Benjamin Fraser - Marxism and Urban Culture

Marxism and Urban Culture is the first volume to reconcile social science and humanities perspectives on culture. Covering a range of global cities Bologna, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mahalla al-Kubra, Mexico City, Montreal, Osaka, Strasbourg, Vienna the contributions fuse political and theoretical concerns with analyses of urban cultural practices and historical movements, as well as urban-themed literary and filmic art. Conceived as a response to the persistent rift between disciplinary Marxist approaches to culture, this book prioritizes the urban problematic and builds implicitly and explicitly on work by numerous thinkers: not only Karl Marx but also David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Friedrich Engels and Antonio Gramsci, among others. Rather than reanimate reductive views either of Marx or of urban theory, the chapters in Marxism and Urban Culture speak broadly to the interdisciplinary connections that are increasingly the concern of cultural scholars working across and beyond the boundaries of geography, sociology, history, political science, language and literature fields, film studies, and more.

Michael Naas - Class Acts: Derrida on the Public Stage

Class Acts examines two often neglected aspects of Jacques Derrida’s work as a philosopher, his public presentations at lectures and conferences and his teaching, along with the question of the “speech act” that links them. What, Michael Naas asks, is one doing when one speaks in public in these ways? The book follows Derrida’s itinerary with regard to speech act theory across three public lectures, from 1971 to 1997, all given, for reasons the book seeks to explain, in Montreal. In these lectures, Derrida elaborated his critique of J. L. Austin and his own subsequent redefinition of speech act theory. The book then gives an overview of Derrida’s teaching career and his famous “seminar” presentations, along with his own explicit reflections on pedagogy and educational institutions beginning in the mid-1970s. Naas then shows through a reading of three recently published seminars on life death, theory and practice, and forgiveness just how Derrida the teacher interrogated and deployed speech act theory in his seminars. Whether in a conference hall or a classroom, Naas demonstrates, Derrida was always interested in the way spoken or written words might do more than simply communicate some meaning or intent but might give rise to something like an event. Class Acts bears witness to the possibility of such events in Derrida’s work as a pedagogue and a public intellectual.

Alexander Brentler - Things Can’t Go on Like This for the German Left

After a catastrophic defeat in last Sunday’s general election, Germany’s socialist party Die Linke faces a choice: return to its working-class roots or face political irrelevance.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/germany-election-die-linke-spd-working-class-party

Byung-Chul Han - Capitalism and the Death Drive

What we call growth today is in fact a tumorous growth, a cancerous proliferation which is disrupting the social organism. These tumours endlessly metastasize and grow with an inexplicable, deadly vitality. At a certain point this growth is no longer productive, but rather destructive. Capitalism passed this point long ago. Its destructive forces cause not only ecological and social catastrophes but also mental collapse. The destructive compulsion to perform combines self-affirmation and self-destruction in one. We optimize ourselves to death. Brutal competition ends in destruction. It produces an emotional coldness and indifference towards others as well as towards one’s own self. The devastating consequences of capitalism suggest that a death drive is at work. Freud initially introduced the death drive hesitantly, but later admitted that he ‘couldn’t think beyond it’ as the idea of the death drive became increasingly central to his thought. Today, it is impossible to think about capitalism without considering the death drive.

Kai Nielsen - Marxism and the Moral Point of View; Morality, Ideology, and Historical Materialism

Marxism and the Moral Point of View attempts to say what consistent Marxists working within the parameters of the canonical conceptions of Marxism should say about morality. This includes what they should say about the function of morality in society, about the extent of moral comment they can justifiably make, and about freedom, equality, and justice, including the justice of whole social formations. Karl Marx-and most Marxists follow him-was opposed.

Brilliant Exposé Of Neoliberal Doublespeak

The Museum of Neoliberalism, which this month welcomes back visitors, is a brave undertaking, full of ironic and hilarious twists and takes, deploying a wicked Orwellian double-think to mock and expose neoliberal marketing and branding.

https://realdemocracymovement.org/museum-of-neoliberalism/

В. Леонхард - Еврокоммунизм. Вызов Востоку и Западу (1979)

