Summer Reading: The Light That Failed

“After the fall of the Wall, across-the-board imitation of the West was widely accepted as the most effective way to democratize previously non-democratic societies. Largely because of the moral asymmetry it implies, this conceit has now become a pre-eminent target of populist rage.”

— Krastev and Holmes

“...even for the inhabitants of economically successful countries such as Poland, the project of adopting a Western model under Western supervision feels like a confession of having failed to escape Central Europe’s historical vassalage to foreign instructors and inquisitors....A feeling of being treated disrespectfully was also fomented by what can be reasonably identified as the central irony of post-communist democracy-promotion in the context of European integration: the Central and East European countries ostensibly being democratized were compelled, in order to meet the conditions for EU membership, to enact policies formulated by unelected bureaucrats from Brussels and international lending organizations. Poles and Hungarians were told what laws and policies to enact, and simultaneously instructed to pretend that they were governing themselves.”

— Krastev and Holmes

A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times by Anand Pandian

Just finished this wonderful little book by Anand Pandian from Duke U Press.

Nice quote: "Anthropology teaches us to seek out unseen faces of the world at hand, to confront its openness through experience and encounter, and to take these openings as seeds of humanity to come." (page 3)

 What is the pragmatic value of anthropology in the 21st century? Pandian argues that we need new ways of seeing the world. He argues that "stories like ours can be tailored for times of darkness: for moments of profound and unsettling disquiet; in the face of intractable forms of injustice and neglect; as resources for assurance and imagination when the light begins to fade each evening, as it will." (page 120-121)

It's summer reading season

The semester is finally over and my committee obligations are mostly behind me, so I can finally hit the books. The first piece of fiction I’ve read this summer is Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which I really enjoyed, probably because Rooney is a Marxist. I also watched the BBC/Hulu TV series which was different, but also quite moving. It is so nice to have a little time for some leisure reading.

Summer Reading: Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani

Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto – Aaron Bastani

I just loved this book.  Well written and exciting, with lots of thought-provoking arguments.  For all fans of Andrew Yang, Bastani’s text is a must read.

“Despite the claim that Marx favoured violent revolution, the truth is he never believed that transition beyond capitalism would be an exclusively political process – something so simple to achieve as to merely require replacing one group of rulers with another. It certainly entailed class struggle and the working class gaining political power, but it also needed new ideas, technologies, and social relations.”

— page 55

“Liberal ends, specifically the individual being uniquely placed to determine their path in life, are impossible without communist means. The possibility of most people finding happiness and meaning is impossible as these things are commodities – subject to profit rather than need.”

— page 194

Summer reading: Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman

A thoughtful exploration of Universal Basic Income, 15-hour work weeks, and open borders with lots of data and examples. Although I have some issues with UBI, I liked Bregman’s energy and pragmatism, and I can see why he was invited to Davos to speak with the oligarchs.  

 Some nice quotes:

“If you were the GDP, your ideal citizen would be a compulsive gambler with cancer who’s going through a drawn-out divorce that he copes with by popping fistfuls of Prozac and going berserk on Black Friday” (pg. 105-106)

“The targets of our performance-driven society are no less absurd than the five-year plans of the former USSR.” (pg. 122) 

“[T]he real crisis of our times, of my generation, is not that we don’t have it good, or even that we might be worse off later on. No, the real crisis is that we can’t come up with anything better.” (page 11)

On page 41, Bregman explains that Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan got definitively canned in 1978 because that found evidence (later proven wrong) that the FAP resulted in 50% more divorces. “A basic income, evidently, gave women too much independence.”

Summer Reading: The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born

Love this little pamphlet-essay by Nancy Fraser! Some great quotes:

“The progressive-neoliberal bloc combined an expropriative, plutocratic economic program with a liberal-meritocratic politics of recognition.” page 12

“While social life as such is increasingly economized, the unfettered pursuit of profits destabilizes the very forms of social reproduction, ecological sustainability, and public power on which it depends. Seen this way, financialized capitalism is an inherently crisis-prone social formation.” page 38

Summer Reading: Kids These Days

I read Kids These Days a couple of weeks ago and I have still been processing it.

I don’t have time to write a long or detailed review, so I’ll just offer a few thoughts. I think the book has some profound insights, and it certainly helped me to understand the challenges faced by Millennials in this most dehumanizing stage of capitalism, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that the situation Harris describes didn’t start earlier. If you go back and reread Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel, in which he coined the term “Generation X,” many of the same trends and concerns discussed by Harris are described there. As someone who survived 8 years of Reaganomics and grew up in tandem with the rise of neoliberalism and the dismantling of the welfare state, I’m a bit shocked that “kids these days” still believe that if you work hard and invest in your own human capital you will get ahead without luck, connections, or masses of inherited wealth.

Does no one read the newspaper anymore? Scholars and journalists have been dubious about the American dream for a long time, so it seems a little weird to complain about being hoodwinked by late capitalism when anyone who wanted to could read any number of books discussing how the American education system serves as a tool for corporate America, starting with the classic 1976 book, Schooling in Capitalist America, by the Marxists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Ginits (a must read!) I know a lot of Millennials who are angry about the system, but not because they feel that they have been uniquely cheated as young people, but because they understand that the whole system unfairly distributes the wealth of society to fewer and fewer people. In other words, there are plenty of Baby Boomers who have been screwed as well. Yes, they have social security and Medicare, but there are still an extraordinary number of senior citizens living in poverty.  

I think the hardest thing about the book for me was the ending. While I totally agree that the usual solutions don’t seem to offer a way forward, I am guilty of the kind of hopeful thinking that he criticizes so ruthlessly in his conclusion. Indeed, I admit that my own book offers some lame “bop it” solutions (to use his term), and I can see that this is a problem. But Harris’s suggestion that his generation will become fascists or revolutionaries, without really discussing what that means, also feels a bit disingenuous. The book just ends abruptly, and I worry that his pessimism will be disempowering and paralyzing for those who read it. I mean, if the system is so totally screwed, why struggle at all? Why do anything? Rather than becoming fascists or revolutionaries, maybe the entire Millennial generation will just walk apathetically into some future turbo-capitalist dystopia. Or perhaps be bought off and placated with UBI, legalized marijuana, public Netflix, and communal X-boxes? I don’t know. There’s lots to discuss here, so it’s definitely worth a read.

Rereading Good Omens after 29 years

I have my first edition of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s book, Good Omens, which I read when it first came out in 1990. Now there is a new miniseries coming out on May 31st (starring my favorite Doctor, David Tenant), and I decided to go back and reread it just for fun. I powered through it in one sitting.

Very British!

Summer reading: Feminism for the 99%

“The division between profit-making and people-making points to a deep-seated tension at the heart of capitalist society. While capital strives systemically to increase profits, working-class people strive, conversely, to lead decent and meaningful lives as social beings.  These are fundamentally irreconcilable goals, for capital’s share of accumulation can only increase at the expense of our share in the life of society. Social practices that nourish our lives at home, and social services that nurture our lives outside of it, constantly threaten to cut into profits. Thus, a financial drive to reduce those costs and an ideological drive to undermine such labors are endemic to the system as a whole”

- Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, page 71

So intrigued by this article in the Boston Review →

http://bostonreview.net/gender-sexuality/samuel-clowes-huneke-gay-liberation-behind-iron-curtain

Spotted in Tate Modern's Bookshop!

One of my colleagues in the UK snapped this photo in the bookshop of Tate Modern. So happy to be so close to the words of Naomi Klein.

Summer reading: The Sum of Small Things

Read a review of this book and decided to check it out for myself. Overall, it is a fascinating read about the rise of inconspicuous consumption among the so-called aspirational class. There is a lot of interesting information in the book, and it reflects on the social consequences of growing inequality in the United States and how it is becoming more and more difficult to reverse its long term effects. Forget about the Rolex and the Benz, health, wellness, education, and security in old age are the new status markers.

