Enzo Traverso - Twenty-First Century Fascism: Where We Are

Enzo Traverso on post-fascism in times of pandemic.

Over the past decade, the world experienced a notable increase in far-right movements. The ghosts of the 1930s seemed to be reawakening and a neo- or post-fascist wave extending its shadow over multiple continents. It reached its peak between 2016 and 2018, with the elections of Trump and Bolsonaro in the US and Brazil and, in the middle, the clash between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron in France. Many far-right parties entered EU governments and some “exceptions” came to an end, with the appearance of Alternative für Deutschland and Vox on the stage of German and Spanish politics. Authoritarian, nationalist and xenophobic governments emerged everywhere, from Putin’s Russia to Modi’s India and Erdogan’s Turkey. The world was turning dark: neo-fascism, post-fascism, right-wing populism? The debate over what to call it remained open, but everyone understood that fascism was now more than a realm of historical scholarship; it was one again a question on the contemporary agenda.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/5257-twenty-first-century-fascism-where-we-are

Michael Harrington’s Failure of Vision

Interview with Doug Greene, author of a new biography of Michael Harrington.

“Michael Harrington was the most important American democratic socialist of the latter half of the 20th century. He was the author of 14 books on politics, history, and socialism. His most famous book was The Other America (published in 1962), which was an exposé of poverty in the United States. The Other America influenced the Great Society and War on Poverty programs of the 1960s. So Harrington’s impact extended very much into the mainstream of U.S. politics.

Harrington was, however, not only a public intellectual but also a political activist. From the early 1950s to his death in 1989, he was involved in a number of organizations. He was a member of the Socialist Party, becoming its chairman at the end of the 1960s. He was also the founder of both the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Lastly, Harrington was not only a political activist but also a democratic socialist theorist. His theory of “democratic Marxism” was meant to supply a philosophy and strategy for the U.S. Left and the labor bureaucracy. The key to this was the idea of “realignment,” which, to put it simply, was meant to transform the Democratic Party into a social democratic party, one that would in turn create a welfare state and, finally, socialism. In reality realignment was a nonstarter. It has been nothing but a rationalization for reformism, opportunism, and apologetics for imperialism. In other words, the key word in “democratic Marxism” is “democratic,” since Harrington’s ideas lead to the death of revolutionary politics and subordination to the Democrats”

https://www.leftvoice.org/michael-harringtons-failure-of-vision/

Axel Honneth - The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal  

The idea of socialism has given normative grounding and orientation to the outrage over capitalism for more than 150 years, and yet today it seems to have lost much of its appeal. Despite growing discontent, many would hesitate to invoke socialism when it comes to envisioning life beyond capitalism. How can we explain the rapid decline of this once powerful idea? And what must we do to renew it for the twenty-first century?  

In this lucid, political-philosophical essay, Axel Honneth argues that the idea of socialism has lost its luster because its theoretical assumptions stem from the industrial era and are no longer convincing in our contemporary post-industrial societies. Only if we manage to replace these assumptions with a concept of history and society that corresponds to our current experiences will we be able to restore confidence in a project whose fundamental idea remains as relevant today as it was a century ago the idea of an economy that realizes freedom in solidarity.

The Internet Platforms We All Use Should Be Publicly Owned and Democratically Controlled

An interview with James Muldoon

Web3 shows how our online lives are increasingly being monetized. It’s time to take democratic control of the internet turning the platforms we all use into free public services.

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/web3-social-media-google-utility-worker-coops/

Richard Seymour - Away from the Guns

Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard-based naturalist who died on 26 December 2021 at the age of 92, was often misunderstood by the left. When he launched the field of sociobiology in 1975, he was charged by the Sociobiology Study Group a critical group set up by Marxist geneticist Richard Lewontin with trying to ‘justify the present social order’. His work, applying the modern synthesis of genetics and evolution to the interpretation of behaviour, appeared to give a new gloss to discredited biological determinism, and suggest that there was a natural basis for such undesirable characteristics as xenophobia and male dominance.

Despite the conservative implications of some of his work, Wilson did not consider himself a man of the right. In his own words, he was a ‘Roosevelt liberal turned pragmatic centrist’. He considered himself a feminist, and furiously rejected charges of racism. His major intellectual goal, which he termed ‘consilience’, was to unify the sciences through a narrow version of Darwinism. He hoped that the essential questions about art, society and religion could be addressed, in part, as questions about genetics. His major ethical concern was to defend the biosphere, challenge human exceptionalism and cultivate respect for the non-human species he studied. Awareness of the ‘limits of human nature’, achieved by viewing humanity ‘from a distance’ – from a termite’s-eye-view, one might say ­– would undermine anthropocentrism.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/away-from-the-guns

Nils Melzer - The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution
 
The shocking story of the legal persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the dangerous implications for the whistleblowers of the future. In July 2010, Wikileaks published Cablegate, one of the biggest leaks in the history of the US military, including evidence for war crimes and torture. In the aftermath Julian Assange, the founder and spokesman of Wikileaks, found himself at the center of a media storm, accused of hacking and later sexual assault. He spent the next seven years in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fearful that he would be extradited to Sweden to face the accusations of assault and then sent to US. In 2019, Assange was handed over to the British police and, on the same day, the U.S. demanded his extradition. They threatened him with up to 175 years in prison for alleged espionage and computer fraud. At this point, Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, started his investigation into how the US and UK governments were working together to ensure a conviction. His findings are explosive, revealing that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that Assange has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer’s compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow. The Trial of Julian Assange is told in three parts: the first explores Nils Melzer’s own story about how he became involved in the case and why Assange’s case falls under his mandate as the Special Rapporteur on Torture. The second section returns to 2010 when Wikileaks released the largest leak in the history of the U.S. military, exposing war crimes and corruption, and Nils makes the case that Swedish authorities manipulated charges against Assange to force his extradition to the US and publicly discredit him. In the third section, the author returns to 2019 and picks up the case as Ecuador kicks Assange out of the embassy and lays out the case as it currently stands, as well as the stakes involved for other potential whistleblowers trying to serve the public interest.

