Stanford Prison Experiment essays

Stanford Prison Experiment essays The Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrates how different people become the roles they play. The students chosen to participate in the experiment are tested strenuously in order to determine their adequacy to perform under conditions similar to those present in prisons. They are considered normal, in terms usually associated with students. Through behaving in their roles, the reactions of others and having their alternatives blocked, the students were transformed into guards and prisoners and their previous roles as students are hidden. Behaving in a role assists a person in becoming an actual holder of that role. From the beginning, the students who are designated to be prisoners are treated as criminals. They are picked up by the police and taken to the police station. Once there, they are finger printed and transported to the location of the Stanford Prison Experiment as prisoners. The students are stripped, searched, given a number and stripped of their identity. The prisoners are made to do push-ups and other demeaning activities that make them behave in their role. On the other hand, the guards are told to keep the jail in order. Although no physical violence is used by the student guards, they certainly behave like guard in other aspects. For example, they lock prisoners in the hole and take food and beds away. By behaving in their roles, the guards and prisoners become the role they play. The reactions of others push the students to become the roles they play. The reaction of the prisoners to the guards turns negative. They start feeling hate towards their captors, while the feelings are reciprocated by the guards. The prisoners are constantly mentally harassed. When the priest is invited to the jail, he acts as if he is visiting a regular jail. Instead of talking religiously, he questions the prisoners about why they have not tried to obtain the services of a lawy...

3 Things the Novelist Can Learn From the Copywriter

3 Things the Novelist Can Learn From the Copywriter 3 Things the Novelist Can Learn From the Copywriter 3 Things the Novelist Can Learn From the Copywriter By Guest Author As a copywriter, I have access to two of the greatest writing improvement tools in existence: practice and feedback. I spend 40 hours a week pumping out words that will be tweaked, replaced, moved, cut, checked, rechecked, and rejected or selected. Every red mark on my ad copy teaches me how to improve my fiction. Here are a few things Ive learned. 1. Clarity The number one rule is Get the Message Across. Don’t sacrifice clarity for cleverness, or even for grammar. If it doesn’t get your message across, it’s not as clever as you think it is; it’s certainly not correct. After all, grammar exists to preserve clarity. The second it fails to do so, throw it out the window. For instance, the â€Å"don’t end sentences with prepositions† rule often results in a mutilated catastrophe, which Winston Churchill so aptly illustrated when he said, â€Å"This is the kind of errant pedantry up with which I shall not put!† 2. Brevity As a novelist, I never worried about being concise. In fact, I strove to write as long a book as possible, thinking it would never be a real novel unless it was good and thick. I pushed until I crossed 100,000 words. But as a copywriter, I’m constantly trimming words to fit the 30-second radio spot, the half-page ad, the 25-character Adwords headline. This was a nuisance at first, but then I realized something: shortening my writing made every word count – and thus made every word hit harder. The best way to learn this rule is to force yourself; take the first chapter of your book and cut 100 words. Or 500. Start by doing a word search for â€Å"that† and â€Å"very† – you’ll find you can cut most of those. (â€Å"Omit unnecessary words† also happens to be Strunk White’s Rule #17.) 3. Brainstorming One of the ways I half-jokingly describe my job is â€Å"I sit around and think stuff up.† It’s another truth I never fully grasped until I became a copywriter: take time just to think. You can’t always expect great ideas or solutions to come to you out of the blue. You have to sit down at a blank page or Word document and focus; not on writing, but on coming up with ideas. Maybe you’re outlining plot, or naming the book, or developing a character. Whatever it is, a brainstorming session can work wonders. Write down every idea that you have, even if it sounds dumb. If you have a major problem or plot hole, find someone else to brainstorm with – your critique partner works well for this. As you work together, your creative power will grow exponentially. About the Author: Stephanie Orges is a writer at the Balcom Agency in Fort Worth, where she drafts radio, print and web copy for a variety of clients including Justin Boots, Southwest Bank and the Neeley School of Business at TCU. On her blog, BeKindRewrite, she offers writing advice and explores the philosophy of writing. She is currently working on her first novel. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Fiction Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Possessive of Proper Names Ending in SList of Greek Words in the English LanguagePhrasal Verbs and Phrasal Nouns

Research Article Assignment for Supply chain Essay

Research Article Assignment for Supply chain - Essay Example The first type of postponement approach is the product postponement. In this approach, a firm designs a product and uses standardized components to delay its customization (Brown, Lee and Petrakian 67). For companies like Xilinx, the final configuration of the product gets done when it is manufacturing or distributing its products. Implementation of the postponement approach was helpful to Xilinx because there was risk pooling. One of the benefits is that the risk pooling occurs particularly when aggregating the demand for the finished goods. In addition, the aggregate demand in the market becomes less uncertain which lead to Xilinx holding fewer inventories to offer similar level of services. Xilinx also benefits from having a reduced degree of customization which remains low through to the front-end stage (Brown, Lee and Petrakian 76). Firms prefer the traditional method of inventory management because it makes it easier for them to have virtual business models. For example, in the case of Xilinx, the business model allows it to operate at a high rate of flexibility and still maintains its processes at a low-cost. Xilinx also benefits from this model because it had new technical innovation and re-engineering ideas as a result of its improved manufacturing processes. The on-time delivery process of the products is also improved. One of the challenges is that redesigning a product to promote the process of postponement requires the manufacturer to wait for some time until the time when the customers change their designs (Brown, Lee and Petrakian 70). This happens in the new product generation releases. There is little that is done for a company that has implemented a postponement strategy and wants to create products without necessarily using the front-end stage strategy. Xilinx uses three processes to make their process postponement more effective. The first is the inventory modeling operation initiative and the second is the

In the Iliad, analyze the critical similarities or differences between Essay

In the Iliad, analyze the critical similarities or differences between the Trojans and the Achaians - Essay Example A central theme throughout The Iliad is the recognition by both the Trojans and the Achaians that the gods of Olympus would determine the final outcome of the conflict. This shared belief is shown throughout the story in many different ways. One manifestation of this shared belief in the intercession of deity in the lives of men in The Iliad is through the casting of lots. In essence, this is the same as drawing a name out of a hat to see who wins something. But for the Trojans and the Achaians, it is a means of knowing the will of the gods. When the Achaians needed to know who should fight against Hektor, the lot fell upon Aias. This relieved the Trojans because this was the very person they had been praying would receive the chance to fight Hektor. This shared belief in the intervention of gods in the conflict is also shown in the direct speech between the two warring armies. At the beginning of Hektor’s challenging speech to the Achaians, he expresses his belief that both s ides have found ill favor with Zeus. That is why neither side can prevail. The prayer of the Achaians is also telling in this regard. They prayed that their champion, Aias might prevail over Hektor, but only if Zeus loves Aias more than Hektor. They prayed that if Zeus loved them equally, then they wanted each to return from individual battle with equal honor and safety. This, in fact, is what happened in this particular instance. Another shared cultural feature of the Trojans and the Achaians is the emphasis on honorable actions and bravery. Bravery, bravado and physical prowess are marks of honor and distinction for both societies. In his speech to the Achaians, Nestor upbraids his countrymen for not being willing to challenge Hektor. He states clearly that he would do it himself if he were not so old. He then recounts fights that he won that brought him honor. He makes it clear that none of the assembled Achaians were worthy of such honor because they

