Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Page 2 of 127

“Can a Woman Win the Presidency?”

Politicos from all over the Democratic Party have been declaring for the last year that a woman can’t win the presidency. Even Michelle Obama made the claim!

What’s up with that?

Let me start by saying the claim is obvious baloney. But once we’ve established the utter foolishness of the claim, we have to figure out what to do. Why do people keep making claims this like?

I’m going to provide an error theory to explain it. We’ll begin from the point that the claim centers on certain professional class liberal anxieties.

And it says more about them than it says about the world.

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Orwell on the Left

I’ve hit a flurry of interest in George Orwell in the last 6 months. My partner and I read a book of essays on Orwell by Rebecca Solnit – Orwell’s Roses – and then we watched a film on him at a local film festival.

In that spirit, I bought a book of short Orwell essays. In those essays, his criticisms of the left – written in the early 1940s, during World War II! – sparked my interest. I found the criticisms still relevant today, but relevant to a different group.

Let’s take a moment to look into this.

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Trump’s (Lack of) Deportation Strategy

Journalist Oliver Eagleton begins a recent article in Jacobin by warning us against “sanewashing” Donald Trump. The idea? We shouldn’t attribute any deeper strategy or long-term plan to Trump, because that’s not how he thinks. Rather, short-term gain and perceived self-interest drive him.

Naturally, Eagleton goes on to disregard this warning. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ll say a brief word here about the web Eagleton thinks the Trumpists are spinning.

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Marx’s Ethical Vision

Many authors to try explain Marx to puzzled readers. Vanessa Christina Wills’s Marx’s Ethical Vision is one of the best books on the topic.

Wills takes a cluster of ideas – the ethical content of Marx’s philosophy – and draws out these themes over the course of his career. Other Marx books I highly recommend – such as David’s Harvey’s commentaries on Capital – tend to focus on a deep reading of a specific text.

I think Wills’s project is more difficult to pull off. But she does it remarkably well.

Let’s take a look at Marx’s Ethical Vision.

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