By Alain Badiou
Within the uprisings of the Arab global, Alain Badiou discerns echoes of the eu revolutions of 1848. In either situations, the article was once to overthrow despotic regimes maintained through the good powers—regimes designed to impose the desire of monetary oligarchies. either occasions happened after what used to be usually regarded as the top of a innovative epoch: in 1815, the ultimate defeat of Napoleon; and in 1989, the autumn of the Soviet Union. however the revolutions of 1848 proclaimed for a century and a part the go back of innovative notion and motion. Likewise, the uprisings underway at the present time usher in a global resurgence within the freeing strength of the masses—despite the makes an attempt of the ‘international community’ to neutralize its power.
Badiou’s ebook salutes this reawakening of historical past, weaving examples from the Arab Spring and in different places right into a worldwide research of the go back of emancipatory universalism.
Reviews:
“A determine like Plato or Hegel walks right here between us!”—Slavoj Žižek
“An inheritor to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser.”—New Statesman
“One of an important philosophers writing today.”—Joan Copjec
“Scarcely the other ethical philosopher of our day is as politically clear-sighted and courageously polemical, so ready to place notions of fact and universality again at the agenda.”—Terry Eagleton
“Shaking the principles of Western liberal democracy.”—Times better schooling Supplement
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Additional info for The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings
Sample text
Two key historical breaks are identified: the transition from agrarian to industrial societies; and thence to post-industrialism. Such theorists also argue that, whereas industrial societies depended on the exploitation of waged labour, post-industrial growth relies on the production and utilization of knowledge. Marxists see this as deeply misleading. s Whereas Mandel forecast that 'late capitalism' would develop on a global scale with increased inequalities and instabilities, Bell expected the demise of industrial society based on economic exploitation and a narrow concern with private profitand-loss in favour of a knowledge-based, post-industrial society orientated to co-operation and the public interest.
This was linked in late capitalism to a great increase in R&D, the expansion of skilled and intellectual labour, the growth of producer services as well as the commodification of working-class leisure, and so on. Mandel also suggested that technological progress would become a major theme in late capitalist ideology (a prediction reflected ideologically in Bell's own work). New forms of global expansion of capitalism would be reflected in new forms of state intervention as national economies became more open and competition grew more intense.
For others, the problem is more theoretical, namely, that it concludes from the fact that living labour-power is bought and sold that it must have the same commodity character as an inert machine. fictitious commodity, that is, as having the external form but not the real substance of a commodity, to derive most of Marx's conclusions about the labour process, capitalist exploitation, class conflict, and the overall logic of capital. Second, there is increasing recognition that, while capitalism may have a distinctive dynamic, its future remains open.
