Cesare Casarino and Antonio Negri, In Praise of the Common A Conversation on Philosophy and Politics

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Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic

Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic

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How to Read Donald Duck is a Marxist political analysis by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart on what they perceive is cultural imperialism in popular entertainment, published in Chile in 1972. Written in the form of essay (or, in the authors’ words, a “decolonization manual”), the book is an analysis of mass literature, specifically the Disney comics published for the Latin American market. It is one of the first social studies of entertainment and the leisure industry from a political-ideological angle, and the book deals extensively with the political role of children’s literature.

Joshua B. Freeman, Working Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II

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Samir Amin, Beyond US Hegemony?: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World

Samir Amin rejects the notion that the current form of neoliberal capitalism is an inevitable future for humanity. He analyzes tendencies within the US, Europe and Japan, the rising powers of China and India, the likely future trajectory of post-Soviet Russia, and the developing world. He explores whether other hegemonic blocs may emerge to circumscribe American power, and force free market capitalism to adjust to demands other than its narrow central economic logic. He identifies the key global campaigns that he feels progressives should launch, and warns that there is no alternative to winning political power.

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Ranabir Samaddar, Emergence of the Political Subject

From Amazon,

"This book is on the political subject, the conditions of its emergence, and the theoretical implications of this emergence, particularly the implications for our history. It seeks to change the way in which we understand our modern political history and the way in which it inquires into life, truth, and collective existence. The book not only marks by dense contentions different and varying histories of turbulent political moments in modern Indian history, but also presents a startling picture of the emergence of the political subject, which has been repeatedly sought to be brought under submission, but has repeatedly emerged as a mark of autonomy and agency in life."


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State of Justice In India: Issues of Social Justice

From Amazon,

"This set presents a comprehensive analytical study of the state of social justice in India. The four volumes undertake theoretical and empirical inquiry into the various spheres of justice, collectively creating what can be termed a report card of the regime of social justice in the country. Authored by some of the finest ethnographers and analysts in the country, this work approaches the issue of justice in the broader context of post-colonial democracy, and look at the limits within which democracy permits justice, social justice in particular."


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The Politics Of Autonomy: Indian Experiences

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From Snapdeal.co.in,

"This volume tells us that a critical inquiry into the idea of autonomy suggests that the politics of the future will be the politics of autonomies: an engagement that combines notions like self-government, women`s autonomy, devolution of power, the rights of minorities, greater popular access to resources, and legal pluralism, and where different autonomies must learn to negotiate and co-exist. Viewing democratic theory through the lens of autonomy, the contributors:

- argue that autonomy has to be an essential ingredient in the building of post-colonial democracies, not merely a residual measure to keep some constituencies happy;
- draw attention to the contending principles of autonomy, the consequent politics of autonomies, the inescapable co-existence of autonomies, and the need for dialogue; and
- analyze the instructive Indian politico-historical experience because of its diversity and range, the extent of colonial institutionalization, multiple forms of autonomy, the complex path of constitutionalism, a wide variety of accords, and the unyielding state that is determined to keep the nation intact. 

In the process, the contributors traverse a wide range of issues relating to women`s autonomy, peace accords, the nature of federalism in the Indian Constitution, autonomy in international law, and the fiscal decentralization. These debates are then supported by case studies on the autonomy experiments in Kashmir, Darjeeling, and the entire Northeast, and on fiscal devolution."

Michael Parenti, Against Empire

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Richly informed and written in an engaging style, Michael Parenti’s Against Empire exposes the ruthless agenda and hidden costs of the U.S. empire. Documenting the pretexts and the lies used to justify violent intervention and maldevelopment abroad, he demonstrates how the conversion to a global economy is a victory of finance capital over democracy.

As much of the world suffers unspeakable misery, and as the Third-Worldization of the Unites States accelerates, civil society is impoverished by policies that benefit the rich and powerful transnational corporations and the national security state. The empire feeds off the resources of the republic, and the hard-won gains made by ordinary people are swept away.

The history of imperialism is also, however, a history of resistance, struggle, and achievement;Against Empire offers compelling alternatives for progressive change.

Contents

• Imperialism 101
  An introduction to the process by which political and economic domination is achieved.

