The Frankfurt school's academic 'Marxism': "organised hypocrisy" In the 1960s, especially in radical student circles, there were many fanciful ideas floating about. The most pernicious and erroneous of these was the view represented by Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, that “neo-capitalism” had evolved ways of avoiding capitalist crisis, and that the working class had been integrated into the system as passive consumers in the “affluent” society. As Daniel Morley explains, these were the pseudo-Marxist ideas of the so-called Frankfurt School.
Women's oppression and prostitution: a Marxist perspective Some feminists argue that the term and notion of ‘prostitution’ should be abandoned and replaced by that of ‘sex work’. In other words, prostitution should be treated as any other form of work and recognised as such. According to the feminist activist Morgane Merteuil (among others), prostitution would even be a tool in the fight against capitalism and for the emancipation of women. In this article, we intend to respond to these ideas from a Marxist point of view.
Revolutionary and life affirming: one hundred years of James Joyce’s Ulysses In this article, published in issue 39 of In Defence of Marxism magazine last autumn to celebrate the book’s centenary, John McInally looks at James Joyce’s revolutionary novel Ulysses, challenges the view that it is apolitical, and explains why it should be on your reading list.
