The rapid spread of wildcat strikes in China is mapped!

China’s move into a “mixed economy” has created a wealth inequality crisis to rival any nation’s; wildcat workers’ strikes (aided by Young Communist movements) have become increasingly common, though they are not often reported in the news (it helps that Chinese state media and the country’s official censors suppress these reports).

The Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin maintains a map of all these strikes, which you can drill down into for news and other detail. As Naked Capitalism notes, it’s instructional to view the map as a time-series by filtering it by year; looking at the rise and rise of strikes from 2011 to 2018 paints a picture of a country in real upheaval.

You can also export the data from the map in a structured format, which should be very useful for a certain kind of scholar or activist.

via Cory Doctorow’s blog BoingBoing.net 

 

How tech workers became activists, leading a resistance movement that is shaking up Silicon Valley

Employees at Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech companies are discovering their power to bend the trajectory of multibillion-dollar corporations.

When news broke in December 2016 that then president–elect Donald Trump would meet with some of the tech world’s most prominent CEOs—Apple’s Tim Cook, Alphabet’s Larry Page, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, among them—many tech workers were furious. In an industry that draws talent and ideas from around the world, Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign promises were abhorrent, and just meeting with him seemed like a tacit endorsement of these views.

His promises of mass deportations and a Muslim ban raised additional alarms for some: “If you’re going to target a sector of the population, it requires a database and collecting information on people,” says software engineer Ka-Ping Yee, who worked at the mobile money-transfer platform Wave during the election. “[Databases are] a necessary component of that particular evil.” And who was better poised to build them than the highly skilled engineers of Silicon Valley?

So Yee was heartened when his friend (and fellow Canadian) Leigh Honeywell, then a security manager at Slack, enlisted him to help draft a statement to both the incoming administration and tech leaders that Silicon Valley’s rank and file were not on board. “We were seeing what felt like a new energy in tech-employee organizing,” says Honeywell, who had volunteered for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The result was the Never Again pledge, signed by 2,843 engineers, designers, and other workers at companies including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Referencing the role of IBM’s punch-card technology in Holocaust record-keeping, the signatories vowed not to participate in the creation of any targeted databases for the U.S. government. And they laid out a playbook for worker-led resistance: Raise issues with leadership, whistle-blow, protest, and—as a last resort—resign.

Gramsci nel cieco carcere degli eretici/Gramsci in the blind prison of the heretics by Noemi Ghetti

via Gramsci nel cieco carcere degli eretici/Gramsci in the blind prison of the heretics by Noemi Ghetti

Gramsci in the blind prison of the hereticsBy Noemi Ghetti Abstract Among the pages of Quaderni: Prison notebooks, the “Dante notes” on the Canto of the Heretics(Q 4, 78-88) give us access to the human, intellectual and political life of Antonio Gramsci. In his outline of Quaderni on February 8, 1929, while Mussolini was ratifying the Lateran Treaty, concordat regulating relations between State and Church, the essay on Canto X of Dante’s Inferno was being written throughout 1930-32, after Stalin’s totalitarian revolt and the fracture between Gramsci and his comrades in the prison of Turi. Uniquely, thanks mainly to the exchange of correspondence which, through Tatiana Schucht and the economist Piero Sraffa, went from Turi to Cambridge to Moscow, the notes were read and commented on by Togliatti precisely while the figure of Gramsci, canonized in April 1931 at the congress in Cologne, was being forced out of the public scene of the party. Promising philologist and linguist in his university days, Gramsci questions the abstract interpretation of Benedetto Croce, the “secular pope” who by distinguishing structure from poetry, intellectual activity from life, becomes the “leader of revisionism”. Contemporarily, through the translation of the works of young Marx, we find Gramsci’s analysis of the theoretic roots of Marxism and the crystallization in economisation of the structure and sub-structure of historical materialism. The analysis of the Canto on the irreducible atheists who refuse the immortality of the soul is a new model of literary criticism: close relations, political passion, theological research and the cultural battle come together in his writing in an extraordinary praxis of prison life which, while his solitude becomes extreme, becomes more and more universal. Political tragedy and personal drama intertwine, like Cavalcanti and Farinata in Dante’s Canto, also in the extraordinary comment by Gramsci, who unveils, through the conflict between Cavalcanti and Dante that constitutes the enigmatic plot of the famous verses, an analogy to his conflict with Togliatti.  Hidden behind the protagonists is Dante’s mortal struggle with Cavalcanti, master and friend, poet and atheist philosopher, and the conversion from love seen as physical passion with which the Italian language was born in 1200, to Christian love. Gramsci returns to the origins of secular Catholic hegemony, directing his studies, Quaderni, on the “question of language” and the history of Italian intellectuals, and laying the foundations for an elaboration of the revolutionary and still modern question of cultural hegemony from the base, as a struggle to express a new secular humanism. Translation by ©Matilda Colarossi

 

 

Noemi Ghetti’s writings include literary criticism and historical novels:  Il principe diabolic: La storia di Niccolò Machiavelli (Nuove Edizioni Romane, 1997), translated in 2012 in Slovenian for Založba Ark, and Storie di eroi greci e romani. Dalle ‘Vite parallele’ di Plutarco (II ed. 2008). She writes for daily and weekly magazines (Left, Il Sogno della farfalla, Altritraliani.net, Babylon Post, Cronache laiche, Formiche e Madrelingua, trimonthly supplement in «Pagine della Dante».                                               

She has worked on the transposition of classics for readings and musical dramas: these include Kaspar Hauser based on the memoires of Anselm Von Feuerbach, first presented in 2011 at the National Opera Theatre in Tirana.                                                                                                    

In 2011 she published L’ombra di Cavalcanti e Dante, and in 2014 Gramsci nel cieco carcere degli eretici, both with L’Asino d’oro Edizioni.http://www.lasinodoroedizioni.it/libri/144/gramsci-nel-cieco-carcere-degli-eretici

 

 

James D. White and the Red Hamlet…

In series of books and articles, James D. White have been building a strong and ground-breaking argument regarding Marx, Marxism, Marxist methodology, Marx’s theory of history and how and why his life project of critique of political economy was not competed and remained as “Das Capital”, could not expand on theorising State and World market, and forming an integral whole. With his 2018, Marx and Russia: The Fate of a Doctrine, White culminates his life work and set forward his argument. In doing so he does not only breakes a new ground for the study of Marx and Marxism, Russia and Russian Revolution, White also sets the modern history on its feet, clarifies key misconceptions generated by acts and non-acts of figures like Marx and Engels themselves, and others like Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky too. He brings back lost figures like Kovalevsky, Sieber, and finally Bogdanov and fixes a major cracks in the history, generated mainly by the official soviet histography, or historians of Marxism, who did not effort and go back to the original sources to uncover stuff and kept reproducing same misconceptions through generations.

The below are James D. White’s 1996 and 2001 books, in which he sets out this argument and presents sea of evidences.

Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism (1996)
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php…

Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (2001)
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php…

I could not find a pdf version of his 1994 The Russian Revolution 1917-1921: A Short History
(https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Revolution-1917…/…/0340539100)

Here is the link to White’s 2018 Marx and Russia: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/marx-and-russia-9781474224086/
And finally, his forthcoming book, in November 2018, is the first ever written and published intellectual history of Alexander Bogdanov, Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov (https://brill.com/view/title/25179)

Peoples of the World, stand up, assemble, and unite for peace, for life, and for dignity!

To the peoples and communities of the World

Stand up, assemble, and unite for peace, for life, and for dignity!

Those who rule the global economy and national states, liberal or conservative capitalist classes and factions in the West have been for long pursuing their own program and agenda to counter the rise of Chinese as well as other contending capitalist classes from Russia, India, Brazil, and others.

The contestation of one sides program to the program and agenda of the other, liberal / conservative, globalist ruling class factions ended up major conflicts in Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, South America and the Pacific. Leaving behind millions of death of innocent people and children and destroying nature and wealth that belongs to all.

In this fight of elephants, by forming and funding alliances, by covert operations, by proxy and drone wars; states using of armed terror groups and fake news has became normal. Surveillance, deception, manipulation, torture, and taking lives without punishment replaced consent based bourgeois democratic form of politics.

Engagement of part of ‘progressive left’ and ‘left liberals’, as well as left-right wing libertarians, some segment of anarchist and communitarian groups, have not only resulted in wide mistrust to alternative liberal-humanist politics in general, hence also caused the failure and expansion of the extreme, right wing, and fascist politics and politicians.

Fall of the liberals and lefts gave way to the rise of right-authoritarian politicians as Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Erdogan, May, Le Pen, Orban, Wilders, but also this lead to the emergence of groups like ISIS and others across the world.

All resulting in expansion of conflict and wars in the periphery of the falling Western Empire.

At the end, the entire world was brought once more to the brink of yet another inter-capitalist and imperialist world war; where a massive nuclear arsenal can be unleashed and put into use to massacre billions of innocent people globally.

Today it appears even in mainstream media as if that the target of spreading wars is about stopping China or Russia, as well as other rising ruling class factions that capitalist system fostered. Yet in reality the real war has been on, the never ending ‘war on terror’ has been ultimately a war at billions of ordinary people. Unemployed, insecure, exploited, indigenous, gay, lesbian, women, men, and from all ethnic back ground.

The global liberal elite has been managing the chaos and financing wars for the benefit of its  own class fraction. Such interest was for a while about establishing a ‘global good governance’, that meant sort of soft imperialism backed by just wars and interventions justified only for the capitalist West.

The result have been everywhere the rapid increasing of military conflicts and erupting of the clashes between local, national and global ruling class factions, turning many countries into blood bath though wars, at the end of the day, launched on the innocent and oppressed governed people.

What got clear today is that a global war, spectacle, this time will be directed on China and Russia, and is about to be triggered and launched either with a false flag or covert action, like Douma Gas attack, as it was the case for the first and second word wars, may be in coming days or hours.

What would a launch of such a global war mean for the masses of oppressed peoples and communities in Europe, the US, and globally is nothing else than the expansion of the tragedies and destruction we have been witnessing with the imperialist wars in Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and inner Asia, since the 90s.

The most important lesson one can get from the past experiences and from the experiences of the last decades, is that not that any program or campaign launched -neither by intellectual left nor its global liberal elite- with the purpose of gaining counter hegemonic political power, would be able to stop this coming war.

Such effective action for peace can only be led by those upon whom this global war is really launched.

Thus the remaining time for the peoples of the world are extremely limited and precious

This can be the real final count-down, and the war can begin in hours.

What you will do now will be historically decisive for all of the humanity, if not for entire life on earth.

This can be our last call, for all times.

That is why we urge all, whoever reads this call, to get energize and get yourself organized. Design and set forth your own local, national, and international action, assemblies and/or permanent networks to stop this war on all of us.

To discuss the ways and possibilities for stopping the coming world war, and for transcending the social and economic system that is may be about the destroy, at least, the human life on earth.

We beg you to connect with each other, face to face, not on facebook or twitter, and with other’s actions, assemblies and networks in mutual respect, love, solidarity, while recognizing each other’s individual – personal and collective autonomy, cultural and ideational differences.

Please keep your self-respect and creativity, while looking for ways and tools to deliver your findings and decisions in touch, together with others’ and forming coherent and homogenous regional and international bodies. That can become a critical mass and deliver accessible message and vision, with strong and universal expressions of such collaboration and solidarity for common humanity.

The day is the day to build a common humanity and rise together, for not only our own survival but for getting a final chance to create genuine wold in dignity.

One for all, all for one

Listen and share the audio version of the call

 

Emergence of Transnational Managerial Class | an update

https://graphcommons.com/graphs/64d91469-5f7d-4dba-9204-c8574945948c/embed?fitgraph=true

Tektology is a comprehensive methodology. Upgrading Dialectic and Historical Materialism of Marx and Engels, with Energetics of Mach and Ostwald, it was founded by Lenin’s most important challenger Alexander Bogdanov Malinowski, between the late 1890s and 1920s. It was developed as a radical critic of Taylor’s Scientific Management yet beyond that in order to look at the entire universe and all its properties from an ‘organizational’ and ‘class’ points of view; in order to discover and study common/general patterns and mechanisms in the emergence, transformation, evolution, and demise of all complex elements and systems forming human experience, and rebuilt it in an emancipatory way. Although it is recognized as the forerunner of the modern Cybernetics of Norbert Wiener, and the General Systems Theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, some claims that Tektology was going further then the two and foreseeing many later discoveries made in these latter fields, following the developments in the 20th century.

This evolving project aims at visualizing and mapping the connections and dots for a longitudinal analysis of the emergence of a Transnational Managerial Class; which has been emerging form the early 20th century; the time of Tektology and the scientist-intellectuals in the West; from revolutionary Russian intelligentsia –turned into Nomenklatura- to the management gurus and futurists of the post-war period: such as James Burnham, Peter Drucker, Alvin Toffler, Jeremy Rifkin. Tracing such agency until today, the research aims at making off such a transnational class, emerging within and between ideologies and planning practices of communism and capitalism. Such a class might finally be asserting itself as the agency of a new global ruling class fraction, with the eruption of 2007-8 crisis and claiming the commanding heights for itself. Doing so by declaring that it would be able to lead the world to an alternative route beyond capitalism: Post-capitalist world. With the concomitant rise of ‘cyber-imperialism’, at the current highest stage of capitalism, we might be witnessing this new class confronting the transnational and national capitalist class fractions as well as the emergent ‘collective worker.’ Therefore, the history of neoliberalism and rise of global governance may be about to become the history of the endgame for the current mode of production. The “collective worker”, agency of the global working class/proletariat, that would be the one challenging and contesting the alternative route to capitalism for its own terms. Providing an alternative to both the global capitalism vision as the agency of the ancient regime holds on; or the cybernetic ‘post-capitalist’ managerial system which is promoted by this emergent new global ruling class candidate.

For our argument’s sake, the form of organization for such class agency will be traced and mapped too. This form is the established network form, around which managerial classes agency is linked to, fused with, and convert those heads of corporations and state apparatus, the state-society complex: in academia, military, trade unions and NGOs, policy groups, etc. While the Corporation, and Corporate Governance are legal manifestation of such organizational form in the business dimension of the ‘civil society’; the WB, IMF, OECD, UN Agencies (as transnational quasi-state apparatus) and policy planing think-tanks: like Council of Foreign Relations, New American, Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, WEF, Open Society, Open Knowledge, New Economy Foundations, etc. are manifestations of such form in the political realm.

Global war, global fascism, or global revolution?

What documents Immanuel Ness in his recent book (Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class) are the real reasons behind the increasing acceleration in robotic, space technology, AI and emergent industry 4.0; emergence of control and surveillance regimes, as well as civil wars and conflicts. Rulers of the world have to coop with billions of poor, unemployed, immigrant their systems generated while they have to generate more of them. They need to be able to control and steer more and more people desperately. As Stephen Hawking rightly indicated it is capitalism (the logic of control, passion for possession, destructive exploitation of ecosystems including humans, etc.) what we need to be afraid of. Not robots, AI or technology in general but those of generated by this logic. Fear is new for those falling from global north to global south first time; yet it is where the hope lies. The hope lies in the possibility of intellectual and industrial workers of the world achieving to form one body; global coming together of those who are living in shock of losing certain privileges s/he had once, very much afraid of it; and of those steered towards suburbs and slums of the mega-cities emerged in the global south; and formed the new industrial army of proletariat. Had the brain and body of this force formed a unity, in at least 4-5 billion people power, planet has the chance to avoid destruction and life could rebuild itself in amazing new forms and contents.

Time to praise Alexander Bogdanov’s geniuine contribution to the radical imagination of global systemic emancipatory change, that we call revolution!

There may be one person, probably the one and only in human history, who could manage to get such widely recognized achievements in all of the mentioned fields (of arts, philosophy, politics, technology, and science) and being a polymath scientist at the same time.

Since I was a little kid, have I been amazed by biographies of important personalities and started to read as many of them as I could. Stories of the known real persons who achieved great mastery and delivered majestic work especially in five major fields of philosophy, art, politics, science, and technology, thus contributing to the common heritage of  several dozens millennia year old humanity has been a guiding light for many. Biographies of those names from Homer to Plato and Aristoteles, from Buddha to Confucius, from Bruno to Vinci and Rumi, from Queen Victoria to Mozart, from Goethe to Hegel and Marx, from Mach and Einstein to Merlyn Monroe and Maradona, from Elvis to Hawking and Beatles, from Churchill, to Stalin, Lenin, and Mao and so on so forth got written, collected, achived, and listed for already hundereds of years. The following link provides a great (may be a bit Western centric) but sort of a global compilation of such biographies (amongst them 100 Famous Women, Famous Historical Figures, 100 most influential people in the world).

It is a striking statistic of these lists that amongst the most influential people, the most well-known and impactful ones are those who are/were able to combine being a polymath (which means a person who is trained in several scientific disciplines) and achieving success in more than one major fields mentioned above (art, science, technology and inventions, politics, philosophy -this includes religion and ideology/discourse too, and then politics). After scanning my memory again, and again, and again, and then testing my memory against the backdrop of above lists I could not find (may miss one or two but could not encounter) one single personality, who did demonstrate major and recognized achievements in all of these fields, and plus being a polymath at the same time.

To my knowledge however, there is one person, probably the one and only in entire human history, who could actually managed to get major achievements in all of the mentioned fields (of arts, politics, technology, philosophy, and science), being a polymath scientist at the same time. Yet it his name has been missing in all of the above lists, and probably from others. It is highly probabley that his name is missing in your list too. The name is Alexander A. Bogdanov, does it ring any bells? I would ont think so.

 

 

Probably the reason is because he was the editor of the second Russian translation of Das Capital of Karl Marx which become standard edition; he was the author of the first Marxist political economy study-book; the author of the first book on the emergence of social-class consciousness, ideological and cultural hegemony -long before Lucaks, Gramsci and others; the inventor of philosophical approach ‘Empriomonism’ which was updating dialectical materialism for 20st century, and he was the most prominent leader amongst Bolsheviks after Lenin; he was the founder of the first communist party schools in Capri and Bologna; the author of first Bolshevik utopian novel Red Star which became the symbol of the idea of global revolution; he was the founder and leader of the Proletarian Culture movement (ProletKult); and he was also a polymath scientist, founded the first Blood transfusion institute and recognized as the founding father of Cybernetics and General Systems Theory with his magnum opus Tektology: General Science of Organisation.

The name of Bogdanov may not be counted in conventional lists of famous influential peoples, who have come to be seen as those who made somehow large impact on the course of development of human history. Yet as the only person who could get major achievements in (several fields of) sciences and technology, but also in politics, arts, and philosophy; it is most likely and highly possible that he has also made the largest and most invisible impact on our development as the humankind. It is time to get a grip and discover that impact and to fill a gigantic gap that remained in the common heritage of humanity, leaving it incomplete for almost a century.

Here is where one could find a great amount of work to start with. And here, Historical Materialism Book Series’ project of Alexander Bogdanov Library which is earning most of his writings into English language.

 

Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists – Founding Statement of Principles – Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists

We are an alliance of Middle Eastern socialists opposed to all the international and Middle Eastern regional imperialist powers and their wars, whether the U.S., Russia and China or Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. We also oppose other authoritarian regimes such as Assad’s in Syria and El Sisi’s in Egypt as well as religious fundamentalism whether of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah consider themselves gradualists and oppose the Jihadism of Al Qaeda and ISIS, all of these organizations share the goal of establishing a state based on Shari’a Law and preserving the current capitalist order. We oppose capitalism, class divisions, patriarchy/sexism, racism, ethnic and religious prejudice and speak to the struggles of women, workers, oppressed nationalities such as Kurds and Palestinians, oppressed ethnic and religious minorities, and sexual minorities. We also oppose Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. We stand for socialism as a concept of human emancipation and an affirmative vision distinguished from the authoritarian regimes that called themselves “Communist.”

Source: Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists – Founding Statement of Principles – Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists

UnionBase is America’s largest digital platform for workers and unions

Launching the new version of UnionBase

Welcome to UnionBase, the world’s first social networking platform for the labor movement with 30,000 Union Profiles, an expertly crafted user experience for union and non-union workers and a cutting edge Verification System.

Workers and unions will be able to connect like never before. Founded by Larry Williams Jr. in 2015, UnionBase is a first of its kind pro-union social networking platform. Larry is the President of Progressive Workers’ Union (PWU) and has been a union organizer, educator and leader for 10 years in Washington, D.C.

Source: Unionbase

“Social democracy has been exhausted”: Kees van der Pijl on Marxism, barbarism, and prospects for left renewal

What are the hope for a renewed Social Democracy across Europe? Who constitute the new Atlantic ruling class? How do we combat the rise of xenophobia? And what is the future of the war-torn countries across the globe? Kees van der Pijl, one of the leading Marxist political scientists, takes us through his intellectual and political development since the 1970s, as well as pointing towards the future developments for emancipatory politics in this wide-ranging interview with George Souvlis and Yulia Yurchenko (originally published by LeftEast).

Q1: Would you like to present yourself by focusing on the formative experiences (academic and political) that have strongly influenced you?

My generation was a lucky one, the baby-boomers whose society was in competition with state socialism, our own social order discredited by the Great Depression and two world wars. So capitalism was compelled to show a human face (at home, not in southeast Asia, Africa or Latin America, of course). Although coming from a very modest background, I was able to study for practically nothing, enjoy quality schooling compared to what is offered today, and profit from other social provision and protection. It was generally a Spartan but optimistic environment to grow up in. From my background in the declining petty bourgeoisie of small shopkeepers, I also inherited a mentality of hard work, not counting on others, and a penchant for not trusting the high and mighty (that turned out very useful, too).

So when my generation experienced first-hand what is now recognised as the moment the capitalist class called into question the post-war class compromise forced upon it by Depression and war, and we ourselves burst onto the scene with a permissive culture breaking with the rigidities of reconstruction Cold War Europe, we were relatively well-trained, hungry for a different world (socialism in any form), and optimistic.

Yet at the time I personally completely failed to see what Wolfgang Streeck has called the three successive attempts by Western governments (inflation, state debt, private debt) to cover the breakdown of the post-war class compromise by throwing money into the breaches. We interpreted the 1970s crisis as a crisis of capital, whereas it was in fact a crisis of the post-war class compromise as a consequence of the restructuring of capital to relations of exploitation and domination outside that compromise –both at home and abroad.

I was hired by the University of Amsterdam in 1973, which was then faced with a massive expansion of student intake, in a climate of student revolt, ‘Marxism’, and with mainstream theories such as positivism being ridiculed. Much time was spent in meetings that in hindsight served no purpose but to offer a terrain the government and university administration had decided or just guessed would slowly tame the student movement by incorporating the administratively-minded into the governing structures and prepare these for a transition towards a market-oriented university regime.

I was also, from the mid-70s to when it collapsed, a member of the Dutch communist party CPN. That party had no clue of what was going on either, and basically mistrusted intellectuals. Even so, my membership satisfied my search for a real opposition, and I must say that in the party I finally encountered the working class, its culture, powerful humanity, and the tradition from which the party had been able to build the most powerful resistance movement in our country against the Nazi occupation in World War II. All this, the strength of character, humour, and iron organisation, made the party an unforgettable life experience but intellectually it did not really influence me. Those who influenced me were French communists, some East German and Soviet authors, whose books I found in the communist bookshop: Paul Boccara, Christian Palloix, and so on to Poulantzas, Suzanne de Brunhoff.

My most inspiring teacher in Leiden, where I studied, was the Indologist, Jan Heesterman, who appreciated my creativity and intellectual curiosity more than the political science teachers such as Hans Daalder and Arend Lijphart who wanted an American-style discipline. Ben Sijes, a veteran Council Communist (anti-party) was a guest professor and intellectually was very important for me, because he introduced us to Pannekoek, who (as a contemporary internationally renowned Marxist) criticised Stalinist propagation of Lenin’s original, mistaken materialism.

Once in Amsterdam, my late friend Gabriel Kolko, the US historian, who along with his wife and (co-) author Joyce had come to live there, was a great source of inspiration and so was Robert Cox whom I got to know through Stephen Gill. André Gunder Frank was employed by our university for a year or so and during that time we had some very memorable encounters. Of course my co-conspirators in Amsterdam, Meindert Fennema, Henk Overbeek and later Otto Holman, and others, and several cohorts of unforgettable students, were able and insightful interlocutors in developing intellectually.

Source: Verso

Pursuance

Impactful, agile, secure civic collaboration

The pursuance system is the world’s first comprehensive framework for process democracy. That is, it allows individuals with no prior relationship to self-organize into robust, agile entities governed via a “proceduralism of agreement.” These entities, called pursuances, in turn engage and collaborate among themselves to whatever extent they choose, leading ultimately to a vast and formidable ecosystem of opposition to institutionalized injustice.

This system will be populated on an invitation basis, beginning towards the end of 2017. For consideration as a participant, and to receive further information as it becomes public, subscribe below.

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More About Pursuances

Intro

For the first time in history, any individual may now collaborate with any other individual. One may get a sense of the implications of this by considering how different human history would have been had early man possessed some psychic ability to find and communicate with anyone else across the world. We now have something very similar, and in some ways more powerful.

It’s easy to underestimate the significance of this in part because it’s also easy to overestimate it and, worse, to romanticize it. The advent of the internet was immediately followed by triumphalist manifestos setting out the great and positive changes that were now afoot. That much of what was predicted didn’t immediately come to pass has led some to challenge the entire premise of the internet as a potentially revolutionary force for good.

Certainly the utopian predictions of the early ‘90s were off the mark; indeed the clearest picture we have today contains seeds of actual dystopia. Meanwhile, the trivial uses to which the internet is commonly put can make it difficult to take seriously as a transcendental factor in our civilization. But then gunpowder was originally used to make fireworks. And a technology that may be used to oppress may also be used to liberate. Again, gunpowder comes to mind.

The way in which events have proceeded in our society since the advent of the internet tells us less about the internet than it does about our society. There are a few lessons we can glean, though. In the large, we know that mass connectivity does not automatically lead to mass enlightenment. We know that states will sometimes seek to use the internet to further their control over information, and that they will sometimes be successful in this. We know many things of this sort. But none of this tells us what the internet will ultimately mean for human civilization. That will be determined on the ground, in the years to follow.

Source: Pursuance

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Programmers in India Have Created the Country’s First Tech-Sector Union | The Nation

There was a time not too long ago when India’s millennial elites, born into an age of globalization, hailed the “technological revolution” as a one-way ticket to infinite opportunity. Today the economic miracle has been derailed, and young workers are starting to demand a refund.

In recent months, workers have reported that mass layoffs at Indian tech hubs are becoming routine as companies shed engineers and slash wages and benefits. Companies that previously invested heavily in emerging Indian firms for global outsourcing contracts seem to be recoiling from a volatile global labor market, and India’s rapid economic expansion is hitting snags.

The global digital bubble’s seemingly inevitable pop has also been sped along by Trump’s protectionist rhetoric and promise of “reshoring” offshored jobs to the United States. This week, even as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks business on his maiden visit to the Trump White House, the administration is also moving to tighten the criteria for the H-1B visa, a federal program that has drawn in tens of thousands of foreign professionals, particularly technicians and programmers from India—often at relatively low pay rates.

Source: Programmers in India Have Created the Country’s First Tech-Sector Union | The Nation

Tech Workers Coalition

Meet the Tech Workers Coalition

We are a coalition of workers in and around the tech industry, labor organizers, community organizers, and friends. We are organizing for activism, civic engagement and education in the Bay Area. We work in solidarity with existing movements towards social justice, workers rights, and economic inclusion. Want to learn more?

How We Work

You are welcome to check us out at our monthly organization meeting in San Francisco.

We communicate and organize every day on Slack. Read our community guide and join our Slack.

Learn More and Stay Connected

Please sign up for our newsletter emails to hear updates about events and what we’re working on, and check out our calendar.

See what we’ve been writing on our blog.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

We’re also happy to chat, answer any questions you might have, or hear about any social justice efforts in which you need a partner. Send us an email.

Source: Tech Workers Coalition

Tech Solidarity

Source: Tech Solidarity 

Tech Solidarity is a grass-roots organization whose goal is to better connect tech workers with the communities they live in. Our emphasis is on regular in-person meetings, volunteer assistance to organizations serving the vulnerable, and the creative use of labor law in pursuit of an ethical agenda.

Founded in November of 2016 by Maciej Ceglowski, a San Francisco web developer, Tech Solidarity holds quasi-monthly meetups in a number of American cities, and tries to serve as a clearinghouse for information and technical assistance.

Our aim is to have regular in-person events in every major tech center. See the events calendar for the meetup nearest you.

Conference: Connecting to the Masses. 100 years from the Russian Revolution: From Agitprop to the Attention Economy | IISH

Date: 13 November 2017Location: IISH, Amsterdam

Time and programme will follow.

Connecting to the masses is critical for the success of any movement, resurrection, protest, and revolution. The communication mechanisms for this connection have some times evolved and other times undergone revolutions of their own. Since the Russian centennial, scholars have examined how media and communication affects this connection to the masses in a double yet complimentary dynamic: how governments connect to the masses and how masses connect to their governments.Therefore, we invite participants to debate this relationship and the strategies and lessons of “connecting to the masses”, in light of the development in media, technology and communication strategies over the last century.

Areas the conference addresses are the following:

• Evolution of propaganda: From leaflet bombs to Twitter
• Artificial attention, political packaging and the so-called attention economy
• Tactical media and tech activism in the 20th and 21st centuries
• Strategies and lessons for the use of ICTs in mobilization
• Impact of technology on revolutionary social change in the macro-perspective
• Revolutionary-era media and communist rhetoric and transition to post-communism
• Mediated contestation, surveillance, censorship and systems of control
• From journalism to social media gatekeepers
• Spheres and systems of political deliberation
• Evolution of the ownership of means of communication, processes of labour reproduction in the media, culture and communication industries
• (R)evolution of technology at work, digital labour, alternative production models
• Intelligence and cyberespionage in the 100 years span.
• Technosocial infrastructures and the politicization of health, illness and biopolitics.

Please find more information about this conference here (link is external)

Revolutions

https://socialhistory.org/en/events/conference-connecting-masses-100-years-russian-revolution-agitprop-attention-economy

Marxian (Tektological) critical systems analysis of Antropocene, for the praxis of emancipatory exit from the global interregnum

The below trilogy is of an immense importance in terms of emancipatory praxis today. These three great books were written for the thinkers and builders of post-capitalist futures by Kenneth M. Stokes in the midst of neoliberal-postmodernist-globalization offensive, between 1992-96. Altough they have broke a ground by setting forward a synthetic Marxian-Bogdanovite approach to critical systems thinking, in order to provide a praxiological tool that would enable steer the social change in the age of complexity, control, and disintegration, from an emancipatory point of view, they have not been recognized and read as much as they deserved. Stokes’ work, for us, does not only provides hope and guidance to steer the world, hopefully safely, to a synthetic human civilization through a coevolutionary (cultural) political economy, he also marks the Bogdanovite Turn in the critique of global political economy, exactly century after Bogdanov did start making of his intervention.

1. Man and the Biosphere: Toward a Co-evolutionary Political Economy – https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=ZcYYDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en_GB&pg=GBS.PT8

2. Paradigm Lost: Cultural and Systems Theoretical Critique of Political Economy –
https://books.google.nl/books?id=trwYDQAAQBAJ

3. A Metatheoretical Discourse: Epistemological, Procedural, and Methodological Issues in Political Economy: http://www.iuj.ac.jp/media/stokes/index.htm

 

 

The Bail Out Business

(https://www.tni.org/en/publication/the-bail-out-business)

The Bail Out Business is the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the steps taken since the 2008 financial crisis to understand who benefits from rescue packages in the EU. Above all, it highlights the role of the Big Four (audit firms) and a small coterie of financial consultancy firms in the business of designing and implementing bail out programs in EU Member States.

Authors

Sol Trumbo Vila, Matthijs Peters

Projects

Corporate Power, Democratising Europe, Public Sector Alternatives

Bail outs in the EU have a hidden cost for taxpayers. On top of the public money used for the bail outs, contracts worth hundreds of millions of Euro have been given to a small number of financial consultants to advise member states and EU institutions.
The so-called Big Four audit firms (EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PWC), with a small coterie of financial advisors, have designed the bloc’s most important rescue packages. Bail out consultants have also been rewarded with new business, even though many gave poor advice or failed to raise the alarm at crucial moments.
For years we have been investigating austerity measures and vast privatisation programmes in Europe. Following our last report on the privatising industry in Europe we decided to hone in on those firms involved in the numerous EU bail out programmes and found a shockingly similar pattern. The Bail-out Business reveals the hidden costs of the rescue packages and a troubling array of conflicts of interest.

Correction 23/2/2017: Lazard was paid 3 million euros for a few days work
Watch the video:

BITS Symposium: Technological Sovereignty and the Crisis of Capitalism 8-9 December 2016

Date:

8 – 9 December 2016

Venue:

Auditori Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona

Summary:

The BITS Symposium will stimulate a global debate about the changing meanings of sovereignty and explore the ways in which various types of sovereignty – of citizens, cities, nation states, and regions – can still be maintained in today’s highly technological global conditions. With a strong focus on the political effects of technological change, BITS will explore how the rise of Technology platforms and the data extractivism they enable is transforming governments, labor, ownership, and access to the basics of life such as water, food, housing, and energy. This task is particularly important as the current political and economic regime reformulates itself around the rhetorical and practical kernel of digital technology, with a new mighty alliance between technology firms, global finance, and the military-industrial complex. 

BITS Symposium 2016 – Agenda

Conference Videos:

Keynote: Power, Economics and Crisis in the Era of Authoritarian Capitalism

Kees van der Pijl, Professor Emeritus, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, presents a keynote on the power, economics and crisis in the era of authoritarian aapitalism. Julian Assange, Founder and Editor of Wikileaks, responds to the keynote.

Session 1: The Geopolitics of Technology

Dan Schiller, Emeritus Professor and Historian of Information and Communications, University of Illinois, opens the session with a keynote on The Geopolitics of Technology, in which he provides an overview of U.S. digital capitalism and asserts that, because digitization constitutes a rare pole of economic growth, it has incited intensifying geopolitical conflict. He goes on to assess briefly some of the challengers of this U.S.-centric political-economy, particularly China. Though the U.S. remains numero uno, it seems likely that we are reaching – or perhaps we have already reached – a “hinge moment.” Evgeny Morozov and Carlos Figueira respond to the keynote in an open debate facilitated by Francesca Bria.

Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed | Wikileaks

[Source: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/%5D

Contents

• Press Release
• Analysis
• Examples
• Frequently Asked Questions

 

Press Release

Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.