Slavoj Zizek - Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Humanity (AudioBook)

In recent years, techno-scientific progress has started to utterly transform our world changing it almost beyond recognition. In this extraordinary new audiobook, renowned philosopher Slavoj Zizek turns to look at the brave new world of Big Tech, revealing how, with each new wave of innovation, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to a bizarrely literal realisation of Marx’s prediction that ‘all that is solid melts into air’. With the automation of work, the virtualisation of money, the dissipation of class communities and the rise of immaterial, intellectual labour, the global capitalist edifice is beginning to crumble, more quickly than ever before and it is now on the verge of vanishing entirely. But what will come next? Against a backdrop of constant sociotechnological upheaval, how could any kind of authentic change take place? In such a context, Žižek argues, there can be no great social triumph because lasting revolution has already come into the scene, like a thief in broad daylight, stealing into sight right before our very eyes. What we must do now is wake up and see it.

http://theoryleaks.org/audio/audiobook/slavoj-zizek/like-a-thief-in-broad-daylight/

David Seddon - Che Guevara and the Struggle for Western Sahara

David Seddon examines a largely unknown chapter in Che Guevara’s involvement in the revolutionary anti-imperialist movements in Africa. He focuses on the question of how far Guevara was involved in promoting and encouraging the liberation struggle in what was to become Western Sahara. Did he contribute to the development of the POLISARIO Front which even today continues its struggle for Western Saharan independence?

http://roape.net/2018/10/02/che-guevara-and-the-struggle-for-western-sahara/

Facebook’s new propaganda partners

Media giant Facebook recently announced (Reuters, 9/19/18) it would combat “fake news” by partnering with two propaganda organizations founded and funded by the U.S. government: the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). The social media platform was already working closely with the NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council think tank

https://mronline.org/2018/09/27/facebooks-new-propaganda-partners/

Ernesto Laclau - The Rhetorical Foundations of Society

The essays collected in this volume develop the theoretical perspective initiated in Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s classic Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Central to the argument of The Rhetorical Foundations of Society is the establishment of rhetorical tropes such as metaphor, metonymy and catachresis as the ‘non-foundational’ grounds of society. From this basis, Laclau explores the state of social relations in today’s heterogeneous society. Employing analytical philosophy from both phenomenological and structuralist traditions, he seeks to locate an ontological terrain for interpersonal relationships. Further, he investigates the definition of social antagonism in an increasingly globalized world, where the proliferation of conflicts and points of rupture erodes crucial links between the social subjects postulated by classical social analysis.

Елена Чиркова - Бесчеловечные инноваторы

Пионеры главной инновации ХХ века конвейерного производства не скрывали, что относятся к рабочей силе как к скоту. Несмотря на все разговоры о новой промышленной революции, этот подход еще долго будет оставаться основой индустриальной и социальной политики.
Мэттью Стюарт в книге "Миф о менеджменте: Разоблачение современной философии бизнеса" развенчивает созданный Тейлором миф об успехе его эксперимента: после первого дня люди разбежались вкалывать на износ за относительно небольшую надбавку никто не хочет

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2995392

Branco Marcetic - Populist Billionaires

The face of right-wing anti-elitism is surprisingly elite.

Over the past few years, the liberal-left has looked on in horror at the rise of various populist right-wing movements creeping up around Europe and the United States. These electoral victories have all been cast, accurately, as products of populist rage and activism. Some votes for the populist right were a frustrated middle finger in the face of their economic and political “betters.” Some were motivated by economic anxiety and represented a desperate rejection of the neoliberal policies that have failed time and again to bring the benefits they promise.

https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/campaign-finance-alt-right-brexit-donations-ukip-trump

Penelope J. Corfield - Christopher Hill: The Marxist Historian as I Knew Him

Penelope J. Corfield reflects on the personal and political life of her late uncle, the eminent Marxist historian Christopher Hill. Throughout his life, Hill was deeply committed to the principle of equality and the vision of a just society without poverty and exploitation - egalitarian ideals that are as important today as they were in the 1640s.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4062-christopher-hill-the-marxist-historian-as-i-knew-him

Jamie Merchant - Trade and Unions

Why economic nationalism is a dead end for the labor movement.

