September 2011
5 posts
10 tags
Technophobia is Healthy.
“Technology serves to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social control and social cohesion…. In the face of the totalitarian features of this society, the traditional notion of the “neutrality” of technology can no longer be maintained. Technology as such cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put; the technological society is a system of...
28 tags
There's an Apparatus for That: On Tiqqun's "This...
Once again saying they are the opposite of things in italics, once again rupturing with things, once again universalizing bourgeois French intellectualism, once again referencing their own concepts to generate the illusion of importance (à la Bob Avakian). Again all this: sex, action, excitement, big words, petty leftist squabbling (and it’s new!).
To begin with, the book is premised on the...
14 tags
Capital Kills Labour
A year ago, a fire in a Bangladesh factory killed 30 workers. The factory made clothes for American companies JC Penny, Abercrombie, and Gap (1). Most of the workers died jumping from the 10th floor, or trying to climb down the fire escapes. An electrical short circuit probably caused the fire. This is a common occurrence in Bangladeshi factories, which use sub-standard wiring, and often have...
11 tags
To the Rulers and Judges - Gavril Derzhavin (1780)
[Some very slight alterations on the original Russian. The only translations I have found of this poem are abysmal. The poem is an adaptation of Psalm 82 of the bible(1) which calls upon god to crush the exploiting class and the government that protects them. This poem has always attracted me, as it seems to almost call out God, and remind him of what he ought to be doing. There is an explicit...
9 tags
What did Capitalism bring to Russia? Andrei...
“During the 1990’s, Summers was a top Treasury official tasked with overseeing the economic rehabilitation of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. This project was, of course, a complete disaster that resulted in decades of horrific poverty, suffering, and death. But that didn’t stop top advisers to the program, notably Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer, from getting...
