A revolutionary Marxist Leninist that seems to add two books to the stack for every one book I take off...
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Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually …
Maybe I'll speed-read this book while stuck in this hotel awaiting permanent housing.
Preston Maness
boosted
Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually …
Russia’s richest ended the century with a full counterrevolutionary reversal of their fortunes, propelling their income share above what it was before the Bolsheviks took over. To accomplish this, the country’s new capitalists fleeced the most vulnerable half of their society. “Over the 1989–2016 period, the top 1 percent captured more than two-thirds of the total growth in Russia,” found an international group of scholars, “while the bottom 50 percent actually saw a decline in its income.” Increases in energy prices encouraged the growth of an extractionist petro-centered economy. Blood-covered, teary, and writhing, infant Russian capital crowded into the gas and oil sectors. The small circle of oligarchs privatized unemployed KGB-trained killers to run “security,” and gangsters dominated politics at the local and national levels. They installed a not particularly well-known functionary—a former head of the new intelligence service FSB who also worked on the privatization of government assets—as president in a surprise move on the first day of the year 2000. He became the gangster in chief.
Vladimir Putin’s first term coincided with the energy boom, and billionaires gobbled up a ludicrous share of growth. If any individual oligarch got too big for his britches, Putin was not beyond imposing serious consequences. He reinserted the state into the natural monopolies, this time in collaboration with loyal capitalists, and his stranglehold on power remains tight for now, despite the outstandingly uneven distribution of growth. Between 1980 and 2015, the Russian top 1 percent grew its income an impressive 6.2 percent per year, but the top .001 percent has maintained a growth rate of 17 percent over the same period. To invest these profits, the Russian billionaires parked their money in real estate, bidding up housing prices, and stashed a large amount of their wealth offshore. Reinvestment in Russian production was not a priority—why go through the hassle when there were easier ways to keep getting richer?
— Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris
'A groundbreaking work of economic analysis. It is also a literary masterpice' Francis Wheen, Guardian …
I mean, I gotta read it eventually...
Long the most prosperous and sophisticated country in the world, China was subjected to the …
Should be a good follow-up to China: Revolution and Counterrevolution.
This volume features a collection of essays from, presumably, members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, along with its acquaintances and fellow comrades in struggle. For context, this collection was first published in 2008, well before the Xi Jinping era of China's socialist development. A 2023 "companion" to this collection of essays could be 1804 Books' "China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future," authored by Ken Hammond; and with an Introduction by Brian Becker and Analytical Essay (also entitled a "Reflection" in certain print runs) by Eugene Puryear, both of whom also have essays in "China: Revolution and Counterrevolution."
Becker and other authors have a decidedly conciliatory tact towards China's Reform and Opening Up under Deng Xiaoping, while Puryear -- and to a greater degree, Ian Thompson -- take a solidly Maoist tact towards it. That the PSL would share print space with ideological competition solidifies, in …
This volume features a collection of essays from, presumably, members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, along with its acquaintances and fellow comrades in struggle. For context, this collection was first published in 2008, well before the Xi Jinping era of China's socialist development. A 2023 "companion" to this collection of essays could be 1804 Books' "China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future," authored by Ken Hammond; and with an Introduction by Brian Becker and Analytical Essay (also entitled a "Reflection" in certain print runs) by Eugene Puryear, both of whom also have essays in "China: Revolution and Counterrevolution."
Becker and other authors have a decidedly conciliatory tact towards China's Reform and Opening Up under Deng Xiaoping, while Puryear -- and to a greater degree, Ian Thompson -- take a solidly Maoist tact towards it. That the PSL would share print space with ideological competition solidifies, in my opinion, its stature as a meaningful institution grounded in complex material realities and not merely a 21st century cosplay of 20th century politics. Indeed, the appendix, which contains the PSL's formal orientation towards China, reflects this nuanced, material understanding of China's revolution, and the importance of defending it against "counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment."
