Christos Memos - Böcker

This book examines the 2008 global economic crisis as a complex social phenomenon or "social hieroglyphic", arguing that the crisis is not fundamentally economic, despite presenting itself as such. Instead, it is considered to be a symptom of a long-standing, multifaceted, and endemic crisis of capitalism which has effectively become permanent, leading contemporary capitalist societies into a state of social regression, manifest in new forms of barbarism. The author offers a qualitative understanding of the economic crisis as the perversion, or inversion, of the capitalistically organized social relations. The genesis of the current crisis is traced back to the unresolved world crisis surrounding the Great Depression in order to map the course and different "inverted forms" of the continuous global crisis of capitalism, and to reveal their inner connections as derivative of the same social constitution. From a historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the book expounds critical social theory, elaborating on the intersection between the early critical theory of the Frankfurt School – mainly Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse – and the "social form" analysis and the critique of global political economy. Global Economic Crisis as Social Hieroglyphic critically addresses the permanent character of the 1920s–1930s crisis and the "crisis theory" debates; the political crisis in Eastern Europe (1953–1968); the crisis of Keynesianism; the crisis of subversive reason; the crisis, negative anthropology and transformations of the bourgeois individual; the state of social regression and the destructive tendencies after the rise of neoliberalism; and finally, the 2008 financial crisis and its ongoing aftermath.

By exploring the concepts of 'crisis' and 'critique', this study offers a thought-provoking re-examination of the political and social thought of Cornelius Castoriadis in light of the current world crisis and with regard to his radical critique of both the traditional Left and contemporary capitalist societies.

This book examines the 2008 global economic crisis as a complex social phenomenon or "social hieroglyphic", arguing that the crisis is not fundamentally economic, despite presenting itself as such. Instead, it is considered to be a symptom of a long-standing, multifaceted, and endemic crisis of capitalism which has effectively become permanent, leading contemporary capitalist societies into a state of social regression, manifest in new forms of barbarism. The author offers a qualitative understanding of the economic crisis as the perversion, or inversion, of the capitalistically organized social relations. The genesis of the current crisis is traced back to the unresolved world crisis surrounding the Great Depression in order to map the course and different "inverted forms" of the continuous global crisis of capitalism, and to reveal their inner connections as derivative of the same social constitution. From a historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the book expounds critical social theory, elaborating on the intersection between the early critical theory of the Frankfurt School – mainly Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse – and the "social form" analysis and the critique of global political economy. Global Economic Crisis as Social Hieroglyphic critically addresses the permanent character of the 1920s–1930s crisis and the "crisis theory" debates; the political crisis in Eastern Europe (1953–1968); the crisis of Keynesianism; the crisis of subversive reason; the crisis, negative anthropology and transformations of the bourgeois individual; the state of social regression and the destructive tendencies after the rise of neoliberalism; and finally, the 2008 financial crisis and its ongoing aftermath.

By exploring the concepts of 'crisis' and 'critique', this study offers a thought-provoking re-examination of the political and social thought of Cornelius Castoriadis in light of the current world crisis and with regard to his radical critique of both the traditional Left and contemporary capitalist societies.

Bringing together the various heterodox traditions, groups and scholars that came under the heading of Open Marxism for the first time, this book assesses the evolution of Open Marxism from the initial usage of the term by Kostas Axelos in France in the 1950s and the journal, Arguments, principally the ‘anarchist Marx’ of Maximilien Rubel and the ‘Libertarian Marxism’ of Daniel Guérin, through Open Marxism as it was developed in Eastern Europe, especially in the scholarly work of Karel Kosik in Czechoslovakia, the work of the Polish Open Marxists and the Praxis group in Yugoslavia, to Johannes Agnoli’s work in post-1968 (West) Germany, and finally to the work developed by Bonefeld, Clarke, Gunn and Holloway within the framework of the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) in Britain since the 1980s.Its comprehensive study of the historical development of Open Marxism in all its various guises and forms reasserts the rich insights of its devastating critique of social democracy, Leninism-Stalinism and the Althusserian structuralist paradigm. It introduces a new readership to Open Marxism’s negative, fundamental, and destructive critique of capitalism and examines the practical relevance of its subversive thinking to the contemporary struggle for a free and open socialist society.