Tag: labor

2,265 words

Correlli Barnett
The Verdict of Peace: Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future
London: Faber and Faber, 2001

See also: The Collapse of British Power, The Audit of War, & The Lost Victory

[This] book — again like its predecessors — is written from the standpoint of ‘Total Strategy,’ a concept first defined in the preface to The Collapse of British Power in 1972 as ‘strategy conceived as encompassing all the factors relevant to preserving or extending the power and prosperity of a human group in the face of rivalry from other human groups.’ (more…)

2,080 words

While I was a student, I had a part-time job at an investment firm paying five whole dollars an hour! (Wow!) Then the company folded; lawyers, to make a very long story short. This left me scrambling to stay afloat during the recession that was beginning to unfold in 1990. The best I could find was a part-time fast-food gig, which for many people is the employment of last resort. But as far as diversity goes, I was living the dream.

I told the story about this wonderful job, and several others which instilled my love for contemporary capitalism, on my free web host account. (more…)

6,471 words

Introduction here, Chapter 11 Part 3 here, Chapter 12 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Biopolitics, in this context, is defined as that force immanent to the social realm which creates relations and forms of life through a cooperative form of production. (more…)

3,226 words

Introduction here, Chapter 11 Part 2 here, Chapter 11 Part 4 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Intellectual labor, say Hardt and Negri, is intrinsically associated with sharing and common production. This “common,” consisting in information, knowledge, and emotional and affective relations is both the condition and the result of today’s predominant form of labor — but of course it has nothing to do with what is generally understood under this term. It does not found a community, for it has neither unity nor identity. (more…)

Antonio Negri (left) & Michael Hardt

5,250 words

Introduction here, Chapter 11 Part 1 here, Chapter 11 Part 3 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

“The Empire is constructing a biopolitical order because production has become biopolitical,” states Antonion Negri.[i] That means that the emergence of the Empire as a paradigm of biopower is indissociable from the appearance of a new form of production, viz. “immaterial” labor, which is defined by Hardt and Negri as “labor which produces a non-material good such as a service, a cultural product, knowledge, or communication” (more…)

3,968 words

Introduction here, Chapter 8 here, Chapter 9 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

The ecologist Fabrice Nicolino, a member of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial board (he was seriously wounded in the Kouachi brothers’ attack in January 2015), declares:

I am nostalgic for a time when people had a place, when men and women were strongly bound. I am nostalgic for a time when rural civilization was not the garbage it is today, a monstrosity that stuffs people with pesticides. (more…)

24,021 words

The following text is being presented in commemoration of Sir Oswald Mosley’s 136th birthday. — Ed. (more…)

854 words

The link between the transatlantic slave trade and industrial growth in Britain is a recurring theme in public discussions. There is a widespread assumption that the slave trade’s profitability required Britain to compensate the descendants of Africans, since it helped to enrich some institutions. It is true that the slave trade made profits, but its contribution to the economy was marginal. Technological change rather than the slave trade was the force that propelled the Industrial Revolution. (more…)

563 words / 2:02:23

Nick Jeelvy welcomed longtime friend of the show Karl Thorburn to the latest broadcast of The Writers’ Bloc to discuss unlimited power and its applications. (more…)

Vladimir Serov, Worker (1960)

2,086 words

Dad: Son, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Son: I want to be a pool cleaner.

Dad: That’s a stupid answer. What else?

Son: I wanna be a pizza delivery boy.

Dad: No, no, no!

Son: A plumber, then.

Dad (turns to mom, whispers): He’s found the tapes. (more…)

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory

1,446 words

More than one person I’ve spoken to, both offline and online, has commented on how the passage of time seems to have changed very little in the past two years. (more…)

2,076 words

Bryan Caplan
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
New York: First Second, 2019

Libertarians have long advocated open borders, viewing any limit on immigration as an infringement on personal liberty. To my knowledge, there has never been a book-length treatment of the issue from a libertarian perspective — until now. Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, makes his case for open borders in a graphic novel. (more…)