Leftist Reading

Episode 129:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - This Week]
The Forms of Freedom - 0:48
-The Mediation of Social Relations - 4:31

[Part 10 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

30) 7:37
For a discussion on the myth of the working class see “Listen, Marxist!”

31) 15:57
If we are to regard the bulk of the Communards as “proletarians,” or describe any social stratum as “proletarian” (as the French Situationists do) simply because it has no control over the conditions of its life, we might just as well call slaves, serfs, peasants and large sections of the middle class “proletarians.” To create such sweeping antitheses between “proletarian” and bourgeois, however, eliminates all the determinations that characterize these classes as specific, historically limited strata. This giddy approach to social analysis divests the industrial proletariat and the bourgeoisie of all the historically unique features which Marx believed he had discovered (a theoretical project that proved inadequate, although by no means false); it slithers away from the responsibilities of a serious critique of Marxism and the development of “laissez-faire” capitalism toward state capitalism, while pretending to retain continuity with the Marxian project.

32) 27:35
This is not to ignore the disastrous political errors made by many “leading” Spanish anarchists. Although the leading anarchists were faced with the alternative of establishing a dictatorship in Catalonia, which they were not prepared to do (and rightly so!), this was no excuse for practicing opportunistic tactics all along the way.

Episode 128:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 7]
Towards a Liberatory Technology
-Technology and Freedom
-The Potentialities of Modern Technology
-The New Technology and the Human Scale
-The Ecological Use of Technology

[Part 8 - This Week]
Towards a Liberatory Technology
-Technology for Life - 0:19
-Discussion - 21:59

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

29) 5:57
The “ideal man” of the police bureaucracy is a being whose innermost thoughts can be invaded by lie detectors, electronic listening devices, and “truth” drugs. The “ideal man” of the political bureaucracy is a being whose innermost life can be shaped by mutagenic chemicals and socially assimilated by the mass media. The “ideal man” of the industrial bureaucracy is a being whose innermost life can be invaded by subliminal and predictively reliable advertising. The “ideal man” of the military bureaucracy is a being whose innermost life can be invaded by regimentation for genocide.

Citations:

24) 1:39
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution (Modern Library; New York, n.d.), p. 593.

25) 3:57
Friedrich Wilhelmsen, preface to Friedrich G. Juenger, The Failure of Technology (Regnery; Chicago, 1956), p. vii.

Episode 127:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 6]
Towards a Liberatory Technology
-Technology and Freedom
-The Potentialities of Modern Technology
-The New Technology and the Human Scale

[Part 7 - This Week]
Towards a Liberatory Technology
-The Ecological Use of Technology - 0:38

[Part 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

27) 4:58
See “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought.”

28) 31:37
The efficiency of the gasoline engine is rated at around eleven percent, to cite a comparison.

Citations:

18) 6:11
F. M. C. Fourier, Selections from the Works of Fourier, (S. Sonnenschein and Co.; London, 1901), p. 93.

19) 6:48
Charles Gide, introduction to Fourier, op. cit., p. 14.

20) 26:54
Hans Thirring, Energy for Man (Harper & Row; New York, 1958), p. 266

21) 30:36
Ibid., p. 269. 22 Henry Tabor, “Solar Energy,” in Science and the New Nations, ed.

22) 32:45
Ruth Gruber (Basic Books; New York, 1961), p. 109.

23) 38:05
Eugene Ayres, “Major Sources of Energy,” American Petroleum Institute Proceedings, section 3, Division of Refining, vol. 28 III. (1948), p. 117.

Episode 126:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5]
Towards a Liberatory Technology
-Technology and Freedom

[Part 6 - This Week]
Towards a Liberatory Technology
-The Potentialities of Modern Technology - 0:18
-The New Technology and the Human Scale - 26:55

[Part 7 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

25) 3:01
For example, in cotton plantations in the Deep South, in automobile assembly plants, and in the garment industry.

26) 13:08
There are two broad classes of computers in use today: analogue and digital computers. The analogue computer has a fairly limited use in industrial operations. My discussion on computers in this article will deal entirely with digital computers.

