Historical-critical dictionary of Marxism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism (HKWM) is a 15-volume German-language dictionary in which over 1500 historical terms relating to Marxism are presented.

Publication and imprint

For the dictionary, which is based on 1500 key words in 15 volumes, nine volumes have been published every two to three years by Hamburger Argument Verlag since 1994 , with volumes from volume 6 each appearing in 2 parts. The dictionary is a publication by the Berlin Institute for Critical Theory . Wolfgang Fritz Haug was the sole editor up to and including Volume 6 / II . From volume 7 / I Frigga Haug and Peter Jehle and from volume 8 / I Wolfgang Küttler joined as co-editors. In the previous (partial) volumes, between 65 and 105 authors wrote between 68 and 117 articles on the respective keywords. In addition, up to more than 800 scientists took part.

Emergence

The HKWM was created in 1983 initially as a supplement to the German edition of the Dictionnaire Critique du Marxisme ( Critical Dictionary of Marxism ), the “French-influenced” discussion status of which was criticized by its editor, Wolfgang Haug. With the end of state socialism, however, this approach was abandoned and the project was further opened to authors from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Conception

The conception of the HKWM is based on the historical dictionary of philosophy , although, as Wolfgang Fritz Haug notes, there is "hardly any overlap" in the selection of lemmas and the presentation of the material.

It works on theoretical and political-strategic terms that go back to Marx and Engels . In addition, keywords are also included that are not of Marxist origin, provided that they “articulate historically new problems or claims to knowledge” or “focus on previously neglected aspects of Marxism”. This includes new concepts that articulate current problems of the present such as the “transition to the high-tech mode of production of transnational capitalism”, the “failure of the Soviet social formation”, the “ North-South conflict ” and the “ new social movements ” ( women's movement , ecology movement ).

On the one hand, the work wants to deal with Marxism as a historical phenomenon “after the communist experiment was broken off”, without which “science, culture and politics of the 20th century” would not be properly understood. Furthermore, the editors consider Marxism to be a project that remains unfinished as long as "the existential problems to which it has begun to respond have not been resolved or become meaningless".

Since 2011 the trailers for the articles have been made available online and free of charge in InKritPedia , which functions as a wiki . A fee of 20 ct per article column is charged for access to the entire article.

reception

The book project was welcomed because for a long time it had been a desideratum to be able to get precise information on Marxist technical terms. The thematic expansion to newer fields such as feminism and the ecological movement , as well as the openness and plurality in the choice of keywords such as “ jazz ”, “ jeans ”, “ internet ”, “ I-AG ” or “ irony ” are praised . The treatise on capitalist globalization and its political effects was also highlighted as a strength of the dictionary .

Although the HKWM is attested to have an open and undogmatic concept of Marxism and a critical attitude towards the power politics of the Soviet Union , it is also an overemphasis on Marxism-Leninism , a distance from classical critical theory and an ignorance of the more recent, non-academic, non-academic theory based on critical theory Criticism of value has been accused. Rolf Hecker complains that his keyword article Simple Goods Production has been changed without his consent, Heinz Gess has withdrawn his planned contribution Critical Theory due to disagreement about the scope and line of the magazine Das Argument , which is published by the same publisher .

Years of publication of the volumes

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ List of terms in the HKWM .
  2. ↑ Cf. Wolfgang Fritz Haug: Foreword to the first volume of the Critical Dictionary of Marxism (1983).
  3. ↑ See Wolfgang Fritz Haug: Foreword to the first volume of the HKWM (1994).
  4. ↑ a b c d So Hans-Martin Lohmann : How much Marxism do humans need ( memento of the original from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (4 pages pdf; 71 kB), Zeit , October 27, 1995. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.inkrit.de
  5. ↑ a b Rudolf Walther : Diagnoses for Debates ( Memento of the original from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 46 kB), Taz , May 7, 2005. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.inkrit.de
  6. ↑ Stephan Grigat : materials on reference Marxism , Streifzüge 3/1999.
  7. ↑ Rolf Hecker: Simple product production , original version, Rote-Ruhr-Uni .
  8. ↑ Heinz Gess: About the misuse of the "critical theory" and its name in the "Institute for Critical Theory" (Inkrit, Berlin) (5 pages pdf; 176 kB), Critique Network , 2006.