The Communist Manifesto Turns 160
Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation:
This year marks the 160th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto and capitalism—a k a “free enterprise”—seems willing to observe the occasion by dropping dead. On Monday night, some pundits were warning that the ATMs might run dry and hinting that the only safe investment left is canned beans. Apocalypse or extortion? No one seems to know, though the populist part of the populace has been leaning toward the latter. An e-mail whipping around the web this morning has the subject line “Sign on Wall Street yesterday,” and shows a hand-lettered cardboard sign saying, “JUMP! You Fuckers!”
The Manifesto makes for quaint reading today. All that talk about “production,” for example: Did they actually make things in those days? Did the proletariat really slave away in factories instead of call centers? But on one point Marx and Engels proved right: within capitalist societies, or at least the kind of wildly unregulated capitalism America has had, the rich got richer, the workers got poorer, and the erstwhile middle class has been sliding toward ruin. The last two outcomes are what Marx called “immiseration,” which, in translation, is the process you’re undergoing when you have cancer and no health insurance or a mortgage payment due and no paycheck coming in.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
The Monstrous Body of Capital
Rough Theory has posted links to and excerpts from Steven Shaviro’s series of reflections on Capital, all of which are worth reading.
I haven’t watched all of these yet, but they look useful for anyone wishing to jump further into Hegel and Marx without going straight into the deep-end head-first.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey
Professor David Harvey of the City University of New York is currently serializing 13, two-hour lectures of a close reading of Karl Marx’s Capital. If you don’t want to watch them in your browser window, you can check out the video feed and download them as .MOV for later viewing. (Via Rough Theory.)