TIME
The Politics of Time: Retrieving our lives
(an excerpt from the section TIME from Jobs, Jive, and Joy: An Argument for the Utopian Spirit.)
The protagonist of Fernando Trías de Bes’ The Time Seller decides one day to quit his bullshit job.
Posts About: The Ludique
Necessity: The Mother of Invention Or The Mother of Strife?
Scientists sometimes design a research project to study one thing only to discover something unexpected. Primatologists studying animal behavior may not have been expecting to find that captive apes are more creative than their cousins in the wild, but in fact, that is exactly what they did discover.
Notes towards a ludic sensibility
I have written almost exclusively on the nature of what most of us do for most of our lives – we work at jobs! But few question why. Of course, we need to eat, but why have we been reduced to “workers” to meet our needs?
Laborless Day
U S Labor Day needs retooling
Labor Day needs some serious retooling. With millions out of work and the prospects of good paying (mostly union) jobs disappearing at a steady pace, Labor Day increasingly takes on the aspect of a memorial, not a celebration.
Your Brain on Autopilot
Recent scientific research has definitively demonstrated that the notion of capitalism as the natural result of the human species quest for aggrandizement on all levels has no validity. Not only is our species empathetic and cooperative, but also this aspect of life extends deep into our ancestry – actually, as some say, life itself down to cells is defined by cooperation.
Social Text on Work and Idleness
Social Text’s Periscope web page currently features a number of essays on “Work and Idleness in the Age of the Great Recession.”
This special issue of Periscope on “Work and Idleness in the Age of the Great Recession,” reconsiders our sense of what qualifies as work or idleness when there is little or no work to be had.
A Modest Trickle-down Economic Proposal
The people who claim that they are adversely affected by the economic consequences of policies that perpetuate the US distribution of wealth have, in fact, no alternative economic option to choose. While some politicians try to create the illusion of a wide spectrum of viable approaches to alleviating poverty, we know that they serve up these schemes only to burnish their liberal brand.
Campaign for a Museum of Marxism on Wall Street
Today we begin our fundraising campaign for a long over due tribute to the world-class economic insights of Karl Marx.
The proposed Museum of Marxism will be an interactive center incorporating the latest cutting-edge museum technology.
Visitors will be able to walk through the Hall of Materialism and see large screen displays of the history of labor’s struggle for a democratic society.
Anarchy for Kids: A review of Colin Ward’s Essays
This large collection of essays by Colin Ward ( Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader ) – his last publishing effort before he died last year at the age of 84 – affords those who know him only as the author of the ever-popular Anarchy in Action (now in print for almost 40 years!)
Sidewalk Utopianism
I have seen references in the news coverage of Occupy Wall Street to the “Culture of Greed,” which strikes me as a meaningless term. Think of what comes to mind with its opposite – the Culture of Generosity. This grammatical construction, of course, is not unique, other “cultures” have preceded it: the culture of violence, of care and the list could go on.