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Author Archives: yeksmesh
Centrism extremism: how horseshoe-politics silences brutality
Extremism as a concept is central to current popular political discourse. In its common definition, however, it is also a highly flawed. Its use shows a bias towards centrist politics that silences a history of extremism. Centrists are just as well … Continue reading
Posted in Bourgeois politics, Critique of the Left, History, Politics, Uncategorized
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Syriza and Israel: Syriza’s response
A few weeks ago the story broke that the Syriza-led Greek government continued military cooperation with Israel. Since the party has advocated ceasing all military cooperation with Israel, commentators on the left quickly classified this behaviour as degeneration and betrayal. … Continue reading
Posted in Critique of the Left, Politics, Uncategorized
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The four contradictions of liberalism
Liberalism produced some of the greatest political advances of our age. As socialists we often obscure this, but civil and political rights combined with representative democracy make for one of the most potent and liberating achievements of the period following the … Continue reading
Posted in Bourgeois politics, History, Politics, Proletarian politics
3 Comments
Trotsky and TTIP: how secret diplomacy serves elite interests
“Secret diplomacy shall not be tolerated for a single moment during the negotiations. Our flyers and our radio service will keep all the nations informed of every proposition we make, and of the answers they elicit from Germany. We shall … Continue reading
Posted in Geopolitics, Politics
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Why autonomists make good journalists
Much loathed and admired within the leftist community, autonomists represent a small but mixed bunch. With their focus on the daily, small-scale class struggle, their squats and auto-reduction, and their sometimes incomprehensible jargon they elicit both fascination and contempt from … Continue reading
Posted in Critique of the Left, Culture, Politics, Proletarian politics, Uncategorized
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Why is the left so obsessed with degeneration?
There is a specter haunting the radical left, the specter of degeneration. Okay, that might sound a bit dramatic but the left today really is scared a great deal of something called various things to various people. Whether we call … Continue reading
Posted in Critique of the Left, Politics, Uncategorized
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Spontaneity, control and socialist organization
In this article I wish to write down some of my thoughts on socialist organization, more specifically on spontaneity and control within the working class and how this relates to socialist organization(s). The thinking underlying this article starts with the … Continue reading
Posted in Critique of the Left, Proletarian politics
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Review – Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus: A World-System Biography – Georgi M. Derluguian
The title of this book by itself could already warrant a read, yet there is much more to find in this book, its interesting title aside. The work mainly deals with the question of the Soviet Union and particularly its … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural analysis, Geopolitics, History
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Revolution: towards a new approach
The first article I wrote on this Spirit of Contradiction was one on revolution, and more specifically a critique of the radical leftist approach to revolution. In this article I wish to return to this subject and repeat some of … Continue reading
Posted in Critique of the Left
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On ideology and culture
“Related to this, but not entirely the same, is the tendency to classify certain movements not by their actual structure, forms, and ways of struggle, but by the specific, formal ideology they adopt to describe themselves. As such, a movement … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural analysis, Culture, Politics, Proletarian politics
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Notes on electoralism
For the record this article is not an attempt by me to sketch out an all encompassing view on the uses of electoralism in the revolutionary process, as I think that such a view needs to be based upon thorough … Continue reading
Posted in Critique of the Left, Politics, Proletarian politics
6 Comments
Some notes on the historiography of revolutions and revolutionary events
The study of revolutionary events, and besides that the study of the movements that aspire to create them, is one area of historical study that is very relevant and very popular within the radical left, and as I would argue … Continue reading
Posted in History, Politics, Proletarian politics
2 Comments
Crime and migration: towards a leftist response
In recent years, and particularly in reaction to the latest wave of austerity measures, we have seen an upswing in the size and importance of parties that are to the left of social democracy, a development that is greeted with … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Proletarian politics
1 Comment
The nature of the economic transition
This is the third article in my series on having an economic transition prior to a political seizure of power, which stands in contrast to the dominant view in the radical left that emphasises the seizure of political power from … Continue reading
Posted in History, Politics, Proletarian politics
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