Nella fossa dei leoni. Si può leggere Il capitale di Marx a partire dalle Tesi su Feuerbach?

In the era of “high tech capitalism”, an era involving a progressive automation of production processes, we need a reading of Marx that reconnects his early works with those of his maturity and with some Engels’ key-texts, including the Dialectics of Nature. Today this reading is indispensable in order to think the current historical phase in its complexity. Against the apologists of a post-human robotics, it is necessary to build a new form of humanism, related to a practical dialectics that is the only true alternative to metaphysics. Only in this way, in the technological era, we will be able to understand society and nature not as abstractly splitted, but in their differentiated relationship, in view of a suitable form of praxis.Keywords: Marx; Dialectics; Technology;  Humanism; Philosophy of praxis

Applying the extended molecule approach to correlated electron transport: important insight from model calculations

Theoretical approaches of electronic transport in correlated molecules usually consider an extended molecule, which includes, in addition to the molecule itself, parts of electrodes. In the case where electron correlations remain confined within the molecule, and the extended molecule is sufficiently large, the current can be expressed by means of Laudauer-type formulae. Electron correlations are embodied into the retarded Green function of a sufficiently large but isolated extended molecule, which represents the key quantity that can be accurately determined by means of ab initio quantum chemical calculations. To exemplify these ideas, we present and analyze numerical results obtained within full CI calculations for an extended molecule described by the interacting resonant level model. Based on them, we argue that for organic electrodes the transport properties can be reliably computed, because the extended molecule can be chosen sufficiently small to be tackled within accurate ab initio methods. For metallic electrodes, larger extended molecules have to be considered in general, but a (semi-)quantitative description of the transport should still be possible particularly in the typical cases where electron transport proceeds by off-resonant tunneling. Our numerical results also demonstrate that, contrary to the usual claim, the ratio between the characteristic Coulomb strength and the level width due to molecule-electrode coupling is not the only quantity needed to assess whether electron correlation effects are strong or weak

Tagungsbericht: Internationale Konferenz „Sozialismus in der gegenwärtigen Welt", Cavtat (Jugoslawien), 27.9. - 2.10.1976

Die jugoslawischen marxistischen Zeitschriften „Marksizam u Svetu" (Marxismus in der Welt) und „Komunist" hatten eingeladen: neben jugoslawischen Intellektuellen Repräsentanten kommunistischer, sozialistischer und sozialdemokratischer Parteien aus den entwickelten kapitalistischen Ländern (vor allem Westeuropas), aus den sozialistischen Ländern Osteuropas und aus einigen der aus dem antikolonialen Befreiungskampf hervorgegangenen jungen Nationalstaaten. Schließlich war eine Reihe "freischwebender" marxistischer Theoretiker und Vertreter theoretischer marxistischer Zeitschriften geladen worden (so auch die Berichterstatter). Das „politische Gewicht" der Teilnehmer und ihrer Vorträge war entsprechend unterschiedlich. Die Konferenz muß auf dem Hintergrund des Wandlungsprozesses gesehen werden, den die kommunistische Weltbewegung und die sozialistischen Parteien sowie das Verhältnis der beiden Fraktionen der Arbeiterbewegung in den letzten Jahren durchgemacht haben bzw. in einigen Ländern durchzumachen im Begriff sind. lnsofern schien die Konferenz von Cavtat fast wie eine unverbindliche (es gab kein Kommunique), weniger prominente, dafür auf die nichtkommunistischen Fraktionen der internationalen Arbeiterbewegung ausgeweitete Variante der Berliner Konferenz der europäischen Kommunisten vom Juni 1976