The Social Thought Research Of Kojin Karatani

Being regarded as the most well-known Marxist scholar in contemporary Japan,Kojin Karatani is attempting to reconstruct the understanding and criticizing to the relationship of capitalism by the conception of domination and isonomoy.Furthermore,he is seeking the possibility to overpass capitalism.As far as Kojin Karatani’s concerned,the understanding for capitalism can not only pay attention to the only dimension of Capital,but should also take note of the active role that modern nation and state plays in on the govern of capitalism.The explaination for Kojin Karatani is that Capital,nation and state are social exchanging methods that serve as economic function,which are also methods to dominate social members.Among them,Capital refers to governing on the production and process of circulation of commodity;nation embodies the assurance and redistribution of the social fortune;state stresses the corporation among social members and value with emotion which maintains the society.Kojin Karatani focuses on the problem of global hegemony of advanced capitalist country and the situation of workers in developed country losing their class consciousness because of profit that caused by participating in the global economic.As far as his concerned,the basic feature of modern capitalism is domination relationship caused by the combination of Capital and nation state.While modern developed capitalist countries just devolve the career that include science,education,financial,military and common welfare,the technique which contain production and creation.The construction like that takes good advantage of taxes and marketing system,which created a better condition for higher profit through global market.Kojin karatani agrees on the point of modern economists that profit could only be produced through the transition among different valued systems,while trinity system of capital-nation-state that consists the domination social construction is just the basic reason that causes economic development diversity and deeper political hegemony in developed countries among the global area.Moreover,another feature of Kojin Karatani’s thought is that he is attempting to explain social formation through exchanging perspective and distinguish between dominant society and un-dominant society.On his point,traditional Marxists over-trapped by the problem of ownership of production but ignored the financial meaning of exchanging method that nation and state served as.Therefore,they could neither understand dominating structure of modern capitalist society nor provide realistic strategy of overpassing capitalism.Basing on that,Kojin Karatani proceeded to figure out that although primitive society took the same production method generally,but could be divided into two stages which contains sedentary society and un-sedentary society through the exchanging perspective,of which the former is typically un-dominant society while the latter is typically dominant society.Specifically,in the un-sedentary society,the contact of social members is not so close,which can neither store possessions nor establish the relationship of personal bondage from one man to another.The exchanging method is mainly purely giving and helping each other.On this occasion,the relationship among social members is free and equality.In ancient Greece,Ionia,serving as Athens’ colony,is trying to reinstate the un-sedentary society’s freedom and equality in order to get rid of being governed by tyrant and the rich in Athens.Therefore,the Ionia established an isonomy society which is made by yeomenry,industrialists and businessmen.Kojin Karatani believed that this kind of isonomy society finally constituted the model of Marxist’s communism.In a word,natural philosophy of Ionia stressed about the material’s self-mobile and self-production,which portrayed a true picture of isonomy society that we have discussed above.While Marx succeeded in developing the idea of Ionia’s social politic indirectly through the thought of the deflexion of atom proposed by Epicurus and developed a profounder thought of individuality and subjectivity.Although Marx didn’t able to propose the conception of ‘isonomy’,as far as Kojin Karatani concerned,the latter part is exactly the point of criticalness and revolutionary in the philosophy of Marxism.Basing on that,Kojin Karatani pointed out that we must seek to establish a new way to association from the un-sedentary society which starts from individualism and freedom so that we have the ability to overpass capitalism and achieve the goal to call back to the isonomy society,which is called ‘Possible Communism’ named by Kojin Karatani.Works including Transcritique,The structure of world history and Architecture of the Empire that Kojin Karatani composed has reflected on the endeavor of establishing a associating freely society.Among the works that Kojin Karatani made,Transcritique assured the extinguishment of proudhonism that insisted on the currency of the monarchy in the economic area and proposed to establish alliance that consists by free individuality in the realm of commodity circulation.The structure of world history explains that there’s still need to establish alliances that may voluntary to help each other to establish an isonomy society so that we could resist the hegemonic power,which is also the intension of ‘Worldwide Republic’ proposed by Kant.On that point,Kojin Karatani appeals to push the reformation of United Nation so that it could get rid of being governed by Capital and nation and reinstate its function serving as freedom of association.In the latest version named Architecture of the empire,Kojin Karatani revised his earlier view of unity that although the empire has a trend of expanding its territory,it contains the principle of overpassing unity and nation states.The feature of the empire is not aggressive and coerciveness,but a principle of seeking common ground while accepting the existing differences.China,which has a long history of imperial,whose principle of standing for imperialism resists America on its principle of imperialism.Kojin Karatani’s work shows somewhat transition in thought from alerting being governed by nation to seek help from government in order to promote the social association.Obviously,this kind of transition contains the principle which can be an important enlightenment for us to get to know the complexity and the inner tension of communism of Marxism,Generally,Kojin Karatani’s understanding on the conception of ‘isonomy’ spotlights the association between Marx and Ionia’s society and philosophy by assuring the point of view of individualism and subjectivism of Marxism philosophy,which is benefit for acknowledging the deep significance of the revolution of Marxism in contemporary condition.Meanwhile,it is offering a pretty unique perspective of explaining historical materialism.However,we have to point out the limitation of Kojin Karatani,which is that in the thought of Kojin Karatani there is a tendency of attaching much importance of individuality but misprizing the aspect of association.Kojin Karatani always considered about resisting on the capitalism from the aspect of individual switching,but didn’t realize that struggling by individuality was powerless when facing such a highly organized social power like Capital.Vary from Kojin Karatani,as far as Marx’s concerned,social common life is always the internal dimension of freedom.Although in the book of Architecture of the empire,Kojin Karatani attempted to revise on his former thought,which still directed on the superstructure of politics so that it underestimated the value of production.Therefore,as a matter of fact,Kojin Karatani didn’t understand Marx’s synthesize of individuality freedom and social association.For the same reason,Kojin Karatani ignored the systematical reformation on the production capability and production relations on the practice strategy.Above all,Kojin Karatani’s understanding on communism is still pretty unilateral compared to Marx,which is the reason why he is not able to envisage main socialism states like China and Russia,whose working on the promotion on the production and improvement on the welfare and other important experiment resisting on the capitalist states.On that condition,Kojin Karatani’s point of view of communism and the campaign of consumer association is actually a kind of reputation of proudhonist’s delusion on the small producer society,which can not only resist on the transnational financial Capital and modern industry weakly,but also unable to create new technique,new knowledge and new survival schema.Eventually,Kojin Karatani’s point of view has little realistic manipuility completely.