José Ricardo Villanueva Lira - Marxism and the Origins of International Relations: A Hidden History

This book investigates to what extent and in what ways Marxist writings and precepts on imperialism informed the so-called idealist stage of International Relations (IR). Though the formative years of International Relations coincide with a vibrant period in Marxist political thought, Marxism is strikingly absent from the historiography of the discipline. Building on the work of revisionist scholars, the book reconstructs the writings of five benchmark IR thinkers. Villanueva analyzes the cases of John Hobson, Henry Brailsford, Leonard Woolf, Harold Laski and Norman Angell to explore the influence that Marxism played in their thinking, and in the “idealist years” of the discipline more generally. He ultimately demonstrates that, although Marxist thought has been neglected by mainstream IR disciplinary historians, it played a significant role in the discipline’s early development. As such, this book both challenges the exclusion of Marxist thought from the mainstream disciplinary histories of IR and contributes to a deeper understanding of the role it played in early 20th century IR theory.

Phil Burton-Cartledge - Falling Down. The Conservative Party and the Decline of Tory Britain

Despite winning the December 2019 General Election, the Conservative parliamentary party is a moribund organisation. It no longer speaks for, nor to, the British people. Its leadership has sacrificed the long-standing commitment to the Union to “Get Brexit Done.” And beyond this, it is an intellectual vacuum, propped up by half-baked doctrine and magical thinking. Falling Down offers an explanation for how the Tory party came to position itself on the edge of the precipice and offers a series of answers to a question seldom addressed: as the party is poised to press the self-destruct button, what kind of role and future can it have?

This tipping point has been a long time coming and Burton-Cartledge offers critical analysis to this narrative. Since the era of Thatcherism, the Tories have struggled to find a popular vision for the United Kingdom. At the same time, their members have become increasingly old. Their values have not been adopted by the younger voters. The coalition between the countryside and the City interests is under pressure, and the latter is split by Brexit. The Tories are locked into a declinist spiral, and with their voters not replacing themselves the party is more dependent on a split opposition putting into question their continued viability as the favoured vehicle of British capital.

Кирилл Рогов - Время янычар: изоляция как стратегия

В то время как внешней рамкой нового противостояния России и Запада является конкуренция либеральных и нелиберальных капитализмов, его особая острота и бескомпромиссность определяются внутриполитическими вызовами: стагнацией российской экономики, конкуренцией двух типов российских элит и стремлением закрепить итоги передела собственности, имевшего место в 2000–2010-е годы.

https://liberal.ru/lm-ekspertiza/vremya-yanychar-izolyacziya-kak-strategiya

Emre Canpolat - Smartphones and Exploitation in the Age of Digital Capitalism: Ordinary Aspects of the Transformation of Everyday Life

This study examines the transformation of everyday life through smartphones, focusing on the daily experiences of smartphone users in Turkey. With their multimedia features, smartphones (defined as a “melting pot” from the technological perspective or polymedia and metamedia in a broader sense) take an important place in users’ everyday lives. As these features and the services accessible through smartphones are offered in commodity form, they inevitably result in the exploitation of users’ labour, the commodification of user data, the shifting of paid work into ‘leisure time’, and finally the transformation of everyday life through smartphones. The main argument of this study is that, under these social conditions, smartphones, referred to as “a melting pot” from the technological perspective, turn into a melting pot of exploitation, and their users experience these interactions not as direct economic relations but as routine social relations.

https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/download/1269/1449

John Bellamy Foster - Ecology Against Capitalism

In recent years John Bellamy Foster has emerged as a leading theorist of the Marxist perspective on ecology. His seminal book Marx’s Ecology (2000) discusses the place of ecological issues within the intellectual history of Marxism and on the philosophical foundations of a Marxist ecology, and has become a major point of reference in ecological debates. This historical and philosophical focus is now supplemented by more direct political engagement in his new book, Ecology Against Capitalism. In a broad-ranging treatment of contemporary ecological politics, Foster deals with such issues as pollution, sustainable development, technological responses to environmental crisis, population growth, soil fertility, the preservation of ancient forests, and the “new economy” of the Internet age.

Within these debates on the politics of ecology, Foster’s work develops an important and distinctive perspective. Where many of these debates assume a basic divergence of “red” and “green” issues, and are concerned with the exact terms of a trade-off between them, Foster argues that Marxism properly understood already provides the framework within which ecological questions are best approached. This perspective is advanced here in accessible and concrete form, taking account of the major positions in contemporary ecological debate. Foster’s introduction sets out the unifying themes of these essays to present a consolidated approach to a rapidly-expanding field of debate which is of critical importance in our time.

Murray Bookchin - Social ecology and Communalism

The purpose of this small collection of essays is to give a general overview of Murray Bookchin’s fundamental ideas on social ecology and Communalism. Of course four essays cannot replace the many books and polemical essays written by Bookchin on these subjects, and this collection is not meant as a substitute for a more thorough study of his ideas. Still, these essays can indeed serve as a decent introduction for serious readers, and give a good sense of the theoretical outlines of Bookchin’s theoretical corpus.

