The iron law of democratic socialism: British and Austrian influences on the young Karl Polanyi

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.A central thesis of Karl Polanyi's The great transformation concerns the tensions between capitalism and democracy: the former embodies the principle of inequality, while democracy represents that of equality. This paper explores the intellectual heritage of this thesis, in the ‘functional theory’ of G.D.H. Cole and Otto Bauer and in the writings of Eduard Bernstein. It scrutinizes Polanyi's relationship with Bernstein's ‘evolutionary socialism’ and charts his ‘double movement’ vis-à-vis Marxist philosophy: in the 1910s he reacted sharply against Marxism's deterministic excesses, but he then, in the 1920s, engaged in sympathetic dialogue with Austro-Marxist thinkers. The latter, like Bernstein, disavowed economic determinism and insisted upon the importance and autonomy of ethics. Yet they simultaneously predicted a law-like expansion of democracy from the political to the economic arena. Analysis of this contradiction provides the basis for a concluding discussion that reconsiders the deterministic threads in Polanyi's oeuvre. Whereas for some Polanyi scholars these attest to his residual attraction to Marxism, I argue that matters are more complex. While Polanyi did repudiate the more rigidly deterministic of currents in Marxist philosophy, those to which he was attracted, notably Bernstein's ‘revision’ and Austro-Marxism, incorporated a deterministic fatalism of their own, in respect of democratization. Herein lies a more convincing explanation of Polanyi's incomplete escape from a deterministic philosophy of history, as exemplified in his masterwork, The great transformation

The difference that tenure makes

This paper argues that housing tenures cannot be reduced to either production relations or consumption relations. Instead, they need to be understood as modes of housing distribution, and as having complex and dynamic relations with social classes. Building on a critique of both the productionist and the consumptionist literature, as well as of formalist accounts of the relations between tenure and class, the paper attempts to lay the foundations for a new theory of housing tenure. In order to do this, a new theory of class is articulated, which is then used to throw new light on the nature of class-tenure relations

Social theory and the politics of big data and method

This article is an intervention in the debate on big data. It seeks to show, firstly, that behind the wager to make sociology more relevant to the digital there lies a coherent if essentially unstated vision and a whole stance which are more a symptom of the current world than a resolute endeavour to think that world through; hence the conclusion that the perspective prevailing in the debate lacks both the theoretical grip and the practical impulse to initiate a much needed renewal of social theory and sociology. Secondly, and more importantly, the article expounds an alternative view and shows by thus doing that other possibilities of engaging the digital can be pursued. The article is thus an invitation to widen the debate on big data and the digital and a call for a more combative social theory

Review debate: we need human rights not nationalism 'lite': globalization and British solidarity

The article explores the relationship of multiculturalism to social solidarity. The multicultural nature of Britain is accepted as a welcome reality but certain problems in relation to the development of multiculturalism in Britain are acknowledged. Various approaches to buttress or replace multiculturalism are reviewed. These are: a strengthened and/or reconstituted nationalism (`Britishness'); human rights; and social equality. The issue of citizenship recurs throughout. It is argued that a combined emphasis on human rights and greater social equality offer a better basis than nationalism for strengthening solidarity in Britain, especially in the longer term. Sociological theory offers a fruitful if strangely neglected starting point for understanding social solidarity. I draw critically on Durkheim and Marx to obtain some objective perspective on this controversial matter. Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution

The English City Riots of 2011, "Broken Britain" and the retreat into the present

The responses to the English city riots of 2011 bear a remarkable resemblance to those of historical urban disorders in terms of the way in which they are framed by concerns over "moral decline", "social malaise" and a "lack of self-restraint" among certain sections of the population. In this paper we draw on the work of Norbert Elias and take a long-term perspective in exploring historical precedents and parallels relating to urban disorder and anti-social behaviour. We reject the notion of "Broken Britain" and argue that a more "detached" perspective is necessary in order to appreciate that perceived crises of civilisation are ubiquitous to the urban condition. Through this historical analysis, framed by Elias' theory of involvement and detachment, we present three key arguments. Firstly, that a 'retreat into the present' is evident among both policy discourse and social science in responding to contemporary urban disorder, giving rise to ahistorical accounts and the romanticisation of previous eras; secondly, that particular moral panics have always arisen, specifically focused upon young and working class populations and urban disorder; and, thirdly, that previous techniques of governance to control these populations were often far more similar to contemporary mechanisms than many commentaries suggest. We conclude by advocating a long-term, detached perspective in discerning historical precedents and their direct linkages to the present; and in identifying what is particular about today's concerns and responses relating to urban disorder

Remarks on the Concept of Critique in Habermasian Thought

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of critique in Habermasian thought. Given that the concept of critique is a central theoretical category in the work of the Frankfurt School, it comes as a surprise that little in the way of a systematic account which sheds light on the multifaceted meanings of the concept of critique in Habermas’s oeuvre can be found in the literature. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the various meanings that Habermas attributes to the concept of critique in 10 key thematic areas of his writings: (1) the public sphere, (2) knowledge, (3) language, (4) morality, (5) ethics, (6) evolution, (7) legitimation, (8) democracy, (9) religion, and (10) modernity. On the basis of a detailed analysis of Habermas’s multifaceted concerns with the nature and function of critique, the study seeks to demonstrate that the concept of critique can be considered not only as a constitutive element but also as a normative cornerstone of Habermasian thought. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on some of the limitations of Habermas’s conception of critique, arguing that in order to be truly critical in the Habermasian sense we need to turn the subject of critique into an object of critique