It is easy to forget some important facts about the presumed sustainability of
planned/communist, historical and current economies. The Soviet block had an
immensly polluting industry which paid almost no attention to the environemntal
nor human health. Citizen protests, unlike the NGO acitivity inthe West, were
banned. The most ecologically destructive economic project recorded so far
inthe world - the draining of the Aral Sea was done in the USSR - an entirely
planned disaster!
Under Mao, Chinese population was subject to periodic starvation and their
economy, despite planning efforts was moving in no direction at all. It is
after gradually implementing capitalist institutions since Deng Xiaoping
reforms that China become second world economic power and lifted at least a
couple of hundred of millions from poverty. In the meantime China is destroying
its environment - the consequnce of joint impact of wild capitalism and
communist planning (Three Gorges Dam project was initiated under Mao but had
economic means for realization only under the capitalist institutions). North
Corea is starving periodically its population and depend on foreign aid.
These former and current communist economies can not be "role models" for
sustainability in any sense. About the quality of life and human rights in former USSR
there is a plenty of evidence from those who lived there, and very few of them feel pity
for its collapse.
Capitalism and free market economy, if not regulated will for sure deplete all
the nonrenewable resources.
However, besides planning, which has been very present in the post WWII
capitalist economies I do not believe that we can learn much from the former
communist systems.
The solution may lie in the change of the predominat Western wordview, which is
overconfident in technological fixes and dominated by materialist and economic values.
Our societies lack substantial environental values and we miss the non-material aspects
of the quality of life. This is a legacy of modernity, and a communist ideology pertains
to this legacy, and therefore has been equally "unfriendly" to environemnt.
Igor Matutuinovic
-----Original Message-----
From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es
[mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Dr. Shu-Kun Lin
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 4:40 PM
To: christian.fu...@uti.at; Christian Fuchs
Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: Re: [Fis] CfP: Marx is Back - The Importance of Marxist
Theory and Research for Critical Communication Studies Today
Some very quick comments: This is extremely interesting topic. I have
this idea also since 2008 when I was reading and considering a lot
about sustainability. Capitalism and free market economy, if not
regulated or revised by adding some elements of socialism (Maxism or
communism) and planned economy, will for sure deplete all the
nonrenewable resources. I understand now why many people (including
the father and the brothers of my grandmother from a rich landlord in
China) from rich families or capitalist families sacrificed their
lives for the revolutionary cause of communism. North Korea people
live in a much more sustainable way than other countries. (Democracy
and dictatorship are another issue of
discussion.) It is a pity that the great Soviet Union was destroyed and China
has been actually doing the capitalism not long after the death of Mao.
Open Access on the Internet is also actually a socialism movement, in my
opinion.
On 21.07.2011 11:46, Christian Fuchs wrote:
Marx is Back: The Importance of Marxist Theory and Research for
Critical Communication Studies Today
Call for Papers for a Special
Issue of tripleC – Journal for a Global Sustainable Information
Society.
Edited by Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco
http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/CfP_Marx_tripleC.pdf For
inquiries, please contact the two editors.
In light of the global capitalist crisis, there is renewed interest
in Karl Marx’s works and in concepts like class, exploitation and
surplus value. Slavoj Žižek argues that the antagonisms of
contemporary capitalism in the context of the ecological crisis, the
massive expansion of intellectual property, biogenetics, new forms of
apartheid and growing world poverty show that we still need the
Marxian notion of class. He concludes that there is an urgent need to
renew Marxism and to defend its lost causes in order to render
problematic capitalism as the only alternative (Žižek 2008, 6) and
the new forms of a soft capitalism that promise, and in its rhetoric
makes use of, ideals like participation, self-organization, and
co-operation, without realizing them. Žižek (2010, chapter 3) argues
that the global capitalistcrisis clearly demonstrates the need to
return to the critique of political economy. Göran Therborn suggests
that the “new constellations of power and new possibilities of
resistance” in the 21st century require retaining the “Marxian idea
that human emancipation from exploitation, oppression, discrimination
and the inevitable linkage between privilege and misery can only come
from struggle by the exploited and disadvantaged themselves”
(Therborn 2008, 61). Eric Hobsbawm (2011, 12f) insists that for
understanding the global dimension of contemporary capitalism, its
contradictions and crises, and the persistence of socio-economic
inequality, we “must ask Marx’s questions” (13).
This special issue will publish articles that address the importance
of Karl Marx’s works for Critical Media and Communication Studies,
what it means to ask Marx’s questions in 21st century informational
capitalism, how Marxian theory can be used for critically analyzing
and transforming media and communication today, and what the
implications of the revival of the interest in Marx are for the field
of Media and Communication Studies.
Questions that can be explored in contributions include, but are not
limited to:
* What is Marxist Media and Communication Studies? Why is it needed
today? What are the main assumptions, legacies, tasks, methods and
categories of Marxist Media and Communication Studies and how do they
relate to Karl Marx’s theory? What are the different types of Marxist
Media/Communication Studies, how do they differ, what are their
commonalities?
* What is the role of Karl Marx’s theory in
different fields, subfields and approaches of Media and Communication
Studies? How have the role, status, and importance of Marx’s theory
for Media and Communication Studies evolved historically, especially
since the 1960s? * In addition to his work as a theorist and
activist, Marx was a practicing journalist throughout his career.
What can we learn from his journalism about the practice of
journalism today, about journalism theory, journalism education and
alternative media?
