Geovanni Arrighi Memorial

GEOVANNI ARRIGHI MEMORIAL

A Memorial web site for Geovanni Arrighi can be found at: http://www.sympathytree.com/giovanniarrighi1937/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

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Politics and Culture

POLITICS AND CULTURE

Call for contributions to Politics and Culture: An International Review of Books – http://aspen.conncoll.edu/politicsandculture/

Politics and Culture is a free, on-line journal edited by Amitava Kumar and Michael Ryan.

Its winter edition of 2009 will entitled “On the critical” and will contain articles that focus on the conditions of possibility of critique, on Cultural Studies’ capacities to generate critiques, or on explicitly critical analysis of cultural and political practices. Contributions may for instance address different conceptualizations and fields of critique, they can interrogate some of its articulations, claims and forms of interpellation, or they can question the position, identity or practice of the critic. Theoretical as well as empirical work will both be included.

Apart from a series of essays and book reviews focussing on the critical, we also welcome other European contributions to Cultural Studies in the widest possible sense. Both notions (”Europe” and “Cultural Studies”) are used in a non-restrictive and open way, guaranteeing a diversity of approaches and geographies.

The editorial team for this edition consists of Joke Bauwens (VuBrussels), Nico Carpentier (VuBrussels), Peter Csigo (Hungarian Academy of Science), Tanja Thomas (ULueneburg), Sofie Van Bauwel (UGhent) and Fabian Virchow (UMarburg / Paris-Lodron-University).

Both essays and book reviews will be included in the winter edition of Politics and Culture, and should all be about 2000 words in length.

Potential authors who wish to express their interest in publishing a book review or an essay are requested to contact Nico Carpentier as soon as possible at nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be. Proposals for book reviews need to include the name of the author, the book(s) to be reviewed, and the estimated length. Proposals for short essays need to include a 100-word abstract.

All book reviews and essays will need to be send to the editorial team (for review) by ultimately September 15, 2009, and final versions of the texts will have to be ready on November 1, 2009.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Greed is good (sometimes); but regulation is better

This is a great article by Jonathan Wolff which appeared in The Guardian (Higher Education) last Tuesday – Glenn

Greed is good (sometimes); but regulation is better

By Jonathan Wolff

I was rather bemused to read an opinion piece suggesting that I had seen the financial crisis coming. The evidence? A few years ago, I wrote approvingly of some of Karl Marx’s thoughts about the inevitability of capitalism’s economic cycle. As I tell my students, when we are at the top of a cycle politicians and economists boast that they have finally cracked it and achieved sustainable growth. But when we are at the bottom we are told not to worry, the cycle will roll the good times back in.

Marx wrote that capitalism is prone to the most extraordinary type of crisis: that of over-production. Throughout history we have struggled to produce enough to sustain us. But capitalism has flipped into another stage, where sometimes we produce much more than we can consume, or at least pay for. Producers are left with unsold stocks, so reduce output and lay off workers. And then there is even less money to buy produced goods, reinforcing a downward spiral.

Marx also argued that each crisis would be worse than the last. Luckily he was wrong. Attempts to manage the economy can soften the crash. But it is worth understanding his reasons for pessimism. Marx observed that one of the tendencies of capitalism was “the concentration of capital”: the increasing amount of our lives that gets sucked up by the market. Over time more of life, such as childcare and entertainment, becomes “commodified”. Consequently, when the market crashes, it drags more of our lives down with it.

As people in developing countries know, an economic crisis is less serious for you if you can go back to the family farm until things pick up. But if you have to rely on the market entirely for your livelihood, you are especially vulnerable.

So did I predict the then-coming crisis? Well, not really. George Soros once said that he had predicted 10 crises out of the last four. Those who rely on the writings of Marx are in the same position. You can be sure that a crisis is a comin’, but why exactly, and when, is a mystery, until it happens.

On the other hand, it was rather shocking to hear Alan Greenspan of the US Federal Reserve blaming the crisis on a “flaw” he had recently discovered in his ideology of minimal regulation of the free market. He should have come to see me. I could have told him that the problem had been discovered in the early 1700s, by the philosopher and essayist Bertrand Mandeville.

