Nate Hagens on Century of the Self(less)

Nate Hagens, the ex-vice president of Lehman Brothers turned generalist Limits to Growth scholar, wrote and article that introduced me to the wonderful documentary 'The Century of the Self', about how psychoanalysis was used in pubic relations and advertisement to bring consumerism and stable, western style democracy to a whole new level. Here is the link to the article for theoildrum.com on the BBC documentary 'Century of the Self'. I seriously recommend both the article and the documentary.

"I've recently rewatched The Century of the Self (COTS), a four part BBC special on the birth and explosion of public relations/advertising, and it's impact on American culture. The series documents how the Freudian theory of subconscious irrational behavior was seized on and manipulated by governments and businesses in the 21st century, initially spearheaded by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and consultant to several administrations (Coolidge, Roosevelt, Wilson per COTS). While watching, I had to agree that the 20th century WAS the century of the self, and in no small part from the cultural push/pull of advertising/media. The films creator, Adam Curtis, seemed to suggest that studying the behaviors of individuals is interesting, but that the real power to move societies lies in the ability to impact the psychology of crowds, via appealing to subconscious desires (for freedom, status, etc.)"

Documentary 'The Century of the Self, by Adam Curtis and the BBC

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Leo Panitch: Still a Marxist after All

In this lecture, Leo Panitch explains his positive but critical relation to Marx and how to understand current events, like the crisis, in Marxist terms. He does this not by just labelling current events with Marxist language, but is interested in how different capitalisms came to pass and how to transcend them in today's world. This is what makes Panitch very stimulating to read and listen to.

He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

He is a prominent exponent of Marxism who sees his own work as theoretically innovative within that tradition, because he maintains that the dominance of the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century can't be understood using theories of imperialism that are themselves a century old.

He has argued, for example, that the concept of imperialism developed for the Victorian era over-emphasized the matter of the export of capital. Yet if one uses that as a yardstick today (he reasons) Great Britain is more a victim of U.S. imperialism than Kenya -- since American investors have much more at stake in the former than in the latter. The advanced industrial nations, in other words, are interpenetrating -- exporting capital to one another, not to the 'South,' and this requires a great deal of revision in Marxist-Leninist models.

A vast amount of his publications can be found here.

Panitch has also argued that Marx was wrong to contend that the rise of trade unions would develop a socialistic class-consciousness in the working class. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."

Timeline: Historical overview of Afghanistan

Stop the War officer John Rees provides a short history of imperialist intervention and local resistance in Afghanistan. Timeline is a series of programmes on political history presented by John Rees and produced by the Islam Channel [ http://www.islamchannel.tv ].

Stop the war coalition: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

http://www.counterfire.org

Marxism 2009: some highlights

Unfortunately, finishing my bachelors this summer turned out to mean I could not attend Marxism festival 2009 in London. However, some of the most prominent speakers have had their speeches filmed and posted on Youtube.

Slavoj Žižek on reinventing socialism and what it means to be a revolutionary today.



Tariq Ali on recent international politics: Obama, Pakistan and the US empire.



More can be found here, including speeches by David Harvey, Chris Harman, and Alex Callinicos (the diehard leninist).

Charles Hall in New Scientist -Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil

One of my favourite academics who address the importance of natural sciences to economic issues is the loud-voiced Charles Hall. He managed to get the undiluted message of the limits to growth published right there in the New Scientist. His article is really worth a good look.

"The world today faces enormous problems related to population and resources. These ideas were discussed intelligently and, for the most part, accurately in many papers from the middle of the last century, but then they largely disappeared from scientific and public discussion, in part because of an inaccurate understanding of both what those earlier papers said and the validity of many of their predictions. Most environmental science textbooks focus far more on the adverse impacts of fossil fuels than on the implications
of our overwhelming economic and even nutritional dependence on them. The failure today to bring the potential reality and implications of peak oil, indeed of peak everything, into scientific discourse and teaching is a grave threat to industrial society.

(...)

No substitutes for oil have been developed on anything like the scale required, and most are very poor net energy performers. Despite considerable potential, renewable sources (other than hydropower or traditional wood) currently provide less than 1 percent of the energy used in both the U.S. and the world, and the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is generally much greater than the total production (let alone increase) in electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaics. Our new sources of “green” energy are simply increasing along with (rather than displacing) all of the traditional ones. If we are to resolve these issues, including the important one of climate change, in any meaningful way, we need to make them again central to education at all levels of our universities, and to debate and even stand up to those who negate their importance, for we have few great intellectual leaders on these issues today. We must teach economics from a biophysical as well as a social perspective. Only then do we have any chance of understanding or solving these problems."

Charles Hall Speaking at ASPO VII in Barcelona, October 2008