What in the hell …

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’.

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.

So I finally finished my dumb damn post about ch24 of Capital 1 - with a whimper not a bang. Christ. That took forfuckingever and a half. Ugh.

It didn’t help that I kept careening in various other directions (more…)

If Atheists Ruled The World

Need a manifesto? Got no time to draft one? Mutual aid is here!

A few blogs I occasionally read treat comments in a way that I don’t understand. To be blunt, they allow asshole behavior of all sorts among the comments. In an in-person discussion this stuff would undermine people’s ability to have an intellectually productive discussion. The same is basically true online. In person, most folk would eventually tell these folk to shut the fuck up, or would go elsewhere to have the conversation. Why this doesn’t happen more often online is beyond me, when it’s so easy - delete and edit the asshole comments. Easy peasy. It’s particularly weird because some of the people who run these blogs teach for a living, a job which requires people in the classroom to occasionally do what I’m suggesting. Ugh.