Murray and Marx

Theory from Marx and related thinkers challenges interpretation of Les Murray's poetry. Topics discussed are: dialectics and dreams; death and its place in our lives; and poetry and religion. Using Marx, religious ideas are given meaning for our lives and thus, it is argued, interest and complexity is discovered in Murray's poetry.

Postcolonial critique of reason: Spivak between Kant and Matilal

The paper ponders the location of Gayatri Spivak in the discursive space between Kant and Bimal K. Matilal (but she is also dis-located by her own enactments, disavowals). So it wonders what a postcolonial critique of reason would look like. In the chapter on philosophy, Spivak (1999) develops a sustained critique of just this kind by decoding the works of the 'Three Wise Men of Continental Europe' (Kant, Hegel, Marx), pointing, via the European impact on the Third World, to the ultimate 'foreclosure: [in the fashion of] the native informant'. But the paper detects another triangular imaginary of reason - this time without an apex, and with limited strategies, each deconstructing and challenging the other. Kant is thus important in spite of his own cosmopolitheia, Matilal for his rational realism of 'moral love'. What both fell short of was a genuine critique of the rational, and therefore also of one of its unfortunate beneficiaries, the postcolonial 'informant'; and this critique is Spivak's 'gift'.

What is the value of the arts?

In an age of globalisation, economic restructuring and rampant consumption, the "cultural industries" have come to be viewed as offering a source of social and economic salvation to declining towns, cities and regions. However, it is far from clear to what extent the arts, media and related tourism create employment, wealth, capital and community cohesion. What then is the value of the cultural industries and what concepts can be deployed to answer this question? This paper will report on one effort to devise a theoretical framework to assess the value of the cultural industries in one small Australian city. Drawing on Marxism, Pierre Boudieu and post-modem theory, it will develop a particular concept of "cultural capital" for use in quantifying and qualifying the socio-economic contribution of the cultural industries in Geelong, Victoria. It will argue that by linking Marx to Bourdieu around reformulated notions of "value" and "cultural capital", a theoretically rigorous framework can be distilled to assess and argue for the value of the arts. Such a concept has particular relevance and implications for arts managers.

From site to text : Australian Aborigines and the origin of the family

Missions were not simply sites of modernity, they were also the source of key data for the modernist theories of human progress. The idea that so called “primitive peoples” provided a window to the origins of human institutions seemed axiomatic to nineteenth-century theorists of human society who sought evidence for these ideas from settlers, administrators and particularly missionaries. The 1870s and 1880s were the high point of missionary engagement with study-bound anthropologists, as questionnaires and letters were sent from the centres to the edges of empires. Missionary responses, augmented with settler and explorer observations, became the footnotes in early anthropological texts on “primitive” societies. These analyses were then mined for the foundation texts of the other social sciences in the late nineteenth century. Along with many other scholars, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels read the anthropology of the period and slotted the findings into their analyses of human society.

An agent-based approach to value theory and wealth distribution in economics

Any attempt to model an economy requires foundational assumptions about the relations between prices, values and the distribution of wealth. These assumptions exert a profound influence over the results of any model. Unfortunately, there are few areas in economics as vexed as the theory of value. I argue in this paper that the fundamental problem with past theories of value is that it is simply not possible to model the determination of value, the formation of prices and the distribution of income in a real economy with analytic mathematical models. All such attempts leave out crucial processes or make unrealistic assumptions which significantly affect the results. There have been two primary approaches to the theory of value. The first, associated with classical economists such as Ricardo and Marx were substance theories of value, which view value as a substance inherent in an object and which is conserved in exchange. For Marxists, the value of a commodity derives solely from the value of the labour power used to produce it - and therefore any profit is due to the exploitation of the workers. The labour theory of value has been discredited because of its assumption that labour was the only ‘factor’ that contributed to the creation of value, and because of its fundamentally circular argument. Neoclassical theorists argued that price was identical with value and was determined purely by the interaction of supply and demand. Value then, was completely subjective. Returns to labour (wages) and capital (profits) were determined solely by their marginal contribution to production, so that each factor received its just reward by definition. Problems with the neoclassical approach include assumptions concerning representative agents, perfect competition, perfect and costless information and contract enforcement, complete markets for credit and risk, aggregate production functions and infinite, smooth substitution between factors, distribution according to marginal products, firms always on the production possibility frontier and firms’ pricing decisions, ignoring money and credit, and perfectly rational agents with infinite computational capacity. Two critical areas include firstly, the underappreciated Sonnenschein-Mantel- Debreu results which showed that the foundational assumptions of the Walrasian general-equilibrium model imply arbitrary excess demand functions and therefore arbitrary equilibrium price sets. Secondly, in real economies, there is no equilibrium, only continuous change. Equilibrium is never reached because of constant changes in preferences and tastes; technological and organisational innovations; discoveries of new resources and new markets; inaccurate and evolving expectations of businesses, consumers, governments and speculators; changing demand for credit; the entry and exit of firms; the birth, learning, and death of citizens; changes in laws and government policies; imperfect information; generalized increasing returns to scale; random acts of impulse; weather and climate events; changes in disease patterns, and so on. The problem is not the use of mathematical modelling, but the kind of mathematical modelling used. Agent-based models (ABMs), objectoriented programming and greatly increased computer power however, are opening up a new frontier. Here a dynamic bargaining ABM is outlined as a basis for an alternative theory of value. A large but finite number of heterogeneous commodities and agents with differing degrees of market power are set in a spatial network. Returns to buyers and sellers are decided at each step in the value chain, and in each factor market, through the process of bargaining. Market power and its potential abuse against the poor and vulnerable are fundamental to how the bargaining dynamics play out. Ethics therefore lie at the very heart of economic analysis, the determination of prices and the distribution of wealth. The neoclassicals are right then that price is the enumeration of value at a particular time and place, but wrong to downplay the critical roles of bargaining, power and ethics in determining those same prices.