Citations:

14) 2:26
U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Automation and Technological Change: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization, 84th Cong., Ist session (U.S. Govt. Printing Office; Washington, 1955), p. 81.

15) 17:10
Alice Mary Hilton, “Cyberculture,” Fellowship for Reconciliation paper (Berkeley, 1964), p. 8.

16) 21:54
Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Harcourt, Brace and Co.; New York, 1934), pp. 69–70.

17) 37:45
Eric W. Leaver and John J. Brown, “Machines without Men,” Fortune, November 1946.

Episode 125:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - This Week]
Towards a Liberatory Technology - 0:13
-Technology and Freedom - 4:49

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:
21) 4:23
Both Juenger and Elul believe that the debasement of man by the machine is intrinsic to the development of technology, and their works conclude on a grim note of resignation. This viewpoint reflects the social fatalism I have in mind—especially as expressed by Elul, whose ideas are more symptomatic of the contemporary human condition. See Friedrich George Juenger, The Failure of Technology (Regnery; Chicago, 1956) and Jacques Elul, The Technological Society (Knopf; New York, 1968).

22) 17:04
It is my own belief that the development of the “workers’ state” in Russia thoroughly supports the anarchist critique of Marxist statism. Indeed, modern Marxists would do well to consult Marx’s own discussion of commodity fetishism in Capital to understand how everything (including the state) tends to become an end in itself under conditions of commodity exchange.

23) 17:54
The distinction between pleasurable work and onerous toil should always be kept in mind.

24) 21:52
An exclusively quantitative approach to the new technology, I may add, is not only economically archaic, but morally regressive. This approach partakes of the old principle of justice, as distinguished from the new principle of freedom. Historically, justice is derived from the world of material necessity and toil; it implies relatively scarce resources which are apportioned by a moral principle which is either “just” or “unjust.” Justice, even “equal” justice, is a concept of limitation, involving the denial of goods and the sacrifice of time and energy to production. Once we transcend the concept of justice—indeed, once we pass from the quantitative to the qualitative potentialities of modern technology—we enter the unexplored domain of freedom, based on spontaneous organization and full access to the means of life.

Citations:

12) 10:57
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (International Publishers; New York, 1947), p. 24.

13) 12:30
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property? (Bellamy Library; London, I n.d.), vol. 1, p. 135.

Episode 124:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 3]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought
-The Critical Nature of Ecology
-Diversity and Simplicity

[Part 4 - This Week]
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought
-The Reconstructive Nature of Ecology - 0:35

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:
20) 8:53
Rudd’s use of the word “manipulation” is likely to create the erroneous impression that an ecological situation can be described by simple mechanical terms. Lest this impression arise, I would like to emphasize that our knowledge of an ecological situation and the practical use of this knowledge are matters of insight rather than power. Charles Elton states the case for the management of an ecological situation when he writes: “The world’s future has to be managed, but this management would not be like a game of chess ... [but] more like steering a boat.”

Citations:

9) 9:26
Robert L. Rudd, “Pesticides: The Real Peril,” The Nation, vol. 189 (1959), p. 401.

10) 22:10
E. A. Gutkind, The Twilight of Cities (Free Press; Glencoe, N.Y., 1962), pp. 55–144.

11) 33:41
H. D. F. Kitto, The Greeks (Aldine; Chicago, 1951), p. 16.

Episode 123:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 2]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 3 - This Week]
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought
-The Critical Nature of Ecology - 0:20
-Diversity and Simplicity - 10:19

[Part 4]
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:
18) 13:26
The above lines were written in 1966. Since then, we have seen the graffiti on the walls of Paris, during the May–June revolution: “All power to the imagination”; “I take my desires to be reality, because I believe in the reality of my desires”; “Never work”; “The more I make love, the more I want to make revolution”; “Life without dead times”; “The more you consume, the less you live”; “Culture is the inversion of life”; “One does not buy happiness, one steals it”; “Society is a carnivorous flower.” These are not graffiti, they are a program for life and desire.

