I argue that there are two interpretations of the Marxist dialectic, both of which examine how human beings interact with objects around them conceptually and how society evolves over time, from different points of view. In the present paper, I undertake three tasks. First, I demonstrate that there is a clear difference between these two strains of Marxist thought which I here call humanist and determinist. Second, I show how Marxist thought has evolved from Hegel and Marx to the present in light of these two different models. Last, I argue that the determinist model is flawed, and that the humanist model stands as a more solid logical and epistemological perspective for Marxist theory.

Historical research about the so-called New Left was until the late 1990s an entirely newacademic field in Swedish academia. However, a large part of this research still deals withquestions concerning “who did what” and perhaps more notably “who was right”.This thesis is an attempt to move away from such inquiries and instead look towardshow one albeit small but very important part of this so-called New Left discussed andused the term America and things American. Formed largely around the Anti-WarMovement, the Marxist-Leninist – or “Maoist” – Left naturally opposed US worldpolicies; but perhaps more interesting a significant part of the ideas about America andthe Vietnam War seemed to stem from USA itself – such as naming your anti-war folkgroup “Freedom Singers” after the US civil rights group “The Freedom Singers”.Analyzing three Swedish Marxist-Leninist magazines the study thus complements theresearch on not only the Swedish New Left but also the study of anti-Americanisms;firstly, by examining what the Marxist-Leninist left considered particularly American;secondly, by studying in what context these particular Americanism was discussed; and,thirdly, by observing if these notions changed over time, and why. The aim is thereforenot to paint a “complete” picture of the image of America in the Swedish New Left butto analyze how things considered American was used, and why.By discussing the term narrative (berättelse) against the term image (bild) the study amongother things shows that the terms America and things conceivably American was used toexpress a number of things, such as a demonization of the Soviet Union. Moreover, a lotof motivation not only came from China – the natural utopia for European Maoist – butfrom American black-power leaders such as Malcolm X; that is, the image of America inthe Swedish New Left was not only more complex than previously thought of, butindeed took inspiration and ideas, albeit sometimes anti-American ideas, from the UnitedStates itself – or rather, “the other America” inside the United States of America.

I argue that there are two interpretations of the Marxist dialectic, both of which examine how human beings interact with objects around them conceptually and how society evolves over time, from different points of view. In the present paper, I undertake three tasks. First, I demonstrate that there is a clear difference between these two strains of Marxist thought which I here call humanist and determinist. Second, I show how Marxist thought has evolved from Hegel and Marx to the present in light of these two different models. Last, I argue that the determinist model is flawed, and that the humanist model stands as a more solid logical and epistemological perspective for Marxist theory.

Per Wahlöö is one of Sweden´s most famous crime writers. Together with Maj Sjöwall he revolutionized the swedish crime novel in the mid-sixties with the Martin Beck-series. Before that he was working as a reporter in the fifties and started writing novels about the oppression of man, power and totalitarian mentality in the end of the decade. Those novels (1959-1968) are called “The dictatorship”-series. This paper has focused on his contemporary writings about Spain where Wahlöö lived for a couple of years in the mid-fifties. How did the fascist Franco regime take place in his writings between the years 1951 to 1962? The material investigated is both journalism articles and fictional writings with the two novels The Wind and the Rain (1961) and The Lorry (1962) as the prime motives. This paper shows that the dictatorship of general Franco is quite invisible in Wahlöö´s early writings. On the other hand it takes almost the entire thematic space in the novels from the sixties. Per Wahlöö´s ideological agenda is also moving from being rather bleak and invisible in the 1951-articles to be more concerned with the class discrimination and fascist oppression in the later pieces. Spain is also an interesting paradox with it´s exploding tourist industry in the fifties and sixties while the ruthless fascist government still controlls the poor people in the country. The relationship between the individual man and the overall social structure is also something that Wahlöö is writing about. The dictatorship-man in Wahlöös novels is someone who is programmed by a fascist structure which in turn creates their own antithesis; the (socialist) dissident, an anti-heroe who´s only way out is armed rebellion proclaimed by an awokened class conscousness.

