Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Living Tradition, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Discussion of the seminal work by R. W. Connell and T. H. Irving 'Class Structure in Australian History' (Longman Cheshire, 1980, 1992), and of the tradition of Marxist and class analysis in Australian intellectual life.

Esmonde Higgins - Politics As Intellectual Practice, Terry Irving

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

This chapter traces Esmonde Higgins' struggle to define his intellectual practice from 1919 to 1954, using his private correspondence and his published writings. It divides his reflections into three parts: alienation, practice, and contradictory aspects of practice.It describes his route from Communist bureaucratic practice to having conversations 'about human interests' with workers as equals in adult education classes and informal domestic gatherings.

Esmonde Higgins - Politics As Intellectual Practice, Terry Irving

Terry Irving

This chapter traces Esmonde Higgins' struggle to define his intellectual practice from 1919 to 1954, using his private correspondence and his published writings. It divides his reflections into three parts: alienation, practice, and contradictory aspects of practice.It describes his route from Communist bureaucratic practice to having conversations 'about human interests' with workers as equals in adult education classes and informal domestic gatherings.

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

The New Left In Australia, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Paper presented as part of the Eleventh Annual Conference of the Australasian Political Studies Association (APSA), 28th-30th August, 1969, University of Sydney. It is of historical interest, being an early exploration and evaluation of the Australian New Left by activist/participant/analyst Rowan Cahill (b. 1945- ). It predates more widely cited sources and authorities, and has been a difficult source to locate due to the limited nature of its original distribution.