Pre Marital Counselling Essay Example for Free

Pre Marital Counselling Essay Premarital Counselling is therapy with two people prior to their marriage, to help give them more realistic ideas of what to expect and how to cope with living with another person as a spouse; relating to each other as a committed pair. By taking the time to explore the reasons you came together, your similarities, your differences, your hopes and your dreams, as well as your expectations of one another, it is sometimes possible to avoid the disappointments that many couples face with the passage of time. Pre-marital counseling offers the opportunity to explore your differences in a relatively safe, supportive, constructive environment. And while some couples may choose to postpone their union until key differences can be resolved, most couples find that pre-marital counseling helps to prepare them for the kind of life they would like to build together. Premarital counseling can help ensure that you and your partner have a strong, healthy relationship — giving you a better chance for a stable and satisfying marriage. Premarital counseling can also help you identify weaknesses that could become bigger problems during marriage. Through premarital counseling, couples are encouraged to discuss a wide range of important and intimate topics related to marriage, such as: Finances, Communication Beliefs and values Roles in marriage Affection and sex Children amp; parenting Family relationships Decision making Dealing with anger Time spent together. The initial period of any relationship is called the honeymoon period; and after that fairytale, marriage can be a rude reality check. In most cases, quarrels over money, family and trust break a couple apart. A pre-marital session helps partners accept each other better and avoid future complications or conflict. Contrary to popular belief, pre marital counseling isn’t only for couples who are going in for an arranged marriage. It is also very important for couples who have had long courtships or have been living together. In arranged marriages, the people going to spend their life together are perpetual strangers, with no idea of what lies ahead of them. In India specifically, arranged marriages are sealed with just one word of advice for the bride â€Å"you HAVE to adjust, and you HAVE to compromise. Premarital Counselling ensures that the couple do not just â€Å"fulfill† the responsibilities of marriage for their family, but also participate in it wholly as individuals. In india marriages are seen as a ‘union of two families’ and the individuals who are supposed to spend the rest of their life together, they get lost in the entire plan. Pre Marital Counselling ensures that doesn’t happen. People who have had long courtships and have been living together, need it perhaps more than than people who’re going in on for arranged marriages . Why? Because once you’re living in with someone ,you think you know everything that there is to know about that person and marriage cant spring any surprises. But guess what? You WILL be surprised greatly by what surprises pre marital counseling will bring for you. Marriage changes the set of expectations two individuals have from each other. More issues have to be dealt with, like children, financial planning etc. Most couples spend more time planning their weddings than their marriages!. If you think about the amount of financial and emotional investment that goes into preparing for the wedding itself, doesn’t it make sense to invest a little in strengthening the relationship at the onset? Many couples preparing for marriage honestly believe they are strong going into the union – and they probably are in a lot of ways. Being caught up with all the loving feelings and other feel-good stuff going on ahead of nuptials, couples often don’t consider the potential pitfalls. Those â€Å"pitfalls† are often times what leads them into a therapist’s office some time down the line. Here six great reasons to get pre marriage counseling: 1) Strengthen Communication Skills:  Being able to effectively listen, truly hear and validate the other’s position is a skill that isn’t necessarily a â€Å"given† for many people. Couples that really communicate effectively can discuss and resolve issues when they arise more effectively. You can tune up your talking and listening skills. This is one of the most important aspects of emotional safety between couples. 2) Discuss Role Expectations:  It’s incredibly common for married couples to never really have discussed who will be doing what in the marriage. This can apply to job, finances, chores, sexual intimacy and more. Having an open and honest discussion about what each of you expect from the other in a variety of areas leads to fewer surprises and upsets down the line. 3) Learn Conflict Resolution Skills:  Nobody wants to think that they’ll have conflict in their marriage. The reality is that â€Å"conflict† can range from disagreements about who will take out the trash to emotionally charged arguments about serious issues – and this will probably be part of a couple’s story at one time or another. There are ways to effectively de-escalate conflict that are highly effective and can decrease the time spent engaged in the argument. John Gottman’s (www. gottman. com) research has shown that couples who can do this well are less likely to divorce in the end. 4) Explore Spiritual Beliefs:  For some this is not a big issue – but for others a serious one. Differing spiritual beliefs are not a problem as long as it’s been discussed and there is an understanding of how they will function in the marriage with regards to practice, beliefs, children, etc. ) Identify any Problematic Family of Origin Issues:  We learn so much of how to â€Å"be† from our parents, primary caregivers and other early influences. If one of the partners experienced a high conflict or unloving household, it can be helpful to explore that in regards to how it might play out in the marriage. Couples who have an understanding of the existence of any problematic conditioning around how relationships work are usually better at disrupting repetition of these learned behaviors. ) Develop Personal, Couple and Family Goals:  It amazes me how many married couples have never discussed their relationship goals – let alone personal or family. I honestly think it just doesn’t cross their minds! This is a long term investment together – why not put your heads together and look at how you’d like the future to look? Where do you want to be in five years? Approximately when would you like to have children? How many children? There are many areas that can be explored and it can be a fun exercise to do together. Pre marriage counseling doesn’t need to be a long process, especially if you feel you’re starting out with a very solid foundation and only need some clarifications and goal-setting. For some people who are poised to start out the marriage as a â€Å"higher conflict† couple or have deeper issues to contend with, the process could take a bit longer. Regardless, be sure to take the time to invest in your marriage as you might in the event itself. The return on your marriage investment has the potential to be life long What you can expect Premarital counseling typically includes five to seven meetings with a counselor. Often in premarital counseling, each partner is asked to separately answer a written questionnaire, known as a premarital assessment questionnaire. These questionnaires encourage partners to assess their perspectives of one another and their relationship. They can also help identify a couples strengths, weaknesses and potential problem areas. The aim is to foster awareness and discussion and encourage couples to address concerns proactively. Your counselor can help you interpret your results together, encourage you and your partner to discuss areas of common unhappiness or disagreement, and set goals to help you overcome challenges. Your counselor might also have you and your partner use a tool called a Couples Resource Map — a picture and scale of your perceived support from individual resources, relationship resources, and cultural and community resources. You and your partner will create separate maps at first. Following a discussion with your counselor about differences between the two maps, youll create one map as a couple. The purpose is to help you and your partner remember to use these resources to help manage your problems. In addition, your counselor might ask you and your partner questions to find out your unique visions for your marriage and clarify what you can do to make small, positive changes in your relationship. Keep in mind that you bring your own values, opinions and personal history into a relationship, and they might not always match your partners. In addition, many people go into marriage believing it will fulfill their social, financial, sexual and emotional needs — and thats not always the case. By discussing differences and expectations before marriage, you and your partner can better understand and support each other during marriage. Early intervention is important because the risk of divorce is highest early in marriage. In Pre marital counseling, as couples you become aware of so many issues that you never thought existed earlier between you two. Premarital counseling is a way to pull the darkness out from its hiding places so that you can turn it over in the light and see it for what it actually is. Remember, preparing for marriage involves more than choosing a wedding dress and throwing a party. Take the time to build a solid foundation for your relationship.

What Impact does Jasper Jones have on the Reader? Essays -- jasper jone

Jasper Jones is a coming of age novel that the author Craig Silvey has set in 1965, in the small town of Corrigan; thick with secrecy and mistrust. Charlie Bucktin, an innocent boy at the young age of thirteen, has been forced to mature and grow up over a life changing, challenging summer. With a little help from Jasper Jones, Charlie discovers new knowledge about the society and the seemingly perfect town that he is living in, as well as the people that are closest to him. The most important ideas and issues that Craig Silvey portrays in Jasper Jones are: coming of age and identity, injustice and racism. These themes have a great impact on the reader. While discovering and facing these new issues, Charlie and his best friend Jeffrey Lu gain a greater awareness of human nature and how to deal with the challenges that life can throw at you. One of Silvey’s major ideas in Jasper Jones is coming of age and identity; in this case, Charlie has been thrown into adulthood and forced to grow out of his immature, fearful self. During the novel Charlie starts to mature, show bravery and stand up for himself. This turn of events occur because Charlie chooses to help Jasper: â€Å"But I don’t turn back. I stay. I follow Jasper Jones. And I see it. And everything changes. The world breaks and spins and shakes.† (pg. 12). He made a choice between doing what was right and what he thought was fair. He knew Jasper would be immediately blamed for the death of Laura Wishart. The night Laura Wishart was found dead, Charlie changed as a person: he started to see everything in a different light, even his home life. He comes to terms with his mother; he realises that her personal issues are being taken out on him and dominating their family life. Ruth Buc... ... reader. Throughout the book, Charlie unfolds secrets and truths about the world and the society that he lives in; secrets and truths that cause him to grow up and transition into adulthood. He also makes a life changing decision and rebelled against was he thought was the right thing. This reflects his maturity and bravery throughout the journey he travels that summer. Charlie eyes suddenly become open to the injustice that the town of Corrigan demonstrates. He also comes to face the issue of racism; not only shown towards his best friend Jeffrey and the Lu family but to Jasper Jones as well. He realises the town of Corrigan is unwilling to accept outsiders. Charlie not only finds out things that summer about the people that surround him, but he also finds out who he is personally. Works Cited Silvey, C 2009, Jasper Jones, Allen & Unwin, Cross Nest N.S.W.

