M-L-M Mayhem!

I've always had some sympathy with various left communist theoretical traditions.  The autonomists (if you can call them left communists) have a special place in my heart because they were my gateway drug to Marxism, though even when I was an autonomist I disliked Empire .  Despite my [many] complaints about their theoretical positions, Tiqqun  and The Invisible Committee  are sometimes a guilty pleasure, at least they aren't a chore to read.  And until recently, because now and then I read Endnotes and the "communization" folks, I enjoyed mining the work of Gilles Dauvé because, regardless of my significant disagreement with his overall political line, he always seemed to have insights that I found half-ways compelling. But then I encountered Dauvé's essay Alice in Monsterland , purely by accident.  I mean, it's not like I'm out googling Dauvé all the time: I find his overall arguments unconvincing, I'm not a left communist (though admittedly sympat

On most days of the week I am awakened by the alarm of my two year old daughter who, down the hall from our room, stands up in her bed and repeats incessantly: "Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy…"  All until I crawl out of bed, throw on a shirt, and trudge over to her room so as to rescue her from the boredom of waiting for her parents to put her day in order.  I both love and resent this alarm, and its squeaky little voice: I love it because I love my child, and in turn feel loved by the fact that this little being is excited to see me in the morning (it's better than any alarm clock); I resent the fact that my sleep is disrupted because, well, I still want to sleep––who doesn't?––and not have to be awakened by the dictatorship of the toddlertariat. This love and resentment of my daughter's morning alarm encapsulates my mixed feelings about the general perspective on equitable fatherhood.  On the one hand I'm happy that fathers who are dividing parenting and domes