Even supposedly sober centrists and the pro-labor left commonly display what sometimes seems an unconscious drive for American supremacy. Consider the way labor leaders have responded to the Trump administration’s ratcheting up of tariffs as part of an escalating trade war. Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, applauded the Trump administration’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum that targeted Chinese companies. Leo Gerard, President of United Steelworkers, put forth a “pro-union case” for the job-creating potential of such tariffs. Both union leaders focused on the actions of foreign governments, mainly China, who are said to manipulate trade rules in their interests to the detriment of American industries.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/trade-and-unions-merchant

Omar G. Encarnacion - How Lula’s Legacy Hurts His Party’s Prospects

Since becoming a democracy in 1985, after 21 years of military rule, Brazil has become used to wild and unpredictable elections. But this year’s presidential race, scheduled for October 7, is one for the history books. Last July, the front-runner, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known simply as Lula, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on corruption charges. He was accused of accepting a seafront triplex apartment from Odebrecht, Latin America’s largest construction firm, in exchange for contracts with Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run oil company. But Lula’s prosecution did not stop him from continuing his presidential run from his jail cell in the southern city of Curitiba. He abandoned the race only after the Superior Electoral Tribunal ruled, on September 11, that he could not run while serving a prison sentence. Lula’s exit from the race forced his party, the leftist Workers’ Party, or PT, into plan B: It replaced Lula with Fernando Haddad, the former mayor of São Paulo and Lula’s minister of education.

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-lulas-legacy-hurts-his-partys-prospects/

Jeremy Gilbert - Anticapitalism and Culture. Radical Theory and Popular Politics

Anticapitalism is an idea which, despite going global, remains rooted in the local, persisting as a loose collection of grassroots movements and actions. Anticapitalism needs to develop a coherent and cohering philosophy, something which cultural theory and the intellectual legacy of the New Left can help to provide, notably through the work of key radical thinkers, such as Ernesto Laclau, Stuart Hall, Antonio Negri, Gilles Deleuze and Judith Butler. Anticapitalism and Culture argues that there is a strong relationship between the radical tradition of cultural studies and the new political movements which try to resist corporate globalization. Indeed, the two need each other: whilst theory can shape and direct the huge diversity of anticapitalist activism, the energy and sheer political engagement of the anticapitalist movement can breathe new life into cultural studies.

Свен Беккерт - Рабство и капитализм. Рабство в центре капиталистического развития?

Если капитализм, как многие полагают, - это наемный труд, рынки, контракты и верховенство закона и, важнее всего, если основан он на идее, что рынки естественным образом расширяют человеческую свободу, как тогда понять роль рабства в нем? Ни одна национальная история не поднимает этот вопрос столь же настойчиво, как история США: это ключевое для нашего времени капиталистическое общество к тому же долго пособничало рабству. Но тема эта выходит далеко за пределы одной нации. На самом деле, отношения между рабством и капитализмом - это ключ к пониманию основ современного мира.

http://gefter.ru/archive/14328

Стыкалин А.С. - Дьердь Лукач - мыслитель и политик

В монографии, написанной с привлечением обширного архивного материала, дается жизнеописание и прослеживается идейная эволюция выдающегося венгерского философа и литературного критика Дьердя Лукача, оказавшего влияние на Франкфуртскую школу и другие направления европейской мысли XX века.

Michael Lowy - The theory of revolution in young Marx

Lowy's classic book is essential reading for anyone interested in Marx, Marxism and socialist politics today. In this book, Lowy, in effect, gives a Marxist analysis of Marxism itself. Through a careful historical analysis of the conditions political, social and economic Lowy excavates the core insight that distinguished Marx from earlier socialists: he thought that the working class could, through a mass-democratic revolutionary uprising, emancipate itself.

Stathis Kouvelakis, Costas Lapavitsas - Syriza’s Repressive Turn

Alexis Tsipras’s government promised to end austerity. Now it’s defending the banks against people evicted from their homes and persecuting those who protest.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/syriza-repression-foreclosure-banks-tsipras

Michael Lowy - The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America

The War of Gods traces the intimate relationship between religion, politics and social issues in Latin America over the last three decades, as liberation theology has reinterpreted the vocation of the Catholic Church and as Protestantism has made inroads on traditional Catholic strongholds. In the 1960s liberation theology addressed itself to the problems of a continent racked by poverty and oppression. Comprising a network of localized communities and pastoral organizations, it soon became something much more than a doctrinal current. Liberationist Christianity defined itself in a multitude of social struggles, particularly in Brazil and Central America. Many of the most momentous events in the continent’s recent history the Nicaraguan revolution, the development of the PT (Workers’ Party) in Brazil, the tortuous ascent of President Aristide in Haiti and the uprising in Chiapas have borne witness to the influence of a distinctive liberationist Christianity. Michael Löwy proposes here a new interpretation inspired by the sociology of culture both of liberation theology and of the rival religious projects in Latin America.