Apr 89 minOn stupidity and the excesses of wokenessOne of the first laws of human existence, or at least of existence in class societies (determined by anti-human institutions that mold...
Oct 10, 20219 minResisting 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, 202111 minExcerpts 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, 20214 minThe "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, 202116 minEleven Theses on Socialist RevolutionThe 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, 202115 minAgainst 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, 20219 minThe truth about genderSome 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, 202149 minOn the inhumanity of Illinois's government in the 1930sIn 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, 202112 minThe secret history of automationHere are some notes on an unjustly neglected book by the great Marxist David F. Noble (social historian of technology) called Progress...
Jun 15, 202111 minOn humans' language facultyYou 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, 202174 minMarxism and the solidarity economyAnother excessively long blog post. I recently published a long article ("Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of...
Jun 10, 202122 minIntroduction to my forthcoming bookIf 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, 202120 minReflecting 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...
Jun 6, 20218 minClosed borders and democratic theoryYou may have noticed that the question of immigration is on people’s minds lately (as it has been, almost without interruption, since the...
May 26, 20216 minThe miraculous brain[Old notes.] I’m reading Stanislas Dehaene’s Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014). Good book,...
May 25, 202112 minCritiques of Richard Rorty (and postmodernism)[Here are notes I took many years ago while reading Richard Rorty’s famous book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. As you’ll see from...
Apr 19, 202114 minReview of "The Young Lords," by Johanna Fernández[This academic review was posted at H-Net.] Johanna Fernández’s The Young Lords: A Radical History could hardly have been published at a...
Apr 5, 202130 minThe rise of right-wing libertarianism since the 1950sSometimes as I read books I like to simultaneously summarize them, to facilitate the intellectual digestion. And also to post my notes...
Mar 4, 20219 minPersonal reflections on anarchismAnarchism (anti-authoritarianism, love of freedom) is an essential thing, an essential guide for our thinking and action, but I have to...
Sep 24, 20204 minA despairing rantThese are interesting times. We have the "privilege" to be living in the era when centuries of capitalist evolution are approaching their...