Zero Books: Advancing Conversations

Last week Douglas Lain gave presentation at the Pacific Northwest College of Arts (http://pnca.edu/graduate/c/ctcr).(http://zero-books.net/blogs/zero/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/zerosquared60-1-300x270.jpg) After a discussion of Zero Books, Doug gave a presentation on the Critique of the Gotha Program and Theodor Adorno. Also included in this presentation was Brendan Cooney's video on Abstract Labor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-YVJ-gPDUs) and a 70s advertisement for the Polaroid SX-70.

Special thanks for this episode goes to Sarah O'Hare and the PNCA Critical Theory graduate students and professors.

From Adorno:

THE sociological theory that the loss of the support of objectively established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of pre-capitalism, together with technological and social differentiation or specialisation, have led to cultural chaos is disproved every day; for culture now impresses the same stamp on everything.

From Marx:

But the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism.

(http://zero-books.net/blogs/zero/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/zerosquared59-300x270.jpg)Pete Dolack has been published on a variety of political and literary topics, mostly pertaining to contemporary issues. He has been published multiple times in the peer-reviewed academic journal Working USA: The Journal of Labor & Society, and currently is published regularly by the online popular magazines CounterPunch and ZNet. His book, It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment (http://www.zero-books.net/books/its-not-over) was published by Zero Books in February of 2016 and he is the guest on this week’s podcast.

Rick Wolff, author of Capitalism Hits the Fan, blurbed Dolack’s book this way: As Cold War taboos on honest discussions of capitalism and socialism lose their force, important books like this are emerging. They ask why capitalism keeps provoking movements to go beyond it, why they have not yet achieved that goal, and what we must learn from them so the next efforts prove more effective. Dolack here contributes to the vital emerging answers.

In this episode you’ll hear clips from Brendan Cooney’s youtube video “Manufacturing Consent” and Coco Briaval’s cover of the Internationale.

Zero

Books author Yasin Kakande recently discussed his new book Slave States on the BBC. Slave States is a stark expose of the enslavement, trafficking, sexual starvation and general abuse of workers in the Gulf Arab Region.

Kakande's expose of the seamy side of life in the Gulf is an important counterweight to the free pass the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) gets in the western press. Oil corrupts, and the oil alliance

that the West has with primitive tribal 'emirates' and the Saudi kingdom has poisoned world politics for long enough. Time for a new world order, where the practice of kafala plays no part.-

Eric Walberg, author of Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games

Chris O'Leary

was the guest on the Zero Books podcast back in March of 2015. He discussed his book Rebel Rebel which is a critical analysis of

Bowie's songs from 1964-1976.

The Cultural Critic Mark Dery (author of All the Young Dudes:Why Glam Rock Matters) describes O'Leary's book this

way:

Marooned in '70s suburbia, I and countless weirdos like me awaited every new Bowie record as a deep-space ping from a world where weird ruled—proof that there really was life on Mars, if not in

tract-home sprawl. To date, what passes for thoughtful inquiry into the polymorphous, polyvalent phenomenon that is David Bowie has consisted almost entirely of potted biographies and coffee-table

photo albums. At last, the Homo Superior gets the exegesis he deserves: Rebel Rebel is the Lipstick Traces of Bowie studies, and Chris O'Leary its unchallenged dean.

We are reposting this interview in tribute to Bowie. Chris O'Leary is also hosting a conversation in remembrance of Bowie at his blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame.