This thesis offers a critical investigation of the Bitcoin currency and the operation of its technical structure, i.e. blockchain technology. The main objective of the research is to identify and describe the specific power dynamics performed by and through this digital phenomenon. “Power dynamics” are framed in this work largely in terms of authority and sovereignty. To structure an exploration of such dynamics, the narrative is overarched by four different notions of “utopia” —as paradox, ideal, no-place, and imagined governance— that address the following main questions always underpinned by the general inquiry on power: What is the Bitcoin Blockchain? Where is it located? How are power relations performed in it? And how are power relations modified in relation with previous institutional systems? The thesis addresses distinct notions of authority in Bitcoin through the observation of its historical, spatial, and organizational characteristics. It maps the techno-political emergence of the blockchain system, the geographical distribution of Bitcoin’s infrastructural network, and the strategies for governance involved in its development as software. Based on the observation of these settings, this thesis argues that Bitcoin posits a restructuration of power dynamics through the automation of code, in particular, through its process of production. In order to develop this restructuration, the power dynamics of the Bitcoin blockchain are weighted against authority models of the state’s institutions. The thesis builds upon existing political theories of Empire (Hardt and Negri), protocol (Galloway), and the Stack (Bratton) to develop a critical account of Bitcoin’s power dynamics. The work sits in between the disciplines of Media Theory, Software Studies, Political Theory, and Digital Methods, and makes use of qualitative and quantitative methods to empirically support the former argument.

Through their influence on Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, Shakespeare’s plays had a formative influence on the development of Marxism and psychoanalysis and the methodology of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Marx and Freud quoted from or alluded to Shakespeare’s plays hundreds of times in their writings. Many of these instances occur at significant points in the development of Marxism and psychoanalysis. Marx used lines from The Merchant of Venice and Timon of Athens to develop his economic theory and his theory of consciousness. Freud used his reading of Hamlet to develop his theory of the Oedipus complex. He also personally identified with Hamlet the literary hero. Freud used his reading of the casket scene in The Merchant of Venice to begin to develop his notion of the death-drive; he rehearses his thinking about the death-drive in his essay about the casket scene, seven years before he publically presents the death-drive theory. Two methods that developed out of the influence of Shakespeare on Marx and Freud—inversions and the re-inclusion of the other/a method of relating to alterity—became the methodology of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The dialectic was the philosophical ground through which the influence travelled. In this manner, Shakespeare’s influence became the roots of the Frankfurt School’s dialectical aesthetic theory.

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The thesis examines the thought of Thomas More and Gerrard Winstanley, emphasizing the concern of both theorists with the prevailing moral depravity of human nature attributable to the Fall of Man, and their proposals for the amendment of men's conduct by institutional means, especially by the establishment of a communist society. The thesis opens with a conceptual exploration of 'utopianism' and 'millenarianism' before discussing the particular forms of these concepts employed by More and Winstanley. The introductory section also includes an investigation of the context which constituted the background to the ideas of More and Winstanley. More's theology, his conception of human nature, and his view of contemporary civil society are examined in detail. It is argued that the conclusions More derived from this aspect of his thought formed his basic conception of the situation to which the institutional amendments outlined in Utopia were directed. These proposals, regarding communism, the state, family and community life, education, religion, and ethics, are discussed. It is argued that Utopia constitutes More's model of a society designed to facilitate the salvation of man. Winstanley's appreciation of man's nature, prevailing condition, and potential for spiritual regeneration, are outlined. The development of Winstanley's thought, and the impression his active involvement with the Diggers made upon him, is described. It is argued that Winstanley renounced millenarianism and ultimately assumed utopian social theory as a medium for the articulation of his proposals for the restoration of man to spiritual regeneracy on earth. The institutional aspects of this scheme, regarding communism, the state, patriarchalism, labour, and education, which he outlined in The Law of Freedom, are evaluated. The thesis concludes, with a brief comparative analysis before setting the ideas of More and Winstanley'in the context of the changing worldview, appreciation of man's potential and progress, and the emphasis upon aspiration, which evolved in the early modern period.

