Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Month: May 2021 (Page 1 of 2)

Left Foreign Policy (New Book!)

May 26, 2021 /

Left Foreign Policy An Organizer's Guide

I spent much of my Pandemic Year hard at work on a new book. And now I’m ready to announce its release! I called the book Left Foreign Policy: An Organizer’s Guide. You can buy the paperback version at the link above. Here’s a page where you can read an in-depth description.

But on this page, I’ll say a bit about the target audience. It’s a book on left foreign policy at a very 101-level. I wrote it for new leftists and for organizers holding discussions with new leftists. In the book, I lay out some general principles for foreign policy organizing, and I invite new leftists to see internationalism as a key piece of leftist strategy and work. So, from this starting point, we can do better organizing.

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anarchism and marxism

Anarchism and Marxism, Again

May 20, 2021 /

Over the course of the last few months, my partner and I did a little reading group. We read Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution. It’s a joint biography of Karl and Jenny Marx by journalist Mary Gabriel. Marx was, of course, not too into anarchism. We’ll return to that.

For now, there’s much of interest in Love and Capital. The Marx family was an interesting family, and Gabriel shows the collective, whole family nature of the Marx political project. However, one topic that kept returning to me as I read is the relation between anarchism and Marxism.

That’s not a central topic for Gabriel, but she finds it important to several key moments in Karl Marx’s life. And like many commenters who focus on Marx, she comes down almost entirely on the side of Marxism in any dispute with anarchists. But several events in the book highlighted the conflict again for me. Battles between Marx and Mikhail Bakunin around the First International, in particular.

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white-identitarianism trump

Taking White-Identitarianism Seriously

May 17, 2021 /

Some time ago, I posted an analysis of fascism. And then I applied that analysis to Trumpism – both in a post and an eBook. The short version of all that: I consider Trumpism a movement of nationalist (or populist) white-identitarianism, a term I coined. I don’t mean to deny that work. I’m satisfied with it and consider it complete, as far as it goes.

But I’ve found some confusions out there on the left. Some leftists set up a false dichotomy. Here’s how it goes: either leftists use the term ‘fascist’ for all far-right viewpoints, or else they’re not taking far-right views seriously as a threat.

This false dichotomy carries the implication that people who don’t call all the far-right ‘fascist’ aren’t taking the far-right seriously. Of course, I don’t think Trumpism is a fascist movement. So it’s time to say a bit more about taking white-identitarianism seriously as a threat.

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