Seminars

On a regular basis, the Centre organizes research seminars for its own members. Some of them are reserved for staff only; others are open to all members. Staff seminars are intended either to co-ordinate the Centre’s research activities, or to provide a forum for philosophical discussion amongst the Centre’s senior researchers. Most plenary seminars are set up for junior researchers to present their doctoral research for both senior and junior colleagues

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Past seminars

Marx and the Production-Organism

John Filling (St. John's College, Oxford)

Abstract

In the first volume of Capital, Marx employs a variety of organic and corporeal metaphors to describe the labour process. He distinguishes two types of 'production-organism': the 'elementary' organism of the division of labour in manufacture; and the 'objective' organism of the machine system in large-scale industry. This paper examines these metaphors to gain a better sense of what we might call Marx's social organicism, his modern corollary of Aristotle's political naturalism.

Comparison is made with the organicism of three of Marx's contemporaries: G. W. F. Hegel, Andrew Ure, and Moses Hess. Examining this organicism sheds new light on some familiar themes in Marx: first, the difference between alienation through division of labour versus alienation through mechanised industry; second, the suggestion that communism will be marked by a material abundance that will render human labour unnecessary; and third, Marx's teratology, in which large-scale industry is said to be a 'mechanical monster' or 'Cyclops', and capital a 'vampire' or 'werewolf'.