It was one of those ‘snap to attention' statements. Political theorist Jodi Dean was asked, "What is the point of theory?" Her response? "It is to provide weapons." Dean was speaking metaphorically of course, but the quote resonated. The world we find ourselves in needs a theory that can cut through the leaden fog that says we have, for better or worse, the best world we can hope for.
Aaron Leonard
Aaron Leonard is a journalist and writer. He is a regular contributor to the History New Network (HNN.US), rabble.ca, truthout.org, PhysicsWorld.com and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.Finkelstein's hope for Gaza
This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences in the Gaza Invasion
(Or Books,
2010;
$20.00)
On one level Norman Finkelstein's new book, This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences in the Gaza Invasion, on Israel's 2008 invasion of Gaza does not reveal much new. It consists of information that has made its way to the public realm over the past year. Yet he brings together the disparate pieces of the event to sharp effect. There is a clear sense that the story has been insulted by the casualness of attention to it.
Capitalism, the infernal machine: An interview with Frederic Jameson
Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One
(Verso Books,
2011;
$31.00)
The literary critic and Marxist political theorist, Fredric Jameson, has written Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One, a book that revisits Karl Marx's most important work, Capital.
On one level it may seem odd evaluating a book almost 150 years old. How much relevance and practical applicability could it have to the world we currently inhabit? Yet to overlook Capital -- as is too often the case -- is to miss its searing critique and keen insight.
New York minutes: Observations and aims in Occupy Wall Street
There is a growing contention over what Occupy Wall Street is all about, "its core message" as the news media says. Advice is coming from every quarter about this, some good, some well meaning if naive, and some with a pronounced agenda. So perhaps it would be good to look at things a bit more sweepingly. What is happening here? What is the message?
First, let's start with matters of space, what does it tell us? The encampment is set up on a plaza called Zuccotti Park [renamed Liberty Square]. This is a park that 10 years ago stood directly in front of the charred remnants of what was the World Trade Center. It was site of a horror that quickly morphed into a chauvinist shrine for U.S. military adventures, first in Afghanistan then Iraq.
Interview with Norman Finkelstein: The Goldstone recantation
On April 1, the Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who chaired the UN fact-finding mission on the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza. In it he suggested he'd gotten things wrong, writing, "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." The op-ed led to an immediate flurry of articles and commentary suggesting the entire report -- and by implication the very notion that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza -- was suspect.
Remembering communism
The Idea of Communism
(Seagull Books,
2009;
$18.50)
Marx and Engels had no idea what they were setting loose in 1848 when they wrote The Communist Manifesto -- and they would be the first to admit it. That's the sense you get reading Tariq Ali's The Idea of Communism a short book in the "What Was Communism" series. It is no longer 1991. The Soviet Union is gone. Rather than a communist utopia China resembles aspects of Dickens' England ... on methamphetamine. A few anomalies like Cuba and Korea remain, but the safe money is that they will not remain thus.