Farooque Chowdhury - Why the attempt to assassinate Maduro?

The attempt to assassinate Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, has failed. This news is days-old. But, the facts are reiterated here starkly. The event raises serious questions for “progressive” critics now in close collaboration with imperialism.

https://mronline.org/2018/08/08/why-the-attempt-to-assassinate-maduro/

Populism or people’s movements? Interview with Mary Taylor

«Populism»
seems to have become a central notion in debates about contemporary politics. How do you see the socio-political process that led to this centrality within the US? How would you characterize the political and discursive fields that shape the meanings and applications of this notion in contemporary US debates?

http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/populism-or-peoples-movements-interview-with-mary-taylor/

Daina Caballero Trujillo - López Obrador: No time to lose

Andres Manuel López Obrador has announced the first 13 reforms that he will send to Congress when he assumes the Presidency of Mexico on December 1.
The Mexico that López Obrador is to inherit is a country where violence, impunity, poverty, strained diplomatic relations, a weak economy, and cases of corruption have generated a crisis of unprecedented dimensions.

http://en.granma.cu/mundo/2018-08-06/lopez-obrador-no-time-to-lose

Venezuelanalysis: Official Statement on Facebook's Removal of Our Page

VA's Facebook page was arbitrarily removed by the social media tech-giant on Thursday morning.
On Thursday morning our Facebook page was arbitrarily "unpublished" by Facebook with no warning or explanation, apart from a standard message informing us that we had allegedly violated the company's terms and conditions. The timing of such a move is concerning for several reasons. Firstly, there is the international context, in which Facebook appears to be targetting independent or leftwing sites in the wake of Russiagate. However, in terms of our own coverage, in the days leading up to our removal, we had published important pieces which challenge the corporate mainstream media narrative on Venezuela.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13990

A NATO-funded team is advising Facebook on flagging ‘propaganda’

While the initiative was initially revealed last May through an official Facebook media release, more details of the controversial think tank’s role have been revealed.
Facebook is using the group to enhance its investigations of foreign interference. Last week, the company said it took down 32 suspicious pages and accounts that purported to be run by leftists and minority activists. While some U.S. officials said they were likely the work of Russian agents, Facebook said it did not know for sure.

https://mronline.org/2018/08/10/a-nato-funded-team-is-advising-facebook-on-flagging-propaganda/

Slavoj Zizek - The US establishment thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is too radical – with impending climate disaster, the worry is she isn’t radical enough

We should of course fully support democratic socialists: we have to begin with where we are. But, my fear is that beneath their concrete welfare state proposals there is nothing, no great project, just a vague idea of more social justice. In the long term, is this enough?

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders-democratic-socialism-capitalism-slavoj-zizek-a8485961.html

Hans-Georg Backhaus - On the dialectics of the value-form

A critical perusal of the secondary literature to Capital shows that the
labour theory of value has been taken up or criticised only in a grossly simplified and frequently wholly distorted form. Above all, it is characteristic of positivist interpretation of Marx to identify the classical and the marxist value theory.

https://lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/ON%20THE%20DIALECTICS%20OF%20THE%20VALUE-FORM%20Hans-Georg%20Backhaus.pdf?token=AWz-TzK4nbJShhC9gIlbeX12cDtwuCS0ApowR4-j9l2ELBIBVCOTCxXWboSCSG4g3xanavNSONzcLBGBkl2kEo3TScvHBaR5Gr1pOFCm5b59z2taWeNNKKoJLgqBRDxBAnLALL5ahCRrxgYUX5sDnU-D_5S5Sx5sZS8FQ4ttk-bAcsXwr5zIlFhgMWt5emQJlHIVCAO_sOl6jd4PdTmhUkTieaXPOGJqVuhUQSyhSi_gPQ

Nasrullah Mambrol - Fredric Jameson and Film Theory

Fredric Jameson is among the most prominent theorists of postmodernism and one of the foremost Marxist critics of his generation. In Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), film occupies a central place in his account of the formal features of postmodernism and in his analysis of the relationship of postmodern culture to the social and economic forms of “late capitalism”.

https://literariness.org/2018/08/02/fredric-jameson-and-film-theory/

Jamie McCallum - Getting the Common Goods

The North Carolina teachers strike was the result of years of grassroots organizing. And they're not done yet.
With school out for summer, it might seem like the teacher strike wave has petered out. But what happened in North Carolina jumpstarted a process that lasted far beyond the one-day walkout.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/north-carolina-teacher-union-strike-education-schools

