China Crash: The Faltering of Economic Transition
Submitted by Nao on Sep 20 2015 12:37
The stock market crash happens at a time when the Chinese development model has reached a turning point, and the financial turmoil reflects underlying structural problems of the economy.
Crisis of civilisation - Gilles Dauvé
Dauvé argues that all crises are crises of social reproduction, and analyses in detail the similarities and differences between the current crisis and previous crises.
The 1984 law - Argelaga
Some reflections on the latest domestic security legislation passed in Spain (July 2015), known as the “Ley Mordaza” (the Gag Law), which the authors see as an attempt on the part of a faction of the Spanish ruling class to forestall a Greek-style crisis by relying, no longer merely on mass conformism (which would facilitate a “Syriza” option), but on the security forces, to preserve “civil security” and the “rights and liberties” of the citizens, i.e., the Orwellian “right to agree with the State’s orders and the liberty to obey them”, because of the “spreading social conflicts” in cities and rural areas, thus imposing a “State of Emergency” without the need for a “coup d’état”.
Disenchantment – Argelaga
An essay on political corruption in Spain published in May 2015, its impunity, its roots in the “partiocracy” that emerged from the “Transition”, its penetration of the Judiciary, and the resulting disenchantment of the population—awakened from its apathy regarding such chicanery now that the economic boom that accompanied the construction of the new Spanish State-form has come to an end—which has led to attempts by political opportunists to rehabilitate the party system by forming new, vaguely progressive “civil society” parties and regional separatist movements, rather than recognizing that “corruption is not the exception, but is inscribed in the very nature of the system”.
Grey is the golden tree of life, green is theory - Robert Kurz
In this 2007 essay, Robert Kurz examines the question of theory and practice from the perspective of the “categorical” “critique of value-dissociation”, with extensive discussions of Marx, Engels, Bloch, Adorno, Horkheimer, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, Debord, Negri, and Holloway, and concludes, in the face of the prevalent urge for immediate “action” and the equally widespread denigration of theory, that “critical theory must consciously maintain a distance from all existing praxis”.
What's behind Operation Pandora? - Revista Argelaga
A short article featuring observations and analysis of the government crackdown on and arrests of anarchists in Barcelona and Madrid in December 2014, written by the editors of the Barcelona journal, Argelaga.
On top of a volcano - Jacques Philipponneau and René Riesel
This unabridged version of an article published in Le Monde on December 4, 2014 features reflections on the meaning of the recent wave of protests and riots that have swept France over the last year (2014) in response to accelerated industrial and commercial development projects, in the context of a worldwide environmental and social crisis, observing that “we are witnessing the birth of a conception of life that is hostile to the one that is imposed by domination”.
In Greece, as the state collapses, the neighborhoods organize - An interview with a member of the Athenian assembly movement
An interview with a participant the Greek assembly movement first published in 2013, providing details concerning the methods employed by the movement and the obstacles that it has encountered since its rise in 2008.
The culture industry in the 21st century - Robert Kurz
In this revised and expanded version of a 2010 talk, Robert Kurz examines the continuing relevance, and the limitations, of the concept formulated by Adorno and Horkheimer in 1944—the “Culture Industry”—with discussions of “cultural pessimism”, the postmodern “cult of superficiality”, the role of technology in cultural change, the “abstract individual”, advertising, the Internet, “virtualization”, “interactive” media, exhibitionism and narcissistic self-promotion, the pseudo-“gift economy” of the Net, the impact of the current economic crisis on the culture industry, the “depletion of cultural reserves”, “estheticization”, and the impossibility of a separate “cultural revolution”.
2008 interview with the online magazine, Telepolis - Robert Kurz
A 2008 interview with Robert Kurz on the financial crisis.
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