Invaders from Marx: On the Uses of Marxian Theory, and the Difficulties of a Contemporary Reading By Michael Heinrich, Berlin [The following text is the slightly reworked version of an article which appeared on 21 September 2005 in “Jungle World”, a leftist German weekly newspaper. In a previous issue, Karl Heinz Roth. one of the main German representatives of Operaismo, had argued that some important Marxian categories are not able to grasp contemporary capitalism. The text at hand answers this critique, stressing the difference between Marxian theory and traditional Marxism, emphasizing the “new reading of Marx”, which developed through the last decades. The German text can be found at the website of the author: www.oekonomiekritik.de] In the past 120 years, Marx has been read and understood in widely varying ways. In the Social Democratic and Communist worker’s movement, Marx was viewed as the great Economist, who proved the exploitation of the workers, the unavoidable collapse of capitalism, and the inevitability of proletarian revolution. This sort of “Marxist political economy” was embedded in a Marxist worldview (Weltanschauung) which provided answers for all pre-existing historical, social, and philosophical questions. This omniscient kind of “Marxism” was analytically without much use, but was eminently well-suited as a means of propaganda and as an instrument of authority against those who questioned the party line. Already in the 1920s and 1930s, a Left critique of such Marxism emerged, but was nonetheless choked off by Stalinism and Fascism and did not receive a hearing in the Cold War era. This situation began to change in the 1960s, as Marx was read anew during the rise of the student movement and protests against the Vietnam War. A New Left arose beyond the classical worker’s movement which saw itself positioned on two fronts: on the one hand against the global capitalist system, on the other hand against an authoritarian and dogmatically petrified Communist movement, which was viewed as a force propping up domination.

http://hydrarchy.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-is-left.html What is the Left? An excerpt from The Paris Commune: A Political Declaration on Politics in Polemics, Verso, 2006.

Civil Society, Citizenship and the Politics of the (Im)possible: Rethinking Militancy in Africa Today by Michael Neocosmos Abstract The contemporary critique of neo-liberalism has concentrated overwhelmingly on its economic theory and socio-economic effects. Very little has been written so far on its political conceptions, particularly of the limited thinking which it imposes on political thought and practice. This paper makes a contribution to the latter endeavour by making a case for thinking an emancipatory politics in contemporary Africa. It shows that civil

Kurt Cobain's Zombie Identity http://www.notbored.org/kurdt.html

Venezuela 2008: A Libertarian Proposal for the Current Situation * The Collective Editorship of El Libertario, www.nodo50.org/ellibertario, expounds its vision of which path to follow in the current situation in Venezuela, summed up in the slogan, “Against the (B)oligarchy, demagoguery and corruption: Autonomous struggle of the underdogs!

Democratic Aesthetics: Actual, Radical, Global Call for papers for a themed issue of the journal Culture, Theory and Critique to be published in April 2009 Since Walter Benjamin equated aestheticized politics with fascism and war, projects to conduct politics aesthetically generally have been regarded as inimical to democracy. Yet, given the role of the US as a hegemonic world power exporting democracy by force of arms, it is timely to re-examine the potential of productive relations between aesthetics and democratic politics. There are many different notions of “aesthetics,” ranging from a philosophical discourse about art (often understood as distinct cultural practices, objects, experiences, perceptions and judgments), to its original broader sense (by Baumgarten) of the study of sensory, bodily aspects of cognitive interactions with the world. Moreover, ongoing processes of globalization generate and intensify tensions among culturally variable ideologies of the aesthetic, even as they problematize the presupposition of democracy’s universal value. It thus becomes at once more difficult and more urgent to think the relation between democracy and aesthetics.

http://www.abahlali.org/node/3388 http://www.newleftreview.org/A2705 THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESIS Alain Badiou

"The Communist Hypothesis"
Alain Badiou

What is the communist hypothesis? In its generic sense, given in its canonic Manifesto, 'communist' means, first, that the logic of class—the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity—is not inevitable; it can be overcome. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away.

From Ken Knabb: Dear Friends, You might find of interest the two webpages linked below. "2007 and I" is a text by a British contact of mine, Wayne Spencer, recounting his recent personal and political trajectory. "A Discussion with Ken Knabb" is an email exchange between us that followed. http://significantfailure.blogspot.com/2008/02/2007-and-i.html http://significantfailure.blogspot.com/2008/02/discussion-with-ken-knabb.... Cheers, Ken Knabb

The American economy is in shambles, with a spiraling debt crisis, a vanishing industrial base, and a plummeting dollar. And, as the debacle of the occupation of Iraq continues to demonstrate, the US is finding it increasingly difficult to keep the rest of the world under its hegemonic thumb through military intervention. Giovanni Arrighi's new book, Adam Smith in Beijing, situates this global decline of US power within the context of a epochal shift in the world-system away from North American dominance and towards Asia. Is China the real winner of the "War on Terror"?