Due to the popularity of my long screed about Maoism and Trotskyism that I made downloadable in a previous post, I have decided that it might be worthwhile to post other prolonged theoretical engagements for download on this blog. As an academic I have been trained to be long-winded but sometimes my long-winded writing is not necessarily academic; occasionally I end up writing pages upon pages in a manner that is not academically acceptable and, due to this fact, will never be submitted to a journal, edited book, or presented at a conference. And since this blog is often a place, as I've maintained, where aborted academic ideas are relegated, I figured it might be best to post longer versions of these aborted attempts for public perusal.
Moreover, due to my current circumstances where I am generally house-bound because I have to care for my new-born child, I have a lot of time on my hands where, between looking after my daughter and eating, I can read and write and peruse the internet. Indeed, tonight I had hoped to attend the opening plenary of the International League of Peoples' Struggle [ILPS] conference in Toronto, where Leila Khaled was being skyped in to address the conference attendees, but obviously was unable to leave my partner alone with a child this soon after the pregnancy. In fact, my current state of exhaustion and stir-craziness prevented me from even making sense of the date and it was not until this morning that I realized the conference was already beginning––events have descended upon me and time is moving in rather surreal manner––and I feel a little guilty for not posting something in support of this conference, some sort of advertisement, as I intended to do in September.
[So as an aside, I would like to belatedly advertise for this conference and request that all Toronto readers of this blog do their best to attend this weekend. The programme can be found on the link provided above and, even if you have missed tonight's amazing list of speakers that includes Leila Khaled, Jan Myrdal, and M-1 of Dead Prez, there are still other speakers and panels highly worth supporting. I also would like to apologize to the organizers of this conference for failing to promote their hard work in time. All I can say in my defense is that right now I feel somewhat trapped in my own new parent universe and have a hard time focusing on the political and organizational world that I would have been on top of just a few months earlier.]
In any case, in this post I am making available a 14 page polemic entitled The Communist Necessity that was drafted several months ago but that, due to its form, ended up in the limbo of my documents folder because I couldn't figure out what to do with it––the writing was too fluid, lacked the structure necessary to make it a proper academic essay, and was most probably affected by the consumption of alcohol. Even still, I think it is worth reading in the current conjuncture because it addresses many of the concerns of this blog as well as the new academic fad of reclaiming the name communism without, in my opinion, the concrete content of this name.
As some of my readers might be aware, Verso has been producing an ongoing series of a books on the reclamation of communism by authors such as Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels, Jodi Dean, etc. And though I think this series is important because (finally!) important intellectuals are openly speaking about communism, I have also found the discourse of these books somewhat troubling. Thus, the pdf that I am going to make available at the end of this post, is a prolonged attempt to address this concern.
Although I have found the books in the aforementioned Verso series useful, and believe they are worth reading, I was also generally dissatisfied by their focus on communism as an abstraction––by their inability to place communism within the concrete context of actually existing class struggle––which I saw as a refusal to recognize that communism was primarily a necessity. Thus, this 14 page (and occasionally vague) engagement with the concept of communism as a necessity against this current academic fad of reclaiming the name as an abstraction is (at least to me who wrote the damn thing!) somewhat important. At the very least it will allow fellow travellers and faithful blog readers understand why I am concerned with certain problematics.
Obviously, due to the manner in which this piece was written, I am rather unapologetic about my political partisanship. This quasi-essay is openly marxist-leninist-maoist (after all, this blog is called MLM Mayhem!) and does not shy away from openly declaring fidelity to the politics and strategy of the PCR-RCP. While long time readers are obviously aware of these loyalties, I would at least like to point out that, to any new readers who accidentally stumble upon this post, that there might even be something worthwhile in the essay despite its open partisanship. That is, in the context of reclaiming the name communism on the part of first world academics and intellectuals, it is possibly important to consider the limitations of these popular reclamations and what it would actually mean to reclaim communism as a vital necessity.