The miracle of the free market – and it is pretty miraculous – was famously captured by Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantage.” As if by magic, the market harnesses self-interest for general well-being. Greed is good. Or, as Mandeville put it in his Fable of the Bees, “Private Vices, Public Virtues”.

But here comes the flaw. This is all very well when shopping for tonight’s dinner. If the butcher sells you rotten meat, you’ll go somewhere else tomorrow, if still alive. It is this that keeps the butcher honest. But suppose you are buying meat that won’t be supplied for 20 years? Still want to rely on the greed of the butcher? Thought not. By the time you have found out if he is cheating you, it will be too late to switch supplier. When there is a substantial time lag between purchase and consumption, as there is for pensions, savings schemes and sub-prime debt, the market loses its magic and the purchaser is vulnerable. Regulation might not be a bad idea after all. Otherwise, as Mandeville might have observed, Private Vices, Public Bail-Out.

The Guardian (Higher Education), 7^th July 2009, p.6

Online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/07/jonathan-wolff-recession-marx

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War

Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War

NEW TITLE: ANTAGONISTICS: CAPITALISM AND POWER IN AN AGE OF WAR 

GOPAL BALAKRISHNAN

Published June 2009

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Praise for ANTAGONISTICS:

 

“Hegel wrote that the moment of triumph of a social movement is simultaneously the moment of its disintegration … Gopal Balakrishnan shows how this holds for the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy in the 1990s … Antagonistics is a book for all those who want to orient themselves in the chaos of our historical moment …” – Slavoj Zizek

 

“This collection is an intellectual feast and a dazzling commentary on political thinking, contemporary and classical.  Here an intelligence honed on Schmitt and Machiavelli reviews a range of theoretical texts with courteous sarcasm and radical interrogation; the results are witty, devastating and full of suggestive speculation …” – Fredric Jameson

 

“This collection of essays by New Left Review’s Balakrishnan expounds his prescient view that the debt-driven expansion that fuelled US hegemony was unsustainable.” – New Statesman, http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/05/short-amidon-largely

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To see some of Gopal’s pieces as they originally appeared in New Left Review see below:

On Hardt and Negri’s ‘Empire’: http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2275

On multiculturalism:  http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2309

On Machiavelli: http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2551

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ANTAGONISTICS addresses central political and theoretical questions: how should we conceive the relationship between neo-imperial warfare and neoliberalism, American hegemony and capitalist globalization? Reflections on the major issues of the new international order are set within a larger framework, tracing the intertwined evolution of the modern state system and the capitalist mode of production, from the Treaty of Westphalia to the Occupation of Iraq. Balakrishnan interrogates three key political perspectives—Tocqueville’s liberalism, Althusser’s Marxism and Schimtt on the radical right – for their insights into state power and civil society, democracy, and class. Antagonistics combines intellectual history, political philosophy, and historical sociology to produce a highly distinctive portrait of an age of capital and war.

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GOPAL BALAKRISHNAN is the author of The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt, and editor of Debating Empire and (with Benedict Anderson) Mapping the Nation. He is a member of the New Left Review editorial board and a professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California , Santa Cruz .

ISBN 978-1-84467-269-1/ £14.99/$26.95/ Paperback / 304 pages

ISBN 978-1-84467-268-4/£60/$110 / Hardback / 304 pages

For more information visit: http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/balakrishnan_g_antagonistics.shtml

To buy the book in the UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antagonistics-Capitalism-Power-Age-War/dp/1844672697/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244563813&sr=8-1

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781844672691/Antagonistics

To buy the book in the US: http://www.amazon.com/Antagonistics-Capital-Power-Age-War/dp/1844672697/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244622963&sr=8-2

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Crisis

CRISIS
Marx, Individuals & Society Seminar
The next meeting will be Robin H on 'Crisis'
Thursday 16th July 2009
It will be at:
Malet Street, London, 7:30PM to 9:00PM, Room MAL 252 
Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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The Rouge Forum – Update 6th July 2009

THE ROUGE FORUM – UPDATE 6^th JULY 2009

A message from Rich Gibson

Dear Friends 
 
The Rouge Forum No Blood For Oil (with those good-for-the-rest of your life posters on sale!) is updated at: http://www.richgibson.com/rouge_forum/ 
 
