The myth of the "moderate" American
[This article was published at Compact magazine.] In the United States there exists today, and has existed since at least the 1950s, a...
Wright's Writing
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- Jul 30
- 7 min
Classical music vs. mediocrity
On one side is the mediocrity of all functionaries. All bureaucrats. There’s no point in my writing about bureaucrats in the ordinary...
- Jul 29
- 8 min
Organized labor and the crisis of democracy
[This article was published at CommonDreams.org.] We live in a time when it’s become a boring cliché to say that democracy is under...
- Jun 13
- 30 min
Origins of the European state system
Reading Charles Tilly’s classic Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (1992). Taking notes on it for myself, but also for...
- Jun 4
- 12 min
America's use of the atomic bomb on Japan
A long time ago I posted some thoughts on America's use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. I happen to be reading parts of...
- Jun 1
- 24 min
Critical thoughts on feminism and social constructionism
On various pages of this website and blog I've criticized some of the dogmas of feminism, for instance the social constructionist dogmas...
- May 29
- 8 min
Vivek Chibber's defense of materialism
[This is a review published at H-Socialisms.] Vivek Chibber. The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn. Harvard University...
- Apr 8
- 9 min
On stupidity and the excesses of wokeness
One of the first laws of human existence, or at least of existence in class societies (determined by anti-human institutions that mold...
- Oct 10, 2021
- 9 min
Resisting fascism (a book review)
[This review was published at H-Socialisms.] The elevation of Donald Trump onto the national political stage in 2016 provoked a heated...
- Sep 8, 2021
- 11 min
Excerpts from "Battle Cry of Freedom"
In an effort to escape the dreary drumbeat of daily news, I'm reading James McPherson's mammoth Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era...
- Sep 1, 2021
- 4 min
The "paradox" of American freedom and slavery
[Old student notes on the early United States.] Quoting Edmund Morgan, in his famous 1972 article “Slavery and Freedom: The American...
- Aug 22, 2021
- 16 min
Eleven Theses on Socialist Revolution
The good folks at DSA (of which I'm a proud member) were kind enough to publish the following article recently in their online...
- Jul 10, 2021
- 15 min
Against liberal "pluralism"
In the time of Trumpism, Michael Paul Rogin’s great book The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (1967) shouldn’t be as...
- Jul 9, 2021
- 9 min
The truth about gender
Some months ago I saw Richard Dawkins recommend on Twitter a new book called The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and...
- Jun 26, 2021
- 49 min
On the inhumanity of Illinois's government in the 1930s
In case anyone is interested in the history of the Great Depression, particularly in Chicago, here's an excerpt from a chapter of my...
- Jun 22, 2021
- 12 min
The secret history of automation
Here are some notes on an unjustly neglected book by the great Marxist David F. Noble (social historian of technology) called Progress...
- Jun 15, 2021
- 11 min
On humans' language faculty
You may have heard of the “talking gorilla” Koko. I remember as a child reading about this fascinating creature that had been trained to...
- Jun 11, 2021
- 74 min
Marxism and the solidarity economy
Another excessively long blog post. I recently published a long article ("Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of...
- Jun 10, 2021
- 22 min
Introduction to my forthcoming book
If all goes well, I'll be publishing a book sometime in the not-too-distant future. It'll be called something like Popular Radicalism and...
- Jun 6, 2021
- 20 min
Reflecting on life at 40
…They accuse me -- Me -- the present writer of The present poem -- of -- I know not what -- A tendency to under-rate and scoff At human...