Руслан Костюк - Никарагуанская гангрена «социализма XXI века»

В 80-е годы прошлого века никарагуанские сандинисты во главе с команданте Даниелем Ортегой были весьма популярны у европейских левых социалистов. Разумеется, с учётом фронтального противостояния в «холодной войне» и того факта, что сандинисты, придя к власти, стали на сторону «Восточного блока», никарагуанский путь к социализму казался тогда достаточно оригинальным, творческим. С аграрной реформой, развитием кооперативного сектора в городе и деревне, народной вооружённой милицией, противостоящей связанным с Вашингтоном контрреволюционерам, сандинистский путь к социализму был в те далёкие годы действительно чем-то новаторским по сравнению как с практикой «марксистско-ленинских» партий, так и с реалиями социал-демократии.

http://rabkor.ru/columns/analysis/2018/08/08/nicaragua-soc/

Wendy Brown - How Neoliberalism Threatens Democracy

Neoliberalism, warns Professor Wendy Brown, has created a form of reasoning in which human beings are reduced to their economic value and activity, and in which all fields of human activity are treated as markets and institutions, including the state, are increasingly run as if they were corporations. This logic is even applied to activities with no connection to wealth creation, such as education, dating, or physical exercise, which are increasingly governed according to market rules. People are treated in this schema, as units of human capital who must constantly tend to their own present and future value.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMMJ9HqzRcE

Helmut Reichelt - Marx’s Critique of Economic Categories: Reflections on the Problem of Validity in the Dialectical Method of Presentation in Capital

It has often been pointed out that the Marxian theory of value contains some inconsistencies, usually in relation to the concept of abstract labour. However, the contradiction between the concept of labour and the concept of validity with which Marx operates in Capital (without actually explaining this conception) has never been discussed. A detailed analysis shows that this concept of validity refers to the process of abstraction which is carried out by the participants of the exchange process. Only the rigorous comprehension of this process of abstraction can illuminate that for which the concept of abstract labour was developed: the unity and universality of value. On this basis, the paper criticises the Marxian development of the money-form and presents an alternative approach that builds on the aforementioned concept of validity. This concept is formulated in more depth by recourse to the works of Hegel, Simmel and Adorno. Furthermore, the paper reconsiders the dialectical development of categories in the light of this alternative conception of the money-form as totality and abstraction (in the sense of Hegel and the young Marx). Finally, the distinction between simple circulation and the process as a whole (found only in the Grundrisse) is explored and it is argued that, according to the novel reading proposed, it acquires a fundamental significance.

https://z-p3-lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/Reichelt%20Marx%27s%20Critique%20of%20Economic%20Categories.pdf?token=AWx5WVpaWR40PKVAwv7sL3BPF5xWz2cmIxunaRNgEYCHr5l74iPyVLPgYRsIwPb5_DiQLKr8cK_QmTvFF3Eofl7iNWVZ-V0t9qOzfGuniAh3b1RhDRsTJeIbFrHv-i64Sb9euew8g0TAy0JW-ulwQFmz2tUDbO-tZyjAunEzqf8gRRiL5nGZjn7QErkN2wOHl-0aZxYUxcoan_ZuVddt1wLBZUuNE3qj58HyoZxjRTXOAw

Миронов Д. А., Перцев А. В. - Австромарксизм, позитивизм и рабочее движение

В книге впервые в отечественной литературе прослеживается линия: позитивистская философия - идеология австромарксизма - практика рабочего движения. Исследуются социально-политический аспект позитивизма, идеи Э. Маха и его русских последователей, Й. Поппера, О. Нейрата - одного из лидеров Венского кружка, развившего концепцию административного социализма и внедрявшего ее в Баварской советской республике. Осмысливаются уроки «третьего пути» австромарксистов к демократическому социализму - между реформизмом и большевизмом. Анализируется практический опыт организации просвещения и досуга рабочих, жилищных и садоводческих кооперативов. Книга адресована специалистам по зарубежной истории и философии, но прежде всего массовому читателю.

