With a focus on the social and political conjuncture in Greece following interventions by the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Union, and European Central Bank, as well as with an analysis of historical trends in Greek capitalism, the end of the Metapolitefsi period, and the rise in authoritarian statism, I argue for a revival of Marxist state theory in understanding the current global crisis. I identify this moment in Greece as a battle for hegemony between the dominant narratives of disaster that perpetuate the vicious cycle of debt-and-austerity and an alternative, radical narrative of here-and-now.

The common sense that queer liberation is based upon a linear or progressive trajectory fails to account for the complexities and contradictions surrounding the current demand for LGBT equality and its place within intersecting social movements. This article uses the history of Marxist praxis, including Marcuse’s contributions, to argue for abandoning linear and stagist assumptions of gradual change in favor of a dialectical approach toward the intersection of identity formation and social struggle.

In his later work, Marcuse concerned himself with the nexus between social movements and unconscious dimensions of human nature. He understood Nature (including instincts) as an “ally” in the revolutionary process. In this paper, I seek to explore his insight through the concept of the “eros effect,” which I first uncovered while analyzing the global revolt of 1968. Forms of direct democracy and collective action developed by the New Left continue to define movement aspirations and structures. Although contemporary rational choice theorists (who emphasize individual gain as the key motivation for people’s actions) cannot comprehend instinctual motivations, a different understanding is central to my conception.

This paper argues that community gardens, in addition to being economically practical, offer a promising example of an environment that fosters the new sensibility. After exploring Marcuse’s new sensibility and his critique of aesthetic experience under capitalism, the paper turns to some empirical studies of the benefits of the aesthetic qualities of community gardening. These studies correspond to Marcuse’s proposition that aesthetic environments can play a role in challenging domination. The last section of this paper considers how those involved in the D-Town Farm in Detroit self-consciously assert the community garden as a political project that challenges domination.

A new wave of global protest movements offers the opportunity to reassess Marcuse’s work in the early twenty-first century. Before engaging with the Occupy movement and its analogs, it is necessary to scrutinize Marcuse’s assumptions about the affluent society. This examination suggests that the conditions of neoliberal accumulation diverge significantly from those Marcuse more or less took for granted as permanently stabilizing capitalist societies in the Global North. While much of what Marcuse offers retains relevance, its appeal to the new movements is not immediate because these can no longer take for granted the prosperity of the earlier era.

This essay challenges the belief in the superiority of capitalism as practiced today, and outlines an alternative economic system aimed at avoiding current capitalism’s main weaknesses. This alternative, built around employee ownership, is designed to result, over time, in a more equal distribution of income and wealth, while surpassing current capitalism’s main strength, its extraordinary economic productivity. It is an economic system that spreads economically beneficial incentives around more widely than today, and helps equalize opportunities. At its core is a buy-in and payoff scheme that avoids what are often said to be the major problems with employee ownership.

This paper explores practical application of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology to lived human experience and practical concerns beyond those he addressed, specifically the phenomenon of gender. We are so committed to gender norms that we ostracize or even kill those who violate them, yet rarely question the reasonableness of our expectations. Gender needs to be examined from a phenomenological stance, a) because of the ubiquity of gendering, b) because presuppositions regarding gender go largely unquestioned in most Daseins’ everyday existence, and c) because cases in which actual fact contravenes our expectations offer insight into what it means to be human.

Many socialists agree that socialism must be democratic, in the political as well as in the economic arena. But socialist democracy is very different from democracy in a capitalist country. Socialist democracy, it is widely believed, will be participatory: everyone will be a full participant in all decisions affecting his or her life. In this paper I argue that this conception of socialist democracy needs a lot more work. Not all decisions can be made by everybody affected by a decision. Many decisions that affect large numbers of persons must be made by representatives. But representation is subject to several serious weaknesses which are not products of capitalism. They will be obstacles to democracy also under socialism. Today we do not know what a socialist democracy would look like.

This paper considers the nature of Heidegger’s Eurocentrism in regard to philosophy. Focusing primarily on “A Dialogue on Language,” I argue, first, that Heidegger recognizes the limits of the Eurocentric idea of philosophy and proposes its overcoming. Secondly, I suggest that the proposal to overcome philosophy is made in an attempt to protect philosophy from the encroachment of an otherness that challenges its very identity. This leads me to the view, thirdly, that Heidegger’s Eurocentrism about philosophy is compromising insofar as he is willing, to a certain degree, to let go of philosophy’s European origin. This “thinning” out of Heidegger’s Eurocentrism, finally, opens the door to a consideration of the possibility for a non-Western, namely, a Latin American, or Mexican “philosophy.”