Benjamin Britton > Recent Status Updates

As opposed to grief or mourning, in which separation is recognized and the libido attached to the original object is successfully displaced onto a new substitute object, melancholy designates a failure to grieve in which the loss is simply internalized and, in that sense, refused.

The dialectic between a juridical imperative that cannot be fulfilled and an inevitable failure “before the law” recalls the tortured relationship between the God of the Old Testament and those humiliated servants who offer their obedience without reward.

“The dialectic between a juridical imperative that cannot be fulfilled and an inevitable failure “before the law” recalls the tortured relationship between the God of the Old Testament and those humiliated servants who offer their obedience without reward.”

“Sadly, like the racial caste systems that preceded it, the system of mass incarceration now seems normal and natural to most, a regrettable necessity.”

“This extraordinary circumstance - unheard of in the rest of the world - is treated here in America as a basic fact of life, as normal as separate water fountains were just a half a century ago.”

“Part of history forget that as the cops are inside the bar, the confrontation started outside by throwing change at the police. We started with the pennies, the nickels, the quarters, and the dimes. ‘Here’s your payoff, you pigs! You fucking pigs! Get out of our faces.’ This was started by the street queens of that era.”
Sylvia Rivera

“Class War, USA is just as valuable for those who have withstood the relentless assault on unions over the last four decades - and will undoubtedly find tremendous inspiration in the history Weber so convincingly tells.”
Sharon Smith

“We do have the power to change ourselves, to attempt to right past wrongs, and repair our relationship with one another and with the planet we share. It’s this work that is the bedrock of shock resistance.”

“The naturalization of both heterosexuality and masculine sexual agency are discursive constructions nowhere accounted for but everywhere assumed within this founding structuralist frame.”

“New Orleans provides a harrowing picture of what we can expect when the next shock hits.”

The crucial lesson of Brexit and of Trump’s victory, is that leaders who are seen as representing the failed neoliberal status quo are no match for the demagogues and neo-fascists.

The presumption here is that the “being” of gender is an effect, an object of a genealogical investigation that maps out the political parameters of its construction in the mode of ontology.

“But analysis is the necessary prerequisite of genetical presentation, and of the understanding of the real, formative process (Gestaltungsprozess) in its different phases”

“Here the calculation of the capitalist is located at the level of the apparent motion of the structure. The capitalist believes that his calculation determines the movement of value whereas the former is determined by the latter.”

“a scientific analysis of competition is possible only if we can grasp the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are intelligible only to someone who is acquainted with their real motions”

“a scientific analysis of competition is possible only if we can grasp the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are intelligible only to someone who is acquainted with their real motions”

“If reality is speculative, an extremely important consequence follows: every critical reading which claims, along the lines of the letter to Ruge, to speak or read things as they are, is invalidated.”

“We see everything that is implied in the young Marx’s theory of abstraction. It is not by chance that, in the 1857 Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the touchstone which distinguishes science from ideology is the theory of abstraction. Neither is it by chance that most of the distortions of Marxist theory have in common that they are based on a certain ideology of the concrete.”

“We see everything that is implied in the young Marx’s theory of abstraction. It is not by chance that, in the 1857 Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the touchstone which distinguishes science from ideology is the theory of abstraction. Neither is it by chance that most of the distortions of Marxist theory have in common that they are based on a certain ideology of the concrete.”

“The political economy with which Marx is concerned is thus saddled with a whole implicit anthropology. It usually presents itself in a more or less explicit fashion, varying in particular cases, within the framework of a theory of society”


Louis Althusser

My close friend for many years, the late Howard Zinn, to put it in his words, said that “what matters is the countless small deeds of unknown people, who lay the basis for the significant events that enter history.”

We have plenty of evidence that direct personal interchange—organizing with people directly, talking to them, listening to them, and so on—has a major effect. Social media are useful, and all organizers and activists use them, but it’s not like really entering into a discussion with people directly.

So take Donald Trump. For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets.

Who gives the orders? Who follows them? That basically defines class. It’s more nuanced and complex, but that’s basically it.

Meanwhile, after we’ve spent those ten minutes, we’ve turned to what really matters, which is not the election, but the continued effort to develop and organize active dedicated popular movements that will continue to struggle constantly for what has to be done.

The simplest definition of “neoliberalism” is “let the market run everything.” Get the government out of policy formation except to support market activities. Nobody really means that. Those are measures applied to the poor and the weak but not to yourself. And that runs all through modern economic history back to the seventeenth century. They didn’t call it neoliberalism then.

There is no economic reason why education can’t be available to everyone for free—there are social and political reasons. But those are social and political decisions.