This thesis is a critical examination of two different stages in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. In particular it deals with his account of the moral resources available to radical thought in contemporary society. MacIntyre’s work presents us with two different accounts of what these moral resources might be and how they might affect the way that we conceive of radical politics. In his earlier Marxist work, MacIntyre claimed, firstly, that an intelligible morality needs to be understood as the satisfaction of desire, secondly that we could come to learn that what we really desired could be achieved through the forms of social solidarity developed in working class life and, thirdly, that we should understand Marxism as providing us with a subtle and non-reductive account of the relationship between human agency and the social structures of the economic base (chapter 1). By contrast, in his later work, most notably in After Virtue and the works that would follow it, MacIntyre rejects Marxism and instead seeks to develop an account of practical rationality based on ‘practices’ that are developed from within the confines of a tradition understood as a self-contained and linguistically based conceptual scheme. What I attempt to do in the following dissertation is to defend a form of Marxism based on MacIntyre’s earlier insights. I will argue that, whatever his claims to the contrary, and whatever its continuing interest as a critique of non-cognitivism, his later work represents a step backward from the sophisticated understanding of base and superstructure sketched in his earlier work (chapter 2). I argue that the pessimism that arises from MacIntyre’s later work starts out from an account of the negative effects of proletarianisation that is highly questionable and which undermines wide scale resistance (chapter 3). I also argue that it relies on an account of the self-contained nature of conceptual schemes that simply cannot be sustained (chapter 4). In its place I attempt to make a case for a form of Marxist humanism, a position which, I believe, is compatible both with Marx’s most important insights about the nature of human beings (chapter 5) and with the existence of a plurality of desirable goods (chapter 6).

This thesis examines the success or otherwise of left-wing politics in the years 1933 to 1941. The study focuses on the cities and towns which broadly correspond to the modem administrative region of Greater Manchester. Rather than attempting another broad and inclusive history of the thirties, the methodology adopted is of a series of case studies. The region selected is notable for the diversity of all aspects of workingclass life, including work and politics. The case studies chosen, describing the experiences of left-wing activists in the engineering, railway and cotton industries, within the Irish Catholic and Jewish communities and as members of the Women's Cooperative Guild, reflect that diversity. This research concentrates on rank-and-file organisation and grass roots activism. The focus is not on trade union or party leaders but on strikers, shop stewards, branch secretaries,c onferenced elegatesa nd local party workers. The actions of thesep olitical militants are examined not only in terms of national events but equally importantly in the context of local economic and social factors. To achieve this, the records of national organisations are used in conjunction with extensive reference to local materials, oral history and other autobiographical sources. The case study approach allows for the examination and contrast of the effects of different factors such as class, gender, occupation, age, ethnicity, religious beliefs, culture, political traditions and economic circumstances on the implantation of socialism amongst working-class activists in differing communities in the 1930s. Among the questions considered are the relationship between industrial militancy and political radicalism; the links between the experience of class and political allegiance; the effects on the development of local Labour and Communist Parties of the enduring presence of other forms of working-class politics including Conservatism and non- Communist socialism; the extent to which the nineteen thirties can be said to complete the "double closure" of British socialism; how far the dominant organisations of labour politics failed to fully represent the interests of a heterogeneous working-class; the differences between the objectives of Labour Movement leaders and local activists; the outcome of the conflict between community (including religious) elites and left-wing parties; the relationship of feminism to 1930s Labour politics and the representation of gender issues by the dominant working-class organisations; the experience of generational differences in political conflict; the continued relevance of internationalism and anti-war sentiment in an era of anti-fascist alliances, and finally the relationship of the local to the national, the specific to the general.

This thesis examines the political thought of Petr Kropotkin as a site of interplay between anarchism and science. It explores a dialogue between the diagnostic and remedial aspirations of revolutionary anarchism and certain epistemologies and methodologies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scientific thought. On the one hand, I argue that this meeting led to the scientisation of Kropotkin’s anarchist politics, transforming conventional anarchist ideas on the state, capitalism, and revolution. On the other hand, I consider how Kropotkin politicised science, that is, how he inflected certain scientific theories and concepts and turned them into powerful revolutionary devices that equipped his brand of anarchism with new ways to identify political problems and solutions. Kropotkin’s bio-political worldview, his enthusiasm for statistics as a means to visualise society and social law, and his understanding of the ‘social’ as a field for the application of rational and scientific forms of knowledge for the improvement of human populations, had far-reaching implications for the ways he conceptualised and articulated traditional anarchist notions of power, domination, moral corruption, order, and the dissemination of knowledge. I show that in contrast to political philosophers who employ scientific ideas metaphorically to represent political concepts such as sovereignty, stability, and resistance, Kropotkin’s absorption of science was literal. Notions of health, sickness, insanity, degeneration, medicine, and hygiene, for example, did not function analogically in his thought, but were, in fact, some of his key political concerns. The intersection of anarchism and science is presented as an agency stimulating a deep ambivalence in Kropotkin’s thought. This thesis does not portray Kropotkin as an optimist, but as a thinker who wavered between fears of decline and hopes for progress. I bring to light Kropotkin’s anxieties, uncertainties, paradoxes, and contradictions, revealing the oscillation between pessimism and optimism that haunted his scientific and political modernity.

