Leonardo Salamini - The Sociology of Political Praxis: An Introduction to Gramsci's Theory

This volume analyses the philosophical nature of Gramsci’s Marxism and its Hegelian source, the radical critique of the economistic tradition and the original analyses of the role of superstructures, ideology, consciousness and subjectivity in the revolutionary process. It relates the central themes of Gramsci’s writings, such as hegemony, ‘historical blocs’, the role of intellectuals and political praxis, to the more peripheral ones, such as science, language, literature and art. The introduction includes a brief intellectual biography of Gramsci.

John Schwarzmantel - The Routledge guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison notebooks

Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks are one of the most important and original sources of modern political philosophy but the Prison Notebooks present great difficulties to the reader. Not originally intended for publication, their fragmentary character and their often cryptic language can mystify readers, leading to misinterpretation of the text. The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks provides readers with the historical background, textual analysis and other relevant information needed for a greater understanding and appreciation of this classic text. This guidebook:

• Explains the arguments presented by Gramsci in a clear and straightforward way, analysing the key concepts of the notebooks.
• Situates Gramsci’s ideas in the context of his own time, and in the history of political thought demonstrating the innovation and originality of the Prison Notebooks.
• Provides critique and analysis of Gramsci’s conceptualisation of politics and history (and culture in general), with reference to contemporary examples where relevant.
• Examines the relevance of Gramsci in the modern world and discusses why his ideas have such resonance in academic discourse

Featuring historical and political examples to illustrate Gramsci's arguments, along with suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to engage more fully with The Prison Notebooks

James Jackson - Olaf Scholz Is Not Your Friend

Polls for today’s German election point to a once unlikely victory for Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. The party’s campaign has focused on Scholz’s personal credentials as a future chancellor yet his record suggests he will never stand up to the powerful.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/olaf-scholz-german-election-merkel-credentials-scandals-chancellor-spd-coalition-machine-politics/

Почему Путин накажет Медведева после победы «Единой России» на выборах?

25 сентября президент Владимир Путин встретился с руководителями партий, которые прошли в Госдуму по итогам выборов. Несмотря на успех «Единой России», Дмитрий Медведев может лишиться должности главы партии. Что не устраивает президента? Кто может занять место Медведева? И какие политические ошибки помешали Медведеву построить успешную карьеру? Обсуждаем в новом эпизоде политического шоу «Перцев и Гаазе».

О чем это эпизод:
00:16 Главный итог выборов в Думу
08:36 О подкасте «После 9/11»
09:20 Что не так с Дмитрием Медведевым
15:48 Болотную организовал Кремль?
21:21 Что случилось с олигархами Медведева
28:00 Как увольняли Алексея Кудрина
30:50 Чем Путин отличается от Медведева
33:06 В чем ошибся Медведев
41:24 Как происходила рокировка в 2011 году
46:00 Как изменился Медведев после 2014 года
49:22 Каким мэром Москвы мог быть Медведев
55:07 Почему Путин так жесток с преемниками

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

Derek Boothman - The New Edition of Gramsci’s Lettere dal carcere (Prison Letters)

2020 saw the publication of a new edition of Gramsci’s Lettere dal carcere (Prison Letters), commissioned by the Einaudi publishing house, the main and “official” publishers of Gramsci’s writings since the very first edition of the Lettere back in 1947. This 1947 publication, a landmark edition and the first ever collection of Gramsci’s writings in volume form, was published on the tenth anniversary of his death and gained the posthumous award of the most prestigious literary prize in Italy, the Premio Viareggio. Over the course of the decades since the first edition, much work has been done, not only to find unpublished letters, but to better understand their whole background and integrate everything into Gramsci’s complex personal, political and cultural biography. The publication, under the editorship of Francesco Giasi, director of the Gramsci Foundation in Rome, is now the fifth major one in Italian, together with all their various reprints.

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&context=gramsci

Dean Baker - We Need Alternatives to Cryptocurrency

Economist Dean Baker discusses China's new ban on cryptocurrency transactions and looks at the pharmaceutical industry’s ironclad grip on American politics.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ecQ4L8bJffs

Bahruz Samadov - One year after the Karabakh war, politics in Azerbaijan has come to an end

With the Aliyev regime still triumphant one year on from its military takeover in Nagorno-Karabakh, chances for dialogue - whether over Karabakh or inside Azerbaijan are non-existent

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/one-year-after-the-karabakh-war-politics-in-azerbaijan-has-come-to-an-end/

Eric Foner - Freedom to Exclude

In Freedom to Discriminate, Gene Slater, who has spent four decades as a consultant to states and municipalities on housing policy, makes a powerful case that California’s real estate brokers not only originated a system of residential segregation that became a model for the entire nation, but also effectively mobilized support for Proposition 14 by invoking the central idea in America’s political vocabulary: freedom. The issue, they insisted, was not race but white property owners’ “freedom of association,” or, more simply, “freedom of choice.” They described government enforcement of the right of Blacks to purchase a home as reverse discrimination against whites. Providing a template for opposition to an overbearing liberal state, Slater argues, the successful campaign for Proposition 14 laid the foundation for the rise of modern American conservatism.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/freedom-exclude/

Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley - Red Brotherhood at War. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos since 1975

This fully updated edition of Red Brotherhood at War – the most comprehensive account of events since 1975 in Indochina explains why communist victory did not usher in a period of peace based on proletarian internationalism. While victorious revolutionaries in Vietnam and Laos strengthened their special relationship, Vietnam’s relations with fraternal Cambodia and China deteriorated into full-scale war. The Vietnamese overthrow of Pol Pot’s regime in 1979 was condemned by the West, which joined with China to support the Khmer Rouge-dominated anti-Vietnamese resistance in Cambodia. An inter-communist war thus became one of the focal points of the New Cold War in the 1980s. This complex and paradoxical tangle of events is skilfully analysed by Evans and Rowley in their frank and lively book. Drawing on a wide range of sources and first-hand research, this new edition has been thoroughly revised to chart the interaction between Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and the changing configuration of regional and great-power politics up to the present day.

Raja Anwar - The Tragedy of Afghanistan: A First-Hand Account

David Marquand - The New Reckoning: Capitalism, States and Citizens

We are told that this is a new world, with which old theories cannot cope. But the dynamic driving the current global transformation is not as new as our pundits and politicians pretend. The global market-place of our day may have little in common with the tamed welfare capitalism of the post-war period but it is uncannily reminiscent of the untamed capitalism of 100 years ago. Keynes and Beveridge may be dead, but Marx, Malthus and Ricardo have had a new lease of life. In these timely essays, David Marquand challenges the fashionable amnesia of the 1990s and addresses the crucial questions raised by the capitalist renaissance which has followed the collapse of Communism and the end of the cold war. In this bewildering new world, which is at the same time an all-too-familiar old world, how can the values of social solidarity and democratic citizenship be realized? Granted that socialism is no longer with us, does it have anything to say from beyond the grave? How is socialism's great antagonist, liberalism, faring in this new world, and what are the prospects of an accommodation between the two? Where does the new medievalism of contemporary Europe fit in? How do the special peculiarities of the British state, the identity it embodies and the political economy over which it presides relate to those wider issues? What room for maneuver do they give the British left? These questions make up the agenda for The New Reckoning.

Thomas McGath - Berliners vote to expropriate corporate landlords

Berlin’s referendum to expropriate corporate landlords is a watershed moment for rental politics and a rare win against international real estate capital.

https://roarmag.org/essays/berlin-deutsche-wohnen-enteignen/

Н. Проценко - «Я с пессимизмом смотрю на людской интеллект, но с оптимизмом на волевое действие»

Памяти Ричарда Лахмана

19 сентября на шестьдесят шестом году жизни скончался известный американский исторический социолог Ричард Лахман (1956-2021) автор ряда влиятельных исследований, посвященных роли элит в развитии и трансформации капиталистических обществ. Однако его книги «Капиталисты поневоле», «Государства и власть» и «Пассажиры первого класса на тонущем корабле» не только описывают социальную реальность в исторической перспективе, но и указывают возможные пути выхода из тех тупиков, в которые загоняет нас современное мироустройство.

https://gorky.media/context/ya-s-pessimizmom-smotryu-na-lyudskoj-intellekt-no-s-optimizmom-na-volevoe-dejstvie/

Jacob Foreman - Whom?: On Frédéric Gros’s “Disobey!”

Frédéric Gros’s Disobey!, recently released by Verso in a translation by David Fernbach, explores forms of obedience to induce new styles of critical democracy and ethical resistance. He pulls together the ancient tragedy of Antigone, a consideration of the trial of Nazi logistician Adolf Eichmann, lessons from American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau’s tenure at Walden Pond, and reflections on Plato’s Republic as object lessons to incite the civic dissident within each of us.

Gros’s analysis of why we are driven to obey is chillingly poignant. Our “unlimited responsibility” means — terrifyingly — that we are responsible for our faults, the meaning we give events, care of those who are fragile, and struggle in solidarity with people worldwide. This unlimited responsibility entails an immense burden, so we find myriad ways to skirt our obligations. Our desire to defer responsibility encourages obedience to laws because we can assign blame to those who write the rules. The defense of Eichmann resonates; we are simply obeying orders. Gros identifies a dangerous split here between our soul and body, whereby we can acknowledge that we physically act while claiming no moral fault. We reduce ourselves to limbs that carry out actions we can offer no defense of as we defer to the authors of laws and the givers of orders.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/whom-on-frederic-gross-disobey/

The Communist Party Just Won the Elections in Austria’s Second-Biggest City

An interview with Robert Krotzer

In Sunday’s elections in Graz, Austria, the Communist Party romped to victory for the first time in history. Jacobin spoke to one of its winning candidates about how the party built a “red fortress” in the city.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/communist-party-of-austria-kpo-graz-election-victory-red-fortress/