Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Page 43 of 113

COVID: The Two-Year Anniversary

While the COVID-19 virus technically emerged in 2019, the pandemic got very real very quickly in the US in March 2020. It was a stark enough change that I still remember some of my ‘lasts’ from that March. I worked my last in-person shift on March 9. I attended my last in-person activist meeting on March 10. Last trip to the movie theater: March 11. And last trip to a coffee shop: Friday, March 13.

I’ve done a couple of those things again in 2021 or 2022. But it was a huge gap. It’s hard to believe it’s been a full 2 years since the start of the pandemic. It hit home for me a few weeks ago when the Englert Theatre notified me it had canceled a Dweezil Zappa show. A show originally scheduled for late March 2020. So, yeah, it’s been a long time.

It’s a good time to check in. Have we learned anything?

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March Reading List (2022)

And so, we have the third reading list of 2022! We’re at that point where spring might be coming, but we’re not sure. Do we catch up on the end of those winter readings? Or do we move along to something a bit warmer and sunnier?

I think I did a bit of both here. Continue on to see what I’ve been reading lately. I’ve even thrown in a couple of TV shows as a bonus! And let me know what you’re reading!

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The State and Revolution: Leftist Ambiguities

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on V.I. Lenin‘s essay ‘What is to Be Done?‘. I read it in a collection of essays called the Essential Works of Lenin. The same book contains his work The State and Revolution, which he wrote much later on the eve of the October Revolution.

In the other post, I noted some of the good and bad of Lenin. He thought a great deal about strategy and tactics. Along the way, he laid out a lot of insightful critique of magical thinking and bad strategy on the left. On the other hand, he clearly had an intolerant, authoritarian style and personality. This served him poorly, both as a philosopher and as a leader.

These same issues reappear in The State and Revolution. But we get something new in the later text: Lenin on the verge of power, now using a quasi-religious reading of the classic texts of Marx and Engels to justify his own views. One of Lenin’s uses of Engels struck me in particular.

With that in mind, let’s take a brief look at this line of thought in The State and Revolution.

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Corporate Politics 101: Structure Hoards Power

So, in the old days, companies built out huge, elaborate structures. They had tons of management layers. Why? In short, they wanted to prevent communication between leaders and workers. What better way to do that than force workers to go through 3 or 4 layers of bureaucrats before they get to anyone who could make a real decision?

But that got way too expensive for them. In the neoliberal era, companies started targeting middle managers (and other people who don’t work  – but don’t have the power to fight back) for layoffs. They did so mainly due to pressure to cut costs. Sure, companies can lay off their actual workers. But that has certain limits. You can’t lay off everyone who does real work. That would also eliminate profits!

We can’t have that now, can we?

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DSA Statement on Russian Invasion of Ukraine

So, the DSA released a statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And boy did liberals hate it! Liberals hated it a lot! You can read it at the link in the first sentence.

However, I’m not going to bother linking to any of the liberal critiques. You can read those at your own leisure. Or you can not read them at all. Whatever. Most of those critiques are so awful they don’t merit a response. All I really wanted to do here is provide a short summary of the statement and the context of it, as far as I can tell.

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