Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice

The Use and Abuse of Class Reductionism for the Left

2023-01-24T14:26:42-08:00

Beneath Utopian Skylines

2023-01-24T14:42:26-08:00

Another World Is Possible

2023-01-24T15:05:14-08:00

Marxists Behaving Badly

2023-01-24T16:57:37-08:00

In theory, Marxists are materialists. Materialists decide the truth or falsehood of hypothesis on the basis of evidence. But with regard to Joseph Stalin and Soviet history during the time of his leadership, many Marxists are in fact idealists, ignoring evidence in favor of their preconceived ideas. This essay discusses: the need for objectivity in historical research; the dialectical relationship of practice and theory; and six words or phrases that are hallmarks of idealism and anticommunism on the pseudo-Marxist “Left”: Totalitarianism; Stalinism; Stalin the “Dictator;” “The Great Terror;” the GULAG; Democracy. The anti-Marxist nature of the Trotskyist website Marxists.org. is exposed and critiqued. The essay concludes that a true Marxist Left must reject the errors examined here.

Normalizing Surveillance in Dave Eggers’ The Circle

2023-01-24T17:39:03-08:00

Lahiri’s Post-Racial Strangers

2023-01-24T17:06:25-08:00

With respect to the Marxian concept of “universal alienation,” we will attempt to account for the universalizing material conditions of late capitalism, considering the central characters as belonging to a global middle class of corporate workers and consumerists. Nikolai Gogol’s short story, The Overcoat, a recurrent motif in the novel, will be viewed as the novel’s precursor, providing an “allegorical key” to understanding the “economic” nature of this condition. It will be argued that the text’s affective impact could be analyzed in terms alienation from labor, from other people and a compensatory fetishistic consumerism. By reading The Namesake as a novel of capitalist alienation, we aspire to contribute to shifting the critical focal point from race to capital.