M-L-M Mayhem!

Whenever capitalism is in a period of crisis there is an emergence of a particular type of bourgeois economist.  Unlike those economists who serve as the cheerleaders of capitalism during its "boom" periods, where the global centres do not experience the visceral facts of class contradiction, these particular economists are attentive to the reality of crisis capitalism.  Indeed, the Milton Friedmans of the economist world, who did little more than play the role reserved for a feudal court's charlatan astrologer (as Samir Amin once claimed), are not really convincing in a context that disproves all of their supposedly "mathematical" theories.  They don't vanish altogether, and of course remain popular in various faculties, but since their theories were predicated on justifying a temporary phase of capitalism that is no longer ascendent, they cannot help but seem somewhat antiquated.  Hence a discursive space is opened for economists who do not shy away from a

Years ago I ended up in an argument with a friend about the problems of "intellectual property" and whether or not radical engagements with this concept might be misunderstanding what was at stake. While he was arguing for a rejection of copyright, and I didn't disagree with the general contours of this position, my point was simply that an unqualified rejection of someone's personal intellectual property might end up valorizing private property in general.  That is, I was interested in making sense of how the labour of a writer or academic might be appropriated by others in an exploitative sense.  It is one thing to be opposed to bourgeois copyright laws, it is quite another to spend a significant amount of time producing a variety of ideas that could be plagiarized or commodified by others under the auspices of rejecting these laws. To be clear, the fact that I spend a significant amount of time blogging and producing articles and documents that are free should de

The fact that the gap of cultural memory is growing each year between myself and my students was initially alarming.  Since pop-cultural references are becoming less and less salient, and humour based on such references falls flat, I have been forced to recognize that I am no longer the "young and hip" teacher that I used to see myself as––especially since I still find PowerPoint presentations annoying, prefer the chalkboard, and can't even be bothered to learn Prezi.  They also think I'm antiquated when they notice I don't use a smart phone, though some of them will admit that I dress in a "cooler" manner than some of their older professors. What I find interesting about this gap, though, is how it affects political memory.  Born in 1978, I spent the first decade of my life inundated with the last gasp of cold-war propaganda.  I remember living in a world where the Soviet Union existed and was considered "the evil empire".  This was a wo

As some of my readers may know, the 3rd Canadian Revolutionary Congress [CRC] will soon take place in Vancouver.  Seeing as how the 2nd CRC held in Toronto was a formative political experience for me , I hope that those who have an opportunity to attend the third CRC will have a similar experience.  For those readers who are interested in this event, I have decided to post links to documents that may confirm your desire to attend. 1.  Congress Document(s) Of course, it is best if I start with a link to the congress call-out, A Call for Revolutionary Unity .  The aim of the congress, as well as the contact information, is available in this call-out.   For background reading it is worth taking a look at the position paper that came out of the 2nd CRC, The Proletarian Movement We Need , which led almost immediately to the emergence of PCR-RCP connected organizations in Ottawa and Toronto. 2.  RSM Document(s) Since an RSM chapter recently appeared in Vancouver , its members w

Danielle Martin, a Toronto-based doctor, has recently been getting a lot of attention due to her participation in US Senate subcommittee debate about health care.  Brought in as an expert of the Canadian health care system, along with doctors from other first world countries that possess similarly accessible health care systems, she succeeded in making the Republican senator attacking her with half-truths and speculations about the Canadian medical system look ignorant.  More proverbial grist for the mill for the average Canadian nationalist looking for any reason to celebrate something "uniquely Canadian".  Both the National Post and the Toronto Star (the conservative and liberal papers, respectively) briefly bonded over this proud moment of Canadian punditry––they even had similar headlines about Martin "smacking down" US senator ignorance. Obviously, there is something to be said about the assumptions and misapprehensions US conservatives have about medica

It is interesting that an institution that was once invested in demonstrating the superiority of capitalism to communism during the cold war has now released a study that proves the opposite.  I am speaking, of course, about the NASA-funded study that pretty much agrees, though not with the same language, with one of the axiomatic claims of historical materialism––that capitalist forces of production are being hampered by capitalist relations of production. Even though this study does not define itself according to a slogan such as "socialism or barbarism" this is pretty much what it argues: the production of surplus and "overconsumption of resources" in the current global system will destroy civilization unless we "reduce economic inequality."  Moreover, not only does it argue that market forces are incapable of producing equilibrium (thus rejecting the parascientific claims of bourgeois economists), but it asserts that groups of "Elites"––th

Recently, due to a manuscript I've been writing off-and-on for over two years (there's always more to read and Scrivener makes editing and re-editing both easy and eternal) about what it means to practice philosophy after rupture produced by Marx, I finally read Étienne Balibar's The Philosophy of Marx .  When I first thought about writing this book, I decided it was worthwhile to return to Althusser , since he had written a lot about marxist philosophy, despite a decidedly anti-Althusserian bias I had somehow absorbed from the university in which I earned my doctorate.  As noted in the aforelinked blog, since I had read a lot more marxist theory of various tendencies since I had first encountered Althusser (a time in which I was an autonomist), I discovered that I actually agreed with much of what he was arguing, with the exception of a few areas, and that he was a far better thinker than the theorists I liked at the time.  So of course it was only natural that, after re-r