This is what I'm working on
I am trying to catch up on thousands of years of history and social and economic theory to address these questions:
- How have economic systems operated historically and what material and social conditions were they based upon?
- What changes in material and social conditions led to the collapse of historical economic systems?
- How do modern economic systems actually operate and how and why do they fail?
- What is the history and current role of money in society?
- What can we gain from historical examples of alternative social/economic systems?
- How are material conditions changing currently and what possibilities for new social and economic arrangements does that create?
- What problems of scale do we face in alternative economic systems?
- What problems of sustainability do we face in alternative economic systems? How can we address that in the long-term?
- How can we transition from our current economic systems into better alternatives?
- What major attempts have there been at collective, egalitarian social reorganization? How did they succeed and how did they fail?
- What strategies have been effective in mobilizing people and combating power, and how we can utilize them now and in the future?
- How do we address the issue of violence?
In particular, I am interested in the Frankfurt School, critical theory, the Situationists, and the Spanish anarchists. My reading list includes:
- Karl Marx - Capital, etc.
- Georg Lukács - History and Class Consciousness
- Raoul Vaneigem - The Revolution of Everyday Life
- Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
- Slavoj Zizek - Living in the End Times
- Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guatarri - Anti-Oedipus
- David Graeber - Debt: The First 5000 Years
- Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin - Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution
- Michel Foucault - don't know which texts yet!
- Noam Chomsky - again, I don't know which texts yet
I also hope to read:
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Economist
- Adam Smith
- David Ricardo
- John Keynes
- Henry George
- the Austrian School
Ideas?
- How have economic systems operated historically and what material and social conditions were they based upon?
- What changes in material and social conditions led to the collapse of historical economic systems?
- How do modern economic systems actually operate and how and why do they fail?
- What is the history and current role of money in society?
- What can we gain from historical examples of alternative social/economic systems?
- How are material conditions changing currently and what possibilities for new social and economic arrangements does that create?
- What problems of scale do we face in alternative economic systems?
- What problems of sustainability do we face in alternative economic systems? How can we address that in the long-term?
- How can we transition from our current economic systems into better alternatives?
- What major attempts have there been at collective, egalitarian social reorganization? How did they succeed and how did they fail?
- What strategies have been effective in mobilizing people and combating power, and how we can utilize them now and in the future?
- How do we address the issue of violence?
In particular, I am interested in the Frankfurt School, critical theory, the Situationists, and the Spanish anarchists. My reading list includes:
- Karl Marx - Capital, etc.
- Georg Lukács - History and Class Consciousness
- Raoul Vaneigem - The Revolution of Everyday Life
- Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle
- Slavoj Zizek - Living in the End Times
- Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guatarri - Anti-Oedipus
- David Graeber - Debt: The First 5000 Years
- Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin - Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution
- Michel Foucault - don't know which texts yet!
- Noam Chomsky - again, I don't know which texts yet
I also hope to read:
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Economist
- Adam Smith
- David Ricardo
- John Keynes
- Henry George
- the Austrian School
Ideas?