Marxism

A provocative and original reconceptualization of international relations.

Article arguing that class society and patriarchy only arose ten to twenty thousand years ago. For over a hundred thousand years, before this counterrevolution, we lived in more gender-egalitarian and anarchist/communist hunter-gatherer societies. Lionel Sims shows the evidence for this counter-revolution in the Bible, in world-wide myths, in hunter-gatherer studies, in research on apes and in archaeology.

In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique.

Marx, Engels and Luxemburg were all keen to return to the egalitarian relations of primitive communism, at a higher level. But how does the egalitarianism of early human societies connect up with Marxism’s prime focus on the rise and decline of capitalism? As capitalism continues to disintegrate, this article looks at the egalitarian origins of money in ancient Greece for clues as to how we might transcend the whole money system.