Updates from section members
2018 Marxist Section election results & award winners
In 2018 the Marxist Section elected a new Chair, two new Council members, and gave awards to six of its members for outstanding work.
2016 Elections: The Political Process as a Mechanism of Control
This article examines the US political process and the duopoly party system within a vast array of state strategies and elite manipulation. It contends that analyses of the political process as a real engine of change and that significant differences within the two-party system are flawed because they do not account that they serve as mechanisms for how power and dominance in maintained and reproduced.
Publication: Montes on the U.S. State’s Strategy of Control
Central to this argument is the idea that segments of the population, including some of the most exploited and oppressed, derive material and ideological benefit from the misery associated with the inequalities that are rooted in the current established social order. It is this complexity that demands an explanation that can move beyond simple dichotomies (e.g., elite vs. non-elite) to a greater understanding to how individuals collaborate with a system that is rooted in inequality. This article examines one of the ways that the U.S. state facilitates the incorporation of millions of individuals into the rank-and-file of policing, correctional, national security, and military organizations. Coercive occupations are deeply embedded in U.S. society and contribute to a way of life for millions as premier job suppliers. Yet, allegiance cannot be reduced to economic motives and interests, because loyalty is also culturally contrived.
Publication: Murphy on A Model of Abjection in Power Relations
Examination of the limit serves as a powerful tool for revealing the hidden characteristics of concepts, and also their relationship with other concepts. This article follows the processes of sovereign exceptionalism from Marx to the capitalist estrangement of labour from Marx to their limit figures. The paper builds on comparisons between the proletarian and the homo sacer; however, the focal point is not on the figures themselves, but their importance in understanding the effect of biopolitics on power relations. Building on the concept of pouvoir constituant as discussed by Carl Schmitt, this paper addresses the ways in which different types of constituent power form structures that can then be used against the constituents themselves. The limit figures suggest a process of abjection is co-created in the establishment of power structures, and that overcoming this process requires a conscious dis-agreement with the politics of policing.
Publication: Murphy on a Marxist Critique of Soccer in Sub-Saharan Africa
Attempts to critique and problematize the inequalities embedded in international sporting codes fall short in their failure to integrate the Marxist discussion of capitalist imperialism. This paper brings into conversation current scholarship on soccer in Africa with the works of Lenin on Imperialism and emerging discussions on nonterritorial imperialism. By examining both historical and structural perspectives on the imperialist use of soccer in Africa, visibility comes to the inequalities within international sport and also the theoretical formation of capitalist imperialism.
Marxist Sociologist Allison Hurst Advises UND on First-Generation College Students’ Experiences
UND looks to ease first-generation adjustment By Wade Rupard on Sep 7, 2016 at 6:41 p.m. Like most students when they first go off to college, Allison Hurst was overwhelmed. But being the first person in her family to attend college, there was even more stress associated with it. Eventually, she walked [...]
Publication: González Review of Film Criticism, The Cold War, and the Blacklist by Jeff Smith
As one of the most widely discussed and researched subjects within the field of film studies, the Hollywood blacklist makes for a difficult task to explore. Previous research in film studies generally examines how members within the Hollywood community came to become blacklisted, either on behalf of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) directly or by their fellow artists. Furthermore, previous literature has simply expressed hypotheses as to the intent of anti-communist films: as propaganda or allegory. In Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist, Jeff Smith provides a new perspective on the phenomenon by elucidating why anti-communist films functioned as they did, regardless of propagandistic or allegorical intent.
Publication: Jonna on Braverman, Baran, and Sweezy as a Dialectical Whole
Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital, although the single most influential work in labor sociology in the post–Second World War period, is often viewed narrowly as a theory of the labor process and labor degradation. However, the central focus of Braverman’s analysis was the structure and dynamics of the working class as it evolved in the period of monopoly capitalism. While the labor process was key to unlocking class dynamics, including changing class composition and increasing precariousness within the working class, Braverman never failed to emphasize how the labor process was intimately intertwined with contradictions and tendencies buried deep within contemporary monopoly capitalism. Indeed, Marx’s theory of the reserve army of labor, which Braverman used as a basis for explaining the degradation of labor and the generalization of precariousness, formed a crucial link between Braverman’s analysis and that of monopoly capital theory. In this essay, we reengage with these neglected dimensions of Braverman’s analysis making it possible to address contemporary problems such as increasing worker precariousness and the internationalization of production, in a broader and more comprehensive context. In the course of the analysis, we develop fresh perspectives on the continuing significance of Braverman’s work.
Feminist and Marxist: Dorothy Smith receives lifetime sociology award
by: ANITA WATERS NEW YORK - At a national meeting this summer here, social theorist Dorothy E. Smith was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Section on Marxist Sociology of the American Sociological Association. Smith is widely acknowledged as a major feminist thinker, perhaps best known for her development [...]