Blog of the Week!

Congratulations to Auntie Vulgar, The Karl Marx Blog of the Week.™

Fantastic blog by a student studying Social Theory his blog focuses on critical Theory "to be clear, by 'critical-theory' I generally mean the various Marxist schools."

Included are tags for Reading Capital, though unlike my aborted attempts to read Grundrisse, as grad student his is quite serious.

Gang of Four and Pop Music as Marxist Critical Theory

Here's something you don't see too often:

A post-punk rock band that talks about Marxist Social Theory and Critical Theory. They even have a song called Why Theory?

Best thing about it is how they sound. They a music first band that just happens to discuss things that readers of this blog will love.

Go here for a list of sample audio clips. Here is the Wiki on the name Gang of 4.

"On their second album Solid Gold, the postpunk rock group Gang of Four openly assert their intention to approach pop music as critical theory with a song titled, appropriately enough, "Why Theory?"

In answer to their own query of why critical theory should have a place in rock music, the band sings "Each day seems like a natural fact / And what we think changes how we act." The critical theory that Gang of Four present in their music is a Marxist one centered on the premise that before revolt can take place, one must first penetrate through the consciousness that is determined by capitalistic ideology in order to understand why a revolution is necessary.

Gang of Four locate their Marxist theory in the Althusserian notion of expressing resistance through the contradictions inherent in the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) of the corporate-controlled rock music industry, and the way in which Gang of Four express their theory of Marxist thought is by inducing in the listener an alternative consciousness achieved through contradictions and disorientations that serve to mirror the very sense of disorientation and contradiction that capitalistic consciousness creates."

Thanks to Political Theory Daily for the link.

Interview with Paul LeBlanc

From Monthly Review:

Paul LeBlanc is what I have called an "organic intellectual," a scholar and activist who has risen directly out of the working class. Paul is the author of many books, including A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (Humanity Books, 1999) and Black Liberation and the American Dream (Humanity Books 2003), and is an internationally known and respected historian of the life and works of Rosa Luxemburg.

The Noneconomic Objections to Capitalism.

Ludwig von Mises recognizes five objections to Capitalism. This post is excerpted from Part IV of his The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality.

I will post more on this soon, but I wanted to get the word out first.

The difficulty in finding Marx.

A blogger asks "Why is it that, as Economics students in the American academia, we are only trained with the (conservative) Smith and (liberal) Keynesian variety, with Smith getting the upper hand, and not even exposed to the equally valid theory of economic forces by Karl Marx?"

He then points out the sad state Marxist thought in typical American universities "Sadly enough, this extends even to graduate school. Marx is not even considered by the majority of Philosophy departments in the U.S. as a philosopher. One can hardly find a Philosophy course devoted to Marx, his influence, and/or his followers."

Das Capital as Literature.

The poet of dialectics

Marx's masterpeice is deconstructed as literture, rather than scientific prose. Nice article that is an "edited extract from Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography, part of a series, Books that Shook the World, published this month by Atlantic and to be serialised in Review in coming weeks."

From the review...

"Karl Marx's Das Kapital is a ground-breaking work of economic analysis. But, argues Francis Wheen, it is also an unfinished literary masterpiece which, with its multi-layered structure, can be read as a Gothic novel, a Victorian melodrama, a Greek tragedy or a Swiftian satire."

Source: A&L Daily

What Do We Mean By Anti-Capitalism?

The first of a three part series by Wayne Price answering the question of what we mean by anti-capitalist.

"Many activists call themselves “anti-capitalist.” But this is a negative; what should we be for? Since anti-capitalists wish to find an alternative to the current system, it is necessary to examine the nature of societies which claim to have once replaced capitalism, namely the former Soviet Union and similar nations. "