Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These are posts about books from the blog Base and Superstructure. Occasionally I’ll read a book worth talking about, and write some thoughts on it. These cover a wide range of topics from the blog.
As readers may have noticed, I have a habit of writing about the New Left in a derogatory way.
I complain about its bad habits. I lament its navel gazing, its development of alienating leftist subculture, and its embrace of open-ended, structureless meetings. And more than anything, I think it’s unfortunate the New Left still influences new activist groups.
So, it’s fair to say I was overdue for a correction from more sober historians.
Never fear, dear reader. That day has arrived!
I started looking through the books I’ve been reading as we headed into the fall, and I saw some of what I expected. Books about politics, presidential candidates, and so on. But I noticed a continuation in my recent summer theme of issues of philosophy and aging.
Yes, we’ve got more of those books on this month’s list. What else will join them on the list? Read on to find out.
I recently read The Idea of Prison Abolition, a book by Tommie Shelby collecting his remarks in the Carl G. Hempel Lecture Series at Princeton. It’s a book on a polarizing issue, and its conclusions will satisfy few participants.
But that need not trouble us.
Shelby isn’t an abolitionist. Rather, he sets out to study the work of abolitionists in order to draw philosophical and practical insights about prisons. He draws insights both for our society and for the better societies we seek to build. Along the way, he draws key distinctions and offers sympathetic criticism of abolitionism. He also situates abolitionism within both black Marxist and black radical traditions.
It’s a worthwhile project, and I’ll take an extended look at it. I’ll also say a bit about how it clarifies and expands upon what I wrote about prison abolition some time ago.
So, the summer’s coming to an end, and that’s kind of a bummer.
There’s not a lot I can do about that. But maybe I can brighten up your day with some new reading material.
What have I got for you this month? I’ve got a couple of books on Epicurean philosophy and history. And some things to go along with those books.
Read on to find out…
Kieran Setiya, an MIT philosophy professor, wrote a philosophically informed self-help book. It’s called Midlife: A Philosophical Guide. That doesn’t sound like it would work. But I found it helpful as a person who just turned 40 and wants to think and write about it.
Setiya approaches midlife from the perspective of diagnosing and solving the ‘midlife crisis,’ which, as he points out in the first chapter, isn’t a particularly old idea. At least in its explicit form. Rather than a crisis, midlife is really more of a vantage point. The person at midlife can see both a long past and a long future. Maybe the past worked out for them, and maybe the future will.
Or not.
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