Бенуа Кокар - Протестные акции и классовая борьба

Нужно различать носителей «бренда» «желтые жилеты» – тех, кто расставляет «лайки» на страницах в Фейсбуке, и тех, кто находится на местах, блокируя дороги. На уличных акциях в основном встречаются представители малоимущих классов, среди которых наиболее многочисленными являются рабочие и наёмные служащие. Демограф Эрве Ле Бра наглядно демонстрирует соотношение между количеством уличных пикетов и численностью населения – особенно выделяются те территории, основное население которых составляют представители рабочих профессий, молодёжь и люди пенсионного возраста.

http://humanite-russie.ru/politic/1098-coquard.html

Frédéric Lordon - End of the World?

The social warfare unleashed by Macron in the past 18 months has sparked anger in the French population. In this article, Frédéric Lordon analyses the gilets jaunes protests.

The collapse of an order of domination is recognizable by the amazement to be seen on the faces of its servants. On Saturday, the show wasn’t just on the street. It was, and still is, the astonished faces on BFM, CNews, France 2, and almost all the TV channels, caught in a radical misunderstanding. What stupidity has in common with stupefaction is expressed in the very etymology of the words. Here the two become indistinguishable, and their common spectacle is offered as a particular kind of continuous ‘news’.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4153-end-of-the-world

Noam Chomsky - Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy

How elites on both sides of the political spectrum have undermined our social, political, and environmental commons.

For 50 years, Noam Chomsky, has been America’s Socrates, our public pest with questions that sting. He speaks not to the city square of Athens but to a vast global village in pain and now, it seems, in danger.

https://www.thenation.com/article/noam-chomsky-neoliberalism-destroying-democracy/

Alain Badiou - The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic

The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic is the last in a trilogy of political-philosophical essays, preceded by Theory of Contradiction and On Ideology, written during the dark days at the end of the decade after May ‘68. With the late 1970’s “triumphant restoration” in Europe, China and the United States, Badiou and his collaborators return to Hegel with a Chinese twist. By translating, annotating and providing commentary to a contemporaneous text by Chinese Hegelian Zhang Shi Ying, Badiou and his collaborators attempt to diagnose the status of the dialectic in their common political and philosophical horizon.

Contribution to the Rupture in Progress

A Translation from France on the Yellow Vest Movement

The following text appeared yesterday on the French platform lundimatin; they describe it as the best sociological and political analysis to date on the yellow vest movement. Although we are no more optimistic about the “non-ideological” character of the first phase of the yellow vest phenomenon than we are about the antiquated methods of organization it supplanted, the movement itself has become a battleground to determine what form the next wave of opposition to neoliberal austerity will assume and no one can afford to stand aside. This text concludes with a cool-headed appraisal of the risks and possibilities before the gilets jaunes and all who will follow in their wake.

https://crimethinc.com/2018/12/07/contribution-to-the-rupture-in-progress-a-translation-from-france-on-the-yellow-vest-movement

Scott Lavery - Global Capitalism and Labour’s Economic Programme

History is filled with cases of left wing governments whose economic plans were sunk by the disciplinary power of global financial markets. With the very real chance of the Labour Party winning any forthcoming general election, would the same happen to them? In this article, Scott Lavery analyses the current conjuncture of global capitalism to see what room to maneuver Corbyn's Labour would have.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4154-global-capitalism-and-labour-s-economic-programme

Nathan J. Robinson - Is it ethical to use Amazon

Should we be ashamed of ourselves for patronizing evil corporations?

Amazon is terrible. Just a truly awful company in so many ways. Most recently, of course, they pitted struggling cities around the country against each other in a brutal “race to the bottom” to see how many taxpayer handouts they could get. New York City’s bribes succeeded and now Amazon has granted New York the privilege of having one of its working-class neighborhoods rapidly gentrified, and becoming even more unequal. But Amazon also overworks both its white-collar and blue-collar employees, and threatens to use its economic power to hurt local economies if the people so much as think of trying to make the company pay its fair share in taxes. An Amazon-dominated future is a bleak one: total unaccountable control of the economy in the hands of one fabulously wealthy individual, millions upon millions of people toiling away in his factories and warehouses.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/12/is-it-ethical-to-use-amazon

Edouard Louis - Can the Yellow Vests Speak?

France's elites were quick to condemn the gilets jaunes protesters as stupid and backward. But as novelist Édouard Louis writes, they're just standing up for their rights.

One of France’s most brilliant young novelists, Édouard Louis’s work emphasizes the daily humiliations and petty brutality of life in small-town France. A critic of the Emmanuel Macron’s government, he has been a vocal supporter of the “gilets jaunes” or “yellow vests” protests which have swept across the country in recent weeks, sparked by a row over rising fuel prices. In particular, the writer has combatted media attempts to smear the participants as “country bumpkins” or stupid opponents of progress. In this text, originally published on Les Inrockuptibles, Louis proclaims that “those who insult the gilets jaunes are insulting people like my father.”

