Anonymous Comrade submits "1000 Years of War:
CTHEORY Interview with Manuel De Landa

Manuel de Landa in conversation with: Don Ihde, Casper Bruun Jensen, Jari
Friis
Jorgensen, Srikanth Mallavarapu, Eduardo Mendieta, John Mix, John Protevi,
and
Evan Selinger.

Manuel De Landa, distinguished philosopher and principal figure in the "new
materialism" that has been emerging as a result of interest in Deleuze and
Guattari, currently teaches at Columbia University. Because his research
into
"morphogenesis" -- the production of stable structures out of material
flows --
extends into the domains of architecture, biology, economics, history,
geology,
linguistics, physics, and technology, his outlook has been of great interest
to
theorists across the disciplines. His latest book on Deleuze's realist
ontology, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002), comes in the wake
of
best-sellers: War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), where De Landa
assumes the persona of the "robot historian" to bring the natural and social
sciences into dialogue vis-a-vis using insights found in nonlinear dynamics
to analyze the role of information technology in military history, and A
Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (1997), where he carves out a space for
geological, organic, and linguistic materials to "have their say" in
narrating
the different ways that a single matter-energy undergoes phase transitions
of
various kinds, resulting in the production of the semi-stable structures
that
are constitutive of the natural and social worlds. When Evan Selinger
gathered
together the participants for the following interview, his initial intention
was to create an interdisciplinary dialogue about the latest book. In light
of
current world events -- which have brought about a renewed fascination with
De
Landa's thoughts on warfare -- and in light of the different participant
interests, an unintended outcome came about. A synoptic and fruitful
conversation occurred that traverses aspects of De Landa's oeuvre.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Has the Gulf War Taken Place Yet?"

Daniel Jewesbury, Variant

Shortly after the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999, Michael Ignatieff published a book called ‘Virtual War’1. In it he argued that Kosovo was a new type of conflict, marked most particularly by the ability of Western nations to wage what he called ‘war with impunity’. This impunity had two defining characteristics. Firstly, ‘the citizens of the NATO countries… were mobilized not as combatants, but as spectators. The war was a spectacle… The events in question were as remote from their essential concerns as a football game’ (p.3). Secondly, the sheer wealth of the West means that, even with relatively small defence budgets, we can afford to fight wars and not suffer noticeable changes to our standard of living. Both these conditions, Ignatieff argued, were new, and fundamentally altered the nature of global power relations.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Once Again, On Fictitious Capital:

Further Reply to 'Aufheben' and Other Critics"

Loren Goldner

(Note: Nothing is of course more boring than a reply to a reply to a reply. The following is written with the intention of being accessible to readers not familiar with my exchange with the "Aufheben" group on fictitious capital, Sander’s intervention in that debate in Internationalist Perspective, No. 41, and various discussion on e-lists. Further, I wish to sincerely thank all these critics for making it possible for me to sharpen my own views.) 

Fictitious capital is the gap between total price and total value on a world scale.

Capital as defined by Marx is a social relationship of production, a process of valorization, money mixed with living labor and means of production to achieve expanded money in the movement M-C-M’ (money-commodity-money prime). Capital is self-expanding value, a “self-reflexive” (self-acting) relationship that relates itself to itself, “value valorizing itself” ("sich selbst verwertendes Wert").

This is the profound movement of “pure” capital analyzed by Marx in Vols. I and II of Capital, before the introduction of the surface phenomena of everyday appearance in Vol. III. Vols. I and II offer a model of a “closed system” of only capitalists and proletarians.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Anarchism and the Politics of Ressentiment"

Saul Newman

"A word in the ear of the psychologists, assuming they are inclined to study ressentiment close up for once: this plant thrives best amongst anarchists...."[1]

Of all the nineteenth century political movements that Nietzsche decries -- from socialism to liberalism -- he reserves his most venomous words for the anarchists. He calls them the "anarchist dogs" that are roaming the streets of European culture, the epitome of the "herd-animal morality" that characterizes modern democratic politics.[2]

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Obit For A Former Contrarian"

Dennis Perrin, City Pages

A friend and protégé tries to make sense of what's happened to Christopher Hitchens

Bright spring afternoon. Hitch and I spend it in his fave D.C. pub just down the street from his spacious apartment. At the long polished bar, he sips a martini, I swig Tanqueray on ice offset by pints of ale. The pub's TV is flashing golf highlights while the jukebox blasts classic rock. We're chatting about nothing in particular when the juke begins playing "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens. Hitch stops talking. His face tightens. Eyes

narrow. I know this look -- I saw it on Crossfire when he nearly slugged a Muslim supporter of the Ayatollah's "fatwa" against Salman Rushdie. I saw it during a Gulf War panel discussion at Georgetown when he responded to some pro-war hack with a precision barrage of invective, followed by the slamming down of the mike, causing a brief reverb in the speakers.

And here it was again.

Michael writes:

"Nothing So Mean Could Be Right"

Once again we enter that silly season in the lives of Americans when
numbers, oratory and brightly colored balloons substitute for thought,
probity and rational discourse. The political convention epitomizes this
circus approach to choosing those we laughingly and unthinkingly refer to as
"leaders."

Anonymous Kumquat submits:

"The Anarchist Ethic in the Age of the Anti-Globalization Movement"

Killing King Abacus

The question always before anarchists is how to act in the present moment of struggle against capitalism and the state. As new forms of social struggles are becoming more clearly understood, this question becomes even more important. In order to answer these questions we have to clarify the relationship between anarchists and the wider social movement of the exploited and the nature of that movement itself.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"The Worst Kind of Lie"

John Chuckman, July 8, 2003

A few years sometimes make a big difference in human affairs. A few years ago an American President was put through the 18th century ordeal of impeachment, a vast, expensively-staged comic opera of white manes waving and grave baritones intoning, over a dribble on a dress and the lie he told to save himself embarrassment. Today we have a President who has hurled the world into two dirty, pointless wars after what undoubtedly qualifies as the longest sequence of public lies ever uttered in a free society, and yet in his homeland he remains popular and is collecting enough campaign cash to rival the Swiss bank balances of the Russian Mafia.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Racism, Exploitation and Neglect:

Bush and Africa"

Martha Honey, Counterpunch

It was a powerfully symbolic gift, coming as it did from one of the world's
poorer countries to the world's richest. In June 2002, a Maasai village in
Kenya presented its most precious resource, fifteen head of cattle, to the
United States as an expression of solidarity for the tragedy of September
11. "To the people of America, we give these cows to help you," read
banners at the ceremonial handover of the cattle from Maasai elders to the
U.S. ambassador. The gift was all the more poignant since the U.S.
government still has not compensated the families of the Kenyan victims of
terrorism who died in al-Qaeda's 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in
Nairobi.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"The Illusion Is Liberty, The Reality Is Leviathan:

A Voluntaryist Perspective on the Bill of Rights"

Carl Watner

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia began their
deliberations on May 25, 1787. During the hot summer months when their
arguments seemed to extend interminably, Benjamin Franklin observed that
life went on around them despite their debates. At one point, he "is said
to have warned the delegates: 'Gentlemen, you see that in the anarchy in
which we live society manages much as before. Take care, if our disputes
last too long, that the people do not come to think they can very easily
do without us'."(1)