Marx and Law

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY VOLUME 20, NUMBER 4, WINTER 1993 0263-323X Marx and Law ANDREW VINCENT* There is no sense in which Marx can be described as just a legal theorist. He did not write any systematic works on legal science or jurisprudence; however, his observations on law are both immensely penetrating and contain an extremely subtle interweaving of philosophical, political, economic, and legal strands. Marx was also at the centre of many crucial intellectual and political debates of his time.In order to try to unpack some of these debates, elucidate his views on law, and retain some overall clarity, I divide my remarks into five sections, which will inevitably overlap. The sections covered are: the problems of discussing Marxist jurisprudence; the philosophical background to the analysis of law and the state; materialism, political economy, and law; base, superstructure, and the ideology of law; and finally, law, politics, and the state. PROBLEMS OF MARXIST JURISPRUDENCE Ther e are a number of problems for any student of jurisprudence or politics trying to grasp Marx's approach to law. First, there is the puzzling point that neither Marx nor Engels had a positive normative theory of law, crime or deviance. In fact, much of the time Marx appears predisposed simply to ignore the question of law as peripheral, or at least to treat crime as a symptom of the conflict within a class-based society. ‘ He certainly offers no clear encompassing definition of law. Marx's jurisprudential thought is often premised upon a critique of law per se, and what he has to say tends to be overwhelmingly negative in character.This is fine if one's purpose is ‘critique' and nothing else, but it is a definite handicap if one wishes to say something more positive about the nature of law, law reform rather than its overthrow, or the future of law (e. specially if one believes that law has a future role in society). A second problem relates to the sources for Marx's obse rvations on law. It has already been noted that Marx did not have a normative theory of law. It is also clear that what he does say about law, by way of negative critique, does not appear in any systematic format. There are works which begin to *School of European Studies, University of Wales, Cardiff CF1 3 YQ, Wales 371 C Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1993. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 JF, UK and 238 Main Street. Cambridge. MA 02142. USA HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 371 1993 say something more systematic, like The German Ideology. However, Marx never allowed its publication in his lifetime and it is commonly dismissed (although not by all writers by any means) as either a work of immature juvenilia or a flawed piece of philosophical polemic which does not come up 3 to the systematic and scientific standards of Capital.Marx, it is also commonly asserted, had intended to write a work on law and the state 4 (possibly as an extension of Capital), but he never realized his ambition. Thus, in consequence, the writings and observations on law that we do have are incomplete and must be picked out from a diverse body of writings. Marx's writings are in fact markedly eclectic and can be roughly divided into four often overlapping types: first, the early, more philosophicallyinclined pieces, clearly more inspired by the German philosopher G.W. F. Hegel. Under this rubric would be included the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), The Holy Family (1844), The German Ideology (1845/6), and The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). The second type of writing is the polemical pieces written for particular political objectives. The most famous of these is the Communist Manifesto (1847/8). The overt character of these polemical writings- despite their wide dissemination, immense influence, and popularity – is their simplification of issues and doctrines.This can be a problem in assessing what Marx actually believed, rather than what he needed to put forward for polemical thrust and cogency. The third group of writings relate to Marx's observations on particular historical events. Probably the most famous of these, and the most convoluted and ambiguous, is the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte(1852). The writings in this context employ Marx's immensely sophisticated method of close historical analysis, although the final upshot of such pieces has given rise to many hostages to fortune especially over the theory of law and the state.The final group of writings settle upon his systematic economic theories. The most famous of these are the earlier Grundrisse (1857/8) and the later Capital (1867-85), which remained incomplete at Marx's death. In sum, Marx's observations on law must be, and usually are, picked out from these diverse writings. It is hardly surprising that there should be oddities, fierce contestation, and discrepancies over such fragments. A related point to the diversity of the above writings is the fact that many commentators on Marx arg ue that there is a marked shift or break in his perspective.The break usually occurs between the ‘younger' and ‘older' Marx. The character of the shift, which was called the ‘epistemological break' by the French Marxist, Louis Althusser, is between an earlier philosophically and morally-inclined Marx, clearly inspired by Hegel, and the mature Marx, focused on political economy and intent upon constructing 5 an empirically-based social and economic science of history and society. This judgement on the distinction between the late and early Marx is often supposed to direct our attention to the late Marx and a consequent dismissal of the early philosophical Marx.In this reading, Marx's early interest in ‘alienation' is superseded by a social scientific theory of economic ‘exploitation'. The development of a clear vision of the early Marx was perhaps 372  © Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 372 1993 partially hampered by the fact t hat the key early writings – the Economic and PhilosophicalManuscripts – were not actually discovered and published till the 1920s. Marx certainly never contemplated their publication during his lifetime.Whether one takes the epistemological break seriously or not, there are undoubtedly changes in Marx's perspective on many issues including law. 6 These cannot be ignored by the student of Marx, although what one reads into these changes remains contestable. Another problem concerns Marx's intellectual relation with Friedrich Engels. There has been a strong tendency in Marxist writings to associate the two men closely with one pristine doctrine. It appears that in fact Marx's definite turn to economics (political economy) was confirmed through his initial contact with Engels' writings.As editor of the Deutsch-Franziisische Jahrbiicherin Paris, in November 1843, Marx had received an article from Engels, entitled ‘Outline of a Critique of Political Economy', which s timulated the economic turn in his own work. Their working relation began a year later in 1844. 1 However, despite their collaboration on works like The German Ideology and The Communist Manifesto, it is far from clear that we should associate them, especially on questions of their philosophical beliefs or their subsequent ideas on law and the state.This point has been made by a number of scholars, although it is still far from resolved. It is clear, for example, that Marx did not formulate a lucid doctrine of materialism, whereas Engels clearly lays out such a doctrine, particularly in popularizing works like Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880), the Anti-Diihring (1885) and the Dialectics of Nature. Marx nowhere used terms like ‘dialectical materialism' or ‘historical materialism'. Neither did he coin terms (which are relevant to the discussion of law) like the ‘withering away of the state'.This latter idea, again, was Engels's terminology from the Anti-Diihr ing. Marx did not apply the notion of dialectics to nature itself. His belief remained firmly fixed in the social sphere of human emancipation. Engels was far more ambitious, some would say foolhardy, extending dialectics to the natural world. ‘ The ultimate consequence of Engels's doctrine was a virtual reenactment of an older form of mechanistic materialism resonant of the French Enlightenment, which Marx had attacked in his early unpublished work, the Theses on Feuerbach.Engels's doctrines later became established in the writings of Lenin, particularly Lenin's philosophical work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism and Plekhanov's Materialism Militant, and subsequently it dominated much of the theoretical output of the Second International and the leading Marxist party of the time in Germany – the Sozialdemokratische ParteiDeutschlands(SPD). 9 However, Marx's theory of knowledge, if it can be summarized, hung uneasily between a classical materialism and an idiosyncratic use of Hegelian idealism.One can overemphasize the differences between Engels and Marx; however, we ignore them at our cost. If we are trying to understand Marx, it is not wise to place too much reliance on Engels's own personal output. One final problem concerns Marx's use of the concept of law itself. There are two terminological points to note here. The first concerns the German 373 D Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 373 1993 word, Recht. It is virtually equivalent to the terms jus, droit or diritto, as distinct from lex, loi or legge. This distinction does not really work in English.Recht in German is not limited to law or jurisprudence but can encompass the issues of civil law, justice, right, and morality. In Hegel, the initial focus of Marx's interest in law, Recht embodied the above themes, but also what he called the ‘ethical life', the state and, ultimately, aspects of world history. In fact, the work on which Marx spent so much time in his early years, Hegel's Grundlinien der Philosophiedes Rechts, is sometimes translated as The Philosophy of Law, The Philosophy of the State and, more usually, The Philosophy of Right. 0 It is important to bear in mind this ambiguity when considering Marx's observations on law (as Recht); when Marx addresses law, it is not strictly parallel to English usage. The above connects up with the second point, which is often confusing to audiences from the British or Anglo-Saxon legal traditions. Hegel's work, referred to above, was, as much as anything else, a theory or philosophy of the state. This is encompassed, to some extent, in the broad use of the term Recht. Thus, the treatment of the state might be said, inclusively, to be also a treatment of law.This kind of approach resonates more with the Roman law and civil law traditions of continental Europe than with the common law tradition of Britain. † However, it is worth taking note of this point since it throws a ray of light on so me of Marx's writings; namely, his critique of the state is to a large extent also a critique of law. ‘2 One small biographical detail could be added here, which might add some substance to this point. When Marx was writing in a more reflective way on the state and law, he was in Germany and France.His early legal training had been in Germany (although he gave it up for philosophy) and he was reflecting and writing within the Hegelian genre. Much later in his life, in the late 1870s, when puzzling over whether to write more on law and the state, he had been living and working for a number of years in Britain, enough time to pick up on the peculiarities and idiosyncracies of the English legal tradition and its odd relation to the state. This might explain some of his later ambiguities, as opposed to his earlier certainties, on the state. Finally, the interest in Marx on law, despite the ork of the Soviet jurist Evgeny Pashunakis in the 1920s and 1930s, and Karl Renner in Austri a, was not really a subject of wide-ranging debate until the 1970s. As Maureen Cain and Alan Hunt have commented: the prevailing trend from the 1930s to the 1960s displayed an almost exclusive emphasis on the repressive or coercive character of law, conceived as the direct embodiment of the interests of the ruling class. In this conception law itself is unproblematic: the analysis of legal development or new legislation has the task merely of exposing the class interest 3 contained in them.What was discovered in the 1970s, presumably under the impact of the surge of interest in the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, was the conception of law as ideology and, in consequence, law as a crucial part of the intellectual hegemony of capitalist societies. In this sense, the more wide-ranging and 374 (D Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 374 1993 popular interest in Marx on law is a relatively recent development. It is thus very tempting, in dealing with this topic, to refer to the developments in Marxism itself to the present day.The major danger with this path is that the discussion can become wholly enmeshed in the recent material and Marx becomes a distant memory. I have tried to avoid this trap here. Although contemporary developments are not ignored, the principal focus is on Marx's writings. THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND TO THE ANALYSIS OF LAW AND THE STATE There are three points to note concerning Marx's philosophical background which are relevant for his later project and his overall understanding of law. First, the premises for his critique of law are derived from his initial philosophical criticism of religion and the state.Secondly, his analysis of the conception of ideology and the ‘illusory' character of bourgeois thought (including law) lies in early essays like ‘On the Jewish Question'. Finally, his first inkling of the economic roots to social and political thought can also be found in his early essays – particu larly the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and his article on ‘Law on Thefts of Wood' in the Rheinische Zeitung (1842). 1 take the first two issues as most significant. The last point, to a large degree, follows from the first two.From the late 1830s, Marx had determined to get to know Hegel ‘from beginning to end'. 4 Together with Bruno and Edgar Bauer, Arnold Ruge, Max Stirner, and Ludwig Feuerbach (the so-called young Hegelians), Marx studied Hegel's works assiduously through the late 1830s and early 1840s. Feuerbach was the most influential figure in the group. Initially he had been a disciple of Hegel's philosophy, and in some ways he never abandoned it. 5 Feuerbach, however, did engage in a dialectical critique of Hegel – using Hegel's own method to criticize him.Hegel's definition of humanity through its thinking abilities, specifically through the notion of Spirit (Geist), is, for Feuerbach, one step short of reality – or, at least, it is inve rted reality. Hegel explained humanity through consciousness (or mind); however, for Feuerbach, it is sensuous and materially-rooted humans who think, not some abstract consciousness or mind. The transcendental ego of Kant, the absolute ego of Fichte, or Hegel's notion of Spirit (the great themes of German philosophy) were all seen by Feuerbach as sensuous human creations.Thus, the basis of Feuerbach's critique of Hegel is that the latter was offering, unwittingly, an ‘esoteric theology'. Humans are not vehicles for Spirit (Geist); rather, humans create the notion of Spirit. In fact, for Feuerbach, humans create God in their own image. Thus, in Hegel, ‘What was a logic of Being becomes [in Feuerbach] a psychology of human concept formation'. 