Котц Д.М., Вир Ф. Путь России от Горбачева к Путину. Гибель советской системы и новая Россия

Предлагаемое издание представляет собой исправленную и дополненную версию книги "Революция сверху: гибель советской системы", опубликованной издательством Routledge в 1997 г. "Путь России от Горбачева к Путину" доводит анализ постсоветской России до настоящего времени; также внесены исправления в ранее опубликованные главы. Дэвид М.Котц и Фред Вир оспаривают широко распространенное мнение, согласно которому причиной гибели советской системы стал экономический крах в сочетании с неприятием социализма советской общественностью. Авторы взяли интервью более чем у пятидесяти бывших лидеров советского правительства и коммунистической партии, политических советников, постсоветских российских политических деятелей, бизнесменов и интеллектуалов. В книге делается вывод, что советскую систему демонтировала сама правящая партийно-государственная элита СССР ради приобретения большего богатства и власти. В ней показано, как попытка перехода к демократическому капитализму оказалась подорвана политикой немедленной либерализации рынка, быстрой приватизации государственных предприятий, "жесткой экономии" в бюджетно-финансовой сфере, денежного дефицита и ограничения роли государства в управлении процессами перехода. Проведение, при поддержке Запада, этой политики, известной под именем "шоковой терапии", или "неолиберализма", в период с ельцинского правления до нынешнего путинского повлекло за собой рост преступности и коррупции, деформированную экономику и эволюцию в сторону авторитарного правления.

The retreat of the pink tide in Latin America

Interview with Jeffery R. Webber

So the first explosion, the first phase of the left, was predominantly extra-parliamentary: the unemployed workers’ movement in Argentina during the financial crisis in that country, the left indigenous revolts in Bolivia and Ecuador, the landless movement in Brazil, etc. That’s the wider context in which Chavez’s election took place. But the real electoral expression of the left elsewhere, outside of Venezuela, doesn’t begin until the second phase in the mid-2000s. So the first phase is one of extraordinary extra-parliamentary militancy, a growing sense of anticapitalism among some layers  of the left.  I don’t want to exaggerate much of it was antineoliberal. But there were some considerable layers of anticapitalism, particularly in the most militant countries, Bolivia being the leading edge of this.

https://isreview.org/issue/110/retreat-pink-tide-latin-america

Mario Tronti - Theses on Benjamin

The 20th century is not the century of social democracy. It is the century of democracy. Moving through the era of the wars, democracy imposed its hegemony. It is democracy that won the class struggle. The authoritarian and totalitarian political solutions functioned in the end as the demonic instruments of a democratic providentialism. Democracy, like the monarchy of the past, is now absolute. More than the practices of totalitarian democracy there emerged a totalised idea of democracy. Paradoxically, this occurred contemporaneously with the dissolution of the concept of the ‘people,’ which was foreseen by the genius of Kelsen.

http://interactivist.autonomedia.org/node/46984

Steve Wright - Back to the Future: Italian Workerists Reflect Upon the Operaista Project

On the cusp of the new millennium, three Italian militant researchers undertook to record the reflections of leading participants in the history of Operaismo, the findings from which were then presented in the book Futuro Anteriore (2002). As one of those interviewed (Sergio Bologna, 2003) later put it, “It was a strange event and it surprised all of us, considering that amongst us there were people who had not spoken nor had any personal relations with one another on any level for years and years, so divergent were our individual paths. One day in 2000, without denying their past, though critical of their experiences, they agreed to recognise themselves in a common tradition”. Drawing upon the transcripts used in the writing of Futuro Anteriore, this paper will explore, in a critical manner, the ways in which the operaisti interviewed by Guido Borio, Francesca Pozzi and Gigi Roggero address the themes central to the current issue of ephemera: from debates around immaterial labour and post-Fordism, to the nature of subjectivity and the role of workers’ enquiries and co-research.

https://libcom.org/files/7-1wright-libre.pdf

Armando Aparicio, David Zlutnick - These Tenants Are Leading the Largest Rent Strike in LA History

Residents of three buildings in Central Los Angeles are refusing to pay rent until their landlord agrees to fair rent increases.
Los Angeles’s housing market is in crisis. Low-income communities of color across the city are facing systematic displacement due to gentrification. Skyrocketing housing costs have created a homelessness epidemic that has left almost 60,000 people living on the streets. And now, the city is undergoing its largest rent strike in recent history.

https://www.thenation.com/article/these-tenants-are-leading-the-largest-rent-strike-in-la-history/

A Rebel in the Marxist Citadel: Tributes to Samir Amin

Samir Amin, a ROAPE contributor and comrade, died last week, we post tributes from some of his comrades, students and friends. Ray Bush, Peter Lawrence, Issa Shivji, Ndongo Sylla, John Saul and Natasha Shivji celebrate the work and life of a rebel in the Marxist citadel. As Ndongo Sylla points out, Amin's life quest was to mark out what alternative paths can lead the ‘wretched of the earth’ towards an authentic human civilisation that capitalism can only refuse them.

http://roape.net/2018/08/21/a-rebel-in-the-marxist-citadel-tributes-to-samir-amin/

How to Beat Uber - An interview with
Chris Brooks

A scrappy New York taxi drivers union is taking on Uber's exploitative business model — and winning.

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance knows how to throw a punch.
On August 14, the scrappy but militant twenty-one-thousand-member union representing taxi and for-hire vehicle drivers in New York City won a landmark legislative victory establishing the country’s first cap on ride-sharing company vehicles and essentially forcing them to pay their drivers a minimum wage.
This fight pitted the Taxi Workers Alliance against corporate giants Uber and Lyft, which together employ more lobbyists than Amazon, Walmart, and Microsoft combined.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/new-york-taxis-app-cap-uber-lyft

The Imperialism of Finance Capital and ‘Trade Wars’

One cannot look at Trump and his policies in isolation from the crisis of ‘trade wars’. Trump promised to ‘make America great again’. He wants to resolve the crisis for America caused by neo-liberalism without violating its core characteristic, which is free global mobility of finance.  At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have wondered about the essential nature of these ‘trade wars’ that have broken out between key allies. We turned to Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi (India), for assistance.

https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/180803_Dossier-7_EN_Final_Web.pdf

David A. Banks - Which Side Are They On?

As Silicon Valley software engineers begin to organize, can they build solidarity with their blue-collar colleagues?
Silicon Valley employees have been racking up headlines lately. Not for building a marginally thinner phone or a new libertarian digital hellscape for us to dump our personal information into. In fact, it is quite the opposite: software programmers want their companies to start living up to their idealistic credos.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/which-side-are-they-on-banks

Б. Кагарлицкий - Между классом и дискурсом. Левые интеллектуалы на страже капитализма

Исследование Б. Кагарлицкого посвящено кризису международного левого движения, непосредственно связанному с кризисом капитализма. Вопреки распространённому мнению, трудности, которые испытывает капиталистическая система и господствующая неолиберальная идеология, не только не открывают новых возможностей для левых, но, напротив, демонстрируют их слабость и политическую несостоятельность, поскольку сами левые давно уже стали частью данной системы, а доминирующие среди них идеи представляют лишь радикальную версию той же буржуазной идеологии, заменив борьбу за классовые интересы защитой всевозможных «меньшинств». Кризис левого движения распространяется повсеместно, охватывая такие регионы, как Латинская Америка, Западная Европа, Россия и Украина. На этом фоне выделяются отдельные истории успеха, такие как избрание Д. Корбина лидером Лейбористской партии Великобритании или рост популярности сенатора-социалиста Б. Сандерса в США. Но подобные успехи не могут стать основанием для нового глобального тренда, если не будут осмыслены и поняты в контексте формирования новой политики, преодолевающей диктат либеральной политкорректности. Левые смогут вернуть себе прежнее влияние, если сами вернутся к классовой повестке. Однако в условиях, когда структура общества радикально изменилась, возвращение к классовой политике отнюдь не означает повторения устаревших формул и лозунгов прошлого века.

Penelope J. Corfield - Christopher Hill's intellectual trajectory: from Biblical Protestantism to Humanist Marxism

Penelope J. Corfield writes about the intellectual development of her uncle Christopher Hill, one of the most influential writers on seventeenth century England and leading Marxist historian.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3934-christopher-hill-s-intellectual-trajectory-from-biblical-protestantism-to-humanist-marxism#_ftn14

Tehila Sasson - The Gospel of Wealth

How did the “moral economy” a concept that once encompassed a radical critique of capitalism become the province of billionaires?

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/tim-rogan-moral-economists-critique-capitalism-book-review

Bruno Rizzi - The Bureaucratisation of the World

The world is on the eve of a tremendous historical turning point. We believe that Stalin will remember having been a revolutionary before having become a dictator and will understand the terrible responsibility which links him to the international proletariat. We will judge solely on the facts and we advise workers to do the same.
Europe and the world must either become fascist or socialist. There is no longer any possibility of life for capitalism. The USSR has become the pivot of world politics and will either be the bastion of the proletarian revolution or a trap for the world proletariat.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/rizzi/bureaucratisation/index.htm

Жиль Делез - Мая 68-го не было. Тексты из сборников: «Необитаемый остров: тексты и беседы» и «Два вида безумия»

Сборник статей Делёза по политической и социальной проблематике. Часть работ носит теоретический характер, другие имеют характер политических деклараций, посвященных вопросам ближневосточной политики и "гуманитарных" интервенций. Во многих работах затрагивается тема "интеллектуалы и власть", изменение роли интеллектуалов в информационном обществе, тенденция к медиатизации интеллектуальной жизни.

Dan La Botz - Reading the Revolution: A Memoir of 1968

For years I have thought of myself as a member of the “generation of 1968.” It was the year that I turned 23 and became active in “the movement,” as we called it then. Today, we naturally and quite rightly remember 1968 for the protests, strikes, and uprisings that took place in the United States, France, Czechosloviaka, and Mexico, as well as for the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3988-reading-the-revolution-a-memoir-of-1968

Сергей Соловьёв - “Попытка декоммунизации в России привела к краху десталинизации”

Пятого мая исполняется 200 лет со дня рождения Карла Маркса. Как бы ни относились к этому мыслителю, никто не спорит, что его наследие многое определило в ХХ столетии, а сегодня спрос на идеи, вдохновленные марксизмом, явно превышает предложение. Что стало с левыми и коммунистическими идеями после крушения СССР, как «декоммунизация» влияет на общества? Об этом редактор журнала «Россия в глобальной политике» Александр Соловьев беседует с Сергеем Соловьёвым – редактором журнала «Скепсис», кандидатом философских наук, доцентом Московского государственного психолого-педагогического университета, главным специалистом РГАСПИ.

https://scepsis.net/library/id_3826.html

Katie Barker - Alive and Kicking: Colonial Legacies in Africa

Colonial legacies are very much alive and well across the African continent. Even the term ‘colonial legacies’ implies the influences and outcomes of colonialism are in fact over, yet contemporary economic, political and social structures across regions in Africa continue to be shaped by their distinctive experiences from the period of colonialism. Assessing the long-term effects of colonialism through public investment decisions illuminates the interplay between colonial interventions and domestic decision-making in contemporary policy-making. In this blogpost expenditure on railroad infrastructure and education will be explored to offer a contribution to understanding why these investments matter and their implications for urban path dependence.

http://roape.net/2018/08/23/alive-and-kicking-colonial-legacies-in-africa/