And so, without further ado, here is The Communist Necessity for your perusal.
[Once again, due to the fact that I am only semi-employed and have just provided pages upon pages of free theory/polemics, I would humbly request that faithful readers who have the means consider contributing monetarily to this blog.]
Moreover, due to my current circumstances where I am generally house-bound because I have to care for my new-born child, I have a lot of time on my hands where, between looking after my daughter and eating, I can read and write and peruse the internet. Indeed, tonight I had hoped to attend the opening plenary of the International League of Peoples' Struggle [ILPS] conference in Toronto, where Leila Khaled was being skyped in to address the conference attendees, but obviously was unable to leave my partner alone with a child this soon after the pregnancy. In fact, my current state of exhaustion and stir-craziness prevented me from even making sense of the date and it was not until this morning that I realized the conference was already beginning––events have descended upon me and time is moving in rather surreal manner––and I feel a little guilty for not posting something in support of this conference, some sort of advertisement, as I intended to do in September.
[So as an aside, I would like to belatedly advertise for this conference and request that all Toronto readers of this blog do their best to attend this weekend. The programme can be found on the link provided above and, even if you have missed tonight's amazing list of speakers that includes Leila Khaled, Jan Myrdal, and M-1 of Dead Prez, there are still other speakers and panels highly worth supporting. I also would like to apologize to the organizers of this conference for failing to promote their hard work in time. All I can say in my defense is that right now I feel somewhat trapped in my own new parent universe and have a hard time focusing on the political and organizational world that I would have been on top of just a few months earlier.]
In any case, in this post I am making available a 14 page polemic entitled The Communist Necessity that was drafted several months ago but that, due to its form, ended up in the limbo of my documents folder because I couldn't figure out what to do with it––the writing was too fluid, lacked the structure necessary to make it a proper academic essay, and was most probably affected by the consumption of alcohol. Even still, I think it is worth reading in the current conjuncture because it addresses many of the concerns of this blog as well as the new academic fad of reclaiming the name communism without, in my opinion, the concrete content of this name.
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| Reclaiming "communism" is even a game! |
As some of my readers might be aware, Verso has been producing an ongoing series of a books on the reclamation of communism by authors such as Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels, Jodi Dean, etc. And though I think this series is important because (finally!) important intellectuals are openly speaking about communism, I have also found the discourse of these books somewhat troubling. Thus, the pdf that I am going to make available at the end of this post, is a prolonged attempt to address this concern.
Although I have found the books in the aforementioned Verso series useful, and believe they are worth reading, I was also generally dissatisfied by their focus on communism as an abstraction––by their inability to place communism within the concrete context of actually existing class struggle––which I saw as a refusal to recognize that communism was primarily a necessity. Thus, this 14 page (and occasionally vague) engagement with the concept of communism as a necessity against this current academic fad of reclaiming the name as an abstraction is (at least to me who wrote the damn thing!) somewhat important. At the very least it will allow fellow travellers and faithful blog readers understand why I am concerned with certain problematics.
Obviously, due to the manner in which this piece was written, I am rather unapologetic about my political partisanship. This quasi-essay is openly marxist-leninist-maoist (after all, this blog is called MLM Mayhem!) and does not shy away from openly declaring fidelity to the politics and strategy of the PCR-RCP. While long time readers are obviously aware of these loyalties, I would at least like to point out that, to any new readers who accidentally stumble upon this post, that there might even be something worthwhile in the essay despite its open partisanship. That is, in the context of reclaiming the name communism on the part of first world academics and intellectuals, it is possibly important to consider the limitations of these popular reclamations and what it would actually mean to reclaim communism as a vital necessity.
And so, without further ado, here is The Communist Necessity for your perusal.
[Once again, due to the fact that I am only semi-employed and have just provided pages upon pages of free theory/polemics, I would humbly request that faithful readers who have the means consider contributing monetarily to this blog.]
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