Radical media, politics and culture.
November 28, 2005 - 9:56pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

"The Old New Clothes of the French Republic:
In Defense of the Supposedly 'insignificant' Rioters"

Yann Moulier-Boutang, Le Manifeste

Major events are not necessarily beautiful, nor joyous. They take you by surprise. They do not necessarily produce integration. The reason why they happen never says anything about the moment of their actual occurrence. They are overdetermined in the same way as the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back: there is a long build-up, and then, one day, submission no longer holds, and you tear down the house.


A riot is rarely a cause for enthusiasm. Its actors are usually unknown, confused, and seldom heroes. There is more than a whiff of undirected, aimless violence in a riot. Unlike wars or revolutions, the dead it leaves, or who lie in its dazed wake, will never be decorated. "Melancholia" [1], despair, "nihilism", "loss of self-confidence", are the conventional vignettes the not-too-stupid Right promptly used to label the rioters.

November 27, 2005 - 4:44pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Five Theses on Informational–Cognitive Capitalism

George N. Dafermos

1

Recession is here, everywhere. Whether recession is artificial and thus compatible
with the axiomatic of capitalism (that is, the tendency toward a world market), or
forced and thus a threat to capitalism is still debated.

From the perspective of
Capital, what is more important is that the historic magnification, which has been
defining capitalism since the 15th century, is not likely to maintain its pace or
character. There are no more barbarians to civilise, no more virgin lands to
conquer and colonise. The new barbarians are refined, the new virgin lands are not
defined by geographical parameters. Primitive accummulation has been completed;
explosion now gives way to implosion.

November 24, 2005 - 7:46pm -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
Work

Argentine Self Management

Michael Albert

This October I spent a week in Buenos Aires, Argentina learning about Argentina's workers movement to recuperate factories.

During the recent corporate globalization inspired economic downturns in Argentina, workers confronted disaster when their capitalist workplaces often went bankrupt. To preserve
income and avoid possible starvation, workers in failing plants in certain cases decided to recuperate their workplaces back into viable businesses despite the capitalist owner being unable to make a go of it.

Ignoring state opposition, aggressive competition, old equipment, and failed demand, workers in these instances took over roughly a hundred and ninety plants over the past five years. In each occupied workplace, we were told during our visit, not only did the capitalist owner leave the
operation, so too did prior professional and conceptual employees including managers and engineers. Where the privileged employees felt their prospects would be better served if they looked elsewhere rather than clinging to a failing operation, the unskilled and rote workers had to
recuperate their failing workplace or suffer unemployment. Thus to date the Argentine occupations, we were told by a highly conscious organizer in the movement, "have not been acts of ideology or followed a revolutionary plan." They have been, instead, "acts of desperate self defense." Yet most interestingly, provocatively, and inspirationally, after taking over a company, which usually required a struggle of many months to overcome political resistance from the state, and after then running the plants for a time, the recuperation projects have become increasingly
visionary.

November 24, 2005 - 3:40pm -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
The State

CKUT Radio: Benedict Anderson - "Anarchism and Anti-Colonialism"

Listen to a lecture on anarchism and its relationship to anti-colonial struggles, given by professor Benedict Anderson of Cornell University. Recorded at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

-->To dowload or listen to the lecture, visit here.

This talk, entitles "Anarchism and Anti-Colonialism" was given by Benedict Anderson, a professor at Cornell University and the author of the book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Professor Anderson recently published Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination.

In this talk, Anderson looks at anti-colonial struggles in three places, the Phillipines, South Africa, and Cuba, and examines how these movements related and interplayed with the growing anarchist movements of Eastern and Western Europe. Particular attention is paid to "propaganda by the deed", an era of anarchism when numerous assassination attempts of political leaders were carried out by anarchists.

This talk was presented by the Montreal Institute for International Studies at UQAM (University of Quebec in Montreal).

CKUT

November 24, 2005 - 11:38am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Work

The following analysis was originally published in Red and Black Revolution, produced by the Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland.


The Nomad, the Displaced and the Settler Work in the 21st
century

In many countries there has been a debate as to the nature of the
changes in western workplaces; in Britain they talk about increased
casualisation of the workforce, in the US they talk about contingent
labour and on the European continent they use the language of
precarity. Central to in all these debates is the issue of job
insecurity.

A number of issues are being discussed. Firstly has the workplace
changed fundamentally such that people increasingly are in temporary
work rather than permanent work? Secondly is the division between
work time and non-work time dissolving, are we spending more of our
lives 'in work'? Thirdly are the non-work aspects of life becoming
increasingly insecure?

November 24, 2005 - 12:34am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

nolympics writes:

"What Is Communism?
Paul Bowman

What is communism? Well according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, communism is


        "1 a political theory derived from Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person is paid and works according to his or her needs and abilities. 2 (usu. Communism) a the communistic form of society established in the USSR and elsewhere."

If that was correct then this would be a very short article. However, as so often, the Concise Oxford is wrong again. In fact the terms socialism and communism appear in England around the 1820s as terms adopted by members of the cooperative movement who were sick of hearing their politics referred to as "Owenism". Originally the two terms were undifferentiated but by the 1840s communism was used by revolutionaries to differentiate themselves from reformists such as J.S. Mill who had adopted socialism to cover an indigestible mess of reformisms.