6 Philosophy, in actuality, reflects human wants and needs. This critique of Hegel's ontology was directly related to Feuerbach's equally important critique of religion in The Essence of Christianity. Hegel's 375 n Basil Blackel1 I t dHeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 375 1993 philosophy is, in point, interpreted as the last speculative outpost of God. Speculative philosophy and religion needed to be led from the realm of mental abstractions into the realm of sensuous humanity. For Feuerbach, in essence, all ‘theology is anthropology'. The true object of religion is not God but idealized humanity. Religion is the alienated form of the individual's recognition of his or her own nature. God is the creation of the human imagination, unknowingly idealizing itself. Thus, Feuerbach claimed that some radical demythologizing was needed.Love of God is really love of humanity in symbolic inverted form. Theology is kind of psychic pathology. The separation between God and humanity is really a separation within humanity itself. Religion is a form of alienation from our essential natures. The demythologizing was to be accomplished by the technique Feuerbach called ‘transformative criticism', namely, the interc hanging of the subject and predicate of propositions. For example, an understanding of God is not crucial for understanding humanity; conversely, an understanding of humanity is crucial for understanding the idea of God.The real subject is humanity, the predicate is God. These arguments affected profoundly the thinking of the young Hegelians. Marx, particularly, was initially enthralled, but soon turned to his own critique of the young Hegelians, especially Feuerbach. In his Theses of Feuerbach, he argued that Feuerbach's great achievement had been to bring holy ideas down to earth. However, he had retained an abstract materialism and theoretical humanism. What was needed was a practical humanism and a new understanding of materialism which took account of the social and economic reality.Philosophy must be moved away from mental abstractions and contemplation into the realm of social, political, and economic realities. Feuerbach was thus also subject to the demystification of transf ormative criticism. Practical and sensuous humanity, embroiled in economic and social realities, is the real subject, not theoretical humanity. I7 This critique of Feuerbach also forms the basis for Marx's critique of Hegel, religion and, finally, the state and law. It also led him to his crucial life project – the study 6f political economy. Marx accepted, implicitly, one theme in both Hegel and Feuerbach.Philosophy is about emancipating human beings. History was imbued with teleological significance as to the growing possibility for and realization of freedom, although this theme become very shrouded in his later writings. Religion purported to be about emancipation; however, for Marx, again, the reality was inverted. As he stated: ‘The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the highest being for man'. 8 Religion per se could not be overcome by simply drawing people's attention to its inverted logic (with due respect to Feuerbach).For Marx, one had t o grasp, critically, the social, political, and economic roots as to why people sought consolation in religion. A criticism of religion was, in essence, social and economic criticism. This exactly paralleled his criticisms of Hegel's notion of the state. For Hegel, humans were self-constituting and self-producing creatures. There was no sense in which we were simply the passive products of historical 376 D Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 376 1993 forces. For Marx, Hegel's view was correct, but again the reality had been inverted.Hegel's Geist (Spirit or Mind) was really labouring humanity. Hegel, for Marx, made the ‘exoteric esoteric'. 9 Hegel had grasped the centrality of labour (self-production) but only in its mental form (in consciousness). Thus, Marx refers to Hegel's philosophy as ‘concealed criticism that is still obscure to itself. 20 For Marx, humans produce themselves by actual labour and through the ensuing social relations in the wor ld. Thus, Marx moved from regarding Hegel's philosophy as an esoteric psychology gradually to regard it as an esoteric economic thesis.Hegel's philosophy of the state (and law) had a correct content but in an inverted and mystified form. Marx in fact treats Hegel's Rechtsphilosophieas summing up German reality at that time (in its mystified form). As Marx put it: The criticism of German philosophy of the state and of law which was given its most consistent, richest and final version by Hegel, is †¦ the critical analysis of the modem state and the reality that depends upon it'. 21 Hegel had argued that humanity and civil society were the product of the state.The state is seen to stand above the conflicts of society. However, for Marx, again the reverse is true. Individuals in civil society, embroiled in economic forces and classes, and hedged about by private property rights, produce the state which, of necessity, reflects differential and unequal property relations and powers. Abstract property rights are embodied in the state. The state exists to maintain this interest. The modern state gives people legal rights and freedoms, premised on the idea of humans possessing property.However, such property is of necessity premised upon the alienation and denial of such freedom to a large proportion of the population. As Marx observed, the critic must now grasp ‘the essential connection of private property, selfishness, the separation of labour, capital and landed property, of exchange and competition, of the value and degradation of man'. 22 The logic of private property is the same as that logic of religion. As human beings alienate their essence into God, so workers alienate their essence into the production of goods.Workers, in receipt of wages, only secure a small proportion of what they produce. Thus, they alienate their essence into goods which others consume, use or embody in their private property – a property upheld by the state and legal s ystem. Moving now to the second point of this section, Marx's early essay ‘On the Jewish Question' deals, on the surface, with question of the repeal of legal disabilities for Jews in Germany. The essay is interesting on a number of counts; however, one point will suffice for the present discussion.Marx indicates that the illusions that were to be found in the religious consciousness could also be found in law. The basic point was that humans turned to religion in particular historical circumstances. Young Hegelians, like Bruno Bauer, had argued that the demands for Jewish emancipation precluded genuine emancipation, since the demand was formulated in religious terms namely, Jews. The state, for Bauer, must abolish all religious categories. The secular state provided the real solution for Bauer. Marx responded to this by 377 C) Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 377 1993 rguing that religion per se was not the problem, but, rather, the state and legal sy stem itself. Religion is an illusory (if crucially important) pathology, but it is a reflection of a broader ‘illusion' pathology within the secular state. A secular state does not free human beings. Rather, the state embodies as many, if not more illusions than religion; illusions of secular states are structurally similar, and, in fact, related to religion. As Marx put it, in somewhat tortuous prose: We do not insist that they must abolish their religious limitations in order to abolish secular limitations.We insist that they abolish their religious limitations as soon as they abolish their secular limitations. We do not change secular questions into theological ones. We change theological questions into secular ones. History has for long enough been resolved into superstition: we now resolve superstition into history †¦ We criticize the religious weakness of the political state by criticizing the secular construction of the 23 political state without regard to its reli gious weaknesses. In short, for Marx, the political world of the secular modern state was as much a tissue of illusions as religion. 4 Underpinning the modern state are the illusions about private property and commerce, and the legal structures which uphold them. The final theme, with regard to his early writing, concerns his essay on the ‘Theft of Wood' in the Rheinische Zeitung in late 1842. The ‘Wood Theft' essay, as Marx later observed, was the first time that he saw clearly the socioeconomic issues which underpinned law (viewed through the lenses of the transition from feudalism to capitalism). The common feudal and customary right of gathering wood was effectively being ‘privatized' by commercial society.Rural poverty was itself the product of the redefinition of property as ‘private property'. In this sense, law was facilitating capitalism. Oddly, in this essay, Marx's solution was a restoration of older customary rights (although a slightly odd use of them) against the new right of private property. As he put it: ‘We reclaim for poverty the right of custom which is not a local one 5 but which is that of poverty in all lands'. 2 It is worth noting, though, that many of Marx's early writings do not envisage the abandonment of law or the state.He adopts, in fact, a quasi-natural law or customary law position (from a strictly secularist position), arguing, in essence, that certain newer laws are not really valid or real in the context of what real law ‘ought' to be like – namely law ought to be, as Marx put it, ‘the positive existence of freedom'. 26 It is also clear that he was not envisaging the abolition of the state; conversely, he anticipated a more radical democratic state upholding the fundamental rights and freedoms of the masses. In many ways these uasi-natural law themes and radicalization and democratization of the state do not disappear in his later writings; rather, they are submerged below the intellectual surface. The surface, in many later writings, becomes more positivist and economic in character; however, the underlying themes of human emancipation as a genuine need of human nature, the correct ways in which humans ‘ought' to act towards each other, and the future structural character of society, still subsist, but certainly not in any easy or comfortable relation to the positivism. 378 (D Basil Blackwell Ltd.HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 378 1993 MATERIALISM, POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND LAW Marx was a materialist of sorts, although, as pointed out earlier, he never described himself as a historical or dialectical materialist. There are various senses which can be attached to the term materialism. Marx had no interest in materialism in the colloquial sense of a ‘seeking after consumer goods' which we might now call consumerism. Neither does he have much interest in mechanistic Enlightenment materialism, seeking to explain humanity via certain mechanical analogies – l'homme de machine.Neither strict physical 2 materialism nor behaviouralism were of any interest. 7 Marx's concern with materialism must be set against his reaction to Hegel's idealism, as examined in the previous section. Put at its simplest, Marx wanted to insist that human beings must subsist (and labour to subsist) before they cognitively speculate or think a great deal about their condition. Our social and economic being is thus prior to our reflective consciousness. The material conditions of our lives form the true basis for both our cognitive life and our social and political structures.We can observe here the ‘transformative criticism' at work again in the basic rudiments of Marx's thought. The ‘subject' is not self-conscious thought, nor is material life the ‘predicate': the converse is true. Subject and predicate must be transformed. It is important to bear this method in mind: namely, that Marx comes to his basic materialist conclusi ons from a philosophical direction. Marx does not suddenly ‘see the empirical light' on some Damascus road or come to such conclusions from empirical observation.His route to such premises is philosophical. One problem here is that even if we focus on Marx's particular type of materialism there are still distinct and competing versions of it. We might call these the stricter and looser versions. We will encounter parallels to this distinction in other areas of Marx's thought and there remains considerable debate as to where Marx's sympathies lay. The stricter materialism might be called ‘unidirectional determinism'. Material conditions causally determine thought and political and social structures.This is the dimension that Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov, and Kautsky picked up on, and it reappears in structuralist Marxism, amongst other varieties in the later twentieth century. This materialism looks, and occasionally tries to act more like a natural science. † In some m ore recent analyses of Marx it is connected to the idea of the ‘epistemological break'; that is, the mature Marx is the ‘scientist' and ‘unidirectional determinist'. The alternative looser materialism can be observed in the elusive Marxist doctrine of ‘praxis' (where ‘theory' and ‘practice' have a symbiotic and reciprocal relation).The basic logic of a praxis argument denies the basic premise of the unidirectionality claim; that is, it asserts that reflective thought and consciousness (as embodied in philosophical, economic or legal thought) can actually affect our material conditions. We can accommodate our theory to our practice and vice versa. Put simply, human reflective thought has definite efficacy; it is not just an epiphenomenon of the material conditions of life. This form of looser materialism can be observed in some of Marx's 379  © Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J.L. & Soc'y 379 1993 writings and in the subsequent Marxis t tradition in writers like Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukfcs, and Karl Korsch. 29 Such a looser materialism is also more aware of the contestable nature of economic and social categories. The particular form of Marx's materialism is premised on political economy. The basic components of the doctrine can be stated as follows: human beings must subsist in order to survive and in so doing they labour. In labouring, humans use certain material technologies (crudely) or modes of production.In working within a mode of production, whether in a medieval rural context with a plough or within a nineteenth century factory with a machine, humans come into relations of production, that is, relations with other human beings within the productive process. Relations of production crystallize into groups called classes whose relations are determined by the particular form or mode of production. As forces of production change, so do relations of production. 