By @Dr_Tad I recently appeared on the Living The Dream podcast hosted by Jon Piccini (@jonpiccini) and Dave Eden (@withsobersenses), talking about the concept of anti-politics that Elizabeth Humphrys (@liz_beths) and I developed over the last five years here at Left Flank. I also responded to some of the misunderstandings and criticisms of the concept. […]
03 Feb
A recent think piece by Spiked!’s theoretical guru, Frank Furedi, is an attack on the idea that anti-politics is any kind of solution to the current breakdown in authority of the political system. It’s worth examining Furedi’s case because it aligns with anti-anti-politics arguments currently found on the Left in its softer and more radical […]
01 Jun
How are capitalism and women’s oppression connected? In my last blog post we discussed the rise of the nuclear family and the connection between the class system and the shift in roles between men and women. This week we’re going to explore how modern capitalism has perpetuated the oppression of women. *** Let’s start a […]
15 May
Comments Off on Sex and society (2): The rise of the nuclear family
Simon Copland is a freelance writer specialising in sex, culture and the environment. This is the second post in a six-part series examining the history of sex and the family. The first post can be found here. These posts and other work from Simon are available on his blog: http://simoncopland.com/blog. How did nuclear families become the […]
12 May
Comments Off on HM Australasia 2015: Reading Capital, Class & Gender Today
University of Sydney, 17-18 July 2015 Call for Papers The year 2015 marks a series of conspicuous anniversaries. Three books in particular celebrate significant milestones this year. Raewyn Connell and Terry Irving’s seminal Class Structure in Australian History was published thirty-five years ago, Louis Althusser and his students published Reading Capital fifty years ago, and Silvia […]
07 May
Simon Copland is a freelance writer specialising in sex, culture and the environment. He previously wrote for Left Flank on the Left and Tony Abbott’s “inevitable downfall”. This is the first post in a six-part series examining the history of sex and the family. These posts and other work from Simon are available on his […]
08 Dec
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. —Marx & Engels (1845), The German […]
18 Nov
When Elizabeth Humphrys and I originally wrote “Anti-politics: Elephant in the room” on Left Flank just over a year ago, we were trying to summarise the changes in our thinking over the causes and consequences of the “crisis of representation” that the blog had been focused on since its inception. The post has been widely […]
06 Nov
Comments Off on Left Flank at Historical Materialism in London
Historical Materialism’s 11th annual conference — How Capitalism Survives — begins tomorrow at SOAS, Vernon Square, in London. Four writers and contributors to Left Flank are speaking. On Friday morning at 9.45am, Elizabeth Humphrys, Tad Tietze and Luke Stobart are speaking in a session on ‘Anti-politics, social movements & the practical critique of the state’ (Room V121) — along […]
08 Sep
Comments Off on The capitalist state, neoliberalism and industrial arbitration
Left Flank’s ELIZABETH HUMPHRYS has launched a new website for her own work, An Integral State: Notes on Marx & Gramsci. The latest post is her paper from the roundtable on Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin’s Deutscher Prize winning book The Making of Global Capitalism, at the Historical Materialism Australasia conference last weekend in Sydney. […]
22 Feb
Comments Off on Podcast: A rough guide to anti-politics