• Imperial Domination (Updated)Poverty and maldevelopment: the products of present day U.S. imperialism.

• Intervention: Whose Gain? Whose Pain? 
  The winners and losers of empire building.

• Strong Empire, Weak Republic
  Ways that Americans pay the hidden costs of empire.

• A Dreadful Success
  How U.S. leaders adroitly prevent the public from seeing how their policies succeed in serving the favored few.

• Drugs, Lies and Video Wars
  More contrived justifications for violent U.S. intervention abroad.

• Worthy Causes
  A critical look at three pretexts for U.S. military intervention: launching humanitarian missions, establishing electoral democracies, and discouraging weapons proliferation.

• Democratic Governance vs The State
  How capitialist state interests undermine and defeat genuine democracy.

• Voodoo Economics: The Third-Worldization of America
  How the deceptions perpetuated by our leaders to advance the interests of empire abroad are duplicated at home.

• The Empire in Academia
  A close look at the discriminatory treatment anti-capitalist scholars receive at the university.

• Real Alternatives
  Precise, rational ways to transform public policy to build democratic institutions.

[source]

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College de France: 1977-1978)

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College de France: 1977-1978)
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Marking a major development in Foucault’s thinking, this book derives from the lecture course which he gave at the Collège de France between January and April, 1978. Taking as his starting point the notion of  “bio-power,” introduced in his 1976 course Society Must be Defended, Foucault sets out to study the foundations of this new technology of power over population. Distinct from punitive, disciplinary systems, the mechanisms of power are here finely entwined with the technologies of security, and it is to 18th century developments of these technologies with which the first chapters of the book are concerned. By the fourth lecture however Foucault’s attention turns, focusing on a history of “governmentality” from the first centuries of the Christian era to the emergence of the modern nation state. These lectures show that the trenchant analysis of biopower, “power over life”, which Foucault had begun in the first volume of the History of Sexuality and which he pursues here in terms of technologies of security, led him to a decisively deeper and more radical formulation of his guiding problematic—what he called “the government of the self and others”—the issue that would serve as the basis for all his subsequent work. Security, Territory and Population might thus properly be called the ‘missing link’ that reveals the underlying unity of Foucault’s later thought.

Excerpt:

We tried to show what the problems were that this “police” had to address; the extent to which the role it was assigned was different from the role that is later given to the institution of the police; and what was expected of it in ensuring the state’s growth in terms of two objectives: to enable it to stake out and improve its position in the game of rivalries and competition between European states, and to guarantee internal order through the “welfare” of individuals. Development of the state of (military-economic) competition, and development of the Wohlfahrt state (of wealth-tranquility-happiness): these are the two principles that “police” as a rational art of government must be able to coordinate. At this time “police” was conceived of as a sort [of] “technology of state forces.”
—Translated by Graham Burchell

Spectacular Times

Partial archive of a series of small ‘pocketbooks’ in the late 1970s/early 1980s entitled ‘Spectacular Times’ by Larry Law. They serve as a brief introduction to situationist ideas. Each consists of newspaper clippings, quotations, handwritten text by Law and illustrations, all compiled and arranged with great humour!

• Spectacular Times 01-02: Images and everyday life
• Spectacular Times 03: The media
• Spectacular Times 04: Fin De Spectacle
• Spectacular Times 07: Women and the Spectacle
• Spectacular Times 08-09: skeleton Keys (Double Issue reprint)
• Spectacular Times 08: The Skeleton Key
• Spectacular Times 10: Animals
• Spectacular Times 11: More of the Shame
• Spectacular Times 12: The Bad Days Will End
• Spectacular Times 13: Cities of Illusion
• Spectacular Times 14: Bigger Cages and Longer Chains

American Apartheid

http://www.sendspace.com/file/j0a4oi

Scripting the Black Masculine Body: identity, discourse, and racial politics in popular media e-book

