The Owensboro Times He was born in Daviess County to the late Rethel and Anna Louise West Lowe Jess-i was a member of IBEW Local 1701 for over 55 years and a member of Precious Blood Catholic Church Jess-i was a former minor league baseball player and coached Western Little League for 13 years his favorite way to entertain was to have people over in his back yard and serve his famous BBQ chicken with his secret BBQ dip He was a founding member of Daviess County REACT an organization to assist first responders in natural disasters Vickie Belcher; two brothers Larry and Rodney Lowe Left to cherish his memory is his wife of 58 years Theresa Bittel Lowe; his children Stacey Lowe (Bill) Tirrill of Nashville KY; two sisters; Charlotte Rowland of Lewisport and Rebecca Elmendorf of Evansville; he was blessed with 12 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren Visitation will be from 11:00 AM until time-of-service Friday Expressions of sympathy may take the form of donations to the American Cancer Society Haley McGinnis Funeral Home & Crematory is both honored and privileged to be entrusted with the care of Mr Leave your messages of condolence for the family of Rethel “Jess-i” Lowe and sign his virtual guestbook at www.haleymcginnis.com Privacy Policy Site by Tanner+West This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page and has been a longtime resident of the Chattanooga area Rethel was a longtime member at Red Bank Baptist Church and its Faith Sunday School Class Rethel is survived by her three sisters and several nieces and nephews The family will receive friends from 1-2:30 p.m on Wednesday at the North Chapel of Chattanooga Funeral Home A Celebration of Rethel’s life will follow at 2:30 p.m on Wednesday at the North Chapel Reverend Bill Harvey officiating Burial will be held in Hamilton Memorial Gardens Please share your thoughts and memories at www.chattanooganorthchapel.com and Prussian Prime Minister Otto Braun at the reception of the Association of Foreign Press in Berlin Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has flung the international order into crisis Understanding the causes of such cataclysms requires understanding not only the interests of states but also the shape of society—its internal tensions as well as its material and cultural transformations The birth of Nazi Germany is informative in this respect the fascist victory has been commonly analyzed through the lens of economic interest domestic industrialists were seen as reacting to the rise of Hitler in various ways but doing so as an undifferentiated bloc while a salaried middle class was thought to have formed a major foundation of fascist support The following reflections weigh these analyses against the existing evidence they highlight the importance of political mobilization in illuminating the intricate dynamics underlying historical shifts In 1926, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) finance minister Rudolf Hilferding published an article in Die Gesellschaft which considered the significance of industrialist Paul Silverberg’s speech to the Dresden meeting of the country’s leading business association—the Reichsverband.1 Silverberg was the first industrialist to suggest that German capital could reconcile itself to the Weimar Republic instead of seeking its overthrow the only Jewish industrialist of any note in the 1920s at least after Rathenau’s assassination in 1922 and would leave Germany for Switzerland at the end of 1933.) Hilferding argues that this was the first time since Bismarck’s days that the alliance between the big landowners and heavy industry had come under severe strain Thanks to the territorial losses imposed on Germany the Versailles Treaty had “reduced the weight of heavy industry.” Coal and iron had been worst affected by the economic crisis and the occupation of the Ruhr and this had completely reversed the relation between capital and the state as the barons of coal and steel became critically dependent on bank finance This weakening of heavy industry went along with a qualitative change in the structure of German industry the leadership of industry passes to industrial groups of a different kind from the heavy industry of Rhineland-Westphalia In the very years that the raw materials sector suffered so badly consolidated its position through technical renovation and financial consolidation it was the chemical industry that conquered the preeminence it enjoys today above all other sectors With its capital of 1.1 billion marks it is the biggest industry in Germany and one of the biggest in the world. Far from being dependent on heavy industry its processes for the liquefaction of coal could well make the coal industry dependent on it Hilferding points to Carl Duisberg’s position as Chairman of IG Farben’s Supervisory Board and head of the Reichsbverband as a clear expression of the leading position of the chemical industry is not in such immediate and unmediated conflict with the working class as heavy industry is wages form the major portion of industrial costs Every demand for higher wages or shorter working hours encounters the fiercest opposition there The lords of coal and iron were the most determined enemies of the unions and of wage contracts wages are much less important than the other elements of cost. Their profits are so extraordinary that wage increases are of declining importance the continuity of the plant becomes vastly more important Their attitude to the workers’ organizations is also quite different and more inclined to compromise. Before the war heavy industry was the bearer of an aggressive German imperialism Germany’s defeat in the war broke its military might yet Germany remained an economic powerhouse of the first order German capitalism’s external drive had to take a different form which it found in international business partnerships (Interessengemeinschaften) German industry has gradually emancipated itself from the political leadership of heavy industry With the country becoming dependent on international loans the Reichsverband became a supporter of the Dawes Plan It wants no part of any struggle over the form of state it recognizes that social power-relations have changed The utopia of destroying the unions and Social Democracy is now finished. The German National People’s Party’s (DNVP) monarchism and aggressive nationalism are rejected by German industry The only supporters of such a politics are sections of the intelligentsia and of the declassed elements who include former army officers But these are layers on which no party can build a lasting future Hilferding concludes that Silverberg’s speech will only strengthen that party’s will to join the government.  since it was a hallmark of Hilferding’s Marxism that he always assigned pivotal importance to the power of political action If there was any sector of capital that did more to undermine the Republic and in this sense pave the way for the Nazis Verbund was a state-of-the-art term that Farocki would have picked up when reading a digression in the Kursbuch “Commentary” where Sohn-Rethel used the example of Vestag to illustrate what he saw as the key contradiction at the heart of “monopoly capitalism.” About the steel giant headed by Poensgen the irony here is that both individually and as a class Germany’s biggest corporates wielded far more influence in the Republic whose demise they helped to bring about than they were ever destined to under the Nazis state officials at all levels welcomed the advent of the Nazi regime in 1933 but this can scarcely be generalized to cover the less conservative and more modern sectors of the “new middle class” who were mainly employed in the private sector Received knowledge about the coalitional support for fascism bears considerable flaws Though Hilferding accurately identified the fractures haunting German capital towards the end of the Weimar republic he miscalculated the power of heavy industrialists and the fragility of existing political alliances In a bid to retain their hold over German society the owners of heavy industry bet on authoritarianism rather than subject themselves to democratic contestation rather than discontented salaried workers as a whole who perceived overlapping interests with the dictatorship Zum Aufruf Wirths und zur Rede Silverbergs’ The Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie was the country’s leading business association in the twenties It was effectively dissolved a few months after Hitler came to power Ökonomie und Klassenstruktur des deutschen Faschismus Bernhard Blanke and Niels Kadritzke (Frankfurt pp.53–68; Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism Staat und NSDAP 1930–1933: Paul Silverberg und der Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie in der Krise der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis The Historical Materialism Book Series plans to publish a new edition of this classic later this year or early next with appropriate revisions “Economic Power and Political Instability Reconsidered: Heavy Industry in Weimar Germany “A Commentary after 38 Years,” Historical Materialism “Commentary,” p.254; I’ve modified the translation to replace “compound production” with “integrated production” and “compound” with “integrated combine.” I’ve modified the translation to reflect the text of Ökonomie und Klassenstruktur Farocki’s interview and his discussion of the ideas that inspired his film can be found in Filmkritik Sohn-Rethel’s remarks can be found at pp.580ff German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler 1985) pp.298-300 mounts a strong defence of Silverberg against Neebe’s description of his contacts with various high-ranking Nazis during the last months of 1932 The Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany Emil Lederer’s Die Privatangestellten in der modernen Wirtschaftsentwicklung was an outlier There’s a good survey of these various “theories” in Val Burris “The Discovery of the New Middle Class,” Theory and Society Translated by the author himself as Hans Speier German White-Collar Workers and the Rise of Hitler (Yale University Press “The Salaried Employee in Modern Society,”Social Research “German White-Collar Workers before the Rise of National Socialism: An Interview with Hans Speier,” International Journal of Politics The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders 1919-1945 (Harvard University Press The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany 1919–1933 (University of North Carolina Press the directorate that shaped the Nazis’ campaign strategy and the content of their electoral campaigns In an earlier summary of his argument Childers had noted “Nazi electoral sympathies within the white collar labour force were marginal before 1930 and surprisingly weak thereafter,” cf “The Social Bases of the National Socialist Vote,” Journal of Contemporary History Childers himself was severely critical of Hamilton’s work Did Vote for Hitler?,” Central European History “German White-Collar Workers”—“today one can hardly imagine how deep the rift between workers and salaried white collar employees was then” (p.200) “Workers were full of resentment toward the salaried employees” (p.203) and Popular Entertainment in Weimar Germany,” J who deals with young women in white-collar jobs and the narcotic quality of “mass culture.” p.391.By “mixed districts” Hamilton means residential areas where lower- middle and working-class families lived in some proximity The forgotten ancestors of East Asian developmentalism An interview with Michael Mann on the study of history and the reemergence of great power politics Ernest Ming-Tak Leung Read the full article Jack Gross Read the full article Maya Adereth , Neil Warner Read the full article Subscribe to Phenomenal World Sources a weekly digest of compelling research across the social sciences Design & Development by Partner & Partners — A local comic book store celebrates 30 years in the Hub City friends and customers celebrated the 30-year milestone Wednesday as well as owner Rethel Miller’s birthday She has run the store herself since his passing in 1996 Mayor Jerry Gist presented Miller with a proclamation and a gift from the city Miller said her regular customers have become close to her through the years “I understand about financial problems and when they have to stop buying for a while or something like that.” You will likely find Miller behind the counter because she rarely takes a day off Chocolate almond paste croissants and turnovers are among the most popular items at Capo 29's new Back Door Bakery Capo 29's Back Door Bakery offers fresh pastries made in-house five days a week Sergio Mazariegos prepares lattes at Capo 29's Back Door Bakery Helena's Capo 29 pop-up is now offering baked goods with a permanent restaurant scheduled to open this summer Capo 29 is the culinary equivalent of a superhero with an alter ego: Rustic bakery by day Capo 29’s new Back Door Bakery operates out of 1320 Main St Then the staff closes for two hours and takes down the bakery displays Then they shift to dinner service from 6 to 9:30 who mans the bar and otherwise pitches in throughout the day recommends dropping by the bakery in the morning for pastries and coffee coming back for cocktails and appetizers at 5:30 “It’s a great showcase of what we’re capable of,” Mazariegos said It’s also a sample of what owner/chef Bruce Marder envisions for the permanent restaurant he hopes to open this summer at 61 Main St. The downtown Capo 29 (or C29) is just a pop-up while the restaurant is under construction The Back Door Bakery is so named because it will operate from the back door of the new restaurant Capo 29’s downtown location looks unusually finished and permanent by pop-up standards but that’s only because all the equipment and décor will be moved straight to the new location this summer Marder has been baking since 1990 and runs a bakery in Santa Monica in addition to his five restaurants including the flagship Capo in Santa Monica some of them by Marder himself along with chef Jae Cho a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park Marder said Capo’s pastries are “rustic looking but the flavor is great and technique is great.” “That’s always been my mantra,” said the fourth-generation chef who tends to look askance at bakeries that prioritize visual appeal over quality Marder takes great pride in his bagels ($2.50) which are boiled in lye and cook in only six minutes Mazariegos recommends the chocolate almond paste croissant ($5) — there’s some pastry cream in the almond paste so it’s not as dry and thick as you’d expect And for dinner — as long as he’s not paying — he’d order the 30-ounce Kansas City Bone-In steak ($95) sourced from Flannery Beef in Marin County He knows locals tend to dine early and don’t like to pay high-end prices He has adapted by offering a two-hour happy hour with “miniature meals” for under $10 He’s hopeful that Capo 29 will build up the same local following as established favorites like Cook Gillwoods and the Himalayan Sherpa Kitchen “We’ve been drawing them in and we’ve been growing pretty quickly.” he’s aware that the permanent Capo 29 in south St He’s already trying to build that base with Capo’s online presence Marder has discovered that labor is hard to come by in St The Napa Valley in general is “hurting really bad,” he said “Tourism is down and hotels are way too expensive,” he said You can reach Jesse Duarte at 707-967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com The demolition clears the way for a new building that will house Capo 29 based on Bruce Marder’s “Italian-style” restaurant Capo in Santa Monica Email notifications are only sent once a day Friends and family of Berryessa's Turtle Rock bar collected the money pined to the ceiling of the cafe to donate to UCSF and celebrate the 15-year 'cancerversary' of Elijah Leung Take a ride around Napa on these motorized ADA-compliant scooters made to look like various critters and creatures Most of Napa’s River Park Shopping Center tenants cater to locals Now a handful of tenants have left the center The sheriff's office reported seizing 13 roosters from a Carneros site where it said the birds were altered and trained to fight other male birds Take a good look at Napa’s Kohl’s building Developers have asked the city of Napa for permission to demolish the building at 1116 First St Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device Account processing issue - the email address may already exist Invalid password or account does not exist Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account the Marxist philosopher and economist Alfred Sohn-Rethel posed the following question in Germany’s Tageszeitung newspaper: “Is the fascist economy a threat?” He offered an ambivalent answer seeing in the military buildup of the 1980s a hallmark of the fascist economy: namely the attempt to save capitalism from itself via massive rearmament the economic transformations unfolding in those halcyon days left him cautiously optimistic that structural conditions were unfavorable to a 1930s redux Yet the militarist political economy taking shape under President Biden is a different beast lending Sohn-Rethel’s original analysis a new and unsettling urgency in our time the term “fascist” or “fascism” is commonly used to denote right-wing authoritarian movements—that is when it isn’t just a vague slur hurled at some opponent But Sohn-Rethel urged us to consider fascism in the political-economic context in which historical fascist movements arose and were embraced by those seeking to preserve the status quo of developed capitalism amid dizzying social turbulence Fascism thus understood isn’t simply a matter of bad individual actors It begins with violent and austere attempts to overcome unemployment to get markets and profits (or monopoly rents) back online eventually developing into an economy of armament production that risks triggering total war People also love good stories and to be entertained Rethel Miller has been in steady business for 34 years Catering to people’s need for something tangible in today’s virtual breed of microwave entertainment was the first and is the only remaining comic book store in Jackson Miller originally ran a martial arts supply store with her husband but after seeing the lack of a comics store in Jackson Miller says that it was scary when he first died because the store was her only source of income “They didn’t think I’d last because I was a woman,” Miller said people still just want to hold paper in their hands Many of her customers are regulars who have been coming for years Miller pulls the new editions of comics off the shelves for them and holds them in a wall of square cubbies and Miller remembers which series each person is interested in It’s like how Starbucks remembers your order if you go enough only Miller remembers a lot more than her customer’s comic book preferences She tells the story of one police officer from Chicago who comes to the store whenever he’s in town visiting family and every time the officer exclaims: “My wife is always surprised that you remember me Miller!” She remembers him because he once came and said he was having surgery and asked Miller to keep him in her prayers who pastors Eastview Baptist Church in Huntingdon Jones has been coming to Comics Universe since he was nine years old he has four children with whom he hopes