Ugo Mattei - From commons to capital and back. The turning point in private law

Ugo Mattei presented and discussed at the Max Weber Programme his upcoming book - co-authored with Alessandra Quarta - in an occasional lecture titled "From commons to capital and back. The turning point in private law"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Imqz7i08q4

Lars T. Lih - Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context

What Is to Be Done? has long been interpreted as evidence of Lenin’s “elitist” attitude toward workers. Lih uses a wide range of previously unavailable contextual sources to fundamentally overturn this reading of history’s most misunderstood revolutionary text. He argues that Lenin’s polemic must be seen within the context of a rising worker’s movement in Russia, and shows that Lenin’s perspective fit squarely within the mainstream of the socialist movement of his time.
Rather than the manifesto of an authoritarian leader, Lih reveals a guide to action to help cohere and strengthen a promising movement, which still maintains remarkable relevance to today’s world.

http://theoryleaks.org/text/books/lars-t-lih/lenin-rediscovered/

Florin Poenaru - Romania: The Demise of Reason

A never-ending anti-corruption campaign, a never-ending series of protests that have become almost ritualistic when not ineffectual; alleged assassination attempts, a silent provincial world next to a boisterous Bucharest. Why is everything so confusing in Romania? Florin Poenaru provides an answer.

www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/romania-the-demise-of-reason/

Ален Бадью - Лишь капитализм виновен в разрушительной эксплуатации природы

Сегодня стало общим местом заявлять, по различным основаниям, о конце человеческого вида, как он нам известен. Эта специфическая экология приобретает мессианические черты. Что касается технологического рывка, то нам обещают неразбериху, роботизацию всякого труда, дигитальное цветение, автоматичное искусство, пластмассовых киллеров и опасности сверхчеловеческого разума. В действительности именно эта общественная формация, и только она, будучи связана со строгим понятием частной прибыли, ответственна за разрушительную эксплуатацию природных ресурсов.

http://www.redflora.org/2018/09/blog-post.html?m=1

Yuval Noah Harari - Why Technology Favors Tyranny

Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don’t take steps to stop it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/?utm_source=twb

К. Нэбб - Радость революции

О содержании этой книги говорит ее название. Она посвящена радости революции - той революции, что не только ведет людей к управлению своими собственными жизнями, но и заключается в самой жизни. Автор утверждает, что революция состоит отнюдь не только из уличных боев, зрелищных столкновений и баррикад; она также состоит из размышлений, живого диалога и скромной повседневной деятельности. Коммунистическое общество - это не идеальная модель далекого будущего. Оно существует и закладывается прямо здесь и прямо сейчас.
Выходец из калифорнийской богемной среды 1960-х годов, он участвовал в радикальных молодежных движениях США того времени, а после ряда политических разочарований в традиционной левой среде открыл для себя ситуационизм. Вступив в контакт с членами американской секции Ситуационистского Интернационала, К. Нэбб участвовал в деятельности первых ситуационистских групп на западном побережье США. Вначале 1980-х собрал, перевел на английский и издал "Антологию Ситуационистского Интернационала", по которой огромное количество людей в мире смогло ознакомиться с текстами СИ. В 1997-м году издал сборник собственных текстов, включая "Радость революции", которая, по признанию многих, в том числе недоброжелателей, стала венцом его работы.

Alex Hochuli - Brazil’s Anti-Politics Election

The soft coup in 2016, an unending economic crisis, and deep disillusionment among voters have led to a volatile and fragmented election in Brazil.
Brazil’s general election this October presents a fragmented, polarized, and corrupted political landscape. This is a consequence of five turbulent years defined by mass protests, severe recession, and a soft coup in which the establishment broke with the 1988 post-dictatorship settlement to oust the Workers’ Party (PT) from power.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/brazil-election-bolsonaro-lula-haddad-boulos-corruption

Nicos Christodoulakis - Greek Endgame. From Austerity to Growth or Grexit

The book explores in depth both the origins of the Greek debt crisis and the conditions under which the economy might be turned around from its current malaise. Greek debt turned explosive after the 2008 global crisis, through a combination of a fiscal spree and domestic policy complacency, but the unpreparedness and indecision of the European Union intensified the problem of liquidity and a massive bail-out agreement became inevitable. However, the stringencies of the adjustment program led to more recession and unemployment, while social tension and political polarization became entrenched. In 2015, a radical Left party, Syriza, ascended to power on a ticket to end austerity and renegotiate Greece’s debt agreements, but a long-lasting growth and reform agenda is still to be settled upon. This book lays out some key reforms that would allow Greece to return to growth and, at the same time, keep the Euro, an option that still remains a cornerstone for the country’s economic and geopolitical stability.

