Hi Jose,
Thanks for the add. If ever you fancy reviewing any noir political thrillers with a social and political edge then I've got a couple that are desperately in need of a review.
Aside from novels, I've been reading a lot of Richard Sennett's stuff, lately, such as AUTHORITY and THE FALL OF PUBLIC MAN, which treats Marxism as an unfinished work in progress whose direction is signalled by THE ECONOMIC AND PGHILOSOPHICAL MANUSCRIPTS and GRUNDRISSE. I'm absolutely convinced that no philosophy that doesn't take alienation as its point of departure (Althussarian Stalinism, post-structuralism and post-modernism) can tell us much about the human condition, the nature of power and ideology, hegemony, false consciousness, primitive rebellion or the ideological quasi-integration of the working class. The Frankfurt School were asking the right questions. The key is still to merge a mandate for human emancipation around democratic rights with the objective need to get rid of capitalism. Sometimes the old songs are still the best.
On the US election I know that Obama isn't a comrade and Biden's a plagerist but then, I don't expect bourgeois politicians to transform society. The common people have yet to learn that they should have illusions in none of these clowns and need to be active participants in the process of social and political change. In the meantime, keep the Republicans and Tories OUT and put pressure on Democrat and Labour administrations to keep those banks nationalised (rather than simply paying their debts) to pay for education, social housing, free health care and infrastructural investment in new industries (with an eye to the environment). But the key to political consciousness is STILL democratic rights - something that every international since the second international has overlooked.