Break or Continuity? Friedrich Engels and the Critique of Digital Surveillance

This paper is a contribution to the argument that Engels’s work remains topical and may provide us with the analytical tools necessary to approach contemporary manifestations of capitalist contradictions. Based on Engels’s work on political economy (with emphasis on his contribution to the labour theory of value and the articulation of the law on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) it will critically review the concept of “surveillance capitalism” as developed by Shoshana Zuboff, in order to explain central aspects of the process of digital surveillance. In particular, it will criticise the view expressed by Zuboff that surveillance capitalism constitutes a break with capitalism’s past and can be tamed through an enhancement of democratic accountability and regulation. Marxist contributions to the critique of digital surveillance have already approached this phenomenon in a many-sided manner. This paper builds upon these contributions and suggests that the exponential growth of digital platforms can be explained as a direct result of the development of capitalist contradictions, especially the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production as expressed in the law of the falling rate of profit

Public interest or social need? Reflections on the Pandemic, Technology and the Law

In most countries the measures to deal with the pandemic were introduced through executive law-making mechanisms, which form part of the ‘law of necessity’ or ‘emergency law’. The legal formalist response to these measures accepts their proportionality and constitutionality because of their temporariness. So far, the debate among constitutionalists has focused on the contradiction between public interest (in this case concretised as public health) and fundamental rights. Additionally, the technocratic legitimacy of the measures is almost unanimously accepted. In this chapter I argue that the contradiction between health and economy, or, more accurately, between the social need for health and the partiality of economic interests, determines the scientificity of the different policy responses to the pandemic. In order to do so, the measures will be examined as a unity of (emergency) form and (politico-economic) content. The argument is that the scientific response to the pandemic is overdetermined by politico-economic priorities

Principles for a Dialectical Materialist Analysis of Law and the State

This chapter is a contribution to the Marxist analysis of law and the state. Its main purpose is to set out the main principles for this analysis. After setting out the main characteristics of dialectical materialist analysis, these principles are discussed in the following order: First, law and the state abstract from and correspond to a specific socio-economic content. Second, they perform a class function in reproducing the dominant relations of production as well as the rule of the dominant class. Third, law and the state efficiently perform this function by being relatively autonomous. In outlining these principles certain categories which are essential for this analysis, such as the ‘unity of form and content’, the ‘relative autonomy of law and state’, the ‘class struggle’, and the ‘reproduction of the relations of production’, are examined

The form and content of public law : from political theology to political economy

This thesis is a contribution to the critique of constitutional theory. It contributes to this critique from a Marxist standpoint, by constructing a theoretical argument while drawing from and applying this on concrete historical cases. More specifically, it examines the public legal form and the change in the form of exercise of public power as corresponding to the level of intensification of social and economic contradictions. Under this prism, public legal concepts are analysed in their unity as a systematic whole, in their historical development, as well as in their social function. The case-reference for this theoretical argument is the interaction of constitutional and socio-economic processes in post-2008 crisis Greece. The observation of the exceptional form of the Memoranda of Understanding and its impact on the Greek legal order made necessary a sustained analysis of the public legal form and the changes it sustains during periods of intensified political and socio-economic contradictions. The major contribution of the thesis consists in the move from Political Theology to Political Economy, and the identification of a need to look into historical cases and socio-economic processes so as to make sense of developments in public law and the role and function of public law concepts and processes in a social formation. Consequently, the thesis combines an internal element, which focuses on the internal unity of public law concepts in their historical origin, and an external element, which looks at their mutual inter-development with socio-economic and political processes. It begins by examining fundamental public legal concepts (such as popular sovereignty, social contract, general will) and dualisms (such as objective and subjective law, norm and decision, constituent and constituted power) as forming a unified whole, in their historical origin and social function. These concepts are discussed as fictions, but are not dismissed as mere illusions; they are rather examined as fictions with concrete functions in the social formation, as evidenced in the analysis of the concrete case of the 2015 Greek referendum and the role played by concepts such as general will and popular sovereignty in its process. Finally, the analysis of the form of public law turns to the examination of the change in the form of exercise of public power in concrete situations of crisis. In this context, the concepts of exception, emergency, and necessity are discussed before moving to concrete historical cases. The intensified contradictions in mid-war Germany, the change from the Weimar to the Nazi state form, and the effect of these developments on Carl Schmitt’s theoretical framework are examined as a necessary complement to the analysis of constitutional processes at work in the current predicament. As far as the latter is concerned, the Greek crisis legislation is analysed as a unity of form and content. It is argued that the exceptional form of exercise of public power, manifested in the Memoranda of Understanding, has to be seen as accompanying a necessary content, i.e. prescribed economic and monetary policies found in European Union legal and political documents which corresponding to specific politico-economic views. The focus on labour reforms, as the socio-economic content of the Greek crisis legislation, combined with a comparative analysis of such reforms in countries without Memoranda, reveals the general and class oriented nature of the measures, which is explained through the Marxist concepts of capitalist uneven development and competition. The move from Political Theology to Political Economy is concluded with a note on the relation between the concepts of democracy and dictatorship, a dualism which underlies the whole thesis and points towards the necessary connection between questions of sovereignty and questions of actual powe