3†³ In capitalism, for example, there are two fundamental classes. Proletarian workers sell their labour for a wage. Workers produce more than receive.The wage only provides subsistence. The capitalist class sells the products of the workers to gain profit. Capitalism thus subsists by extracting labour value from its workforce. The interests of the capitalist class necessarily conflict with those of the proletariat. Thus, material conditions of economic life form the real basis to social existence. Political and legal structures can only be understood via these material conditions. Marx, in one of his more synoptic semi-autobiographical pieces of writing, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, called this whole 31 process the ‘leading thread' of his studies.It is worth remarking at this point that Marx's views on this ‘leading thread' have given rise to another debate which parallels the stricter and looser senses of materialism. There are interactive and passive notions of economic reductionism. On the passive view (which corresponds to stricter materialism), law and the state emerge instrumentally from economic forces. They have no independent efficacy or reality. The state and law are not understood to arise from conscious human intention; rather, they reflect the 32 class struggle that takes place in the context of the economic base of society.Many Marxists writers find themselves uniformly uneasy with this form of passive reductionism. 3 3 In this more sceptical reading, Marx's Preface (mentioned above), as well as many works by Engels, are not regarded as adequate representations of the totality of Marx's views. Antonio Gramsci, for example, regularly dismissed this more passive view in the curt phrase ‘economism'. For such critics, passive reductionism contains an impoverished and simplistic conception of the state and law. It does not grasp the more interactive quality of the state and legal system, and it ignores the conflicts between classes over authority within st ate.Neither does it explain how the economic base actually ‘determines' law. The actual causal mechanism remains inchoate in Marx's writings. Marx's texts, it is argued, are rife with potential for more interactive readings. However, the Marx of the Preface could reply to this criticism by arguing that such a view is in imminent danger of ‘legal fetishism', where law is seen as both necessary for 380 D Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 380 1993 the existence of society and autonomous from economic or class factors. There is nothing unique about law in the passive reductionist reading.However, most exponents of interactionism would not want to argue that law has total autonomy; rather, that the law can, in certain circumstances, act upon economic life and can either facilitate or work against a particular mode of production. The ambiguities over these various positions can be observed in Marx's classic account of the transition from feudalism to ca pitalism. As commercial capitalism slowly develops at the economic base it, of necessity, erodes feudal relations. It is no use to capitalists that a workforce is tied by feudal bonds to a particular aristocratic landowner or piece of ancient property.In addition, communal land (or wood), which all can freely utilize as a common resource, is also deeply inconvenient for capitalism. Property, for capitalists (as in Marx's observations in the wood theft article), must be privately owned and tradable. Labour must also be free of feudal ties in order to travel where the work is needed by capitalists. These processes were obviously facilitated by coercion and outright violence, as in many cases of enclosure; however, as Marx noted, law also expedited the whole process in developing sophisticated systems of property law, contract law, and tort.In creating a landless poor (‘free labour') and a contractual private property-based law, the groundwork for capitalism was gradually laid. T he problem is how to read these events. On the one hand, law could be seen (as in the interactive thesis) as semi-autonomous, providing intentionally the conditions for changes in the mode of production. In fact, it is arguable that law consciously constituted the integuments of a mode of production. This argument throws doubt on the unidirectional determinism and passivity thesis.On the other hand, law can be read as a coercive structure representing the actual dominance of the bourgeoisie of the means of production, but determined by the laws of the economic base. In this latter reading, law has no autonomy whatsoever. It simply and instrumentally reflects the economic base. Support for both lines of argument can found in Marx. BASE, SUPERSTRUCTURE, AND LEGAL IDEOLOGY The basic idea of base and superstructure follows neatly from the previous section. In fact, once again, we find similar disputes being echoed from previous sections.One theory sees a precise causal relationship. The other theory sees a looser tendency and more interactive quality in base and superstructure. This latter theory leads some critics to bewail even the use of terms like ‘base' and ‘superstructure'. It is argued that it would be far better if we treated these terms as more or less useful metaphors, not referring to any empirical reality. 34 As in many of Marx's writings, half the problem here might simply be because Marx never really addressed the problem head on. 5 The terms occur in certain writings, but Marx did not appear to have any inkling of how much significance was going to be placed on them by 381  © Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 381 1993 subsequent generations. The older instrumental causal account of base and superstructure sees a clear correspondence between laws and political institutions (superstructure) and the economic base. As Marx put it unequivocally in his Preface to a Critique of PoliticalEconomy: With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict†¦ Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life. For example, laws on land tenure in the feudal period (a superstructural phenomenon) changed markedly with the development of capitalism. The real foundation for these changes and the explanation of them would be sought in the actual change in the modes and relations of productio n – the material base. There are a number of minor problems with the above view. First, it is not easy to see how the above thesis explains why certain types of law occur. For example, how, on the above model, would one explain factory legislation, which controlled the activities of capitalists?Alternatively, what of social welfare legislation or legislation which enacts progressive redistributive taxation? Admittedly, it could be replied here that such laws indirectly help capitalism by improving the condition of the working class and preventing revolution, while paying a minimum cost. Thus, despite appearances, such legislation aids capitalism: it is in essence still a business proposition. This counter argument might hold for some legislation, but what of other laws which prevent abuse to children, punish rape, or ensure the proper care of the mentally handicapped?What of laws which define the roles of an official in local or central government or, alternatively, traffic l aw? Surely it is not as easy to explain these as clearly causally related to the economic base of capitalism. Any attempt to do so would surely look very far-fetched. In other words, the instrumental thesis does not account for the totality of law. Secondly, certain legal rules appear to be part of the relations of production, for example, contract law. The relations of production are held together by such contractual rules. They form a kind of social glue for such economic practices.The question arises, therefore, can we separate out contractual law and the relations of production? If the relations of production are constituted by legal vocabulary then there can be no clear determination of the superstructure by the base. Thus, for these, and many other reasons, a number of commentators have felt distinctly uneasy with the instrumental/ causal base superstructure model. 3 7 In fact, Marx did not use the model with any great frequency and late in life Engels also wrote a number of o ft-quoted 3s qualifying letters which appear to give a lot of ground to sceptics.As noted above, in the quotation from Marx's Preface, Marx often tended 382 (C Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 382 1993 to view ideology from a similar causal perspective. One way of viewing an important dimension of the superstructure is as the body of ideas of a society. Marx refers, in the above quotation, to the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, and philosophical ideas of a society. The quotation clearly takes a ‘reductionist' and ‘instrumental' view of ideology. Ideas are explained via their connection to the material base.Legal ideology is thus, once again, part of the consciousness of bourgeois society, and, as Marx clearly observed: ‘Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness'. Thus, overt legal ideas and forms tells us virtually n othing substantive – they merely reflect deeper economic changes. 39 It is understandable in this reductionist reading that Engels and others should thus have referred to ideology as the ‘false-consciousness' of a class like the bourgeoisie.Lawyers might thus be regarded as professional ideologists or ‘waged hacks' (in fact like most intellectuals, professional groups, and academics) for the bourgeoisie. Subsequently Marx's ideas came under certain pressures and a number of questions arose 0 In his early writings Marx appeared to be contrasting ‘ideology' with ‘reality as practice' – a form of philosophical materialist ontology. Liberal capitalism was in an equivalent position to religion as a distortion of the human essence. Later this contrast became ideology (as distortion) as against natural science (as truth or knowledge).The change in perspective here refers, once again, to the idea of an epistemological break in Marx's writings. However, in both these views, it remained unclear as to what to include within the term ideology. In some writings it appeared to be widely inclusive – consciousness in general. In other writings he appeared to limit himself to economic and political ideas. The question arose at the time (which is still unresolved) as to whether natural science was part of ideology or was wholly distinct. Marx also did not explain, as mentioned earlier, the precise mechanisms of determinism.For example, it is not clear (taking A as the economic base and B as legal ideology), whether ‘determine' means that A causes B, tends to affect B, or sets parameters to B, or alternatively, whether there is a symbiotic relation of A to B. 41 In strictly practical terms, such corrosive ambiguities do link up to quite ordinary questions on legal activity. As Hugh Collins observes: ‘The question is whether a judge follows instrumental considerations with a class character or operates a discrete 42 mode of reasoning'. Marxists have gone on struggling with the concept of ideology.Some, like Gramsci, found inspiration in ideas of ‘relative autonomy', which allows some leeway for ‘a discrete mode of legal reasoning'. In Gramsci's thesis (which for some is present in Marx's writings like the 18th Brumaire), domination under capitalism is not simply achieved by coercion, but, subtly, through the hegemony of ideas. The ideology of the ruling class becomes vulgarized into the common sense of the average citizen. Power is not just crude legal force, but, conversely, domination of language, morality, and culture. Laws, for example, become internalized within the consciousness of 383  © Basil Blackwell Ltd.HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 383 1993 each citizen. The masses are quelled and co-opted by this internalization of ideas. The hegemonic ideas become the actual experiences of the subordinate classes. Bourgeois hegemony moulds the personal convictions, norms, and aspirat ions of the proletariat. Gramsci thus called for a struggle at the level of ideology. Organic intellectuals situated within the proletariat should combat this by developing a counter-hegemony to traditional intellectuals upholding bourgeois hegemony – which might be considered as the basis of a credo for critical legal studies.In sum, this perspective does not consider law as just instrumental. Law does not necessarily uphold the interests of the ruling class and it is not simply determined by the economic base; in fact, it may have some counter-determining role on the base itself. These themes will be pursued more intently in the final section. LAW, POLITICS, AND STATE One view of the state and law, which predominates in Marx's writings, is that they are a condensation of the economic interests of the dominant class.The state is thus viewed as the ‘executive committee to manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie'. The state acts as its oppressive agent in civil society, su ppressing proletarian interests in favour of capital accumulation. The personnel of the state owe allegiance to one particular class – the bourgeoisie. Lawyers would be viewed as waged lackeys of the bourgeoisie. Law is part of this oppressive mechanism and embodies the ideological mystifications of bourgeois intellectualism. The bourgeois capitalist class dominates political power hrough its domination of economic power. This is the more traditional view of the state, epitomized in The Communist Manifesto. As Marx stated unequivocally in the latter work: Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the 43 economical conditions of existence of your class. The above argument is a form of class reductionism.The bourgeois state and legal system are class-based phenomena. Cl ass, for Marx, refers to large social groups linked together in certain social relations within a mode of production. Each class receives differential rewards, power, and status. Relations between classes tend to be conflictual. Within the instrumental perspective, the state and legal system are seen to condense the interests of one class. The state is not a representation of any collective good or impartiality. It is, rather, integral to certain specific economic interests in society.Class interests are seen to manage the state apparatus in the interests of that class – the bourgeoisie in capitalist society. The history of states is therefore subsumable under class interest. Marx tended, in many writings, to interpret nineteenth-century legislation, particularly in Britain, in such class terms. For example, the passing of the Reform Bill and Ten-Hours Bill, and 384 (D Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 384 1993 the repeal of the Corn Laws, were seen as aspects of the economic conflict between the bourgeoisie and landed aristocracy.The above view reflects dolefully on a number of issues. First, there does not appear to be any difference between a democratic rule-of-law constitutional state (Rechtsstaat) and an unconstitutional, undemocratic despotism. Both are simply exploitative class-based entities. † The former state simply shields its basic exploitative character more successfully, particularly under guises like the ‘rule of law'. Secondly, both the ‘general' rule-of-law principle and ‘particular' property, contract or criminal laws, are simply there to buttress the property owners of capitalism.The rule of law is a typical example of legal fetishism, namely, giving law a false autonomy from the economic and class base of society. In times of high productivity, the constitutional capitalist state will give the appearance of some concern, via state spending, but it will show its true colours during perio ds of economic crisis. The first cuts will always be to the welfare of working people. The rule of law is thus an elaborate confidence trick. 