The Necessity of Social Control

by Istvan Meszaros, John Bellamy Foster (Foreword by)

Overview

As John Bellamy Foster writes in his foreword to the present book, “István Mészáros is one of the greatest philosophers that the historical materialist tradition has yet produced. His work stands practically alone today in the depth of its analysis of Marx’s theory of alienation, the structural crisis of capital, the demise of Soviet-style post-revolutionary societies, and the necessary conditions of the transition to socialism. His dialectical inquiry into social structure and forms of consciousness—a systematic critique of the prevailing forms of thought—is unequaled in our time.”

Mészáros is the author of magisterial works like Beyond Capital and Social Structures of Forms of Consciousness, but his work can seem daunting to those unacquainted with his thought. Here, for the first time, is a concise and accessible overview of Mészáros’s ideas, designed by the author himself and covering the broad scope of his work, from the shortcomings of bourgeois economics to the degeneration of the capital system to the transition to socialism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583675380
Publisher:	Monthly Review Press
Publication date:	03/01/2015
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

István Mészáros is a world-renowned philosopher and critic. He left his native Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956. He is professor emeritus at the University of Sussex, where he held the chair of philosophy for fifteen years. Meszaros is author of The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time, Beyond Capital, The Power of Ideology, The Work of Sartre, and Marx’s Theory of Alienation.

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review. He is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and author of The Great Financial Crisis (with Fred Magdoff), The Ecological Rift and Critique of Intelligent Design (both with Brett Clark and Richard York), The Ecological Revolution, Ecology Against Capitalism, Marx’s Ecology, and The Vulnerable Planet.

Table of Contents

Foreword John Bellamy Foster 9

1 The Necessity of Social Control 23

1.1 The Counter-Factual Conditionals of Apologetic Ideology 24

1.2 Capitalism and Ecological Destruction 27

1.3 The Crisis of Domination 30

1.4 From "Repressive Tolerance" to the Liberal Advocacy of Repression 37

1.5 War if the Normal Methods of Expansion Fail 40

1.6 The Emergence of Chronic Unemployment 43

1.7 The Intensification of the Rate of Exploitation 45

1.8 Capital's "Correctives" and Socialist Control 48

2 Marxism Today 52

2.1 Sartre's Alternative 52

2.2 Marxism Today 53

2.3 Mickey Mouse Socialism 57

2.4 The Problem of Organization 59

3 Causality, Time, and Forms of Mediation 63

3.1 Causality and Time under Capital's Causa Sui 63

3.2 The Vicious Circle of Capital's Second Order Mediations 68

4 The Activation of Capital's Absolute Limits 80

5 The Meaning of Black Mondays (and Wednesdays) 92

6 The Potentially Deadliest Phase of Imperialism 97

7 The Challenge of Sustainable Development and the Culture of Substantive Equality 121

7.1 Farewell to "Liberty-Fraternity-Equality" 121

7.2 The Failure of "Modernization and Development" 124

7.3 Structural Domination and the Culture of Substantive Inequality 126

8 Another World Is Possible and Necessary 130

8.1 The Myth of Ideological Neutrality and the Imposition of the Single-Ideology State 130

8.2 The Emergence of Neoliberal Consensus 133

8.3 Capital's Structural Crisis and the Implosion of the Soviet System 135

8.4 The Persistent Neglect of the National Question 140

8.5 Crisis in the Western Socialist Movement 145

8.6 Patriotism and Internationalism 149

8.7 The Immediate and the Long Term: Continuity and Change in Socialist Strategy 156

8.8 The Need to Redress Structural Inequality 160

8.9 The Necessary Global Alternative 164

8.10 The Social Subject of Emancipation and the Power of Emancipatory Ideology 172

9 Alternative to Parliamentarism 177

10 Reflections on the New International 199

11 Structural Crisis Needs Structural Change 218

12 The Mountain We Must Conquer: Reflections on the State 231

Introduction 231

12.1 The End of Liberal-Democratic Politics 242

12.2 The "Withering Away" of the State? 246

12.3 The Wishful Limitation of State Power 250

12.4 The Assertion of Might-as-Right 253

12.5 Eternalizing Assumptions of Liberal State Theory 262

12.6 Hegel's Unintended Swan Song and the Nation-State 269

12.7 Capital's Social Metabolic Order and the Failing State 281

Conclusion 297

Notes 299

Index 321