Whilst there have been an increasing number of articles that have addressed what for me has been a growing discomfort with the limits of discourse around the Israel and Hamas conflict. A recent speech by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek1 at the opening ceremony of the 75th Frankfurt book was perhaps, despite the philosophers’ usually verbose approach one of the clearest encapsulations of this emergent dynamic. A moment subsequently made all the more poignant by the subsequent prohibition of pro-Palestinian protests2. Opening with a straight forward condemnation of Hamas, and the events of the 7th of October and an acquiesce...
I’ve dabbled a bit in the past with Left Accelerationist tendencies mainly through stressing the development of productive forces as a necessary part of Marxist praxis, although in many ways I see this as much a part of orthodox Marxism as of accelerationism. With Marx and with Marxists more broadly, I feel there’s always different viewpoints, different approaches and different focuses and with Accelerationism being at least partly based on Marx it was unsurprising that it would branch out in some many different directions. My principle interest in acceleration, however, isn’t so much within its emancipatory possibilities, but more as a...
The continuous reoccurrence of crises has, in both Marxian economics and the wider economic field has often been perceived as a moment of reckoning, a chance to examine the fundamentals of the current socio-economic system and the contradictions that lie behind them. What has now across the United Kingdom and further afield been labelled the cost of living crisis marked by spiraling inflation, a rise in the prices of essential goods and corresponding fall in real wages. By now the origins of these various phenomena have been found to be relatively varied with some being traced to abnormal climate conditions1,...
The recent success of the England team and the corresponding rise of national pride has, I suspect like many who have a slightly more tangled relationship with England and Englishness, created a mixture of complex feelings. For me Englishness unlike to some extent Britishness, has historically lacked much of the cosmopolitan and in many ways outward looking symbolism of latter. This appeared all the more clear when observing the 2016 referendum where vote to leave the EU was largely concentrated within in England, even in Wales, a devolved region which also voted for Brexit analysis suggested that it was retired...
An intriguing post on the collapse subreddit1 recently lead me to thinking about the nature of the crisis we’re currently presented with and how it is best understood. In the post a regular user of the subreddit which largely concerns itself with speculations surrounding the collapse of global civilization, criticized the increasing prevalence of what they referred to as ‘crypto libertarians’ and ‘inflation alarmists’. The user then went on to point to the usual villains of these groups opprobrium, quantitive easing and the general monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. With the dollar well placed as the world’s premier global...
I haven’t actually finished working on this piece yet but I thought I’d publish an early draft whilst I continue to refine it. You might also find it useful to watch the clip that inspired this piece. I’ll also preface this by saying I’m not by any stretch a fan of Tucker Carlson’s, his deeply xenophobic rhetoric couched in “conservative” concern is of really no interest to me at all. What does interest me is a particular point he made during a recent interview he had on the Ben Shapiro Show, which whilst covered his new book, highlighted a particular contradiction in...
In 2010, Eugene Thacker of New York’s The New School, published the first instalment of his Horror of Philosophy series entitled In The Dust Of This Planet. By using the theme of horror as a starting point, Thacker intended to examine and explore the idea of a world becoming increasingly unthinkable, one regularly confronted with emerging pandemics, planetary disasters and looming above everything the eschaton. Whilst it would be somewhat hyperbolic to place Brexit within this category, I believe there might be something to be gained by examining how these themes might still have some relevance to the current conversation. In polls taken almost immediately after...
Regardless of the entirely reasonable cynicism, many on the far-left might have of the Labour Party as a vehicle for a post-capitalist transformation of the UK the general election results have had a profound impact on the left. At an event, I went to recently various radicals from anarchists to Trotskyists glumly reflected on the results. To many, it may have seemed like a refutation of one of the few attempts in recent political history to truly break with the neoliberal consensus and begin to develop a wider-reaching transformative economic and social project. Whilst I’d definitely concede to some degree...
“The Right is primarily after power, in the fight for power (which for example it does not possess in Poland today) it is prepared to advance any leftist slogans that can count on popular appear. Let us speak openly: contempt for ideology is the strength of the Right because it allows for greater flexibility in practice and for the arbitrary use of any facade that will facilitate the seizure of power” Leszek Kolakowski ‘The Concept of the Left’ With the anti-defamation league recently publishing an article conflating accelerationism with a particularly violent strand of an already reactionary ideology. It occurred to...
With the recent protests at the government shutdown effect on employment gaining increasing coverage, it seems like an increasingly salient time to question the nature of work in our lives. I should caveat this with whilst I am aware there’s a fairly clear connection between these protests seemingly organic nature and large dark money corporate networks however the fact that this can seemingly go unremarked on in many instances, is in itself is quite an interesting fact and I would suggest more broadly indicative of how work functions in advanced capitalist economies. With 22 million out of work in the United States...