45 Thirdly, Marx suggests that the so-called equal rights of liberal states have grossly unequal effects.The rights 4 of human beings are in reality the rights of bourgeois men in civil society. 1 They protect individual capitalists in their exploitative practices and they protect the unequal economic results of such practices. Rights are associated with individuals who ‘own' them in order to protect private interests. Rights thus shield the basic inequalities and exploitative practices of bourgeois culture. Bourgeois culture ignores material inequalities and slavishly adheres to formal legal, moral or political equality of rights.Marx found this whole scenario profoundly objectionable. Equally, from the same perspective, the justice that we observe in liberal societies is another aspect of the ideology of capitalism. It concentrates min imally on how goods might be distributed (if it gets as far as distributive justice) and ignores the massive inequalities implicit in the production process itself. In other words, it shuts the stable door after the capitalist horse has bolted. Justice is not a virtue for communists. Marx thus quite explicitly takes an anti-justice and anti-rights stance.With genuine communism, there would be no classes, no coercion, no conflict, and no private ownership; in consequence, there would be no need for justice or right claims. If there is abundance and communal ownership, then there is no reason for principles of allocation or any allocating or adjudication mechanisms. In sum, Marx objects, in this reading, to the whole notion of the juridical legal state as a complex sham. As law is integral to the idea of the state in Marx, so the antistatist stance of communism implies the abolition of law.The traditional account above is not without some internal ambiguity, particularly over notions like ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat'. This latter doctrine envisages the state as not so much a negative, coercive, backwardlooking institution, as rather an instrument of positive revolutionary change utilized for the benefit, ultimately, of humanity (even if it is still viewed as a transitional entity). Marx's own qualified fervour for the state can be observed, even in Capital,where he remarked enthusiastically on the work of 385 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. Soc'y 385 1993 the Factory Inquiry Commission in Britain, specifically the work of Leonard Horner, as rendering ‘undying service to the English working class. He [Leonard Horner] carried on a life-long contest, not only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the Cabinet'. 47 Marx later commented, with evident relish, that British manufacturers compared the factory inspectorate 4 8 with revolutionary commissioners of the French National Convention. However, this was hardly a n egative coercive vision of a class-based state functioning only in the interests of the bourgeoisie.The stricter class view of the state and law also suggests that if there were no class there would, in turn, be no law and no state. Class conflict is the prerequisite of the state. This view was later crystallized in Lenin's work, The State and Revolution. This idea, in turn, gives rise to the idea (initiated by Engels and carried on by Lenin, although many would contend it was also present in Marx) that the state and legal order will ‘wither away'. In this sense a communist society would be stateless and lawless (in a strictly descriptive sense).Thus, from the standpoint of a strict materialism, the state is not a major player. The end. result of this looks very much like communist anarchism, although Marx himself argued fiercely against such a conclusion and showed only vitriolic contempt for anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin. However, Marx never resolved this issue of the relation between communism and mainstream anarchism. However, the class reductionist and instrumental perspective does not represent the totality of Marx's writings. Let us take the question of class first.Class, in certain works, is seen as more complex, fragmented, and containing fractions with no overt connection to political or legal domination. The state and its legal system, in this reading, clearly does not embody the interests of a ruling class. In addition there can be, as Marx demonstrated with great verve in the 18th Brumaire, intra-class conflict between fractions. Marx mentions four fractions within the bourgeoisie who often conflict: landed property, the financial aristocracy, the industrial bourgeoisie, and commercial bourgeoisie.In addition, the lumpenproletariat are kept separate from the proletariat, and the petty bourgeoisie from the peasantry. As one commentator has remarked, ‘the recourse to â€Å"fractions† of classes . . . indicates that . . . â €Å"class† is not a sufficiently precise concept to be of value in explaining particular events'. 49 Law, in this fraction perspective, can actually become a ‘site of class struggle'. 50 Laws are therefore not always oppressive in the interest of one class. In fact, many laws can benefit the working class, for example, factory legislation. Certain laws also result from pressures from multifarious groups outside social classes. In addition, the notion of class remains deeply ambiguous since Marx nowhere explains its precise relation to property ownership. The doubts over the relation between class and state, outlined in the 18th Brumaire,led Marx to suggest that in the conditions that pertained in France in the period 1848-50, the state did not represent any bourgeois fractions, or even the bourgeoisie in general. In fact, Marx contends that the state and law may work against the interests of the bourgeoisie. 52 This effectively under386  ©D Blackwell Basil Ltd. HeinOn line — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 386 1993 ined both the idea of the direct synonymity of ‘class' to ‘law' and ‘state', and also the necessity of class for analysing the state (although both these views are strongly maintained by Marx in The Communist Manifesto, amongst other writings). It is these qualifying arguments of Marx which enabled the development of what is now called ‘state autonomy theory', which has powerfully shaped late twentieth-century Marxist studies. The theory, in varying degrees, sees the state and law as a factor of cohesion, a site of struggle between fractions of classes, and an institution which may even regulate class conflict.The basic point is that legal reasoning takes on a relative autonomy from the economic base of society. It is not totally to be explained via modes or relations of production. This relative autonomy thesis might make us consider anew the curt dismissals of notions like the rule of law. Certainly a number of recent commentators have picked up on this theme in Marx, suggesting that the theory of unidirectional determinism of base and superstructure does not really work for explaining the nature of law itself.Laws are actually integral to certain types of relations of production. E. P. Thompson, following this line of thought, has spoken of law in eighteenth-century England as ‘deeply imbricated within the very basis of productive relations, which would have been inoperable without law'. He continues that we cannot ‘simply separate off all law as ideology, and assimilate this also to the state apparatus of a ruling class'. 53 Taking on board the Gramscian thesis of ideological hegemony being a sphere of struggle, Thompson contends that disputes are fought out in the sphere of law.Law certainly still expressed class power; however, part of the success of legal ideology itself was its appearance of impartiality. As Thompson notes, law ‘cannot seem to be so without its own logic and criteria of equity; indeed, on occasion, by actually being just†¦ even rulers find a need to legitimize their power, to moralize their functions, to feel themselves to be useful and just'. 54 The rhetoric was not therefore empty, even if it was still rhetoric. Semi-autonomous legal logic was thus often used against dominant groups – which was precisely a central aspect of Marx's argument in the 18th Brumaire.Thus, for Thompson, law does not equal raw class power. It was certainly involved in class power and it redefined property rights in undermining feudalism, but its focus was not exclusively on class interest. Its own logic and rhetoric gave it a partial autonomy which inhibited, in some cases, the dominant groups. It was also a site of struggle between fractions of these dominant groups. As Thompson concludes, such a notion of the rule of law is markedly different from arbitrary despotism. It is, in fact, he notes, a ‘cultural achievement'. 5 The effort to redeem Marx from his anti-statist and anti-law stance, via some notion of relative autonomy, has also had other defenders. Some critics have found in Marx's early writings a number of themes which add support this vision. For example, in one of his early writings, Marx speaks -oflaw as ‘the positive, bright and general norms in which freedom has attained to an existence that is impersonal, theoretical and independent of the arbitrariness of individuals. A people's statute book is its Bible of freedom'. 56 He also 387 Basil Blackwell Ltd. HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 387 1993 makes favourable noises, at points, about customary law established over 7 time, as against the new laws of the bourgeoisie. 5 Others have noted, with surprise, that Marx draws distinctions between ‘real' and ‘unreal' law. For example, on the same page of the article referred to above, Marx speaks of law becoming active: as soon as it is transgressed for it is only true law when in it t he unconscious natural law of freedom becomes the conscious law of the state. Where law is true law, i. . where it is the existence of freedom, it is the true existence of the freedom of man. Thus laws cannot prevent man's actions, for they are the inner laws of life. Paul Phillips remarks on this point that: ‘The significance of this distinction is that it posits the existence of an order superior to that of mere man-made law 58 and, to that extent, it is a Natural Law Theory'. Marx, even in his later writings, appeared to believe that there is a condition of freedom and wholeness for human beings, where their real natures will flourish.There is, as one critic has put it, a ‘myth of transparency' in Marx (as in Hegel) – this is ‘the vision of a society in which something â€Å"standing behind† the set of available social roles and relations†¦ will be revealed in a social order which will have become â€Å"obvious† to the participants'. 59 This notion of positive freedom, wholeness, and perfectibility behind the veil, is both implicit in the discussion of alienation (in the earlier writings), and restlessly present just under the surface of the later discussions of exploitation and communism.  ° This vision of freedom is subtly linked to Marx's strong (if unstated) communitarianism, namely, his deeply-rooted belief that humans are social creatures and can only develop freely within a particular type of community. This is the community which is distorted and lost in capitalism and will be recovered in communism. Humans are meant to develop historically toward such a society. Marx did not like to be associated with such a view, since it smacked of romantic utopianism. However, it is undeniably there throughout the corpus of his writings. Alienation is a prime example of such erfectibility lost and regained. The notion developed initially in a theological context. Humans were alienated from God through their sin. In H egel, the alienation is philosophical: spirit (or mind) externalizes itself in the world. It becomes alien to itself. The task of thought is to overcome the self-alienation of spirit, to perceive itself at home in the world. Overcoming alienation is realizing that the world is not alien to our thought. For Feuerbach, however, the real alienation is that human beings have placed their essence into either God or the Hegelian Spirit.To overcome alienation is to transform the subject and object – to realize that God is idealized humanity. For Marx, on the other hand, alienation takes on a number of subtle forms. 61 The basic idea is that human alienation is more immediate and practical, and subsumes all the other notions. In discussing the topic, Marx speaks initially of alienation through labour. Labour creates capital and capital escapes the control of labour and takes on a supposedly independent existence, which in turn dominates the original producer. Workers thus find they a re alienated from the product of 388 (D Basil Blackwell Ltd.HeinOnline — 20 J. L. & Soc'y 388 1993 their labour. Labour, in this capitalist context, is no longer free and creative. It is necessary for subsistence and thus exercises alien compulsion over the worker. In consequence, workers are alienated from free creativity (which is the true nature of human beings) and they are thus also alienated from their fellow human beings. Overcoming human alienation implies ultimately overthrowing the economic and social forms which generate the loss of reality and the self. The solution to the riddle of history and human alienation is communism. 2 There is strong sense here of a definite underlying human nature, with certain specifiable needs, which can flourish under a specific type of community, which recognizes certain ‘natural laws', not necessarily as overt imperatives from some external authority, but more as natural non-coercive norms derived from reason. Despite Marx's a ppearance as an anti-law theorist, some writers have claimed that it is possible to identify a communist theory of law and justice, and also, possibly, of state (given Marx's early interest in a radical democratic participatory state). 3 In certain writings, particularly The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx does indicate that there would be a principle of justice under communism – ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'. 64 Such a notion of justice would presumably prevent unequal access to the means of production and also prohibit alienation and exploitation. It would also respond distributivelyto human needs – although Marx leaves the concept of ‘need' fairly open. Needs for social relations, satisfying labour, and the like, move well beyond physical subsistence.It is difficult not to consider some of Marx's needs as ‘wants' or ‘interests', which are surely markedly different notions. Tom Campbell, amongst a number of recent theorists, believes that we can reconcile Marx's historicism, and aspects of a looser materialism, with a belief in communist justice and the moral superiority of such a society. He di

