“It was a machine like no other.” With this sentence Franz Kafka opens his metaphorically true story “In the Penal Colony.” The “machine” is a device that tatoos social imperatives into the skin of those perceived as violating them. The Pioneer (the protagonist of the story, acting in the capacity of a sociologist) shows...
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Culture
Reflections on Kafka’s “Penal Colony”
Crisis: the stories so far
Business As Usual: The Economic Crisis And The Failure Of Capitalism by Paul Mattick. Reacktion Books: 2011. Just yesterday, we were all supposed to believe that the globalisation of capitalism and free markets was the route to freedom, peace and prosperity for all. Then, with barely an explanation, and somewhat out of the blue,...
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Joseph Dietzgen – The Workers Philosopher
This was article written by Adam Buick for the journal Radical Philosophy 10. Spring 1975 . JOSEPH DIETZGEN is indeed a neglected philosopher. How many people know that he was the man Marx introduced to the 1872 Congress of the First International as ‘our philosopher’? Or that it was Dietzgen, not Plekhanov, who first...
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Food Prices – speculation and hoarding
Jomo Kwame Sundaram , United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development writes :- “Lack of food is rarely the reason that people go hungry. The world today produces enough food to feed everyone. The problem is that more and more people simply cannot afford to buy the food they need. Even before the recent...
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Zeitgeist 3 Review
“…I’m 94 years old now and I’m afraid my disposition is the same as it was 74 years ago, THIS SHIT’S GOT TO GO!” And so begins Zeitgeist: Moving Forward the third film in a series of independently produced and distributed films by Peter Joseph. For those unfamiliar with these films, which have enjoyed...
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What Was He Fighting For? (Phil Ochs as the Sound of the New Left)
A new documentary film on the life and music of Phil Ochs, “There But For Fortune,” is being shown in a several US cities now. It hasn’t come too soon, certainly, because Ochs today is largely unknown outside the circle of lefty baby-boomers. Often Ochs is dismissed as a “topical” songwriter whose music, for...
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Marx and the Anarchists
Review of Karl Marx and the Anarchists by Paul Thomas This excellent book is a running commentery on Marx’s fierce battles with crackpots he regarded as disasters to the socialist movement: the anarchists Max Stirner, P. J. Proudhon and Michael Bakunin. One of its principal merits is that it debunks, with the support of voluminous...
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What’s wrong with religion?
Occasionally gets a membership application from someone who has a rough idea of what we stand for. They may have read few Socialist Standards and perhaps been to a meeting or two. They’re fired up and want to get involved so they ask for an application form, fill it in, – and...
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“If we listened to it…
maybe history would stop repeating itself.” -Lily Tomlin
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Making Bread
Wheat is the new gold. As poor countries brace for shortages, it’s boom time for Kansas farmers. “It feels like Christmas in August,” admitted Darrell Hanavan, of the Colorado Wheat Administrative Committee, noting that the harvest just completed in his state seems to have been the most bountiful for 25 years. The dollar value...
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