By the 1870s the terms had moved from differentiating means to distinguishing ends. The proper Oxford English Dictionary notes in its sources:


        "Forster Diary 11 May in T. W. Reid Life (1888).... I learn that the great distinction between communism and socialism is that the latter believes in payment according to work done and the former does not".

It is this meaning of communism as opposed to socialism that evolved in the late nineteenth century that this article discusses. Of course it's not that important to get hung up on a name, for many people the Concise definition of communism being something to do with Marx and the USSR is the one they know. For us the name of the post-capitalist society we aim to help construct is a detail, what matters is the content of the ideas. Nonetheless for the purposes of this article we need to choose a name so we stick with the historical one.

November 22, 2005 - 9:56am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

Tran writes: "This is an interesting analysis of the WTO...."

"Disneyland, Doha and the WTO in Hong Kong:
The Spectacle of Corporate Fear
Absurdity and the New Universalism"

Hidayat Greenfield, Z Mag

It's fitting that the Sixth WTO Ministerial should arrive in Hong Kong only a couple of months after the opening of Disneyland. In both cases reality is abandoned at the door, while fiction and fantasy take over. The magical Doha 'Development' Round promises an end to global poverty and a new prosperity for all — based on an agenda that boosts transnational corporate power and demolishes the remnants of political and social barriers to corporate profit.

Like a rollercoaster ride through a fictional world, we set off to alleviate global poverty and arrive at greater impoverishment as the destination. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors and dazzling special effects, but we end up where we began. We end up with US$545 billion in global agricultural exports co-existing with eight million people dying of hunger and hunger-related diseases every year, while tens of millions of small farmers and agricultural workers who produce the food that feeds the world are themselves living in hunger. In the fantasy world of the Doha Round 'market access' is the magical solution: small farmers and workers must compete harder, producing more for less, while pinning their hopes on access to overseas markets so they can sell more of the stuff that's impoverishing them.

Continues here.

November 22, 2005 - 9:39am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Rants

duckdaotsu writes:

"No Thanksgiving at My House:
Remembering Wesley BadHeartBull"
Duck Dao Tsu

Hot Springs, South Dakota is a small town located in the southernmost tip of the Black Hills. Wesley BadHeartBull started the sixth grade at Hot Springs Junior High School; he died just outside of town at the hands of a couple of cowboys — stabbed to death because he had the audacity to ask for drink at the bar. He was 22 years old.

November 22, 2005 - 9:33am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Continental Drift:

Questions for Jean Baudrillard"

Deborah Salomon, New York Times Magazine

Q: As one of France's most celebrated philosophers, can you give us any insight into the civil discontent that is pitting a generation of young people against the rest of the country?


It will get worse and worse and worse. For a long time, it was a relatively friendly coexistence or cohabitation, but the French haven't done much to integrate the Muslims, and there is a split now. Our organic sense of identity as a country has been split.

November 21, 2005 - 11:02pm -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Notes on copyright and copyleft

by Wu Ming, translated by Jason Di Rosso

1.The two horns of the false dilemma

We’ll start at the end: copyleft is founded on a need to link two primary needs; we might say two irrefutable conditions of civil co-habitation. If we stop struggling to satisfy these needs, we stop hoping the world will get better.

There's no doubt that culture and knowledge must circulate as freely as possible and access to ideas must be straightforward, equitable and free from discrimination on the grounds of class, censorship or nationality etc. Intellectual works are not just products of the intellect, they must in turn produce intellect, disseminate ideas and concepts, fertilize minds, in order that new thoughts and fantasies may sprout forth. This is the first cornerstone.

The second is that work must be remunerated; this includes the efforts of artists and narrators. Whoever can make art or narration their profession has the right to make a living out of it in a way that doesn't infringe on their own dignity. Obviously, we're talking about the best case scenario here.

It's a conservative attitude to think that these two needs are like two horns of an irreconcilable dilemma. "There's barely enough to go around" say the defenders of copyright as we've known it. Freedom to copy for them means only 'piracy', 'theft', 'plagiarism' - and you can forget about the author's remuneration. The more the work circulates for free, the fewer copies you sell, the more money the author loses. A bizarre syllogism if you examine it closely.
The most logical progression should be: the work circulates for free, its appreciation translates into word of mouth, the author's reputation and profile benefit as a result, and therefore their influence in the cultural industry (and not just there) grows. It's a beneficial cycle.
A well respected author is increasingly called on to make presentations (expenses reimbursed) and to attend conferences (paid); they are interviewed by the media (unpaid but it furthers the cause); academic postings are offered (paid); consultancies (paid), creative writing courses (paid); the author has the possibility to dictate more advantageous conditions to their publisher. How can all this harm book sales?
Let's talk about the musician/composer. The music circulates for free, people like it, it grabs their attention; whoever wrote or performed it has their profile raised, and if they know how to exploit it they're called upon to perform more frequently and in more places (paid), they have the opportunity to meet more people and therefore more supporters, if they 'develop a name' they are offered film soundtracks (paid), gigs as DJs (paid), sound design jobs for events, parties, art shows, fashion shows - they can even find themselves directing (paid) a festival, or an annual exhibition and so on. If we look at pop artists, we can add the income from merchandising like t-shirts sold on-line or at concerts etc.
And so the 'dilemma' is resolved: the needs of the consumers have been respected (they've had access to a work), as have those of the authors/composers (with financial and career benefits) and the cultural industry (editors, promoters, institutions etc.)

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