* What have been the structural conditions, limits
and problems for conducting Marxian-inspired Media and Communication
Research and for carrying out university teaching in the era of
neoliberalism? What are actual or potential effects of the new
capitalist crisis on these conditions?
* What is the relevance of
Marxian thinking in an age of capitalist crisis for analyzing the
role of media and communication in society?
* How can the Marxian
notions of class, class struggle, surplus value, exploitation,
commodity/commodification, alienation, globalization, labour,
capitalism, militarism and war, ideology/ideology critique,
fetishism, and communism best be used for analyzing, transforming and
criticizing the role of media, knowledge production and communication
in contemporary capitalism?
* How are media, communication, and
information addressed in Marx’s work? * What are commonalities and
differences between contemporary approaches in the interpretation of
Marx’s analyses of media, communication, knowledge, knowledge labour
and technology?
* What is the role of dialectical philosophy and
dialectical analysis as epistemological and methodological tools for
Marxian-inspired Media and Communication Studies?
* What were
central assumptions of Marx about media, communication, information,
knowledge production, culture and how can these insights be used
today for the critical analysis of capitalism? * What is the
relevance of Marx’s work for an understanding of social media?
*
Which of Marx’s works can best be used today to theorize media and
communication? Why and how?
* Terry Eagleton (2011) demonstrates
that the 10 most common held prejudices against Marx are wrong. What
prejudices against Marx can be found in Media and Communication
Studies today? What have been the consequences of such prejudices?
How can they best be contested? Are there continuities and/or
discontinuities of prejudices against Marx in light of the new
capitalist crisis?
All contributions shall genuinely deal with Karl Marx’s original
works and discuss their relevance for contemporary Critical
Media/Communication Studies.
Eagleton Terry. 2011. Why Marx was right. London: Yale University
Press. Hobsbawm, Eric. 2011. How to change the world. Marx and
Marxism 1840-2011. London: Little, Brown. Therborn, Göran. 2008. From
Marxism to post-Marxism? London: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj. 2008. In
defense of lost causes. London: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. Living in
the end times. London: Verso.
Editors
Christian Fuchs is chair professor for Media and Communication
Studies at Uppsala University’s Department of Informatics and Media.
He is editor of the journal tripleC – Journal for a Global
Sustainable Information Society. His areas of interest are: Critical
Theory, Social Theory, Media& Society, Critical Political Economy of
Media/Communication, Critical Information Society Studies, Critical
Internet Studies. He is author of the books “Foundations of Critical
Media and Information Studies” (Routledge 2011) and “Internet and
Society: Social Theory in the Information Age”
(Routledge 2008, paperback 2011). He is co-editor of the collected
volume “The Internet and Surveillance. The Challenges of Web 2.0 and
Social Media” (Routledge 2011, together with Kees Boersma, Anders
Albrechtslund, Marisol Sandoval). He is currently writing a book
presenting a critical theory of social media. http://fuchs.uti.at
Vincent Mosco is professor emeritus of sociology at Queen's
University and formerly Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society. Dr.
Mosco is the author of numerous books on communication, technology,
and society. His most recent include Getting the
Message: Communications Workers and Global Value Chains (co-edited
with Catherine McKercher and Ursula Huws, Merlin, 2010), The
Political Economy of Communication, second edition (Sage, 2009), The
Laboring of
Communication: Will Knowledge Workers of the World Unite
(co-authored with Catherine McKercher, Lexington Books, 2008),
Knowledge Workers in the Information Society (co-edited with
Catherine McKercher, Lexington Books, 2007), and The Digital Sublime:
Myth, Power, and Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2004). He is currently
writing a book on the relevance of Karl Marx for communication research today.
Publication Schedule and Submission
Structured Abstracts for potential contributions shall be submitted
to both editors (christian.fu...@im.uu.se, mos...@mac.com) per e-mail
until September 30th, 2011 (submission deadline). The authors of
accepted abstracts will be invited to write full papers that are due
five months after the feedback from the editors. Full papers must
then be submitted to tripleC. Please do not instantly submit full
papers, but only structured abstracts to the editors.
The abstracts
should have a maximum of 1 200 words and should be structured by
dealing separately with each of the following five dimensions:
1) Purpose and main questions of the paper
2) Description of the way
taken for answering the posed questions
3) Relevance of the topic in
relation to the CfP
4) Main expected outcomes and new insights of
the paper
5) Contribution to the engagement with Marx’s works and to
Marxian-inspired Media and Communication Studies
Journal
tripleC (cognition, communication, co-operation): Open Access
Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society,
http://www.triple-c.se
Focus and Scope:
Critical Media-/Information-/ Communication-/Internet-/Information
Society-Studies
tripleC provides a forum to discuss the challenges
humanity is facing today. It publishes contributions that focus on
critical studies of media, information, communication, culture,
digital media, social media and the Internet in the information
society. The journal’s focus is especially on critical studies and it
asks contributors to reflect about normative, political, ethical and
critical implications of their research.
Indexing: Scopus, EBSCOHost Communication and Mass Media Complete,
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Open Access: tripleC is
an open access journal that publishes articles online and does not
charge authors or readers. It uses a Creative Commons license
(Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License) that allows reproduction
of published articles for non-commercial purposes (without changes of
the content and only with naming the author). Creative Commons
publishing poses a viable alternative to commercial academic
publishing that is dominated by big corporate publishing houses.
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