This dissertation studies socialist utopian literature published in Britain and America from 1888-1900. The central thesis is that they shared an underlying theoretical basis regarding how they were imagined to function, and why. Details obviously varied, but these texts shared a common structure which can be defined in terms of five interrelated themes: economics; ethics; environment; education; and evolution. These socialist utopias embodied a certain set of relations between these themes. Planned cooperative economies would be founded upon a socialist ethic inculcated by education and the environment, and the whole was posited as the product of historical evolution. These interrelated aspects were seen as the necessary foundations that would enable a socialist utopia - a united, harmonious society, characterised by association, community, and cooperation. This would convert society into a "community of interests", and an "administration of things", enabling collective democratic control of a socialist economy. This pattern can be found across the literature, underlying various strands of contemporary socialism and internal splits dividing the ideology. The most prominent of these, as manifested in utopian literature, was between state socialism and communitarian or libertarian socialist approaches. This divide is best encapsulated in the two most-famous examples, represented by Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and William Morris' News from Nowhere respectively, which dominate existing secondary accounts. However, the differences between these two strands were not as great as often supposed. These complex issues have been approached through the prism of the key figure of Bellamy, and five of his respondents who are essentially unstudied. This is both because of the size of the literature (around 50 texts), but also Bellamy's overwhelming significance in existing secondary accounts, and to his contemporaries. Morris however is considered mainly as a touching-point in relation to other texts, there being little to add to existing accounts.

This thesis assesses the degree to which the Argentinean activist collective Proyectil Fetal can be successfully placed within the context of three intersecting ideological strains: feminism, anarchism and queer activism/theory. Queer anarcha-feminism, the confluence of these three ideologies, is an emerging ideology developed by a number of groups and individuals around the globe. This is in part due to their conviction that anarchists should have something to say about sexuality and gender, and that queer theory and feminism can help define such an up-to-date anarchist politics of sexuality. In addition, some believe that queer theory and feminism should be grounded in the more comprehensive ethical framework provided by the anti-capitalism and anti-Statism of the anarchist ideology, rather than be complicit with capitalism and the State. As such, queer anarchists share queer Marxists concern with combining queer theory and anti-capitalism. The overlaps and the tensions between these three ideological currents and Proyectil Fetal are closely traced through a deep analysis of the latter s blogs, internet pronouncements and discussions and actions. The core concepts of queer anarcha-feminism are all identified on their blog, and the group s adjacent as well as perimeter queer anarcha-feminist concepts are examined in depth. It is shown how the latter are formed partly in response to the current political climate in Argentina. Finally, the reception of Proyectil Fetal s queer anarcha-feminist ideas is examined in order to position their queer anarcha-feminism in relation to the political landscape of Argentina. Through this work, and drawing on Michael Freeden s conceptualisation of ideologies (Freeden 1998), this thesis elaborates the first systematic definition of queer anarcha-feminism.

This thesis investigates four utopias, Plato’s Republic, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, and H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia, in relation to postcolonial criticisms that present them as outlining ostensibly ‘universal’ values and as being inherently colonial, expansionist, and imperialist. This critique is often applied to the utopian genre as a whole, yet while widespread and popular, it is often in contrast with the ideas contained and measures proposed within the texts. In fact, a close reading shows that they resist such generalisations. The key themes investigated in each of these texts are: how they characterise their utopian people; how they construct their utopias physically; how they manage them in terms of education, law, family, and economics; how they imagine and map their boundaries; and, finally, how they view and interact with the ‘other’ – the non-utopian. These four canonical texts often outline philosophies and proposals intended for the benefit of humanity as a whole, which might be misinterpreted by some as imperialist in intent. It will be argued, however, that there is also a strong but under-recognised tendency within them not to expand, conquer, and incorporate, as commonly thought, but instead to withdraw and contract, a dynamic of non-interference. Along the way, it will be necessary to negotiate the difficult, slippery status of these texts, about which the reader is never fully clear whether they were intended to be taken as literal blueprints for real future societies, as non-committal thought-experiments, or as ‘mere’ literary entertainments.

