in the writings of Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci, 1918-1938

Creator

Robinson, James.

Contributor

Hellman, John (Supervisor)

Date

Pages

1983

448

Abstract

This study is a comparison of the development of the theories of reification and hegemony in the writings and political activities of Georg Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci during the years from 1918 to 1938. In demonstrating that reification and hegemony were formulated in response to the unsuccessful revolutionary movements in Hungary and Italy of 1919-1920, it becomes evident that the respective theories of Lukacs and Gramsci were meant to constitute critiques of bourgeois cultural domination. Thus, their problematic extends to analyses of more specific issues, such as the role of positivist science as the prevailing "paradigm of rationality" and the instrumental function of "traditional" and "organic intellectuals." The solutions that both theorists sought in order to overcome reification and hegemony are embedded in their neo-Hegelian interpretations of Marxism, where historical materialism is defined as a methodology characterised by its utilisation of the conceptual tools of "dialectic," "totality," and "absolute historicism." However, Lukacs was forced by historical circumstances to retreat into the realm of aesthetics, although he continued the critique of reification by way of his theory of critical realism. Simultaneously, Gramsci began to elaborate more practical solutions to cultural domination through his theory of the "war of position," catharsis, and counter-hegemony.

Subject

Lukács, György, 1885-1971 -- Philosophy.

Gramsci, Antonio, 1891-1937 -- Philosophy.

Politics and culture -- Hungary -- History.

Politics and culture -- Italy -- History.

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Department of History.

Rights

URL of this record

http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=68694&silo_library=GEN01

JUST RELEASED

Lukács’s Phenomenology of Capitalism
Reification Revalued

Author: Westerman, Richard

Offers one of the first full-scale accounts of Lukács’s Heidelberg Aesthetics in English.

Reveals the links between Lukács’s account of society and his philosophy of art.

Applies Lukács’s thought beyond the paradigm of class conflict, showing what it implies for analysis of human domination of nature, and the notion of rationality as such.

This book offers a radical new interpretation of Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, showing for the first time how the philosophical framework for his analysis of society was laid in the drafts of a philosophy of art that he planned but never completed before he converted to Marxism. Reading Lukács’s work through the so-called “Heidelberg Aesthetics” reveals for the first time a range of unsuspected influences on his thought, such as Edmund Husserl, Emil Lask, and Alois Riegl; it also offers a theory of subjectivity within social relations that avoids many of the problems of earlier readings of his text. At a time when Lukács’s reputation is once more on the rise, this bold new reading helps revitalize his thought in ways that help it speak to contemporary concerns.

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China Grabs More Canadian Oil as Dirty Crude Supplies Dwindle

(Bloomberg) -- China is snapping up more Canadian crude as global heavy oil supplies dwindle amid Iran sanctions and a political crisis in Venezuela.

Ambelos is the second tanker to leave Vancouver’s Westridge terminal this year bound for China, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s carrying more than half a million barrels of heavy Canadian crude, according to IHS Markit. It follows the Erik Spirit, which sailed to China’s Nanhai district from Westridge last month. The shipments happened even as Canadian heavy crude has sold at an average discount to West Texas Intermediate futures of less than $11 a barrel so far this year. READ ON

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VENEZUELA

WWW.HANDSOFFVENEZUELA.ORG

It is hard to overstate just how in the tank the corporate media is for the U.S. government overthrowing another government. It's as though they never read a history book. But it's worse than that, because you know they have read history books and continue to back this insanity anyway.

COMMONDREAMS.ORG

Zero Percent of Elite Commentators Oppose Regime Change in Venezuela

That elite media didn’t find a single person to vouch for Maduro or Chavismo, and that almost all the opinions explicitly or implicitly expressed support for the ouster of Venezuela’s elected president, demonstrates a firm editorial line, eerily obedient to the US government’s regime change po...

www.handsoffvenezuela.org

"Modern society’s systemic problem is capitalism, not this or that kind of capitalism."

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Yes, We Can do Better Than Capitalism

By democratizing our workplaces, we can supplant the dominant ecomomic system which cannot escape its intrinsic exploitation of labor.. As capitalism drives itself into ever-greater inequality, instability and injustice, its critics multiply. Worried defenders react in two ways. Many dismiss the cri...