Paul Bowman - Post-Marxism Versus Cultural Studies: Theory, Politics and Intervention

Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies is an innovative exploration of the ethical and political significance of Cultural Studies and Post-Marxist discourse theory. It argues that although Cultural Studies and post-Marxism tend to present themselves as distinct entities, they actually share a project that of taking on the political. Post-Marxism presents itself as having a developed theory of political strategy, while Cultural Studies has claimed to be both practical and political. Bowman examines these intertwined, overlapping, controversial and contested claims and orientations by way of a deconstructive reading that is led by the question of intervention: what is the intervention of post-Marxism, of Cultural Studies, of each into the other, and into other institutional and political contexts and scenes? Through considerations of key aspects of Cultural Studies and cultural theory, Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies argues that the very thing that is fundamental to both of these ‘politicised’ approaches the quest to establish a theory of intervention, and to relate this to a practice actually remains frustrated and unrealised as a direct result of the way this has been approached. Because of this stalemate, Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies proposes a new theory of pragmatic intervention one that is derived from Derridean deconstruction, post-Marxism and Cultural Studies, and which will be of importance and value for politicised academics and intellectuals working in all areas of political and Cultural Studies.

Jon Schwarz - The Murder of the U.S. Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week

Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers was the first huge offensive in corporate America’s war on everyone else

Forty years ago, on August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers and barred them from ever working again for the federal government. By October of that year, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, the union that had called the strike, had been decertified and lay in ruins. The careers of most of the individual strikers were similarly dead: While Bill Clinton lifted Reagan’s ban on strikers in 1993, fewer than 10 percent were ever rehired by the Federal Aviation Administration.

PATCO was dominated by Vietnam War-era veterans who’d learned air traffic control in the military and were one of a vanishingly small number of unions to endorse Reagan in 1980, thereby scoring one of the greatest own goals in political history. It’s easy to imagine strikers expressing the same sentiments as a Trump voter who famously lamented, “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/06/middle-class-reagan-patco-strike/

Jason Hackworth - The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism

The shift in the ideological winds toward a "free-market" economy has brought profound effects in urban areas. The Neoliberal City presents an overview of the effect of these changes on today's cities. The term "neoliberalism" was originally used in reference to a set of practices that first-world institutions like the IMF and World Bank impose on third-world countries and cities. The support of unimpeded trade and individual freedoms and the discouragement of state regulation and social spending are the putative centerpieces of this vision. More and more, though, people have come to recognize that first-world cities are undergoing the same processes.

In The Neoliberal City, Jason Hackworth argues that neoliberal policies are in fact having a profound effect on the nature and direction of urbanization in the United States and other wealthy countries, and that much can be learned from studying its effect. He explores the impact that neoliberalism has had on three aspects of urbanization in the United States: governance, urban form, and social movements. The American inner city is seen as a crucial battle zone for the wider neoliberal transition primarily because it embodies neoliberalism's antithesis, Keynesian egalitarian liberalism. Focusing on issues such as gentrification in New York City; public-housing policy in New York, Chicago, and Seattle; downtown redevelopment in Phoenix; and urban-landscape change in New Brunswick, N.J., Hackworth shows us how material and symbolic changes to institutions, neighborhoods, and entire urban regions can be traced in part to the rise of neoliberalism.

John Tomlinson - Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction

In Cultural Imperialism, John Tomlinson deals with issues ranging from the ideological effects of imported cultural products, to the process of cultural homogenization, to the nature of cultural autonomy. He examines a number of related discourses: thedebate about "media imperialism" the discourse of national cultural identity; the critique of multinational capitalism and the critique of cultural modernity. His analysis reveals major problems in the way in which the idea of cultural, as distinct from economic or political, imperialism is formulated.

Vanessa Williamson - The Austerity Politics of White Supremacy

Since the end of the Confederacy, the cult of the “taxpayer” has provided a socially acceptable veneer for racist attacks on democracy

From the Southern strategy of the 1960s to Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the presidential election, it is easy to trace the Republican Party’s decades-long descent into racial authoritarianism. Despite the president’s unhinged response to the election results, the real locus of power is the Senate, where Republican legislators have been striking sober-sounding notes about the need for smaller government, an end to relief spending, and the danger of higher taxes. Those desperate to see a return to normalcy may hail this born-again fiscal conservatism as a departure from Trump’s racist, antidemocratic politics. Historically speaking, this is a false distinction.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-austerity-politics-of-white-supremacy

Suleiman Mourad - After the Blast

It has been just over a year since the devastating explosion at Beirut’s port on 4 August 2020, which destroyed several neighborhoods and shattered the national psyche. The blast was all too predictable: the upshot of a 2013 decision by port authorities to confiscate a cargo ship carrying 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate and store it in a warehouse without proper safety provisions. Few believed that the political system would survive the fallout. Yet so far it has persisted, even in the absence of a stable government. Sporadic outbursts of public anger have not been enough to prompt a widespread change in political allegiances. For many, recent developments have paradoxically affirmed the need for institutionalized sectarianism and corruption. To uncover the reasons for this stasis, we must place the events of last summer in a broader historical perspective. 

