Sunday, July 27, 2014

Georg Lukács, Tactics and Ethics: 1919-1929

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"Tactics and Ethics collects Georg Lukács’s articles from the most politically active time of his life, a period encompassing his stint as deputy commissar of education in the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Including his famed essay on parliamentarianism—which earned Lukács the respectful yet severe criticism of Lenin—this book is a treasure chest of valuable insights from one of history’s great political philosophers." 

Etienne Balibar, Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness


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"John Locke's foundational place in the history of British empiricism and liberal political thought is well established. So, in what sense can Locke be considered a modern European philosopher? Identity and Difference argues for reassessing this canonical figure. Closely examining the "treatise on identity" added to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Etienne Balibar demonstrates Locke's role in the formation of two concepts central to the metaphysics of the subject—consciousness and the self—and the complex philosophical, legal, moral and political nature of his terms.

With an accompanying essay by Stella Sandford, situating Balibar's reading of Locke in the history of the reception of the Essay and within Balibar's other writings on "the subject," Identity and Difference rethinks a crucial moment in the history of Western philosophy."

G. A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism?

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

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Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man

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"Debt—both public debt and private debt—has become a major concern of economic and political leaders. In The Making of the Indebted Man, Maurizio Lazzarato shows that, far from being a threat to the capitalist economy, debt lies at the very core of the neoliberal project. Through a reading of Karl Marx’s lesser-known youthful writings on John Mill, and a rereading of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, Lazzarato demonstrates that debt is above all a political construction, and that the creditor/debtor relation is the fundamental social relation of Western societies.

How do we extricate ourselves from this impossible situation? How do we escape the neoliberal condition of the indebted man? Lazzarato argues that we will have to recognize that there is no simple technical, economic, or financial solution. We must instead radically challenge the fundamental social relation structuring capitalism: the system of debt."  

Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias

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"Rising inequality of income and power, along with recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet few are attempting this task—most analysts argue that any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations is utopian. Erik Olin Wright’s major new work is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. A systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors, Envisioning Real Utopias lays the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system. Characteristically rigorous and engaging, this will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century."  

Monday, July 21, 2014

Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine



Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine

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A call to transform Israel into a secular democracy by a leading writer -- This book is absolutely fundamental for those who reject the unfortunate confusion between Jews, Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel -- a confusion which is the basis for systematic manipulation by the imperialist power system. It convincingly argues in favour of a single secular state for Israelis and Palestinians as the only democratic solution for the region. Zionism creates a terrible contradiction that eats away at the soul and conscience of the Jewish people. The problem is that you can't have a democratic state for just one people while excluding the others. It is just a logical impossibility. The notion of democracy derives from universal ideals based on universal human rights; it cannot exist where there is a systematic inequality, and all the more so when these others are those who have been dispossessed by Zionism.