Славой Жижек - Событие

This Is Media публикует отрывок из книги словенского философа и культуролога, которая вышла в издательстве “Рипол Классик”

Если вам это кажется слишком абстрактным, вспомните многочисленные примеры из истории науки, от воображаемого элемента сгорания флогистона (псевдопонятие, выдающее незнание ученых того времени о распространении света) до “азиатского способа производства” у Маркса   еще одной отрицательной категории, так как истинное содержание значения этого понятия сводится ко “всем способам производства, не подходящим к стандартной категоризации способов производства по Марксу”. Другими словами: как Маркс пришел к этому понятию? Сначала он сформулировал европоцентричную серию прогрессивных способов производства: первобытное доклассовое общество, древнее рабовладельчество, феодализм, капитализм, коммунизм; затем, заметив, что многие древние общества, от Китая и Египта до империи инков, не подпадали под эту категоризацию способов, он создал новую категорию “азиатских способов производства”, которая кажется последовательным понятием, но на деле является пустым “вместилищем” для всех выбивающихся из теории элементов.

https://thisis.media/culture/preprint-slavoy-zhizhek-sobytie

Ronald Aronson - The Privatization of Hope

What caused the depletion not only of social goods but also social energy? Not only the will to work together but even the sense that togetherness could be politically useful?
The most stunning instance of this shift is the eruption of the Tea Party in early 2009. By what political alchemy did the only movement generated during the first three years of the Great Recession demand more of the same policies that caused the crisis?

http://bostonreview.net/editors-picks-us-books-ideas/ronald-aronson-privatization-hope

Ishay Landa - Liberalism, Fascism, and the Conundrum of Mass Society

Highlighting the "mass" nature of interwar European fascism has long become commonplace. Throughout the years, numerous critics have construed fascism as a phenomenon of mass society, perhaps the ultimate expression of mass politics. This study deconstructs this long-standing perception. It argues that the entwining of fascism with the masses is a remarkable transubstantiation of a movement which understood and presented itself as a militant rejection of the ideal of mass politics, and indeed of mass society and mass culture more broadly conceived. Thus, rather than "massifying" society, fascism was the culmination of a long effort on the part of the élites and the middle-classes to de-massify it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzmE-i4QiFs

Claus Leggewie - Resist, don’t reminisce!

Resistance is a word inextricably linked to historical anti-fascism. So can it be used to describe opposition to contemporary authoritarianisms? Yes, argues Claus Leggewie: wherever the foundations of democracy are being undermined, the history of resistance teaches us how to respond.

https://www.eurozine.com/resist-dont-reminisce/

ROAR magazine issue 8 - “Beyond the Border"

Featuring nine timely reflections on a new revolutionary internationalism for the twenty-first century.

https://roarmag.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ROAR_Issue_8_Beyond_the_Border.pdf

Oli Mould - Against Creativity

The push for “creativity” at work and in society is about serving capital’s needs. The rush to “be creative” is having a huge impact on everything around us, from the places where we work to the ways we are managed. The traditional corporate hierarchy is now a defunct system that negates creative activity, we hear. Governments are too bureaucratic and stifle innovative policy thinking. Regulation is the enemy of flexible, agile, and creative work.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/against-creativity-oli-mould-commercialization-profit-resistance

Richard Sennett - Real progressives believe in breaking up Google

It is time to break up Google. The problem is simple: the company is just too powerful, as are Apple and many other big tech groups. The notion that a private company must not be allowed to become a leviathan is hardly novel. More than a century ago, in 1911, the US Supreme Court ordered the break-up of Standard Oil. An overmighty business was shattered into 33 shards. Yes, Google is an innovator, but so was Standard Oil. Like the tech company, Standard Oil’s scale and reach afforded it great efficiencies. Even so, President Theodore Roosevelt used his trustbusting armoury against it and the other big industrial groups that controlled the gates of technological innovation.

https://www.ft.com/content/06512782-de6e-11e2-9b47-00144feab7de

Ernesto Laclau - Emancipation(s)

In Emancipation(s), Ernesto Laclau addresses a central question: how have the changes of the last decade, together with the transformation in contemporary thought, altered the classical notion of “emancipation” as formulated since the Enlightenment? Our visions of the future and our expectations of emancipation, have been deeply affected by the changes of recent history: the end of the Cold War, the explosion of new ethnic and national identities, the social fragmentation under late capitalism, and the collapse of universal certainties in philosophy and social and historical thought. Laclau here begins to explore precisely how our visions of emancipation have been recast under these new conditions. Laclau examines the internal contradictions of the notion of “emancipation” as it emerged from the mainstream of modernity, as well as the relation between universalism and particularism which is inherent in it. He explores the making of political identities and the status of central notions in political theory such as “representation” and “power,” focusing particularly on the work of Derrida and Rorty.