Chemotherapy in the elderly

The number of elderly patients with malignancy is growing and is likely to have a major impact on resources, quality of care, health economics and treatment options. Decisions regarding treatment options with chemotherapy are limited by the scarcity of data specifically addressing the issues regarding chemotherapy in the elderly. The problem is further confounded by issues such as co morbidity, poly-pharmacy, cognitive impairments, emotional problems, functional limitations, sensory impairment and a lack of social support. Ageing is associated with specific physiologic changes in functional status, organ function and drug pharmacokinetics. Optimising cancer care and chemotherapy delivery in the elderly requires a better understanding of the specific pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic issues and administration of chemotherapy in this age group. Elderly participation in clinical trials and specific research is essential to guide treatment decisions and further research is required to provide evidence-based models to guide treatment decisions. In an Australian setting, the development of a geriatric oncology specific group as a means of facilitating collaboration with geriatricians, development of specific elderly research programs and clinical trials, education and development of treatment guidelines would further improve outcomes of our elderly patients undergoing cancer treatment.

Multicentre phase I/II study of PI-88, a heparanase inhibitor in combination with docetaxel in patients with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer

Background: Docetaxel (Taxotere) improve survival and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response rates in patients with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). We studied the combination of PI-88, an inhibitor of angiogenesis and heparanase activity, and docetaxel in chemotherapy-naive CRPC.

Patients and methods: We conducted a multicentre open-label phase I/II trial of PI-88 in combination with docetaxel. The primary end point was PSA response. Secondary end points included toxicity, radiologic response and overall survival. Doses of PI-88 were escalated to the maximum tolerated dose; whereas docetaxel was given at a fixed 75 mg/m2 dose every three weeks

Results: Twenty-one patients were enrolled in the dose-escalation component. A further 35 patients were randomly allocated to the study to evaluate the two schedules in phase II trial. The trial was stopped early by the Safety Data Review Board due to a higher-than-expected febrile neutropenia of 27%. In the pooled population, the PSA response (50% reduction) was 70%, median survival was 61 weeks (6–99 weeks) and 1-year survival was 71%.

Conclusions: The regimen of docetaxel and PI-88 is active in CRPC but associated with significant haematologic toxicity. Further evaluation of different scheduling and dosing of PI-88 and docetaxel may be warranted to optimise efficacy with a more manageable safety profile.

Anti-angiogenic therapy for lung cancer

This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows:

To determine the benefits and harms of angiogenesis inhibitors in the treatment of lung cancer when given alone, following or in combination with chemotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy (in the case of locally advanced non-metastatic NSCLC or limited stage SCLC).

Understanding Marxism

Marxism as an intellectual movement has been one of the most important and fertile contributions to twentieth-century thought. No social theory or political philosophy today can be taken seriously unless it enters a dialogue, not just with the legacy of Marx, but also with the innovations and questions that spring from the movement that his work sparked, Marxism.

