M-L-M Mayhem!

Having recently reread Strike One To Educate One Hundred , recently republished by Kersplebedeb , and now that I'm reading a draft of 1978: A New Stage in the Class War  (a collection of Red Brigades documents) that will be published by the same press very soon, I'm again stricken by the fact that the Red Brigades (BR) were the primary revolutionary force in Italy in the 1970s-80s. Unlike the Red Army Faction (RAF) and other similar urban guerrilla groups of that period, the BR was embedded in the proletariat and was able to launch something akin to a People's War in the metropoles that was not focoist. What is striking about this fact––the acknowledgment of which is inescapable when the documentation of that period is studied––is that the contemporary left in North America has an obsession with a particular articulation of Marxism in that period of Italian history that is not the politics of the BR and is largely ignorant of this politics. That is, for the past two or th

Usually I review books and not essays but Josephine Armistead's  The Silicon Ideology  was such a clear, timely, and engaging twenty pages that I believe it deserves a review post. Indeed, I think it is best understood as an extended abstract to a book that needs to be written [or might have already been written if the soon-to-be published Neoreaction A Basilisk  by Phil Sandifer is anything like an expanded version of Armistead's essay] particularly since the centres of global capitalism are witnessing the rise of various fascisms and ur-fascisms. Ostensibly about neo-reaction and the alt-right, The Silicon Ideology  also attempts to provide a "unified theory" of fascism so as to demonstrate that the neo-reaction/alt-right ideological milieu is united around an emergent fascism that is connected to the old fascisms and multiple contemporary fascisms. Rather than focus on the more seemingly popular fascist movements (fascist political parties in Europe, the Trump po

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

At the conclusion of The Communist Necessity  I wrote: "the window in which we can make revolution is closing as the world approaches the armageddon promised by the logic of capital."  The intention of this claim was to point out the necessity of organizing in the face of capitalism's depletion of liveable existence, arguing that we needed to get our shit together because, due to capitalism's internal logic, it might be too late to continue waiting until the current mode of production has played its course.  At that time I had not read Robert Biel's The Entropy of Capitalism ––though I had helped edit the second edition of his earlier manuscript, Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement ––and he was nice enough to write a blurb for the back of The Communist Necessity … I really wish I had read his most recent book, however, considering that The Entropy of Capitalism dove-tailed with the conclusion of my book. Yep, same picture as last post.  Um… I thought I'

[Yeah, still haven't written anything about Syriza.  Partisan had a small article about it , which would probably be a summary echo of whatever longer thing I would say, but the truth is I'm stuck between some gap of caring and not-caring, particularly since I know what I will say and the readers of my blog shouldn't be surprised by what I say, but that I probably would say it in way that has at least enough nuance to piss off a bunch of people on all sides of the debate and guarantee flaming.  Also, I enjoyed reading the response to Curtis Cole's terrible article about PPW that has recently been posted on the PCR-RCP website .  But instead of writing about either of those issues, I've got this rambling post instead…] As an ethos pacifism is compelling because it banks on the moralistic assumption that in any given war both sides are equally wrong.  Hence those committed to a pacifist politics are ethically superior to those embroiled in these wars because they ex

Due to the default opportunism that festers at the centres of capitalism, organizing in the so-called first world possesses particular challenges that exist as stumbling blocks and/or anti-organizational principles that even the most radical marxist in theory might end up incorporating in their practice.  Whereas the challenges of organizing in the peripheries are indeed monumental––since revolutionaries in these contexts experience the entire brunt of imperialist super-exploitation––the fact that, as Amin once pointed out, the contradictions are clearer in these contexts due to the very fact of super-exploitation means that revolutionary consciousness also possesses a clarity.  A comrade of mine who was politicized in a third world context lamented the fact that his children were not interested in communism, despite his best efforts, whereas he grew up in a context where his entire family was politicized as communists due to their experience. But here, at the centres of capitalism

Today, after reading Kersplebedeb's repost of Emmanuel Ortiz's seminal poem A Moment of Silence  and Zak Brown's reflections on his childhood experience of September 11th 2001, I also found myself reflecting on this event. (More accurately a date that became an event because it was forced into significance by US imperialism––in some ways the only event , as Ortiz pointed out, that is allowed to count as a contemporary event according to imperialist discourse.)  Due to this date's significance in initiating the so-called "War in Terror" I cannot help but reflect on it from time to time, particularly whenever I am faced with the fact that the majority of my students were children when it happened and that t his is often their cultural reference point .  Brown's article was salient in this regard; he reflects on a childhood dominated by this event and the ideology to which he was subjected in the following years. The fact that the event of "9-11"