Summary and critique of Stanley Milgram

The experiment on â€Å"Behavioral Study of Obedience† was conducted by Stanley Milgram in July 1961. It was barely three months after Adolf Eichmann had been tried over the criminal activities committed during the Nazi war. The research was designed to address the questions about the peoples who were the masterminds of the infamous Nazi torturing ordeal that were responsible for the deaths of millions of the innocent people. It was intended to find out the people who would prefer to be submissive to the authority at the expense of human life. The experiment also sought to measure the willingness of individuals to obey an authority figure who instructs them to do certain things that are against their personal conscience. The question that the researchers were asking was, â€Å"Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?† The hypothesis was that there was likelihood that that during the Nazi war it might have been that Adolf Eichmann and his accomplices were just being submissive to the orders from higher authority (against their will) to murder the innocent people. The research question was very instrumental in helping to unveil how one can alter another person’s behavior, beliefs and mind-set. Before giving the results of the experiment the researcher predicted that only a negligible number of the participants would obey the orders and persist on to administer maximum shock. The range was 0 – 3%. That meant that out of 100 participants only 3 would administer the 450 volt shock. Method The people who participate in the experiment (subjects) were drawn from different social status background within New Haven area. They comprised people from a wide range occupation with characteristic characters include clerical officers, teachers, salespersons, engineers and drudges. The group was a representative of all educational levels; from elementary school to doctorate and other professional degrees and aged between 20 – 50 years in their right state of mind (Milgram, S., 1963). The dependable variable in this experiment was the maximum shock that the subject, S, was willing to administer to the victim L up to that point when he resist to follow the instructions given to him by the experimenter. The independent variables were the learner (an experimental confederate) and the experimenter’s orders. There were two participants in each case. They were; a naà ¯ve subject who played the role of a â€Å"teacher† and was provided with a 450 volt electric shock generator and the second one a confederate who played the role of a â€Å"learner.† The task of the â€Å"teacher† was to read to the â€Å"learner† a list of word pairs. The â€Å"learner† on the other hand was to respond correctly to these pairs of words by pressing the button as an indicator of his response. In case of a wrong answer the â€Å"teacher† was to administer an electric shock to the â€Å"learner†. For each subsequent wrong answer, the â€Å"teacher† would increase the voltage. Even though the subject believed that the learner was receiving the actual shock, the learner, being in a separate room, sets up a tape recorder which had been incorporated to the electric shock generator. This tape played sounds which had been pre-recorded to march each shock level. The presupposed victim (â€Å"learner†) would start to bang the wall separating him from the subject at given numbers of voltage increase. He would continue banging on the wall and complaining of heart condition until all the responses from him ceased. The data collected was based on how much electric shock the subjects were willing to inflict on the victim. This was to indicate their level of obedience and to see their willingness to obey the orders; if it they were doing it deliberately or did it against their will. Results Eventually it was discovered that out of the 40 participants 14 subjects showed explicit signs of nervous laughter and smiling which were inapt and weird. Three of the subjects developed irrepressible convulsions. According to the results obtained, it is evident that while responding to the demands prompted by the appraisals, 40 themes exceed the projected break-off point. None of them administered the electric shock below 300 volts, a point when the victim starts to kick the wall and provided no answers to the teacher’s questions. 5 of them stops at the 300 volt level; 4 of them proceeds to 315 volt level; 2 breaks of at 330 volt level; 3 others drop off at 345, 360 and 375 volts respectively. These 14 subjects were defiant to the experimenter’s instructions. They were recurrently in a frantic and enraged condition. However 26 of the 40 subjects were obedient enough to proceed on to punish the victim till they attain the shock of 450 volts. But they do this against their will. They could be observed to be in consternation once the experiment was brought to a halt. Discussion The results obtained imply that there are people who, despite receiving orders from authority, would choose to defy and stick to what they believe is morally acceptable. In this case the 14 subjects held this belief and would not inflict pain on another person against his/her will. It was however observed that some people would choose to act against their conscience and submit to authority even if what they are ordered to do is against moral principles. This what the 26 subjects did; despite expressing some signs of displeasure in shocking an innocent person, they still go on to obey the commands to the end. This implies that obedience to authority can cause harmless and non-hostile individuals to turn inhuman. The results seems to be in contrast to those predicted in the questionnaire where only 3 out of 100 respondents said they would proceed to administer electric shock to their victim up to the most maximum and risky shock of 450 volts. In this case however, the figure was surprisingly high; 26 out of 40. It had also been expected that a subjected would basically terminate or proceed as dictated by his conscience. However the subjects exhibited tension and emotional strain in their response to the commands. Critique The experiment was well conducted and its objective was attained. The volunteers were got through a New Have (Connecticut) daily newspaper advert and direct mail to some informing them take part in the study of reminiscence as well as the learning designate conducted in a laboratory at Yale University. The real purpose of the experiment was hidden from the subjects until the experiment was over; they knew that the experiment was a study of memory and learning yet it was about study of obedience to authority. Another thing was that the entire volunteers were to play the role of the teacher while that of the student was played by an experimental confederate. In addition, the generator that the teacher used was just but of 45 volts sample shock with the generator not wired to shock the learner. Lastly, the kicking of the wall by the learner, screams and his rejection to proceed and the commands/orders of the experimenter to the teacher were all skillfully fabricated. These indicate the researchers’ thoroughness in the design of the experiment to answer their specific research question. Most importantly, at the end of the experiment subjects underwent some procedures to assist them go back to normal well being. The researchers did not however deal with any feasible alternative explanation for their results. This might be attributes to the fact that they expected the subjects to show some level of obedience. Also, the subjects might have been expected to act accordingly and participate fully to make the research successfully bearing in mind that the real objective of the experiment was hidden from them. It should be stated here that there are some people who will not, at any cost, accept to administer any level of electric shock to another person. The research was also not well represented in terms of gender or the researchers did not specify the sex of the participants. This raises the question about the criteria that was used in selecting the subjects. But all in all the experiment was quite essential as it the positive and the negative nature of human beings. Reference: Milgram. S. (1969); Study on behavioral obedience, Journal of Abnormal and social psychology; 371-378. http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/index.html

