Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
We have two at-large city council seats on the ballot in Iowa City in November 2023. For anyone who doesn’t know this, all the candidates go on the same ballot and the top 2 candidates win. Voters pick 2 from the total list of names.
Let’s talk about how it’s going to go down.
Bhaskar Sunkara kicked up a bit of a storm when he first wrote about ‘anarcho-liberalism’ in 2011. Sunkara wrote about this odd term as an extension of the politics of the New Left. Specifically the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s. And when he used the term, Sunkara called to mind two things: first, a rejection of the mass working class institutions and politics of the left, and second, ‘revolutionary’ critique and action from people and small groups.
Let me narrow this down a bit in a way that readers might apply to their local situations. Anarcho-liberalism often amounts to a kind of knee-jerk cynicism and opposition toward government, especially at the local level. And it lacks any serious plan to build a movement to take power in the interests of the working class.
Insofar as anarcho-liberalism allows for an alternative, it falls back on NGOs, non-profits, or ‘mutual aid.’ And these are the best options. At its worst, it fails to go beyond ‘pestering’ local officials with no deeper goal.
In short, it’s a mess. And it has its backers in Iowa City.
Let’s talk a bit about that.
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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