Bradley Babendir - Not How the Internet Happened

“How the Internet Happened” dispels some of Silicon Valley’s stupider creation myths. But it doesn’t hold those same firms accountable for how their reckless, thoughtless pursuit of money and power threatens democracy.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/not-how-the-internet-happened-babendir

Lorenzo Cini, Arianna Tassinari - On Struggles in Logistics: Notes for militant labor activism from the Italian experience

Logistical infrastructures have become central in the contemporary organization of work and capitalist production. In the current phase of capitalist accumulation, characterized by low levels of growth, profitability is primarily pursued through facilitating and speeding up the circulation of goods and increasing the number of exchanges, rather than increasing production. Within this model, the logistics sector plays a key role, because of its capacity to reduce the space and time necessary for capital circulation.

https://notesfrombelow.org/article/struggles-logistics-notes-militant-labor-activism

Sandro Mezzadra - Operaism and post-Operaism

Operaismo (“operaism”), also known in the English-speaking world as “autonomist Marxism”, refers to a theoretical and political current of Marxist thought that emerged in Italy in the early 1960s. An original reading of Marx in the framework of the radical workers’ struggles that developed in the country during the whole decade led to the invention of new theoretical concepts (such as technical and political class composition, the mass worker, the refusal of work) and of a new political methodology (the so called militant investigation or co-research).

http://imediata.org/indditec/?p=238

“We Are a Marxist Party That Believes in a Socialist Future”

An interview with
Peter Mertens

In Belgium, a party of Marxist-Leninist background is mounting a surprising challenge to the mainstream.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/12/belgium-workers-party-ptb-elections-left

The Idea of Communism vol. 2: The New York Conference

Key theorists discuss the future of communism in New York.

The first volume of The Idea of Communism followed the 2009 London conference called in response to Alain Badiou’s ‘communist hypothesis’, where a cast of radical intellectuals put the idea of communism back on the map.

This volume brings together papers from the subsequent 2011 New York conference organized by Verso and continues this critical discussion, highlighting the philosophical and political importance of the communist idea, in a world of financial and social turmoil. Contributors include Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Susan Buck-Morss, Jodi Dean, Adrian Johnston, François Nicolas, Frank Ruda, Emmanuel Terray and Slavoj Žižek.

Jacques Rancière - Althusser's Lesson

Jacques Rancière's first major work, Althusser's Lesson appeared in 1974, just as the energies of May 68 were losing ground to the calls for a return to order. Rancière's analysis of Althusserian Marxism unfolds against this background: what is the relationship between the return to order and the enthusiasm which greeted the publication of Althusser's Reply to John Lewis in 1973? How to explain the rehabilitation of a philosophy that had been declared 'dead and buried on the barricades of May 68'? What had changed? The answer to this question takes the form of a genealogy of Althusserianism that is, simultaneously, an account of the emergence of militant student movements in the '60s, of the arrival of Maoism in France, and of how May 68 rearranged all the pieces anew. Encompassing the book's distinctive combination of theoretical analysis and historical description is a question that has guided Rancière's thought ever since: how do theories of subversion become the rationale for order?

Руслан Дзарасов - Зачем изучать политэкономию?

Российский ученый и доктор экономических наук, заведующий кафедры политической экономии РЭУ им. Г.В. Плеханова Р. С. Дзарасов расскажет, почему нам все-таки необходимо изучать политическую экономию.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yeFEe9zVlM0

Words on the street: graffiti of the Paris protests – in pictures

As the cleanup operation continues across across the French capital after violent demonstrations against rising taxes and the high cost of living, the messages left behind reveal some of the motives and emotions behind the unrest

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/dec/03/words-on-the-street-graffiti-of-the-paris-protests-in-pictures

Mariátegui’s Heroic Socialism

An interview with Michael Lowy

José Carlos Mariátegui was Latin America's most original Marxist. And his work is strikingly relevant for confronting the continent's right-wing backlash today.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/12/jose-carlos-mariategui-seven-interpretive-essays-peru-marxism-revolutionary-myth

Diana Johnstone - Yellow Vests rise against neo-liberal ‘King’ Macron

For centuries, the “left” hoped popular movements would lead to changes for the better. Today, many leftists seem terrified of popular movements for change, convinced “populism” must lead to “fascism.” But it needn’t be so, says Diana Johnstone.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/yellow-vests-macron/252604/

The Idea of Communism vol. 3: The Seoul Conference

A cast of radical intellectuals discuss the continued importance of communist principles

The discussion has continued across the world and this book gathers responses from the conference in Seoul. It includes the interventions of regular contributors Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, as well as work from across Asia, notably from Chinese scholar Wang Hui, offering regional perspectives on communism in an era of global economic crisis and political upheaval. What does it mean to talk of communism as an emancipatory possibility to a geographical neighbour of North Korea, Vietnam or China?

