Andrew Cockburn - The Spoils of War: The Truth Behind the U.S. Lust for War

Why Does America Go to War? In the last decades, America has gone to war as supposed defenders of democracy. The War on Terror was waged to protect the west from the dangers of Islamists. US Solders are stationed in over 800 locations across the world to act as the righteous arbiters of the rule of law. In What The Spoils of War Andrew Cockburn brilliantly dissects the intentions behind Washington's martial appetites. The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the "private passions" and "interests" of those who control it - principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as he witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer's urgent financial requirements; the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 "because it will do us good at budget time." Based on years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: squalid, and at the same time terrifyingly dangerous.

Cedric Johnson - Huey P. Newton and the Last Days of the Black Colony

Huey Newton’s shifting political analysis illuminates both the limits and the ongoing relevance of the radicalism of the Black Panther era.

Like the broader movement he gave birth to, Newton’s life was at various turns inspirational and tragic. Following his release, Newton struggled to integrate back into party life. The international campaign to win his freedom had made Newton a powerful symbol of the organization, but in many ways the party had outgrown his command, and others vied for influence beyond the Bay Area. The combined weight of heightened police repression and his own paranoia fueled Newton’s addiction and reprehensible behavior. His rhetoric and political courage inspired thousands to stand against war, racism, and imperialism, and yet at other moments he succumbed to personal acts of brutality and self-destruction.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/huey-p-newton-and-the-last-days-of-the-black-colony

Jean-Claude Kongo, Leo Zeilig - Sankara’s elusive socialism

Jean-Claude Kongo and Leo Zeilig look at Thomas Sankara’s reforms in Burkina Faso in the 1980s. Sankara understood that Africa had to find its own path to development, and this would require redistribution of wealth and severing the ties with imperialism. Yet ultimately Sankara’s project of transformation proved too weak.

https://roape.net/2021/09/23/sankaras-elusive-socialism/

Aleksander Kaczorowski - A Communist LSD Trip 

The Story of Czechoslovak Acid

The history of Czechoslovak LSD is one of the greatest phenomena of the second half of the 20th century. How come for almost a quarter of a century, in a communist state, thousands of people, including many popular artists such as Karel Gott, were able to use psychedelic drugs entirely legally

https://przekroj.pl/en/society/a-communist-lsd-trip-aleksander-kaczorowski

The Marxist Who Saw the Fall of the German Left

An interview with Frank Deppe

The postwar German left has had a lot of ups and downs and leading Marxist political scientist Frank Deppe was there for most of them. On his 80th birthday, he spoke to Jacobin about the need to root left-wing politics in the changed realities of the modern working class.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/frank-deppe-germany-marxism-socialism-antifascism-academia-leftist

Jacob Collins - Montaldi’s Notebooks

It was in the pages of the journal Quaderni rossi (Red Notebooks) that the theoretical and political current known as Operaismo (Workerism) began to take shape in Italy during the early 1960s. Central to this body of thought was the idea that the working-class exists as an autonomous, self-constituting force, and not merely as a passive victim of capital’s onslaught. Among its most original contributions was an emphasis on the relationship between capitalist expansion and the formation of working-class subjectivities. This was explored to particularly brilliant effect by one of the journal’s founders, Danilo Montaldi, a figure little known outside Italy. Through oral history and autobiography, Montaldi’s work produced a living image of worker and lumpen subjectivities in motion, one without parallel in Marxist theory.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/montaldis-notebooks

Жак Лакан - Акт основания

Я основываю в таком же одиночестве, в каком я всегда пребывал в моем отношении к делу психоанализа Французскую школу психоанализа, руководство которой я буду обеспечивать в течение четырех последующих лет, поскольку в настоящем мне ничто не препятствует отвечать за это лично.

Под этим названием я намереваюсь представить организацию, где должна совершаться работа: которая, в рамках поля исследований, открытого Фрейдом, возрождает острый лемех его истины; которая возвращает первоначальную практику, учрежденную им под именем психоанализа, к возложенным на нее обязанностям в нашем сообществе; которая посредством упорной критики изобличает отступничество и компрометирование принципов, что замедляют ее прогресс, искажая её применение.

https://syg.ma/@intraduction/zhak-lakan-akt-osnovaniia

Lola Olufemi - Claudia Jones: A life in search of the communist horizon

A lifelong communist, revolutionary poet and Black feminist organizer, Claudia Jones lived her many lives in the service of collective liberation.

https://roarmag.org/essays/claudia-jones-olufemi/

К. Митрошенков - Как Томас Манн (почти) подружился с коммунизмом

О книге «Я не попутчик...“: Томас Манн и Советский Союз»

Времена писателей, способных влиять на мировую политику, продлились недолго и остались в прошлом, но назвать исчерпывающими наши знания о том, как именно литераторы реализовывали свои политические амбиции в условиях биполярного мира, пока еще сложно. Почему, например, Томаса Манна, «буржуазного индивидуалиста», так высоко ценили в СССР и десятилетиями пытались привлечь к сотрудничеству, а автор «Волшебной горы» хотя и держал некоторую дистанцию, но не отвергал советских ухаживаний?

https://gorky.media/reviews/kak-tomas-mann-pochti-podruzhilsya-s-kommunizmom/

Meagan Day & Seth Ackerman - Are We Really the 99% vs the 1%?