Marx's critique remains the most incisive analysis of capitalism to date, though the transformations which capitalism has undergone require that his conceptual apparatus be radically overhauled. I have attempted to do so through a topological twisting of his conceptual assemblage, highlighting new elements and relations. In this way I am lead to questions of time already highlighted by Marx, in relation to an immanent and constitutive ontology. However, my primary concern remains with the contemporary strategies of capitalist command, and the new conditions and strategies of resistance it demands. Concrete/Abstract: or. The German Ideology - i)The question of ideology, the failure of its problematic, and the initial step beyond: fetishism as 'dissimulation objective' (Deleuze); ii) the function of money and the emergent 'truth in practice' of an ontology of efficient material-abstraction. Total Critique is a Pragmatics - i) The transformation of Critique from partial to Total, and the emergence of a differential materialist ontology, ii) the critique of the labour theory of value, and the transformation of capitalism into a project of heterogeneity management (fundamental ontology). Subsumption - i) An account of Braudel's notion of the anti-market, and a critique of the reduction of the anti-market to capitalism; ii) an account of real subsumption in terms of a temporal ontology. Time and Resistance - i) A re-reading of 'historical determinism' in the light of Marx's letters to Vera Zasulich on the Russian commune; ii) the question of becoming as opposed to history through a diagramming of masses rather than the contraposing of classes; iii) temporality as motor of flight/control: the syntheses of time as a diagramming of efficient capitalist material-abstraction, and of the strategies of a critical materialist pragmatics.

The aim of this research was to examine the main organisational and social characteristics of the Romanian industrial enterprise under communist rule. The research explored the complex relations between state planning bodies, enterprises, and the managers. The research’s approach was multi-disciplinary drawing on industrial management, economics, organisation studies sociology, and political science. The research had also a consistent trans-disciplinary character because it aimed to create an over-arching perspective on Romanian industrialisation process. The approach employed in this study was the one labelled by Burrell & Morgan interpretivist. This means that author’s set of assumptions over society and social research lies on the subjective side of the philosophy of science dimension, and is characterised by an integrationist view over society. The research methods employed were predominantly qualitative, based on interpretation of data collected using interviews and document analysis. The empirical research focused on the formation and key features of Romanian industrial enterprises, on the process of negotiation of the plan objectives between enterprises and central state structures, and on the analysis of the human resources processes of the enterprise. The empirical findings offer an in-depth perspective over the practices, mechanisms, and actors involved in the activity of the Romanian industrial enterprises for almost four decades. The findings also confirm the consistent potential of the interpretive approach to provide a better understanding of the way organisations work in a challenging environment as the communist regime was.

This study is a social history of communists in wartime Rome. It examines a decisive change in Italian communist politics, as the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) rose from a hounded fraternity of prisoners and exiles to a party of government. Joining with other Resistance forces in the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN), this ‘new party’ recast itself as a mass, patriotic force, committed to building a new democracy. This study explains how such a party came into being. It argues that a PCI machine could establish itself only by subduing other strands of communist thought and organistion that had emerged independently of exiled Party leaders. This was particularly true in Rome, where dissident communists created the largest single Resistance formation, the Movimento Comunista d’Italia (MCd’I). This movement was the product of the underground that survived across the Mussolini period, expressing a ‘subversive’ politics that took on a popular following through the disintegration of the Fascist regime. Standing outside the CLN alliance and the postwar democratic governments, it reflected the maximalism and eclecticism of a communist milieu that had persisted on the margins of Fascist society. In the Occupation period this dissident movement galvanised a social revolt in the borgate slums, which would also trouble the new authorities even after the Allies’ arrival. Studying the political writing of these dissidents, their autodidact Marxism and the social conditions in which it emerged, this study reconstructs a far-reaching battle to redefine communist politics. Highlighting the erasure of the dissidents’ history in mainstream narration of the Resistance, it argues that the repressed radicalism of this period represented a lasting danger to the postwar PCI and the new Republic.

