Gopal Balakrishnan on Rational Choice, Capitalism, and the Humanities
Edmund Burke’s disparaging remark about the French Revolution is indeed famous: “The age of chivalry is gone.” Not quite so well known is the sentence following: “The age of sophists, economists, and calculators is upon us; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”
The Resignation of the Proletariat
Culture was one of the defining concerns of what was once called Western Marxism. Ostensibly a theorization of the cultural, Vivek Chibber’s The Class Matrix may not speak to those who have come to Marx by way of, say, Adorno.
Hardt and Negri’s Empire
Over the last decade, a series of works offering a comprehensive vision of the state of the world after the end of the Cold War have enlivened the tenor of mainstream intellectual life. These have sought to capture the experience of American victory over Communism, and lesser adversaries at home and abroad.
Speculations on the Stationary State
A crisis occurs sometimes lasting for decades. This exceptional duration means that incurable structural contradictions have revealed themselves and that despite this the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself are making every effort to cure them within certain limits and to overcome them.
History and Politics: An Interview
Viewpoint: You write within a Marxist framework, but often focus on classical political philosophy, prior to or outside of the Marxist tradition. What’s the relevance of this kind of study?
Gopal Balakrishnan will address ‘Capitalism in Decline’ in free public lecture on Dec. 5
The Dai Ho Chun Endowment for Distinguished Lecturers of the Colleges of Arts & Sciences presents “Capitalism in Decline: Causes and Implications,” a free public lecture and book signing by Gopal Balakrishnan, at 4:30 p.m., Monday, December 5, 2016, at the Shidler College of Business, Room A101.
Anti-imperialismo na periferia do capitalismo
Os acadêmicos falam em nacionalismo, mas referem-se ao seu próprio nacionalismo, sua história, seu conceito; não falam de imperialismo, muito menos do necessário anti-imperialismo.
Anti-imperialismo na periferia do capitalismo
Os acadêmicos falam em nacionalismo, mas referem-se ao seu próprio nacionalismo, sua história, seu conceito.
The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (Gopal Balakrishnan)
Carl Schmitt, preeminent antiliberal, is that rare thing, the modern political philosopher relevant long after his time. The simple remember him only for his grasping embrace of National Socialism, but the more astute, especially on the Left, have in recent times found much to ponder in Schmitt’s protean writings.
The Abolitionist—1
The opposition of an early and a late Marx may seem to be a topic of little contemporary moment. Notably, the current round of interest in Marx, in contrast to previous ones, is focused on his later economics to the exclusion of the earlier work.
The Abolitionist—II
For the early Marx, the history of civil society unfolded as a process of accumulation that took off with the privatization of archaic quasi-natural communities and came to a conclusion with the abolition of the state, property and the family.
Counterstrike West
In the tumultuous European aftermath of the First World War, the breakthroughs of mass democracy confronted a right-wing backlash that came to adopt anti-status quo pretentions historically identified with the left. The spectacle of industrial warfare was felt to have possessed a higher world-historical significance, cruelly travestied by post-war upsurges of subaltern classes demanding social reforms bordering on revolution.
The Coming Contradiction
After so many groundbreaking variations on the theme, it will perhaps not come as a surprise that new material from Fredric Jameson offers yet another occasion to think about what it means to historicize.
The Oracle of Post-Democracy
Sheldon Wolin’s magisterial study of Tocqueville is the culmination of a remarkable body of work on the history of political thought, the harvest of four decades of engaged reflection. Politics and Vision, published at the close of the Eisenhower era in 1960, was the landmark that defined this enterprise.
The Age of Identity?
Over the last quarter of a century, the deflation of the radical agendas of the 68 generation has in many quarters generated a nervous sensibility, jumpy at any hint of large hypotheses. But in the wider movement away from epic theories of historical development, the German scene has exhibited persistently distinctive features.
The Geopolitics of Separation
Assessments of the many first-rank European thinkers who sympathized or collaborated with fascism—Heidegger, De Man, Céline, Jünger, Gentile, Croce, Della Volpe, Pound—are inevitably problematic.