Summer reading: Workshops of Empire

I read Eric Bennet's article, "How Iowa Flattened Literature," in the Chronicle Review a few years ago and was very excited for this book. His basic argument is that Cold War pressures, and especially the need to fight against socialist realism, deeply influenced the development of American creative writing programs in the 1940s and 1950s. A lot of the techniques that the literary cognoscenti associate with "good" writing today are really artifacts of the anti-communist politics of the Cold War.  It's a fascinating argument, and it helps me understand why much American creative writing tends to hyper-focus on the individual and the sensory experience of the world and eschews politics, philosophy, and ideas.

Summer Reading: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy.

Because I was traveling, I actually read this book on my e-reader. This is a great introductory primer for young people that Varoufakis originally wrote in Greek to his own child, Xenia. He has a lively voice and it is a very fast read, with lots of pop culture references. I think the most useful discussion is his exploration of the difference between exchange value and experiential value, and his call for radical democratization of the economy. 

Summer Reading: The Cold War: A World History

A sweeping history of the Cold War, but Westad doesn't have much to say about women. So far, I've found only one relevant paragraph which segues immediately into a discussion of militarism. 

A perfect book for Bassett hounds and history buffs.

“One of the biggest changes throughout the Communist world was in the position of women. All over eastern Europe and eastern Asia the position of women had been governed by patriarchal traditions that gave them little say over resources, work, or family affairs. In areas that had had a taste of capitalism, new opportunities for women were mixed with increased social and economic exploitation. The Communist parties set out to change this sorry state of affairs, and at first many women were able to benefit from the new policies. Access to education, work, and child care improved dramatically in many places. So did women’s control over their own lives. The right to divorce and availability of birth control made for big changes in gender relations. But women were still kept out of political leadership positions, and as the regimes wanted to increase their populations, many women found themselves increasingly caught between work and duties to their families. The dual burden on women turned out to be as troublesome in societies that called themselves socialist as they were in the capitalist countries, and the on-going conflict between progressive ideas and traditional norms at least as intense.”

— Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History, New York: Basic Books, 2017: page 190.

Summer reading: Axel Honneth, The Idea of Socialism, 2017

Daisy models Axel Honneth's excellent (and short) book, The Idea of Socialism

“For decades, despite a number of attempts at mutual rapprochement, the relationship between the socialist workers movement and the emerging feminist movement remained tense and unhappy. Although it became increasingly clear that women’s liberation not only required greater equality in terms of voting and labor rights, but also a more fundamental cultural change beginning with established forms of socialization if women’s voices were to be freed from the gender stereotypes imposed upon them, the worker’s movement remained blind to such conclusions, clinging instead to the priority of the economic sphere. How different the relationship between socialism and feminism could have been had socialists only been willing to take account of the functional differentiation of modern societies by interpreting the sphere of personal relationships as an independent sphere of social freedom. Had they done so, the moral standard of free cooperation in social attachments based on mutual love soon would have opened their eyes to the fact that the oppression of women begins within the family, where stereotypes are imposed upon them with open or subtle forms of violence, leaving them no chance to explore their own sentiments, desires and interests. The problem, therefore, did not so much consist in involving women equally in economic production, but in granting them authorship of their own self-image, independent of male ascriptions. The struggle for social freedom in the sphere of love, marriage and the family would have primarily meant enabling women to attain as much freedom as possible from economic dependency, violence-based tutelage and one-sided labor within the hatchery of male power. This would enable women to become equal partners in relationships based on mutuality, and it is only on the basis of free and reciprocal affection that both sides would have been capable of emotionally supporting each other and articulating the needs and desires they view as a true expression of their selves.”

— Axel Honneth, The Idea of Socialism, 2017: 85-86

“We are unable to anticipate social improvements in the basic structure of contemporary societies because we regard the substance of this structure as being impervious to change, just like things. On this account, the inability to translate widespread outrage at the scandalous distribution of wealth and power into attainable goals is due neither to the disappearance of an actually existing alternative to capitalism, nor to a fundamental shift in our understanding of history, but rather to the predominance of a fetishistic [and fixed] conception of human relations”

— Axel Honneth, The Idea of Socialism, 2017: 4