Étienne Balibar - Lenin, Communists, and Immigration (1973)

Étienne Balibar wrote the text, “Lénine, les communistes, et l’immigration,” as a readers’ letter to the daily organ of the French Communist Party (PCF), L’Humanité, appearing in the June 8, 1973 issue. It was later included as an appendix in Balibar’s 1974 collection of essays, Cinq études du matérialisme historique. The letter was a response to an article, “On Immigrant Workers,” by Jean Bruhat, a historian and veteran PCF member, which had charted the impact of migrant labor on earlier episodes of the workers’ movement in France.

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2019/01/14/lenin-communists-and-immigration-1973/

Antonio Negri - A 21st Century Fascist

With election of Jair Bolsonaro as President of Brazil, Antonio Negri reflects on the resurgent global far-right.

In regards to what happened in Brazil, it must first be noted that fascism did not arrive through a classic “coup d’etat” (from outside of the democratic institutions), through the exception (as what more or less happened with Latin American fascisms, up until Pinochet and the Argentine military junta), but rather from within the constitutional process. It did not arrive through a rupture with constitutional legality, but through the constitutional construction of a new legitimacy.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4208-a-21st-century-fascist

Карин Жансельм - Водитель UBER признан штатным сотрудником этой компании

Является ли Uber приложением, которое просто помогает установить контакт между независимыми шофёрами и их клиентами? «Нет», - ответил в четверг парижский апелляционный суд, который недавно направил на рассмотрение комиссии по трудовым вопросам дело, возникшее между водителем-перевозчиком пассажиров и гигантом онлайн-бронирования. По мнению судей, истец был связан трудовым контрактом с Uber BV – акционерным обществом, действующему по нидерландскому праву. И поскольку этот шофёр позиционирует себя как штатный сотрудник, его дело должно рассматриваться судом по трудовым вопросам. Несмотря на то, что этот суд в июне 2018 г. объявил себя некомпетентным в подобного рода делах, отдавая их коммерческим судам.

http://humanite-russie.ru/politic/1178-voditel-uber.html

Slavoj Žižek - The Real of the Capitalist illusion

Lacan begins the eleventh week of his seminar Les non-dupes errent (1973-4) with a straight question directed back at himself: “what was it that Lacan, who is here present, invented?” He answers the question “like that, to get things going: objet a.” Objet a has a long history in Lacan’s teaching, it precedes for decades Lacan’s systematic references to the analysis of commodities in Marx’s Capital. But it is undoubtedly this reference to Marx, especially to Marx’s notion of surplus-value /Mehrwert/, that enabled Lacan to deploy his »mature« notion of objet a as surplus-enjoyment: the predominant motif which permeates all Lacan’s references to Marx’s analysis of commodities is the structural homology between Marx’s surplus-value and what Lacan’s baptized surplus-enjoyment, the phenomenon called by Freud Lustgewinn, a “gain of pleasure,” which does not designate a simple stepping up of pleasure but the additional pleasure provided by the very formal detours in the subject’s effort to attain pleasure.

The point of this homology is not to search in Marx for the origins of Lacan’s theory, but to explore how reading Marx’s critique of political economy through Lacan enables us to reactualize Marx, to conceive the structure of the self-propelling circulation of capital (“money which begets more money”) as the fundamental fantasy of capitalism, fantasy not in the sense of subjective illusion but in a much more radical sense of a fiction which structures our social reality itself.

https://youtube.com/watch?list=PLN1Nt3XUpdDDY97yeqMZ8DfKBYt89oSL5&v=zy56vTJBu9c&index=1

Costas Lapavitsas - The Left Case Against the EU. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2019.

Reviewed by Neal Harris

Lapavitsas does not present the left case against the EU. Rather, a more accurate title would have been: Former SYRIZA MP and esteemed Marxist economist angrily argues that the EU is neoliberal. Demonstrating this unfortunate reality in black and white, in quantitative and qualitative terms, is admittedly an important task, and one which Lapavitsas does with confidence and flair. Yet arguing this thesis alone does not make his publication a left case for leaving the EU, a call which Lapavitsas repeatedly asserts. To merit this weightier appellation Lapavitsas needs to do more; he would need to get involved in the uncertainties and messy realities of secessionist debates.