«Вольфганг Леонхард - известный советолог, выходец из Германии. В свое время он получил образование в Советском Союзе. В 1942—1943 годах учился в школе Коминтерна. В 1945-1947 годах являлся сотрудником отдела агитации и пропаганды ЦК СЕПГ, в 1947-1949 годах - преподавателем в Высшей партийной школе имени Карла Маркса при ЦК СЕПГ. В 1949 году В. Леонхард бежал и Югославию, а оттуда в 1950 году в ФРГ, где в последующие годы опубликовал несколько книг: «Революция освобождает своих детей» (1955), «Кремль без Сталина» (1959), «Советология сегодня - политическая наука» (1962), «Хрущев: подъем и падение советского лидера» (1965), «Раскол марксизма на три течения» (1970), «Накануне новой революции? Будущее советского коммунизма» (1975). С 1966 года подвизается в йельском университете (США), где регулярно читает лекции по истории Советского Союза и по международному коммунистическому движению. Его очередная книга «Еврокоммунизм. Вызов Востоку и Западу» выпущена в свет  издательством «Бертельсман ферлаг» в 1978 году. В ней подвергается рассмотрению развитие международного коммунистического движения на современном этапе под углом зрения ставшей в последнее время весьма популярной в публицистике Запада проблемы так называемого еврокоммунизма.

Рози Брайдотти - «Мы» здесь вместе, но мы не одно и то же

Перевод небольшой статьи Рози Брайдотти — феминистской исследовательницы эпистемологии, субъектности, постгуманизма и постгуманитарного знания о том, как связаны пандемия коронавируса и наша способность быть вместе в нечеловеческом аспекте общего становления. Брайдотти размышляет об истощении и упадке сил, о новых разделениях и биовласти, танатополитике и витальности, которая таится в планете и в ежегодном приходе весны. Брайдотти уверена, что ответы на многие вопросы, возникшие во время недавних катаклизмов, можно найти в феминисткой теории, в исследованиях Юга и постколониальной философии.

https://syg.ma/@maksimilian-nieapolitanskii/rozi-braidotti-my-zdies-vmiestie-no-my-nie-odno-i-to-zhie

George Monbiot on capitalism, the climate crisis, defying establishment journalism - and hope

George Monbiot is one of the most important progressive writers of our time. We talk about what it's like being a progressive journalist in the establishment media, about whether the climate emergency can possibly be solved under capitalism, about how public understanding of the crisis has changed, how our lakes are being destroyed and our ecosystems butchered, the legacy of colonialism, long COVID, the pandemic and much else.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DRbigmBSX3Y

Хосе де Хесус Мартинес - Мой генерал Торрихос

Эта книга последняя в творчестве Хосе де Хесус Мартинеса и одна из десятков написанных разными авторами о легендарном панамском «Генерале бедняков» Омаре Торрихосе Эррера, добившемся от США путём переговоров и без единого выстрела возврата Панаме суверенитета над Панамским каналом. Автор книги философ-марксист, известный в Латинской Америке и как поэт, и как писатель, в течение 7 лет был личным телохранителем этого национального лидера страны, пытавшегося построить в ней справедливое и динамично развивающееся общество на основе человеческого достоинства, независимости и социальной справедливости. Написана в стиле воспоминаний, перемежающихся с философскими размышлениями о человеке, его месте в истории с позиций исторического материализма и диалектики. Издание книги приурочено к 40-летию до сих пор до конца не расследованной авиакатастрофы, в которой погиб Омар Торрихос и несколько сопровождавших его лиц 31 июля 1981 года в Панаме.

Michael C. Behrent - The True Foucault

The issues most important to Michel Foucault have moved from the margins to become major preoccupations of political life. But what did Foucault actually teach?

As Foucault’s standing has climbed on the right, it has fallen on the left. A decade ago, left attention focused on whether Foucault’s discussions of neoliberalism in the 1970s suggested that his philosophical commitments harmonized with the emergent free-market ideology: hostile to the state, opposed to disciplinary power, and tolerant of behaviors previously deemed immoral. Recently, the locus of the leftist critique has, like its conservative counterpart, shifted to cultural politics. Thus the social theorists Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora maintain that Foucault’s politicization of selfhood inspired the confessional antics of “woke culture,” which seeks to overcome societal ills by making the reform of one’s self the ultimate managerial project. At the same time, Foucault’s standing has suffered a debilitating blow in the wake of recent claims that he paid underage boys for sex while living in Tunisia during the 1960s. These charges have brought new attention to places in his writing where like some other radicals of his era he questioned the need for a legal age of consent.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-true-foucault

State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan

The rise of Arab nationalism and of militant Islam - most dramatically posed in the 1979 revolution in Iran - has made the role of ideology a central issue in modern Middle East politics. This book provides a broad-ranging comparative analysis of religious-political ideologies and casts new light on the conditions that produce them and enable them to prosper. It underlines both their independent force and their relationship to classes, state formation, social movements and the national and international economy.

Elias König - Fridays for Sabotage? The strange fascination of climate Blanquism

If peaceful mass-mobilizations cannot avert climate catastrophe, has the time come to imagine more radical forms of resistance to fossil capitalism?

https://roarmag.org/essays/climate-blanquism/