Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Think I've Found Housing (But Life Is Still Far from Rosy)
Well, it seems that I have found new housing. (Assuming that nothing unexpected happens, nothing goes terribly wrong, etc.) It also looks as though it's going to be a very interesting atmosphere, living in a house with a bunch of slightly younger punk-ish musicians, some of whom are also horror or science fiction writers (which will surely reconnect me with some of my past), next door to the landlord, who's been a community activist for sometime (gardens, waterfronts, eco stuff and arts stuff). The neighborhood is Mott Haven (aka "So Bro," bottom of The Bronx), an area in NYC that I have found intriguing, which I've mentioned in this blog a few times.
The drawback is that my poor cat, Chomsky, may not be able to live with me, after living with me, and being constantly in my company, for ten years. (Some people who know me might say, "That doesn't sound like such a bad change!" But he has been very devoted to me...for a cat.) The problem is, there are already a few cats in the place, and there's some resistance to his moving in. We (me and some friends of mine who know about the situation) are hoping this will change in time. Meanwhile, it looks like he's going to stay with some friends in Staten Island, one of whom may have a blog that some of us are quite familiar with.... The situation was a bit upsetting when I first thought about it, but I think it will be all right.
I'd enjoy all of this more if I didn't just have a very bad experience in the work life. I don't want to go into any details right now, except to say that it involves sleazy bosses using petty power to do nasty things, and a decrease in what little stability I had. This is all very familiar territory, of course. But, assuming readers can take the suspense, I'd rather go into the specifics in another post, another time.
I will say that it might be time for me to stop complaining about landlords and start complaining about bosses and supervisors again. And, as always, the curse of precarity.
-----------
P.S. Blogging may be slowed down for a little while.
The drawback is that my poor cat, Chomsky, may not be able to live with me, after living with me, and being constantly in my company, for ten years. (Some people who know me might say, "That doesn't sound like such a bad change!" But he has been very devoted to me...for a cat.) The problem is, there are already a few cats in the place, and there's some resistance to his moving in. We (me and some friends of mine who know about the situation) are hoping this will change in time. Meanwhile, it looks like he's going to stay with some friends in Staten Island, one of whom may have a blog that some of us are quite familiar with.... The situation was a bit upsetting when I first thought about it, but I think it will be all right.
I'd enjoy all of this more if I didn't just have a very bad experience in the work life. I don't want to go into any details right now, except to say that it involves sleazy bosses using petty power to do nasty things, and a decrease in what little stability I had. This is all very familiar territory, of course. But, assuming readers can take the suspense, I'd rather go into the specifics in another post, another time.
I will say that it might be time for me to stop complaining about landlords and start complaining about bosses and supervisors again. And, as always, the curse of precarity.
-----------
P.S. Blogging may be slowed down for a little while.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
A (Belated) Happy Birthday to Brian Eno
All right, I'm a day late. But I found out from Wood's Lot that May 15 was Eno's birthday. (Note, I'd use the permalink, but it doesn't seem to be working for me right now.) And if it seems like a jump to mention Eno's birthday after Marx's, note this very interesting quote:
This is something that anyone who deals with world finances would probably understand; value is conferred and the result of a system of confidences among people. But it is not something that religions generally understand. It is certainly not something that fundamentalists understand. For me, so many of the really critical bottleneck type problems of our time come from that difficulty of understanding that it's humans that make the value in things. It didn't get there, it wasn't in there, it isn't there all the time, it wasn't made by somebody else and it's left there for us to find it. We made it. We put it there.
The engagement with culture is a way of understanding that.
...From page 5 of an illuminating feature/interview from Edge.
I have to add, though, that I don't think I'm crazy about Edge and its emphasis on the "new intellectuals." The whole approach seems a bit elitist to me. I'm weary of any culture's emphasis on the cultural vanguard or celebrities. That's why I'm also increasingly ambivalent about even doing these birthday posts that I used to do more often, especially when I'm praising celebrities who've obviously made themselves wealthy, often through commercial work. (Hey, at least Marx never got rich off of his ideas.) But on the other hand, there are people whose work has influenced and moved me in some way, whom I would like to acknowledge because I'd like to acknowledge the things that they've done that have affected me. And Eno is definitely up there...maybe not as the more explicitly social/political kind of thinker who would better fit the themes that have developed in this blog (he would have fit better into the blog that I originally planned, which was named after a line in an old David Bowie song and was going to include more rock reviews); but, obviously, Eno has done some thinking in that area, and it has influenced his music. (And you also have to wonder why he named his second solo album after a famous Maoist opera. He denies any political significance, but, then, he has always been a little sly that way.)
