capitalism

Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism and the University

The growing concentration of value and knowledge in a few big corporations that became intellectual monopolies induced different forms of academic capitalism. I present three types of academic capitalist university – teaching institutions, subordinate research universities, and academic intellectual monopolies – and explore the consequences for knowledge as commons and for academic workers, all of which have worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

By |2020-12-02T13:58:01-05:00Dec 2, 2020|
Read More

COVID-19, Land, and Rural Struggles of the Chinese Working Class

The new Chinese land reform and the attendant countermovement have given rise to a new round of rural struggles over land and livelihood security. These constitute an integral part of the movement of the Chinese working class, of which the 290 million rural workers are a major force.

By |2020-09-23T11:40:29-04:00Sep 23, 2020|
Read More

Capitalist Political Economy, Fascistic Tendencies, and Left Politics in India

I wrote Critical Reflections on Economy and Politics in India: A Class Theory Perspective (published by Brill in 2020) as an attempt to ‘apply’ to the Indian context, some of the general ideas about class presented in my Marxist class theory for a skeptical world (published in 2017). Many scholars argue [...]

By |2020-07-15T14:09:55-04:00Jul 15, 2020|
Read More

Pandemic’s Lesson: Global Capitalism is Uneven and Dangerously Particularistic

There is probably no better example of why “it is much easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” than governments’ responses to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The problem is not so much that the structural and ideological hegemony of capital accumulation prevents us from [...]

By |2020-06-18T16:47:21-04:00Jun 18, 2020|
Read More

An Organic Crisis Is Upon Us

While all of the various crises that comprise the larger organic crisis are inextricable, I’ve tried to map out in schematic form a number of the crises I see cascading across our conjuncture. As you will see, it’s nearly impossible to talk about one without talking about all, but that’s what I’ve tried to do here: provide a roadmap to the organic crisis that’s only just begun.

By |2020-05-06T16:39:58-04:00May 1, 2020|
Read More

Variegated Social Reproduction as Critical Thinking

Variegated social reproduction as a conceptual lens is meant to acknowledge that the unfolding of the contradiction between capital accumulation and the conditions of social reproduction is not uniform but uneven and variegated, involving developments that are sometimes unanticipated.

By |2020-01-23T09:15:32-05:00Jan 22, 2020|
Read More

Capitalism, Neoliberalism and Unfree Labour

Although most labour rights activists readily identify the status of these migrant workers as legally unfree, there is, however, a deeper form of unfreedom and coercion in the labour market that deserves much more attention than it receives in discussions of unfreedom. This unfreedom and coercion is not reducible to a legal status but is instead rooted in the very nature of the relationship between employer and worker in capitalist society.

By |2019-11-27T11:19:34-05:00Nov 27, 2019|
Read More

Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States

The task at hand is to place the political economy of repression within the contours of U.S. history. It involves sketching in broad terms how, over time, repression is the product of dynamic and fixed relations between capital and labor. The goal is to represent how capital is able to repress labor given essential prerequisites.

By |2018-10-08T06:57:39-04:00Apr 23, 2017|
Read More

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.

By |2018-07-16T13:09:43-04:00Feb 20, 2017|
Read More

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.

By |2018-07-16T13:10:02-04:00Feb 20, 2017|
Read More
Go to Top