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/after-the-blast

Perry Anderson - The Indian Ideology: Second, Enlarged Edition

The historiography of modern India is largely a pageant of presumed virtues: harmonious territorial unity, religious impartiality, the miraculous survival of electoral norms in the world’s most populous democracy. Even critics of injustices within Indian society still underwrite such claims. But how well does the ‘Idea of India’ correspond to the realities of the Union? In an iconoclastic intervention, Marxist historian Perry Anderson provides an unforgettable reading of the Subcontinent’s passage through Independence and the catastrophe of Partition, the idiosyncratic and corrosive vanities of Gandhi and Nehru, and the close interrelationship of Indian democracy and caste inequality. The Indian Ideology caused uproar on first publication in 2012, not least for breaking with euphemisms for Delhi’s occupation of Kashmir. This new, expanded edition includes the author’s reply to his critics, an interview with the late Praful Bidwai of the Indian weekly Outlook, and a postscript on India under the rule of Narendra Modi. Anderson considers whether his regime is as much of a break with the practices and thought processes of Congress rule as is generally supposed.

Saanya Goyal Jain - Anthro-washing

On the rise, and limits, of corporate anthropology

The connection between anthropology and business is not new. Corporate support for anthropologists goes back to the very founding of the discipline in the 1920s. From the philanthropic funding of colonial expeditions led by anthropologists to the Rockefellers finding positions for anthropologists at the newly created Harvard Business School itself founded in part with a Rockefeller donation businesses have long supplied alternatives to the precarity of life as an academic anthropologist.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/anthro-washing-goyal-jain

Vivek Chibber -
Why Doesn't Capitalism Collapse?

Vivek Chibber explains why capitalism remains so durable and how it prevents workers from revolting.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c5bX31kS3-o

Четвёртая акция против ковидных паспортов

От Тулона до Лилля, по Франции прокатилась четвёртая волна протестов. Люди недовольны введением санитарных паспортов и обязательной вакцинацией медперсонала. Закон о соответствующих мерах был одобрен Конституционным советом 5 августа. В Париже корреспонденты «Юманите» присоединились к колонне «жёлтых жилетов», начавших шествия и района Дефанс.

https://humanite-russie.ru/2021/08/10/chetvyortaya-aktsiya-protiv-kovidnyh-pasportov/

William Tsutsui - Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan

Japanese industry is the envy of the world for its efficient and humane management practices. Yet, as William Tsutsui argues, the origins and implications of "Japanese-style management" are poorly understood. Contrary to widespread belief, Japan's acclaimed strategies are not particularly novel or even especially Japanese. Tsutsui traces the roots of these practices to Scientific Management, or Taylorism, an American concept that arrived in Japan at the turn of the century. During subsequent decades, this imported model was embraced and ultimately transformed in Japan's industrial workshops. Imitation gave rise to innovation as Japanese managers sought a "revised" Taylorism that combined mechanistic efficiency with respect for the humanity of labor.

Tsutsui's groundbreaking study charts Taylorism's Japanese incarnation, from the "efficiency movement" of the 1920s, through Depression-era "rationalization" and wartime mobilization, up to postwar "productivity" drives and quality-control campaigns. Taylorism became more than a management tool; its spread beyond the factory was a potent intellectual template in debates over economic growth, social policy, and political authority in modern Japan. Tsutsui's historical and comparative perspectives reveal the centrality of Japanese Taylorism to ongoing discussions of Japan's government-industry relations and the evolution of Fordist mass production. He compels us to rethink what implications Japanese-style management has for Western industries, as well as the future of Japan itself.

Ekaitz Cancela, Stuart Medina - Consultancy Capitalism Is Allowing Private Firms to Control Public Funds

The EU’s promised €750 billion in recovery spending has been a boost for consultancy firms like Deloitte and PwC, hired to plan where funds are directed. These businesses’ growing control over public spending isn’t just undemocratic it’s a recipe for corruption.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/08/consultancy-capitalism-private-sector-neoliberalism

Vivek Chibber - The Fall and Rise of the American Left

Vivek Chibber explains what led to the drastic decline of the American Left and what it will take to revive it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8mpofVyzpbw

Шесть лекций о неолиберализме

Курс Вадима Квачёва о неолиберализме:

Встреча 1. Либерализм и неолиберализм
https://syg.ma/@neoliberal-condition/nieolibieralizm-ekonomika-politika-i-kultura-ghieghiemonii-pozdniegho-kapitalizma-vstriecha-1-libieralizm-i-nieolibieralizm

Встреча 2. Фридрих Хайек. Утопия неолиберализма
https://syg.ma/@antiuniviersitet/khaiiek-utopiia-nieolibieralizma

Встреча 3. Милтон Фридман. Realpolitik неолиберализма
https://syg.ma/@antiuniviersitet/milton-fridman-realpolitik-nieolibieralizma

Встреча 4. Неолиберализм и Фуко
https://syg.ma/@antiuniviersitet/nieolibieralizm-i-fuko

Встреча 5. Неолиберализм и демократия: конец солидарности
https://syg.ma/@antiuniviersitet/nieolibieralizm-i-diemokratiia-koniets-solidarnosti

Встреча 6. Культура неолиберализма
https://syg.ma/@antiuniviersitet/kultura-nieolibieralizma