Kaushik Basu - Profit Sharing Now

Recent proposals to grant workers equity in the economy have been met with skepticism by those who fear that radical intervention in the market inevitably paves the road to serfdom. But profit-sharing schemes, if designed properly, could be an ideal response to today's dangerously high levels of inequality.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/profit-sharing-labour-party-plan-by-kaushik-basu-2018-09

Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe - Post-Marxism without Apologies

Why should we rethink the socialist project today? In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy we pointed out some of the reasons. As participating actors in the history of our time, if we are actually to assume an interventionist role and not to do so blindly, we must attempt to wrest as much light as possible from the struggles in which we participate and from the changes which are taking place before our eyes. Thus, it is again necessary to temper ‘the arms of critique’. The historical reality whereof the socialist project is reformulated today is very different from the one of only a few decades ago, and we will carry out our obligations as socialists and intellectuals only if we are fully conscious of the changes and persist in the effort of extracting all their consequences at the level of theory. The ‘obstinate rigour’ that Leonardo proposed as a rule for intellectual work should be the only guideline in this task; and it leaves no space for complacent sleights of hand that seek only to safeguard an obsolete orthodoxy.

Bruce Robbins - Marxism Without Progress

My failure to answer this question at the time, or even to realize it needed asking, hit me with a sudden queasiness when I opened Reading Marx, a short volume of three essays by Slavoj Žižek, Frank Ruda, and Agon Hamza. The point of this fascinating, if somewhat quirky book, is not to talk people out of acquiring the Master’s thought second-hand, as if all problems would be solved by a return to the sacred texts. Reverence for the texts themselves is visible, but Marx is not treated as infallible.

https://bostonreview.net/philosophy-religion/bruce-robbins-marxism-without-progress

Rene Rojas - The Latin American Left’s Shifting Tides

The new millennium unleashed a wave of popular rebellions in Latin America, which propelled a number of left governments into power. These governments came to be known as the Pink Tide, and while they have not pursued full-blown “red” policies, they received enthusiastic support from radical quarters, including from some of our leading thinkers. Noam Chomsky, for instance, praised the achievements of the new reformers in the areas of democracy, sovereign development, and popular welfare.

https://catalyst-journal.com/vol2/no2/the-latin-american-lefts-shifting-tides

Chantal Mouffe - Agonistics. Thinking The World Politically

Political conflict in our society is inevitable, and its results are often far from negative. How then should we deal with the intractable differences arising from complex modern culture? Developing her groundbreaking political philosophy of agonistics the search for a radical and plural democracy Chantal Mouffe examines international relations, strategies for radical politics, the future of Europe and the politics of artistic practices. She shows that in many circumstances where no alternatives seem possible, agonistics offers a new road map for change. Engaging withcosmopolitanism, post-operaism, and theories of multiple modernities she argues in favour of a multipolar world with real cultural and political pluralism.

Liz Pelly - Unfree Agents

Spotify pushes an Uber-like model for independent artists.

It was a peculiar comment coming from Ek, especially considering the way Spotify forces independent musicians to work more like Uber drivers beholden to the whim of a platform they can’t control, one whose “innovations” have undercut an industry that once provided some semblance of an organic support system. What’s more, at least one Spotify employee has referred to the company’s aspirations with the Uberish term “self-driving music,” language which points to a strategy that would see music creation and discovery become more automated and data-driven, and, as much as possible, human-free.

https://thebaffler.com/downstream/unfree-agents-pelly

Jean-Paul Sartre - On intellectualism

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_g8JVK4Fppw

Noam Chomsky - I Just visited Lula, the worlds most prominent political prisoner. A “soft coup” In Brazils election will have global consequences.

The prisoner we visited, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – “Lula,” as he is universally known has been sentenced to virtual life imprisonment, in solitary confinement, with no access to press or journals and with limited visits one day a week. The day after our visit, one judge, citing press freedoms, granted the request of the nation’s largest newspaper, Folha of São Paulo, to interview Lula, but another judge quickly intervened and reversed that decision, notwithstanding the fact that the country’s most violent criminals its militia leaders and drug traffickers are routinely interviewed in prison.

https://theintercept.com/2018/10/02/lula-brazil-election-noam-chomsky/

Samir Amin - The Communist Manifesto, 170 Years Later

This essay was the last sent to Monthly Review by Samir Amin before his death.

There is no other text written in the mid-nineteenth century that has held up as well as the Communist Manifesto of 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Even today, entire paragraphs of the text correspond to contemporary reality better than they did to that of 1848. Starting from premises that were hardly visible in their era, Marx and Engels drew the conclusions that the developments of 170 years of history fully verified.

https://monthlyreview.org/2018/10/01/the-communist-manifesto-170-years-later/