В ожидании диссонанса

Аналитический доклад по Мониторингу выборов 19.09.2021

В условиях падения рейтингов «Единой России» (о чем свидетельствуют в том числе публично публикуемые опросы политически лояльного ВЦИОМ) потребность в дополнительной массовой агитации кандидатов ЕР через процедуру праймериз (ПВГ) во многом исчезла, что во многом предопределило сворачивание агитационной массовости кампании ПВГ, деградации процедуры ПВГ и ее фактическое превращение в деловую игру по возможностям административной мобилизации избирателей по регионам

https://liberal.ru/reports/v-ozhidanii-dissonansa

Phil Armstrong - Value and Crisis: Essays on Marxian Economics in Japan

Makoto Itoh’s Value and Crisis provides a valuable exposition of a school of Japanese interpretation of Marxist economics

Makoto Itoh has had a long and distinguished career as a Marxist economist and is one of the leading thinkers of the Uno School of Marxism. He is one of a select group of Japanese scholars of Marx who have published widely in English, both in books and journals. One of his major concerns has been Marx’s value theory and the first edition of this book (1980) had a global impact on the field. Itoh is particularly well known for his collaborations with Costas Lapavitsas, especially their jointly authored work, Political Economy of Money and Finance (1999). This volume has been influential on my own thinking, especially on the nature and development of banking

https://www.counterfire.org/articles/book-reviews/22523-value-and-crisis-essays-on-marxian-economics-in-japan-book-review

Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government

Despite the enormous influence of Michel Foucault in gender studies, social theory, and cultural studies, his work has been relatively neglected in the study of politics. Although he never published a book on the state, in the late 1970s Foucault examined the technologies of power used to regulate society and the ingenious recasting of power and agency that he saw as both consequence and condition of their operation. These twelve essays provide a critical introduction to Foucault's work on politics, exploring its relevance to past and current thinking about liberal and neo-liberal forms of government. Moving away from the great texts of liberal political philosophy, this book looks closely at the technical means with which the ideals of liberal political rationalities have been put into practice in such areas as schools, welfare, and the insurance industry. This fresh approach to one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century is essential reading for anyone interested in social and cultural theory, sociology, and politics.

Barbara Winslow - Sylvia Pankhurst - Sexual Politics and Political Activism

Along with her mother Emmeline, and her sister Christabel, Sylvia Pankhurst was one of the leading women’s suffrage activists in early twentieth-century England, working with the militant Women’s Social and Political Union. Unlike her family, however, who looked to parliament and spoke to elite and middle-class women’s concerns, Sylvia consistently looked to working women and the labour movement as central to her feminist politics. In this illuminating political biography, feminist historian Barbara Winslow recovers Sylvia Pankhurst’s life and work for a new generation of socialists and feminists. From Pankhurst’s organizing with immigrant and working women in London’s East End to her revolutionary communism and growing internationalism and anti-fascism, Winslow gives us the story of a brilliantly inspiring unorthodox feminist and unorthodox socialist. With a preface from internationally recognized socialist feminist historian and activist, Sheila Rowbotham.

Jacques Rancière: «The issue is to manage to maintain dissensus»

Interview with philosopher Jacques Rancière on the Covid-19 crisis, contemporary political upheavals the experience of art and film over the past year, and social media.

We met Jacques Rancière at his home in Paris with some tenacious questions in mind. Throughout his life, this thinker of workers’ emancipation, deeply attached to the idea of equality, has deconstructed authority figures and the haughtiness of the ‘knowers’. How, from this theoretical basis, does the philosopher view a historical sequence in which, under the effect of a virus, the words of experts stifle all others and cast precarious lives back into silence? How does the author of major works such as The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1987), Hatred of Democracy (2005) or The Emancipated Spectator (2008) see this radical repression of emancipation and dissent – a precondition for democratic debate and political action? In Les Mots et le Torts, a dialogue with the young Spanish philosopher Javier Bassas that has just been published, Althusser’s former student explains how he has always searched in his writing to ‘oppose to the identifications and distinctions of inegalitarian thinking a world of equality without borders’. It is an understatement to say that today the world of equality is faltering and that a handful of intellectuals and politicians have gained the upper hand in the war of words. From barricades to ‘safety measures’, Rancière X-rays the present time, seeking the possibilities of a new political moment.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/5132-jacques-ranciere-the-issue-is-to-manage-to-maintain-dissensus

Helen Davis - Understanding Stuart Hall

Understanding Stuart Hall traces the development of one of the most influential and respected figures within cultural studies. Focusing on Stuart Hall′s writings over a period of nearly fifty years, this volume offers students and academics a cogent and exploratory route through complex and overlapping areas of analysis. In her critical assessment of Hall′s most important contributions to academic and public debate, Davis shows the extent to which his analyses of race and ethnicity have been informed by early studies of Marxism, class and ′societies structured in dominance′. Davis offers fresh insight into the formation of one of the most prolific, charismatic and controversial intellectuals of his generation. Despite having been branded a ′cultural pessimist′, Stuart Hall has long been associated with encouraging new, cutting-edge scholarship within the field. This volume concludes with a discussion of Hall′s most recent political and academic interventions and his continuing commitment to innovation within the visual arts.

