Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
These are posts on blogging from the blog Base and Superstructure. Mostly these are meta-blogging posts, where I’ll be writing a bit about what it’s like to run a blog.
After more than a year at it, I think I’ve learned a few blogging lessons along the way. Maybe these will be useful to you, and maybe not. Thinking about starting your own blog? Or just interested in some of the process details? Perhaps both?
Whichever it is, here are four blogging lessons.
As I wrote earlier, traffic declines during the summer? Why? I don’t know. Maybe everyone’s on vacation or just enjoying the sun. I hope you had a good time, but that’s not the point.
The point is you might be wondering what you missed? Well, I’m here to let you know. Here are some summer highlights.
I started this blog one year ago with three posts on some of the political issues I find most central. The first is an overview of a Marxist explanation of society. The second is an overview of the history and role of identity politics in the US. And the third is an overview of what makes for successful activist movements.
That was a start, anyway. 70 or so posts and one year later, here we are!
I’m going to celebrate the blog’s one year anniversary with an FAQ.
I write a lot in this blog about political issues, and I try to keep individual personalities out of politics as much as possible. If politics is about any specific thing, it’s about collective struggles over things like ownership and control of resources, rights, representation, et al. If you want something even more vague and unhelpful, I could stick with Aristotle and say it’s about the “affairs of the city.”
My point is that it’s not about individual personalities.
But that’s easier said than done. When I’m thinking about what to write in this blog, individual personalities frequently come to mind. In fact, I’ve devoted an entire category to an American political movement organized around an individual personality. Yes, that one.
And so, it turns out I find myself writing about specific people. When is it best to write about specific people? Here are my thoughts.
I started this blog on June 1, 2018 with a post on the Marxist concepts of the base and superstructure. This is the end of the first year, and my 32nd post. Here’s an overview of that year.
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