Marxist themes of Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments have not often been looked at. Yet, they are decidedly prominent. The band make use of a Marxist image and of collectivist easy-played, easily-understood music in order to gain working class listeners. In fact, the band itself is based on an egalitarian structure, until it, due to an increasing individualist wish for success, falls apart. The aim of this essay is thus to argue, through pointing to the Marxist rhetoric of the band and the hypocrisy around it, and through a comparative reading between The Commitments and Orwell’s Animal Farm, that The Commitments has an allegorical value, much like Animal Farm does, when it comes to depicting the way Marxism has worked and failed as it has been practised in reality.

Since Deng Xiaoping implemented the ¡§reform and open-up¡¨ policy in 1978, the world has been greatly influenced during these 30 years. ¡§The Chinese phenomenon¡¨ is deeply affecting the international politics and economics. All those results are thought to be connected to the trend of globalization. As the development of political ideology is firmly related to the lasting of Chinese Communist Party¡¦s political power, Chinese Communist Party¡¦s political ideology is inevitably to act and transform in different ways according to whatever the situations are. By doing this way, the Chinese Communist Party can rule the country smoothly and have a successful development of it. Because it is so important that none of the ¡§China studies¡¨ academic circle can neglect it nowadays. Through ¡§A Research on the Developmental Trend of Contemporary Chinese Marxism¡¨, everyone will be able to have a better understanding in China¡¦s rising and its future. After the Hu -Wen system came to be recognized in 2003, they advocated gradually to ¡§the scientific view of development¡¨ based on humane essence, not just focused on the economic development. They also strengthened the steady stability on politics and the collective democracy. Does it imply that, from now on, the China¡¦s policy will incline gradually towards the centre-left? Or is this ¡§the third way¡¨ of the Republic of China? People in the world are all waiting to see what it will be in the future!

This project addresses problems for theorists of writing and composition that arose in the 1990s when capital privatizes the production of internetworked writing and starts operating in the manner of a practicing compositionist. I begin by noting that capital in the 1990s converted internetworked writing machines into fixed capital and started composing its version of the cultural form of the "social" we call the Internet. Thereafter, I argue that composition theorists can best understand the Internet, internetworked writing, and internetworked subjectivities if they regard capital as a formidable compositionist, one capable of making the machinofactured internetworked composition into a privately owned means for organizing the direct production of internetworked social writing and internetworked social being. I engage with this problem by pointing out that capital's private production of the internetworked social subsumes both the interindividual site of sociolinguistic p roduction and the individual internetworked writer. I go on to establish that capital uses its control of end-user license agreements to transform the writer subsumed by capital into a privately controlled intellectual property. I argue that capital subjects internetworked writers to a form of accelerated decrepitude because the internetworked writer's cycle of life gets tied in to cycles of software and hardware upgrade, overwrite, and erasure. And, finally, I demonstrate that capital converts the internetworked population of commodified writers, along with their commodified writing and commodified formal compositions, into allegorical symbols insofar as "every commodity is a symbol, since, in so far as it is value, it is only the material envelope of the human labour spent upon it" (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, chapter 2). On the strength of these positions, I argue that composition theorists should develop a theory of internetworked writing and composition that makes the following assumpt ions: capital has become a compositionist; internetworked compositionists and compositions have become commodities; and internetworked compositions, compositionists, and composition theorists -- for having become commodities -- have entered into an age of allegory -- that is, an age wherein internetworked compositions necessarily make other, allegorical reference to relations of production and exchange that support capital's ongoing production of the composed, commodified, and festishized internetworked "social."

