István Mészáros
Biographic Data
| ID | 434480 |
|---|---|
| NAME | István Mészáros |
| GIVEN NAMES | István |
| FAMILY NAME | Mészáros |
| SIGNATURE | MÉSZÁROS I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Incontrolabilidade Do Capital E Sua Globalização
Traduzido de Globalizzazione (Milão: Edizione Punto Rosso), pp.17-30
Beyond Leviathan: Critique of the State
A Única Economia Possível
Apesar de representar um grande avanço sobre os modos de produção anteriores - ao instituir a relação mercantil como fundamento do processo produtivo e liberar os entraves ao crescimento da riqueza social - o capitalismo vem progressivamente manifestando sua lógica deletéria. É inegável que esta disjunção básica entre as necessidades humanas e as necessidades de reprodução do capital foi o elemento responsável pela incrível expansão do sistema ca…
Preface to Beyond Leviathan
The state cannot be other than Leviathan in imposing its structurally entrenched power on overall societal decision-making. Yet a way must be found to extricate humanity from the ever more dangerous, arbitrary, and alienated form of the Leviathan state. Indeed, the survival of humanity depends on it.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Neocolonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness: Essays on Cultural Decolonization
This title was first published in 1978. This book offers examples of the writings of Renato Constantino, one of the Philippines' most prolific essayists. Editor Meszaros summarizes their unifying theme: 'The colonial strangehold on consciousness is the crucial factor through which the whole society is dominated... The subversion of colonial consciousness through the development of a 'counter-consciousness' inevitably means also the end of colonia…
Aspects of History and Class Consciousness
The various contributions in this book, originally published in 1971, discuss many aspects of the complex subject of history and class consciousness, and the themes that are dealt with are all inter-related. The papers range from history and sociology, through political theory and philosophy, to art criticism and literary criticism. Georg Lukacs’ classic work History and Class Consciousness, is discussed in several of the essays, and the volume i…
From Primitive to Substantive Equality—via Slavery
Unlike materially grounded and strictly determined primitive equality, the realization of universally shared substantive equality is feasible only at a highly developed level of social/economic advancement that must be combined with the consciously pursued non-hierarchical (and thereby non-antagonistic) regulation of a historically sustainable social reproductive metabolism. That would be a radically different social metabolism, in contrast to al…
The Critique of the State: A Twenty-First Century Perspective
The allegedly less and less power of nation-states is a great exaggeration, voiced by governments in the interest of justifying their failure to introduce even some of their thoroughly limited and once solemnly promised social reforms.... The overwhelming historical failure of capital was—and remains—its inability to constitute the state of the capital system as a whole , while irresistibly asserting the imperatives of its system as the material …
Reflections on the New International: Dedicated to the Memory and Legacy of President Hugo Chávez
The need for the establishment and successful operation of The New International is painfully obvious and urgent today. The enemies of a historically sustainable societal reproductive order, who occupy at the present time still the dominant position in our increasingly endangered world, do not hesitate for a moment to exploit in the interest of their destructive design, with utmost cynicism and hypocrisy, the existing decision-making and opinion-…
Structural Crisis Needs Structural Change
When stressing the need for a radical structural change it must be made clear right from the beginning that this is not a call for an unrealizable utopia. On the contrary, the primary defining characteristic of modern utopian theories was precisely the projection that their intended improvement in the conditions of the workers' life could be achieved well within the existing structural framework of the criticized societies.... As we also know, th…
The Dialectic of Structure and History: An Introduction
The investigation of the dialectical relationship between structure and history is essential for a proper understanding of the nature and the defining characteristics of any social formation in which sustainable solutions are being sought to the encountered problems. This is particularly important in the case of capital's social formation, with its inexorable tendency toward an all-embracing, structurally embedded determination of all aspects of …
The structural crisis of capital
In this collection of trenchant essays and interviews, Istvan Meszaros, the world s preeminent Marxist philosopher and winner of the 2008 Libertador Award for Critical Thought (the Bolivar Prize), lays bare the exploitative structure of modern capitalism. He argues with great power that the world s economies are on a social and ecological precipice, and that unless we take decisive action to radically transform societies we will find ourselves th…
Social structure and forms of consciousness
Reflexões e perspectivas das relações entre capital e Educação
Entrevista concedida por István Mészáros, a Maria Isabel Batista Serrão e Patricia Laura Torriglia em 21 de novembro de 2007. Florianópolis. Santa Catarina. Brasil
The challenge and burden of historical time: Socialism in the twenty-first century
An extraordinary new work by the leading Marxian philosopher of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time represents a breakthrough in the development of thought. It can be seen both as a companion volume to his earlier pathbreaking Beyond Capital and a major theoretical contribution in its own right. Its focus is on the decapitation of historical in today's capitalism and the necessity of a ne…
