Or, why is there still socialism in the United States? Why, then, would we look for evidence of socialism only where a state seized by radicals of the Left inaugurates a dictatorship of the proletariat? Or, to lower the rhetorical volume and evidentiary stakes, why would we expect to find socialism only where avowed socialists or labor parties contend for state power? We should instead assume that socialism, like capitalism, is a cross-class cultural construction, to which even the bourgeoisie has already made significant contributions – just as the proletariat has long made significant contributions to the cross-class construction we know as capitalism. What follows?
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Feb 13, 2013 -
46 comments
"The lofty vision of a stateless, marketless world faces obstacles that are not moral but technical, and it’s important to grasp exactly what they are." Seth Ackerman for Jacobin Magazine on
"thinking concretely and practically about how we can free ourselves from social institutions that place such confining limits on the kind of society we are able to have. Because of one thing we can be certain: the present system will either be replaced or it will go on forever."
posted by davidjmcgee
on Jan 7, 2013 -
30 comments
British Marxist historian and lover of jazz, Eric Hobsbawm is dead:
Guardian obit.
His key works: Industry and Empire (1968); and the "Age of" series, which he began with The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848, first published in 1962. Followed in 1975 by The Age of Capital: 1848-1875. And in 1987, The Age of Empire: 1875-1914. A fourth volume, The Age of Extremes: 1914-91, was published in 1994.
He also found time to be castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs (5 March 1995). Other than the music, his choice of book was a collection of Neruda's poems and his "luxury item" was a pair of binoculars.
stream or download
posted by Mister Bijou
on Oct 1, 2012 -
53 comments
Ayn Rand has a fantasy in Atlas Shrugged of striking ‘creative’ capitalists, a fantasy that finds its perverted realisation in today’s strikes, most of which are held by a ‘salaried bourgeoisie’ driven by fear of losing their surplus wage. These are not proletarian protests, but protests against the threat of being reduced to proletarians.
The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie in the London Review of Books.
posted by klue
on Jan 21, 2012 -
91 comments
Robert Paul Wolff is most famous as the author of
In Defense of Anarchism and as the "
only person on the face of the earth who has read, cover to cover, Immanuel Kant's Inaugural Dissertation, Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation, and Newt Gingrich's doctoral dissertation."
His memoir has also drawn considerable
interest. But as a part of his
blogging he has habitually offered "micro-tutorials" to encourage his readers to re-acquaint themselves with the classics of what might be called the Heroic Age in the study of society -- the writings of
Marx,
Freud,
Weber,
Ricardo,
Mannheim, and
others. His newest micro-tutorial, on Durkheim's
Suicide,
begins today.
posted by anotherpanacea
on Dec 8, 2011 -
25 comments
The year is 1965: Groucho Marx takes the
Hollywood Palace stage to introduce (in typically gag-laced fashion) the next number on the program, to be sung by none other than his 18-year-old daughter,
Melinda Marx. What follows is, arguably, right up there with some of the worst songs ever written, performed by Melinda and her backup singers in some of the most excruciatingly bad choreography ever seen. But this is
Groucho's daughter we're talking about here, so I just had to share it with you:
The East Side of Town.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Mar 2, 2008 -
47 comments
Never wanna work/Always wanna play/Pleasure, pleasure every day. What happens when the jobs go away and
don't return? Should we take the surpluses generated and
pay people not to work? What happens to the assumption of scarcity when
nanotechology allows us to generate potentially anything we want from
grass clippings? Maybe Marx had it wrong all along. Maybe, instead of fetishizing work and the authoritarian mindset that it generates, we should have been reading Paul Lafargue
instead.
Just as a thought experiment, what would you do if your job category disappeared? How would you spend your time? Would you invest more time and energy in friendships and other relationships? Hobbies? If you were your employer, what technologies would you use to get rid of your position and save money?
posted by jason's_planet
on Jun 25, 2006 -
43 comments
On this date in 1848,
The Communist Manifesto was published.
Howard Zinn: "I don’t see much point in abstract theorizing or getting into arguments about Marxism, Leninism, etc. ... Theoretical analyses are useful but not crucial. There is a lot of wasted time in such endeavors, but not all is wasted. Marx’s
Communist Manifesto was a theoretical analysis, immensely useful and inspiring. His first volume of
Das Kapital was useful too. His second and third volumes, and his
Grundrisse, were probably a waste of time!"
Informal Poll: How many of you have actually read the entire
Communist Manifesto? (I haven't.)
posted by mickeyz
on Feb 24, 2006 -
42 comments
