Maddie Crum - The Story of the Lost Novel

Reading the book Simone de Beauvoir decided not to publish

I reread The Age of Discretion in order to write about a newly published book by de Beauvoir called Inseparable. Translated by Sandra Smith, the novel fictionalizes de Beauvoir’s friendship with a religiously and socially oppressed girl named Zaza Andrée in the book who died young, a formative tragedy for the novelist and philosopher. Zaza died in 1929, and de Beauvoir was haunted by her face in dreams, “yellowish . . . beneath a wide-brimmed pink hat, looking at her with reproach,” according to de Beauvoir’s adopted daughter and literary executor, Sylvie Le Bon-de Beauvoir. “To counteract the void and to never forget her,” the writer wove Zaza into “the unpublished novels written in her youth,” a collection called When Things of the Spirit Come First, as well as a passage later removed from her novel The Mandarins. Clearly, she was compelled to write about her friend and compelled to keep that writing to herself. Written in 1954, the year The Mandarins was published, Inseparable was “conserved by Simone despite her critical judgement of it.”

https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-story-of-the-lost-novel-crum

Conspiracy Theories, the Staple Diet of European Populism

Many thanks to our colleagues at Voxeurop for inviting us to republish this interview with Andreas Önnerfors, Professor in Intellectual History in Salzburg, Austria. He specializes in far-right ideology in Europe, radicalisation, and conspiracy theories. His latest book, coedited withAndré Krouwel, is Europe: continent of conspiracies, an overview of conspiracy theory with contributions by other academics. In this interview he explains the specificities of European conspiracism and which theories specifically target the EU.

https://lefteast.org/conspiracy-theories-european-populism-onnerfors/

Che Guevara Talks to Young People

A Pathfinder upgraded edition. In eight talks from 1959 to 1964, the Argentine-born revolutionary challenges youth of Cuba and the world to study, to work, to become disciplined. To join the front lines of struggles, small and large. To politicize their organizations and themselves. To become a different kind of human being as they strive together with working people of all lands to transform the world. And, along this course, to revel in the spontaneity and joy of being young. Introduction by Mary-Alice Waters, 12-page photo section and other photos, glossary, index. Now with enlarged type.

Renzo Llorente - The Political Theory of Che Guevara

Nearly half a century after his death, Ernesto “Che” Guevara remains a compelling and controversial figure. He was an original social theorist, and many of his writings attest to an innovative interpretation of various concepts and commitments central to Marxist thought. This is one of the first works to comprehensively consider his contribution to social and political theory for a student audience. Firstly, the book provides thorough and reliable accounts of the key theses, concepts and commitments that give Che Guevara’s theoretical, and political, orientation its distinctive character. It addresses Guevara’s views on topics such as work, morality in socialism, egalitarianism, prefigurative politics, internationalism, and the process of “disembourgeoisement”. Secondly, the study situates Guevara’s ideas within the context of the Marxist theoretical tradition and, on the other hand, twentieth-century Latin American social thought. To this end, it will explore both the affinities and dissimilarities between Guevara's views on certain fundamental questions and the views represented by such figures as Marx, Lenin, Herbert Marcuse and José Carlos Mariátegui. Finally, The Political Thought of Che Guevara will provide critical assessments of Che’s key ideas, many of which remain relevant to contemporary debates in socialist theory.

Adam Tooze - Will COVID End Neoliberalism?

Economist Adam Tooze discusses how the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic differs from prior economic crashes, how elites have responded to the pandemic, and how COVID might shape the future development of China’s political and economic power.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I50LW7BtqRs

Marco D’Eramo - Sceptical Credulity

They looked at me with a benevolent smile, almost pitying my credulity, my capacity to be fooled. This person, whom I met by chance, was in their sixties, had taught at the Sorbonne and published several books. They immediately told me they would never get the Covid vaccine. They smiled when I objected that over the course of their life they had unthinkingly accepted over a dozen vaccines, from smallpox to polio, and that to enter a whole host of countries every one of us has been inoculated – against tetanus, yellow fever and so on – with relative serenity. ‘But this vaccine isn’t like the others,’ they replied, as if privy to information from which I had been shielded. At this point I understood that there was nothing I could say to shake their granitic certainty.  

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sceptical-credulity

Aleida March - Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara

For the first time, Aleida March evokes the memories of her partner, Ernesto Che Guevara. She describes their great romance and life together from the days when they first met as fellow guerrillas in Cuba's revolutionary war up to the tragic moment when she learned of Che's assassination in Bolivia less than a decade later.

As Che's widow, Aleida writes with passion and poignancy of their shared political dreams for the future and their family. Never before have readers been offered such an intimate insight into the man behind one of the great political symbols of our time. Includes one hundred intimate photos taken from the private family albums of Che with his children and his wife, including the last photos of Che and Aleida together when Che had disguised himself in preparation for his secret mission to Bolivia.  Also includes facsimiles of postcards and letters Che sent to his family from abroad, as well as poems written to Aleida and a moving short story sent from Africa.

This book reveals Aleida's own great strength and courage as she came to terms with her private loss while under the international spotlight of millions of others who also mourned the death of a world-famous revolutionary, perhaps comparable to Yoko Ono after the death of John Lennon. She also describes her efforts to raise her four children as ordinary children despite their father's legendary status in Cuba and abroad.

The awakening of Latin America: a classic anthology of Che Guevara's writings on Latin America

The name Che Guevara is synonymous with Latin America. This classic anthology on Latin America shows the Argentine-born revolutionary’s cultural depth, rigorous intellect and intense emotional engagement with a continent and its people. Selected from his family’s personal archives, this book offers the best of Che’s writing: examples of his journalism, essays, speeches, letters and even his poetry, revealing the evolution of an extraordinary mind from that of an impressionable young medical student to the “heroic guerrilla,” brutally assassinated in Bolivia. This anthology of Che Guevara's writing on Latin America is destined to become an instant classic comparable to Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America.

«В российском обществе есть изгои»

Михаил Лобанов – независимый кандидат, выступающий от КПРФ на выборах в Госдуму Российской Федерации. Он говорит о популярности левых идей среди населения и хочет сделать парламент средством для продвижения идей борьбы за права граждан.

https://humanite-russie.ru/2021/09/18/v-rossiyskom-obschestve-est-izgoi/

Doug Henwood - Occupy Wall Street at 10: It Was Annoying, But It Changed the World

Ten years ago, I was ready to throw in the towel on this whole politics business, writes Doug Henwood — things were too bleak. Then Occupy Wall Street kicked off. Now, thank God, we’re living in the world Occupy created.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/09/occupy-wall-street-ten-year-anniversary-99-percent-new-york

Helen Yaffe - Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution

Che Guevara is an iconic figure, four decades after his death. Yet his most significant contribution is largely unknown his work as a member of the Cuban government is rarely discussed. This book explores his impact on Cuba's economy, through fascinating new archival material and interviews.

К.ф.н. Антон Бархатков продолжает разбор антикоммунистической книги сэра Карла Раймунда Поппера «Открытое общество и его враги». На этот раз речь пойдет о двух других врагах свободы, демократии и открытого общества – Аристотеле и Гегеле.

https://youtu.be/X9wIUMsOBRo

At the Side of Che Guevara: Interviews with Harry Villegas (Pombo)

Villegas talks about the struggles he has taken part in over four decades in Cuba, the Congo, and Bolivia, to the war in Angola and the defeat of the South African apartheid army at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988.