Currently I’m reading Nina Burton’s ‘Livets tunna väggar’ which translate to something like Walls of Life. It’s a book by a Swedish writer who inherits her mother’s summer house. When she wants to renovate it, she finds all sort of life around and in the house. She uses said life to teach you something about the intellect of various insects and animals, which goes deeper than humans normally think.
It’s a very interesting book that makes me think about non-human life even more. Creatures that are thousands of times smaller than we are have such complex societal structures. Humans have overcommodified animal life for centuries now, seeing them as property and commodities instead of complex and intelligent life forms.
What are you reading?
I am a strange loop https://archive.org/details/iamstrangeloop00hofs
Thanks to the latest Macro N Cheese podcast episode, I’ve ordered a copy of Carlos García Hernández’s Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism through Modern Monetary Theory. It seems to be hard to find physical copies of it in the US right now (perhaps because it’s new), so I have to wait two weeks for it to arrive from Australia. Amazon & Kobo have ebook versions.
Edit: I suspect what I may eventually come to find that this is essentially what socialism with Chinese characteristics is, but first I’ll need to learn more about what actually goes on in China.
I hadn’t heard of Hernández before, but I was intrigued by the title so I gave it a listen. He said he doesn’t subscribe to dialectical materialism and his entire framework of defining socialism without even considering the ownership of the means of production strikes me as deeply idealistic, so I’m not so sure how seriously I want to take his work.
I also just ordered Carlos Martínez’s new book, The East is Still Red – Chinese socialism in the 21st century. He contributes to Midwestern Marx.
He comes from a philosophy background, and I’m not really interested in his weird Kant vs Hegel diversion, but for his attempt to synthesize fiat money & socialism, which is what I suspect China has already achieved. China is allowing some limited private ownership of the means of production, and they have sovereign fiat money.
As far as I know (which isn’t all that much) fiat money/Keynesianism/MMT hadn’t yet been developed when Marx was writing on capital. I have a suspicion that these innovations may have “resolved” some of capitalism’s internal contradictions, such that it might never collapse on its own. For instance, did Marx consider that the State might just print money to bail out the too-big-to-fail monopolies indefinitely, or that the State might prop the monopolies up by becoming their buyer of last resort? American capitalism seems to have entered uncharted territory.
such that it might never collapse on its own.
It certainly made capitalism more stable for a while, but once the US runs out of imperial power and those trillions of dollars in debt aren’t backed by any real goods they’ll get in deep trouble.
That sounds really interesting!
I’m listening to:
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Wretched of the Earth - I’ve read about half of it in the past, but I’d like to finish it.
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At the Earth’s Core - Edgar Rice Burroughs - neat ideas unfortunately locked in the authors views on race and humanity.
And reading:
- Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey - I like the ecology bits, but he’s somewhat reactionary and unfocused. Pretty writing, though.
Cool! I love thinking about non human life. They’re essentially aliens to me. I’ve tried to overcome some fear of bugs being on me so I can hold them. Also saw my first owl (that wasn’t a brief glimpse at night flying) last week…I forgot their heads can turn 180° 😅
I’m reading “Laurus”, a translation of a book by Eugene Vodolazkin. 14th century Russian medieval peasant boy becomes a holy fool on a pilgrimage for God in the midst of plague. I haven’t read many books in my adult life but as far as I know, it’s my favorite (second read).
Currently reading Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media by Parenti :). A great book, but also somewhat depressing. Even though it’s quite old, it definitely still holds up. It kind of seems like nothing has changed.
Have I got a takedown for you: The Mainstream and the Margins: Noam Chomsky vs. Michael Parenti
Edit: Lorenzo’s a funny guy, if you can still find his work, some of which requires elbow grease & the Wayback Machine.
Example: 5 people who deserve as much shit as Banksy for their half-baked politics