Jacobin editors Meagan Day and Seth Ackerman whether the language of the “99% vs the 1%” still remains useful ten years after Occupy Wall Street.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iin3Ouf3yyQ

Кирилл Рогов - Кто рулит историей? Политический спрос и предложение в условиях гибридного режима и случая России

Гибридные режимы, т.е. политические режимы, совмещающие демократические и авторитарные практики, стали центральной проблемой сравнительной политологии последнего десятилетия. Что определяет динамику таких режимов?
Одни политологи считают, что устойчивость политических режимов обеспечивается консолидацией элит, а политические перемены являются следствием внутриэлитных расколов. Другие отдают приоритет структурным факторам -- экономическому развитию и условиям формирования в общественном мнении устойчивого спроса на перемены. Кто менее прав и что определяет динамику общественного спроса в «переходном» обществе? Что добавляет наш опыт к этой полемике?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MYm27K7MI9w

Jared Loggins - The House That Charles Built

Over a long career as a public intellectual, Charles Mills used his gut-punching wit and moral clarity in defense of racial justice

Mills was best known for his first and now canonical 1997 book The Racial Contract, in which he began a lifelong crusade against the unspoken but tacitly accepted centrality of whiteness in modern liberal thought and practice. At best, he argued, modern liberalism was indifferent to racial inequality. At worst, it was actively committed to reproducing it. Yet, his towering philosophical contribution was aimed not at throwing liberalism into the dustbin as one might expect. Much to the dismay of his critics, Mills set about reconstructing it.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-house-that-charles-built

Philip Clayton, Justin Heinzekehr - Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe

This revolutionary book fuses the enduring legacy of socialism government for the common good with the best of the environmental movement and the newest insights from sustainability studies. The result is a manifesto in the tradition of Bill McKibben’s Eaarth a roadmap forward in the face of the growing environmental catastrophe, which is the most complex crisis humanity has ever faced. Catherine Keller writes, “What an unexpected, discomforting and important work! If Marxism seemed to be abandoned in the West to a few academic leftists and nostalgic activists, the authors bring it roaring back into relevance.” American conservatives like to say that Marxism was destroyed by its opponents and by the mistakes of Marxist governments. Organic Marxism provides the definitive answer to this charge. New economic evidence reveals that Marx’s predictions are coming true in ways once thought impossible. Today the wealthiest class, the richest 1%, possesses more wealth and power than ever before, whereas the 99% are slipping economically, and the majority of humans live in increasing poverty.

Above all else, the global environmental crisis changes everything. Clayton and Heinzekehr show how, over the last decades, rich individuals and multinational corporations have acted selfishly to increase their own wealth with devastating ecological consequences. The data make it clear that the planet has reached the limits of its capacity. The authors trace the unimaginable environmental and social consequences that (scientists tell us) global warming will bring: mass extinctions, food and water shortages, violent weather, rising oceans. Why then do our governments continue to favor the wealthy? Why do they take no action or actually worsen the situation? Organic Marxism shows why the situation is not hopeless, however. The vast majority of humans favor sustainable systems and lifestyles. With this growing support, it’s possible to begin laying the foundations for a new, ecological civilization on this planet. In these pages Clayton and Heinzekehr lay out the steps toward a fair and sustainable society, one run not in the interests of the rich but for the common good.

Закрутят ли гайки после выборов? Скорее всего, да

В 2020–2021 годах в России усилились репрессии — разгромленными оказались неподконтрольная Кремлю оппозиция, ряд СМИ и общественных организаций. Когда это началось и чем кончится? Обсуждаем с аналитиком «ОВД-Инфо» Григорием Охотиным.

00:58 О чем этот выпуск
04:49 Как изменились методы давления
08:00 Чем репрессии 2011-2012 годов отличаются от современных
17:53 Эффективны ли репрессии
21:10 Культура протеста в России
25:18 Почему давление не прекратится после выборов

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=awsBR9y6ezs

Andreas Reckwitz - The End of Illusions: Politics, Economy, and Culture in Late Modernity

We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future.  Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years.  Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism.

Marco Fonseca - Gramsci's Critique of Civil Society: Towards a New Concept of Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist thinker whose radical ideas on how to build an alternative world from below remain vigorously relevant today. Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis critically dissects the institutions of modern liberal democracy to reveal what is perhaps its deepest secret: it is the most successful political system in modernity at preserving an objective condition of domination while transforming it into a subjective conviction of freedom. Based on a careful reading of Gramsci's The Prison Notebooks, Marco Fonseca shows hegemony as more than leadership of elites over subaltern majorities based on "consent". Following Gramsci’s critique of citizenship, civil society and democracy, including the current project of neoliberal "democracy promotion" particularly in the Global South, he discloses a hidden process of hegemony that generates the preconditions for consent and, thus, successful domination. As the struggles from Zapatismo to Chavismo and from the Arab Springs to Spain’s Podemos show, liberation is not possible without counter-hegemony. This book will be of interest to activist scholars engaged in the study of Marxism, Gramsci, political philosophy, and contemporary debates about the renewal of Marxist thought and the relevance of revolution and Communism for the twenty-first century.