Tony Smith
I was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1951. My parents, Arthur and Alice Smith, moved to Mattapoisett Massachusetts two years later, a beautiful town on the coast where I was lucky enough to grow up with my sisters Anne Marie and Lisa, and my brother Andrew. In 1983 I had the immense good fortune of marrying Rebecca Burke. To our great joy Bridgit Burke-Smith joined us in 1994, followed by Conor in 1996.
I received my undergraduate degree from Boston College in 1974, writing a senior thesis on Bernard Lonergan and Aquinas under Joseph Flanagan. In 1972-3 and again in 1978-9 I studied Hegel, Marx, and Critical Theory at the University of Munich, while I spent 1975-6 at the University of Tübingen. In 1980 I was granted a Ph.D. in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, having completed a dissertation contrasting Habermas and Weber under the supervision of Dick Howard.
In the fall 1980 I began my appointment in the Department of Philosophy and
Religious Studies at Iowa State University, where I have been chair of since
2002. I am a member of the
socialist organization Solidarity, and am on the Board of Directors of the Iowa
Policy Project, the leading progressive think-tank in the state of Iowa.
I am a contributing editor for the journal
Science and Society, on the Advisory
Board of Historical Materialism, and
an active member of the Radical
Philosophy Association.
A selection of books, articles, and reviews follows. Publishing details and a complete list of publications can be found in my C.V. by clicking here: Curriculum Vitae
THE HEGEL/MARX CONNECTION
During the 1980’s I published a number of articles, the best of which were collected later in The Role of Values in Social Theory (1991) and Dialectical Social Theory and Its Critics: From Hegel to Analytical Marxism and Postmodernism (1993). My main intellectual project during these years was writing The Logic of Marx’s Capital: Replies to Hegelian Criticisms (1990). In 1975-6 while attending Klaus Hartmann’s seminars in Tübingen I conceived the idea of replying to his criticisms of Marx in Die Marxsche Theorie. (Fortunately, I recognized that I did not understand either Hegel or Marx well enough to make this the topic of my dissertation.) The Logic of Marx’s Capital is my response. I show that Capital can be read as a work of systematic dialectics, in which Marx reconstructs the essential determinations of capital, moving from the most simple and abstract determinations to the most concrete and complex. I argue that while Marx’s dialectical social theory is quite different from Hegel in that it is critical rather than affirmative, the criticisms made of Marx’s dialectical methodology by Hartmann and other Hegelians do not hold.
A sabbatical year at the University of Sussex in 1986-97 was invaluable for completing this project. I was fortunate enough to participate in a study group on Hegel that year with some of England’s leading Marxian philosophers, including Chris Arthur, Joe McCarney, and Sean Sayers.
The first chapter of this book can be found at the marxists.org website:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/tonysmi.htm
My reading of Hegel is much more charitable (and, in my view at least, accurate) than most Marxian philosophers. A sense of my position in debates about the Hegel/Marx connection can be won from my response to an article by Chris Arthur claiming that Hegel’s Logic is “homologous” with the logic of capital: The Hegel/Marx connection
My views also differ significantly from those presented in John Rosenthal’s The Myth of Dialectics:
“The Relevance of Systematic Dialectics to Marxian Thought: A Reply to Rosenthal”:
“Hegel: Mystic Dunce or Important Predecessor?”:
“On
Rosenthal’s “Escape” from Hegel”:
THE INTERNATIONAL
SYMPOSIUM ON MARXIAN THEORY
In the fall of 1990 Fred Moseley, an internationally recognized Marxian economist, moved to Mount Holyoke College. Part of his start-up package from Mount Holyoke included funds to host a small conference. At that time Professor Moseley’s main interest was the methodological framework employed in Marx’s Capital. It is widely recognized that Marx’s method was affected by his study of Hegel’s The Science of Logic. But exactly what Marx took over from Hegel more or less intact, what he transformed, and what he rejected, is a matter of intense controversy. Professor Moseley decided to organize a week-long working conference bringing together Marxian economists and philosophers who had studied Marx’s methodological framework in general, and the Hegel/Marx relation in particular. By a happy coincidence The Logic of Marx’s Capital had just come out, and I was invited. There were eight participants in the conference in the summer of 1991, four philosophers and four economists. Five were from the United States, the others were from England, the Netherlands, and Italy.