On the Madness and Boredom Front: 
Substance News is carrying reports from the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly, running through Monday, here: http://www.substancenews.net/ 
 
On the Educational Miracles Front: 
Substance has exposed the Chicago Miracle, the reason Arne Duncan holds his position as Ed Boss, for years. However, here is another expose, from an unexpected source: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/downloads/CPS.pdf 
 
On the What Do You Mean We Had Something to Do With that Coup and What Do We Know About the School of the Americas Front: http://www.soaw.org/ 
 
On the Everyone Can Make it in America Front, the Jobless Rate Hits a 26 Year High: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/02/us-unemployment-june-467000 
 
On the Someone is Actually Doing Something About all of This Front: The San Francisco Freedom School is open for summer: http://educationanddemocracy.org/SFFS/2009program.html 
 
Russian Students are Resisting: http://www.rferl.org/content/Russias_New_Standardized_Exams_Fail_The_Public_Test/1761799.html  
You can do something too. There is one organization in North America, rooted in education, that connects the wars, unemployment, de-industrialization, class struggle, and the crises in schools: The Rouge Forum. Next week we will circulate a call for nominees for this year’s Rouge Forum Steering Committee. We urge you to join us. Please spread the word. 
 
Thanks to all the courageous delegates at the NEA RA who spoke to me and gave me so much information. You’ll see it in print in the coming days. If you are still at the RA and we have not met, please email me asap, or we can talk when you get home. 
 
Thanks too to Amber, Wayne, Adam, Bob, Colleen, Tammy, Christina, Katie and Greg, Bill, Joe, Sally, Sue, Donna, Kathy Y and E, Gil, Tony, Jill, Eric, Marcie, Isabella, Victoria, Donnie, Tally, Shawndre, Teeyah, Pete, and Doug. 
 
Good luck to us, every one. 
Rich Gibson

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Centre for the Study of Work and Education – Update 6th July 2009

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF WORK AND EDUCATION – UPDATE 6th JULY 2009

OUR MANDATE: The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people.

We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.

To change your subscriptions settings, visit: http://listserv.oise.utoronto.ca/mailman/listinfo/csewbroadcast

For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• NEW! FROM FERNWOOD PUBLISHING – FIGHT BACK: WORKPLACE JUSTICE FOR IMMIGRANTS
• REPORT – ENTRY-LEVEL AND NEXT-STEP JOBS IN THE LOW-SKILL JOB MARKET
• JULY 15 EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE CALL – SETTING UP & RUNNING A CBPR DEPARTMENT IN A COMMUNITY AGENCY: THE ACCESS ALLIANCE EXPERIENCE
• ARTICLE – PRACTICALLY SPEAKING: IMPROVING THE FABRIC OF WORKPLACE LEARNING
• COMMEMORATIVE BOOK “A CENTURY OF CO-OPERATION” NOW AVAILABLE
• ARTICLE – LESSONS FROM THE HUMBLING OF GENERAL MOTORS
• A FAREWELL TO ATKINSON COLLEGE (TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2009)
• ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

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NEW! FROM FERNWOOD PUBLISHING – FIGHT BACK: WORKPLACE JUSTICE FOR IMMIGRANTS
By Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, Steve Jordan, Eric Shragge & Martha Stiegman

Displacement of people, migration, immigration and the demand for labour are connected to the fundamental restructuring of capitalism and to the reduction of working-class power through legislation to free the market from “state interference.” The result is that a large number of immigrant and temporary foreign workers face relentless competition and little in the way of protection in the labour market. Globally and in Canada, immigrant workers are not passive in the face of these conditions: they survive and fight back. This book documents their struggles and analyzes those struggles within the context of neoliberal globalization and international and national labour markets. Fight Back grew out of collaboration between a group of university-affiliated researchers/activists and the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal. The book shares with us the experiences of immigrant workers in a variety of workplaces.

It is based on the belief that the best kind of research comes from people’s lived experiences and consequently tells it “how it really is”.

