Socialist feminism – a compass amidst an era of ‘ressentiment’?
The following is a recording of my lead-off at a Sheffield Workers’ Liberty public meeting on 15th October 2015. I hope you find it of some interest.
Author: camilabassi
Space, Place, and Post-Berlin Wall Techno
“You cannot really describe what happened at that time, during this cultural revolution, that’s so special about it. But I would say there was an incredible curiosity for the future.” Paul van Dyk, DJ and producer, Berlin (Sub Berlin: Story of Tresor) “If I hadn’t had this Tresor family, I would have had much more problems […]
Corbyn, naked moments, and the leviathan stripped bare
If capitalism were a sea monster, propelling and propelled by the waves of the sea, then very occasionally it is stripped bare to create a naked moment. And if dialectics are the waves of the sea, to-ing and fro-ing in constant motion, driven by contradictory forces and tensions, then some of us know that tides turn and […]
The inaugural Bolshy Cycle Ride
“On an antiquated, ridiculously heavy frankenstein’s monster of a bike, I rode up agonising hills and down wild descents. I was last home and felt it for days. And here’s the thing: my mind, my imagination, my sense of history and somehow my spirit of solidarity were all reinspired and reinvigorated, just as my craving […]
The political economy of cycling and doping as licensed fraud
“Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.” (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, Friedrich Engels, 1844) I. Brewer’s thesis Benjamin Brewer‘s paper, Commercialization in Professional Cycling 1950-2001: […]
All laid bare: cycling, commodity fetishism, and podium girls
Marx, the Wood Theft Law, and commodity fetishism While editor of the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, Karl Marx wrote a series of articles (in 1842) about a proposal in the Rhenish provincial assembly, on behalf of the forest owners, to stop the traditional practice of gathering (dead) wood by the peasants. Here, in debating the Wood Theft Law, an […]
The world of cycling, doping, and cheating exploded (in one report)
“The Commission did not hear from anyone credible in the sport who would give cycling a clean bill of health in the context of doping today.” (Cycling Independent Reform Commission: Report to the President of the Union Cycliste Internationale, March 2015) “he [Brian Cookson] needs to be talking about other things because this sport is not […]
Who is the real enemy of professional cycling – Lance Armstrong, or capital personified?
“As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value [i.e. profit]…” (Karl Marx, “The Working Day”, Capital: Volume One) “Marx does not advance a moral ‘right’ to an unscathed existence or something similar against the impositions […]
‘To the House of Rothschild!’ Socialism, charity, and Aladdin
“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. […] Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.” […]
Britain’s 2015 General Election: words from Antonio Gramsci
Foreword The writings of Marxists who have long past should neither be confined to their era of origination nor be reworked to the extent that eliminates from analysis of such work the context provoking them. Gramsci himself understood that ideas about the past may transcend the original context and communicate to us in the present, but only through rigorous empirical […]
Anaemic On A Bike 