Postliberalism: a dangerous “new” conservatism
[This article was published in The Philosophical Salon.] In Wilhelm von Humboldt’s book The Limits of State Action (1792), one of the...
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Wright's Writing
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- Sep 8, 2023
- 8 min
Postliberals against the common good
[Published at Common Dreams.] “The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history,” says Noam Chomsky. It seems...
- May 18, 2023
- 9 min
Love of freedom defines the political left, not the right
[This article was published at Sublation and other venues.] Political discourse in the United States consists largely of lies and...
- 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...
- 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...
- Apr 5, 2021
- 30 min
The rise of right-wing libertarianism since the 1950s
Sometimes as I read books I like to simultaneously summarize them, to facilitate the intellectual digestion. And also to post my notes...
- Sep 24, 2020
- 4 min
A despairing rant
These are interesting times. We have the "privilege" to be living in the era when centuries of capitalist evolution are approaching their...
- Sep 8, 2020
- 22 min
From Steve Fraser's "The Age of Acquiescence"
I just finished reading Steve Fraser's masterful The Age of Acquiescence (2014), which compares the popular responses to America's two...
- Aug 27, 2020
- 21 min
The remarkable perversity of idealism
Many years ago, when I was a simple boy who thought he ought to know a lot about Hegel, I took masses of notes on his philosophy. Below...
- Aug 5, 2020
- 6 min
Thoughts on classical fascism
[Student notes from ten years ago.] Reading Robert A. Brady’s classic Business as a System of Power (1943), which influenced Chomsky....
- Jun 29, 2020
- 15 min
Laboring Against Racism: The Textile Workers Union of America in the South during the 1960s
[An old student paper.] The conventional understanding of labor unions and their membership in the 1960s is of a conservative and...
- Jun 26, 2020
- 8 min
Capitalism and colonialism
As I frequently and tiresomely reiterate, academic writing tends toward sophistry, superficiality, and obscurantism. Personally, my...
- Jul 13, 2018
- 4 min
Critical thoughts on "The Alchemist"
[Notes from 2006.] Reading The Alchemist, the novel that has sold tens of millions of copies. “To realize one’s destiny is a person’s...
- May 28, 2018
- 5 min
"Social Democracy Is the Best Form of Government"
[As an undergraduate at Wesleyan University I wrote hundreds of essays not all of which, I think, are worthless. Here's a short one on...
- Mar 31, 2018
- 8 min
Progressivism, or "the Triumph of Conservatism"
Years ago I took some notes on Gabriel Kolko’s classic The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History 1900–1916...
- Mar 21, 2018
- 12 min
Notes on Marxism and empiricism
(Also see these notes.) Reading Maurice Cornforth’s Marxism and the Linguistic Philosophy (1965). A good book, not dogmatic or...
- Jul 9, 2016
- 5 min
Elite pretentiousness
The following is the beginning of an essay I wanted to write years ago on the concept of pretentiousness, a phenomenon the ubiquity of...
- Jun 15, 2016
- 3 min
"Sunbelt capitalism"
[Random journal notes.] Reading Elizabeth Tandy Shermer’s Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (2013)....
- May 23, 2016
- 3 min
Far-left, i.e., rational and open-minded
[Old notes from my journal.] A lot of mainstream people would criticize me for immersing myself in leftist scholarship and journalism,...
- Jan 12, 2016
- 6 min
Fragments on bourgeois ideologists
On neoclassical economics.— Milton Friedman wrote a famous article in 1953 called “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in which he...
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