The problem of the ‘mountain man’, the caricature of self-sufficiency and individualism, is not a new one for autonomy theorists. It seems plausible that there is genuine value in self-direction according to one’s deeply-held principles. If autonomy involves something like this, then anyone concerned with autonomy as a social rather than individualistic phenomenon must explain what (if anything) the mountain man gets wrong when he denies that his autonomy admits of being placed under obligations to others. In particular, the mountain man challenges autonomy-minded social anarchists: if his denial of legitimate non-voluntary obligations is correct, then it is not just the state we should reject, but any organising body with coercive powers. This may be consistent with individualist anarchism or right-libertarianism, but it sits ill with the social anarchist intuition that we can have genuine political obligations (albeit not to the state). My thesis addresses this problem in three stages. First, I argue for a functional analysis of authority and autonomy: the concepts are not pre-existing “immovable objects”, but rather are defined by the role that they are intended to play in our discourse. I suggest that we need a concept of political or institutional authority in order to resolve co-ordination problems and pursue collaborative social goods, and a concept of autonomy to explain when and why self-direction is valuable. Second, I defend a social-relational conception of autonomy. The autonomous agent is powerful and authoritative, where this power and authority is in large part constituted, rather than merely affected, by the social structures and relations that we stand in. We are powerful and authoritative (and thus autonomous), I argue, when we stand in relations of non-domination: we are not vulnerable to arbitrary interference in our lives, and this non-vulnerability is defended in virtue of recognition respect for us as agents. There are two important implications of this account: that autonomy comes with a built-in equality condition whereby everybody’s autonomy is threatened if anybody’s is, and that there is no principled distinction to be drawn between ‘personal’ and ‘political’ autonomy. In the last three chapters, I suggest an autonomy-justified conception of authority. I argue for autonomy as the crucial collaborative good which authoritative institutions help us to pursue, and suggest that such institutions may legitimately claim authority if they act or effect actions in ways which are likely to promote or defend autonomy-constituting relations, and act or effect actions in ways consistent with maximal equal autonomy. Finally, I return to the anarchist argument, showing that while my accounts of autonomy and authority give us a plausible picture of how autonomy is compatible with genuinely authoritative institutions, this picture still has no room for the state.

