hydrarchist writes: "
Through the aut-op-sy list, we have just been informed that the full text of Harry Cleaver's 'Reading Capital Politically' (2nd ed. AK Press, 1999)has now been made available online as a PDF at the following address:
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html /cleaver_rcp.pdf

The file is very large (1.5mb) and thus we here provide you with a HTML version of the Preface which will give readers some feel for the style, content and subject matter of the text. Enjoy.

Preface

New prefaces to old works are problematical. What to say about something you wrote
a quarter of a century ago? Instead of writing a preface, it’s tempting to simply rewrite
the book in ways that would bring it up to date with your current ideas and formulations.
However, books, as some have pointed out, take on a life of their own after they’ve been
published and the generous leave them unmolested, not tinkered with, but allowed
to follow their own course. About all you can do is introduce them, tell a bit of their
story and then leave them to the mercy of their readers. This makes sense to me. So
here I tell something of the genesis of this book, about how it came to be, and then
something of the subsequent implications of its ideas for my own work since.(1)

Some books are intentionally crafted. Conceived and written as part of a political
project with a particular purpose, an objective, they are designed from the start as a
contribution. The first volume of Karl Marx’s Capital is such a book. He conceived and
wrote Capital as one step in a larger project of laying out his analysis of the nature of
capitalism. That laying out was, in turn, part of an even larger project of contributing to
the overthrow and transcendence of capitalism. His writing was part of his contribution
to the ongoing struggles of workers against their exploitation and alienation and for
the crafting of better, alternative forms of social life.

Faith and Knowledge -- An Opening

Juergen Habermas

Speech by Juergen Habermas accepting the Peace Price

of the
German Publishers and Booksellers Association

Paulskirche, Frankfurt, 14 October 2001

Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 15 October 2001

[translated from German by Kermit Snelson]

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/aktuell/sz/artikel86740 .php

When current events become so overwhelming that they rip the choice of topic
out of our own hands, so to speak, the John Waynes among us intellectuals
are of course greatly tempted to compete instead as to who can be the
quickest to shoot from the hip.

Only a short time ago the spirits moved us to discuss the question of
whether and how far we should subject ourselves to genetic technology for
self-instrumentation or even for pursuing the goal of self-optimization.
Our first steps along this path were beset by controversy between the
advocates of those two great rival faiths: organized science and organized
religion. One side feared obscurantism and the revival of atavistic
suspicion against science. The other accused the scientistic belief in
progress of a crude naturalism that undermines morality.

But after 11 September, the tension between secular society and religion
exploded in an entirely different way. As we know from Atta's testament,
these suicidal murderers, who turned civilian means of transport into living
missiles against the capitalist citadels of Western civilization, were
motivated by religious convictions. For them, those symbols of globalizing
modernism were the embodiment of the Great Satan.