The conference was a great success, and in various incarnations the group has met annually since then in a variety of countries under the rubric of The International Symposium on Marxian Theory (ISMT). Over the course of this period we have published six collections of papers as a group: Marx’s Method in Capital (1993), New Investigations of Marx’s Method (1997), The Circulation of Capital: Essays on Volume Two of Marx’s Capital (1998), The Culmination of Capital: Essays on Volume III of Marx’s Capital (2002), The Constitution of Capital: Essays on Volume I of Marx’s Capital (2004), and Marx’s Theory of Money: Modern Appraisals (2005). A seventh book is forthcoming from Palgrave/Macmillan, titled Re-reading Marx: New Perspectives After the Critical Edition. A selection of articles from these books introducing Italian readers to the ISMT will be published in Italy in 2009. It would be difficult to convey how much I have benefitted from interactions with ISMT friends and comrades, especially the core group of Chris Arthur, Riccardo Bellofiore, Andrew Brown, Martha Campbell, Roberto Fineschi, Fred Moseley, Paul Mattick Jr., Patrick Murray, and Geert Reuten.
A sample of my contributions to these volumes:
New Investigations:
“Marx's
Theory of Social Forms and Lakatos's Methodology of Scientific Research
Programs”:
Essays
on Volume II:
“The
Capital/Consumer Relation in Lean Production: The Continued Relevance of Volume
Two of Capital”:
New Perspectives:
“The
Chapters on Machinery in the 1861-63 Manuscripts”:
The most recent ISMT conference was held at the University of Bergamo in July 2008, commemorating the 150’th anniversary of the Grundrisse. My contribution is titled, “The ‘General Intellect” in the Grundrisse and Beyond.” It includes a critical assessment of two leading contemporary Italian Marxist theorists, Paolo Virno and Carlo Vercellone:
TECHNOLOGY AND CAPITAL IN THE AGE OF LEAN
PRODUCTION: A MARXIAN CRITIQUE OF THE “NEW ECONOMY
In 1993-4 I spent a sabbatical year at the geography department of the University of California at Berkeley, working primarily with Richard Walker. My project was to assess the extent to which Marxian theory illuminates contemporary developments in capitalism, in specific, the rise of “flexible” networks of production. This work culminated with the publication of Technology and Capital in the Age of Lean Production: A Marxian Critique of the “New Economy,” in which I attempted to show that the extent to which Marxian theory illuminates contemporary developments is considerable.
Here is the book in its entirety:
Chapter 1: FROM FORDISM TO LEAN PRODUCTION:
Chapter 2: LEAN
PRODUCTION AND THE CAPITAL/WAGE LABOR RELATION
Chapter 3: LEAN
PRODUCTION AND THE CAPITAL/WAGE LABOR RELATION
(2): STRUCTURAL
COERCION, EXPLOITATION, AND REAL SUBSUMPTION:
Chapter 4: THE CAPITAL/CONSUMER RELATION IN LEAN PRODUCTION:
Chapter 5: INTERCAPITAL RELATIONS IN LEAN PRODUCTION:
Chapter 6: GLOBALIZATION AND THE "NEW ECONOMY":
Chapter 7: SOCIALISM, AN ALTERNATIVE TO LEAN PRODUCTION?:
GLOBALISATION: A SYSTEMATIC MARXIAN
ACCOUNT
After completing
Technology and Capital I immersed myself in the literature on globalization
and global justice. After a year of
research undertaken while visiting the economics department of the University of
Amsterdam in 1999-2000, I began writing the book eventually published in 2005,
Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian
Account.