Theses on the Relationship between Rights and Social Struggle

This article examines the relationship between rights and social struggle. This topic is revisited in light of the phenomenon of rising inequality in the aftermath of the last capitalist crisis, which reignited the debate on the role of rights in processes of social mobilisation. In this context, this paper examines three very recent contributions to this debate, namely Samuel Moyn’s Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, Radha D’Souza’s What’s Wrong with Rights, and Paul O’Connell’s work on a critique of the displacement thesis. In critically discussing these contributions it introduces and elaborates on six theses which describe the relationship between rights and social struggle. The argument focuses on the important role of rights in the struggle between different social forces, as well as their limitations in promoting a critique of the structural roots of social inequality

‘E Pluribus Unum … Forum’: A Marxist Approach to the EU’s Democratic Deficit

This paper approaches the issue of the European Union’s (EU) democratic deficit from a Marxist perspective. This issue has been central to the exponential rise of Euroscepticism that influenced processes like Brexit and Grexit (despite the latter’s frustration), as well as the rise of explicitly anti-EU national governments in European countries. This paper shows that critiques of the EU’s democratic deficit (even cutting-edge ones, like the one placing emphasis on the notion of the ‘economic constitution’) are inadequate because the debate is already embedded in ideological compromise. Offering a brief exposition of the Marxist approach to the democratic form of the capitalist state, it attempts to show the limitations of critical approaches which overlook the issue of class rule and state power in their calls for democratisation. To do so, the paper outlines the structural function and class character of the EU, as well as its role as a (supra-)state formation in the process of capital accumulation. Ultimately, it offers a Janus-faced critique of democratic deficit in Europe, one the one hand arguing that the critique of the EU economic constitution as neoliberal is limited because it fails to account for the scope of reform that the EU allows to respond to the challenges of the process of capital accumulation, while on the other concluding that the solution to the democratic deficit cannot simply be a return to nation-state democracy which is equidistant from actual self-government of the popular strata as its EU counterpart

Dictatorship: New Trajectories in Law

This book analyses the institution and concept of dictatorship from a legal, historical and theoretical perspective, examining the different types of dictatorship, their relationship to the law, as well as the analytical value of the concept in contemporary world. 　 In particular, it seeks to codify the main theories and conceptions of ‘dictatorship’, with the goal of unearthing their contradictions. The book’s main premise is that the concept of dictatorship and the different types of the dictatorial form have to be assessed and can only be understood in their historical context. On this basis, the elaborations on dictatorship of such diverse thinkers as Carl Schmitt, Donoso Cortes, Karl Marx, Ernst Fraenkel, Franz Neumann, Nicos Poulantzas, and V. I. Lenin, are discussed in their historical context: ‘classical and Caesaristic dictatorship’ in ancient Rome, ‘dictatorship’ in revolutionary France of 1789 and counterrevolutionary France of 1848, ‘fascist dictatorship’ in Nazi Germany, and ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in Russia of 1917. The book contributes to the theory of dictatorship as it outlines the contradictions of the different typologies of the dictatorial form and seeks to explain them on the basis of the concept of ‘class dictatorship’. The book’s original claim is that the dictatorial form, as a modality of class rule that relies predominantly on violence and repression, has been essential to the reproduction of bourgeois rule and, consequently, of capitalist social relations. This function has given rise to different types and conceptualisations of dictatorship depending on the level of capitalist development.　 This book is addressed to anyone with an interest in law, political theory, political history and sociology. It can serve as core text for courses that seek to introduce students to the institution or theory of dictatorship. It may also serve as a reference text for post-graduate programs in law and politics, because of its interdisciplinary and critical approach

The form and content of public law : from political theology to political economy