This thesis investigates the phenomenon of memoir competitions in communist-era Poland, focusing on contributions to them by Poles of rural origins inhabiting the lands – known as the Recovered Territories – acquired by the postwar Polish state from Germany in 1945. I explore the history of the memoir method in postwar Poland, the processes involved in producing published volumes of competition memoirs – including editing and censorship, and the use of these sources in communist-era and post-1989 sociological, historiographical and interdisciplinary studies. I focus on existing research both on the Recovered Territories, particularly Polish settlement of those lands and the development of new communities there, and also on postwar peasants’ lives, particularly where theories of social advance are applied. In this respect, this investigation adds to existing literature in social history on early postwar Poland. My study also contributes to work in censorship studies by considering Polish censors’ approach to quite exceptional sources. Because in many cases original competition entries are available, it is possible to establish where editors, publishers and censors have intervened, something that is rarely possible with standard works of literature or academic scholarship produced under communism. I consider what strategies different scholars used in presenting published sources and circumventing restrictions imposed. Subaltern studies approaches to speaking and its critique of nation-centred historiography are, meanwhile, applied in investigating the intersection of peasant autobiographies, academic research, scholars and Party-state institutions and their discourses, as I consider how the published communist-era compilations of competition entries framed peasant writing, experience, culture and consciousness, and how these frames potentially conflicted with the authors’ own interpretations of their experiences and social reality. This investigation also contributes to memory studies, a discipline whose approach to communist and totalitarian states is particularly problematic as many studies assume significant restrictions were imposed not only on publication but also on autobiographical memory expressed in usually unrecorded private and local spheres. I explore whether memory studies’ typical approach, based in notions of competing claims might also apply to Poland under state socialism. Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism prove useful in exploring the history of memory under communism, rather than the memory of it – as is commonplace today in oral history-based studies, for example. It is in respect of censorship studies and memory studies that this thesis makes its most substantial original contributions to research. My research draws on substantial archival research conducted in Poland, where I explored censorship archives in Warsaw and Poznań, Party and ministerial archives, and the Polish Academy of Science archive, since numerous memoir sociologists and rural sociologists were based there. I also used archives housing original competition entries, the main locations being: The Institute of Western Affairs in Poznań (Instytut Zachodni – IZ), the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Science (Instytut Historyczny PAN – IH PAN) and the Museum of the History of the Polish Peasant Movement (MHRPL in Piaseczno, near Tczew). I consider published volumes alongside original sources where possible, although substantial losses have occurred to the store of popular autobiography. Chapter 1 outlines the background of Polish memoir sociology and the main methods and theories used in this investigation, ranging from subaltern studies through Bakhtin to autobiography studies. Chapter 2 focuses on memory studies, including the field’s approach to communist and postcommunist countries, before outlining aspects of censorship studies relevant to this investigation. I end Chapter 2 on a case study of the memoir compilation Miesiąc mojego życia [A Month in my Life – MMŻ; (1964)] and its treatment by censors. Chapter 3 explores recent English- and Polish-language historiography on the Recovered Territories, concentrating on, firstly, how historians have used the memoir resources in considering the early postwar years, and, secondly, how peasants are represented within the recent wave of works exploring Polish communism through nationalism and popular legitimation. I end on a case study of one particular memoir by a female settler to the new Polish lands, highlighting the value of the competition entries as thick descriptions. Chapter 4 investigates the mainstream communist-era memoir movement where the leading analytical concept for approaching peasants and social change was ‘social advance’, developed from Józef Chałasiński’s prewar sociology. I explore how the nine-volume series Młode pokolenie wsi Polski Ludowej [The Young Generation of Rural People’s Poland – MPWPL; (1964-1980)] and other memoir-based studies approached peasants and the Recovered Territories, which were often framed as a site of quicker and more intensive social advance and urbanisation. I also explore the autobiographies of Poles who lost their homelands in the prewar eastern borderlands in the context of today’s assumptions that ‘repatriants’, as the eastern Poles were known under communism, were largely absent from communist-era publications. 4 Chapter 5 considers the academic sociology of the Western Territories, developed at IZ, and how materials from its 1956/57 memoir competition on settlers were used alongside fieldwork. I explore the sociological frameworks developed for analysing migration, settlement and community development, noting that some studies from the 1960s can today be considered forerunners of migration studies and memory studies. Chapter 6 specifically considers the publication Pamiętniki osadników Ziem Odzyskanych [Memoirs of Recovered Territories Settlers – POZO; (1963)], investigating original entries alongside published materials to explore editors’ and academics’ role in censorship, while also investigating how the volume was received in the press. Chapter 7 explores the production of the four-volume series Wieś polska 1939-1948 [Rural Poland 1939-1948; (1967-1971)] by historian-editors Krystyna Kersten and Tomasz Szarota, who treated these previously-unpublished texts written in 1948 explicitly as historical sources, thus contrasting with previously dominant sociological approaches while also posing specific problems for censors as the editors employed a unique method of summaries in an attempt to make the entire set of some 1700 texts available to readers. Exploring different approaches to memoir publication, I aim to illustrate the diversity of the published sphere in People’s Poland, while demonstrating the heterogeneity of ordinary Poles’ memories submitted to different competitions between 1948 and 1970. While the value of the archived sources should be quite evident, exploration of censorship and editing processes should demonstrate the value of compilations and indeed communist-era scholarship, which is often overlooked today. By avoiding totalitarian schools of historiography and memory studies, I aim to demonstrate that competition memoirs illustrated ordinary Poles’ agency within historical and social processes, while also stressing their agency over their memories and autobiographical narratives which at the same time were, as in any society, cultural and social constructs.

The central aim of this thesis is to provide an exposition of the decay of the categories of political economy first made famous by classical political economy, but subjected to rigorous critique by Marx. An explanation of the following form the theoretical core of the thesis: the decay of the categories - abstract labour, value and capital (in its fixed, circulating and variable forms); how the decay of these categories led to the collective formation of the working class; and how, combined, they provide the key to understanding the full ramifications of the weakening of commodity fetishism and decline of capitalism. More specifically, the thesis is concerned with establishing an alternative Marxist theory of the decline of capitalist social relations of production in Britain. The thesis moves through three distinct phases to complete the task comprehensively. Firstly, a critique of the existing literature concerning decline is undertaken, with specific reference to Britain. Secondly, an alternative Marxist theory of decline is put forward. Thirdly, the full implications of the theory is then expounded by way of a case study of British capitalism. Of course capitalist social relations of production are universal, in the sense that they are global relations of exchange and exploitation, as well as being specific to individual nations. Therefore, inevitably, the exposition of the concept of capitalist decline will extend, on occasions, beyond my chosen case study - Britain. Nevertheless, the main concern is with British capitalism and its specific path to decline.