to share his love for comics He recalls Miller questioning him as a child wanting to know what his parents did for a living since he was spending so much money buying comics He says Miller has been exceedingly kind to him and his family over the years “You don’t find a lot of shops where it’s woman-owned and the same woman has been there for a long time [Miller] is very sweet to me and takes care of me he enjoys talking to Miller about the church and the Lord She thinks this principle is one of the first things that draws people to comics To stand in her store is to be surrounded by multitudes of stories where the good guys always win glossy pages of a comic book and thumbing through to the end It’s an ancient narrative that humans have been writing about since the very beginning Miller has never had any employees at her store She’s run the store for 25 years by herself and she doesn’t see that changing anytime soon if somebody dies and I have to go to a funeral put a sign in the window and lock the doors.” Prince Albert II will be making an official visit to the Ardennes on 24 and 25 April to coincide with an exceptional exhibition strengthening the centuries-old ties between the Principality and the French region “I began my ‘tour de France’ of places with historical links to my Family and the Principality nearly fifteen years ago, in 2011 in Saint-Lô, Normandy,” Prince Albert II recalls in an interview with the Ardennes Département the paths of memory and the ‘community of destiny’ that links France and Monaco have taken me from Brittany to Alsace Auvergne by way of Poitou and Catalonia.” The ties between Monaco and the Ardennes date back to the end of the 18th century  “It’s all about a marriage,”  explains Prince Albert II heiress to the titles and lands of Cardinal Mazarin the King’s chief minister from 1643 to 1661 which he had acquired from the Duke of Mantua in 1659 became the Duchy of Mazarin for the cardinal’s niece and nephew this piece of Ardenne came to the Grimaldis at the end of the 18th century.” The official visit will include the exhibition at the Musée de l’Ardenne and visits to historic sites with links to the Grimaldi family Prince Albert II explains his approach: “My intention is obviously not to bring back an old political regime that is totally outdated for France but to use history as ‘fertile soil’ to enable my country and myself to ‘grow’ special relations with a number of French communities.” This visit could pave the way for further cultural cooperation “I always take a sympathetic view of the projects I receive from these territories,” says the Sovereign Prince and we need to ensure our involvement is justified but it’s always a pleasure to give a helping hand so that heritage improvement projects can come to fruition.” Prince Albert II is no stranger to the French region:  “The Ardennes are close to the Aisne My ancestor Prince Charles III and his wife Antoinette de Mérode So I’m no stranger to northern and eastern France and I like to recharge my batteries there.” presents unique documents and works of art most of which have never been shown to the public in particular from Monaco’s Palace Archives and the Bibliothèque nationale de France Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Professor of Accounting at the Warwick Business School (WBS) was titled "Identity as infrastructure in financial markets" A renewed focus on infrastructure 'the piping of financial markets' is gaining purchase in critical finance studies and Prof Millo began his keynote by raising some conceptual questions: How can we think through the remodeling of financial infrastructure in the current time He proposed to develop a view of infrastructure as a process an intersubjective yet oportunistic endeavor to jointly produce taken-for-grantedness Drawing from his research on identification in financial markets from his current work on the introduction of Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) he showed how such a view may help to understand the peculiar contradictions which underscore recent post-crisis attempts to re-organise the markets by creating a new infrastructure for identity Where the first keynote urged us to revisit the technological basis for finance Prof Rethel asked what may be learned from its high-profile industry events Reporting from her own research in Southeast Asia she emphasised how conferences in particular have taken on a crucial role for the development of capital markets in the region offering a place and time for financial communities to stage a spectacle of finance such events serve to 'raise the profile' of particular financial networks they are also sights where different networks overlap in unlikely encounters as such providing intriguing material to dissect 'high finance' as a multiplicity of circulating knowledges gaining pace and taking shape in the enactments of strategic spectacles You can find Prof Rethel's powerpoint slides here Current students Staff intranet News & Events Facebook Twitter Instagram We use cookies to give you the best online experience Please let us know if you agree to functional You can update your cookie preferences at any time Tony Richardson and Kye Peterson have climbed two new mixed routes in Garibaldi Provincial Park The new routes are on a crag above Wedgemount Lake that’s been called Rethel Headwall the trio climbed No Cupcakes (NC) WI4+ 140 metres and Intolerant Tearin (IC) M5+ 140 metres Kruk paraglided back to the base of the wall “Two new and very high quality 140 m mixed lines dispatched on the Rethel Headwall in the last two days by Tony “I just landed in the valley and am waiting for the boys to walk down Get the digital edition of Gripped for your chosen platform: John Hinkson It is not possible to grasp contemporary social life without taking into account the vast transformations in society and technology that have occurred across the last several generations having unmistakable impacts in most aspects of life: the internet which has opened new possibilities for sociality and communications While locking many of the older generations out of the new daily necessities—such as internet banking—this transformation is taken for granted by younger generations especially since the Second World War—think of nuclear energy and nuclear warfare as well as the electronics that undergird computerisation among other things—profoundly shape our world today At the centre of these transformations are certain technological