Radical media, politics and culture.

"Anarchism, Marxism and the Bonapartist State"

Saul Newman, Anarchist Studies, [Volume 12, #1, 2004]

This paper explores the question of state power and sovereignty in radical political theory through an examination of the classical anarchist critique of Marxism. It draws on the Bonapartist moment in Marx's thinking, seeing this as laying the groundwork for the development of a theory of the state as autonomous from class, suggesting that the implications of this argument are only fully realised in anarchism. Anarchism was able to develop a wholly autonomous and specific theory of state power and political authority — one that was irreducible to the Marxist class and economic analysis. I will argue that this had crucial consequences for contemporary radical political theory as it allowed the political dimension to emerge as a separate field of antagonism, demanding its own specific forms of analysis. I then explore the implications of this theoretical terrain through Agamben's analysis of biopower and state sovereignty, and Laclau and Mouffe's 'post-Marxist' understanding of
hegemonic political identification, suggesting that there are important links here with anarchism that could be developed.

NOT BORED! writes:


Operation Censor:

A New Translation of a Situationist Text


In August 1975, ex-Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti, with the help of Guy Debord, another ex-Situationist, executed an exemplary prank: they created an author (a powerful industrialist called "Censor") and wrote for him an anonymous pamphlet on Italian politics, and printed up copies and sent them to 520 of the most powerful people in the country. The very cynical pamphlet was very well received -- no one suspected a fake. Finally, in December 1975, two months after the pamphlet was reprinted, Sanguinetti revealed himself, and a major scandal ensued.

Here, for the first time in English, is Sanguinetti's December 1975 statement. It contains links to the other important texts involved in "Operation Censor."

"On the Necessity of Refusal"

Nurit Peled-Elhanan

[What follows is the transcript of a speech by Nurit Peled-Elhanan of the Israeli Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum, and Laureate of the 2001 EU Parliament Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and Human Rights. This speech was given at Arab Media Watch's conference on June 6 entitled "opposing, challenging and resisting 37 years of occupation".]

I would like to dedicate my words in this part of the day called "giving voice to the voiceless" to a man whose voice was silenced brutally. Prof. Izzat Ghazzawi, my co-laureate of the Sakharov award, a Palestinian writer and militant for peace and dialogue, was a man who spent three years in a solitary prison cell for nothing more than raising his voice in favour of dignified human existence, and who sent word from this cell to Israeli writers and poets to join him in his refusal to lose faith in man. A man who watched his 15-year-old son being shot by Israeli soldiers at the courtyard of his school while rushing to help a wounded friend, a man who has never spoken a harsh word, and who commented on the continuous humiliation and torture he and his family have been enduring for years, with a short email message, saying: "I think they are trying to intimidate my voice." Prof. Gazawi's heart gave in to humiliation and harassment a year ago, and I have promised him upon his dea
th that
his voice would never be intimidated.

Louis Lingg writes:

"Alternative Press Review has published an examination of the mass hypnosis techniques used by George Bush and the rhetorical and emotional confusion used to overcome critical thinking:

"Bush–Hitler: Hypnotizing the Masses"

"Whatever Happened To Compassion?"

Zygmunt Baumann


In the USA ten years ago the income of company directors was 42 times
higher than that of the blue-collar workers; it is
now 419 times higher. Ninety-five per cent of the surplus of 1,100 billion
dollars generated between 1979 and 1999 has
been appropriated and consumed by 5 per cent of Americans.


What happens inside every single society occurs as well in the global
sphere — though on a much magnified scale. While the
worldwide consumption of goods and services was in 1997 twice as large as in
1975 and has multiplied since 1950 by a
factor of six — 1 billion people, according to a recent UN report, 'cannot
satisfy even their elementary needs'.

.... this is from the most recent issue of Republicart, which focuses on the theme of precarity, something which you'll be hearing a lot more about....

Spectacle Inside the State and Out:

Social Rights and the Appropriation of Public Spaces
The Battles of the French Intermittents

The strength of a political movement is found not only in its ability to reach a concrete objective. These kinds of successes depend mostly on the economy of power relations. The strength of a movement reveals itself more in its potential for raising new questions and providing new answers. And this much is certain: the battles of the precariously employed French cultural workers have raised new questions demanding new answers.[1]

"Finding Journalists' Political Donations"

David Folkenflik, Baltimore Sun

Michael Petrelis has been angry at The New York Times for a long,
long time. Since the 1980s, Petrelis, a Green Party volunteer and
longtime AIDS activist now based in San Francisco, has felt that The
Times
is insufficiently attentive to what he believes are the
government's shortcomings in fighting the disease. Since March,
however, Petrelis has become an online gadfly, seeking to force The
Times
to reveal what he says are its political entanglements and
sympathies toward the Democratic Party. And he is beginning to get
noticed.

"Members Only: Bohemians in Their Groves"

Adair Lara, San Francisco Chronicle


On Saturday, some 2,000 CEOs and politicos and arty types arrived at the cool redwoods and lily-choked lake of the Grove, the famous Russian River playground of the powerful Bohemian Club.


They say it's the place to be seen in America in July.


Except, of course, you can't see them.


Signs abound: No Thru Traffic. No Trespassing. Members and Guests Only. No Turn Around. Sentries scan the paths from above with binoculars, helped out by infrared sensors.


And what are those important men doing out there for 17 days behind that elaborate security?

"Enforced Democracy: The Bolivian Referendum"

Jennifer Whitney


La Paz, Bolivia — After a long day of tension, rumors, and ocasional provocations,
Bolivian polling stations have closed and the counting of votes is
underway. But the results are already known. Regardless of whether the
"yes" vote or the "no" vote wins, Bolivia’s most valuable natural
resource — natural gas — will remain in the hands of the
transnationals.

Enforced Democracy: the Bolivian Referendum


Jennifer Whitney


After a long day of tension, rumors, and ocasional provocations, Bolivian polling stations have closed and the counting of votes is underway. But the results are already known. Regardless of whether the “yes” vote or the “no” vote wins, Bolivia’s most valuable natural resource – natural gas – will remain in the hands of the
transnationals.


Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, has long had its wealth plundered by foreigners. First, it was the realization by the Spanish in the sixteenth century that a small hill in the southeast of the country was comprised almost entirely of silver. For two centuries, the wealth extracted from Cerro Rico in Potosí was, according to Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, “the primary nourishment of the capitalist development of Europe.” Next it was saltpeter, desperately needed as fertilizer for exhausted European soil, and plundered by the English. Then during the second world war, Bolivia’s tin was mined and sold at approximately ten times less the market price, leading to massive strikes, and massacres of the workers, who were only demanding to be paid a living wage. Now, the world wants Bolivia’s gas – the second largest reserves in Latin America. But Bolivians are sick of watching
the wealth of their nation stolen from underneath their feet.

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