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/12/france-yellow-vests-gilets-jaunes-austerity-macron

Rob Weissman - How Market Fundamentalism Corrupts the Political Process

Rob Weissman, president of Public Citizen speaks at the forum, “Destroying the Myths of Market Fundamentalism,” held in Washington DC, on October 19, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OK2bTk1uVM

Bruno Amable - Towards an Anti-Bourgeois Bloc?

Emmanuel Macron's regime is in tatters, with plummeting approval ratings and the growing wave of "gilets jaunes" protests. But could this growing discontent be the start of an anti-bourgeois bloc to challenge the neoliberal consensus?

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4152-towards-an-anti-bourgeois-bloc

Ги Дебор - Ситуационисты и новые формы действия в политике и искусстве

Повсюду царит одно и то же общество отчуждения, тотального контроля, потребления спектаклей, какие бы идеологические и юридические маски оно не надевало. Понять сущность такого общества невозможно без всеохватной его критики, продиктованной противоположным стремлением к свободе творческого действия, к обретению каждым человеком контроля над собственной историей на всех уровнях.

Сегодня вернуть к жизни проект неразрывного единства того стремления и той критики (каждое из понятий предполагает другое), значит тут же поставить во главу радикализм, чьими носителями были рабочее движение, современная поэзия и искусство, мысль эпохи преодоления философии, от Гегеля до Ницше.

http://hylaea.ru/debord_situationisty.html

Nick Slater - How “creative jobs” pervert your soul

"We can say with reasonable certainty that there are some places where the truth will definitely not be found, and the soulless content factories of the creative class are a prime example. George Orwell once wrote that 'if a writer is to have an alternative profession, it is much better that it should have nothing to do with writing.' The same holds true for any creative pursuit. Taking a photo or composing a song or drawing a cartoon is a joyful thing for human beings to do, because it allows us to feel like we’re sharing our true thoughts and feelings with the world. But as Orwell says, 'no government, no big organization, will pay for the truth.'"

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/12/how-creative-jobs-pervert-your-soul

“Paris is not an actor, but a battlefield”: Interview with Eric Hazan

Are we facing the insurrection announced by the Invisible Committee in its 2007 book?

What happened last Saturday really looked like an insurrection. And not only in Paris. The movement has been very strong elsewhere: in Bordeaux, Marseille, as far as Le Puy-en-Velay... Paris is not the motor that it usually is, what it was in May 68, what it was during the Commune. Today, things happen in Paris because it is the seat of power, that’s where Macron is. But the city itself does not really play a role.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4159-paris-is-not-an-actor-but-a-battlefield-interview-with-eric-hazan

Graham Harman and Slavoj Zizek: talk and debate: On Object Oriented Ontology

Graham Harman gives a talk on object-oriented-ontology and then debates with Slavoj Zizek if "subject-oriented ontology" would be its opponent.
Munich, "Lost-Weekend" - Cafe, December 1, 2018; organized and moderated by Dominik Finkelde (Munich School of Philosophy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k8Gm2SPRrA

Noam Chomsky - Essential Reads

Cognitive scientist, political activist, and the “father of modern linguistics” Noam Chomsky celebrates his 90th year. We jumped at the chance to compile a reading list of his writings, not only because we have published him several times on topics.

http://bostonreview.net/reading-lists/rosie-gillies-boston-review-noam-chomsky%E2%80%94essential-reads

Bruna de Lara - The corruption cabinet

What remains astonishing is how career politician Jair Bolsonaro, with almost three decades in Congress under his belt, has managed to position himself as Brazil’s anti-establishment miracle cure for corruption. How long can his facade last?

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/09/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-cabinet/

John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark - Marx and Alienated Speciesism

Few contemporary scholarly controversies on the left are more charged than those surrounding Karl Marx’s view of the status of animals in human society. Numerous left animal-rights scholars, including some ecosocialists, allege that Marx was speciesist in his early writings. Moreover, it is contended that, despite their later adherence to Darwinian views, Marx and Frederick Engels never fully transcended this deeply embedded speciesist outlook, which therefore infected historical materialism as a whole.

https://monthlyreview.org/2018/12/01/marx-and-alienated-speciesism/

Мишель Фуко - Лекции о воле к знанию

Курс лекций, прочитанный в Коллеж де Франс в 1970–1971 учебном году. Первый лекционный курс, прочитанный Мишелем Фуко в Коллеж де Франс (1970–1971), получил название «Лекции о Воле к знанию». Он представляет процесс формирования идей, легших в основу получившей то же название книги Фуко 1976 г. Вместе с тем, эти лекции позволяют по-новому взглянуть на обращение философа к культуре античности, пересмотрев общепринятое представление о такой переориентации его исследовательских интересов лишь в самый поздний период творчества Фуко, связанный с программой исследования «заботы о себе». Опираясь на ницшеанское понимание власти и продолжая свою линию «генеалогии знания», Фуко развивает детальный анализ античных практик дознания истины, выводя новую версию уже знакомой читателю его книг связки «знание-власть».