For those with limited time on their hands, I recommend the following essays from the collection:
An excellent collection of essays from, presumably, members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, along with its acquaintances and fellow comrades in struggle. For context, this collection was first published in 2008, well before the Xi Jinping era of China's socialist development. A 2023 "companion" to this collection of essays could be 1804 Books' "China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future," authored by Ken Hammond; and with an Introduction by Brian Becker and Analytical Essay (also entitled a "Reflection" in certain print runs) by Eugene Puryear, both of whom also have essays in "China: Revolution and Counterrevolution."
Becker and other authors have a decidedly conciliatory tact towards China's Reform and Opening Up under Deng Xiaoping, while Puryear -- and to a greater degree, Ian Thompson -- take a solidly Maoist tact towards it. That the PSL would share print space with ideological competition solidifies, in my opinion, …
An excellent collection of essays from, presumably, members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, along with its acquaintances and fellow comrades in struggle. For context, this collection was first published in 2008, well before the Xi Jinping era of China's socialist development. A 2023 "companion" to this collection of essays could be 1804 Books' "China's Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future," authored by Ken Hammond; and with an Introduction by Brian Becker and Analytical Essay (also entitled a "Reflection" in certain print runs) by Eugene Puryear, both of whom also have essays in "China: Revolution and Counterrevolution."
Becker and other authors have a decidedly conciliatory tact towards China's Reform and Opening Up under Deng Xiaoping, while Puryear -- and to a greater degree, Ian Thompson -- take a solidly Maoist tact towards it. That the PSL would share print space with ideological competition solidifies, in my opinion, its stature as a meaningful institution grounded in complex material realities and not merely a 21st century cosplay of 20th century politics. Indeed, the appendix, which contains the PSL's formal orientation towards China, reflects this nuanced, material understanding of China's revolution, and the importance of defending it against "counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment."
For those with limited time on their hands, I recommend the following essays from the collection:
Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually …
subcutaneous's quotes from this book definitely make me want to get around to reading it.
Preston Maness
boosted
Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually …
The BPP’s heyday was extraordinarily short. In less than 10 years, the party fell apart under repressive pressure from the government and ethical inconsistency from its leadership, which centralized authority and became increasingly punitive and masculinist. Considering what the state put this group of people through, it’s no surprise that some Panthers turned on one another: They were infiltrated by government agents planning to imprison and kill them. The RAM milieu was right about that (and it had a much higher survival rate), but it’s objectively mistaken to see the Black Panther Party as a failure. It synthesized political currents from the Civil War and the Cold War, and the model it produced took the world by fire. In the Panthers’ analysis, they combined the psychological heat of anticolonial struggle with an ice-cold understanding of capitalism as a worldwide impersonal system. That’s what allowed them to uphold the seemingly contradictory truths of Black Power and Marxist universalism at the same time. Strategically, it allowed them to understand that changing hearts and minds could never abolish global capitalism. The Panthers showed that the war was always already here at home. The question was how to fight and win.
— Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris
Preston Maness
boosted
Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually …
These were bad days for working people. You could tell because the stock market was going up.
— Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris
How hacking cultures drive contemporary capitalism and the future of innovation.
In Resistance to the Current, Johan Söderberg and Maxigas …
"Shoshana Zuboff, named "the true prophet of the information age" by the Financial Times, has always been ahead of her …
This work argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, …
Preston Maness
boosted
As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack …
At the beginning of 2022, I set a goal to read at least 20 books this year that had been banned or threatened in Texas libraries or schools. My 20th book in that #FReadom journey was the 10th Anniversary edition of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. newjimcrow.com/
After finishing Alexander's profound work, I went back and reread her updated preface to the new edition, in which she captures the urgency of how the business of mass incarceration has evolved through privatized "e-carceration" and immigration detention.
Then I came across this deep dive by @aaronlmorrison published last month by AP, with personal stories of the impact of the drug war & mass incarceration. But I needed the context of Alexander's book to truly understand the massive scale of the whole story. apnews.com/article/war-on-drugs-75e61c224de3a394235df80de7d70b70
