miércoles, 29 de agosto de 2012

Autonomist Marxism - Nick Dyer-Witheford


This paper argues for the pertinence of autonomist Marxism to an era of computerised capital and postmodern culture. Broadly speaking, ’autonomist Marxism’ designates that tradition of Marxism which places at its centre the self-activity of the working class - a tradition with deep historical roots and wide international diffusion. However, perhaps its most developed contemporary expression, and the one I shall focus on here, is that arising out of the struggles of Italian workers, students and feminists during the 1960s and 70s and formulated in the work of such revolutionary intellectuals as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna, Mariorosa Dalla Costa, Francois Beradi, and Antonio Negri. When in 1979 the ferment of the Italian New Left was violently repressed under the pretext of counter-insurgency against the Red Brigades the development of this innovative body of theory was abruptly interrupted, and subsequently the heretical tenor of its positions - anathema to neoliberals, Soviet-style nomenklatura and social democrats alike - has ensured it a subterranean existence, even on the left. Yet despite the destruction of the movement in which it was originally based, this strand of autonomist Marxism has continued to develop, undergoing new mutations and making fresh connections.


An Imbecile's Guide to Guy Debord's Concept of the Spectacle - Anselm Jappe


First published as ‘Part 1: The Concept of the Spectacle’ in Anselm Jappe’s Guy Debord,
University of California Press, 1999
This edition published by Treason Press, February 2004

lunes, 20 de agosto de 2012

The story of Utopias - Lewis Mumford


Concerning himself with utopias of escape and utopias of reconstruction, Lewis Mumford takes a hard look at the utopian dreams that people have had throughout the ages. Mumford holds these stories up against our own world and shows that there really are no simple solutions without work and effort. Anything else is just day-dreaming.