Thoughts on classical fascism
[Student notes from ten years ago.] Reading Robert A. Brady’s classic Business as a System of Power (1943), which influenced Chomsky....
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Jul 30, 202016 min read
The heartbreak of staggering self-consciousness
Today I came across a copy of Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and was reminded of myself in my twenties, when I was...
Jun 29, 202015 min read
Laboring Against Racism: The Textile Workers Union of America in the South during the 1960s
[An old student paper.] The conventional understanding of labor unions and their membership in the 1960s is of a conservative and...
Jun 28, 20207 min read
Old student notes on random philosophy articles
Sometimes I like to return to philosophy in order to get the sort of intellectual stimulation that reading history doesn't provide. E.g.,...
Jun 26, 20208 min read
Capitalism and colonialism
As I frequently and tiresomely reiterate, academic writing tends toward sophistry, superficiality, and obscurantism. Personally, my...
Jun 16, 20202 min read
Primary sources on Communists and the unemployed during the Great Depression
While writing my PhD dissertation a few years ago ("Down But Not Out: The Unemployed in Chicago during the Great Depression"), I...
Jun 14, 202019 min read
Critical remarks on Thomas Nagel
[From 2009.] I’m reading Thomas Nagel’s famous book The View From Nowhere (1986). Nagel seems more sensible than most contemporary...
Jun 13, 20206 min read
Gender norms in a Chilean copper mine
[This was supposed to be a short outline for a student presentation I had to give. So excuse the roughness. Here are more book reviews.]...
Jun 12, 20204 min read
Student notes on "Poor People's Movements"
[Maybe it's self-indulgent of me to keep posting old notes from my student years, but just in case anyone out there gives a shit, I guess...
Jun 9, 20208 min read
Old syllabus and lecture notes
[Here are some notes from the first syllabus I wrote for the U.S. History After 1865 survey course. Below them are overly ambitious notes...
Jun 8, 20207 min read
Appreciative and not-so-appreciative thoughts on cultural theory
[These notes, for what they're worth, are from, respectively, 2010 and 2018.] Reading Raymond Williams’ classic Marxism and Literature...
Jun 6, 202016 min read
Rambling reflections on Camille Paglia
I've been reading Camille Paglia's collection of essays Sex, Art, and American Culture (1992). I disagree with a lot of Paglia's...
Jul 30, 201918 min read
Notes on a radical interpretation of the Cold War
[Also here]. I’ve been reading Gabriel and Joyce Kolko’s classic The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945–54...
Jul 27, 20195 min read
On the fight against misogyny
As a leftist, "I wish we could all just get along." Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe it would get boring pretty quickly. But a little less...
Jul 24, 201919 min read
A little misanthropy can be a healthy thing
This is from a letter Sigmund Freud wrote to his pastor friend Oskar Pfister: I do not break my head very much about good and evil, but I...
Jul 22, 201910 min read
Marxist theories of imperialism
[Years ago I took notes on the book mentioned below, which I thought I'd post here for the heck of it. Maybe someone will find them...
Jul 19, 20197 min read
A plea for honesty in discussions of sex and gender
A recent article of mine, called "Political Correctness Is Getting Out of Hand," elicited some angry emails. Not from people who...
Jul 19, 20193 min read
Thoughts on planning vs. the market
Been reading The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism. It's a good...
Jul 16, 20197 min read
Thoughts from the dark
Lugubrious. That's the word for how I'm feeling tonight. That and self-indulgent. So I thought I'd write a blog post. These midnight...
Jul 11, 201910 min read
What will "the revolution" look like?
Here's a blog post for you masochists who are interested in the debates that go on among Marxist intellectuals over questions around...
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