Anti-police riots in France for a few days/nights… Apparently the Establishment Socialist response is different compared with the infamous riots in the early 2000’s that pre-empted the popularity of books like The Coming Insurrection. This time, the Establishment Socialists are showing sympathy. Maybe they learned a lesson from the early 2000’s: that if they don’t make an attempt at relevance to the discontent then the anti-Establishment anarchists and leftists will.

Anthropology as a revolutionary project: David Graeber’s political legacy

https://perspectivesinanthropology.com/2023/07/01/anthropology-as-a-revolutionary-project-david-graebers-political-legacy/

I got to the part about Lenin and then read no further.

Archive 81

I finished watching Archive 81 today. I enjoyed it! I don’t usually spend a lot of time reflecting on TV shows that I watch and I don’t really plan to.

Marcuse Stuff

If there is a Frankfurt School thinker that I have spent much time with, it is Erich Fromm. The rest of them haven’t held me, despite some interest from time to time. Based on my interests, this shouldn’t be the case… social psychology is my focus and a lot of Frankfurt School stuff seems to be in that field more-or-less. It isn’t the Marxism that turns be off. I think it’s the Freudian psychoanalysis. Freudian categories annoy me. For example, I never wanted to read Eros and Civilization because from the title alone it just seems like too much would need to be simplified to write a book on such a topic that is under 300 pages long. Erich Fromm isn’t an exception to this, he just made his way into my life before I formed this aversion.

That said, I also realize that the Frankfurt School thinkers and Herbert Marcuse in particular didn’t just pump out pop-psychoanalysis drivel. There isn’t anything I am saying about this that goes below the surface of a few book titles. So, it has been interesting to read Marcuse’s thoughts on phenomenology. I haven’t finished any of the texts that I linked to yet. I definitely want to know what Marcuse was up to with all this, for how long he was up to it, and what his conclusions were. I’m also curious about how his work on phenomenology was received.

Paul Brissenden’s work on the I.W.W.

One of my focuses right now is a study of the I.W.W. and after reading Bob Black’s text Beautiful Losers, which deals with I.W.W. historiography, Brissenden’s work seemed to be the next place to go. I’m only a few chapters deep into The I.W.W. A study of American syndicalism, but it is already illuminating. There is a lot that I don’t know about the I.W.W. and this work offers exactly the sort of description that I am looking for. It’s difficult to keep track of all the organizations and people that play roles in this history, but I’m going to try. Part of that trying inspired this Garbage In:Garbage Out project. So here’s a few things I want to jot down…

The I.W.W. didn’t form as an anarcho-syndicalist organization and when it did become anarcho-syndicalist, it wasn’t because the French C.G.T. inspired them. A substantial amount of the principles had already been the practice of the Western Miners Union (am I already fucking this with the who’s who?) and they were a substantial amount of those whom formed the I.W.W. The opposition to craft unionism – as opposed to industrial unionism – was important. So was the failure of the Socialist Labor Party’s offshoot, the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. All of the former organizations had a bone to pick with the Socialist Party and the so-called conservative unions organized into the A.F.L. While there was an Eastern component to the original I.W.W., the Western component seems to be the engine of the organization’s beginnings. Finally, this character Daniel de Leon seems to have had a significant role, but I am not far enough into the book to understand it and not many other individuals have been discussed yet.

Daniel De Leon’s Socialism Versus Anarchism

I’m about half-way through this text. I’m engaging with it because of the engagement with I.W.W. history that I am already involved in. So far, it’s really bad. I don’t know if I’ll actually finish it. He had used Leon Czolgosz as his figure to represent anarchism, which is almost a strawman. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Czolgosz wasn’t an anarchist, but he certainly wasn’t representative of anarcho-syndicalism, which would be the appropriate anarchist school to critique in the text.

Garbage In:Garbage Out 00000000

Garbage In

Archive 81

Marcuse’s stuff on Phenomenology and Marxism

Paul Brissenden’s work on the I.W.W.

Daniel De Leon’s Socialism Vs Anarchism

Saved Daily News

Garbage Out

The Dangers of ‘Cool Girl’ Liberal Critics:

France arrests nearly 1,000 rioters in fourth night of violence

France’s Left Has Finally Woken Up to Racist Police Violence

Anthropology as a revolutionary project: David Graeber’s political legacy

Archive 81

Marcuse Stuff

Paul Brissenden’s work on the I.W.W.

Daniel De Leon’s Socialism Versus Anarchism

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