From Florence to Moscow
The posthumous publication of Louis Althusser’s reflections on Machiavelli offers an unsettling occasion to return to both thinkers. If we except the more limited cases of Della Volpe and Colletti, Althusser was the only figure in the Western Marxist tradition to engage with a number of the classics of Western political theory.
STATES OF WAR
The greatness of an estate, in bulk and territory, doth fall under measure;
and the greatness of finances and revenue, doth fall under computation.
The population may appear by musters; and the number and greatness of
cities and towns by cards and maps.
Role of Force in History
How should Western military interventions of the past decade be situated within the millennial epic of human civilization? The theme itself, in all its hoary grandeur, might bring to mind lectures on civic virtue and occidental destiny from Harvard or the Hoover Institute.
The Politics of Piety
The discourse of multiculturalism, often regarded as characteristically American, has in recent years steadily gained ground in Europe. This can be seen as a belated response to the often striking transformation of the metropolitan Lebenswelt by the inflow of millions from Asia, Africa, the Antilles and the Middle East. Decades of friction between majorities
and minorities in the streets, on the labour market, in public housing, over access to welfare and in schools have thrown up fractured ethno-landscapes all across the continent.
El contraataque de Occidente
Concepciones de la revolución de derechas en la era del fascismo europeo y de la superación activista del abatimiento conservador ante el destino de Occidente. Figuraciones políticas y filosóficas de una modernidad capitalista alternativa, capaz de saldar cuentas con la decadencia y el bolchevismo.
The Age of Warring States
According to conventional wisdom, 1648 marks the moment of creation: the inauguration of the modern inter-state system. The Peace tortuously negotiated in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück—while half-starved mercenary armies, spurred on by France or Sweden, Austria or Spain, continued to ravage the farms, towns and villages of the German principalities—famously recognized the territorial sovereignty of the 300-odd states of the Holy Roman Empire.
Virgilian Visions
Over the last decade, a series of works offering a comprehensive vision of the state of the world after the end of the Cold War have enlivened the tenor of mainstream intellectual life. These have sought to capture the experience of American victory over Communism, and lesser adversaries at home and abroad.
Sermons on the Present Age
Deliverance from Republican rule in 2008 was heralded at home and abroad as the end of America’s darkest hour of reaction. In one respect, the change was undeniable. As the face of us power, it might be hard to imagine a more striking contrast to Bush and his Vulcans than the serene and visionary Obama, personifying in the eyes of many a moral heritage squandered by the outrages of unilateralism.
The National Imagination
Eric Hobsbawm, in the final chapter of a comprehensive survey on the history of nationalism, claimed that as a historical phenomenon, it had passed its heyday.footnote1 Employing a Hegelian idiom he suggested that the nation-state was now on a declining curve of historical viability, the beginnings of its fossilization clearing the way for deeper explorations into its origins, impact, and possible futures.
News from Nowheresville
Since the end of the Cold War, controversies surrounding the future direction of American statecraft have often been prompted by the publication of surveys offering an easy-to-follow reconnaissance of the geo-political terrain for Beltway planners and pundits. The 90s were perhaps especially propitious for thinking about current events through the historical and civilizational categories of an earlier Age of Empire.
Two on the Marble Cliffs
The publication of the correspondence between Carl Schmitt and Ernst Jünger is an intellectual event of some moment. The letters collected in this volume span a full half century—from 1930, when the two first met in Berlin, to 1983, shortly before Schmitt died at the age of 97.
Algorithms of War
As the Napoleonic Wars came to an end, the French liberal Benjamin Constant envisioned a new age of commerce, legality and representative government, in which the traditional war-making powers of the state would wither away.
The National Imagination
Eric Hobsbawm, in his final chapter of a survey on the history of nationalism, claimed that the nation-state had embarked on a declining curve of historical viability, and that the beginnings of its fossilization would clear the way for deeper explorations into its origins, impact and possible futures.
L’Ennemi Un portrait intellectuel de Carl Schmitt
Quelle est la part qui demeure vivante dans ce que nous a légué la figure controversée de Carl Schmitt ? Pour tenter d’évaluer son actualité, il convient d’évoquer ce que notre situation historique a de commun avec la sienne : l’incertitude de plus en plus forte qui pèse sur la viabilité de certains aspects fondamentaux du statu quo mondial.