Author Archives: modulus

About modulus

Modulus is an unaffiliated Marxist from South Western EU (Spanish state). He studied computer science and law, and is at present preparing for civil service exams for the Spanish administration. An avid IRC user, he enjoys arguments and will occasionally play devil's advocate. He regards himself as orthodox and is concerned about unscientific attitudes on the left on such things as nuclear energy, biotechnology, and so on. His support for the European Union as a platform to unify the class struggle across the continent has earned him plenty of strong opposition, and doubtless will continue to do so; until, that is, his view is vindicated by history.

Forum of Contradiction: a complementary space

IRC makes for a very good way to communicate in realtime, especially for multi-user chat with people one doesn’t necessarily know already. In my view, it is a far superior means to the modern so-called instant messaging systems such as … Continue reading

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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

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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

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Debate on sortition

On the 27th of August, the IRC ##marxism channel on Freenode celebrated its first team debate. If this doesn’t mean a lot to you, check the ##marxism debates page for more information. Basically, ##marxism is a channel on IRC–a text … Continue reading

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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