There is a common narrative in the West, which corresponds to the Kremlin’s narrative, that the Russian government may be tyrannical but it is supported by the majority of Russian people, and the dissident minority, while brave, has no ability to change society. This fits the Vladimir Putin regime’s view of itself as the inheritor of a thousand-year-old state.
The American Caste System
10 April, by“The worst disease is the treatment of the Negro. Everyone who freshly learns of this state of affairs at a mature age feels not only the injustice, but the scorn of the principle of the Fathers who founded the United States that ‘all men are created equal.’ [I could] hardly believe that a reasonable man can cling so tenaciously to such prejudice.”
— Albert Einstein in 1946 (Quoted, Wilkerson, 377)
The Turkish State Today
10 April, byAcademic conferences generally uncontroversial, even boring, affairs. This was decidedly not the case in October of 2018, when a two-day workshop titled “Turkey’s New Neoliberal State in the Making?” was held at Middle East Technical University in Ankara.
Introduction to Marxist Theory: Selected Writings by Ernest Mandel
10 April, byErnest Mandel was one of the most significant Marxists of the twentieth century. During his life, Mandel participated in anti-fascist resistance, played a leading role in the Fourth International, and assisted Che Guevara with socialist economic planning after the Cuban Revolution. For many socialists, Mandel’s writings were their first encounter with Marxist theory and played an important role in their political education. In order to stimulate an interest in Mandel’s writings, the International Institute for Research and Education (IIRE) has recently published the first volume of Mandel’s selected works, Introduction to Marxist Theory. It is an excellent book for those who are new to Marxism and want to learn about Marxist economics, the theory of the state, imperialism, and revolutionary organisation.
Engaging Federici on Marx, Capitalism, and Social Reproduction
21 February, byThe introduction to Patriarchy of the Wage suggests that the collection is inspired by “the feminist return to Marx” [1]. What follows, however, is not an extended and developed critique of Marx’s relevance to understanding gender and feminism—this Federici promises to deliver in a forthcoming, second volume. Instead, readers get a “return to Federici.” Outside of a short introduction, the volume showcases no new writing. Yet, while readers looking for something new from this prolific and provocative feminist theorist will be disappointed, the collection of essays delivers a relatively cohesive critique of the bearded man’s ideas and influence—one that is, to my mind, balanced if not always fair.
What Is Social Reproduction Theory Trying to Explain?
21 February, bySue Ferguson’s Women and Work has the great virtue of giving a history of various theoretical trends in feminist thinking about, well, work. If you have ever, like me, had the experience of wading into literature on this topic and left feeling more disoriented than before you began, Ferguson’s book does the service of putting various arguments into their context as well as relating them to one another. Indeed, one of Ferguson’s goals is diagnostic: to disambiguate trends in feminist theorizing about the relationship of women’s work to their oppression, so as to develop a more coherent socialist feminist perspective than currently exists.
Going to see ‘Belfast’ by Kenneth Branagh
21 FebruaryI went to see ‘Belfast’ by the actor and Director Kenneth Branagh with an open mind, and I left wanting to like it more than perhaps I did. It’s an autobiographical film of a small Protestant boy and his working class family at the beginning of the Troubles.
Belfast
21 FebruaryThe marketing people at Universal Pictures must have shrieked when they were told to come up with an advertising campaign for Kenneth Branagh’s new film Belfast.
Rescued from history, Rome’s dissident Communist partisans
12 January, byThis is the story of several thousand resistance fighters in Rome who were organised as the Movement Communists of Italy (MCd’I), sometimes better known by the name of their publication, Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag). They criticised Togliatti’s PCI (Italian Communist Party) for its policy of national unity with liberals and Christian Democrat forces which effectively blocked a strategy of turning the anti-fascist struggle into an insurrection for socialism. The PCI used all its resources and some unsavoury sectarian tactics to defeat this left organisation.
Forty Years Later, Reds Is Still One of the Best Films Ever Made About Revolutionary Politics
24 December 2021, byIn 1981, Warren Beatty directed Reds, a retelling of John Reed’s classic firsthand account of the Russian Revolution. The film still stands up today as one of the greatest and most faithful depictions of revolutionary politics.
Footnotes
[1] It is important to bear in mind that some social reproductive labor is also capitalistically productive. I make this critique of autonomist-influenced feminism in Susan Ferguson, Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction (London: Pluto Press, 2020), Chpt. 8.