Marx provided a revolutionary set of ideas about freedom, politics and society. As social and political conditions changed and new intellectual challenges to Marx’s social philosophy arose, the Marxist theorists sought to update his social theory, rectify the sociological positions of historical materialism and respond to philosophical challenges with a Marxist reply. This book provides an accessible introduction to Marxism by explaining each of the key concepts of Marxist politics and social theory. The book is organized into three parts, which explore the successive waves of change within Marxist theory and places these in historical context, while the whole provides a clear and comprehensive account of Marxism as an intellectual system.

International contact lens prescribing in 2007

Our annual review of international prescribing trends reports on close to 20,000 prospectively conducted fits in 27 countries.

Creative research : a radical subjectivity?

The struggles around notions of creative research are in some ways engaged with the return of the subject in face of post/structuralist moves that have tried to evacuate or dissolve subjectivity, or reduce it to an element in a structure. What this kind of subjectivity is, and how to define it, seems a matter up for grabs. What I suggest is that creative research is trying to stretch beyond its boundaries by advocating for a knowledge-producing subjectivity that rejects the methodological positivism of so called real research (which in many ways is centred upon the presuppostition of a transcendental subject), while negotiating the discourses of postmodernity and post/structuralism which are suspicious of, or radically dismiss, subjectivity as a category. I suggest that creative research might be a radical gesture, indeed a radical subjectivity, whose possibilities as creative/critical practices reveal the human content of the seemingly autonomous forms which are the outcome of the fragmentary world of capitalist social relations.

The Pharmaceutical Industry and Access to Medicines in India

Pharmaceutical policy in India as elsewhere is shaped by conflicting economic and social interests and opposing values and priorities. Tensions can be understood as revolving around the contradiction between use value and exchange value in the production of medicinal drugs as commodities, as per Marx’s original analysis. The use value of medicines – if safe and efficacious, of good quality, and prescribed and consumed appropriately – is the prevention, cure or alleviation of ill-health and disease. Health policy is – or should be – aimed at optimising the use value of medicines. For this purpose government agencies administer regulatory oversight of the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of medicines. Drugs made available to patients are expected to meet adequate safety, quality and efficacy standards, but regulation to ensure such standards is subject to controversy in most countries. This is a domain where definition and interpretation of scientific-technological principles and criteria is infused by partiality and bias grounded in social and material interests, as evidenced by recurrent debates about industry ‘capture’ of regulatory agencies, including the world’s most regulator, the US Food and Drug Administration (Angell 2005; Law 2006). In India, a Parliamentary Committee Report in 2012 depicted the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) as dysfunctional and influenced inappropriately by the exchange value perspective of manufacturers (Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Welfare 2012). The clash between use and exchange value perspectives is starkly illustrated by cases of products known to cause more harm than good, particularly common in poorly regulated markets such as India’s, as shown by Srinivasan & Phadke.

Radical practice? Writing 'beyond' system

Might writing be at once the context or system that restricts and forms us but also, in some instances, the means to evade or transform this very system? The question posed in the call for papers for this conference outlines the very grounds upon which the writing subject may be seen as negotiating questions posed by artistic practice and creative research. Here these are formulated around ‘encounters’ between seemingly autonomous or pre-determined realms: between subjects and objects, between knowing and being, between aesthetic systems however defined. This view accepts the fragmentary definitional world of capitalist social relations. What I suggest is that the kind of subject that is at stake in creative practice and research has much in common with a kind of radical subjectivity. What I suggest is that writing is a practice that can be seen through the lens of Karl Marx’s notion of purposeful activity. Writing, in other words, is a critical/creative practice founding a radical view of subjectivity that attempts to overcome the dualism of subject and object via the category of human practice. Against an individual expressivist paradigm, or modes of thought that envision writing (and language) objectively, this might be called radical practice in that writing is a critical/creative practice: critical in that it is against what exists, and creative in that it seeks to move beyond it.

The Twitter float and free labour : the political economy of digital media

Nick Dyer-Witheford’s Cyber-Marx was published nearly 15 years ago, but there are continuing echoes of its dire promises today. The trends that Dyer-Witheford outlined—the growth of tech-giants in the communications field at the expense of democratic media practices and the radical shedding of jobs in the traditional mass media context—are confirmed by recent events. In November 2013, Twitter launched itself on the public share register, despite having no visible means of financial support, or even much of a business plan. The Twitter IPO tells us a lot about the economy of cyber-capitalism. Aligned to the trend of ‘technological unemployment’ is the rise of what some commentators call ‘digital serfdom’. This is not just growing unemployment, but also drastic under-employment of talented media professionals and an alarming rise in the number of media outlets that want to pay contributors in ‘exposure’, rather than in corporeal, fungible dollars and cents. This articlediscusses these trends and events in the context of the political economy of digital communication.