interesting and important thesis, though it'd be nice if a bunch of historians could do the work to substantiate it, as the sourcing for claims reliesinteresting and important thesis, though it'd be nice if a bunch of historians could do the work to substantiate it, as the sourcing for claims relies a lot on "alternative sources".
I read it mainly because it illustrates how the owning class seeks to realize its goals -- by making use of, and promoting violence against those they force to work for them, especially if they can turn part of the working class against the other. For instance by legalizing working women's rape, by illegalizing prostitution (which makes it easier to get away with raping prostitutes with impunity, very much including by state officials), by promoting witch scares (whose targets are mainly women, though not exclusively so), and so on. And this both to make it easier to privatize/enclose common land, to force people into the cities (where they would need to work as day laborers etc. to survive), to immiserate them, and so on....more
Less useful than I'd hoped. The topic is certainly very important to explore, and worth exploring, even if this has already been done in great detail Less useful than I'd hoped. The topic is certainly very important to explore, and worth exploring, even if this has already been done in great detail by authors Frank probably wouldn't read, like Marx, and Michael Parenti in the US context. That said, Frank doesn't go into how the anti-populists went about their destroying the populist movements of their times, and as a result, the book doesn't really have a great deal to add over Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People. If I had to guess, this is mostly because Frank hasn't really understood the significance of the post-ww2 expansion of access to tertiary education -- namely: greatly enlarging the cohort of people sensitive to 'the liberal mindset'. That is, to meritocratic reasoning, to thinking of the 'uncredentialed' as at best second-class citizens, and to not believing in solidarity with your peers, let alone with your fellow workers broadly. (I've said more about this e.g. .)
Second, Frank barely mentions how the owning class has used its wealth and power to destroy working class presses and entertainment (by creating huge media and "news" empires), and to push reactionary views (as discussed by Michael Parenti in his two-part analysis of how the media function: Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media and Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment). Even as they used the state and the laws to promote sexism, racism, classism and so on. A decent stab at this was made by Corey Robin in Fear: The History of a Political Idea, but a broader history of how capitalists combined state and private (corporate) power to destroy the US populist and communist movements would've been very welcome, because as it is, what passes for the 'left' in the US is way too naive when it comes to understanding how the people who have to work are played by those who own....more
This book only argues for an end to "intensive" animal agriculture, which is still immoral, just as killing a person every week is still wrong, even if it's less worse than killing a person every day....more
read it for historical reasons, it's got the usual issues. Great that he thought to call out speciesism as morally indefensible, but cognitive abilityread it for historical reasons, it's got the usual issues. Great that he thought to call out speciesism as morally indefensible, but cognitive ability isn't morally relevant either. If you want a book that argues for veganism and an actual end to animal use generally, please read Gary Francione's Intro to AR, Animals as Persons or Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach....more
My review of Rutger Bregman's recent publication HumanKind: interesting book, but his argument has a dangerously limited scope, which undermines his cMy review of Rutger Bregman's recent publication HumanKind: interesting book, but his argument has a dangerously limited scope, which undermines his case. If you want to know why I think so, please see the linked article.
I'd long chosen to basically ignore the whole 'party' question, because the notion of all of these socialist & communist parties splitting and arguingI'd long chosen to basically ignore the whole 'party' question, because the notion of all of these socialist & communist parties splitting and arguing themselves to be the only correct tendency, while investing much more time in 'exposing' their 'rivals' than in doing actual work, etc., really turned me off.
This book largely justifies that intuition, while also explaining how those tendencies originated, and where they went (and still go) wrong. The brief fundamental answer to this is that they all adopted bureaucratic centralism while banning factions, as this completely destroyed their ability to grow through discussion and by trying, failing, then learning from failure. And it also really hurt the growth potential of those parties (because the antidemocratic tendencies both scared and repulsed newcomers, even as they ossified the party by creating an atmosphere of fear).
This sadly is an issue that affects both ML/'Stalinist' and most Trotskyist parties to this day, so I'm very grateful to Macnair for explaining the reasons for it and for providing a book in which all of this is explained in an accessible way. It won't answer any and every question you may have, of course, as it is pretty short, but it does ask the right questions. See the weeklyworker.co.uk website for more.
If you want to get something done on the left, and you're sick of toxic structures, I'd highly recommend reading....more
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