Памяти Самира Амина (1931-2018)

John Bellamy Foster - Samir Amin at 80: An Introduction and Tribute

Samir Amin was born in Cairo in 1931, and studied within the French educational system in Egypt (Lycée Français du Caire). He pursued his higher education in Paris at Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po”) receiving his diploma in 1952; then at Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, obtaining his Ph.D. in Political Economy in 1957. He worked in the planning agency of Egypt from 1957 to 1960, until the Nasser regime’s persecution of communists forced him to leave. From 1960–1963 he was attached to the Ministry of Planning of the newly independent Mali. After becoming a full professor in France in 1966, he chose to teach in Paris-Vincennes and Dakar, Senegal. He has been based in Dakar now for over forty years, serving there for ten years as director of the UN African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, and since 1980 directing the African Office of the Third World Forum. He is currently president of the World Forum for Alternatives.

https://monthlyreview.org/2011/10/01/samir-amin-at-80-an-introduction-and-tribute/

Памяти Самира Амина (1931-2018)

Revolutionary Change in Africa: an Interview with Samir Amin

ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig interviewed Samir Amin in Dakar on 5 February 2017. Samir Amin is a Marxist economist, writer and activist. He is one of the continent’s foremost radical thinkers, who has spent decades examining Africa’s underdevelopment and Western imperialism. With great originality and insight he has applied Marxism to the tasks of socialist transformation in Africa. In this interview Amin reflects on a life spent at the cutting edge of radical theory and practice, African politics and the legacy of the Russian revolution. The interview was held the day after he spoke on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Marx’s Capital, organised as part of the monthly series ‘Economic Saturdays.’ These are left-wing economic debates organised by African Research and Cooperation for Endogenous Development Support (Arcade) an initiative established by the Dakar based writer and activist Ndongo Sylla in 2013.

http://roape.net/2017/03/16/revolutionary-change-africa-interview-samir-amin/

Ben Ehrenreich - Algiers, Third World Capital by Elaine Mokhtefi review – Black Panthers, freedom fighters, revolutionaries

In the 1960s Algeria became a beacon to the world, and exiled artists, intellectuals and guerrilla fighters flocked there. The militant author met them all.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/11/algiers-third-world-capital-elaine-mokhtefi-review

Helmut Reichelt - From the Frankfurt School to Value-Form Analysis

The preoccupation with problems of capital-analysis began relatively early. We wanted to know in the first place what “reification” really is. At that time in the mid-sixties we systematically plagued Horkheimer with these things. We wanted to know how they are interpreted in the framework of the Frankfurt Theory since the Frankfurt Theory built explicitly on them - and discoverer after all, that after three sentences long silences set in. and that basically there was very little to learn from these theoreticians. Finally, we decided to think these questions through ourselves and - this can now be said in the present company - had to conclude that the omission of these moments itself had to be conceived as to a certain extent symptomatic with regard to the critique of this “Critical Theory”.

https://z-p3-lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/helmut-reichelt-from-the-frankfurt-school-to-valueform-analysis-1.pdf?token=AWzYmvUJ2E98PP7-SRCRgMKxn3lZh0pEoCv04baQ_hsqOzW4RTvxyY8oxt6xXgc61Di1ypN42nTqylgVVsW5fKejOgh0mCsTaoYnx9quHECJ_R86w0HyL3ipyLXmOAR3NMzFSZM-RVgqjoLXCthi6PvNU5BvIJ8nWeI9PQeqKhUHLLujum4uTJoEVsRagFbwmkSlVrTi9C4wh99b2XopwhEKo8lw87jZ_cLErs4elAsX5A

Antonio Maestre - Striking for the Future

Striking taxi drivers in Spain are demanding state action against Uber. They show that even in the digital economy, strikes are our most potent weapon.
Last week Barcelona was brought to a standstill, as endless queues of taxis blocked the city’s main thoroughfares. The taxi drivers camped out on the central Gran Vía de Les Corts, demanding that the government block the spread of Uber and Cabify. They want an end to the so-called “VTC licenses” on which these companies rely. Not only did the drivers paralyze Barcelona, but they also had a contagious effect on their cohorts elsewhere in Spain, who demanded similar measures.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/spain-taxi-strike-uber-sharing-economy

Марина Симакова - Конкретный Ленин в конкретной ситуации

Книга историка и активиста Тарика Али,  написанная аккурат к  годовщине Октябрьской  революции, представляет собой  яркий и своевременный исследовательский очерк. Организуя тонкую, политизированную пересборку материала из широко известных и доступных на английском языке источников, автор предлагает читателю  современный взгляд  на  историю  русской  революции, в центре которой находится фигура Ленина. В то же время Ленину его Али описывает не только с симпатией, но с теплотой и даже с некоторым благоговением в книге отведено не так уж много места, и он несколько  отличается  от  своих  привычных  ипостасей.

http://stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/view/86/146