revolutions We can focus on their generational impacts in this discussion of the work of German economist and philosopher Alfred Sohn-Rethel is to focus on where those technological revolutions come from and what they mean as a set of related developments in social life with some precursors but only fully fledged today were not historically familiar forms of technological development They did not emerge from intelligent thinking by practical inventors they are developments incubated within institutions that were not directly associated with the practical transformation of everyday life and economy: the universities and related research centres These settings provide a form of institutional organisation for intellectuals and their relationship to both the economy and the life-world has radically changed Something has happened within intellectuality itself that gives it a direct entry point into the transformation of the material world This is a development that is to the side of how Marxist insights have been taken up especially through the political-economic account of distributional inequality via binary and deeply resonant theme for all modern people of Marx’s phrase ‘all that is solid melts into air’ captures the association of capitalism with social transformation the kind of transformation being conjured up refers to the transformation of the means of production—those technologies and other means that feed productivity—as set within a process of class control The idea of class controls that enable a selection of technical transformations leaves unexplored the source of transformation itself technological revolution—is in Marxism and derived left positions not Might transformations in science and technology contain their own momentum Can they alter how class is experienced and the forms class takes Is it possible that over time they introduce basic change into the larger society without directly challenging the underlying class structure What are their powers and scope in shaping experience Such questions lie at the centre of the preoccupations of Arena editors over many years The growing importance of intellectual training and its implications for persons generally not primarily for the industrial working classes; the growing importance to capitalism of intellectual practices; and what their meanings for social life and future prospects might be—these have gone through various phases of development in Arena’s body of social theory The recent republication of Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s classic work Intellectual and Manual Labour invites a consideration of some of these changes that have impacted on the relevance of the Marxist account for social analysis over a century or so with its emphasis upon class exploitation and class division practical Marxism has nevertheless taken up only one aspect of Marx’s account Sohn-Rethel’s focus is on social practices in scientific and technological development that are unifying rather than conflictual He is concerned with how society is significantly composed of what he calls shared universals across society or where and how knowledge is achieved.  This concern with abstract universals can easily be misleading Sohn-Rethel was very much preoccupied with the issues of his day Experiencing the disaster of the First World War and its aftermath saw the failure of the German working-class revolution and the unravelling of German society generally he was seeking to understand how this had happened against the backdrop of the class account of social prospects developed by Marx this was a failure that opened the door to the rise of the Nazis in Germany leading to the destruction of the strongest working-class movement in Europe Rather than seeing this failure as a contingent event that worked out badly for Marxist movements Sohn-Rethel sees it as a crisis of practical theory: a failure of one side of Marxist thought He is basically arguing that an account grounded in the production process as it is in Marxism leaves the productive forces as a kind of ‘black box’ that is taken for granted and in itself has no social basis The increasing reliance on science in economic life has progressively transformed the productive forces The reliance upon a notion of ‘scientific revolutions’ as explanation for the transformation of the productive forces is not a fully material account of what has happened The question is: how is this scientific revolution a social phenomenon not merely the expression of class interest It is important to keep in mind that Sohn-Rethel is not claiming that Marx wholly ignores such universals the early chapters of Marx’s Capital address the commodity abstraction (an emanation from markets) which is universal in its impact on social life its significance is implied rather than elaborated and this is one reason why it is largely dismissed or brushed aside in political economy as inappropriate Many find it a mysterious moment in Marx’s overall account of capitalism It is certainly true that the main focus of Capital lies elsewhere: how political economy works practices and social structures in the foreground in order to make sense of how class division unfolds and is reinforced While it can be shown that such universals have an impact on his practical accounts nevertheless the overall impact of the Marxist frame at work in Capital is reductive Historical materialism always seeks to give a social context to popular ideas: consciousness is socially rooted and in the political economy account therefore slated home to economy and to class Marx makes many references to how ideas are related to a social basis but Sohn-Rethel regards it of great significance that science escapes this focus.  