Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Month: April 2019 (Page 2 of 2)

5 Tips for Reading Marx’s Capital

April 11, 2019 /

Capital Marx

So you’ve bought Volume 1 of Marx’s Capital, or you’re thinking about buying it?

Good for you! It’s a fantastic book, and you should read it! Capital is worthwhile for its historical significance alone, both to politics in the last 150 years and to philosophical and intellectual developments. But it’s also a highly relevant book to our current times. Particularly in an era of neoliberal or financialized capitalism, where many of the conditions Marx wrote about resurface.

Personally, I would’ve liked a bit more guidance when I started reading. I fumbled around quite a bit, and it took me awhile to understand what Marx was doing in the text.

What I lacked, may you have!

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Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 101

April 8, 2019 /

The Gaza-Israel conflict is heating up as the Israeli elections approach. And Netanyahu is threatening to annex the West Bank. I’ve been following the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict pretty closely for about a decade and a half, but I rarely post about it.

Why?

There’s no point in beating around the bush. Most writing on the topic is terrible. Politics, religion, and/or ideology lead authors to ignore background conditions, distort historical facts, and misstate even the most basic aspects of the conflict. As a result, writing about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is often pointless.

This is all rather polite. What I’m saying is that commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is full of some of the most untruthful, disingenuous, asinine nonsense imaginable. Many people are simply talking out of their ass.

Not that this wasn’t a fun intro to write.

My aims here are pretty modest. I’ll give a very basic orientation to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Sort of like what I did with North Korea. Who’s involved? What’s it about? I’m not going to do much in the way of offering solutions. That said, I think getting clear about what’s going on is a great start. And it’ll leave most people better off than where they started.

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How to Criticize the Democratic Candidates

April 4, 2019 /

Rife with disorganization and insecurity, the Democratic Party wants you to vote blue no matter who. I guess. I mean, they do sell the phrase on a t-shirt.

And it loves its metaphors. When you criticize fellow liberals, so they say, you’re just engaged in a circular firing squad. They really love that metaphor. You know, circular firing squad. They write about it over and over and over and over.

Not that they started recently. They were writing about it in 2016. Hell, even in 2006.

Probably in 1896, for all I know.

But there are real distinctions and divisions among liberals and leftists. And between liberals and leftists, as I wrote about previously in a quiz. The call to line up behind a candidate and a message is always louder when it comes from those who dominate the debate and the issues. That’s, of course, the fly in the ointment. Among others, which I’ll say more about below the flow chart.

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Real Queer America: Bloomington, Indiana

April 1, 2019 /

Real Queer America

Samantha Allen is a trans woman and ex-Mormon who lived for a time in Provo, Utah. She recently wrote a book called Real Queer America. The basic idea is to take a road trip through red states, chronicling the LGBT communities therein. She drove from Utah to Texas to Indiana to Tennessee to Georgia.

Her premise is that the red state American crucibles produce unique LGBT spaces. These are spaces where LGBT people have to overcome differences and find common ground, avoiding the kind of arcane squabbling found in New York or San Francisco, where communities are large enough to divide into warring subgroups.

The book itself is pretty good. It’s a worthwhile travelogue, and it does show how smaller places can be as radical and beautiful as larger ones. Not that I don’t have any quibbles. She organizes the book more around legislation than movements, and there are thorny issues of gentrification and homonormativity that she sometimes overlooks.

But this post is less a review of Real Queer America than a reaction to one of the stops on Allen’s road trip. She visits Bloomington, Indiana, where I lived for 6 years.

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