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/16501_the-left-case-against-the-eu-by-costas-lapavitsas-reviewed-by-neal-harris/

David Harvey - Paris, Capital of Modernity

Collecting David Harvey's finest work on Paris during the second empire, Paris, Capital of Modernity offers brilliant insights ranging from the birth of consumerist spectacle on the Parisian boulevards, the creative visions of Balzac, Baudelaire and Zola, and the reactionary cultural politics of the bombastic Sacre Couer. The book is heavily illustrated and includes a number drawings, portraits and cartoons by Daumier, one of the greatest political caricaturists of the nineteenth century.

А. Пензин - «Космология духа» Эвальда Ильенкова: опыт прочтения в свете современных философских дискуссий

В статье обсуждается ранняя работа Эвальда Ильенкова «Космология духа», написанная в первой половине 50-х гг., и опубликованная лишь после смерти мыслителя. Рассматривается связь «Космологии» с советским интеллектуальным контекстом 1950-х гг. Подробно разбираются аргументы и гипотезы этой весьма экспериментальной работы. Статья не ограничивается жанром интеллектуальной истории, но пытается обосновать актуальность текста Ильенкова для современных дискуссий в европейской философии. Прослеживаются возможности интерпретации этой работы – как мифо-поэтического текста, как идеологически-культурного симптома, а также как выражения советской субъективности, рассмотренной с точки зрения теории «практик себя» М. Фуко. Ранняя работа Ильенкова также прочитывается имманентно, с точки зрения его поздних трудов, в частности, его интерпретации ряда идей из наследия Б. Спинозы. Эта интерпретация, начало которой можно обнаружить в «Космологии», сравнивается с интерпретацией Спинозы в работах современного французского философа Алена Бадью, а также гипотезами Квентина Мейясу из его книги «После конечности. Эссе о необходимости контингентности». На основании сравнительного анализа утверждается, что работа Ильенкова предвосхищает некоторые идеи современной мысли, которая вновь обращается к проблемам онтологии и космологии – с точки зрения переосмысления классического материализма, а также философской теории события и контингентности.

http://www.intelros.ru/pdf/vox/2018_25/Vox%2025-12-Penzin.pdf

James Henry - Systematized Tax Evasion: Cheating Competition

James Henry, economist and tax attorney, speaks at the forum, “Destroying the Myths of Market Fundamentalism,” held in Washington DC, on October 19, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3572anqSanE

Liza Featherstone - R.I.P., Elite White Feminism

This year saw two socialists have been sworn in to Congress: Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx. There are now 131 women in Congress, more than ever before, many of them progressive women of color. In this article, Liza Featherstone argues that this offers hope that we can break free of the tired feminism vs. socialism debate that dominated the 2016 presidential primary.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4210-r-i-p-elite-white-feminism

Oye, AMLO: Talking Andrés Manuel López Obrador with Galia García Palafox

What can you learn about an incoming president just by reading his / her books? What does anyone outside your country really know about its politics? Galia García Palafox and I posed these types of questions to each other throughout the long post-election wait for Andrés Manuel López Obrador to enter Mexico’s presidential office. Along the way, García Palafox and I read López Obrador’s recent book releases, 2018 La Salida: Decadencia y renacimiento de México, Oye, Trump, and A New Hope for Mexico: Saying No to Corruption, Violence, and Trump’s Wall (translated by Natascha Uhlmann). With López Obrador now in office, we here have distilled 20 of the most pressing questions that those reading experiences raised for us. García Palafox, a Mexico City-based journalist, is currently an executive producer for Milenio TV, and a reporter / writer for the Spanish-language storytelling podcast Así Como Suena. She works in print, digital media, radio, and TV, and teaches journalism at Universidad Iberoamericana.

http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/oye-amlo-talking-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-galia-garcia-palafox/