The Communal System and the Principle of Self-Critique
The collapse by century's end of most of the post-revolutionary social experiments of the twentieth century put socialists nearly everywhere on the defensive. Today's call for a "socialism for the twenty-first century" is an attempt to transcend this defensive posture and to engage fully with the most urgent problem of our time: the creation of a sustainable socialist order. In this respect, "István Mészáros," in the words of President Hugo Cháve…
O desafio e o fardo do tempo histórico
O desafio e o fardo do tempo histórico
The Only Viable Economy
Once upon a time the capitalist mode of production represented a great advance over all of the preceding ones, however problematical and indeed destructive this historical advance in the end turned out-and had to turn out-to be. By breaking the long prevailing but constraining direct link between human use and production, and replacing it with the commodity relation, capital opened up the dynamically unfolding possibilities of apparently irresist…
Bolívar and Chávez: The Spirit of Radical Determination
In the summer of 2005 Venezuela commemorated the bicentenary of Simón Bolívar's oath, made in the presence of his great teacher, Simón Rodríguez—a man who later in Paris, well before Marx, frequented socialist secret societies and returned to South America only in 1823. Bolívar's oath took place on August 15, 1805, on the outskirts of Rome. Already the place itself—the hill of Monte Sacro—which they had chosen together for this solemn occasion, w…
The Structural Crisis of Politics
I would like to begin with a brief survey of the very disquieting—indeed, I should say, of worldwide threatening—developments in the field of politics and the law. In this respect I wish to underline that it was no less than twenty-three years ago that I became personally acquainted in Paraiba, Brazil with the painful circumstances of explosive food riots. Twenty years later, at the time of President Lula's electoral campaign, I read that he had …
The Necessity of Planning: In Honor of Harry Magdoff
I wrote some time ago that "Harry Magdoff is a great teacher and an indomitable combatant. His contributions to socialist theory-on imperialism and monopolistic developments, as well as on the vital role of planning for any viable society of the future—are of a truly lasting importance."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this articl…
Cuba: The Next Forty-Five Years
This year Cuba will be celebrating the forty-fifth anniversary of its victorious revolution: a great historic achievement. And when we bear in mind that the Cuban Revolution—the long sustained action of a nation of just eleven million people—survived for forty-five years against all odds, successfully confronting the declared enmity, the U.S.-dictated international political encirclement and economic blockade, as well as the ever renewed attempts…
Militarism and the Coming Wars
It is not for the first time in history that militarism weighs on the consciousness of the people as a nightmare. To go into detail would take far too long. However, here it should be enough to go back in history only as far as the nineteenth century when militarism, as a major instrument of policy making, came into its own, with the unfolding of modern imperialism on a global scale, in contrast to its earlier—much more limited—varieties. By the …
The Challenge of Sustainable Development and the Culture of Substantive Equality
To the memory of Daniel Singer with whom I often conversed about the untenability of our order of structural inequality. 1. Two closely connected propositions are at the center of this intervention: If development in the future is not sustainable development, there will be no significant development at all, no matter how badly needed; only frustrated attempts to square the circle, as in the last few decades, marked by ever more elusive "modernizi…
Socialism or barbarism: From the "American Century" to the crossroads
O desafio e o fardo do tempo histórico
O desafio e o fardo do tempo histórico
Militarism and the Coming Wars
It is not for the first time in history that militarism weighs on the consciousness of the people as a nightmare. To go into detail would take far too long. However, here it should be enough to go back in history only as far as the nineteenth century when militarism, as a major instrument of policy making, came into its own, with the unfolding of modern imperialism on a global scale, in contrast to its earlier—much more limited—varieties. By the …
Neo-colonial identity and counter-consciousness
Additional informationNotes on contributorsIstván Mészáros This essay is reprinted from Renato Constantino's Neo-Colonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness, edited and introduced by István Mészáros (London: Merlin Press, 1978
The Structural Crisis of Politics
I would like to begin with a brief survey of the very disquieting—indeed, I should say, of worldwide threatening—developments in the field of politics and the law. In this respect I wish to underline that it was no less than twenty-three years ago that I became personally acquainted in Paraiba, Brazil with the painful circumstances of explosive food riots. Twenty years later, at the time of President Lula's electoral campaign, I read that he had …
The Challenge of Sustainable Development and the Culture of Substantive Equality
To the memory of Daniel Singer with whom I often conversed about the untenability of our order of structural inequality. 1. Two closely connected propositions are at the center of this intervention: If development in the future is not sustainable development, there will be no significant development at all, no matter how badly needed; only frustrated attempts to square the circle, as in the last few decades, marked by ever more elusive "modernizi…
The Uncontrollability of Globalizing Capital—Intro to Beyond Capital