With contributions by Alain Badiou, Wang Hui, Ho Duk Hwang, Rosalind C. Morris, Pun Ngai, Claudia Pozzana, Alessandra Russo, Yong Soon Seo, and Cécile Winter

Philippe Alcoy - Student protests in Albania: “What we are witnessing is the direct effect of the neoliberal reform in education”

Albanian students are protesting en masse against a new hike in tuition fees in one of the poorest countries of the continent. While the medium wage in Albania is 350 euros per month, the tuition fees can go up to 2000 euros per year. Government wanted to make students pay for retake exams but it was forced to retreat to try to calm down the movement. But it seems not enough. We interviewed Redi Muçi, lecturer at the Faculty of Geology and Mining and member of Movement For University (Levizja Për Universitetin), one of the organizers of the protests.

http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/student-protests-in-albania-what-we-are-witnessing-is-the-direct-effect-of-the-neoliberal-reform-in-education/

Алексей Сахнин - Новые старые левые или 1968 год наоборот

«Нынешние протесты носят гораздо более «плебейский» или как сегодня говорят «популистский» характер. Вместо богемных обитателей Латинского квартала, ядром нынешних демонстраций стали выходцы из рабочей глубинки страны. И требуют они вовсе не передать всю власть воображению, как мечтатели 1968, а повысить минимальные зарплаты и пенсии. «Нельзя полюбить рост промышленного производства» - писали на стенах Сорбонны в 1968. Наивные! Они просто не могли вообразить себе эпоху, когда одно за другим закрывались или перемещались за рубеж тысячи предприятий, а провинция превратилась в депрессивную социальную пустыню. Нынешние «революционеры» требуют защищать производство и гарантировать занятость. Бунтари Красного мая презирали общество потребления и издевались над долгой традицией рабочего движения, якобы сводившегося к борьбе за мелкие мещанские привилегии»

https://aurora.network/articles/10-vlast-i-obshhestvo/63930-novye-starye-levye-ili-1968-god-naoborot?fbclid=IwAR0wZAaz8kiyNpK1_Ag-FUKZg2CNE6fiCyeKFdX7Yas6NRudcLPQ0UdheWs

Первая лекция Бориса Кагарлицкого из цикла о марксистской политико-философской теории, посвящена введению в методологию марксизма.

https://socioimagination.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/kagarlitsky-metodologia-marksizma/

Panagiotis Sotiris, Spyros Sakellaropoulos - European Union as Class Project and Imperialist Strategy

Questions regarding the character of the European Union as a class project have not received the attention they deserve in Marxist debates, despite important interventions by some Marxists who have attempted to theorize “European Integration.” In contrast to the tendency to theorize the European Integration process as the evolution of a federation or confederation, we want to focus upon the class strategies inscribed in this process. Such an approach will show that we are not dealing with a supranational state-form, but with an advanced form of the hierarchical (and necessarily contradictory) coördination and integration of the class projects of European capitalist classes and capitalist states, in which the reduction of state sovereignty enables a strategy of intensified capitalist exploitation. Such an approach has not only analytical consequences but also political ones, because it points towards the continuing relevance, for the subaltern classes, of a strategy of rupture with the process of European Integration.

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/02/01/european-union-class-project-imperialist-strategy/

Raymond Williams - The future of marxism (1961)

Published at last in New Left Review, a remarkable, long-buried intervention by one of the leading thinkers of the early New Left. Characteristically original and independent-minded considerations of the relation of Marxism to the actually existing Communist regimes and the correspondences of socialist theory and practice across the ‘three worlds’, written just after The Long Revolution.