This thesis is a contribution to the critique of constitutional theory. It contributes to this critique from a Marxist standpoint, by constructing a theoretical argument while drawing from and applying this on concrete historical cases. More specifically, it examines the public legal form and the change in the form of exercise of public power as corresponding to the level of intensification of social and economic contradictions. Under this prism, public legal concepts are analysed in their unity as a systematic whole, in their historical development, as well as in their social function. The case-reference for this theoretical argument is the interaction of constitutional and socio-economic processes in post-2008 crisis Greece. The observation of the exceptional form of the Memoranda of Understanding and its impact on the Greek legal order made necessary a sustained analysis of the public legal form and the changes it sustains during periods of intensified political and socio-economic contradictions. The major contribution of the thesis consists in the move from Political Theology to Political Economy, and the identification of a need to look into historical cases and socio-economic processes so as to make sense of developments in public law and the role and function of public law concepts and processes in a social formation. Consequently, the thesis combines an internal element, which focuses on the internal unity of public law concepts in their historical origin, and an external element, which looks at their mutual inter-development with socio-economic and political processes. It begins by examining fundamental public legal concepts (such as popular sovereignty, social contract, general will) and dualisms (such as objective and subjective law, norm and decision, constituent and constituted power) as forming a unified whole, in their historical origin and social function. These concepts are discussed as fictions, but are not dismissed as mere illusions; they are rather examined as fictions with concrete functions in the social formation, as evidenced in the analysis of the concrete case of the 2015 Greek referendum and the role played by concepts such as general will and popular sovereignty in its process. Finally, the analysis of the form of public law turns to the examination of the change in the form of exercise of public power in concrete situations of crisis. In this context, the concepts of exception, emergency, and necessity are discussed before moving to concrete historical cases. The intensified contradictions in mid-war Germany, the change from the Weimar to the Nazi state form, and the effect of these developments on Carl Schmitt’s theoretical framework are examined as a necessary complement to the analysis of constitutional processes at work in the current predicament. As far as the latter is concerned, the Greek crisis legislation is analysed as a unity of form and content. It is argued that the exceptional form of exercise of public power, manifested in the Memoranda of Understanding, has to be seen as accompanying a necessary content, i.e. prescribed economic and monetary policies found in European Union legal and political documents which corresponding to specific politico-economic views. The focus on labour reforms, as the socio-economic content of the Greek crisis legislation, combined with a comparative analysis of such reforms in countries without Memoranda, reveals the general and class oriented nature of the measures, which is explained through the Marxist concepts of capitalist uneven development and competition. The move from Political Theology to Political Economy is concluded with a note on the relation between the concepts of democracy and dictatorship, a dualism which underlies the whole thesis and points towards the necessary connection between questions of sovereignty and questions of actual powe

The form and content of the Greek crisis legislation

This paper offers a dialectical analysis of the law relating to the Greek crisis. The form and content of the measures introduced in the Greek legal system to deal with the debt crisis is examined under the concept of ‘necessity’. It is argued that this concept, used by the Greek Council of State to justify the constitutionality of these measures, opens a path for a more comprehensive analysis of the measures implemented through the mechanism of the Greek Memoranda of Understanding. The measures are seen as ‘necessary’: on the one hand in their accordance and basis on principles of the European Union; on the other hand in their class orientation and reflecting of specific social (class) interests. But despite their necessity, neither their content, nor the form of implementation of these measures is fixed; it is rather contingent, i.e. dependent on the level of intensification of social (class and intra-class) and economic antagonisms

‘Bursting Asunder the Integument’: Democracy, Digitalization, and the State

This chapter examines the relationship between digital platforms and the democratic state. On the one hand, it seeks to analyse the symbiotic relationship between digital monopolies and the capitalist state and, on the other, it explores the potential of digital platforms for actual self-governance in a different kind of society. Phenomena such as targeted ads, fake news, the twitter mob and echo chambers, as well as the influencing and fragmentation of public opinion, and their significance for the operation of bourgeois democracy and the reproduction of capitalism will be discussed. Yet, technology and democracy are both conditioned by the social, i.e. capitalist, context of development. The issue of the unrealised potential of the internet for democracy is intertwined with the issue of capitalism, exploitation and inequality. Contrary to techno-pessimist or neo-Luddist conceptions, we argue that the emancipatory potential of the processes of digitalisation and automation can only be actualised in the context of a radical restructuring of the relationship between economy, politics, technology and work. At the same time, contrary to techno-optimist views, we argue that this process cannot be initiated -let alone concluded- within the strict confines of the capitalist state. On the contrary, the potential of digital platforms for actual self-governance can only be realised in the context of development of socialist relations of production and administration. This chapter concludes by tentatively exploring the potential of digital platforms for solving problems that earlier attempts at building socialism were faced with -in particular the contradiction between central planning and collective decision-making