The Iranian diaspora is an extraordinary community, but one not often noted in the Western press. This community can be compared to the Russian diaspora of the 1890s, or the German of the 1930s. That is to say, an exiled community of an often revolutionary intelligentsia with a potential for affecting the world far beyond the borders of the land they left. A sign of this vigor is the forthcoming in Farsi of István Mészáros' important book Beyond …
Structural Crisis Needs Structural Change
When stressing the need for a radical structural change it must be made clear right from the beginning that this is not a call for an unrealizable utopia. On the contrary, the primary defining characteristic of modern utopian theories was precisely the projection that their intended improvement in the conditions of the workers' life could be achieved well within the existing structural framework of the criticized societies.... As we also know, th…
The Only Viable Economy
Once upon a time the capitalist mode of production represented a great advance over all of the preceding ones, however problematical and indeed destructive this historical advance in the end turned out-and had to turn out-to be. By breaking the long prevailing but constraining direct link between human use and production, and replacing it with the commodity relation, capital opened up the dynamically unfolding possibilities of apparently irresist…
Marxism, the Capital System, and Social Revolution: An Interview with István Mészáros
In the Marxian literature there are a number of models of capitalist crisis: reproduction of the social capital, overproduction, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall In your opinion, which of these models can best explain crises in the modern age? Or can we combine all these models into one? Yes, fundamentally you can combine them. But what takes precedence above all is a global view of capital. It is quite ironic that people have been rece…
Dialectical Transformations: Teleology, History and Social Consciousness
In Marxism, the material base of society is responsible for a number of structural restraints on the appearance, functioning, and evolution of the superstructure. At the same time, the superstructure, too, and especially ideology, exercises considerable influence on developments in the base, and in certain conditions can prove decisive in transforming the relations that constitute the base. While history is radically open ended and, therefore, no…
O marxismo hoje: Entrevista com István Mészaros
Esta entrevista é uma versão elaborada a partir daquela publicada em Monthly Review (voI. 44, no 11, abril de 1993) e que, inicialmente e na íntegra, apareceu em Radical Philosophy (no 62, outono de 1992), sob a condução de Chris Arthur e Joseph McCarney. István Mészáros é um conhecido filósofo húngaro que colaborou diretamente com Lukács, junto à Universidade de Budapest, nos anos que antecederam à intervenção soviética na Hungria, em 1956
The necessity of social control
Political Power and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Societies
The question of political power in post-revolutionary societies is and remains one of the most neglected areas of Marxist theory. Marx formulated the principle of the abolition of ‘political power properly so-called’ in no uncertain terms: ‘The organization of revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of
Neocolonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness
The Work of Sartre, Volume I: Search for Freedom
The Work of Sartre: Volume One: Search for Freedom
The Division of Labor and the Post-Capitalist State
Marx formulated his basic principles with regard to the conditions of a socialist transformation well before the burden of historical experience had deeply affected the political movement of the proletariat first through the accommodations of German Social Democracy, and then through the formation of the Leninist vanguard party after Marx's death. Understandably, therefore, the far-reaching implications of such developments had to remain beyond M…
The decreasing rate of utilization and the capitalist state
1988). The decreasing rate of utilization and the capitalist state. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 265-306
Philosophy, Ideology and Social Science: Essays in Negation and Affirmation
Marxism Today: An Interview with István Mészáros
This is a somewhat abbreviated version of an interview published in the British journal Radical Philosophy (No. 62). The interview was conducted by Chris Arthur and Joseph McCarney in April 1992 and is included here with permission. Introducing the interview, the editors wrote as follows: "István Mészáros left Hungary after the Soviet invasion of 1956. He recently retired from a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. He established his …
Marxism—Politics—Morality
There is a morality of politics—a difficult subject and never clearly treated—and when politics must betray its morality, to choose morality is to betray politics. Now find your way out of that one! Particularly when the politics has taken as its goal bringing about the reign of the human. - Jean-Paul SartreThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF v…
Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition
In only 986 pages, the author exposes a system which can only renew itself at the cost of increasing its problems and can only delay its eventually collapse, showing how philosophers from Locke to Hegel have assumed the permanence of capitalism and taking apart the arguments of capitalist apologists
O marxismo hoje: Entrevista com István Mészaros
Esta entrevista é uma versão elaborada a partir daquela publicada em Monthly Review (voI. 44, no 11, abril de 1993) e que, inicialmente e na íntegra, apareceu em Radical Philosophy (no 62, outono de 1992), sob a condução de Chris Arthur e Joseph McCarney. István Mészáros é um conhecido filósofo húngaro que colaborou diretamente com Lukács, junto à Universidade de Budapest, nos anos que antecederam à intervenção soviética na Hungria, em 1956