Hilary Goodfriend - The Changemaker

Since winning the presidency with a decisive mandate in 2019, Nayib Bukele the charismatic millennial millionaire president of El Salvador – has launched a major authoritarian crackdown: using the armed forces to intimidate parliamentarians; enforcing a militarized state of exception during the pandemic; attacking independent journalists; prosecuting the political opposition; and orchestrating a legislative coup to replace Supreme Court magistrates and the Attorney General. Backed by a sizeable portion of the population, Bukele is turning a weak neoliberal democracy into a militarized autocratic state. He has reversed the fragile gains of the 1992 Peace Accords, destroying the country’s post-civil war political system in the process. His rise to power, however, can only be understood in the context of that system’s extended crisis.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/changemaker

Julian Casablancas Breaks Down Capitalism and Marxism With Economist Richard D. Wolff

Julian Casablancas virtually sits down with economist Richard Wolff in the latest edition of the Strokes singer’s Rolling Stone interview series S.O.S. — Earth Is a Mess.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LOq5FxSQ1TQ

Romain Felli - The Great Adaptation - Climate, Capitalism and Catastrophe

The Great Adaptation tells the story of how scientists, governments and corporations have tried to deal with the challenge that climate change poses to capitalism by promoting adaptation to the consequences of climate change, rather than combating its causes. From the 1970s neoliberal economists and ideologues have used climate change as an argument for creating more “flexibility” in society, that is for promoting more market-based solutions to environmental and social questions. The book unveils the political economy of this potent movement, whereby some powerful actors are thriving in the face of dangerous climate change and may even make a profit out of it.

Энди Мерифилд - Городская жизнь в постковидную эпоху

Наши самые прозорливые эксперты-урбанисты в большинстве своем сходятся во мнении, что города, где активней всего бурлит жизнь — это города с наибольшим разнообразием. Разнообразием деятельности и людским разнообразием. Еще Джейн Джекобс подчеркивала взаимосвязь экономического разнообразия и социальной витальности: первое дает силу второму, экономическая активность обеспечивает приток людей, скопление людей, людей самых разных, каждый из которых в свою очередь по-своему помогает экономической активности держаться на плаву.  

Французский философ Анри Лефевр продвигал схожий тезис, хотя говорил о чуть ином. Его интересовали не столько экономические предпосылки разнообразия, сколько то, как это разнообразие отражается на динамике продуктивных встреч. Город Лефевра — это место встреч, густонаселенное и разнородное общественное пространство, где собираются люди. Живыми городские пространства становятся благодаря тому, что в них все рядом, благодаря тому что в них концентрируются различные социальные группы и предприятия.  Противоположностью, врагами встреч, и, соответственно, урбанизации, — Лефевр называл сегрегацию и сепарацию.

https://admarginem.ru/2021/08/10/gorodskaya-zhizn-v-postkovidnuyu-epohu-perevod-stati-endi-merifilda/

Ewa Majewska - Feminist Antifascism - Counterpublics of the Common

Feminism as the bulwark against fascism

In this exciting, innovative work, Polish feminist philosopher Ewa Majewska proposes a specifically feminist politics of antifascism. Mixing theoretical discussion with engaging reflections on personal experiences, Majewska proposes what she calls “counterpublics of the common” and “weak resistance,” offering an alternative to heroic forms of subjectivity produced by neoliberal capitalism and contemporary fascism.

История администрации президента. Почему это уже не самая влиятельная властная структура в стране?

Антон Вайно 12 августа отметил пятилетие на посту главы администрации президента (АП), а самой администрации этим летом 30 лет. Как изменилась структура за эти годы? Как из простого бюрократического аппарата она превратилась в самый влиятельный орган власти в стране? И почему она постепенно утрачивает это влияние? Историю АП рассказывают журналист Андрей Перцев и политический обозреватель Константин Гаазе в субботнем эпизоде «Что случилось».

В выпуске:
— Зачем Борис Ельцин создавал администрацию? Что входит в ее формальные обязанности и чем она на самом деле занимается?
— Кто важнее — руководитель АП или его заместитель? Почему первого замглавы АП Сергея Кириенко, отвечающего за внутреннюю политику, знают лучше Антона Вайно?
— Как Антону Вайно удалось продержаться в кресле руководителя дольше всех предшественников?
— Как администрация президента стала терять политический вес и превратилась в комбинат обслуживания Путина?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ugpNT49gak

Mathew Lawrence, Laurie Laybourn-Langton - Planet on Fire - A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown

The environment is collapsing at a rapid rate, and in increasingly unpredictable ways. How should the left respond? Building on the debates surrounding the Green New Deal, Lawrence and Laybourn-Langton argue that it is not enough merely to spend our way out of the crisis. Instead we need to rapidly change the shape and purpose of the economy, away from the emphasis on endless growth and towards creating a healthy and flourishing environment for everyone.

Dario Gentili - The Age of Precarity - Endless Crisis as an Art of Government

Crisis dominates the present historical moment. The economy is in crisis, politics in both its past and present forms is in crisis and our own individual lives are in crisis, made vulnerable by the fluctuations of the labor market and by the undoing of social and political ties we inherited from modernity. Yet, traditional views of crises as just temporary setbacks do not seem to hold any longer; this crisis seems permanent, with no way out and no alternatives on the horizon. Reconstructing a political genealogy of the term from the Greek world to today’s neoliberalism, this book demonstrates that crisis, understood as a “choice” between revolution and conservation, is a peculiarity of the modern era that does not apply to the present day. However, since its origin, the trope of crisis has proven to be one of the most effective instruments of social discipline and administration. The analytical trajectory followed by this book which spans from Plato to Hayek, from the juridical and medical science of antiquity to the current technocracy, passing through the “weapons of criticism” of Marx and Gramsci finally identifies, following Benjamin and Foucault, precariousness as the “form of life” that characterizes crisis understood as an art of government. But we still need to answer the question: “How can we recreate the possibility of political alternatives?”