Elaborating no social basis for scientific ideas allows them to stand alone as essentials to be simply taken for granted their source and social formation unquestioned If the phenomena of consciousness are time-bound by being related to social contexts mathematics and science are ‘ruled by timeless standards’ how might philosophy and science be understood to be bounded by time via particular types of sociality This is essential for a socially material approach this is also a key question related to the prospect for socialism He asks: how can there be a socialism if science and technology are not subservient to the needs of society if science cannot be given a materialist account this will lead to a technocratic society To take up these matters Sohn-Rethel relies on a key distinction in Marx between ‘societies of production’ and ‘societies of appropriation’ Communal societies illustrate societies of production; this is where a whole society produces for itself where one class appropriates and exploits the other Societies of appropriation are commodity societies where the market stands apart as a universal from the social classes and facilitates the appropriation process so that exploitation—mired in an inescapable brutality of various types—is muted or made opaque this standing apart is achieved by means of abstraction separated from the production process This reality of the market is itself a material force who viewed the commodity abstraction as merely a metaphor This observation allows Sohn-Rethel to refer to abstraction as a process other than by thought While abstraction facilitates class division and allows the productive process to be pursued by individuals who are mediated by markets The market is a universal material force that facilitates social unity despite the reality also of class division.  It is this real abstraction of the market that in history is the social basis of social relations that are not primarily entities of class division: crucially the relations of intellectuality—philosophy these social relations are not experienced as such They assert their powers in action rather than in conscious awareness This universalist material force is also time-based It is a product of the market that emerged in antiquity where universalist philosophy also famously emerged the market is a social basis of all commodity societies in ways necessarily different to other social forms This approach allows Sohn-Rethel to draw conclusions about the nature of commodity societies ‘(T)he abstractness operating in exchange…does…find an identical expression or the so-called “pure understanding” [this is] the cognitive source of scientific knowledge.’ (U)naffected are the forms of consciousness which are part of the economic life of society and all those mental forms residing under the name of ‘ideologies’ which is to be understood as an attempt purely at a critique of idealistic epistemology complementary to Marx’s critique of political economy but based on a systematic foundation of its own Interrelationships affected by the exchange relation act through abstract forms (of commodity relations) not through the directly engaged psychology of the individuals involved It is the form that moulds psychological mechanisms intellectuals and scientists engage indirectly through mathematical forms of a ‘pure’ nature one ‘unmistakably at odds with the nature experienced by man in the labour process’.                  Sohn-Rethel can speak of an abstract nature ‘devoid of all sense reality [that] admits only…quantitative differentiation’ The form elements of the exchange abstraction are of such fundamental caliber—abstract time and space etc…[and] make up between them a kind of abstract framework into which all observable phenomena are bound to fit This relationship between the class-based productive sphere and the universalist commodity-based intellectual/scientific sphere—the former grounded in the practices of actual production the latter ‘grounded’ in real abstraction—has been the basis of commodity societies since ancient Greece This division of mental and manual labour only moved into another relation with the emergence of monopoly capitalism and profound changes in ‘science and technology whereby there is a transformation of the productive forces into those [shaped by] atomic physics and of electronics’ the modern sciences have bridged the relation of practical production and abstract intellectual forms by their entry directly into practical production especially his emphasis on real abstraction throws light upon the role of intellectuality in commodity societies and gives significant focus to the distinctive social role of intellectuals in the social life of those societies his work on Taylorism and the prospects of automation real practices today that are not given the broad interpretation they deserve And there is a noted lack of development in respect of the meanings and effects of intellectual practices since the emergence of atomic physics or the unconstrained assault on practical nature that has unfolded since the Second World War This latter theme has long been a point where socialism and capitalism agree While there have always been deep differences here about the significance of who controls the means of production the continued expansion of the means of production is a shared assumption of both approaches It is not only climate change that has intervened on this question The broader environmental questions of resources use and destruction of the natural world has ruled a line through this expansive that deep assumption of modernity that continues to carry both capitalism and conventional socialism towards existential disaster Sohn-Rethel’s identification of intellectuality as a material process establishes a potential transition in the practical understanding of capitalism and socialism This was not due merely to a change of concepts and conceptual frameworks The timing of Sohn-Rethel’s work was also critical because it coincided with a practical transition in capitalism itself one that demands new thinking about the components of contemporary society with potentially different emphases for practical action It is striking that within Marxist political economy Sohn-Rethel’s reconstruction has always struggled to gain recognition It was even resisted by some left publishers who felt the work strayed too far from what was acceptable within the politics of the Left a practically focused class-based politics with ingrained ideas has little room for ideas about intellectuality and the scientific revolutions of the twentieth century who viewed Sohn-Rethel’s work as typical of German left-pessimism after the destruction of the workers’ movement in the 1920s Is it pessimism at work or is it recognition of a major shift in the social composition that must now be taken into account If this is a question to be answered by history that Sohn-Rethel’s book is being republished now could in itself constitute recognition that his emphasis on the importance of intellectuals in productive life has gained further significance since the time of his writing The Arena project views Sohn-Rethel’s work on intellectual and mental labour as an important step in coming to terms with social