What in the hell …

My new rule is that I don’t reply to electronic communications in which there is some disagreement until I have let 48 hours pass then I have read them a second time, unless it’s a decision making issue and time is important.

I recently stumbled onto the wikipedia entry for “garden path sentences.” Here’s an example of a garden path sentence from that entry:
The old man the boat.

Here’s another:
The horse raced past the barn fell.

There’s more. Reading the above two at first sort made the inside of my head throb (it made my brain hurt).

I mentioned this to an old friend today and he said “oh, it’s mental push ups. Cool.” Then he recommended the following as another version of mental pushups, for people who know how to count to ten in two languages or more.

Count to ten alternating languages. For instance:
One, dos, drei, four, cinco, sechs, seven, ocho, neun, ten.

Neat. The next step, I’ve not tried it, would be to do basic math problems in a similar fashion.

Funny enough, a number of blogs that I read only very occasionally but regularly, if that makes sense, have had a big wide-ranging discussion about ontology and politics at the same time as I’ve gotten into an argument with some friends in my offline life about this very same subject, friends who I’m pretty sure don’t read any of these blogs. (more…)

I’ve been meaning for a long time go back and read the three part Aufheben article on decadence theory. (This piece played a role in Aufheben’s exchange with Theorie Communiste, which I’ve still not read except in a very cursory fashion.) One of these days (after ch25 of Capital! and after my latest round of Hamerquist’s writing!) I’m going to have to dig into this stuff.

For now, Hardt and Negri in Commonwealth:

a “symptom of capital’s illness: its failure to engage and develop productive forces. When Marx and Engels describe the centuries-long passage from feudal to capitalist relations of production in Europe, they focus on the expansion of productive forces: as feudal relations increasingly obstruct the development of productive forces, capitalist relations of property and exchange emerge to foster them and spur them forward. “At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange,” Marx and Engels write in the Manifesto, “the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.” Every mode of production, capital included, at first powerfully expands productive forces but eventually holds them back, thereby generating the foundation of the next mode of production. (…) Capitalist relations of property are becoming increasingly such fetters today.” (298.)

Capitalism, from once helping to now hindering progress. From progressive to decadent social formation.

This is a slightly edited and expanded version of what I said in my notes, about Ignatiev’s piece as part of the Hamerquist Lenin discussion. I tried to post it as a comment over there but it didn’t work so I’m posting it here.

Ignatiev’s piece is about CLR James and organization. Ignatiev begins by noting that James both rejected the idea of the vanguard party and retained a commitment to organization. What’s that organizations for, though? (more…)

Trick question. It’s a self-evident good. (more…)

Another post consisting of notes written in bits and pieces over much time which means I’ll need to review it when I’m done and try to write a a summing up. This is all I’m capable of much of the time anymore. Still need to write one of these on ch25 of Capital! Anyways, this is on Don Hamerquist’s essay on Althusser. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it, will just keep updating this post as I read further. Folk should read the essay, folk interested in Althusser and also folk following the recent Lenin discussions. (more…)

I want to point out two great posts at Gathering Forces, about Lenin. There’s this one and then there’s this other one, the second is in response to Don Hamerquist’s essay. I still don’t feel equipped to assess claims about Lenin’s relative importance compared to other possible thinkers to think with or to to assess claims about Lenin historically, let alone feeling equipped to make my own claims about this. As such, my (for me) very old hesitation about Lenin and the Bolsheviks remains. None the less, whether or not Lenin per se is necessary for or incidental to the particular problems addressed, the problems addressed in these posts are important the posts address them in a serious way.

My primary reaction personally is that a key task right now for those of us who can be called ‘younger’ (at least in an expansive sense of the term, I don’t feel young very often anymore, sadly) is to build up our skills. My hunch is that a lot of us young-ish leftist lack some knowhow that we will need regardless of our theoretical and strategic perspectives (I have a further hunch that this is tied to a breakdown in intergenerational transmission on the left today). I think finding a way to coordinate on this would be valuable in and of itself - because it’d make efforts more powerful - and might lay the groundwork for some common political projects that put those skills to use. I wish I had more concrete ideas than that to say on this.

While I’m tipping my hat to other blog posts re: politics and whatnot, folk should also see these blogs:
http://red-anti-state.blogspot.com/
http://swedishzine.wordpress.com/

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/andrewnflood/

Edit:
DH’s recommendations of Lenin stuff to read, to come back to ASAP (thanks Don!). A lot of other stuff in v24 of the collected workes in particular looks interesting, just based on the titles.

Vol. 23 of the Collected Works contains the “Lecture on the 1905 Revolution” (p. 236-254), presented to a group of young Swiss workers a few weeks before the February, 1917 Revolution. Check it out; particularly the last paragraph. Then read the Letters from Afar and the April Theses in Vols 23 & 24. If possible pick up Sukhanov’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist to read an account of a left Menshevik of the various issues that were confronted. Then look at Badiou’s speech in New York last year; “Is the Word ‘Communism’ Forever Doomed?’ (Kasama) I think you will see where I find the relevance of Lenin in grasping the development of the ‘possibility of possibility’ and understanding that, “…the truth is not purely composed of facts…The truth is also the becoming of the new subject, the new collective subject.” (p.12). As well, on p. 16, note what Badiou presents as the limitations of the ‘second sequence’.