This is something that anyone who deals with world finances would probably understand; value is conferred and the result of a system of confidences among people. But it is not something that religions generally understand. It is certainly not something that fundamentalists understand. For me, so many of the really critical bottleneck type problems of our time come from that difficulty of understanding that it's humans that make the value in things. It didn't get there, it wasn't in there, it isn't there all the time, it wasn't made by somebody else and it's left there for us to find it. We made it. We put it there.
The engagement with culture is a way of understanding that.
...From page 5 of an illuminating feature/interview from Edge.
I have to add, though, that I don't think I'm crazy about Edge and its emphasis on the "new intellectuals." The whole approach seems a bit elitist to me. I'm weary of any culture's emphasis on the cultural vanguard or celebrities. That's why I'm also increasingly ambivalent about even doing these birthday posts that I used to do more often, especially when I'm praising celebrities who've obviously made themselves wealthy, often through commercial work. (Hey, at least Marx never got rich off of his ideas.) But on the other hand, there are people whose work has influenced and moved me in some way, whom I would like to acknowledge because I'd like to acknowledge the things that they've done that have affected me. And Eno is definitely up there...maybe not as the more explicitly social/political kind of thinker who would better fit the themes that have developed in this blog (he would have fit better into the blog that I originally planned, which was named after a line in an old David Bowie song and was going to include more rock reviews); but, obviously, Eno has done some thinking in that area, and it has influenced his music. (And you also have to wonder why he named his second solo album after a famous Maoist opera. He denies any political significance, but, then, he has always been a little sly that way.)
Monday, May 15, 2006
Very, Very Busy, Dealing with the Bigotry of Room/Share Ads
Looking around at the blogs that I usually check, I see that many haven’t posted in at least a week, maybe more. Maybe it’s because many of these people are students and they have to complete the work for the semester or else are completely burnt out from doing that a week or two ago. I also know that the Journalspace blogs are down right now because there was some big computer crash. As for me, I’ve been weighed down by the tortuous task of trying to find another room.
This time hasn’t gone as well as last time. And the supposedly illegal prejudices mentioned in room listings on Craigslist (for example) have become more blatant than ever.
The most obvious prejudice/bias, which nobody seems to acknowledge, is age. It’s been my experience that people are prejudiced strongly in favor of renting rooms to young people, even if the people renting out the rooms are older. This is probably because people are so effectively conditioned to think that as you get older you are supposed to “establish” yourself to a point where either you can afford your own place or you have a spouse or family that you’re sharing a place with. These ideas about what we’re supposed to be doing as we “mature” are so ingrained in people’s minds, it doesn’t even occur to them that they comprise an irrational bias, based on social expectations directly connected to the demands of the capitalist system. But that is what it all comes down to in the end.
I had the common-law spouse earlier in life. And the steady job. It’s sometimes a little distressing now thinking about how much I lack the security that I once had, although I know that these “stable” factors also made me miserable enough at certain points in my life. (That would apply to both the steady "wife" and the steady job.) However, I think I never really got the notion sufficiently drummed into my head that I was supposed to develop certain kinds of stability, increased "respectability" and a certain change in lifestyle as I got older. Actually, I sort of did it backwards, but I haven’t seen anything wrong with the way I did it. The only thing that’s wrong is the prejudice that I encounter from other people who have those common expectations.
Although I think that these expectations are going to have to change as the system becomes more unstable and precarity becomes a bigger factor in more people's lives. One thing I have noticed in looking at these roommate-wanted listings is that while most of them do blatantly request someone considerably younger than I am, they don’t usually request someone of traditional college age. The peak of the demand seems to be for people in their late 20s, and there are an awful lot of ads that specify up to "early 30s." A couple of decades ago, as I can recall (because I am so old), people were actually expected to be through with college-type shares by their early 20s at the latest. So, one can only hope that at some point the pattern will change so much that there is no longer an expectation connecting the sharing of rooms or apartments with being very young. (Although, on the other hand, that may be a strange thing to hope for, because it will mean that more people than ever are living insecure lives.)