phenomena yet to be fully comprehended by a practically oriented Marxism Sohn-Rethel ends with the emergence of electronics and atomic physics as the moment in science that creates the setting for monopoly capitalism in the world of capital founding editor of Arena,who was influenced by Sohn-Rethel argues for a much broader transformation of materialist thinking and practice an account of the emergence of a new social agent in a transforming social structure: the intellectually trained often squeezed into the category of ‘middle class’ by political economy differ in basic ways from the working class By being trained in the academy they are formed in the application of general techniques developed by creative intellectuals can only come from a return to the academy in one form or another which means the intellectually trained must also relinquish the constraints of particular settings their internalised techniques are defined by their generality and flexibility Their capacity to stand at a distance from and take hold of situations is distinctive.  Control of such workers requires both control of the person Both the person and the academy are defined by their relative autonomy While control may be achieved in a given moment it is never settled; such control is a process defined by contingent uncertainty The formation of the intellectually trained in the rational mode within the academy also means that they have to choose how to live and what social structures to support While today these choices largely support the contemporary social order not to mention the crushing of the humanities within the academy the distinctive formation of the intellectually trained allows the possibility of choosing to oppose that order This is especially the case if the intellectual practices proper within the academy become critical of the dominant social order The point is that universalistic intellectual practices have concerns broader than those of capitalism or any particular social structure and ‘service’ is ‘a deeply entrenched value’ While they are at present largely joined with capitalism in the pursuit of ‘development’ It is possible to get a partial glimpse of this process today with climate change The rebellion of climate scientists over climate policy is a rational revolt against the assumptions of a social order in which the scientists have come to believe that the lives of everyone While both intellectuals and the intellectually trained do not essentially live by social relations ordered by institutional authority they can order themselves around rational concerns and become fierce opponents.  Sharp’s work first addressed a situation of growing cultural and political revolt in the 1960s and 1970s While this revolt was not sustained in later decades the growth of intellectual practices in the economy constantly expanded This was reflected in the enormous growth of the educational sector in ‘advanced’ societies and also in attempts by the social order to clamp down on the freedom of the intellectually trained by reducing the academy to more restricted and narrowly careerist forms of education This has evolved over time to the point where there is a growing disparity between two different kinds of workers in industry with the industrial working class in relative decline This puts a radically different emphasis on the new significance of the sciences in industry as compared with Sohn-Rethel’s work and time Sohn-Rethel did not go on to explore the implications for the persons of such workers under the new or emerging development he retained an approach somewhat closer to conventional political economy.  Another expression of this development in thinking is in Arena’s interpretation of science and its relation to industry Rather than simply refer to the latest developments in science—electronics atomic physics—Sharp and other Arena editors recognise a generalised transformation that leads to the identification of the high-tech revolution as a much more general category this perspective argues that in the twentieth century science and technology became decisively intertwined after the discoveries of Albert Einstein have multiplied in all sectors as capitalism recognised the productive revolution this implied This led to a vast expansion of educational institutions in society and growing emphasis on intellectual training Sharp saw this development as epochal: technique in the world was increasingly a product of the academy of practices derived from complexes of ideas that constituted real lived abstractions set apart from the productive process itself This high-tech revolution not only impacts directly on myriad forms of production and services of great variety but also steps outside of conventional economic concerns and turns upon everyday life One could say that when Sharp refers to the relation of abstract ideas to practical transformation as an epochal change he is suggesting that it generates outcomes that are without historical precedent Homo sapiens with the help of techno-science begin to imagine it can shape and displace evolution as illustrated by various contemporary interventions to reconstruct the body the temptation to use geo-engineering as a response to climate change and Elon Musk and his followers’ desire and capacity to begin to colonise space The idea of ‘constitutive abstraction’ in Sharp’s work reflects the generalised nature of these developments Here the social relations distinctive to intellectuals are seen to work as extended relations relations that place a form of absence—of the other—at their heart with those relations necessarily mediated by technology or forms of internet communication and connection These relations are relatively abstract: in the sense of the real abstraction identified by Sohn-Rethel relations of this abstract kind are not easily raised to self-consciousness by intellectuals themselves Intellectuals typically experience themselves as individuals rather than as sharing in the characteristics of their form of apprehending and experiencing the world This account of the social relations of absence contrasts with the social relations that best account for everyday life; that is where the other is largely physically present in face-to-face or embodied relations the body and the senses employed in close community—the qualities of sensual interactions that are situated in place and experienced over time These have typically been a broad form of social relation organised within