Anonymous Comrade writes:

Here is a quick translation of a three-book review from the Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad of 7 May 2004. The author is Arnold Heumakers, a philosopher. It discusses three books that throw light on the ‘split within western culture.’ NRC-Handelsblad is the newspaper of the Dutch economic and cultural upper strata, with liberal-democratic, neoliberal and anti-populist inclinations (and a good book section). The review itself expresses a rather sophisticated notion of the west as a global entity, with all kinds of internal antagonisms and a ‘peculiar schizophrenia’.

“Our Intimate Enemies”

Arnold Heumakers

“The New Imperialism” by David Harvey
reviewed by William bowles

“Military interventions are the tip of the imperialist iceberg”

“Almost certainly those European governments, such as Spain and Italy, that have supported the US against the clear wishes of their peoples will fall”
David Harvey, “The New Imperialism”

“It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup…We are to continue to generate maximum pressures toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that United States Government and American hand be well hidden.”
CIA cable to the US State Department cited in “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” by Chalmers Johnson

For most, mention the word economics and eyes glaze over and turn elsewhere, but without some basic understanding of economics, making sense of our world is all but impossible. The corporate media rarely, if ever, mentions economics as intrinsic to politics in its coverage of events unless it’s about interest rates, taxes or employment. Delving deeper into the mechanics of capitalism as relevant to events and most importantly, the reasons behind events is forbidden territory. The media’s role is to project the view that the capitalist system with all its faults is still the best solution available. And what better proof of this approach could we have than the common reaction in the corporate press to the suggestion that oil could have something to do with the invasion of Iraq. By dismissing the idea as a conspiracy, oil is relegated to the nether regions, along with flying saucers and telepathy.

On Joe Hill

Loren Goldner, Break Their Haughty Power

Reviewing Franklin Rosemont's Joe Hill: The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture. Chicago, Charles H. Kerr, 2003.   

Franklin Rosemont’s Joe Hill is in many ways a beautiful book. In these days of war without end in the Middle East,  and Kerry vs. Bush,  and visible “politics” in the U.S. seemingly reduced to a right-wing party and a far-right party,  the book gives me a high that makes me wants to run out the door and organize. I feel like a curmudgeon criticizing it in any serious way. The book is above all important for a new generation of activists trying to situate itself in the rubble bequeathed by the 20th century bureaucratic-statist “left” (Social Democratic, Stalinist, Third Worldist, Trotskyist) and the latter’s wooden ideologies.

"An Anarchist Terroir"

Rebecca Dewitt, New Formulation (February, 2003)

Reviewing:

Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies

Edited by Warren Belasco and Philip Scranton

New York: Routledge, 2002



Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food

Edited by Carlo Petrini with Ben Watson and Slow Food Editore

Chelsea Green, 2001

Anarchism and contemporary academic theory ignore each other. On opposite ends of the theoretical spectrum, one tends toward universal ideas and the other towards isolated phenomena. Introducing academic theoretical advances to anarchism is both an affront and a necessity. Anarchism, let me introduce you to Food Studies. Go on, try it, you might like it! Kropotkin’s response to Malthusian sentiments in Mutual Aid, Food Not Bombs as anarchism in action, and mobilizations against biotechnology and other profiteering methods of production are the primary ways in which anarchism utilizes food. While anarchists debate the nature of nature, serve vegan food to the homeless, and protest Monsanto’s(1) conquest of the so-called Third World, is it worth expanding anarchism’s utilitarian use of food? Why this even matters is discernable in the new trend known as Food Studies. Two recent books, Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies and Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food attest to the new political nature of food and expand upon an international dialogue.

These days it is no longer enough to hand out free food, declare oneself a vegetarian, or shop at your local coop to make a statement about food. The emerging academic field of Food Studies invokes eco-gastronomic movements, analyzes rifts between “foodies” and “fatties,”(2) and elevates slow food over fast food to look at the means of production, transportation, cultural identity, nation building or dismantling, class warfare, and imperialism. To simply demand control over the means of production and access to food, central to anarchist thought, appears to be the equivalent of theoretical vulgarity. If anarchism wishes to take advantage of the increasingly rich fields of Food Studies, it will need to avoid such simplistic reductions while also retaining strong anarchist convictions.