Marxism, Postcolonial Theory, and the Future of Critique: Critical Engagements with Benita Parry  

Using the aesthetic and political concerns of Parry’s oeuvre as a touchstone, this book explores new directions for postcolonial studies, Marxist literary criticism, and world literature in the contemporary moment, seeking to re-imagine the field, and alongside it, new possibilities for left critique. It is the first volume of essays focusing on the field-defining intellectual legacy of the literary scholar Benita Parry. As a leading critic of the post-structuralist turn within postcolonial studies, Parry has not only brought Marxism and postcolonial theory into a productive, albeit tense, dialogue, but has reinvigorated the field by bringing critical questions of resistance and struggle to bear on aesthetic forms. The book’s aim is two-fold: first, to evaluate Parry’s formative influence within postcolonial studies and its interface with Marxist literary criticism, and second, to explore new terrains of scholarship opened up by Parry’s work. It provides a critical overview of Parry’s key interventions, such as her contributions to colonial discourse theory; her debate with Spivak on subaltern consciousness and representation; her critique of post-apartheid reconciliation and neoliberalism in South Africa; her materialist critique of writers such as Kipling, Conrad, and Salih; her work on liberation theory, resistance, and radical agency; as well as more recent work on the aesthetics of "peripheral modernity." The volume contains cutting-edge work on peripheral aesthetics, the world-literary system, critiques of global capitalism and capitalist modernity, and the resurgence of Marxism, communism, and liberation theory by a range of established and new scholars who represent a dissident and new school of thought within postcolonial studies more generally.

Raymond Geuss - The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School  

Habermas and earlier members of the Frankfurt School have presented critical theory as a radically new form of knowledge. It is differentiated from the natural sciences as essentially 'reflective': the knowledge it provides guides us towards enlightenment as to our true interests, and emancipation from often unsuspected forms of external and internal coercion. Its first paradigms are in the writings of Marx and Freud. In this book Raymond Geuss sets out these fundamental claims and asks whether they can be made good. Is a science which does not simply describe and explain social phenomena, but also criticizes? The concept of ideology plays a crucial role in this discussion. Geuss carefully analyses it here, its relation to our beliefs and interests, and the account of truth and confirmation required by its critique and the concomitant goal of self-knowledge. The book does not presuppose acquaintance with the works of the Frankfurt School and can serve as a lucid introduction to their central, distinctive theses. But in its scrupulous and incisive consideration of these, and the modified support for them that emerges, it will also interest experts on critical theory and others concerned with the methods and purposes of the social sciences in general.

Douglas Kellner - Television and the Crisis of Democracy  

Douglas Kellner offers a systematic, critically informed political and institutional study of television in the United States. Focusing on the relationship among television, the state, and business, he traces the history of television broadcasting, emphasizing its socioeconomic impact and its growing political power. Acknowledging that television has long served the interests of the powerful, he points out that it has dramatized conflicts within society and has on occasion led to valuable social criticism.Kellner's examination of television in the 1980s and, in particular, its role in the 1988 presidential election yields the conclusion that in our time television has worked increasingly to further conservative hegemony. In so doing, Kellner argues, contemporary television has helped produce a crisis of democracy.But Television and the Crisis of Democracy goes beyond description and diagnosis. In a discussion that is both analytical and comparative, Kellner presents alternative models to the existing structure of commercial broadcasting and shows how new technologies might be used to create a more democratic future for television?one that could enhance political knowledge and participation.

Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture  

In this collection of essays, leading cultural theorists consider the meaning and implications of world-scale humanist scholarship by engaging with Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis. The renowned sociologist developed his influential critical framework to explain the historical and continuing exploitation of the rest of the world by the West. World-systems analysis reflects Wallerstein’s conviction that understanding global inequality requires thinking on a global scale. Humanists have often criticized his theory as insufficiently attentive to values and objects of knowledge such as culture, agency, difference, subjectivity, and the local. The editors of this collection do not deny the validity of those criticisms; instead, they offer Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis as a well-developed vision of the world scale for humanists to think with and against. Scholars of comparative literature, gender, geography, history, law, race, and sociology consider what thinking on the world scale might mean for particular disciplinary practices, knowledge formations, and objects of study. Several essays offer broader reflections on what is at stake for the study of culture in decisions to adopt or reject world-scale thinking. In a brief essay, Immanuel Wallerstein situates world-systems analysis vis-à-vis the humanities.

Contributors: Gopal Balakrishnan, Tani E. Barlow, Neil Brenner, Richard E. Lee, Franco Moretti, David Palumbo-Liu, Bruce Robbins, Helen Stacy, Nirvana Tanoukhi, Immanuel Wallerstein, Kären Wigen

К.ф.н. Антон Бархатков рассказывает о политических взглядах английского поэта-романтика и сторонника утопического коммунизма Перси Биш Шелли (1792-1822).

https://youtu.be/AJUKhMsCUe4