The Political Vindication of Radical Empiricism: with Application to the Global Systemic Crisis

The interplay of two streams of thought form the basis for this philosophical essay. One revisits James’ radical empiricism and generalizes it to politics; the other endeavors to think the current global systemic crisis as the last burst of international capitalism. Weber uses Marx and Whitehead to argue that Marx’s ideal and pragmatism should be preserved, together with his twin concepts of class consciousness and class struggle. His concept of class, however, needs some new foundations, and his materialism and determinism would be advantageously replaced by Whitehead’s panexperientialism and creativity.