The illusion of Britishness (18 November 2006)
New Labour tells us that ethnic minorities need to adopt British values. Anindya Bhattacharyya examines their vision of “Britishness” and finds it wanting
Duncan Hallas on permanent factions
There is controversy about permanent factions inside the SWP. I turned to Duncan Hallas, one of our tradition’s founders, to dig out the original political rationale for banning such formations. This cuts through some sophistry on this question flying about of late.
Marx, Hegel and the dialectic
The configuration of dialectics and materialism in Marx is intimately connected with his revolutionary practice. If you want to do justice to that tradition, you have to grapple with that intellectual history and those ideas. That’s one reason why the dialectic is still a live issue today.
Breivik: What is fascism?
My contribution to the ebook On Utøya edited Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze. “Breivik was typically presented as lone madman whose inner working could not be rationally fathomed. To ascribe political motives to his acts disrespected the dead.”
Praxis makes perfect
March 2006 issue of Socialist Review review of Alex Callinicos’s The Resources Of Critique, Slavoj Zizek’s The Parallax View, and Alain Badiou’s two major works, Being and Event and Logics of Worlds.
Review of Badiou’s The Meaning of Sarkozy
A review of Alain Badiou’s book The Meaning of Sarkozy, first published in the March 2009 issue of Socialist Review. “Badiou is insightful and funny, especially when he gleefully castigates France’s corrupt political elites and idiotic business classes.”
Banning the EDL is ineffective, counter-productive and demobilising
Our urgent task is to create an anti-fascist, anti-racist mass movement that can head off the EDL/BNP while feeding into and strengthening wider working class struggles. We must defeat dismal calls for demobilisation.
Badiou on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia
Alain Badiou wrote a short piece for Le Monde last month on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. It’s already been translated into English a couple of times (on the … Continue reading
Down with the ten capitalist ministers
[originally published on Lenin’s Tomb] A few critical words on Slavoj Zizek’s paper at the Politics of Truth conference held in London at the end of last month. You can listen … Continue reading
Three studies in consumer desire
[originally published on bat.blogspot.com and Lenin’s Tomb] A peculiar microtrend in consumer advertising has recently caught my attention: a penchant for unexpected dialectical reversals in the normal ideological discourse of … Continue reading
Zizek on counterfactuals
[originally published on bat.blogspot.com and Lenin’s Tomb] Exhibit A: witless reactionaries desperately trying to justify the summary execution of an innocent man in London last month by armed plain clothes … Continue reading
George Galloway’s libel victory
[originally published on bat.blogspot.com] I’ve been following the George Galloway libel story with a personal as well as a political interest – I was working for the Telegraph at the … Continue reading
Ascherson on Deutscher on Trotsky
[originally published on bat.blogspot.com] Neal Ascherson works as a political journalist for the Observer, but he is also a seasoned political operator in his own right, being active on the … Continue reading
Zizek on Bush’s reëlection
[originally published on bat.blogspot.com] Slavoj Zizek’s response to George W Bush’s reëlection – The Liberal Waterloo – has been published by In These Times, the Chicago-based radical magazine. It’s a … Continue reading
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