M-L-M Mayhem!

Recently, I have been reflecting on the claim that communism means the death of the family .  Before I became a parent I accepted this claim without much reflection, simply as a good theoretical point, because I wasn't involved in developing my own family (in the sense implied by the aphorism) and so it did not apply to me personally.  Obviously I could understand, having been brought up in a family and socialized according to particular familial values, why this "death of a family" made sense––but once some of us are independent adults, as I have been for some time, it is easy to pretend that we are outside of the family and, socialized into unconsciously  thinking of ourselves as individuals even though we consciously  know this is a lie, have already murdered its influence. Having a child with your partner, though, regardless of how traditional or untraditional your relationship with this partner may be, does bring the family directly and consciously back into your p

As expected, my recent post on the problems with "sex positivist" feminism caused some controversy.  And though most of this controversy was anticipated, and the complaints about my position most often generated the predictable poverty of thinking (and intentional misunderstanding), there were some criticisms that were more interesting and salient.  To be fair, I think that the post in question was not especially good: it was unfocused, it lacked a clear structure, and was generally a rant derived from a few related frustrations that just happened, at the time the post was written, to coincide.  Even still, at least one of the complaints that made it unto my comments string (keep in mind I am ignoring all of the bullshit complaints and "critiques" that were levelled on other sites where it was reposted) was interesting enough, regardless of how it was phrased, to inspire this specific post.  The comment in question was arguing that all of my articles and discussion

On the bus to work last week I encountered a transit advertisement, paid for by some vague religious group, that read "There is no absolute truth… absolutely?"   Being an advertisement aimed at university students who are presumably indoctrinated by what is taken to be an intrinsic secular doctrine of moral relativism––supposedly prevalent in post-secondary education––it was designed to demonstrate the inherent logical contradiction of this position.  By pointing out the cognitive dissonance that results from this position, I would assume that the people behind this advertisement were hoping to win university students to some religious doctrine of moral absolutism. The subway advertisement in question.  And despite the appropriation Hebrew, In Search of Shalom  is a fundamentalist Christian campaign. The problem, however, is that both the advertisement's worry and its slogan demonstrate a general ignorance about the supposed prevalence and contradictory nature of m

I first realized that the "sex positive" turn in feminism––with its treatment of pornography, "sex work", and sexual practice in general as emancipatory––represented a rightward drift in mainstream left activism in 2005.  Before then I found it disagreeable but could, at the very least, countenance some of its arguments: I might have been uncomfortable, for example, with its pro-pornography position but I understood that there were indeed problems with the way in which some anti-pornography radical feminists agitated within the bourgeois legal system; I might have been annoyed with how it framed all radical feminists as "sex negative" due to misreadings of Dworkin's Intercourse  but I also recognized that Dworkin's analysis––as masterful as it was––was not without its problems.  But it was in 2005, when the film Sin City  was released, when I decided this "sex positive" brand of feminism was intrinsically liberal if not implicitly reactio

The Revolutionary Student Movement (RSM) has just released a call-out for its third organizational conference, to be held in Montreal on March 1-2 of this year, and I have been asked to post the call-out here.  Between the first (which was in Toronto) and the second (which was in Ottawa) conference the RSM expanded significantly and, if the rate of growth is any indication the conference in Montreal will be larger and expansive than the previous conference. As with the other conferences, this RSM conference is aimed at expanding the organization and the politics (which are sympathetic to, because this is a mass organization initially sponsored by, the PCR-RCP), breaking from the tired student leftism of the past, and assessing whether or not the previous goals and commitments have been met by all of the RSM affiliated groups across Canada since the fall conference. In any case, if anyone who reads this blog and lives in Canada is interested, please go to the  Conference Call-ou

Any capitalist that is successfully a capitalist must, at some level, grasp Marx's scientific analysis of capitalism.  This is not to say that these capitalists will necessarily read Capital  but only that they will understand, as Marx did, the core logic of the system in which they are the ruling class.  And though sometimes we will encounter capitalists who study Capital  and other marxists (i.e. at one point it was a fad for committed capitalists to read and appreciate Gramsci, but from an opposing position), the average capitalist who is actually successful is only successful because s/he gets  the basic logic described by Marx.  It is important to recognize this fact, and find instances where it is demonstrated, because it proves that Marx's understanding of this mode of production was correct but from the other side––the ruling class, when it is most successful, understands with eerie precision precisely  the logic of its success and what it must do to persist in its hege

For those interested in all things my daughter, I have started a non-serious, and possibly overly "cute", tumblr entitled Toddler Curates Library .  Starting a tumblr account was interesting; in fact I've always been interested in the whole tumblr thing (that somewhere between twitter and wordpress  feeling it gives me) ever since quotes from some of my articles were posted and reposted on innumerable tumblr sites.  Indeed, I've chosen to follow on my tumblr account (because you have to) at least one of the tumblr bloggers, pomeranian privilege , who has recently quoted me . Anyhow, the theme of my blog-lite is simply to take pictures of the books my daughter takes from the adult bookshelves (she does this a lot) and what she does with them.  Since the combined library of my partner and myself is pretty large (and in our cramped living space results in bookshelves all over the place), and also somewhat eclectic (we can't say no to used books given to us and have