This thesis answers the question: ‘what explains Jordan’s international alignments between 1955 and 1957?’ In so doing, the thesis addresses the broader question of why states in the Global South make alignments and explores the conditions under which these alignments are generated. The thesis advances beyond existing accounts in the historical and International Relations (IR) literature: especially the ‘omni-balancing school who argue that in Southern States, ruling regimes balance or bandwagon (like state actors in neo-realist theory) but directed against both internal and external threats. This thesis argues that such explanations explain Southern state behaviour by some lack or failure in comparison to the states of the global North. The thesis argues that omnibalancing imports neo-realist assumptions inside the state, endowing regimes with an autonomy they do not necessarily hold. The thesis adopts the theoretical framework of uneven and combined development to overcome these challenges in explaining Jordan’s alignments between 1955 and 1957. Using this case study, at a turning point in the international relations of the Middle East where Jordan could have taken either path, the thesis illuminates the potential utility of this theoretical framework for the region as a whole. The thesis argues that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a ‘combined social formation’ emerged east of the Jordan river through the processes of Ottoman mimetic reform, land reform and state formation under the British mandate. The main characteristics of this social formation were a relatively egalitarian rural land-holding structure and a mechanism of combination with the global capitalist system through British subsidy to the former nomadic pastoralists in the armed forces, replacing formerly tributary relations. The thesis traces the social bases of the struggles that produced Jordan’s alignments between 1955 and 1957 to the emergence of this combined social formation and presents case studies of: the Jordanian responses to the Baghdad Pact, expulsion of British officers in the Jordanian armed forces, the Suez Crisis, abrogation of the Anglo- Jordanian treaty and acceptance of US aid at the time of the Eisenhower Doctrine. The thesis will be of interest in the fields of IR and Middle East studies: contributing to IR by critiquing existing approaches and demonstrating the utility of a new theoretical framework that can overcome the dichotomy of universality/specificity in the region.

The present essay concerns Walter Benjamin´s engagement with the concept of critique in four of his early writings from 1916-1928. It revolves around three main themes, or objects of interest: the critique of language [Sprache], the critique of the work [das Werk] and the critique of history [Geschichte]. The main objective of this study is to show how we can understand Benjamin’s conception of critique and how he develops it in regard to language, the work and history. The essay argues that this is a vital part to understand his philosophy in general as well as his later philosophy of history in particular. This study attempts to examine each of its objects, above mentioned, in itself but also show how these cannot be thought of as separate from each other. Benjamin’s concept of critique should not be thought of as systematic (as in erecting a philosophical system), but should instead be regarded as extremely consistent in its approach regardless of his objects of study. Because everything, for Benjamin, is seen as closely tied together. This study therefore attempts to configure a notion that Benjamin’s philosophical oeuvre should be understood as, in many ways, rooted in respect to his concept of critique. I argue that a thorough investigation of Benjamins concept of critique is the key to grasp his specific and uncompromising approach to philosophy. In this respect the study also tries to break with a certain, already established, notion that regards Benjamin as either a marxist or a messianic thinker. This essay instead tries to develop an approach in which everything, every single fragment, possibly can come together as a whole, even though it may only be as pieces of a fractured whole. At last, I therefore argue that, the possibility of the piecing together of this whole, to make whole of what has been scattered, should be considered in relation to Benjamin’s concept of critique, here explicated and developed, in regard to the above mentioned objects: language, the work and history.

This work seeks to address the major texts of Slavoj Zizek using a reading methodology which treats political philosophy as a practice, rather than a series of logical propositions or claims of truth or falsity. Philosophy is herein understood as a field of relations among authors who occupy precise theoretical and political coordinates. Writing produces and reproduces an author's position within this field via the way in which an author communicates with his/her peers, draws on past concepts, and designs new ones. This paper argues that Zizek cannot usefully be grasped as a theorist attempting to provide positive political solutions or analyses, but rather as a 'negative' force who occupies an impossible position by attempting to negate his peers and popular contemporary theoretical concepts - Zizek wishes to create a new intellectual space where political possibilities can be rethought and rediscovered, and he does this in his texts by ephemerally occupying multiple positions only to displace them.