Dialectical Transformations: Teleology, History and Social Consciousness
In Marxism, the material base of society is responsible for a number of structural restraints on the appearance, functioning, and evolution of the superstructure. At the same time, the superstructure, too, and especially ideology, exercises considerable influence on developments in the base, and in certain conditions can prove decisive in transforming the relations that constitute the base. While history is radically open ended and, therefore, no…
The Uncontrollability of Globalizing Capital—Intro to Beyond Capital
The Iranian diaspora is an extraordinary community, but one not often noted in the Western press. This community can be compared to the Russian diaspora of the 1890s, or the German of the 1930s. That is to say, an exiled community of an often revolutionary intelligentsia with a potential for affecting the world far beyond the borders of the land they left. A sign of this vigor is the forthcoming in Farsi of István Mészáros' important book Beyond …
Marxism, the Capital System, and Social Revolution: An Interview with István Mészáros
In the Marxian literature there are a number of models of capitalist crisis: reproduction of the social capital, overproduction, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall In your opinion, which of these models can best explain crises in the modern age? Or can we combine all these models into one? Yes, fundamentally you can combine them. But what takes precedence above all is a global view of capital. It is quite ironic that people have been rece…
Marx's Theory of Alienation
5th Edition with new preface. This book focuses on the origins of Marx's thought and on his early writings especially The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. It was a winner of the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize. 'In the hands of a creative thinker conviction and passion can give wings to the freedom struggle. Meszaros' book is a 'winger' - one of the most far-reaching books of on the subject of Marx's theory of alienation since Lukac…
The Need for a Radical Alternative: An Interview with István Mészáros
1. From the modern vision, the great revolutions, the anti-Nazi war, to the collapse of socialism in East Europe and to the sovereignty of the market, what do you think about the twentieth century—the "century of extremes" as Hobsbawm calls it? I am very glad you asked this question, because the issues raised in it have far-reaching implications. First, the revolutions. They are best compared to monumental earthquakes. The mountain ranges they br…
Neo-colonial identity and counter-consciousness
Additional informationNotes on contributorsIstván Mészáros This essay is reprinted from Renato Constantino's Neo-Colonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness, edited and introduced by István Mészáros (London: Merlin Press, 1978
The Challenge of Sustainable Development and the Culture of Substantive Equality
To the memory of Daniel Singer with whom I often conversed about the untenability of our order of structural inequality. 1. Two closely connected propositions are at the center of this intervention: If development in the future is not sustainable development, there will be no significant development at all, no matter how badly needed; only frustrated attempts to square the circle, as in the last few decades, marked by ever more elusive "modernizi…
Socialism or barbarism: From the "American Century" to the crossroads
Militarism and the Coming Wars
It is not for the first time in history that militarism weighs on the consciousness of the people as a nightmare. To go into detail would take far too long. However, here it should be enough to go back in history only as far as the nineteenth century when militarism, as a major instrument of policy making, came into its own, with the unfolding of modern imperialism on a global scale, in contrast to its earlier—much more limited—varieties. By the …
Cuba: The Next Forty-Five Years
This year Cuba will be celebrating the forty-fifth anniversary of its victorious revolution: a great historic achievement. And when we bear in mind that the Cuban Revolution—the long sustained action of a nation of just eleven million people—survived for forty-five years against all odds, successfully confronting the declared enmity, the U.S.-dictated international political encirclement and economic blockade, as well as the ever renewed attempts…
The Structural Crisis of Politics
I would like to begin with a brief survey of the very disquieting—indeed, I should say, of worldwide threatening—developments in the field of politics and the law. In this respect I wish to underline that it was no less than twenty-three years ago that I became personally acquainted in Paraiba, Brazil with the painful circumstances of explosive food riots. Twenty years later, at the time of President Lula's electoral campaign, I read that he had …
The Necessity of Planning: In Honor of Harry Magdoff
I wrote some time ago that "Harry Magdoff is a great teacher and an indomitable combatant. His contributions to socialist theory-on imperialism and monopolistic developments, as well as on the vital role of planning for any viable society of the future—are of a truly lasting importance."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this articl…
The Only Viable Economy
Once upon a time the capitalist mode of production represented a great advance over all of the preceding ones, however problematical and indeed destructive this historical advance in the end turned out-and had to turn out-to be. By breaking the long prevailing but constraining direct link between human use and production, and replacing it with the commodity relation, capital opened up the dynamically unfolding possibilities of apparently irresist…
Political science (27 works) · Philosophy (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Sociology (23 works) · History (19 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Economics (11 works)