What in the hell …

You should all go buy Manituana. It’s the latest novel by Wu Ming, at least the latest to be translated into English. I can’t speak to the contents of the novel because I haven’t read it yet. I just found out a moment ago that it was available now in the US, and I ordered my copy immediately on finding out. I’m sure it’s excellent, and I’ll post on it after I get it and read it. Their other work is awesome, though. I like their stuff so much that I used to volunteer a bit with my meager Spanish and Italian helping translate occasionally for their newsletter. I like their stuff so much that I plan to really get my Italian good someday (in like 5-10 years, most likely) and read all their other work that’s untranslated. I like their stuff so much that I’ve gone through some of it in Italian with a dictionary despite the agonizing slowness that makes for me right now.

If you haven’t already done so, you should also go buy their other novels in translation, Q and 54.

Their work is some of the only material in book form that I can think of that I can seriously say about it “this is a cultural product with political uses.”

See here for reviews of the newest novel and news on their book tour (they’re coming to the US but only to New York, sadly).

Now go buy Manituana.

Socialisme ou Barbarie, actually. They were a French left group, very influential in some circles. More details on wikipedia (where else?).

I just found out that there’s a bunch of their stuff been scanned in and posted on line, for readers of French this is awesome. My French is crap but maybe I’ll try and learn better. Here’s archive:

http://soubscan.org/#ENGLISH

I ran across this article, “Toward a Breakdown of the Capitalist Subject?” via a post at Jodi’s. I think the piece is inadequate and evidences a widespread and mistaken understanding of capitalism which overemphasizes the sphere of circulation; this is common in conversations that conflate (anti-)capitalism with (anti-)neoliberalism. (more…)

I’ve had all this common/commons stuff on my mind lately (I got some links to toss in here later, they’re on another computer). A while back when I was doing a bit of reading on slavery in the US it struck me that slave labor at least some of the time involved an ongoing use by slaveholders of land which slaves held in common, in a sense. That is, slave owners could offload reproductive costs and so forth onto slaves, cheapening the cost of maintaining slaves. (In my opinion one of the many things that’s interesting about the history of slavery - really, the history of any forms of exploitation - is how it can clarify one’s marxism.) At this level of generality, this is what goes on with waged labor as well - we reproduce ourselves day to day and year to year and many of us reproduce in the sense of having children, thus making more workers. We don’t do so in order to enrich anyone monetarily, but we still produce life and lives appropriated under capitalism. (more…)

I’m still in prefatory mode with regard to the reading group on chapter 25 of v1 of Capital. Duncan and NP have kicked things off good and proper with posts on chapter 25. There’s been some particularly substantial discussion at Duncan’s, I need to re-read it soon when I’ve had more sleep than I did during my first read through. Check it out.

Like I said, I’m in prefatory mode still. This post is my notes on chapter 24. Chapter 25 next, soon-ish. (more…)

So several folk around this corner of the bloggiverse are going to use some fancy web technology to coordinate us reading some Marx together, to up our interaction density. I’m pretty sure we’re going to read ch25 of v1 of Capital. Other folk are of course welcome to join in. The idea is simple - read the chapter, post on it, read others’ posts, make comments and conversation. Should be fun. (more…)

My sympathies decline a good deal at the edges of the bargaining unit, so to speak, but I recognize that that some bosses are worse than others. It’s still important to read these in a way that ups one’s anger, not lessens it - other bosses are not better because some are inhumanly evil.

One of these days when I finally feel like I’m ahead of the curve on at least some of the things I have on my plate (and when I’ve stopped mixing my metaphors) I’d like to work up some of the following. And so, notes to self. (more…)