ABSTRACT: Time is central to Martin Hägglund’s discussion of secular faith and spiritual freedom. Time is precisely what is finite in this life and presides over the relationships we value and our risk of losing them. Hägglund adopted the notion of disposable time from Karl Marx’s Grundrisse and reframed it as the more descriptive socially available free time. Following Marx, Hägglund advocates the revaluation of values so that socially available free time would become the measure of value rather than socially necessary labour time. A close examination of the origin of Marx’s analysis ..read more

 Decisions, decisions ..read more

Toward the end of his 1968 essay, "The Unknown Marx," Martin Nicolaus quoted Marx's enumeration of four barriers to production under capital that "expose the basis of overproduction, the fundamental contradiction of developed capital." Nicolaus qualified what Marx meant by overproduction to be "[not] simply ‘excess inventory’; rather, he means excess productive power more generally." ‘These inherent limits necessarily coincide with the nature of capital, with its essential determinants. These necessary limits are: ‘1. necessary labour as limit to the exchange-value of living labour-power, of ..read more

I have expressed my disagreement with Kohei Saito's Slow Down and Marx in the Anthropocene in previous posts. I welcome Huber's and Phillips's critique of Saito at Jacobin. They get much right in their criticism of Saito's Utopianism and implicit primitivism but they share with Saito a fundamental misreading of Marx. This misreading is based on a speculative interpretation of a stirring but ambiguous passage in Marx's Preface to his 1859 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, w ..read more

Kohei Saito's "manifesto" of degrowth communism was BIG in Japan, selling half a million copies in the first year and a half after publication. It's debut in English is already tarnished, though, by a colossal, cringe-inducing Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion error that repeats throughout the book. The formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit is: multiply the Celsius temperature by 1.8 and add 32. The addition of 32 is to account for the fact that the freezing point of water is 0° in Celsius but 32° in Fahrenheit. However, when converting a temperature change, such as the IPCC's upper limi ..read more

     One of the tallest trees in the economic forest has fallen:  Bob Solow has died at the age of 99. The modern study of economic growth could not have happened without his work, of course.  He was also one of the funniest economists I know. For years I have had the following quote from him on my office door,  which hilariously sums up his attitude to Lucas and Sargent on business cycles: "Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to me that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing I want to do with him is get involved in a ..read more

It is a problem that has vexed and eluded Marxists -- and tantalized critics of Marx -- for a century and a half. If I am correct, Karl Marx had an intuition of the argument I am about to present but he couldn't quite bring himself to articulate it. A bit over a century later, in "Proletariat and Middle Class in Marx: Hegelian Choreography and the Capitalist Dialectic." Martin Nicolaus almost got it or may have gotten it but couldn't put it into words. The question is usually framed in terms of a New Middle Class, although the agglomeration isn't a class, it isn't in the middle, and it isn't p ..read more

Was Karl Marx a “degrowth communist” as Kohei Saito claims in Marx in the Anthropocene? In a word, no. But the whole truth is even stranger and more wonderful than Kohei Saito’s oxymoron anachronism. André Gorz is credited with the first use of la décroissance (degrowth) in the context of modern criticism of the political imperative of economic growth. The occasion was a public forum held in Paris by Le Nouvel Observateur on June 13, 1972 to discuss the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report. Gorz’s remarks were largely a reply to a speech and interview given by European Commission Presiden ..read more

Suppose, after the October 7 action by Hamas, Israel had simply retaken its territory, captured or killed the attackers and left it at that.  In this parallel universe, they would have issued a statement that any further response would endanger innocent civilians, and to do so would have lowered themselves to Hamas’ level.  What would have happened then? Hamas would have accomplished nothing other than killing hundreds of people.  Israel would have the world’s sympathy.  Its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia would have continued unabated.  It would have been more secure ..read more

 Imagine:  Trump convicted of federal crimes by Jack Smith, sentenced to prison and imprisoned during 2024 election cycle, wins election and proceeds to pardon himself. The Supine Court upholds his self-pardon, Thomas writing for the majority. Are you sufficiently scared? To forestall this, he must be convicted of serious felonies at the state level:  a president's power to pardon only bears on federal crimes.  Hence my title: Godspeed, Fani Willis ..read more