If Music Could Talk

Not exactly theory, but more leftist contemporary analysis and advocacy:
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
Paul Mason, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

They're all quite approachable to the novice, I think.

Thanks!

Oh, shit, one more. The late Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? is excellent and important, dealing with the mental struggles we have in getting past capitalism.

Edit: If you've never read his controversial (in left circles) essay, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” it's well worth the time. It zeroes in on a key failure of the greater left in the last fifty years, emphasizing personal liberation over collective consciousness and action. Which is to say, made leftists more a strain of liberal.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdo ... ire-castle

Been feeling appalled at how callous I have become since deep-diving back into Marxism, and I have been swinging back towards anarchist pacifism and personalism. I don't really need the anger, resentment, and indifference to death that seems to well up inside me when I am immersed in the Marxist-Leninist worldview.

eumaas wrote: ↑

18 Jul 2018, 10:03am

Been feeling appalled at how callous I have become since deep-diving back into Marxism, and I have been swinging back towards anarchist pacifism and personalism. I don't really need the anger, resentment, and indifference to death that seems to well up inside me when I am immersed in the Marxist-Leninist worldview.

Did you hear the one about the Marxist comedian?
Nope, me neither.

lol, tankies:

Flex wrote: ↑

27 Jul 2018, 3:16pm

lol, tankies:

All you have to do is change "ruling class" to "deep state" and, voila, Alex Jones!

Post Scarcity Anarchism - Murray Bookchin. A few essays on technology, ecology, forms of freedom and the hopefulness of the late sixties, which the book is contemporary to. There's some beautiful writing in here and the closing essay, a comparison of revolutionary organizations, is particularly rewarding. Saying that, on the whole I found the book's reputation to be higher than it deserved. It takes some things for granted without further discussion or explanation and others are put into tedious, drawn out detail. It's a light recommend from me.

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

23 Aug 2018, 3:39am

Post Scarcity Anarchism - Murray Bookchin. A few essays on technology, ecology, forms of freedom and the hopefulness of the late sixties, which the book is contemporary to. There's some beautiful writing in here and the closing essay, a comparison of revolutionary organizations, is particularly rewarding. Saying that, on the whole I found the book's reputation to be higher than it deserved. It takes some things for granted without further discussion or explanation and others are put into tedious, drawn out detail. It's a light recommend from me.

"Post Scarcity"—now there's a term that will emerge as a historically specific blip.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

23 Aug 2018, 6:22am

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

23 Aug 2018, 3:39am

Post Scarcity Anarchism - Murray Bookchin. A few essays on technology, ecology, forms of freedom and the hopefulness of the late sixties, which the book is contemporary to. There's some beautiful writing in here and the closing essay, a comparison of revolutionary organizations, is particularly rewarding. Saying that, on the whole I found the book's reputation to be higher than it deserved. It takes some things for granted without further discussion or explanation and others are put into tedious, drawn out detail. It's a light recommend from me.

"Post Scarcity"—now there's a term that will emerge as a historically specific blip.

You're not wrong. Heading towards a situation which will, at first, have similar issues with food and water production as 200 years ago.

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

23 Aug 2018, 8:55am

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

23 Aug 2018, 6:22am

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

23 Aug 2018, 3:39am

Post Scarcity Anarchism - Murray Bookchin. A few essays on technology, ecology, forms of freedom and the hopefulness of the late sixties, which the book is contemporary to. There's some beautiful writing in here and the closing essay, a comparison of revolutionary organizations, is particularly rewarding. Saying that, on the whole I found the book's reputation to be higher than it deserved. It takes some things for granted without further discussion or explanation and others are put into tedious, drawn out detail. It's a light recommend from me.

"Post Scarcity"—now there's a term that will emerge as a historically specific blip.

You're not wrong. Heading towards a situation which will, at first, have similar issues with food and water production as 200 years ago.

Fundamentally, all modern ideologies and economics are rooted in the idea of prosperity and how to manage it. The entire idea of progress is measured in the notion of perpetual growth and development. Scarcity has always been a core component of existence, with the exception of the last 200 years, give or take a decade. We thought that we'd evolved past that, like eliminating disease, but like antibiotic-resistant strains, the normal of scarcity will reassert itself. Clinging to ideologies that take as an assumption that access to resources is assured and the only problem is how to enjoy all that ease and luxury is a major intellectual and psychological hurdle.

Reading this Gang of Four bio—started slowly, but it's emerged as a better-than-usual examination, tho more cultural politics would be better—and learned of a dadaist artist, John Heartfield, whom I'd never heard of. His grandson runs a site dedicated to his work, several of I'll likely by posters of at some point.
https://www.johnheartfield.com/HTML/index.html

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

18 Nov 2022, 9:48pm

https://thehardtimes.net/blog/now-that- ... al-skills/

*sensible chuckle*