David Harvey - Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference

This book engages with the politics of social and environmental justice, and seeks new ways to think about the future of urbanization in the twenty-first century. It establishes foundational concepts for understanding how space, time, place and nature the material frames of daily life are constituted and represented through social practices, not as separate elements but in relation to each other. It describes how geographical differences are produced, and shows how they then become fundamental to the exploration of political, economic and ecological alternatives to contemporary life. The book is divided into four parts. Part I describes the problematic nature of action and analysis at different scales of time and space, and introduces the reader to the modes of dialectical thinking and discourse which are used throughout the remainder of the work. Part II examines how ''nature'' and ''environment'' have been understood and valued in relation to processes of social change and seeks, from this basis, to make sense of contemporary environmental issues. Part III, is a wide-ranging discussion of history, geography and culture, explores the meaning of the social ''production'' of space and time, and clarifies problems related to ''otherness'' and ''difference''. The final part of the book deploys the foundational arguments the author has established to consider contemporary problems of social justice that have resulted from recent changes in geographical divisions of labor, in the environment, and in the pace and quality of urbanization. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference speaks to a wide readership of students of social, cultural and spatial theory and of the dynamics of contemporary life. It is a convincing demonstration that it is both possible and necessary to value difference and to seek a just social order.

Ben Burgis - “Economic Freedom” Rankings Don’t Tell Us Anything About Capitalism

Conservatives and libertarians love to cite studies ranking different countries’ levels of “economic freedom” as evidence for the glories of capitalism. There’s just one problem: the rankings are nonsense.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/economic-freedom-rankings-frasier-institute-peter-leeson-socialism-capitalism/

Andy Merrifield - Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City

"Metromarxism" discusses Marxism's relationship with the city from the 1850s to the present by way of biographical chapters on figures from the Marxist tradition, including Marx, Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, and David Harvey. Each chapter combines interesting biographical anecdotes with an accessible analysis of each individual's contribution to an always-transforming Marxist theory of the city. He suggests that the interplay between the city as center of economic and social life and its potential for progressive change generated a major corpus of work. That work has been key in advancing progressive political and social transformations.

David Harvey - Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom  

Liberty and freedom are frequently invoked to justify political action. Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush have built their policies on some version of these noble values. Yet in practice, idealist agendas often turn sour as they confront specific circumstances on the ground. Demonstrated by incidents at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the pursuit of liberty and freedom can lead to violence and repression, undermining our trust in universal theories of liberalism, neoliberalism, and cosmopolitanism.Combining his passions for politics and geography, David Harvey charts a cosmopolitan order more appropriate to an emancipatory form of global governance. Political agendas tend to fail, he argues, because they ignore the complexities of geography. Incorporating geographical knowledge into the formation of social and political policy is therefore a necessary condition for genuine democracy. Harvey begins with an insightful critique of the political uses of freedom and liberty, especially during the George W. Bush administration. Then, through an ontological investigation into geography's foundational concepts space, place, and environment he radically reframes geographical knowledge as a basis for social theory and political action. As Harvey makes clear, the cosmopolitanism that emerges is rooted in human experience rather than illusory ideals and brings us closer to achieving the liberation we seek.

Зачем Кремль играет с национализмом и опять показывает мигрантов как угрозу?

Кремль продолжает использовать националистическую риторику, которая сопровождала предвыборную кампанию в Думу. Например, на этой неделе глава СКР Александр Бастрыкин предложил ввести геномную регистрацию мигрантов. А в государственных СМИ появляются материалы о множествах преступлениях, которые якобы совершили мигранты. Зачем Кремль пытается продвигать эту политику? Как вообще власть понимает русский национализм? Получится ли в этот раз успешно сыграть на этой теме?

О чем этот выпуск?
00:17 О чем этот выпуск?
04:07 С чего началось раскручивание темы национализма
10:28 Как понимается национализм в России
13:26 О вопросе трудовых мигрантов в Москве
20:30 В Кремле есть сторонники «русской партии»?
24:31 Из чего состоит современный российский национализм
29:49 Какой в России запрос на национализм
30:58 Алексей Навальный националист?
34:25 КПРФ — националистическая партия?
35:13 Как создавалась партия «Родина»
37:24 Как Захар Прилепин понимает национализм
41:25 Сейчас «Родина» влиятельная сила?
46:45 Что строит митрополит Тихон (его считают близким к Владимиру Путину)
51:54 Как владыка Тихон управляет Псковской митрополией
56:23 Зачем Путин обратился к консерватизму
59:39 Кто такой философ Иван Ильин
1:01:30 Иван Ильин о фашизме
1:02:42 Ильин о воспитании детей в русских традициях
1:04:56 Как Ильин понимает национальный дух
1:08:40 Как Путин понимает национализм
1:09:25 Новая опора легитимности режима — национализм?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0grz1zskRk0

Derek Wall - The Rise of the Green Left: A Global Introduction to Ecosocialism

Climate change and other ecological ills are driving the creation of a grassroots global movement for change. From Latin America to Europe, Australia and China a militant movement merging red and green is taking shape. Ecosocialists argue that capitalism threatens the future of humanity and the rest of nature. From indigenous protest in the Peruvian Amazon to the green transition in Cuba to the creation of red-green parties in Europe, ecosocialism is defining the future of left and green politics globally. Latin American leaders such as Morales and Chavez are increasingly calling for an ecosocialist transition. Drawing on the work of key thinkers such as Joel Kovel and John Bellamy Foster, Derek Wall provides an unique insider view of how ecosocialism has developed and a practical guide to focused ecosocialist action. A great handbook for activists and engaged students of politics.