Of course, there are a lot of young people who are more comfortable dealing exclusively with other young people... In that area, too, I never really shared exactly the same kind of prejudice. I may have gravitated toward certain "youth" cultures (mainly punk, back in the day), but I never wanted to be in a situation where I was surrounded only by people my own age. That's probably the biggest reason, as I recall, that I never liked being stuck on a college campus, especially in the particular places where the undergraduates were confined. But it seems that a lot of people really do have this need, whether they're "established" adults or young people who fancy themselves as being "cool" or being rebels (and don't get me started on all the ageism, etc., in the activist scene)... As one now-old-fart songwriter once put it (back when he was a youth-generation hero), "Everybody wants you to be just like them!" (That song's been running through my head a lot lately. And I'm not sure why. I don't usually have "classic" '60s songs running through my head. But this one just seems so perfect these days.)
Anyway, looking at the roomshare listings, it’s really incredible how many blatant prejudices people will spell out. It seems that the only kind of prejudice people are afraid of spelling out is the preference of a white person for another white person (though I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is the most common prejudice weighing on the actual "interviews" for those rooms). Everything else is fair game – whether it’s sexual preference (and, surprisingly, I have even seen ads specify that they want straight people only), or nation-related ethnicity, or religion (some people actually feel comfortable saying that they want to live only with other Christians)...whatever it is, you name it, the bigotry is right there, out in the open, with no one doing a damn thing to stop it, even though much of it is technically against the law.
Although there is a common prejudice to be found that’s perfectly legal; i.e., asking for you to have "good credit." This is beginning to seem universal in rentals of whole apartments, and it is becoming more and more common in shares. One very frustrating thing about this demand is that it doesn’t matter if you’re actually earning enough now to cover the rent now; if you’ve got some debt from the past, you’ll be eliminated for that. This is just a microcosm of the problem involved in pulling oneself out of poverty – something that the capitalist establishment supposedly (but not really) wants everyone to do. Because, even if you aren’t poor anymore, if you’ve accumulated some debt from when you were poor, you’re going to be paying severely (in more ways than one) for a very long time.
And having to look for a share also means being faced with a lot of unfortunate limits not so clearly connected to the usual bigotry. I’m finding that, for some reason, a vast majority of people renting out rooms in shared spaces do not want you to bring a pet. Probably, the greatest obstacle that I’m encountering is the fact that so many people who are renting rooms would not want me to bring my cat. But I don’t see how I can possibly separate myself from my cat. Even assuming I could find him a decent home (and I’m pretty sure I can, based on some conversations I’ve had with some people), I would not want to give him up. Even if I could stay in a place which has other very nice cats (one consolation that some people seem to be offering), it would make no difference, because it wouldn’t be my cat, with his personality, and the bond that we’ve built up between us over ten years.
I can only imagine what how difficult it must be for someone who has a child....
------
P.S. Apparently, someone at CounterPunch has the same feeling about that old Bob Dylan song.
This time hasn’t gone as well as last time. And the supposedly illegal prejudices mentioned in room listings on Craigslist (for example) have become more blatant than ever.
The most obvious prejudice/bias, which nobody seems to acknowledge, is age. It’s been my experience that people are prejudiced strongly in favor of renting rooms to young people, even if the people renting out the rooms are older. This is probably because people are so effectively conditioned to think that as you get older you are supposed to “establish” yourself to a point where either you can afford your own place or you have a spouse or family that you’re sharing a place with. These ideas about what we’re supposed to be doing as we “mature” are so ingrained in people’s minds, it doesn’t even occur to them that they comprise an irrational bias, based on social expectations directly connected to the demands of the capitalist system. But that is what it all comes down to in the end.
I had the common-law spouse earlier in life. And the steady job. It’s sometimes a little distressing now thinking about how much I lack the security that I once had, although I know that these “stable” factors also made me miserable enough at certain points in my life. (That would apply to both the steady "wife" and the steady job.) However, I think I never really got the notion sufficiently drummed into my head that I was supposed to develop certain kinds of stability, increased "respectability" and a certain change in lifestyle as I got older. Actually, I sort of did it backwards, but I haven’t seen anything wrong with the way I did it. The only thing that’s wrong is the prejudice that I encounter from other people who have those common expectations.