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ki7olt

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
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One of the puzzling things about all the theories about the origins of money that we’ve been looking at so far is that they almost completely ignore the evidence of anthropology. Anthropologists do have a great deal of knowledge of how economies within stateless societies actually worked-how they still work in places where states and markets have been unable to completely break up existing ways of doing things. There are innumerable studies of, say, the use of cattle as money in eastern or southern Africa, of shell money in the Americas (wampum being the most famous example) or Papua New Guinea, bead money, feather money, the use of iron rings, cowries, spondylus shells, brass rods, or woodpecker scalps. The reason that this literature tends to be ignored by economists is simple: “primitive currencies” of this sort is only rarely used to buy and sell things, and even when they are, never primarily to buy and sell everyday items such as chickens or eggs or shoes or potatoes. Rather than being employed to acquire things, they are mainly used to rearrange relations between people. Above all, to arrange marriages and to settle disputes, particularly those arising from murders or personal injury.
NOTE: An obvious must-read for any serious thinker.

Note: Updated with new .EPUB link.

James Erickson: Political Economy Illustrated, 1958

Cartoon/comic Marxist analysis of the critique of political economy during the Mccarthyist area. 

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Joseph Stalin Collected Works, volume one to twelve:

Collected Works Volume 1
Collected Works Volume 2
Collected Works Volume 3
Collected Works Volume 4
Collected Works Volume 5
Collected Works Volume 6
Collected Works Volume 7
Collected Works Volume 8
Collected Works Volume 9
Collected Works Volume 10
Collected Works Volume 11
Collected works Volume 12

'€œTheory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect. Of course, theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory. But theory can become a tremendous force in the working-class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice; for theory, and theory alone, can give the movement confidence, the power of orientation, and an understanding of the inner relation of surrounding events; for it, and it alone, can help practice to realise not only how and in which direction classes are moving at the present time, but also how and in which direction they will move in the near future.'€

Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings

Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings

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We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against oppression and colonialism which has characterized this era….It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter”

— Malcolm X, 1965 

Happy Birthday Malcolm X!

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Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Judith Butler, Undoing Gender
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Felix Guattari, Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972-1977

Felix Guattari, Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972-1977
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Desire is not intrinsically linked to an individuation of the libido. A machine of desire encounters forms of individuation, that is, of alienation. Neither desire nor its repression is an ideal formation; there is no desire-in-itself, no repression-in-itself. The abstract objective of a “successful castration” partakes of the worst reac­tionary mystifications. Desire and repression function in a real society, and are marked by the imprint of each of its historical stages. It is therefore not a matter of general categories which could be transposed from one situation to another. The distinction which I propose between micropolitics and macropolitics of desire would have to function as something which would lead to the liquidation of the pretended universality of psychoanalytic models, a notion which ostensibly secures the psychoanalyst against political and social contingencies. It is said that psychoanalysis is concerned with something which takes place on a small scale, barely the scale of the family and the person, whereas politics is concerned only with large social groupings. I would like to demonstrate that, on the contrary, there is a politics which addresses itself to the individual’s desire, as well as to the desire which manifests itself in the broadest social field. And it has two forms: either a macropolitics aiming at both individual and social problems, or a micropolitics aiming at the same domains (the individual, the family, party problems, state problems, etc.). The despotism which exists in conjugal or family relationships arises from the same kind of libidinal disposition that exists in the broadest social field. Inversely, it is by no means absurd to approach a number of large scale social problems (for example, the problems of bureaucratism and fascism), in the light of a micro­ politics of desire. The problem therefore is not to put up bridges between already fully constituted and fully delimited domains, but to put in place new theoretical and practical machines, capable of sweeping away the old stratifications, and of establishing the condi­tions for a new exercise of desire. In that case, it is no longer a simple question of describing preexisting social objects, but one of engaging in a political struggle against all machines of the dominant power, whether it be the power of the bourgeois State, the power of any kind of bureaucracy, the power of academia, familial power, phallo­-cratic power in male/female relationships, or even the repressive power of the superego over the individual.
—Guattari, “Everybody Wants to be a Fascist”

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
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Here, the author of “Stigma” and “Asylums” presents an analysis of the structures of social encounters from the perspective of the dramatic performance. He shows us exactly how people use such ‘fixed props’ as houses, clothes, and job situations; how they combine in teams resembling secret societies; and, how they adopt discrepant roles and communicate out of character. Professor Goffman takes us ‘backstage’ too, into the regions where people both prepare their images and relax from them; and he demonstrates in painful detail what can happen when a performance falls flat.