Tuesday, September 11, 2012
What Are We Fighting For? posted by Richard Seymour
I have contributed an essay to this collection, What We Are Fighting For, published by Pluto Press. It follows from last year's conference at the ICA, which sought to deal with some of the political, strategic dilemmas posed by Occupy. It features Peter Hallward, David Graeber, John Holloway, Nina Power, Mark Fisher, Zillah Eisenstein, Dan Hind, Owen Jones, Hillary Wainwright and other excellent contributors. It also features, as I just mentioned, me. I'm in there. Buy it. Buy it or you're not my friend any more.*
*(See, this is what happens when you become a member of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia - non-stop hawking of your own wares, all relations subordinated to the cash nexus, all sentimental bonds drowned in the icy waters of egoistic calculation. No, but seriously.)
Labels: anticapitalism, counter-hegemony, occupy, revolution, socialism, socialist strategy
3:44:00 pm |
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
May Day posted by Richard Seymour
My latest in The Guardian is a brief history of international workers' day:If you see a history of May Day in the newspapers this year, it is most likely to recount the mystical, medieval origins of a pagan fertility festival. And though you may never have seen a maypole in your life, you will be assured that a ribboned piece of birchwood is the sign and sanction of May Day.Yet this has little to do with the reason that 1 May is celebrated in Britain, or why it is an international holiday, or why the Occupy movement is planning "global disruption" today. May Day is international workers day. As such, it is – in the words of Eric Hobsbawm – "the only unquestionable dent made by a secular movement in the Christian or any other official calendar". And its past is more rowdy than is suggested by the imagery of Morris dancers serenely waving hankies and bells around...
Labels: internationalism, may day, occupy, socialism, strike, trade unions, working class
2:04:00 pm |
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