0. A slightly random assortment of links and lamentations partly prompted by Landeryou labelling this blog as lefty inre Gerry Hand (and Lindsay Tanner).
1. “[Lindsay Tanner’s] predecessor in the federal seat of Melbourne, Gerry Hand, spent decades denouncing Indonesia for the unpleasantness perpetrated against East Timor. Shortly after he left ministerial service, he was involved in creating a casino with an Indonesian billionaire with very close ties to Indonesian generals and the Presidential family. Lefty websites claim he was also involved in – shock, horror – coal mining.”
The shock, horror is compounded in this case by archive.org, which explains of http://www.greatearthltd.com: Hrm. Wayback Machine doesn’t have that page archived. Of course, Lindsay’s revelation that a big legged woman Modern Labor ain’t got no soul ain’t all that newsy.
2. Strike a light! No sooner had I discovered that the Revolutionary Socialist Party is madly flirting with Socialist Alternative than a jealous rival for SAlt’s affections emerges: Socialist Alliance.
Dear Comrades
We are writing on behalf of the Socialist Alliance national executive to request discussions with your leadership to explore possibilities for closer cooperation and unity. Our national executive met on September 14 and agreed on sending this letter…
It’s been an interesting decade for the remnants of the Fourth International’s followers in Australia but by avoiding, if not initially, the electoral trap set by the DSP for the ISO in 2001, SAlt has emerged a decade later in a much stronger position than its chief ideological rival Solidarity, and much better able to recruit yoof, especially on campus, than SA’s yoof wing Resistance.
See also : Bad News for Spotters : RSP and SAlt to merge? (September 18, 2012) | (On SWP/DSP history) In Reply to Peter Boyle, by Barry Sheppard, SWP History: 1960-1988, August 26, 2012.
4. Finally, Comrade Hayes has reminded me of the Situationists. To be precise, he’s got a blog and has armed himself with a critique of McKenzie Wark’s recent title about the adventures of Those Crazy Europeans in a rather too-brief period of Time. Speaking of which, PM Press is gonna be re-publishing the Belgian d00d’s 1967 book soon too.
It’s a text no working family can afford to miss!
That’s Comrade Bastard to you dude.
Interestingly those confused state loving ex-Trot Lacanian structuralist Post-whatever creeps at Verso have gotten their hands on the rights of the English translation of Vaneigem’s book (I presume its the Nicholson-Smith version):
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1125-the-revolution-of-everyday-life
And sadly Wark is preparing to unleash another installment of reflected glory:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1162-the-spectacle-of-disintegration
a.
Hmmm.
Is Verso UK market and PM US market or something?
Re Wark’s second volume, it may have the virtue of addressing the later SI. Have you read many other reviews? (I ain’t read it myself.) I dunno, I kinda assoc his name w Sydney cultural studies mafia.
Guy on Mute:
“If Expect Anything Fear Nothing could be characterised as earnest, McKenzie Wark’s offering on the other hand could perhaps be labelled strategic and performative. The Beach Beneath the Street self-consciously and paradoxically strives to defend the continuing value of the SI as laying outside of, and resistant to, commodification or academic subsumption; an argument valid and well made, and yet it takes an academic in a book that is an especially attractive example of the commodity form to make this point. A sexy book for a sexy movement perhaps – after all the SI never shied away from high production values – but this is not the only unease that we as readers and all those that write on the SI habitually grapple with. It has become a cliché that books on the SI begin with apologies, usually for the impending contradiction between the tactics espoused, occasionally heroicised, and the implications inherent in the act of publishing a book about them. This is the curse of recuperation, just one of Debord’s delicious tactical jokes bequeathed to subsequent generations of hero-worshippers and detractors alike…”
http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/importance-being-earnest-or-not
Wark gotta blog and a Twitter and a gig @ the Nu Skool too LOL.
I don’t know about any Verso/PM relation. I agree with others who find SI related works appearing under the Verso imprint laughable simply because the Verso gang early on were practically opposed to the SI and dismissive of their work. That is until they worked out they could actually turn a profit from selling them.
Wark almost completely ignores the SI between 1962 and 1968. The blurb for his new book says he will be focusing on the SI *after* 1968. No doubt this fits with his barely repressed favouritism for the ‘wacky’ pre-62 SI as opposed for the ‘serious’ post-62 SI. But it is a bit strange that over two books he manages to skip over the *crucial* years of the SI. It’s precisely this seriousness that led the SI to be a significant contributor to laying the groundwork for 68. Despite those comments on Mute Wark conveniently inserts a shameful caveat for his role as an academic in the last chapter and even tries to justify himself by inventively paraphrasing Debord (i.e. by lying). I find that the “unease that we as readers and all those that write on the SI habitually grapple with” is the shameful unease of those that want to justify their pathetic relationship with the university system etc. while remaining hip to the situs. There’s nothing new here, Baudrillard and the Utopie gang pioneered this type of recuperation in the later 1960s.
Anthony
I asked the pair — waiting for reply. Assume it’s same shit diff pile.
I can see how Verso might be regarded humourously ’cause of earlier opposition but unsure about practicalities(?); otherwise, yeah, market forces. (Plus no copyright issues.)
Dunno what the r/ship is b/w Wark and New School et al but if you wanna picture of the future, imagine jobs jobs jobs working families working families working families — forever.
Verso generally releases very high quality books – the next book I’m hoping to get from them is a new version of Lissagaray’s History of the Paris Commune, which looks wonderful.
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1055-the-history-of-the-paris-commune-of-1871
I don’t think anyone can say Verso has a political ‘line’ on anything really. They publish authors who have a wide range of differing perspectives, on, well, almost everything. I’d rank them alongside Haymarket Books, PM Press and AK Press as among the best radical publishers. Besides, every working family needs a 1056 page hardback book on Hegel and dialectical materialism by Zizek as light bedside reading.
http://www.versobooks.com/books/1114-less-than-nothing
It makes an effective weapon in the class struggle as well when you’re bopping your boss over the head with it. Take it from me.
I think Nicholson-Smith has a copyright on the translation. Hmmm, maybe.
A picture of the future: Imagine [insert person here] being ground down by the bourgeois family, forever.
I didn’t have much of an opinion on Lindsay Tanner, until I picked up his new book absentmindely walking through the politics section of a bookstore. In it, he blames ‘the 60s’ for a decline in (patriarchal, that is) family values and social solidarity. One would have thought neoliberalism and the cutting back of social services under Labor governments might have more to do with that, but oh well, wouldn’t want to sound too off the deep end by blaming some abstract notion like ‘capitalism’. Also, we’re too greedy, consumerist, and individualistic – probably because we’re so well off, what with all our basic and not so basic needs met in this land of milk and honey. Sigh. Something else to worry about is your own little counter-revolutionary Bonapartist known as the ‘Lord Mayor’. He’s up to something, I say – and that something is surveillance
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8539438/melbourne-mayor-backs-more-cctv-cameras
But the really concerning thing is that the public seems almost 100% behind it, if the ninemsn vote poll is to be believed.