This is a fascinating insight into the post 1917 bolshevik blues, on the problem of so-called ‘socialist’ money. Any resemblance to this of course, is purely coincidental.

On Ratgeb Raoul Vaneigem took up the pen name of Ratgeb. The original Ratgeb was a radical in the 1500s. Vaneigem after he resigned from the Situationist International in the 1970s never recovered; without a critical base around him he produced second-rate materials. The worse of all was The Book Of Pleasures. Not much pleasure [...]

Great overview of that book’s life and times here

The Burgin Beano: where the usual bores tried to graft 1917 onto 1968 In 2008, London’s Conway Hole played host to a celebration of May 1968. The entire show was organized by WRP Burgin. Principia Dialectica were outside, attempting to crowbar a few good people away from the dire politics of orthodox marxism. The brightest [...]

This review of a new book suggests that Allende chose to die as a symbol of geniune libertarian socialism, refusing to take the road towards totalitarianism as Castro did. Allende was close to the Cuban regime, with many advisors, but maintained his independence, believing that the machinery of civil society could be used to the [...]

Another master class from Principia Dialectica in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: The Association of Musical Marxists have just brought out another boring book. (Sorry Ben, but didn’t you yourself say at a recent AMM jamboree that your book on William Blake is only aimed at fellow aficionados of Blake, so it is [...]

Ex Althusserian Jacques Bidet wastes much ink explaining that we should faece facts, and that we can’t smash the cystern But as the reviewer points out, a recent book on the revolutionary Chartists steers a clearer path between the ‘liberal egalitarian’ social theorists of today and the rocks of a warmed over Althusserianism

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jul/12/violent-visions-slavoj-zizek/

‘Hitler wasn’t violent enough’ – Zizek The Guardian almost got it right. Their title for the Zizek piece was Genius or the Borat of philosophy? It ought to have been ZIZEK: THE BORAT OF PHILOSOPHY. Decca Aitkenhead met Slavoj Zizek (Grauniad, 11 June , 2012) “Slavoj Zizek does not know the number of his own [...]

Like permafrost, Ticktinism moves to envelop other habitats. The London based Cheese and Whiners seem to have been struck down by it, the Libcommers/Aufhebeners like it as window dressing too. Hillel Ticktin, editor in chief of the journal Critique, posits the idea that the Soviet Union did not operate on the basis of the capitalist [...]