John Foster / 15 Sep 2023
Factory Floor Forever
Remembering Mario Tronti, Part II
The publication of Mario Tronti’s Workers and Capital in English offers a clearer picture of Italian workerism than had previously been available.(...)
Karl Marx
John Foster / 23 Jun 2023
Dystopian Digital Economics
The New Feudalism, Part III
If it sounds twentieth-century, it is. Yet, in 2023, conservatives still complain about communism and, leftists, feudalism.(...)
John Foster / 16 Dec 2022
Fantasy Island
Free Market: The History of an Idea, by Jacob Soll
It’s as though the 1980s never happened. For many Gen Xers like me, until the 2008 financial crisis, the free market was the only game in town.(...)
John Foster / 10 Oct 2022
Surviving Fascism
Philosophy and Sociology, by Theodor Adorno
Looking back from a distance of more than half a century, 1960 appears almost as a period of calm.(...)
John Foster / 12 Aug 2022
Marx on Neoliberalism
Hyperculture, by Byung Chul-Han
Korean-German philosopher Byung Chul-Han is the quintessential postmodern figure. Having to come to Germany to study metallurgy, he switched fields and mastered the argot of German philosophy.(...)
John Foster / 25 Mar 2022
Diversity Without Nationalism
Heaven in Disorder, by Slavoj Žižek
One is always a bit apprehensive when cracking the latest publication by the eminent Slovenian curmudgeon Slavoj Žižek.(...)
John Foster / 14 Jan 2022
Communist Artificial Intelligence
Work Without the Worker, by Phil Jones
The robots are coming to take our jobs. Well, perhaps not universally. Truth be told, not everybody thinks it’s a bad thing.(...)
John Foster / 05 Mar 2021
Catalunya in the 1970s
Salvador Puig Antich: Collected Writings on Repression and Resistance in Franco’s Spain
A concrete platform occupies a bend in the road in the El Roquetes neighbourhood of Barcelona. It overlooks a dusty playground and a climbing wall, and then beyond the broad sweep of the city and the azure sea.(...)
John Foster / 30 Aug 2019
Read Between the Lines
The Battleground Fall Books List
Do you ever get the feeling that you’re living through some kind of crazy dystopian novel? (...)