In Part One I attempt a systematic reconstruction of the
main positions in the globalization debate, taking Hegel’s dialectical ordering
of positions in The Phenomenology of
Spirit as a rough guide. I
distinguish four models of globalization:
the social state model, the
neoliberal model, the catalytic state model, and the democratic cosmopolitan
model. I argue that each
necessarily tends to function in a manner contradicting essential normative
claims made by its leading advocates (John Rawls
, Friedrich Hayek
, John Gray
, and David Held
, respectively).
In Hegelian jargon, this ‘immanent contradiction’ justifies a
‘determinate negation’, that is, a transition to the next model, in which the
shortcomings besetting the previous framework are explicitly addressed.
I claim that the immanent contradictions afflicting the democratic
cosmopolitan position justify a transition to a Marxian model of capitalist
globalisation, where the irresolvable contradictions and social antagonisms of
the contemporary global order are explicitly recognised.
The first three chapters of Part Two are devoted to an examination of
this Marxian model of capitalist globalisation.
The final chapter develops an alternative socialist model of
globalization, based upon the model of economic democracy developed in David
Schweickart’s important books Against
Capitalism and Beyond Capitalism.
Unfortunately, the price of the book has pretty much limited its purchasers to
libraries. Anyone interested in
checking it out without spending a small fortune can do so here.
Table
of Contents and Preface:
Chapter 1: THE SOCIAL
STATE MODEL OF GLOBALISATION:
Chapter 2: THE
NEOLIBERAL MODEL OF GLOBALISATION:
Chapter 3: THE
CATALYTIC STATE MODEL OF GLOBALISATION:
Chapter 4: THE
DEMOCRATIC COSMOPOLITAN MODEL OF GLOBALISATION:
Chapter 5: A MARXIAN
MODEL OF CAPITALIST GLOBALISATION (1): THE WORLD MARKET:
Chapter 8: A MARXIAN
MODEL OF SOCIALIST GLOBALISATION:
Dialectics for a New Century, co-edited with Bertell Ollman, includes my paper “Towards a Systematic Dialectic of Globalization,” an overview of the arguments developed in much greater detail in the globalization book:
An unpublished paper titled “The Place of the World Market in Marx’s Systematic Theory” might also be useful to those interested in Marxian theories of globalization:
A
SELECTION OF OTHER PAPERS
“Biotechnology and Global Justice”:
“Technological Dynamism and the Normative Justification of Global Capitalism.”
This article discusses “new growth theory,” a development in mainstream
economics that treats technological change as endogenous to capitalism
(amazingly enough, until very recently standard neoclassical models in economics
have treated technological change as an exogenous variable).
In this respect new growth theory is a return to the theory of technology
developed in Marx’s Capital.
Interestingly, some new growth theorists have also come to accept
another thesis defended by Marx: technological change in capitalism necessarily
tends to reproduce/exacerbate inequalities in the global economy.
I argue that this acknowledgement undercuts a crucial premise of liberal
political philosophers who accept the normative justification of global
capitalism. The rise of new growth
theory should make it more difficult to assert uncritically that that proper
respect for the equal moral worth of all individuals can be institutionalized in
capitalism if the proper background conditions are in place:
“Marx,” was commissioned by the editor of the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Continental Philosophy. It provides an overview of Marx’s theoretical framework, emphasizing its continued relevance to debates in contemporary political philosophy. It was written with those reading Marx for the first time in mind.
“The Case
Against Free Market Environmentalism”:
Finally, two contributions to the debate regarding Robert Brenner’s
The Economics of Global Turbulence:
“Brenner and Crisis Theory: Issues in Systematic and Historical Dialectics
“Reply to Fine, Lapavitsas and Milonakis”
A SELECTON OF BOOK REVIEWS
Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx, by Stathis Kouvelkis:
SOME RECENT BOOKS ON GLOBALIZATION: Lori Wallach and Patrick Woodall, Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO; Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum, edited by William Fisher and Thomas Ponniah; Confronting Capitalism, edited by Eddie Yuen, Daniel Burton-Rose, and George Katsiaficas; David McNally, Another World is Possible: globalization and anti-capitalism: