Welcome to the first reading post of the new year! Follow along for some of the things I’ve been reading lately. Hopefully you find something of interest, and let me know what you’ve been reading lately!
Month: January 2022 (Page 2 of 2)
Readers hardly need an intro to V.I. Lenin. To this day, he’s still a hero to the Marxist-Leninist left. Why? He defeated Russian capitalism, founded the Soviet Union, and guided revolutionary movements around the globe. And to most anarchists, he’s still a villain. Why? He broke Russian anarchism and turned communism into an authoritarian ideology.
I’m not going to wade too heavily into that debate. I’ll take a more modest aim here. Recently I started reading the Essential Works of Lenin. From that collection, I’ll say a few things about Lenin’s short book ‘What Is to Be Done?‘
While much of the material looks at the specific situation in Russia, I think we can learn a few things from it. Even things we can apply in the 2020s. Lenin can teach us a number of things about both good activism and what to avoid.
My readers don’t live under a rock. So, they surely know the Delta variant has given way to Omicron in the last couple of months. At first glance, one might expect this to shake up public debate. Maybe people evolve with the evidence, see things in a new light, and so on.
Well, that didn’t happen. Omicron mostly locked people into their previous biases and hardened their attitudes on the pandemic and public policy. Let’s take a look at how this is working out.
I focused in 2021 on issues in the business world and corporate culture. Along those lines, I’m going to write a new series of posts for the new year. It’s called Corporate Politics 101. The thought: I’ll lay out some basic tips for how to navigate the business world. Along the way, maybe we’ll learn a few interesting things about the politics of the business world.
Corporate Politics 101 #1: Be Nice to the Admin Staff
A few years ago, I sat down to eat lunch in one of our office lounges. While having lunch, I found the credit card of an admin assistant lying on the floor near one of the seats. I picked it up and returned it to her.
That’s it. Nothing more to it. What’s so important about this?
For one, it was just the right thing to do. Solidarity with your fellow worker and human being, and all that. But, two, admin assistants are usually nice people who work hard for not enough pay. They also – perhaps more than anyone else in a company – make things run smoothly.
Lately, the corporate world has been learning that latter lesson the hard way. Due to various business ideologies and systems, they’ve chosen to lay off quite a few admin assistants. And without admin assistants, they have to load admin work on various executives who, frankly, have neither the skills nor the inclination to do the work well. In such an environment, one would be well advised to be nice to the admin assistants who remain.
They’re your best friends on the job!
The Series
So, that’s the first post in our Corporate Politics 101 series. I’ll try to keep the posts short and sweet. How often will I write them? I don’t know. Whenever the mood strikes me, I suppose. I’ll probably work these posts into my regular, shorter posts on Thursdays.
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