Stephen M. Bainbridge - Conservative Critiques of Capitalism

The 1984 Republican Party platform lauded what it called “democratic capitalism” for having produced, “in the United States and elsewhere, an unparalleled ability to achieve political and civil rights and long-term prosperity for ever-growing numbers of people.” In 2016, the GOP platform continued to argue that the combination of “political freedom and entrepreneurial capitalism drives economic growth, catalyzes private sector development, and is the only sustainable solution to poverty.” Yet doubts had begun to creep in, albeit ever so slightly. The platform disparaged what it called “crony capitalism” for having given the country “special interest tax breaks, custom-designed regulations, and special exemptions for favored parties.” While making no specific promises, the platform urged its readers to rally to the cause of fighting crony capitalism.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/08/conservative-critiques-of-capitalism/

We need to recover democracy and to radicalize it

Famous political theorist Chantal Mouffe speaks about populism and its relation to democracy, conception of left populism and the strategies that are most necessary for the left at our historical moment.

Mouffe was in Sofia at the invitation of Human and Social Studies Foundation for a conference under the title “Populism and Propaganda: New Intersections”. In this interview we talk about the significance of her theoretical and political work concerning populism and its relation to democracy, and in particular about the conception of left populism and the strategies that are most necessary for the left at our historical moment.

https://en.baricada.org/chantal-mouffe-interview/

«Меня поразило, какая же занудная белиберда „Майн Кампф“ Гитлера»

Читательская биография исторического социолога Георгия Дерлугьяна. Часть первая

Как выучить португальский по комиксам о Дональде Даке, что читали в Мозамбике 1980-х, почему Валлерстайну в Нью-Йорке не нужно изъясняться дискурсами, а также микровведение в макросоциологию.

https://gorky.media/context/menya-porazilo-kakaya-zhe-zanudnaya-beliberda-majn-kampf-gitlera/

Памук, Данилкин и распад СССР

Читательская биография исторического социолога Георгия Дерлугьяна. Часть вторая

Почему Валлерстайн планирует отметить 101-ю годовщину в еврейско-азербайджанском ресторане в Москве, зачем почтенный кабардинец в папахе штудировал Бурдье и как распался Советский Союз?

https://gorky.media/context/pamuk-danilkin-i-raspad-sssr/

Ivan Mitchell, Daniel Lopez - The Immodest Victorian Socialists

Australia hasn’t had an explicitly socialist member of parliament since the communist MP Fred Patterson was gerrymandered out in 1949. Since the collapse of his Communist Party following 1989, socialist groups have found themselves confined to the margins of political life. This is beginning to change.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/victoria-socialists-australia-manifesto-elections

Alec MacGillis - The Original Underclass

Poor white Americans’ current crisis shouldn’t have caught the rest of the country as off guard as it has.
Sometime during the past few years, the country started talking differently about white Americans of modest means. Early in the Obama era, the ennobling language of campaign pundits prevailed. There was much discussion of “white working-class voters,” with whom the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, were having such trouble connecting. Never mind that this overbroad category of Americans the exit pollsters’ definition was anyone without a four-year college degree, or more than a third of the electorate obliterated major differences in geography, ethnicity, and culture. The label served to conjure a vast swath of salt-of-the-earth citizens living and working in the wide-open spaces between the coasts Sarah Palin’s “real America” who were dubious of the effete, hifalutin types increasingly dominating the party that had once purported to represent the common man. The “white working class” connoted virtue and integrity. A party losing touch with it was a party unmoored.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/the-original-underclass/492731/

Ellen Meiksins Wood - Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from the Renaissance to Enlightenment

The formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment have all been attributed to the “early modern” period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, political discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day.

Чарльз Тилли - Принуждение, капитал и европейские государства. 990 - 1992 гг.

Цель данного исследования, по словам автора, при помощи подробного анализа истории Европы дать возможность понять истоки, характер и границы современной мировой системы. Принуждение и капитал являются основой для формирования государств. Начальная дата исследования определяется временем, когда после 990 г. европейские правители в отношении с подвластным населением все больше отходили от захвата необходимых для ведения войны средств в пользу их приобретения. Тем самым создавалась основа для соглашений между насилием и капиталом, обеспечивших участникам права и привилегии, а также форму современных государств.