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A socialist party for our times
The question of the party, broadly understood as the nature and relation to the working class of its political organisational form, whether we call it a party or not, has produced a fecund and abundant literature within Marxism and elsewhere … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics
2 Comments
Cutting the crap: epistemology, science, the left and you
Science and the Left Once upon a time the relation between science and socialism was pretty direct and self-explanatory. Not in vain, Marxists call ourselves scientific socialists, when we can stop our unceasing and largely fruitless factional struggles, that is. … Continue reading
Posted in Critique of the Left, Philosophy, Sci-tech
12 Comments
14N and some thoughts on the conjuncture
First off, by 14N I mean the European Day of Action and Solidarity which took place the 14th of November. It’s a Spanish convention to abbreviate dates that way, hence the 15M movement, the 23F coup, etc. Here in Iberia–both … Continue reading
Posted in Bourgeois politics, Politics
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Orthogonal, by Greg Egan: a review
Greg Egan’s books are remarkable for two rather unrelated reasons: on the one hand, the attention to detailed world-building which makes of his work “diamond-hard” science fiction, often including a great deal of mathematical rigour; on the other, a deft … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural reviews, Culture
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Poetry: what it is for
Poets have from ancient times enjoyed a special status, which connected them with the sacred and the sublime. They were often believed to be inspired by divinity and this position as mediators between a mundane everyday existence and something higher … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural analysis, Culture
1 Comment
Limited liability: why we should want more of it
On my previous post on corporate personhood I intended to also deal with the matter of limited liability–hence the URL of the post. However, I couldn’t do that in that post, so here it goes. Limited liability is a privilege … Continue reading
Posted in Bourgeois politics, Economics, History, Politics, Proletarian politics
Comments Off on Limited liability: why we should want more of it
Corporate personhood
One common complaint in anticapitalist circles is that the system of rights which once was designed to apply to human beings has been, through judicial interpretation, extended to so-called juridical persons–not persons at all, that is. Thus, corporations are given … Continue reading
Posted in Bourgeois politics, History, Politics, Proletarian politics
1 Comment
Left victimhood and the language of weakness
The working class is exploited and oppressed. This is the central premise for any genuine socialist consciousness. It’s possible to argue whether young Marx‘s notions of alienation, and similar ideas before his complete break with German idealist philosophy and Feuerbach … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics
Comments Off on Left victimhood and the language of weakness
Interest rates and fraud
The exploding LIBOR scandalis already bad enough, but there are more general problems with the inter-bank offered rates. When something like LIBOR comes up, the responses from the establishment are so predictable as to contain no information: “exceptional cases”, “bad … Continue reading
Posted in Economics
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Thoughts on culture in an age of superabundance
One of the biggest triumphs of capitalism lies in having created the impression that it’s a natural system. A non-specialist, when considering other times and societies, will almost certainly interpret them through the prism of capitalist assumptions: transferable property, free … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural analysis, Culture, History
1 Comment
The limits of populism: are we the 99%?
First off, I’d like to point out much of the reaction from the left–or perhaps I should say the sects–to the Occupy phenomenon seems to be misguided and full of sour grapes. Whether one has misgivings about the theoretical grounds … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics
Comments Off on The limits of populism: are we the 99%?
Retracing our steps: from the strait passage to genuine party democracy
From the Third Internationale onwards, a cardinal dichotomy in socialist circles has been that of opportunism and ultraleftism. The “line”, so Leninists–against whom, let this be clear, I have no animus–say, is like a complex navigation problem. Many are the … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics
Comments Off on Retracing our steps: from the strait passage to genuine party democracy
