Radical media, politics and culture.
July 6, 2003 - 6:06am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"On Epistemological Anarchism"

Paul Feyerabend

The hallmark of political anarchism is its opposition
to the established order of things: to the state, its
institutions, the ideologies that support and glorify
these institutions. The established order must be
destroyed so that human spontaneity may
come to the fore and exercise its right of freely
initiating action, of freely choosing what it thinks
is best. Occasionally one wishes to overcome not just
some social circumstances but the entire physical
world which is seen as being corrupt, unreal,
transient, and of no importance.

July 5, 2003 - 4:40pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

[This article continues from Barbarians, Part One]

GO TO WORK!

    The two emissaries describe the subjects as “multitude”, a neutral term of the quantitative sort taken from some scholars of the past that is useful for avoiding the encumbrance of using a qualitative description of sides. Their aim is to convince the subjects that although it may be true that the Empire shows many defects, it is also true that its existence is the result of a right and inevitable necessity. That if the Empire is the One that represents the Many, it is only because it expresses them in a precise arithmetical sum, not because it annihilates them inside itself. That its functioning is not something that the multitudes now suffer, but that they themselves have determined, intentionally or not. In a word, that the will of the Empire is not, in fact, opposed to the desires of the multitude, but that, on the contrary, it is their expression and realization, even if lacking -– which is why there is no reason whatsoever for wanting its destruction. Quite so!

July 5, 2003 - 3:16pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Barbarians: The Disordered Insurgence"

A Critique of Hardt & Negri’s Empire

By Crisso and Odoteo

[Translator’s Preface]

"Barbarians" by Crisso and Odoteo is a text of some importance for anarchists and anyone else who sincerely desires the destruction of this social world of exploitation and domination. It presents a devastating critique of a book that has become one of the most significant theoretical influences on a major part of the so-called anti-globalization movement, Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. When one reads these two texts together, two opposing ways of using language are exposed. Hardt and Negri use a language that is obviously meant to conceal at least as much as it reveals, and that should immediately tip one off to the recuperative nature of their text. Crisso and Odoteo, on the contrary, use direct language as sharp as a barbarian’s sword to cut through the murky web of Hardt’s and Negri’s postmodern doublespeak to reveal the essentially anti-revolutionary core of their perspective.

   

July 3, 2003 - 5:56pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"The World:

Seven Thoughts In May of 2003"

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

Originally published in Spanish by www.revistarebeldia.org, translated by irlandesa

Introduction

While the Power's calendars break down, and while the large media
corporations vacillate between those absurdities and tragedies being
staged and promoted by the world?s political class, below, in the great
and extensive basement of the tottering modern Tower of Babel, the
movements are not ceasing and, even though they are still faltering, they
are beginning to regain the word and their ability to act as mirror and
lens. While the politics of discord are being decreed above, in the
basement of the world, the others are finding each other and the other
who, being different, is another below.

July 2, 2003 - 10:50pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

"The Title Structure"

Francisco Trindade


Francisco Trindade's new book is exclusively distributed in electronic format
through the site http://www.franciscotrindade.com (portuguse)

If you are interested in obtaining the book you will have to fill a form
(which is inside http://www.franciscotrindade.com) with the name or nick-name, and, most
importantly, the reason or reasons why you are asking for a copy of the
book.The motivation must be clearly explained.

If the reasons are not considered pertinent the request will not be
satisfied. A Estrutura do Título has the following price: 0.

The Title Structure:

From Globalisation to Self-Management

An exclusive production in electronic format without intermediates between
the author and the reader, and without the problem of money dictating
whatever kind of inhibition. Fuck copyright. Copyfree.

July 2, 2003 - 8:38pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Lessons from the American Revolution"

John Chuckman, July 2, 2003




Many otherwise well-educated Americans know remarkably little about the actual circumstances of their country's birth. Assumptions about that early period, frequently offered as counterexamples to the current dangerous and dreary American government, too often contain little more than boyish daydreams of nobler times.



America's central myth about its founding goes something like this: An extraordinary bunch of men, dressed in frock coats and wearing powdered wigs, closeted together after a long and heroic war against tyranny, worked unselfishly to give the United States a perfect modern system of government.



Since they were men concerned with rights and abuses and the tyranny of absolute monarchy, they gave Americans a set of basic rights that is the envy of the world.

July 1, 2003 - 5:45pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Only in America"

Eric Hobsbawm

Looking back on 40 years of visiting and living in the United States, I think I learned as much about the country in the first summer I spent there as in the course of the next decades. With one exception: To know New York, or even Manhattan, one has to live there. For how long? I did so for four months every year between 1984 and 1997, but even though my wife, Marlene, joined me for the whole semester only three times, it was quite enough for both of us to feel like natives rather than visitors.

July 1, 2003 - 12:00pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Work

Anonymous Kumquat submits:

This edited introduction is from Han's latest book: The Economics of Competition: A Critique of Paul Samuelson's "Economics," published by Jingji Kexue, Chubanshe, 2002

"The Economics of Competition: A Critique of Paul Samuelson"

Han Deqiang, China Study Group

A Collective "Prisoners' Dilemma"

China has switched to a market economy for a whole decade now. People once
hoped, and may still be dreaming that, as the institution matures and
perfects itself, China would become a strong developed country, where
democracy rules and people enjoy high quality of life not only in material
terms but also in spiritual and moral terms.

But reality seems to be moving
farther away from such a dream. Since the late 1990's, all kinds of Chinese
enterprises have gone bankrupt en masse. With it came increased
unemployment, lower mandatory retirement age, lower wages for workers,
decreased income for farmers and slack domestic demand. With the influx of
foreign enterprises and foreign products, many Chinese enterprises have
switched their business lines because they no longer have the confidence to
run a high-tech business at a profit. They become de facto employees of
those foreign enterprises, earning meager fees for their efforts.

In the
meantime, there has been a staggering number of tragic mine accidents that
kill thousands year after year. Major accidents involving large number of
deaths, such as firework factory explosions, plane crashes, as well as fires
at cyber cafes, night clubs, theaters and shopping malls have occurred with
mind-numbing frequency; villages and small towns are flooded with fake or
poor quality products; drugs and AIDS are rampant. Not only has corruption
become a normal way of doing things among many officials, but it has also
become a normal part of the values/belief system of the collective national
psyche, marked by an egregious lack of civil-mindedness and ethical
awareness. Teachers, doctors, lawyers and accountants all share the belief
that " One must make use of one's position of power for self-enrichment
before one loses it"; schools have become agencies that sell diplomas;
hospitals force patients to pay up or leave.

June 30, 2003 - 8:50pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Are Trotskyites Running the Pentagon?"

Alan Wald

As a scholar researching for several decades the migration of United States intellectuals from Left to Right, I have been startled by the large number of journalistic articles making exaggerated claims about ex-Trotskyist influence on the Bush administration that have been circulating on the internet and appearing in a range of publications. I first noticed these in March 2003, around the time that the collapse of Partisan Review magazine was announced, although some may have appeared earlier.


One of the most dismaying examples can be found in the caricatures presented in Michael Lind's "The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush's War" that appeared in the April 7, 2003 issue of the New Statesman. Lind states that U.S. foreign policy is now being formulated by a circle of "neoconservative defence intellectuals," and that "most " are "products of the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s...." Moreover, Lind claims that their current ideology of "Wilsonianism" is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism."


However, I am not aware that anyone in the group of "neoconservative defence intellectuals" cited by Mr. Lind has ever had an organizational or ideological association with Trotskyism, or with any other wing of the Far Left. Nor do I understand the implications of emphasizing the "Jewish" side of the formula, although many of these individuals may have diverse relations to the Jewish tradition--as do many leading U.S. critics of the recent war in Iraq.

June 30, 2003 - 9:12am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Lunacharsky writes:

"Economic & Philosophical Background to the Autonomen Movement"

By Lunacharsky



Economic Background to Autonomy



This is an article about the background and principles which underlie the German autonomist movement. Right off, at the start, I’d like to point out that there are two movements out there in Europe which have similar names but which are oriented in different directions: there’s the Autonomia movement in Italy, which focusses on the inherent autonomy of the working class from the economy in which it’s located, and then there’s the Autonomen movement in Germany and the Low Countries, which focussed on remaking society through autonomous centers and squats outside of the system.

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