Available at your local independent bookstore or order online from
http://www.fernwoodpublishing.ca

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REPORT – ENTRY-LEVEL AND NEXT-STEP JOBS IN THE LOW-SKILL JOB MARKET

Low-skill jobs are not “no skill” jobs, and the labor market for non-college jobs—jobs that do not require a college degree— is vast and diverse. This brief uses data from the 2007 Survey of Employers in the Low-Skill Labor Market to explore differences between non-college jobs that have few if any requirements and those for which either a high school degree, prior experience, or previous skills training is extremely important.

The report aims to broaden and deepen our understanding of the diversity of this labor market.

To read more: http://www.urban.org/publications/411801.html

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JULY 15 EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE CALL – SETTING UP & RUNNING A CBPR DEPARTMENT IN A COMMUNITY AGENCY: THE ACCESS ALLIANCE EXPERIENCE

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health is pleased to announce the second call in our 2009-2010 Educational Conference Call Series. In the midst of the numerous recovery act funding announcements from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we’ve been noticing a dramatic rise in inquiries to CCPH from community-based organizations that are either applying directly for research grants or as partners of academic institutions that are the lead applicants. We’ve decided to focus the call series on answering the most frequently asked questions, as part of the over-arching theme of “Building Community Capacity for Research.” Each call includes speakers who provide answers and insights from their direct experience, helpful handouts, and links to relevant resources.

The audiofile, agenda, and handouts for the first call, which took place on June 3 and addressed the “how and why” of obtaining a federally negotiated indirect rate and federal wide assurance, are now posted on the CCPH website at:
http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/pastpresentations.html

The next call, scheduled for July 15 from 3:30 – 5 pm eastern time, addresses the question of what organizational systems and supports need to be in place to do community-based participatory research (CBPR) in a community agency setting. The call is titled “Setting Up & Running a CBPR Department in a Community Agency: The Access Alliance Experience.”

To register for the call, go to: https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/ccphuw/78916.

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ARTICLE – PRACTICALLY SPEAKING: IMPROVING THE FABRIC OF WORKPLACE LEARNING

The rising dollar. An aging workforce. Competition from overseas. These are just a few of the challenges facing Canadian businesses. Increasingly, companies are investing in skills training as a way of gaining a much-needed edge—and Canada’s textile industry has been on the forefront of this shift, spending millions of dollars on an innovative—and inventive—workplace learning initiative.

To read more: http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Newsroom/PracticallySpeaking/20090616MWTextiles.htm?Language=EN

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COMMEMORATIVE BOOK “A CENTURY OF CO-OPERATION” NOW AVAILABLE

One of the highlights of the Canadian Co-operative Association’s National Congress in Ottawa was the launch of A Century of Co-operation, a commemorative book by Canada’s pre-eminent co-op historian, Ian MacPherson. The 234-page book chronicles the history of Canada’s co-operative movement through text and images from the movement’s beginnings to the present day.

The book can be ordered from CCA’s website at: http://www.coopscanada.coop/en/about_cca/100th/Commemorative-book . Cost is $50 plus GST.

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ARTICLE – LESSONS FROM THE HUMBLING OF GENERAL MOTORS
By Sam Gindin

Of all 20th century industries, it was the auto sector that best captured the sway of capitalism and the rise of American dominance. The assembly line showed off capitalism’s remarkable productive potential and the automobile flaunted capitalism’s consumerist possibilities … In the growth years after the war, the proudest achievement of the UAW and then the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), even to the point of trading off workplace rights, was winning what was essentially a ‘private welfare state’ – a set of gains that brought workers not just wages, but the security of a range of benefits, of which health care and pensions were the most significant…

To read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet229.html

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A FAREWELL TO ATKINSON COLLEGE (TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2009)
By James Laxer

A great experiment in part-time, adult education is coming to an end tomorrow.

Atkinson was on the cutting edge of the drive to democratize what had been a rather hide bound system in the past. Greater accessibility was the watchword of the time … From the very start Atkinson was about much more than upgrading professionals who needed a university degree. Without being fully conscious of what this implied at the outset, Atkinson was learning through experience how to educate people who combined work and study in their lives.

To read more: http://www.jameslaxer.com/2009/06/farewell-to-atkinson-college.html

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Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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Mike Cole on Marx and ‘Capital’

Mike Cole on Marx and ‘Capital’

My friend Mike Cole has an excellent reflective review of Capital: Volume 1 by Karl Marx in this week’s Times Higher Education.

