Philosophy

Under capitalism, the only thing which can make a difference is the semblance of difference. That is, there are no real differences, but there is at least the appearance of difference and that it appears to be the case there are differences stands in the way of the objective fact of the lack of any difference whatsoever. The semblance of difference which appears to make a difference when it does not is money; in our society now, everything has made itself amenable to money so much that a price can be put on anything....

Leon, Trotsky. “Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours” in The Transitional Programme. 1938. http://www.marxist.net/trotsky/programme/p2frame.htm?wages.htm In 1938, Trotsky outlines his vision of the transitional program, which would meet the minimum demands already held by the workers with the call for socialist revolution that would overthrow the bourgeoisie, instead of searching for ways to appease them. Due to historical peculiarity, and knowing that we could choose any of the minimal demands in existence to work with, the first transitional demand he outlines turns out to be as he calls it the, “Sliding scale of wages....

“And since it is not real man, nor therefore nature – man being human nature – who as such is made the subject, but only the abstraction of man – self-consciousness –”1 My aim here is to raise some additional points about the commodity form in Marx’s Capital Vol. 1. In response to the argument that Capital can’t help us much with reaching workers and we should avoid using overly dense theory in our outreach, we say that Capital is a correction of the bourgeois ideology....

It should be of interest for us discuss The Philosophy of Poverty because it is an understudied text in the canon of Marxist theory even though its contents are of vital importance. This is also surprising because so much of elementary Marxist criticism bases itself on the argument that philosophical metaphysics is undermined by a proper understanding of historical materialism. This argument overlaps with the really lousy naive realism included in the modern reception of ideological scientism by both our scientific research institutions and by the popular culture at large....

Plato 429-347 bc The Republic. c. 375 bc Aristotle 384-322 bc Politics. c. 350 bc More, Thomas 1478-1535 ce Utopia 1516 Machiavelli, Niccolò 1469-1527 ce The Prince 1532 Bacon, Francis 1561-1626 ce New Atlantis 1626 Hobbes, Thomas 1588-1679 ce De Cive - 1642(1647) De Corpore - 1645(1655) Humane Nature, or, The Fundamental Elements of Policy - 1650 Leviathan - 1651 De Homine - 1658 Locke, John 1632-1704 ce Second Treatise of Government....