The Historicity of Materialism and the Critique of Politics

This chapter proposes one definition of critical materialism and a critique of politics based on several authors from Marx to Foucault. This critique occurs in several stages and unfolds as a criticism of universals such as human freedom, general interest, political rationality, or reconciled political community. The decisive materialist-historical question, then, is which of the different materialities is dominant at a certain point of time. I argue that Marx condemns politics as an illusion. He thought of ‘political reason’ as a form of ‘spiritualism’. Hence, critical materialism argues for a move away from the illusion of politics

Die Soziologen auf der Suche nach ihrer Disziplin: Zur Genealogie eines Wissenschaftsbildes (1945-1961)

Es geht in diesem Aufsatz um die Geschichte der westdeutschen Soziologie in der Nachkriegszeit. Gezeigt werden soll, wie die Soziologie als akademische Disziplin eingeführt wurde, welche Interessen der Soziologen hinter dieser Etablierung lagen, wie sich die westdeutsche Soziologenzunftfortan auf einem bestimmten, eingegrenzten, sozialen Feld bewegte. Diese Geschichte ist nicht nur für Soziologen, sondern darüber hinaus interessant, weil Demirovit klarmacht, daß die Soziologie nicht aus ihr immanenten Gründen »links« wurde, sondern nur aufgrund bestimmter politischer Auseinandersetzungen und Entscheidungen fortan mit dem Projekt einer demokratisch-aufgeklärten Politik assoziiert werden konnte

Struktur, Handlung und der ideale Durchschnitt

The first part of the article argues in favor of an anti-hermeneutic strategy of reading Marx, taking into account the always shifting character of the meaning of his theory due to historical transformations generated by social struggles and the partisan and interventionist character of any Marxist theory. This has effects upon how the relation of structure and agency has to be conceptualized as a specific historical relation – very often ignored by a misled sociological reading of Marx in the tradition of Weber and Parsons. Decisive is the argument that in Marx’s theory the differentiation and opposition of structure and agency is in itself not pertinent but has to be explained in terms of historical struggles. At the centre of the argument is a reformulation of the law of value as a logic of collective practice and the important meaning of what Marx calls the “ideal average” as a subject of his theory

Ecological crisis and the future of democracy

Das prekäre Verhältnis von ökologischer Krise und Demokratie verlangt nach demokratietheoretischen Lösungen. Im folgenden Beitrag werden zwei Ansätze zu einer ökologischen Verfassungstheorie diskutiert. Vor allem deren ökologische Modellbildung erweist sich, mit Blick auf das Projekt gesellschaftlicher Demokratie, als unzulänglich. Demgegenüber wird vorgeschlagen, gestützt auf einen Begriff gesellschaftlicher Naturverhältnisse, die Ausdifferenzierungslogik industrieller Gesellschaften zu demokratisieren.The precarious relationship between ecological crisis and democracy demands solutions based on democratic theory. In the following article two approaches to an ecological constitutional theory are discussed. Especially the ecological modelling of constitutional theory proves to be inadequate with regard to the project of social democracy. In contrast, it is proposed to democratize the logic of differentiation of industrial societies based on a concept of social natural conditions

„Anders denken, anders sprechen“: Ein Besprechungsessay zu „Das Kapital lesen“

Originally published in 1965, Reading Capital is a landmark of radical theory. Previously only available in a highly abridged form, the publishing house Westfälisches Dampfboot and the translator Frieder O. Wolf make an unabridged edition available in German for the first time and restores original chapters by Roger Establet and Pierre Macherey. Louis Althusser and his scholars interpret Marx’s analysis as a revolutionary break—the basis of a completely new science. Demirovi? opens in his review essay the discussion about Reading capital. He refers not only the history of reception of misunderstanding and repression but also underlines why the contributions in Reading Capital underachieve the critical-marxian theory of capitalist social formation

Keine Zeit mehr: Das Ende des sozialdemokratischen Projekts

His recently published book on the economic crisis Wolfgang Streeck, one of the advisors of the former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, is a harsh critique of the trajectory of economic policies parties in Germany followed since the late sixties. The article discusses the arguments and proves the contradictions in Streecks approach. Streecks argues that mass support of the welfare state capitalism in the early seventies eroded. Capital withdrew its trust in democratic capitalism as the compromise between social classes. Thus an unexpected crisis of legitimation began. The state under the leading role of social democratic parties started with measures to ensure the loyalty of the working class but failed in a specific way. Crisis management led to crises on a higher level. Streecks approach claims to be critical. But nevertheless it doesn’t draw the necessary consequences, i.e. a critique of the social democracy that finally turns out to fail as a project: crisis management leads to the recent crisis of the EU and the monetary union. His recommendations: to go back to the ruins of the welfare state are not convincing. The book shows that social democracy confronted with the results of its own policies is perplexed

Kehrt der Staat zurück? Wirtschaftskrise und Demokratie

There is some evidence that the crisis of the financial market has leaded – as some critics suggest - to a crisis of neoliberalism, a crisis of finance driven accumulation or even of a structural crisis of capitalism. The reason for this suggestion is the return of state interventionism. But this is misleading because the state intervened alongside with the formation of new owner relations of capital during the last two decades and supporting this new rising fraction of capital was in itself reorganized. The measures undertaken to smooth down the crisis are still part of an ongoing neoliberal political strategy to deal with a long lasting crisis of overaccumulation, probably ending up in an even deeper crisis including a crisis of political crisis management

Liberdade e humanidade

Tradução do artigo Freiheit und Menschheit, de Alex Demirović, publicado originalmente em BECKER, Jens & BRAKEMEIER, Heinz (Hrsg.). Vereinigung freier Individuen. Kritik der Tauschgesellschaft und gesellschaftliches Gesamtsubjekt bei Theodor W. Adorno. Hamburg: VSA: Verlag, 2004, pp. 18-33. © VSA: Verlag 2004, St. Georges Kirchhof 6, 20099 Hamburg. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. ISBN 3-89965-044-1.Tradução realizada por Renata Guerra, doutoranda do Departamento de Filosofia da Universidade de São Paulo e bolsista da FAPESP. Email: [email protected]://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-011

Die politische Metapher »links« und die politischen Orientierungen von Studierenden

On the basis of a survey on political views among students at universities in Hesse, the author shows that the assertion, that the left-right-dichotomy has lost empirical or theoretical evidence cannot be maintained. They belong to the symbolical order of modern politics as floating significants, although their meaning is changing at the moment