Constructive Criticism

Recent posts

Aug 30, 2023
Time After Time
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. – Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto Communism is the riddle of history solved. – Karl Marx, Economic and …
Aug 29, 2023
Book release: “The Elementary Concepts of Historical Materialism”
The cover Announcing a release of an English translation of Marta Harnecker’s Los conceptos fundamentales del materialismo histórico, or The Elementary Concepts of Historical Materialism in English. This book …
Aug 27, 2023
“Parametricity” is now “It’s Dusk Somewhere”
For many years this blog was called Parametricity. I am no longer that interested in type theory, so I am renaming the blog to reflect its new content, which is mostly Marxism. Still it is just the personal …
Aug 10, 2023
Walking Past the Apocalypse: The Material Roots of Anti-Human Philosophy in 2020s San Francisco
Most of us are familiar with the potential discomfort of passing a person begging on the street. Some stop and give some money or food, some stop to say they don’t have cash, most try to avoid eye-contact …
Aug 4, 2023
Poem for eternity and the social nature of the human
My words are not mine and yours are not yours And neither were Shakespeare’s so don’t worry Echos Or reverberations My organ receiving/transforming/transmitting Who does that beautiful sound belong to? Me? Was …
Jul 26, 2023
First thoughts on ‘Mute Compulsion’
Mute compulsion is a very nice book. So far I’ve read the first few chapters and found it to have one the most accurate and sophisticated description of Marxism I’ve seen written in a single place. It is an …
Jun 7, 2023
The Social-mediafication of Working Class Organizing
Last month, flying over the Atlantic in the throes of an existential crisis brought on by too strong an edible (which I had taken to try to sleep through the flight), I had the following disturbing …
Jun 1, 2023
To face the coming climate crisis, a new vision and a new spirituality
The following is a translation of an article from Caminos (A Cuban journal of socio-theological thought). It was written by José María Vigil, Spanish-Nicaraguan liberation-theologian. Seeing: The climate …
May 30, 2023
Cuba’s Struggle for the Full Dignity of the Human Being
Housing and the Cuban Revolution “In the first three years of the revolution, 1959-61, all measures were taken to disarticulate the capitalist system at its base.” This is how Zuleica Romay Guerra …
May 18, 2023
Jewishness Abstractly and Concretely
This is a follow-up to the post “Class and Race”. This post gives an example of the way ethnic groups can serve as particular instantiations of historical roles which occur abstractly. Because I am …