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Sasha Lilley (ed.), Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (Oakland: PM Press, 2011)

I

It was late when she arrived at the country road. The moon, invisible behind the thin cloud cover, spread an unreal ghostly blue light; the sharply arched sky marked off against the dark round earth. Rita could not look deeply enough into this light – simultaneously soft and hard – for which she had no name and knew no equivalent.

Suddenly, to her left, an island of light descended down to the border between sky and earth.

While the condition of a people is prosperous, and uninterrupted by violent and sudden changes, insanity never exceeds. But when the dispensations of Providence fail of their accustomed bounteousness, or man by trouble is afflicted beyond his nature, or by his own wilfulness o’erleaps the bounds which nature and reason define; then insanity is engendered; and an increased number of lunatics indefinitely swells the catalogues of human calamities. -- G. M. Burrows, 1820²

Preface by Frigga Haug (November 2011): Victory in Defeat

Of course, the good terrorists are those who respond to the interests of the State, those who become allied with them. Bear in mind that the governments of Puerto Rico and the US very much feared the development of Puerto Rican independence movements in the 60's and the 70's.

You're old, they think you're senile then they feel they can wipe your mouth while you're talking. -- Kato Laszlo Roth

Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011)

I

In the recently published MEGA² volumes (I/30 to I/32), we find all of Engels’ texts from the period after Marx’s death except for his work on Capital.¹ They shed new and consistent light not only on Engels' understanding of theoretical issues, but more especially on his ability to analyze concrete problems, e.g. those arising out of the new historical situation following mass industrial action of workers in Germany and Great Britain in 1889 and the founding of the new International in the same year.

In addition to a radical modification of the preexisting economic model, Vietnam’s Doi Moi (renovation)¹ has also entailed a gradual process of institutional adaptation without altering the core components of the country’s political system. The introduction of liberal market economy principles since the late 1980s has co-existed with both a Marxist single-party institutional architecture and an ideological corpus envisioning socialist democracy.

Partially stimulated by the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008, the issue of universal values is hotly debated in present-day China. The excellent performance and altruistic virtues that Chinese people displayed in response to this catastrophic event were highly praised at home and abroad. However, there are different interpretations of this phenomenon.

Mackenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (London/New York: Verso, 2011).

Richard Gilman-Opalsky, Spectacular Capitalism: Guy Debord and the Practice of Radical Philosophy (London/New York: Minor Compositions/Autonomedia, 2011).