marxism | Wright's Writing 2/4

Jun 10, 202122 min read

Introduction to my forthcoming book

If all goes well, I'll be publishing a book sometime in the not-too-distant future. It'll be called something like Popular Radicalism and...

Sep 10, 202012 min read

DuBois's "Black Reconstruction"

W. E. B. DuBois’s great work Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880, published in 1935, isn’t a very easy read. But it’s important as...

Sep 8, 202021 min read

"Revolution in the Twenty-First Century: A Reconsideration of Marxism"

[An article from several months ago.] In the age of COVID-19, it’s even more obvious than it’s been for at least a couple of decades that...

Sep 7, 20207 min read

Old notes on "the foundations of Christianity"

Karl Kautsky’s book Foundations of Christianity: A Study in Christian Origins (1908) is quite good. Despite his flaws and mistakes (both...

Sep 4, 202035 min read

The Workers' Bill

Here's the last section of chapter 6 of my dissertation on the unemployed in Chicago during the Depression. The previous two sections are...

Sep 3, 202054 min read

On the Unemployed Councils and the Chicago Workers' Committee

The last chapter of my dissertation on the unemployed in Chicago during the Great Depression is, I think, more interesting than the...

Aug 28, 202017 min read

A critique and defense of Plato’s “just state”

In case anyone out there has an interest in Plato, here's a paper from my student days in which I did the shamelessly anachronistic and...

Aug 26, 202016 min read

Methodological individualism vs. holism

If you're like me and are dumb enough to take an interest in abstruse debates among social scientists, you may have heard of the "debate"...

Aug 25, 20209 min read

Thou shalt not worship intellectuals

When I read old books or articles that are totally forgotten despite being brilliant, it saddens me. Siblings of Donald Trump publish...

Aug 24, 202025 min read

Why I am not a Leninist (nor an anarchist)

Years later, I still reproach myself for self-publishing my book on cooperatives, because that ensured it would have a limited...

Aug 23, 202025 min read

The radical dimensions of mass consciousness, part 2

Here's the sequel to this post, from the last chapter of my Ph.D. thesis. It's just an excerpt. The main point of it is to argue against...

Aug 23, 202045 min read

The radical dimensions of mass consciousness, part 1

I'm kind of a "vulgar Marxist." In this respect, I suppose I'm a lot like people in the American ruling class, except that their values...

Aug 21, 20209 min read

I wish stupidity were less common

This is going to be a whiny, self-pitying post. Just to warn you. The question is sometimes asked, "Why are stupid people frequently so...

Aug 17, 20207 min read

Fragments on Marxism and anarchism

Grad student notes from 2010.— One of the advantages of Marx’s equation of progress with the expansion of productive capacity is that it...

Aug 16, 20204 min read

A short critique of Albert Camus

Journal entry from 2007.— Reading The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (by Camus). Impressive book. Tries to answer the question I was...

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...

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 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 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...