How Company Structure Affects the Costs of the Luxury Division Essays

How Company Structure Affects the Costs of the Luxury Division Essays How Company Structure Affects the Costs of the Luxury Division Essay How Company Structure Affects the Costs of the Luxury Division Essay How Company Structure Affects the Costs of the Luxury Division Name: Institution: Instructor: Course: Date: How Company Structure Affects the Costs of the Luxury Division Companies should continually adapt their structures to match changing strategies. Superior Living Company is looking to expand and go public, changes that will be better navigated with a relevant structure. Moving from unrelated to related diversification increases the bureaucratic costs associated with managing a multi-business model (Hill Gareth, 2010). The ideal organizational structure for Superior Living should consider the streamlining of processes, resources available, the coordination of personnel and the overall costs implications. The current divisional structure is relevant in terms of the level of product specialization required in each product. This means operational costs of the luxury division are high, and the firm misses the advantages of manufacturing economies of scale due to differentiation. This can, however, not be altered without compromising the quality because product differentiation offers a larger range of opportunities for competitive advantage (Miltenburg, 2005). On the other hand, the structuring of different marketing and sales department unnecessarily decreases the level of horizontal integration. This increases the costs of Luxury (and other) division by replicating effort. The way the decision-making authority is structured is also increasing the operational costs unnecessary. Independent Human resource and IT divisions mean personnel decisions with cost implications on the Luxury division can be made without consulting the division head. This may result in redundant employees. The role of strategic decision-making in the current structure also has negative implications on the firm’s future. The locus of decision-making control is up to the division level. This has the different divisions operating as separate units and forgetting that they work for the same company. This compromises the interdepartmental communication resulting in costly bureaucracy. Changes Giving Incentive to Department Heads To Manage Costs The finance VP needs to improve the communication between the division heads of the Luxury, Human Resource and IT departments. He can do this by implementing acceptable changes such as having the heads team up to come up with interdepartmental communication and cost management policies. He should have the CEO back him up to increase his credibility with them. Improved communication would prevent the costs of replicated effort. All the division heads should be taught to view the company as one and not just think in terms of their divisions. The finance VP could use their desire to head any new divisions resulting from a merger with new acquisitions as a motivation. The opportunity to move up the ranks in should be made dependent on their cooperation. He should also engage the CEO in the creation of knowledge sharing policies facilitated by the IT department that has access to the whole company’s information. This would manage costs by having those with good cost management practices teach others. The divisions with the best cost management practices could also be rewarded financially or otherwise. Auditing professionals could also be consulted due to their independent outlook. Historically, professional independence of auditors has been set by reputable supervisory bodies (Morris, McKay Oates, 2009). An auditor would thus be able to analyze the situation impartially earning the trust of all concerned. They would also be unaware of internal politics hence the ability to present facts without fear of repercussions. The Finance VP can also communicate the importance and relevance of cost management on their future. This extra accountability will help the entire company effectively transform in to a publicly held company. Public companies are usually under more critical scrutiny than private ones. The increased accountability may also prevent any future inefficiency that could damage their public image thus harming future employment prospects. References Hill, C. Jones, G. (2010). Strategic Management Theory: An Intergrated Approach. Mason, OH: Southwestern Cengage Learning. Miltenburg, J. (2005). Manufacturing strategy: How to formulate and implement a winning plan. Newyork, NY: Productivity Press. Morris, G., McKay, S. Oates, A. (2009). Finance director’s handbook. Amsterdam; Boston; London: CIMA.

Free sample - The Role of CIOs in Innovation. translation missing

The Role of CIOs in Innovation. The Role of CIOs in InnovationIntroduction The article â€Å"The Internet of Things: How CIOs Can Influence the Next Wave of Product Innovation† is a current article on technological issues in a company and it explains how technological advancement in internet is geared to revolutionize human life in a great deal and the role of CIOs in encouraging innovation through the use of internet and other form of communication. This article comprehensively analyzes technological development and innovation which CIO is putting forward to not only improve human life but also improve profitability in doing business. According to Nash, (2010,p.1), â€Å"By combining the capabilities of the Web, cloud computing, analytics and tiny intelligent sensors, CIOs can help create wholly new products and services connected to networks and to each other† The article stresses the role of CIOs are strategic and critical in driving technological innovation to the next level. This is because there role is much more of marking and data coll ection which are letter transformed into product innovation. CIOs role goes beyond keeping the light of IT on in accompany since it encompasses marketing role as well as research Nash, (2010,p.2). This paper takes a critical and a comprehensive analysis of the role of CIOs in influencing innovation in a company. In addition the paper examines the role of IT and internet in the process of globalization and business opportunities How CIOs can influence innovation Ø   Making new friends Networking is one the best way of making and keeping friend and since human being learn from each other, it is through this that CIOs get new concepts and can influence innovation. Interaction and meeting new friend present an opportunity of getting new ideas, technologies as which when adopted bring meaningful change in a company. Ø   Jumping right in the business CIOs should be out going individuals who initiate conversations and should never wait to be asked for such communication which can lead to innovations. This strategy is quite important since it saves time and provides faster adoption of new technologies in the market. Ø   Shaking the pillars It is the responsibility of CIOs to be ready for change at all times since this will actually improve on the need for innovation in a company. How to achieve innovation in IT Ø   Delay the RFP The innovation goal should be the core and integral factors in outsourcing for innovation and therefore RFP should be delayed for this goal to be achieved. Ø   Clearly define innovation According to Nash, (2010), â€Å"True innovation might mean continuous process improvement, emerging technology implementation, new best practices, IT transformation or competitive advantage. A clear definition of innovation is required so that the contract will reflect the appropriate financial and other terms associated with it†. In this regard, CIOs should carefully involve all the stakeholders and departmental team in defining the kind of innovation they require. Ø   Use outsourcers as consultants   This strategy will provide a great opportunity for the IT providers to improve their services which in turn lead to innovation in the field. Ø   Lock everyone in a room to brain storm Putting everyone in a room to brain storm on the best way to improve a given IT service provide all stakeholders with opportunity to think and come up with new concepts which in most cases result in innovations. Ø   Motivate the team in IT department Motivation is a powerful incentive to innovation and therefore CIOs should all the time work hard towards designing a motivational package to all the team he or she works with so as to keep innovation process on and active. Marketing concept which strive to build a company a round a profitable satisfaction of customer needs and demands is the most critical key which has helped many companies and different brands to develop in parts of the world. However, the success of these companies and brands is on the other hand pegged on well designed marketing strategies which not only ensures a high rate of product penetration but also ensure that the products compete highly in the market and the role of CIOs in this task is inevitable. Multi-channel retailing which can be improved by CIOs through several strategies   has been defined as the opportunity presented to the same customer to obtain the same product from the same retailer by multiple purchase channels According to Nicholson, Clarke and Blakemore (2002,p.45), this multi-channel marketing strategy attempts to foster the customer’s behavior to be multi-channel. Those companies that obtain part of their sales from two different channels can be classified as having adopted the multi-channel approach as contrasted with the ones whose entire sales volume is generated from the pursuit of a single channel (Nicholson, Clarke and Blakemore, 2002, p. 12)   Many customers use multiple channels during the purchase process such as research, during the purchase process and while obtaining services (Stone, Hobbs and Khaleeli, 2002, p. 74). In this regard, it has been advanced that where organizations decides to adopt a multi-channel strategy in communication and marketing, then attention needs to focus on whether all the channels will be offering similar services or products range and whether they will have all the functional areas. Of paramount importance here is the need to define the role that the various channels are intended to function and the associated interactions, as this helps in the identification and facilitation of both the use and preferences emphasis for the targeted segments. Several advantages of multi-channel strategies in search of innovation have been presented in literature. According to Lawson, (2001, p. 31), channels have different advantages depending on the type of interaction with the various customers. This point has been buttressed by Souza and Serrentino (2002,p.87) states that customers look for different channels depending on the kinds of products, the moment of purchase and the prevailing motivation. The researchers have broadly categorized these behaviors within three domains of retail emotion where the experience of purchasing performs a fundamental role, retail reason in which case price is the overriding factor of the purchase and finally, retail convenience. According to Lawson (2001,p.94), â€Å"the critical factors for the accomplishment of a multi-channel strategy encompasses the complete integration of the brand, product position, inventory forecast, price, logistics and the expectations of the customers.† As Lawson (2001, p.12) points out, the adoption of IT in marketing and information collection from the clients brings positive results such as increases in sales volumes, costs reductions and increased levels of operations. Integrated channels in the opinions of Stone et.al (2002, p.49) also affects positively brand loyalty and customer’s life time values and this is possible with appropriate technological innovation.   Conclusion CIOs role is quite significant for a wave of innovation in companies in this era of technological advancement. This is only possible when they are well equipped and ready to implement strategies which are geared towards innovation. This will go along way in making the companies competitive as well as drive economic development in a country and globally. Information Technology plays a pivotal role in the success of a company and the economy at large. Towards this it is prudent for CIOs to improve embrace change which are geared towards innovation as impetus to scaling up economies of scale in accompany. Works cited Keller, K.L (1993). Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity.Journal of Marketing, 57, 1-22. Kotlar, P. (2003). Marketing insights from A to Z: 80 concepts every manager needs to know. John Wiley and Sons Kotler, P. and Amstrong, P, (2007). Principles of Marketing. John Wiley and Sons Lawson, K. (2001). Commercials That Name Competing Brands.   Journal of Advertising Nash, K.S. (2010).The Internet of Things: How CIOs Can Influence the Next Wave of Product Innovation. Access on 18th Nov.2010 from www.cio.com Nicholson, J. Clarke, G. and Blakemore, Y. (2002). Going to market: Distribution Performance: The Role of Brand Loyalty. Journal of Marketing, 65: 81-89. Souza, M.G., and Serrentino, A. (2002). Will the growth of multi-channel retailing Stone, M., Hobbs, M and Khaleeli, M. (2002). Multi-channel customer management: the  Ã‚   benefits and challenges. Journal of database management, 10 (1), 39-45.Systems for Industrial Products. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Zeithaml, K. (2002). Brand Loyalty Programs: Are They Shams? Marketing Science,24(2): 185-19