Category: FAQ (Page 2 of 3)

Oh, thanks for asking!

As many readers already know, I published my first book about six years ago. It’s called Classify and Label: The Unintended Marginalization of Social Groups. This book covers much of my early research focused on the social impact of classifications in the sciences and everyday life.

I’ve kicked around a number of book ideas since then, and I published an ebook on Trumpism (A Primer on Trumpism) before the 2020 election.

But lately my thoughts have turned toward foreign policy, particularly the idea that the U.S. left still doesn’t have much of a consensus on what a foreign policy should look like. I’ve written a series of posts on foreign policy on this blog, and I’m collecting that material and turning it into a book project! The basic idea here is that we need to build a left consensus on foreign policy. And we should organize that consensus around principles of international solidarity and working-class unity across borders. With that kind of consensus in place, we can do better organizing across borders.

The manuscript is pretty much done. I’m thinking now about publishing options.

Yes. Is that a problem?

After more than 2 years and a couple hundred posts, there’s a lot of content here on Base and Superstructure! Occasionally people ask me where they should begin. They want to know what to read first.

I’ve got enough anarchist in my political background that it’s a weird question. I think anywhere works. But that’s pretty unhelpful. Posts here cover related issues, and more recent posts build on earlier ones. Later posts where I use words in novel ways might be a bit disorienting to people who didn’t read the earlier ones.

And so, here’s my best recommendation. I’ve used the ‘categories’ function to sort the posts in this blog. I included a category called ‘Foundations‘ for those background posts I repeatedly build upon. Just click ‘Foundations‘ and then start reading from the beginning. Luckily there aren’t too many posts. I think only 7 or 8 at this point. So, it shouldn’t be all that large a reading load.

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Not much? Blogging hit its height about 10 years ago. But people can still make money on it through affiliate marketing, ads, etc. I do these things. And I have both a Patreon and an offer for freelance work.

However, blogs that make money tend to be ones that hit solid marketing topics or topics that are widely popular. Leftist blogging is a bit narrow, though. I cover topics with a good audience, but a relatively small one. If you’re looking to make big money, you should pick a different topic.

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OK, so I actually get this question more than I expected when I started the blog. The short answer: No.

The longer answer: Not yet, anyway. So far, I’ve written all content on the blog. I’m open to the possibility of a guest post. In fact, I’d love to see it. But I believe writers should be paid for their work. Even for more causal blog writing, I’d like to see writers getting paid 5-10 cents per word.

So, if I invited someone to do a 1000-1500 word guest post, I’d want to pay them $50-150 to do so. At the moment, I’m not really prepared to pay that kind of money for guest bloggers. I’ll probably say a bit more about the blog’s financials in a future FAQ. For now, let’s just say I’m not pulling in the kind of cash needed to pay people that much to write. Since I can’t pay, I’m not yet allowing guest posts.

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