2017-02Thematic Section
Marx’s Biggest Idea, or Six Features of Capital (On the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital)

Abstract: 150th anniversary of Marx’s Das Kapital calls for yet another contemporary evaluation of Karl Marx’s legacy. The article argues that Marx’s most important and the longest standing contribution into social science is not „historical materialism” nor any particular form of “critical theory” – it is the concept of capital…

2017-02Thematic Section
Object-Oriented Ontology and Commodity Fetishism: Kant, Marx, Heidegger, and Things

Abstract: There have been several criticisms of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) from the political Left. Perhaps the most frequent one has been that OOO’s aspiration to speak of objects apart from all their relations runs afoul of Marx’s critique of “commodity fetishism.” The main purpose of this article is to show that even…

2017-02Thematic Section
The Value of Time: Its Commodification and a Reconceptualization

Abstract: The discourse about commodification of time indicates that under the current socio-economic regime important values get systematically ignored. This paper reviews literature about the value of time in classical political economy, neoclassical economics, the household production approach, household economics, and activity models. Starting with neoclassical economics, all these approaches are…

2017-02Thematic Section
Growth and Well-Being, Economic and Human

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to trace how a perverted understanding of the human – of human nature, growth, and well-being – came to form the foundation for classical liberal economic thought and to identify some of the negative consequences of this development. My suggestion is that, in response to the social upheaval of the…

2017-01Thematic Section
Human Nature after Neo-Darwinism

Abstract: In the course of the 20th century the so-called Modern Synthesis of Neo-Darwinism has become the dominant paradigm in modern biology. First, it is explained how and why Darwin’s broad definition of evolution, in which the environment plays an important role, was narrowed down by Neo-Darwinism to a radical gene-centric view. Next, the paradigm shift…

2017-01Thematic Section
The Human Difference: Beyond Nomotropism

Abstract: The main theme of this essay is  f i n i t e  l i f e, which is the bedrock of modern biopolitics. In the series of lectures devoted to the ‘birth of biopolitics,’ Michel Foucault defines it as a new system of ‘governing the living’ based on the natural cycle of birth and death, and the law of…