Although I think that these expectations are going to have to change as the system becomes more unstable and precarity becomes a bigger factor in more people's lives. One thing I have noticed in looking at these roommate-wanted listings is that while most of them do blatantly request someone considerably younger than I am, they don’t usually request someone of traditional college age. The peak of the demand seems to be for people in their late 20s, and there are an awful lot of ads that specify up to "early 30s." A couple of decades ago, as I can recall (because I am so old), people were actually expected to be through with college-type shares by their early 20s at the latest. So, one can only hope that at some point the pattern will change so much that there is no longer an expectation connecting the sharing of rooms or apartments with being very young. (Although, on the other hand, that may be a strange thing to hope for, because it will mean that more people than ever are living insecure lives.)
Of course, there are a lot of young people who are more comfortable dealing exclusively with other young people... In that area, too, I never really shared exactly the same kind of prejudice. I may have gravitated toward certain "youth" cultures (mainly punk, back in the day), but I never wanted to be in a situation where I was surrounded only by people my own age. That's probably the biggest reason, as I recall, that I never liked being stuck on a college campus, especially in the particular places where the undergraduates were confined. But it seems that a lot of people really do have this need, whether they're "established" adults or young people who fancy themselves as being "cool" or being rebels (and don't get me started on all the ageism, etc., in the activist scene)... As one now-old-fart songwriter once put it (back when he was a youth-generation hero), "Everybody wants you to be just like them!" (That song's been running through my head a lot lately. And I'm not sure why. I don't usually have "classic" '60s songs running through my head. But this one just seems so perfect these days.)
Anyway, looking at the roomshare listings, it’s really incredible how many blatant prejudices people will spell out. It seems that the only kind of prejudice people are afraid of spelling out is the preference of a white person for another white person (though I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is the most common prejudice weighing on the actual "interviews" for those rooms). Everything else is fair game – whether it’s sexual preference (and, surprisingly, I have even seen ads specify that they want straight people only), or nation-related ethnicity, or religion (some people actually feel comfortable saying that they want to live only with other Christians)...whatever it is, you name it, the bigotry is right there, out in the open, with no one doing a damn thing to stop it, even though much of it is technically against the law.
Although there is a common prejudice to be found that’s perfectly legal; i.e., asking for you to have "good credit." This is beginning to seem universal in rentals of whole apartments, and it is becoming more and more common in shares. One very frustrating thing about this demand is that it doesn’t matter if you’re actually earning enough now to cover the rent now; if you’ve got some debt from the past, you’ll be eliminated for that. This is just a microcosm of the problem involved in pulling oneself out of poverty – something that the capitalist establishment supposedly (but not really) wants everyone to do. Because, even if you aren’t poor anymore, if you’ve accumulated some debt from when you were poor, you’re going to be paying severely (in more ways than one) for a very long time.
And having to look for a share also means being faced with a lot of unfortunate limits not so clearly connected to the usual bigotry. I’m finding that, for some reason, a vast majority of people renting out rooms in shared spaces do not want you to bring a pet. Probably, the greatest obstacle that I’m encountering is the fact that so many people who are renting rooms would not want me to bring my cat. But I don’t see how I can possibly separate myself from my cat. Even assuming I could find him a decent home (and I’m pretty sure I can, based on some conversations I’ve had with some people), I would not want to give him up. Even if I could stay in a place which has other very nice cats (one consolation that some people seem to be offering), it would make no difference, because it wouldn’t be my cat, with his personality, and the bond that we’ve built up between us over ten years.
I can only imagine what how difficult it must be for someone who has a child....
------
P.S. Apparently, someone at CounterPunch has the same feeling about that old Bob Dylan song.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Long Saturday
It's been a while since I did what a lot of bloggers do and just wrote about a bunch of stuff that I did during the day... Often, I'm not satisfied unless I write a cohesive thought piece or at least post something with some profound quotes in it. But maybe it’s time to loosen up anyway, especially considering that I am a bit tired and busy too. So, anyway, I had a very long Saturday this past weekend, and it went like this...
I actually got up before noon, because I’d been sent home early from my job Friday night. So I decided to go to that ICC meeting after all. I was not very awake there and probably not as engaged as at the past meeting, but it was still a pretty thought-provoking experience, and I like these people and their perspective (in addition to liking much of what I've seen in the publications, etc.). But I'm not going to do any write-ups this time...
After the meeting, I wandered for a few blocks in Brooklyn and found myself in shopping mall hell. I had forgotten how grotesque the downtown Brooklyn shopping district was (hadn’t been around Brooklyn in a while). Are people really conditioned to enjoy hanging around in this environment, or is it just that the environment is irrelevant to them because they are so absorbed in shopping (most likely spending money that they don't really have)? There were actually things that I badly needed to get but had put off getting which I could have gotten now - like a decent pair of shoes, for instance - but I couldn't stand hanging around long enough to get that task done. So I finally found the subway and went back into Manhattan.
I have to confess, I actually really like walking around certain areas of downtown Manhattan where stinking rich people live. It's not the people I like - I try to avoid them, especially when they start going to chic clubs and are obviously already drunk for their Saturday night... But the streets themselves, in lower Soho, Tribeca, and the Wall Street area can be so interesting. I've blogged about this before, though mostly a few years ago. I love wandering around this part of the city during off hours, when I can have a little space to myself, in some of the narrow streets, around the great architecture, and in those many little parks. (Often, though, I am very conscious of being spied upon by the intense security forces planted in the downtown area. But I try not to let it bother me much.)
So, for a number of hours, I just wandered around, sitting in one park or another, sometimes staring at a fountain, sometimes closing my eyes and half-sleeping, and sometimes reading, of course.
On Friday evening, I had picked up an old sociology classic, The Technological Society, by Jacques Ellul. I'd been curious to read some of this guy's work in part because he'd been recommended to me by some people (including Jim from Words Matter sometime ago) and in part because I had enjoyed an excerpt that I'd seen in the last issue of Green Anarchy. (Yes, I read Green Anarchy, and though I don't always agree with it, I enjoy it much more than most magazines that I pick up, because I like the fighting spirit of the writing, the way it stretches the envelope on many matters, and the way it asks some big questions that many people are afraid to ask. I can see some of my "red" comrades recoiling now - oh, well.) So, anyway, I'm still near the beginning of the book, but it is a very interesting read. It reminds me most of all of Lewis Mumford, whom Ellul actually quotes extensively. I don't agree with this book's classic-primitivist outlook that gives technology, or the focus of thought connected to technology (i.e., "technique"), greater significance than any other social influence in history (even overtly dismissing those who rail against capitalism, because they supposedly have missed the bigger point). But I'm still fascinated by the writing, and I expect I will leave this book agreeing with a lot of the more specific points in the critique.
At the same time, as I may have mentioned, I also am re-reading Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. I imagine that if I alternate from one book to the other, it will have a good effect - certainly, I think these books can complement each other well.
But I really did much more walking and wandering on Saturday than I did sitting and reading, so by the midnight shift, I was thoroughly exhausted enough to be half out of my mind. This may have had some consequences, not only because it may have affected the "quality" of my work (and there sure was enough work this time - most of it being at the end of the shift, after 5 in the morning, naturally), but also because I was so tired when I left there that I left a bunch of crap that I'd been scrawling in between assignments, which I would not want other people to see. (In fact, I do not want other people to see most of the stuff that I scrawl on my own in the workplace, and I am usually very careful about that.) This stuff that I was scrawling wasn't very good either, and some of it was kind of embarrassing. (One thing was a letter that I was supposedly writing in response to one of these roommate-share ads in which the person looking for a roommate mentions all these silly things about musical tastes and so forth... It's hard to explain here, but I answered in such a way as to amuse myself, without ever really intending to send this one out. And that probably got tacked on to the bottom of a proofread attorney's document - oops.)
I don't know what I would have done in that exhausted condition if I hadn't been working at a place that was willing to send me home in a car. I do sometimes get these odd little bourgie perks in this line of temping, even though I've made well below median income from this over the past several years and sometimes have lived in poverty. Even if I'm buried in debt and can't afford to get my own place or save my teeth from getting pulled, at least on the weekend I get to be driven home in a semi-fancy car.
I actually got up before noon, because I’d been sent home early from my job Friday night. So I decided to go to that ICC meeting after all. I was not very awake there and probably not as engaged as at the past meeting, but it was still a pretty thought-provoking experience, and I like these people and their perspective (in addition to liking much of what I've seen in the publications, etc.). But I'm not going to do any write-ups this time...
After the meeting, I wandered for a few blocks in Brooklyn and found myself in shopping mall hell. I had forgotten how grotesque the downtown Brooklyn shopping district was (hadn’t been around Brooklyn in a while). Are people really conditioned to enjoy hanging around in this environment, or is it just that the environment is irrelevant to them because they are so absorbed in shopping (most likely spending money that they don't really have)? There were actually things that I badly needed to get but had put off getting which I could have gotten now - like a decent pair of shoes, for instance - but I couldn't stand hanging around long enough to get that task done. So I finally found the subway and went back into Manhattan.
I have to confess, I actually really like walking around certain areas of downtown Manhattan where stinking rich people live. It's not the people I like - I try to avoid them, especially when they start going to chic clubs and are obviously already drunk for their Saturday night... But the streets themselves, in lower Soho, Tribeca, and the Wall Street area can be so interesting. I've blogged about this before, though mostly a few years ago. I love wandering around this part of the city during off hours, when I can have a little space to myself, in some of the narrow streets, around the great architecture, and in those many little parks. (Often, though, I am very conscious of being spied upon by the intense security forces planted in the downtown area. But I try not to let it bother me much.)
So, for a number of hours, I just wandered around, sitting in one park or another, sometimes staring at a fountain, sometimes closing my eyes and half-sleeping, and sometimes reading, of course.
On Friday evening, I had picked up an old sociology classic, The Technological Society, by Jacques Ellul. I'd been curious to read some of this guy's work in part because he'd been recommended to me by some people (including Jim from Words Matter sometime ago) and in part because I had enjoyed an excerpt that I'd seen in the last issue of Green Anarchy. (Yes, I read Green Anarchy, and though I don't always agree with it, I enjoy it much more than most magazines that I pick up, because I like the fighting spirit of the writing, the way it stretches the envelope on many matters, and the way it asks some big questions that many people are afraid to ask. I can see some of my "red" comrades recoiling now - oh, well.) So, anyway, I'm still near the beginning of the book, but it is a very interesting read. It reminds me most of all of Lewis Mumford, whom Ellul actually quotes extensively. I don't agree with this book's classic-primitivist outlook that gives technology, or the focus of thought connected to technology (i.e., "technique"), greater significance than any other social influence in history (even overtly dismissing those who rail against capitalism, because they supposedly have missed the bigger point). But I'm still fascinated by the writing, and I expect I will leave this book agreeing with a lot of the more specific points in the critique.
At the same time, as I may have mentioned, I also am re-reading Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. I imagine that if I alternate from one book to the other, it will have a good effect - certainly, I think these books can complement each other well.
But I really did much more walking and wandering on Saturday than I did sitting and reading, so by the midnight shift, I was thoroughly exhausted enough to be half out of my mind. This may have had some consequences, not only because it may have affected the "quality" of my work (and there sure was enough work this time - most of it being at the end of the shift, after 5 in the morning, naturally), but also because I was so tired when I left there that I left a bunch of crap that I'd been scrawling in between assignments, which I would not want other people to see. (In fact, I do not want other people to see most of the stuff that I scrawl on my own in the workplace, and I am usually very careful about that.) This stuff that I was scrawling wasn't very good either, and some of it was kind of embarrassing. (One thing was a letter that I was supposedly writing in response to one of these roommate-share ads in which the person looking for a roommate mentions all these silly things about musical tastes and so forth... It's hard to explain here, but I answered in such a way as to amuse myself, without ever really intending to send this one out. And that probably got tacked on to the bottom of a proofread attorney's document - oops.)
I don't know what I would have done in that exhausted condition if I hadn't been working at a place that was willing to send me home in a car. I do sometimes get these odd little bourgie perks in this line of temping, even though I've made well below median income from this over the past several years and sometimes have lived in poverty. Even if I'm buried in debt and can't afford to get my own place or save my teeth from getting pulled, at least on the weekend I get to be driven home in a semi-fancy car.
Friday, May 05, 2006
He's 188 Years Old Today...
Happy Birthday, Karl.
And, though I insist on getting all my Marx works in hard copy (especially because they help me so much to get through those long subway rides)...I think it is certainly worthwhile to visit some of these works at everyone's favorite online Marx/Engels archive index, especially if you need to cut and paste some good quotes.
Right now, I am (re)reading the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
This is sort of a return to the origins/basics after I did some intensive study (somewhat helped along by a few classes at a certain SPACE) of far more "advanced" (at least age-wise) and dense material in Capital, Volumes II and III (unfortunately, quite a long time after I had read some of I).
But the mid-1840s Marx is really the Marx that I know best. The Marx piece of writing that I’ve read most often is the first part of The German Ideology (that most famous part), which was the piece of writing that really drew me into Marx’s work over a decade ago.
Even if, like many people, I had read the Manifesto of the Communist Party very early in life...
And even if there were times when I had to return again and again to Grundrisse.
Etc.
What more can I say? (And, besides, there is all that writing that I do so many other days of the year that’s definitely influenced by this guy...)
Happy 188th birthday to Karl Marx.
----------------
P.S. [afternoon]: Interesting comments on the subject (well, sort of on the subject...), appearing at Long Sunday. There's also another promised "symposium" on the way. Keeping an eye out for that...
And, though I insist on getting all my Marx works in hard copy (especially because they help me so much to get through those long subway rides)...I think it is certainly worthwhile to visit some of these works at everyone's favorite online Marx/Engels archive index, especially if you need to cut and paste some good quotes.
Right now, I am (re)reading the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
This is sort of a return to the origins/basics after I did some intensive study (somewhat helped along by a few classes at a certain SPACE) of far more "advanced" (at least age-wise) and dense material in Capital, Volumes II and III (unfortunately, quite a long time after I had read some of I).
But the mid-1840s Marx is really the Marx that I know best. The Marx piece of writing that I’ve read most often is the first part of The German Ideology (that most famous part), which was the piece of writing that really drew me into Marx’s work over a decade ago.
Even if, like many people, I had read the Manifesto of the Communist Party very early in life...
And even if there were times when I had to return again and again to Grundrisse.
Etc.
What more can I say? (And, besides, there is all that writing that I do so many other days of the year that’s definitely influenced by this guy...)
Happy 188th birthday to Karl Marx.
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P.S. [afternoon]: Interesting comments on the subject (well, sort of on the subject...), appearing at Long Sunday. There's also another promised "symposium" on the way. Keeping an eye out for that...
Monday, May 01, 2006
Mayday!
s0m3times says that it is "still too European" (although for some reason, my browser can't seem to download the Australian thing that she is comparing it to), but for me, the EuroMayday message still resonates much more than anything that they’re coming up with in the U.S. (Yes, of course, the big immigrants' rights thing here is an important part of the struggle, and it's nice that at least one (huge) group has gotten it together enough to hold an action that has potentially more of an impact than, say, the usual anti-war cattle stroll... But I don't see any message getting out that addresses the big picture beyond a group's "rights," or that can help me to feel personally part of the struggle, i.e., can be a way for me to address my own situation, along with so many others'. So, I confess, I sort of wish I could have gotten out to Europe right now (as I've wished on many Maydays past), to take a nice communist-autonomist protest vacation, just like the lucky Chris Carlsson is doing...if only my work paid better and weren't so precarious...)
Anyway, from the EuroMayday site:
Last year, Euromayday parades gathered more than 200,000 precarious people of all sorts and brought protest actions against precarity and other forms of labor and social domination in the streets of a dozen of EU cities. Why did we do it?
Because we are précaires, precari, precari@s: we are the unemployed, women and the young, the casualized, we are intermittent workers, students, stagiaires, migrants, net/temp/flex workers, we are the contortionists of flexibility and survivors of precarity springing out of dozens of collectives in our cities and through a transeuropean network to defend our collective social rights and claim new ones.
We have no trust or faith in those who, at the helm of governments, unions, political parties, or cultural institutions, pretend to speak in our name and take decisions on our lives, while ignoring social demands and repressing practices of social transformation.
We will parade on mayday to reclaim our lives and fight against workfare or other authoritarian solutions to mounting inequality and welfare crisis. We want to give flesh with our conflicts a new welfare system and a more horizontal, democratic society, where immaterial, service, affective, flexible work is not subjected to pitiless exploitation, blackmail flexibility, and existential impossibility. Nobody wants to be sentenced to the same job for life. But nobody wants to spend her whole day wondering how to pay the next bill, while juggling three jobs.
We want life-affirming social equality, not subservient, discriminative employment. European welfare provisions should be made independent from either employment or citizenship so to benefit native as well as migrant precarious people. We are determined to sever the link between welfare and employment, and between welfare and citizenship, as basic pre-conditions to create truly democratic, libertarian, and egalitarian polities in the age of war-making globalization...
And from the great (I think) London-based Precarity site:
This Mayday we invite all self-organised workers, migrant workers, non-unionised workers, agency workers, cash in hand workers, dole claimants, free-lancers, work rejecters and all of those who fall outside of traditional union organisation to join our autonomous bloc on the TUC march. To make Mayday a day where the invisible claim a common voice.
MAYDAY is International workers day, born out of the struggle for an 8 hour day in 1886. Over 100 years later our lives are still taken up by the world of work. Even more so now, as the work imposed by Capitalism has become more casualised (temporary contracts, flex time, part time, no time!) forcing us to adapt to the point where it's hard to tell when, where or even if we are working. This leaves us in a situation where our lives are always on hold, on call and at the mercy of the market. May 1st this year falls on a bank holiday, yet for many it will be just another day at work. Our leisure time too is filled with anxieties. The anxiety of not being able to have enough money to pay the rent, go to the cinema, a nice restaurant, shop for food, clothes, anything! In reality our work never finishes and when we're not at work we still end up making some other person even richer.
Yes, they got that right!
Anyway, from the EuroMayday site:
Last year, Euromayday parades gathered more than 200,000 precarious people of all sorts and brought protest actions against precarity and other forms of labor and social domination in the streets of a dozen of EU cities. Why did we do it?
Because we are précaires, precari, precari@s: we are the unemployed, women and the young, the casualized, we are intermittent workers, students, stagiaires, migrants, net/temp/flex workers, we are the contortionists of flexibility and survivors of precarity springing out of dozens of collectives in our cities and through a transeuropean network to defend our collective social rights and claim new ones.
We have no trust or faith in those who, at the helm of governments, unions, political parties, or cultural institutions, pretend to speak in our name and take decisions on our lives, while ignoring social demands and repressing practices of social transformation.
We will parade on mayday to reclaim our lives and fight against workfare or other authoritarian solutions to mounting inequality and welfare crisis. We want to give flesh with our conflicts a new welfare system and a more horizontal, democratic society, where immaterial, service, affective, flexible work is not subjected to pitiless exploitation, blackmail flexibility, and existential impossibility. Nobody wants to be sentenced to the same job for life. But nobody wants to spend her whole day wondering how to pay the next bill, while juggling three jobs.
We want life-affirming social equality, not subservient, discriminative employment. European welfare provisions should be made independent from either employment or citizenship so to benefit native as well as migrant precarious people. We are determined to sever the link between welfare and employment, and between welfare and citizenship, as basic pre-conditions to create truly democratic, libertarian, and egalitarian polities in the age of war-making globalization...
And from the great (I think) London-based Precarity site:
This Mayday we invite all self-organised workers, migrant workers, non-unionised workers, agency workers, cash in hand workers, dole claimants, free-lancers, work rejecters and all of those who fall outside of traditional union organisation to join our autonomous bloc on the TUC march. To make Mayday a day where the invisible claim a common voice.
MAYDAY is International workers day, born out of the struggle for an 8 hour day in 1886. Over 100 years later our lives are still taken up by the world of work. Even more so now, as the work imposed by Capitalism has become more casualised (temporary contracts, flex time, part time, no time!) forcing us to adapt to the point where it's hard to tell when, where or even if we are working. This leaves us in a situation where our lives are always on hold, on call and at the mercy of the market. May 1st this year falls on a bank holiday, yet for many it will be just another day at work. Our leisure time too is filled with anxieties. The anxiety of not being able to have enough money to pay the rent, go to the cinema, a nice restaurant, shop for food, clothes, anything! In reality our work never finishes and when we're not at work we still end up making some other person even richer.
Yes, they got that right!