communities that combine locatedness in place with ties that in one way or another limit or slow up movement kinship and intergenerational relationships have provided common means of achieving this While this delineation of a contrast in ‘levels’ of social abstraction is a crucial insight into the nature of personal and social formation of even greater importance is that for both the individual and the social order these more or less abstract forms are combined in everyday life especially as young people growing up; they retain these internalised relations as they develop abstract interchanges in the academy; they integrate them within the self and as well as within broader sets of intellectual practices more abstract inter-relations are also significant as illustrated by the role of literature and religion historically the intellectually trained and their dominance in the mode of education and conjunction with the demands of capital everywhere There is another development in the Arena outlook that goes beyond the work of Sohn-Rethel By formulating a material account of intellectuality in commodity societies Sohn-Rethel moves beyond conventional political economy come to terms with the significance of intellectuality in the world today This isn’t merely a matter of the changing proportions of industrial workers versus the intellectually trained in society The formulation by Sharp of levels of social abstraction makes it possible to see the different modes of social formation in interrelation As intellectual practices penetrate and move across the society the more generalised abstraction is embedded in and appears to enhance all ways of life Ways of being human have always been formed within cultures that value the tangible object world What this more generalised social abstraction means for social life is multifaceted One consequence of great significance is the enhancement of liberatory political movements of many kinds While liberatory movements are hardly new at the very least Gnostic and Christian liberation has a long history—these movements now spawn wherever one looks Freedom was once a hard-won political and legal right for individuals against the power of the state with the undermining of generational face-to-face relations by more socially abstract relations that do not value the presence of the other liberation often comes to mean freedom from natural or evolutionary constraints: from the given body from generational ‘constraints’ (displaced by social media) or even the Earth itself via colonisation of space –a long-held deep orientation of modernity now crudely exemplified by the projects of Elon Musk and others For Sharp this profound shift in the balance between face-to-face and more abstract relations tends towards a broad-ranging cultural contradiction and may be seen in the huge range of mental crises related to a lack of grounding in embodied social life and natural world.  It is a crisis that emerges as techno-science joins with capitalism and begins to reconstruct the world around us in fundamental ways Cultural contradiction has multiple effects in the social world People begin to act against its manifestations in piecemeal ways Some begin to walk away from contemporary social life attempting to rebuild their face-to-face relations with others and with nature as did the counter-culture fifty years ago Conventional politics fragments and turns upon itself having lost the stable reference points that were its basis in the past The whole frame of ‘progress’ and expansion begins to unravel for growing sections of society Yet how this challenge will work its way out over the next generation will turn in large part on the response over time of intellectual practice in the academy Sharp made clear that this would be no easy task: …any movement towards confronting the new-found merger…of the intellectual practices with the Powers It is a conjunction that may continue to devolve into new forms of tyranny unless the interpretive branch of the intellectual practices can renew its former precedence Will intellectual practices continue their implicit cooperation with capital and destroy much of the world of Homo sapiens and other species can they be harnessed to draw upon their universalist ethical orientation and return to and serve the broad community was republished by Brill in 2021; it was originally published in 1978 John Hinkson lectured in the Education Faculty at La Trobe University for many years He is a longstanding Arena Publications Editor More articles by John Hinkson Categorised: Arena Quarterly #9 Tagged: theory Independent publications and critical thought are more important than ever Arena has never relied on or received government funding It has sustained its activities largely through the voluntary work and funding provided by editors and supporters If Arena is to continue and to expand its readership © 2025 Arena Maryland State Police criminal investigators arrested and charged 66-year-old Richard Rathel with distribution and possession of child pornography Police say the three-month investigation began when investigators received a tip regarding potential child pornography files being uploaded from the internet and officials were able to obtain a search warrant for Rathel’s home Officials say the evidence was obtained Tuesday morning that led to Rathel’s arrest Electronic equipment recovered from Rathel’s home will be sent to the Maryland State Police Computer Crimes Unit digital forensics laboratory for further investigation Rathel was charged with one count of distribution of child pornography and three counts of possession of child pornography He was taken to the Wicomico County Detention Center and appeared before a court commissioner where he was ordered to be held without bond Police add that the investigation is ongoing Because Local Matters The first issue of 2022 considers the many ways in which our vision can be obscured in these complex and tumultuous times The climate emergency—its scale so vast that it can’t be contemplated entire—grows ever more urgent The far Right exploits well-intentioned concerns about vaccines to draw greater numbers into its fold The last decade has seen the failure of the centrist form of neoliberal progressivism that occupied the left parties in the face of an onslaught by right-wing populism which mobilised forces old and new to present themselves…as a response on behalf of the people against the entire ‘political/media’ class Read more...