This PhD focuses on transgender subjectivity and explores the ways in which trans is negotiated and compromised by and within social space, with particular attention to the dynamics and socio-cultural norms through which the transgendered body that identifies beyond the gender binary is mediated. The existence of trans subjectivity develops in opposition to institutionalised heteronormativity; its problematic social location and identification make it a phenomenon which strongly relies on movement and spatiality. Part of what makes trans so compelling is not so much its breach of the ‘natural body’, but it is the unique form of self-description it carries within itself which retains the potential of opening up a new narrative and alternative possibility for the very notion of gender and for all LGBT advocacy and its relations to space. My theoretical framework is influenced by the work of Gilles Deleuze. I look at trans as a mode of unified affirmation and not as a product of negotiation (medical and/or legal). Difference for Deleuze is not an empirical condition but an ontological constitutional principle. Through this, I elaborate a conceptual framework of understanding wherein transgender subjectivity is articulated in terms of utopianism. The utopianism I refer to is not wishful hope, rather, it is the material embodiment here and now of that mode of futurity transgender subjectivity evokes. Futurity contains within itself the seed for producing the re-energisation of thought and ‘ethical space’ does not only entail the inclusion of what is real and tangible but must also account for what is possible, because what is possible is real.

This thesis examines the formation of the anarchist movement in Spain, from the collapse of the movement in the early 1890s to the consolidation of the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT) in 1915. The grassroots anarchist print culture established over these years was central to the movement’s survival and expansion. Periodicals were the site in which anarchist ideology and practice came together, where abstract ideas were given meaning in relation to contexts and developments over time. The anarchist press, and the groups which produced it, also gave the movement an informal structure which it otherwise lacked. Together, the ideas and networks established by print formed the cultural foundations of the movement, prior to its mass expansion during the First World War. The first section of this thesis examines the movement’s relationship with violence in 1890-1898. In these years, popular violence, terrorism and state repression had a profound impact on the ways in which anarchist practice was conceived. The anarchist press provided a forum for debates between anarchist factions over the legitimacy of violence, while at the same time it attempted to stabilise the movement in the face of the broad, heavy-handed repression of the Spanish state. It failed in this last regard, and by 1896 the movement and its press had collapsed. The second section focuses on the recovery of the movement from 1899 to 1906. In this period, the movement made its first consolidated effort to establish education as a revolutionary strategy, which became seen as the prime means to cement anarchist culture and practice in local contexts. Print was central to these developments, carrying the anarchist educational message into new areas and assisting in the establishment of centres and schools. The third, and final, section discusses the attempts to unite the movement around the organisational theory of syndicalism, from the first articulations of these ideas in Barcelona in 1907-1910 to the consolidation of the CNT in 1915. The spread of – and in some cases, resistance to – syndicalist ideas outside Cataluña relied on the networks of anarchist publishing which had been established over the turn of the century. Yet, by helping to create an alternative, more formal, structure within the movement, the anarchist press sowed the seeds of a decline in its own heterogeneity and significance. This was symbolised by the establishment of the syndicalist daily Solidaridad Obrera in Barcelona in 1916, and the subsequent contraction of anarchist publishing elsewhere in Spain.

London and its poorest inhabitants, the residuum, became pivotal in the development of the thought of both William Booth and Karl Marx. Each was to identify the residuum as a potential army of the poor. The London residuum's impact came from its size and the level and duration of poverty suffered. Booth and Marx were among many people who would search for a solution to the problem of the poverty of London's underclass. William Booth had been marked by the poverty he saw in his youth in Nottingham and was profoundly affected by the suffering of the London residuum. His interaction with this underclass was instrumental in the form his organisation, the Salvation Army, would take. The two crucial dates were 1865, when the size of the residuum led him to leave an itinerant evangelical ministry and remain in the East End of London, and 1890, when the intractability of the poverty of the submerged tenth caused Booth to publicise the problem and institutionalise his organisation's response. Karl Marx had first been drawn to the study of economics by the plight of the poor in the Moselle region of his native Germany. It was London's residuum, its size the result of the development of capitalism, that caused Marx to recognise that its members were the necessary victims of capitalism's advance. In the size of London's surplus population he also recognised its complexity, with the reserve army of labour an economic condition for, and the lumpenproletariat a consequence of, capitalism. Booth's organisation and Marx's economic theory began in their early encounters with poverty and were shaped in interaction with the London residuum, as each recognised that much of the suffering was caused by the working of laissez-faire capitalism and that its total solution required a challenge to the existing economic system.

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