Christian Marazzi – The Violence of Financial Capitalism

The 2010 English-language edition of Christian Marazzi's The Violence of Financial Capitalism made a groundbreaking work on the global financial crisis available to an expanded readership. This new edition has been updated to reflect recent events, up to and including the G20 summit in July 2010 and the broad consensus to reduce government spending that emerged from it. Marazzi, a leading figure in the European postfordist movement, argues that the processes of financialization are not simply irregularities between the traditional categories of wages, rent, and profit, but rather a new type of accumulation adapted to the processes of social and cognitive production today. The financial crisis, he contends, is a fundamental component of contemporary accumulation and not a classic lack of economic growth. Marazzi shows that individual debt and the management of financial markets are actually techniques for governing the transformations of immaterial labor, general intellect, and social cooperation. The financial crisis has radically undermined the very concept of unilateral and multilateral economico-political hegemony, and Marazzi discusses efforts toward a new geomonetary order that have emerged around the globe in response. Offering a radically new understanding of the current stage of international economics as well as crucial post-Marxist guidance for confronting capitalism in its newest form, The Violence of Financial Capitalism is a valuable addition to the contemporary arsenal of postfordist thought.

Cole Stangler - Back on the Offensive

After a steady decline in turnout, France’s Yellow Vest movement is on the rise again. Emmanuel Macron’s call for a “great national debate” lies dead in the water.

At the heart of the government’s effort to rein in the Yellow Vest movement is the so-called “great national debate.” One of the olive branches pledged to protesters last year, the project is slated to involve a series of open forums with mayors and, eventually, the general public both online and in person. In a highly publicized letter to the nation designed to kick off the debate, Macron announced four key areas of focus: taxes and public spending, public services, the environmental transition and democracy and citizenship.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/yellow-vests-emmanuel-macron-gilets-jaunes

Ismail Muhammad - Mastering Effects: Podcasts and the Authoritarian Voice

As the critic Susan Douglas argues in her 1999 study, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, multiple and increasingly diverse generations of Americans have turned to radio as a source of cultural nourishment. From the radio dramas of the 1930s, to the progressive rock stations of the 1970s, to NPR’s early experiments with sound collage and the personal essay, to hip hop stations like Los Angeles’ original KDAY 1580, radio has been the hub of various imagined communities to which individuals can yoke their own experience. Radio’s intimacy derives in part from the unique demands audio broadcasting places upon our minds: the medium constructs an audience that it subsequently invites “to participate actively in the production of the show at hand.” At bottom, this production is always the imagining of a broader community wherein the border between audience and performer fluctuates incessantly. Insofar as radio asks listeners to be present, attentive, and marshal their imaginative resources to enter into this community, it demands collaboration rather than consumption.

https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2019/01/mastering-effects-podcasts-and-the-authoritarian-voice/

«Операционная» - программа, где под скальпелем ведущего - современная культура. Георгий Межуев изучает её проблемы, высказывая субъективное мнение, надеясь построить диалог между представителями разных поколений.

Темы первого выпуска — товарный фетишизм и общество потребления. Как мы потребляем и оцениваем вещи и что об этом думают философы?

https://youtu.be/ItCsVDOApoM

Tom Nairn - The Twilight of the British State

Brexit has thrown the British state into crisis. This week's defeat for Theresa May's proposed deal was the single biggest by a sitting government in the modern era. As Tom Nairn writes, "only a few years ago, the break-up of Britain was almost inconceivable". Not so much anymore. However, these words weren't written in 2019, but 1977. In this, the return of Verso's Weekend Reads, we republish Tom Nairn classic account of the nature, and the twilight, of the British state.

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4212-tom-nairn-the-twilight-of-the-british-state

Jackie Wang - Carceral Capitalism

Essays on the contemporary continuum of incarceration: the biopolitics of juvenile delinquency, predatory policing, the political economy of fees and fines, and algorithmic policing.

What we see happening in Ferguson and other cities around the country is not the creation of livable spaces, but the creation of living hells. When people are trapped in a cycle of debt it also can affect their subjectivity and how they temporally inhabit the world by making it difficult for them to imagine and plan for the future. What psychic toll does this have on residents? How does it feel to be routinely dehumanized and exploited by the police?

Отличная статья о планах построения в Пуэрто Рико техноутопии с блокчейном, криптовалютой и дронами

Chloe Watlington - Tales from the Cryptos

The cryptos plan to replace worn-out, storm- beaten physical infrastructure with tech-based business plans, which will serve as proof-of-concept for their mainland investor friends: running government on the cheap, via blockchain; running hurricane-insurance schemes, also via blockchain; and setting up spaceX launchpads. What any of this has to do with native Puerto Rican concerns is not obvious.

https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/tales-from-the-cryptos-watlington