At the end of 2011 I copy-edited the manuscript of Divided World Divided Class (DWDC) by the then upcoming scholar Zak Cope. Although I ultimately disagreed with the conclusion of the manuscript (a rehash of the Third Worldist argument that there was no proletariat in the imperialist metropoles) I appreciated the expansiveness of the empirical data that at least proved the existence of a labour aristocracy. And in any case, it was not my business to agree or disagree––my job was merely to copy-edit. Then, in the fall of 2012, right after my daughter was born, I had the misfortune of having to lug 50 newly published copies of this book in a suitcase across the world, throughout the Netherlands on a train, and over kilometres of the cobblestone streets of Maastricht to the Jan Van Eyck Centre where they were being launched as part of a conference I was co-presenting at. I still remember the echoes of my clunking suitcase as I crossed the town early Saturday morning, causing the inhabita
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections