Tag: the working class

President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act into law, surrounded by his supporters.

3,031 words

Part 6 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here)

When a term has become so universally sanctified as “democracy” is now, I begin to wonder whether it means anything, in meaning too many things. — T. S. Eliot (more…)

Klaus Schwab trying not to look like an evil mastermind.

1,799 words

We, a select group of human beings . . . — John Kerry speaking at Davos

In this life, one thing counts.
In the bank, large amounts.
I’m afraid these don’t grow on trees,
You’ve got to pick a pocket or two.
— Fagin, Oliver! (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…)

Antonio Negri (left) & Michael Hardt

5,027 words

Introduction here, Chapter 10 Part 2 here, Chapter 11 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri published a book intitled Empire (E.) in the United States in April 2000, followed four years later by another essay, Multitude (M.). (more…)

Barricade of the Communard National Guard, Paris, March 18, 1871.

3,377 words

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Introduction here, Chapter 9 Part 2 here, Chapter 10 Part 1 here

The Revolution of 1789 was itself above all a liberal and bourgeois revolution — even “ultra-liberal,” as the very liberal Gaspard Koenig affirms, not failing to celebrate this. (more…)

Ernesto Laclau

3,974 words

Introduction here, Chapter 7 here, Chapter 9 Part 1 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, a populist movement that became (with 20.6% of the vote) the third-largest political force in Spain following the elections of December 2015, said shortly thereafter that one could “define Podemos by saying that we have done everything the Left said must not be done.” (more…)

6,066 words

Introduction here, Chapter 6 here, Chapter 8 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

“To be on the Right is to be afraid for what exists,” said Jules Romains. A nice definition. We find it again in many authors. (more…)

24,021 words

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

Jean-Claude Michéa

6,046 words

Introduction here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here, Chapter 6 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

No doubt we should have expected this. The views developed by Jean-Claude Michéa were not slow to earn him many critiques, mostly directed at two of his books, Orpheus’s Complex and Mysteries of the Left. (more…)

Jean-Claude Michéa

5,916 words

Introduction here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

In January 1905, the regulations of the French Section of the Workers’ International, the Socialist Party of the time, still indicated that it was a “class party whose goal was to socialize the means of production and exchange, i.e. to transform capitalist society into a collectivist or Communist society, and that its means to this end was the economic and political organization of the proletariat.” Of course, no “socialist” party would dare say this today. Socialists have mutated into social-democrats and, increasingly, into social-liberals. (more…)