Books Jul 8, 2010 at 4:00 am

Books to Keep You from Being Stupid This Summer

Comments

2
Thank you Charles! I am going to study the course this summer.
3
Charles, I'm very curious what country, either current or in the past 30 years or so, comes closest to what you would consider an ideal form of government. I really would like to know and would greatly appreciate a response.

Thanks
4
With the series and its meaty companion (it's over 350 pages),

This alone proves you to be not only foreign-educated but among the more adept writers, Charles: you know the difference between "its" and "it's" and how to use them both capably in the same sentence.

Will you be suggesting Anthony Trollope's 1875 tome The Way We Live Now as an appropriate summer fiction read?
5
Our Mutual Friend is still relevant to the moment and, for that matter, so is the Way We Live Now (for precisely the decomposition talked about at the end of the article).
6
Read Marx and you will find he had this greedy scumbag system down perfect in the 1850's. You will find Marxism has nothing to do with the USSR or China and that Glenn Beck and his ilk are total and and complete ignorant fools. Bill Clinton was a terrible and evil President - at least Bush didn't attempt to lie about his corruption. And the American People are living in a mythological world of capitalist b.s. and paying for their own destruction. Maybe we have a 100 years...read Marx - it is all there!
7
David Harvey profile on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harve…)

"Reading Capital" Lectures

http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/
8
But if I read Marx, then I'll be forced to question my liberal use of the word Socialist to describe everything I am uncomfortable with.

Nice try, SOCIALISTS!
9
Check out this interview with David Harvey from Paper Tiger TV, a long-running NYC media project/collective:

http://blog.papertiger.org/2009/12/12/ex…
10
Hmm I think the Paper Tiger link didn't post... ah well, you can go to "blog.papertiger.org" and search for "David Harvey" and you'll see what I mean.
12
"...wealth in the form of incomes?"

That's heavy stuff. Nothing like some good old Marxist theory to make the WaMu acquisition sound like a magical spell. Dude, have you ever bought a bank...on weed??
13
this is the only book review i've ever read (my eyes gloss over the others). Finally, something interesting to read. thanks
14
That is a fantastic recommendation Charles... I spent last weekend at the beach in Madison Park reading the Communist Manifesto and Marx for Beginners. This'll teach those low brow friends of mine razz me over my Summer reading choices.
15
I am a little startled by your piece, Mr. Mudede. First, before and after 2008--you say "great for capitalism" before and after 2008 "crisis." Senseless: capitalism has a long history of integrating every crisis, so there really is not a crisis. Crisis is a scare-word, not a concept. Or it's a concept without a referent. Second, Harvey has always toed the line on utopian thought (save the future); to relate his notion of social change (from Marx) to Deleuze's 'assemblages' is misleading--you say that Harvey-Marx insist on the independence of domains (work, family, State, culture), which is really from Althusser; Deleuze was not interested in that question of specific autonomy. Rather, in A Thousand Plateaus, assemblages are tetravalent--affecting expression, form, territories and deterritorialization. The Marxist assemblage in the U.S. has deterritorialized itself to university discourse.
On the value question, please see Baudrillard's re-figuring of that discourse in Political Economy of the Sign...or Symbolic Exchange and Death.
16
Thanks a lot for the reccomendation. I started listening to the the podcasts and for now am totally gripped. I am a psychoanalyst in training and have been reading quite a bit of philosophy in the last couple of years, having completed the Phenom. of Spirit, Crtique of Reason, and lots of Adorno. Looks like Das Capital will be my next stop. Thanks again. Love your work.
17
Great summer reading recommendation!

There's a Marx summer reading series going on in the U-District every other Wednesday night. The other day was the German Ideology. Sections of Capital will be discussed in mid-August.

More details here: http://isoseattle.blogspot.com/2010/07/f…
18
You write, "Indeed, Harvey does something that would shock postmodern philosophers like Manuel De Landa: He reads in Marx a theory of social change that's not connected to Hegel's totality but Gilles Deleuze's assemblages!"

I'm not sure what you meant by this. I don't get how De Landa is a postmodernist. Also, De Landa is heavily influenced by Gilles Deleuze, and Marx is one of Deleuze's most referenced thinkers. Yes, it's true that De Landa does not draw much influence from Deleuze's readings of Marx, but surely he is aware of them.

Also, Hardt and Negri are heavily influenced by Deleuze, so I'm not sure what you meant by "To think in this way is to think like Deleuze. To think in this way also avoids something that the other famous Marxists of our moment, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, fail to avoid: economism—the belief that the developments in capitalist technologies or in the mode of production will lead to the liberation of the exploited."

That may (or may not) be an accurate way of describing Hardt and Negri's thought, but they definitely acknowledge Deleuze as an influence and are aware of his dynamic, process-based view of reality.

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