Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)

2021-09-28 15:54:04 Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley - Red Brotherhood at War. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos since 1975

This fully updated edition of Red Brotherhood at War – the most comprehensive account of events since 1975 in Indochina explains why communist victory did not usher in a period of peace based on proletarian internationalism. While victorious revolutionaries in Vietnam and Laos strengthened their special relationship, Vietnam’s relations with fraternal Cambodia and China deteriorated into full-scale war. The Vietnamese overthrow of Pol Pot’s regime in 1979 was condemned by the West, which joined with China to support the Khmer Rouge-dominated anti-Vietnamese resistance in Cambodia. An inter-communist war thus became one of the focal points of the New Cold War in the 1980s. This complex and paradoxical tangle of events is skilfully analysed by Evans and Rowley in their frank and lively book. Drawing on a wide range of sources and first-hand research, this new edition has been thoroughly revised to chart the interaction between Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and the changing configuration of regional and great-power politics up to the present day. Открыть/Комментировать

2021-09-28 14:05:26 Н. Проценко - «Я с пессимизмом смотрю на людской интеллект, но с оптимизмом на волевое действие»

Памяти Ричарда Лахмана

19 сентября на шестьдесят шестом году жизни скончался известный американский исторический социолог Ричард Лахман (1956-2021) автор ряда влиятельных исследований, посвященных роли элит в развитии и трансформации капиталистических обществ. Однако его книги «Капиталисты поневоле», «Государства и власть» и «Пассажиры первого класса на тонущем корабле» не только описывают социальную реальность в исторической перспективе, но и указывают возможные пути выхода из тех тупиков, в которые загоняет нас современное мироустройство.

https://gorky.media/context/ya-s-pessimizmom-smotryu-na-lyudskoj-intellekt-no-s-optimizmom-na-volevoe-dejstvie/ Открыть/Комментировать

2021-09-28 11:23:44 Michael Naas - Class Acts: Derrida on the Public Stage

Class Acts examines two often neglected aspects of Jacques Derrida’s work as a philosopher, his public presentations at lectures and conferences and his teaching, along with the question of the “speech act” that links them. What, Michael Naas asks, is one doing when one speaks in public in these ways? The book follows Derrida’s itinerary with regard to speech act theory across three public lectures, from 1971 to 1997, all given, for reasons the book seeks to explain, in Montreal. In these lectures, Derrida elaborated his critique of J. L. Austin and his own subsequent redefinition of speech act theory. The book then gives an overview of Derrida’s teaching career and his famous “seminar” presentations, along with his own explicit reflections on pedagogy and educational institutions beginning in the mid-1970s. Naas then shows through a reading of three recently published seminars on life death, theory and practice, and forgiveness just how Derrida the teacher interrogated and deployed speech act theory in his seminars. Whether in a conference hall or a classroom, Naas demonstrates, Derrida was always interested in the way spoken or written words might do more than simply communicate some meaning or intent but might give rise to something like an event. Class Acts bears witness to the possibility of such events in Derrida’s work as a pedagogue and a public intellectual. Открыть/Комментировать

2021-09-28 07:52:12 David Marquand - The New Reckoning: Capitalism, States and Citizens

We are told that this is a new world, with which old theories cannot cope. But the dynamic driving the current global transformation is not as new as our pundits and politicians pretend. The global market-place of our day may have little in common with the tamed welfare capitalism of the post-war period but it is uncannily reminiscent of the untamed capitalism of 100 years ago. Keynes and Beveridge may be dead, but Marx, Malthus and Ricardo have had a new lease of life. In these timely essays, David Marquand challenges the fashionable amnesia of the 1990s and addresses the crucial questions raised by the capitalist renaissance which has followed the collapse of Communism and the end of the cold war. In this bewildering new world, which is at the same time an all-too-familiar old world, how can the values of social solidarity and democratic citizenship be realized? Granted that socialism is no longer with us, does it have anything to say from beyond the grave? How is socialism's great antagonist, liberalism, faring in this new world, and what are the prospects of an accommodation between the two? Where does the new medievalism of contemporary Europe fit in? How do the special peculiarities of the British state, the identity it embodies and the political economy over which it presides relate to those wider issues? What room for maneuver do they give the British left? These questions make up the agenda for The New Reckoning. Открыть/Комментировать

2021-09-27 19:17:53 Joseph E. Stiglitz - A Coup Attempt at the IMF

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF's Managing Director since 2019, has been a bold leader in confronting the economic fallout of the pandemic, as well as in positioning the Fund as a global pioneer on climate change. The efforts now underway to remove her are not only unjust, but could hamstring the Fund's management for years to come.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coup-attempt-against-imf-managing-director-georgieva-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-2021-09 Открыть/Комментировать

2021-09-27 16:57:18 Derek Boothman - The New Edition of Gramsci’s Lettere dal carcere (Prison Letters)

2020 saw the publication of a new edition of Gramsci’s Lettere dal carcere (Prison Letters), commissioned by the Einaudi publishing house, the main and “official” publishers of Gramsci’s writings since the very first edition of the Lettere back in 1947. This 1947 publication, a landmark edition and the first ever collection of Gramsci’s writings in volume form, was published on the tenth anniversary of his death and gained the posthumous award of the most prestigious literary prize in Italy, the Premio Viareggio. Over the course of the decades since the first edition, much work has been done, not only to find unpublished letters, but to better understand their whole background and integrate everything into Gramsci’s complex personal, political and cultural biography. The publication, under the editorship of Francesco Giasi, director of the Gramsci Foundation in Rome, is now the fifth major one in Italian, together with all their various reprints.

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&context=gramsci Открыть/Комментировать

2021-09-27 14:09:40 Ryan Zickgraf - Mark Zuckerberg’s “Metaverse” Is a Dystopian Nightmare

The Facebook founder intends to usher in a new era of the internet where there’s no distinction between the virtual and the real and no logging off.

While his fellow tech CEOs try to usher in an era of mass interplanetary travel, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is dreaming of expansion not into outer space but cyberspace. The lords of Silicon Valley are all done with earthly reality, but as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos arrange plans to physically leave, Zuckerberg wants to program a better earthly experience one curated by Facebook. In July, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is in the process of transitioning into a “Metaverse” company over the next half decade. The social media giant wants to morph into an all-consuming, all-encompassing platform with relationships, work, commerce, and entertainment commingling under one big tent.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/facebook-zuckerberg-metaverse-stephenson-big-tech Открыть/Комментировать

2021-09-27 11:47:23 Eric Foner - Freedom to Exclude

In Freedom to Discriminate, Gene Slater, who has spent four decades as a consultant to states and municipalities on housing policy, makes a powerful case that California’s real estate brokers not only originated a system of residential segregation that became a model for the entire nation, but also effectively mobilized support for Proposition 14 by invoking the central idea in America’s political vocabulary: freedom. The issue, they insisted, was not race but white property owners’ “freedom of association,” or, more simply, “freedom of choice.” They described government enforcement of the right of Blacks to purchase a home as reverse discrimination against whites. Providing a template for opposition to an overbearing liberal state, Slater argues, the successful campaign for Proposition 14 laid the foundation for the rise of modern American conservatism.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/freedom-exclude/ Открыть/Комментировать