About Red May: Red May is a month-long spree of red arts, red theory, and red politics based in Seattle, Washington. We gather in bookstores, movie theaters, bars, parks, cafes, alleys, and auditoriums to share in discussion and plot ways forward toward a world in common: a world beyond capitalism. While we will continue our annual collective hurdle over the wire of our capitalist horizon, now you can join us throughout the other 11 months of the year.
Pipeline is actually available in English, translated by Ed Emery, published by Polity in 2015. (Polity also published the excellent collection, Politics of Subversion, in 1989)
Thanks Red May ... this presentation inspired me to go down the rabbit hole, and dig up the Franciscan theme of Highest Poverty. Best wishes from Valencia Spain
Spinoza? No. Read Ray Brassiere Also Lukacs joins Stalins significance later in life…rejecting a good amount of his famous work history and class consciousness
To Phil's point about starting with the Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History instead of ending with it. This sounds like John Holloway's latest book Hope in Hopeless Times that starts with the notion of revolution as pulling the emergency brake.
To say the idea of family is a "white capitalist" construct forced on minority societies is laughable. These people said many words without any real meaning or thought.
46:15 "To everyone"? Really, I think shes not telling the truth? I doubt she means everyone, it may make her statement sound open and living, but I think inly to people that think like her.
One thing comes to mind - materialist dialectic is also dependent on technology. The same technologies which also wield tyranny. Including the types we are using currently to consume all such information and content.
Being part of a family, whether biological or chosen, has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with just being a human. Even before we had any type of societal structures people needed a village, a tribe, a group, for the most part. We are social creatures. And on top of that we are biologically inclined and wired to reproduce, even if you choose not to have children. It has nothing to do with creating the next generation of workers, as the gray haired lady stated. I can't bear to watch these people talk for 2 hours so I don't know if this is explained away somehow, but the fact that this is even a concept that some people hold seriously is mind-blowing and based on what I said, it crumbles instantly when you think about it for more than 2 seconds.
You weren’t listening. They are all saying family is natural and a good thing. In fact they say it is a refuge and form of protection from systemic exploitation. The difference is that they are saying the *nuclear* family needs to be abolished and we need to go back to being tribes by having grandparents, aunts & uncles, cousins, friends and larger, closely knit communities to protect each other. They are saying it is not fair to place the entire burden of providing on one man, and the entire burden of nurturing on one woman because it leads to burn out and in some cases it leads to abuse. They are also saying that a nuclear family (not anger extended family) is just playing into capitalism- where the parents and children are isolated and nothing more but consumers and worker bees for the economy. Naturally we used to hunt and build in packs. We took turns cooking, cleaning, and watching each other’s babies. Our children had many elders to look up to. And if any adults were abusive, we would ostracize and punish them as a group. I hope that makes sense.
You are conflating the specific form of family that exists nowadays, the nuclear industrial family, with any possible arrangement of interpersonal support. We reproduce biologically? Yeah. We need other humans to live? Pretty much. But none of their claims contradict those things. They are basically talking about transitioning to more communal ways of organising society.
I totally understand why we should abolish the family. It makes sense. Families are a burden on children. We need society. We can organize child rearing in a good way. No more baceless morality. No more work for the sake of work. Instead work to make society better not to make someone rich