I was particularly struck with how Mike started the article with an autobiographical note on how he read Capital: Volume 1 under the tutelage of Tom Bottomore for his Masters degree, and then moved on to outlining some of Marx’s key ideas. As someone interested in Marxist educational theory, I also appreciated how Mike made clear the significance of labour power for Marx’s theory of exploitation in capitalist society. I have explored the role of education and training in the social production of labour power in capitalism for many years now*.

You can see Mike’s reflective review at: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407196&c=2

* See, Online Publications by Glenn Rikowski, at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Professor Mike Cole is Director of the Centre for Education for Social Justice, Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln. He is author of Marxism and Educational Theory: Origins and Issues (2008) and Critical Race Theory and Education: A Marxist Response (2009).

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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The Future of Educational Materialism

THE FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALISM

Call for papers – Educational Philosophy and Theory

Special edition on: The future of educational materialism

Edited by David R Cole, University of Technology, Sydney

This edition of the journal will attend to emerging developments in educational materialism by bringing together international scholars in this area. The basic questions that this edition of the journal will address are: How do educational materialisms work? and: What are the relevant theoretical variations on educational materialism and what are their practical applications?

As a starting point for this discussion one might take this quote from Ray Brassier: “While transcendental orthodoxy wastes time staving off the imminent liquidation of reason, sense, and life, transcendental materialism celebrates the deterritorialization of intelligence.”

There are a least three inter-related strands of educational materialism that this special edition will interrogate:

* Materialist dialectics: Deriving in main from the work of Karl Marx – the basic thesis behind this strand of educational materialism is that teaching and learning systems are directed towards the manipulation of capital. Schools deliver human capital to the markets – that assess and place qualifications, social status and individual capabilities in terms of capital. This situation has been further accelerated and complexified due to the global use of electronic markets and the emergence of virtual capital. This strand of educational materialism may include work on social capital that is often theorised using the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu.

* Transcendental materialism. The second theoretical platform for understanding educational materialism is derived from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. This strand accepts material dialectics, yet intensifies and broadens the scope in the ways capital transforms situations. This is because capitalism also acts on an irrational level, and this can be clearly seen if one analyses advertising or takes into account the ways in which media systems manipulate emotions. Transcendental materialism looks for escape routes out of situations that might lead to internalisation – and in the case of education, this includes putting contemporary practises such as examinations under erasure.

* Speculative materialism. This recent development in materialist theory reconciles materialism with realism – and avoids the potential for duality between materialism and idealism. The essential thesis of this strand of educational materialism stipulates that the designation of ‘the human’ or ‘the subject’ defines limiting criteria that restrict research. The path to forthright understanding of education therefore requires the elimination of phenomenology or any ‘mentalism’ that might contain and lock up the possibilities of material agency.

Interested scholars should send a 500 word abstract in the first instance to David R Cole at david.cole@uts.edu.au by December 1^st 2009

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Zombie Capitalism

Zombie Capitalism

New from Bookmarks Publications

Zombie Capitalism: Global crisis and the relevance of Marx, by Chris Harman

A major new study of capitalism from Marx to the 21^st century

Praise for Zombie Capitalism:

“A powerful, comprehensive and accessible critique of capitalism from one of the world’s pre-eminent Marxist economists. This book needs to be read far and wide. It is a clear, incisive warning of the massive dangers posed by a ‘runaway system’ and the threat it poses for the future of humanity.” Graham Turner, author of Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis 

“Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the present crisis and its place in the history of capitalism and an important contribution to Marxist political economy” Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, King’s College London

To read an interview with Chris about his new book, click here

To read Chris’s article “The Rate of Profit and the World Today”, click here

ISBN: 9781905192533; July 2009 428pp; £16.99

To order Zombie Capitalism for the special offer price of £15, click here

To request a review copy, email: publications@bookmarks.uk.com

Chris Harman is the editor of International Socialism journal (http://www.isj.org.uk). His previous books include A People’s History of the World (Bookmarks 1999 and Verso 2008), Revolution in the 21^st Century (Bookmarks 2006), Economics of the Madhouse (Bookmarks 1995), The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After (Bookmarks 1988), Explaining the crisis (Bookmarks 1984) and The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 (Bookmarks 1982).

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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