Citations:

9) 18:05
For insight into this problem the reader may consult The Ecology of Invasions by Charles S. Elton (Wiley; New York, 1958), Soil and Civilisation by Edward Hyams (Thames and Hudson; London, 1952), Our Synthetic Environment by Murray Bookchin [pseud. Lewis Herber] (Knopf; New York, 1962), and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (Houghton Mifflin; Boston, 1962). The last should be read not as a diatribe against pesticides but as a plea for ecological diversification.

Episode 122:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
- Preconditions And Possibilities
- The Redemptive Dialectic
- Spontaneity and Utopia

[Part 2 - This Week]
-Prospect - 0:31
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought - 15:09

[Part 3 - 4]
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:
18) 13:26
The above lines were written in 1966. Since then, we have seen the graffiti on the walls of Paris, during the May–June revolution: “All power to the imagination”; “I take my desires to be reality, because I believe in the reality of my desires”; “Never work”; “The more I make love, the more I want to make revolution”; “Life without dead times”; “The more you consume, the less you live”; “Culture is the inversion of life”; “One does not buy happiness, one steals it”; “Society is a carnivorous flower.” These are not graffiti, they are a program for life and desire.

Citations:

7) 16:54
Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (Van Nostrand; New York, 1962), p. viii.

8) 17:54
Quoted in Angus M. Woodbury, Principles of General Ecology (Blakiston; New York, 1954), p. 4.

Episode 121:

This week we’re starting a new book, Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - This Week]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
- Preconditions And Possibilities - 1:11
- The Redemptive Dialectic - 11:04
- Spontaneity and Utopia - 21:48

[Part 2 - 4]
-Prospect
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 11]
The Forms of Freedom

[Part 12 - 16]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:
14) 11:01
It is worth noting here that the emergence of the “consumer society” provides us with remarkable evidence of the difference between the industrial capitalism of Marx’s time and state capitalism today. In Marx’s view, capitalism as a system organized around “production for the sake of production” results in the economic immiseration of the proletariat. “Production for the sake of production” is paralleled today by “consumption for the sake of consumption,” in which immiseration takes a spiritual rather than an economic form—it is starvation of life.

15) 12:58
The economic contradictions of capitalism have not disappeared, but the system can plan to such a degree that they no longer have the explosive characteristics they had in the past.

16) 26:04
For a detailed discussion of this “miniaturized” technology see “Towards a Liberatory Technology.”

17) 29:38
Despite its lip service to the dialectic, the traditional left has yet to take Hegel’s “concrete universal” seriously and see it not merely as a philosophical concept but as a social program. This has been done only in Marx’s early writings, in the writings of the great Utopians (Fourier and William Morris) and, in our time, by the drop-out youth.

Citations:

3) 17:27
Raoul Vaneigem, “The Totality for Kids” (International Situationist pamphlet; London, n.d.), p. 1.

4) 27:46
Guy Debord, “Perspectives for Conscious Modification of Daily Life,” mimeographed translation from Internationale Situationiste, no. 6 (n.p., n.d.), p. 2.

5) 36:01
Josef Weber, “The Great Utopia,” Contemporary Issues, vol. 2, no. 5 (1950), p. 12.

6) 38:27
Ibid., p. 19 (my emphasis).

Episode 120:

This week we’re finishing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith

[Part 1]
Introduction

[Part 2-5]
1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905

[Part 6-8]
2. From Reform to War, 1906-1917

[Part 9-12]
3. From February to October 1917

[Part 13 - 17]
4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power

[Part 18 - 22]
5. War Communism

[Part 23 - 26]
6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy

[Part 27 - 30]
7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture

[Part 31]
Conclusion (first half)

[Part 32 - This Week]
Conclusion (second half) - 1:25
Discussion - 26:16

Footnotes:
10) 8:25
Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 2, ch. 32.

11) 18:14
‘L’Odeur de ce charnier’, 25 Nov. 1912, La Dépêche de Toulouse, in Jean-Pierre Roux (ed.), Jean Jaurès: Rallumer tous les soleils (Paris: Omnibus, 2006), 880.