LISTEN: On class, power, privilege, and impunity (A Rotten Crowd on KPFA’s ‘Against the Grain’)
We can learn a lot about class, power, privilege, and impunity from a novel published 100 years ago…. | more…
An important contribution to the discussion of the future of socialism in Cuba and globally (The Knowledge Economy and Socialism reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)
The slight thaw in the US relationship during Obama’s presidency was thrown into deep freeze at the twilight of Trump’s first term when Cuba was reinstated onto the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Biden left it untouched. On 30 October, the UN general assembly once again voted on the resolution, titled ‘Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.’ It passed with 187 votes in favour, two against (Israel and the US)… | more…
New! PARAGUAYAN SORROW, By Rafael Barrett (EXCERPTS)
Paraguayan Sorrow:
Writings of Rafael Barrett, A Radical Voice in a Dispossessed Land
By Rafael Barrett
Edited by William Costa
240 pages / $26.00 / 978-1-68590-078-6
“…what makes you shudder is when he declares: ‘Now I’m going to pull up all the trees around the property so that it looks nice.’
Yes, the gleaming, stupid façade must look clean, bare, with its brazen colors that profane the softness of the rural tones. People must say: ‘This is the new house of so-and-so, that man who is now so rich.’ It must be possible to contemplate the monument to so-and-so’s endeavors without obstruction. Trees are surplus to requirement: ‘They block the view.’ And there is not only vanity in this eagerness to strip the ground: there is hatred, hatred of trees.
Is this possible? Hatred of beings that, unmoving, with their noble limbs always open, offer us the caress of their shade without ever tiring; the silent fertility of their fruits; the multifarious, exquisite poetry that they raise up to the sky? They claim that there are harmful plants. Perhaps there are, but that should not be reason to hate them. Our hatred condemns them. Our love would perhaps transform them and redeem them….” | more…
A landmark of historical and legal scholarship (The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis reviewed in ‘The Historian’)
“The book under review furnishes ample proof that professional historians do not have the market cornered on rigorous historical method, and the most fascinating portions of Batterson’s brilliant book draw on reasoning methods that may be common to mathematicians but elude the practitioners of other disciplines….” –The Historian | more…
An ideological product of imperialist countries (Western Marxism reviewed in ‘ML Today’)
Losurdo provides us with an ideological map of opportunist Continental left-wing philosophy. The Western Marxists that he criticizes are the Frankfurt School (Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas); French theory ( Alain Badiou; Michel Foucault); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (authors of Empire); Hannah Arendt; Slavoj Zizek; Ernst Bloch; Norberto Bobbio; Leon Trotsky and his disciples (including Perry Anderson) and others. Losurdo demonstrates the influence of Western Marxism on such writers as Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser who did not wholly succumb to it…. | more…
The ceasefire is just a pause, and pauses don’t heal wounds (Contributer to A Land With A People in ‘New Lines Magazine’)
we’re born with the wit to master Advanced Drone Escape 101 and How to Breathe Through Dust 202. By the time this war began, I was already a seasoned student. I had passed the tests five times already, miraculously surviving five destructive wars in just 25 years. So I was familiar with the drill: grab your documents, your children and whatever food you can carry, and run. But knowing the drill doesn’t make it easier. | more…
No panacea, rather, a useful compass (Western Marxism in ‘Marx & Philosophy Review of Books’)
It is true that what Losurdo leaves us is not an encyclopedia nor a comforting panacea. Instead, like Virgil leading Dante through the inferno, he offers to help light the way as our guide through this capitalist imperialist hellscape. Like Virgil, however, Losurdo cannot see this journey through for us. | more…
The case against ‘Western’ Marxism (Losurdo reviewed in ‘Morning Star’)
….cites a popular and influential book by a self-proclaimed Marxist that invites us to “change the world without taking power.” “Here,” declares Losurdo, “the self-dissolution of Western Marxism ends up departing from the terrain of politics and settling in the land of religion.” Losurdo is clear that “changing the world” involves an intensification of anti-colonial struggle, and an ongoing renewal of Marxism, not limited to any hemisphere. | more…
Political and spiritual solutions to Paraguay’s social injustices (NACLA on Rafael Barrett’s Paraguayan Sorrow)
Despite the explicitly national flavor of its title, the core themes that run through ‘Paraguayan Sorrow’ resonate broadly in space and time. No doubt thanks to his international education and background, Barrett was able to quote, compare, and draw inspiration from writers and case studies from around the world…. | more…
A socialist ecological politics appropriate for the Anthropocene (The Dialectics of Ecology reviewed in ‘Filozofia’)
The dialectics of ecology can help us move beyond critique and start developing a socialist ecological politics appropriate for the Anthropocene. This is all the more important because, contrary to some recent interpretations, Marx’s writing does not on its own give us practical solutions to the ecological contradictions of our time. Instead, we are now faced with “two opposing tendencies” with different prescriptions for how to respond to the global ecological crisis. On the one hand, some are proposing the “acceleration of capital through the financialization of nature” – a proposal that “can only lead to total disaster, the barren negation of humanity itself”. On the other hand, we find two alternative socialist projects – the idea of ecological civilisation coming from China, and the strategy of planned degrowth in rich economies. These two socialist projects will eventually have to converge, according to Foster, but how they do so remains to be seen… | more…
A year ago, Israel buried me alive. I’m still clawing my way out (Mohammed Mhawish on substack)
A year later, I still hear the explosion in my dreams. I still wake up in a cold sweat, reaching out to make sure my son is breathing beside me. The physical scars have mostly healed, but the emotional ones remain as fresh as the day it happened. People tell me I should be grateful we survived, and I am. But survival isn’t the same as living… | more…
As an anti-immigrant demogogue, he is vile, but anything but original (Author of Postcards to Hitler and Lettuce Wars in ‘Counterpunch’)
The southern border became, not the firm line of defense of national sovereignty as our contemporary demagogues would have us see it, but the portal for the low wage laborers on whose backs an empire was being built. But the door was meant to be a revolving one and herein lay the conflict. | more…
On Mészáros’s critique of the State (Beyond Leviathan in ‘Counterpunch’)
The author’s premise is that the state and capitalism dovetail to exploit people and Mother Nature for profit, a contradiction humanity must overcome to build a sustainable society. This is a systemic dilemma pushing humanity and the ecology to the brink. Transcending capitalism means transcendence of the state with people actively involved, a premise that Mészáros develops at a level of abstraction some readers might find challenging. My advice is to stick with it. I think the effort will reap intellectual and practical rewards. | more…