ZJW
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I was expecting to see a review of the Bernes book in the May SS. No.
But here in the Mattick-edited section of the May Brooklyn Rail, there are three reviews of it, along with a rejoinder to them by Bernes.
https://brooklynrail.org/section/field-notes/
I find useful to read his rejoinder first. (Partly out of fear of fatigue from reading ‘this kind of thing’.)
By the way, from his rejoinder it seems he was mistaken for something of an Impossiblist because he rejoinds (if there is such a word):
‘When I speak of the necessity of an immediate plan for common production for common use, I do not mean, as Frits Janssen argues, a “variation of the well-known view that the workers can only make a revolution when they are ‘conscious’…when they have studied piles of books” but rather an intensive and extensive network including “the vast majority” in the activity of planning and producing in common for common use.’
A strange assessment of China saying it is neither capitalist or socialist! A crumbling state capitalist regime that has long ago succumbed to the realities of global capitalism despite all of the propaganda. The author would probably have said the same about ‘soviet’ Russia and we all know how that turned out.
See https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/chinese-marxism-not-even-trying/#post-130306
Articles by Kevin Carson from two weeks ago going back to 2016. ( Choose ‘newer first’ in ‘sorting’) :
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/kevin-carson?sort=pubdate_desc&rows=500
And here’s the site of that broader spectrum tendency with which he’s associated:
Thanks to that reviewer and his good review. Book looks well worth reading. (Or, even if not read cover to cover, at least using as a valuable reference work.)
I’m trying to find some documents that outline the internal decision-making structure of the German SDP (up to the end of the Weimar period) and USPD, specifically in regard to how much influence standard members had within these organisations.
Anyone able to point me anywhere?
If you’ve not seen it, then, to a certain extent, here, chapter starting on page 116?
(Schorske’s 1955 book ‘German Social Democracy 1905-1917’)
Re: #257052, in which:
‘A comrade who is reviewing Nick Heath’s book ‘The Idea: Anarchist Communism, Past, Present and Future’ points out […].’
Someone is finally going to review it? The last time there was mention of this book:
ALB on July 13, 2023
‘[ …] I thought we had reviewed that book by Nick Heath, but apparently not. But I remember now. We were going to but the reviewer said it was boring, a real trudge to get through, and had no index, and didn’t submit a review because he didn’t want to have to offend the author.’DJP on July 13, 2023:
‘[..] Incidentally, I’ve been told a second edition of this book has already been printed and there will be an index available online.’What has happened since then? This must be the printing containing an index — https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/product/the-idea/ — but has it become un-‘boring’ as well?
(No online index so far as I can find. I can’t even find a webpage for the publisher Just Books.)
In semi-connection with vanguardism (discussed above in this thread), ‘Indo’ the council-communist poster on libcom who has been translating and posting content from the KAPD press, has presented his (I think, valuable) view on the terms ‘council communist’ vs ‘Dutch-German Left’ vs councilist, i.e. the real vs unreal differences between what the three terms supposedly mean.
It’s here on this so far otherwise utterly worthless page: https://libcom.org/discussion/ranking-libertarian-socialist-currents-worst-best.
To find it, search this: ‘ I don’t believe there’s any difference between Dutch-German Left and Council Communism’
Wez wrote:
‘I will have to examine this ‘constitution’ more closely and find out how it came to be deified by the ‘liberals’ over there.’
The US Constitution was the counterrevolutionary overthrow of the Articles of Confederation, according to certain Americans of the (market-)libertarian confession:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/1787-constitution-was-radical-assault-spirit-revolution
Leipold’s ‘Citizen Marx’ reviewed by Mike Macnair of the Weekly Worker. (He’s very fond of it.)
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1528/very-essence-of-marxism
It won’t be news to DJP, but for others, if interested, the Zoe Baker book on anarchism, which comes up on page 3 of this thread, is reviewed here by Paul Raekstad. Been there a year in fact.
Fitting in (sort of maybe) with my #254343 above, and the IP critique of David Adam, here is, fresh off the press, Hermann Lueer’s critique of Postone:
Hermann Lueer: On the Critique of Moishe Postone’s »Time, Labor and Social Domination«
(Hermann Lueer is the labor-voucherist who republished the GIC’s ‘Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution’ and speaks often about it, including what he considers to be its ‘current significance’:
Months later, Lazare continues. First letter, here:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1521/letters/
(Of course in the letters section of the following week he was roundly denounced as ‘the Renegade Lazare’!)
This brings to mind, rather tangentially, I admit, the Doric Film Festival. Click the video to hear the text under it read:
