#Because i dont know how to tell you this but BOTH frameworks assume something is Wrong and Needs to be fixed.

[multiplydifficult]

Do people realise that trauma is a framework through which to understand their experiences?

And while it is important to let people know that y'know, just because your parents or others around you tried their best, doesn't mean they didn't harm you; it's important to let people know that a lack of support (emotional support, respect for autonomy, understanding of difficulties & support problem-solving, etc.) no matter how well intentioned, can fuck people up in the long run,

It's not actually helpful to insist that every unpleasantry in childhood is inherently traumatic. It's not helpful to insist that anyone who is still in some way affected by an unpleasant childhood thing has trauma.

You don't get to decide what's trauma for other people. You don't get to tell them that actually, they're wrong and that experience they had was trauma and they just don't know it.

They get to decide what was trauma for them, and if they say "i had xyz experience, and it was not trauma," you don't get to decide they're wrong, that they don't understand what trauma is. You don't get to decide that they're just not understanding the severity of their experience.

Trauma is a framework, and it's not a helpful framework for everyone.

[goforbrooke]

This was such a surreal thing for me- like I've had The Trans Thoughts for a long time, but once I actually admitted it to myself, started presenting more fem, started going by she/Her and my new name? I realized how much hostility and implicit danger the women(cis and trans) in my life have had to navigate and endure in the world and I honestly *never* had a good sense of it before my egg cracked.

When I lived as a boy, pre-transition, i was told(sometimes explicitly, but often through media) that men have a duty to protect "their" women from other men- the implication being that strange men are going to violently assault women that are under your "protection", and you need to be ready to protect them with violence or the threat thereof.

The issue, as I see it, is this strange possessive instinct- I blame compulsive heterosexuality and the damsel-in-distress plot for this. When writing media for men that involves "romance", it's nearly always something *earned*. There are two variants of this: The damsel-in-distress(which has been thoroughly deconstructed, other folks have done it better than me I'm sure)- and the "Woman Award" plot. The latter I'm coining a phrase(agonized over it for a while) but I think its telling to the way society teaches men to think about women.

In these stories, a man starts off as a loser with a heart of gold and/or a dream. He encounters a woman(usually played by an actress younger than his actor, well-put together, desirable to the male gaze, usually not much of a character in her own right). He either tries to make an advance on her (and hijinks ensue), or theres some kind of "she'd never notice a loser like me 🥺" (often while type of talk (typically while ogling her).

Already we have a framework many men in the audience can relate to- they feel society doesn't value them individually, they are unsuccessful, and (as society teaches us to treat men and women as dimorphic species) they don't know how to have healthy relationships with women. They either are intimidated by women, or have been rebuffed too much in the past.

Over the course of the story, the man follows his dream, goes on his adventure, practices to become more successful, the woman starts to notice him. The man often does very little for the woman, but she is still inexplicably drawn to him- regardless of anything he does for her. If the story is better written they may have some interactions and even some chemistry that develops- but dont be distracted. The guy *always* gets the girl. No matter what devastating Revelation comes in the end of the 2nd act, regardless of any misogynistic or uncomfortable things he may have said to her, she succumbs to his protagony. They *will* kiss in the 3rd act- the only way this doesn't happen is if she fucking **dies**. (And even then, it's played as a tragedy for the man). She never tells him no.

Now I'm not railing against romantic subplots. I enjoy ships.

I am also a trans woman. I grew up consuming a lot of stories written for men, it's only because of my wonderful wife that I've even started to consume stories written for women. I have not watched/read enough of it to make these same generalizations(though I promise I've read/watched more than any man that bitches about romance as a genre being "emotional porn").

This exposure to both perspectives has left me realizing that stories for men shred hetero relationships down to ownership. A man threatens violence against a woman, and when another man threatens violence against the first man, he wins the woman by conquest. Otherwise, the woman is a badge, a guaranteed but unrelated award for solving the conflict. Either way, the woman has no real agency- her heterosexuality for the protagonist is assumed.

Obviously, some element of this comes from the structure of western storytelling- an inevitability of the 3 act structure if comphet is invoked. The issue comes when men internalize this(the way we all do with media, especially if we don't think critically about it). Suddenly, their choices to protect women or keep them as friends in their social circle takes on a more Insidious subtext- they are his potential subjects, mates to woo, damsels to free from distress, babes to throw themselves at his feet when he becomes successful.

This is where nice guys come from. This is where alpha males and incels and the friendzone and the red pill come from. If these men succeed in ensnaring a woman, they pass these attitudes on to their kids- daughters are a new woman to impress, to protect, to own- and sons are taught to follow in their father's footsteps. This is where financial abuse, hate disguised as "protecting the children", the "dad with a shotgun" talk, even seeking the father's approval for marriage comes from. It's all just ways these men try to own their daughters like they own their wives.

This entitlement to women's time, affection, and fundamentally bodies is at the root of all of this. Men's stories make them false promises and the world doesn't deliver- but they shriek about wokeness if you try to try to fix the stories, tell them something trier.

But until we can tell better stories, until the way we structure society doesn't tell men that women are objects, any male-dominated space carries that threat- and men, even the ones doing their best, fundamentally won't understand.

[legionofpotatoes]

alright here’s ma thoughts on that flick I mentioned

we hatewatched a*my of the dead because we were CONVINCED “zombies in las vegas” would be an impossible concept to screw up, but in so assuming we obviously invoked a holy wager with the universe and got reminded, once again, that hoping for improvement from someone who’s dependably put out bad art is never a wise choice 😐

but we were honestly kinda roped in by the marketing??? and expected a goofy fast-paced flick with the odd traditional undead metaphor thrown in, framing some sort of relationship drama maybe or hell even nothing at all! we’d have taken pure indulgent storytelling, idk italian job with zombies in las vegas, I don’t know fucking anything but??? whatever this was???? spoilers below for it is time for One Of My Rants

I mean the main reason I really want to write all this and complain. this film here probably has the most unappealing cinematography I have ever experienced in my life and that is saying something. who the fuck signed off on that CONSTANT shallow-ass depth of field that imprisons your eyeline and turns every shot into bokeh paste???? and I mean every shot almost!!!! I promise if you think I am overreacting just throw a dart at the seek bar and watch twenty seconds from wherever it lands. it is horrifying to look at. at least it gave my girlfriend a good visual shorthand for what it’s like when I lose my glasses

why was sean spicer in this movie. did they pay him to be here. was sean spicer paid hollywood money for his scene in this film because fuck everyone who was involved in that decision

the legitimately baffling hints at the extraterrestrial origins of the infection that went absolutely nowhere and had no dramatic or plot-level bearing. we love to see the franchise sprouts fellas

yet another big budget waste of everything hiroyuki sanada has to offer. and bautista too I guess? I like him but man was this an odd career move

what was the crux of his conflict/resolution with his daughter btw. I understand it was rooted in miscommunication over their forms of grief irt mom but uhh… it was all rather clunky and didn’t land for me. I tried I really tried to buy in but something was wrong fundamentally with the groundwork there, it did not click and their catharsis felt unearned. I know there’s massive amounts of tragic baggage being projected there from the author so I’m not slapping any judgment down really;

but again it would be an easy thing to wave off if they just had a vibrant cast of lovable simpletons with good chemistry and the kinetic sense of plotting the trailers promised (and this premise never discounts good drama, either). but instead it was just two and a half (!) hours of meandering into situations the filmmaking instincts had no idea how to flow in and out of

to wit. I know talking about “bad pacing” is associated with armchair bullshit but consider the example of the scene were dieter does an out of nowhere little dance after childishly screaming but then still-killing a zombie, with the film framing this as a micro character triumph, and not a second later the bg soundtrack instantly fades into an orchestral score dramatizing a nearby mcguffin reveal, completely 180 degreeing the tone without a semblance of deft insert shot stitching or even I dont know a fucking jump cut maybe. now imagine this whiplash for 2.5 hrs uninterrupted

I will keep complaining about the length yeah because this was not a story requiring this much real estate to be told. Uhh in my humble and personal opinion, of course

[man sees zombie tiger] “this is crossing the line!” you can in fact write dialogue that is not utter nonsense that falls apart once you drill down its single fickle layer of referential meta winking. what line are you talking about. you have rules in this insane situation you’re in? total nitpick moment I know but it got burned in my brain for some reason. like a microcosm of the mismanaged dramatic instincts paired with weird writing that dots this movie. I am sure the director calls this either satire or genre deconstruction. I am SO sure

tumblr domino meme that goes from “dude getting sucked off while driving” to “entire las vegas literally nuked”

tig notaro is always great to see but once you know she’s been filmed as a separate greenscreen plate months after photography wrapped - cause she had to apparently replace some abusive asshole but that’s a whole other pig not worth fucking - it becomes impossible to unsee her odd detachment from everyone else in the movie lmao. it doesn’t really “ruin” anything on its lonesome but it is hard to unsee

why. was. sean. spicer. in. this. movie

a very simple key ingredient missing from fully turning lip service sympathy for main uruk hai dude into actual empathy that would generate meaningful conflict with hero family would be to spend a bit more time articulating what he internally wanted the most. because he was obviously trying to do something here with pointed agenda. a family, to have kids, build a caste system, save his wife’s head, return to his planet??? all of these could represent the bigger context in his psychology that spurred his vengeance but none of them are dramatically emphasized long enough for you to cheer him on. I’m not asking too much I promise. Articulating interiority of a mute character is pretty doable with deft cinema language, just gotta linger and hold a shot here and there for a few seconds, frame as his POV, donezo. I know this is also one of those like. “who cares” moments but the movie does, very evidently so, in making this guy an actual character. you can kinda piece it together and create a framework of sympathy for him, sure, but then again he ultimately becomes a foil to be killed and not defeated, so. Ehh whatever

quarantine zone stuff was not a wildly childish covid allegory quarantine zone stuff was not a wildly childish covid allegory quarantine zone stuff was n

the rooftop helicopter fakout at the end was such an ass-backwards, manufactured moment of what could be a simple setup/payoff it just pissed me off??? you gain nothing by giving sad dad five seconds of pointless crisis that flips right back to previous status quo ANYWAY, except for a weaksauce waste of runtime, which could be used instead to get inside notaro’s head and actually SHOW the remorse form as she took off, literally maybe even a frown playing on her face as she’s headed for safety right before we cut back to drax and the kid. just a simple-ass, minimal, momentary setup for what is the most basic filmmaking trick of creating macro catharsis moments. Just???? g o d if you can’t even land that shit why are you even doing any of this

that lil run final pam did was very very charming and super choreographed in a way that was the tiiiniest bit overdone

the whole intro with the simul-backstories and posing with family photos was just… oddly motivated. what was the goal? “here’s what we’re fighting for” vignettes? why? it’s not a functional setup in that vein. what was all that

also I am sorry if this is insensitive but the reasons most characters end up articulating to justify going back into the hell that destroyed their lives makes them sound seriously insane

I dont like complaining about CGI (honestly) but so much of it in modern movies can achieve higher fidelity if the animation is simply subdued. Do not overengineer and over-apply 2D cell methodologies and kinematics to each tiny twitch and movement in a hyper 3D model and I promise you. it will look a thousand times more natural. look at thanos in those last two movies. your rendering and detail are absolutely perfect with the tiger you just have to let stuff sit instead of constantly simulating swaying hair strands and firing off all facial muscles at once. great moment at one point where makeup zombie horse and CG zombie tiger are both in one shot together and just by unnecessary amounts of movement alone you can tell who doesn’t belong. again; detail, rendering, compositing, lighting, all picture-perfect; but y’all just gotta let the animation breathe sometimes, and chill it out

plot holes don’t really matter to me but it was kinda funny how lilly decided not to mention the enormous wrinkle in intel pertaining to an actual territorial tribe of intelligent zombies that require human offerings to let you pass, just so that reveal could play out in real time through the joyous punishment of the cartoonishly misogynistic dude

total chad move for mister uruk hai and final pam to rule from a rusted swimming pool complex

the ending with vanderohe oh my god. with the. cash stacks at the airport register. and specifically them working in his favor. that is literally something you do to get arrested under suspicion of theft. it was almost played for laughs and I respect that. coulda been goofier. make these movies goofy ya dorks

anyway, weird, weird movie. bad marketing. message unclear (something something sins of the father???), baffling editing instincts, literal worst-looking cinematography I ever laid eyes upon. Confidently dying on that last hill

[villanevest]

You’re Mine [pt.1] - villanelle’s perspective in 2x08

okay so i've seen a lot of freaking out post-finale and i want to say: it's all alright. yes, it was a pretty shocking ending, but honestly, i think it was really good for the characters, and for the show. before anybody yells at me for saying that, i'm going to be explaining myself in three posts. in this post, we're going to be looking at villanelle’s perspective on the events of the episode, and next post, we’ll look at eve's, and this will hopefully make their actions a little clearer, and villaneve's future seem less uncertain. in another post, i'll explain why these kinds of tough, dramatic choices are important for the overall health of the show.

let the deep dive begin. VILLANELLE’s thoughts and feelings in the finale villanelle's first really significant scene this episode is the aaron-villanelle-eve showdown at breakfast. remember that last night was villanelle and aaron's conversation about being voids (2x07), and now that she's seen the murder tape, villanelle really feels like she's got a clean read on aaron -- enough to predict and manipulate him, as she would anyone else. seeing raymond's picture tells her it's time to get out, so she essentially invites eve in to supervise the end of the operation. villanelle has the power -- she's seen aaron's kill technique and clearly decided she can beat him, if it comes to a struggle -- and she's comfortable with the confrontation.

and then aaron offers for her to come work for him. crucially, he frames it as, "you'll never be bored again [with me]". we know for villanelle, boredom is her great vice -- she falls into it easily, it controls her, and she's trying desperately to escape it. aaron's offer in undeniably tempting -- we've seen all through 2x07 the luxury on offer -- but it's when he says "all of it" that villanelle makes up her mind. 

because eve would hate her if she went with aaron, and it can't be "all of it" if "everything" doesn't include eve. here, she decides that eve, on her own, makes villanelle feel more alive/less bored than any material object or orchestrated murder aaron can provide. that's why she turns to eve -- she's saying, look what i'll give up for you.

i dont think she'd necessarily have killed aaron if he hadn't asked her to hurt eve. he might've been a good option to keep on the backburner in case eve ever gave her the green light. but he's a threat, so she gets rid of him. eve freaks out, and villanelle tries to comfort her, as best as she knows how. 

"it's okay", "i'll take care of it", reassuring physical contact. she's probably a bit smug too because now she's killed two people in front of eve, and eve's only upset because of their operation, not because of the murder; for villanelle, this is another indication that violence is not a problem to eve.

i think after this, though, villanelle becomes a bit worried that eve feels like she doesn't have control, which she knows is something eve needs (see: 2x06, when eve was micromanaging the mission). we’ll get back to this. villanelle tries to keep the keel level -- she skirts around the picture of raymond, not wanting to pile on, and slaps eve to start her out of her tailspin. from villanelle's perspective, the morning has probably not been ideal, but it's running fairly smoothly. so villanelle makes her first overture, both because it's what she's wanted this whole time (since konstantin said, "if anything happens, you and eve are on your own"), and because she thinks it'll stop eve from running in to danger.

once she realises eve is serious about it mattering, she stops protesting, and starts helping. and then she runs into konstantin, the second most important person in the world to her, and in her mind, he betrays her. she tells him that she and eve are the same. this is particularly notable at this juncture, because he has just picked his family over villanelle; this comment is partly a bite-back -- villanelle believes she will be eve's first choice, even if she wasn’t his.

then we have the hotel fight with raymond, which again, only really begins once he threatens eve.

unrelated, but i believe raymond's claim "i'm a real somebody" may prove vital in season 3. is he perhaps a high-ranking member of the twelve who likes to indulge in a little recreational axe murder? if yes, then eve may have real problems on that front later.

when raymond is strangling her, villanelle is definitely in a bad way. i dont think, at that point, she has the strength or cognizance to reach for the gun. then eve hits raymond with an axe, and villanelle gets a second to breathe. this is where we get a callback to her saying, "you wanted to save me. and you did." if villanelle is concerned eve feels a lack of control, then this is a chance to return it to her. her encouraging eve to kill raymond is motivated by more than just practicality. firstly, villanelle needs to prove herself right to konstantin -- after he's shaken her faith, she needs absolute unwavering certainty that she and eve are the same. secondly, it binds them, just like the stabbing did in season one. thirdly, villanelle finds a liberation and excitement and power in killing, and she wants to give eve a chance to feel that. finally, and least significantly, i think villanelle probably just found the idea of eve killing someone hot and wanted to watch.

eve starts going into shock again, so villanelle gets her away from the sensory input -- takes off her bloodied shirt and directs her quickly from the scene. she's very gentle and physical in this moment, both because she wants to take care of eve and make sure she feels safe, and because she feels closer to eve than ever before. "like us". 

villanelle holds onto eve as they move through rome. she has already turned down one chance (with konstantin's car) to run away without eve, and she's definitely not losing her, especially now. in the tunnels, she lets eve smash through the wall alone, because she can tell she needs a way to get out her excess energy and deal with the overload of sensation. 

but the gravity of eve's response is more than villanelle expected. she thought eve would probably panic a little, and then right herself. even though they're both on the psychopathy spectrum, villanelle (in addition to being further along that spectrum) was raised with very little moral framework, whereas eve has spent the last forty years assimilated to society and ideas of good/bad, and these are integral to her sense of self.

but eve says "yeah", she is okay, and villanelle kind of assumes that things are alright, after this beat of catharsis. eve is taking a bit longer to process, but that's fine. maybe villanelle can take her mind off it, right? so she starts with talking about dinner, and then pitches her big idea: alaska. 

villanelle has probably been entertaining the abstract idea of "alaska" for a while. she has either watched or help eve lose tethers to her old life (e.g. niko), and villanelle wants a way to make their new connection permanent. she doesn't want eve to vanish like anna did. she picks alaska itself because of the snow globe, which as i said in another post, makes her think that eve's been there before, and liked it enough to buy a souvenir. also, it's in america, so eve would feel like she was on home turf. villanelle clearly prefers europe, but i think alaska has a faraway allure, and she's prepared to compromise.

she reminds eve that they could be normal as another way of allaying her worries post-murder. she's saying, not everything has to change, don't stress, you don't have to kill all the time. we can have half my life and half yours.

and then eve sees the gun. villanelle knows that not shooting raymond was manipulative, otherwise she wouldn't try and distract eve from the fact she had a weapon all along. then she defends, "you had it under control" -- like i mentioned before, she’s trying to return power to eve, remind her of her agency, assure that she's not spiralling.

in this situation, villanelle sees herself like the babysitter who has lied to the child about holding on to the back of the bike to get them to ride without training wheels -- it's for their own good, to teach them their own capabilities. it made me think this:

and then:

this really cemented for me that villanelle saw raymond's death as almost a gift to eve, a way to give her something she'd been missing, that villanelle was SURE she'd, if not necessarily immediately enjoy, then find valuable and help her understand herself. which is why she says she's proud -- she thinks eve has had a personal growth moment. she tells eve, "you made us safe", which mirrors, "you wanted to save me and you did". the "we can look after ourselves now" not only affirms their similarities, but is villanelle's way of saying, you can hold your own, you're in control, which she thinks eve needs to hear. but eve replies that she's going home, leaving. the exact thing villanelle wanted NOT to happen. it's a rejection of what villanelle sees as a big shared experience for them (raymond's death), and of "alaska", which translates to a rejection of villanelle herself. then we have this:

which i think shows a lot of villanelle's character development this season. she's clearly feeling a lot here, but primarily hurt (eve doesn't want her) and fear (eve will leave; she's not enough). konstantin just abandoned her too, by her measure, so villanelle's already more emotionally unstable than she's been. BUT. she takes a breath, and she tries to reopen lines of communication. 

when eve says villanelle wants her to be a mess, i think that upsets villanelle quite a bit, because we've been shown that eve is most exciting and attractive to her when she has agency and power, and also because from villanelle's perspective, she's spent half the time trying to STOP eve from becoming a mess. she's held her and reassured her. villanelle wants to steady her again. villanelle does believe that eve wanted this: wanted to kill raymond, maybe wanted alaska, certainly wanted villanelle. part of what makes villanelle so fun for us to watch is her short-sightedness and impatience, but here all that means is that she hasn't got the long-term empathy to see how this might be utterly rearranging eve's worldview. as we'll talk about in eve's post, eve has actually recovered remarkably well (villanelle's efforts to return her sense of control have worked, and she begins to dominate this exchange, and feel confident again), but she's experiencing A LOT of cognitive dissonance (she's a killer / doesn't think of herself as a killer), and she turns that into anger, and projects that anger onto villanelle. a perfectly justified trauma response. villanelle genuinely doesn't understand why eve is having such a strong reaction to this. it'd be like if you thought your friend would really like chocolate, so you left some on the table for them, and then they got mad at you for making them break their diet, which you'd thought they were never actually serious about. no, that's not at all what it's like in actuality, but it's essentially how villanelle is reading this. "you love me." "no." again, villanelle tries one last way of reaching out, and putting herself on the line to prove to eve how serious she is -- "i love you."

but eve tells her she doesn't, that she doesn't know what love is. and that really angers villanelle, because after so long doubting herself, knowing she's a psychopath and wondering how authentic her emotional experience is, she FINALLY got closure last night, with aaron. as we discussed in my post about that, she now believes what she feels is real, and so it's especially crushing to have it questioned by eve. but in this heated, stressful exchange, when she feels rejected after everything (especially considering how attached she probably was to "alaska"), she retreats to the relatively emotionless security of the "i / it". 

villanelle's sense of entitlement comes screaming through here. from her point of view, she's done so much for eve. just hours earlier at breakfast, she chose eve over aaron's offer of everything else money can buy. she had the alaska plan. she supported eve when she wanted to go back into the death-trap hotel and get the recordings. villanelle is SURE she's done EVERYTHING right. she's played the game perfectly and is somehow still losing. she's not used to losing, to failing, to not having what she wants. villanelle is addicted to instant gratification (she wants something, she gets it asap), and eve has been the only exception. she worked for her. but the extra time and effort is suddenly for nothing. 

and so villanelle does the only thing she can think of, and she moves eve from the category of "special"/"wanted"/"important" to "not special"/"not wanted"/"not important". it's literally emotional triage. yes, villanelle feels things more than aaron, more than most psychopaths, but what she still does have is an ability to mute those feelings, if not entirely, then by quite a lot. so she shoots eve. the logic probably is that if eve isn't around, then villanelle can reconstruct the narrative -- there's nobody else eve's with instead of her, because eve's gone; eve would probably have come back by now if she could, etc. but she doesn't commit entirely, because she doesn't aim to kill. instead, she chooses to replicate how eve stabbed her, because it's something eve "think[s] about all the time". this becomes a don't forget me. it's a think about this, too. is it also an expression of anger? absolutely. villanelle's default is destruction. eve hurt her. she wants to hurt eve. it's a childish tit-for-tat equation. villanelle externalises her feelings, because she can't reckon with them when they're all inside. if she's hungry or annoyed or bored then someone's going to know about it. and here, there is her instinct, and the gun is already in her hand. 

she fires.

will villanelle regret this? will she rationalise it? will she stay angry at eve or reconsider? i'll get into that in my write-up about narrative choices for the show. i've also posted another one of these about eve, and how eve's thinking and feeling (check #villanevest writes). i'm a fan of both eve and villanelle, and i think they were acting in ways that made sense to them. i get that we want them to be happy, but i think it's ignoring a lot of context to blame one or the other of them. remember, killing eve is a show about dangerous and irrational people doing dangerous and irrational things.

[edwad]

If you had to choose 10 marxian econ books for someone who has only read marx, what would you recommend

by “marx” i have to assume you mean capital because that really is the root of “marxian econ”. it won’t suffice to just have read the manifesto or something like that and i don’t want to recommend books that will be saying things that you’re totally unfamiliar with because you’re skipping straight into the secondary literature which already largely assumes a reader which is familiar with capital. anyway, heres a list, which isnt in any particular order and which includes a few things that i’m still working through for myself:

1. essays on marxs theory of value - isaak rubin 

hugely important book which essentially all value-form theory derives from. written by an extremely knowledgeable marx scholar who had a much better idea of what marx was doing in capital than most marxists today. last month brill published a book called “responses to marxs capital” which includes some of rubin’s other writings, most of them being published in english for the first time. hes a huge figure in the literature and definitely worth looking in to. 

2. marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason - david harvey

i was obviously going to put something of harvey’s in here and i think his last book is a fairly good summary of the best of what hes done up to this point with some welcome additions (the visualization of capital, the stuff on anti-value, etc). not perfect but he definitely provides a good framework for how to understand the geography of capital which doesnt require necessarily agreeing with him on everything. honestly, if you keep up with harvey at all you’ll be able to tell that its mostly just typical harveyisms with the inclusion of some stuff from his recent talks (which have all been almost exactly the same). 

3. in the long run we are all dead - geoff mann

maybe this looks more like a book on keynesian rather than marxian econ, but its real argument is that keynesianism as a long historical project (meaning long before and after keynes himself) has been an immanent critique of liberalism and revolution and that keynes is to us what hegel was to marx. a really great book that covers a lot of ground which isnt always explicitly economic, but definitely worth the read if you have the patience. if you want a longer review, i left a pretty lengthy one on amazon a few months ago where you can get a better idea of what i got from this book, what its limitations are, and why i think its so important. 

4. monopoly capital - paul baran & paul sweezy 

an older book which hasnt exactly aged well, but its thesis has become extremely popular again since the crisis. written by baran and sweezy, the fathers of “the monthly review school” of economics, its played a huge role in the direction of marxian debates from the 1960s up until today. the authors were both tending in the same intellectual direction in their earlier works (sweezy’s theory of capitalist development and baran’s political economy of growth, the former still being considered one of the best introductions to marxs work and its relevance to the 20th century, with much controversy of course) and this was the result of them coming together to talk about what they saw as a monopoly capitalism which was fairly different in character than the “competitive capitalism” of marx’s day and therefore had to be dealt with differently. 

5. capitalism - anwar shaikh

probably the most ambitious work the left has seen in a long time which tries to thoroughly critique neoclassical theory and develop an alternative economics which is rooted in what shaikh calls the “classical” school (”classical-marxian” would probably be more appropriate but i think hes trying to downplay his reliance on marx). in it, shaikh takes a good look at many of the competing schools of thought (neoclassical, post-keynesian, sraffian/neo-ricardian, etc) and sees how they stand up analytically and empirically, taking issue with their underlying assumptions and the inevitable problems which arise from building a theory on false foundations. 

one of his bigger points is that the neoclassical theory of “perfect competition” is nonsensical but wasnt thoroughly combatted by heterodox economists, who only made it so far as asserting the “imperfect” nature of competition, which, in shaikh’s eyes, is to simply add imperfections after the fact into the theory which necessarily begins with the absurd assumption of perfection. the book’s argument is that the theorists of “imperfect competition” still rely on the theory of “perfect competition” as their starting point and never really manage to escape the latter because they havent actually created an alternative way of thinking about competition, they’ve just inserted a complication into a theory which was a completely unrealistic assumption to begin with. much of his attack is directed at the monthly review school and the idea of a “monopoly capitalism” which is supposedly different in form than the allegedly “perfect competition” of capitalism during marxs life. in this sense, this book serves as a counterbalance to the MR approach and is also probably the most successful attempt at situating marxs TRPF within an empirical study of kondratiev waves. 

hes also got a website with a bunch of resources and a lecture series from a course he did on the material in the book which is pretty interesting, but it assumes a good deal of familiarity with economics. 

6. a history of marxian economics - michael howard & john king (2 volumes)

this is a pretty thorough history of the internal debates among marxian economists ever since the death of marx all the way up to 1990. it covers a lot of ground and doesnt shy away from controversies where marx didnt come out on top. of course, a good amount of this is subject to the interpretation of the authors and they definitely have a great deal of input, but its a very impressive work which i frequently use as a marxian encyclopedia of sorts. 

7. the making of marx’s capital - roman rosdolsky

despite some problems, rosdolsky’s classic book on the development of marx’s critique of political economy is easily one of the most important marxological works ever written and it still holds a lot of sway. taking the grundrisse as its starting point, the author unpacks marx’s project and constantly asserts marx’s method and in particular his explicit reliance on hegel’s logic, pitting marx (as he was in his drafts) against the then contemporary thinkers and critics which were prone to misusing or misunderstanding the arguments in capital. as a disclaimer and partial criticism of rosdolsky’s portrait of marx, i dont believe that we can simply say that marx in the late 50s was identical to the marx of the 60s and 70s that wrote and published capital, but i also dont think that means we necessarily have to discount the grundrisse (or theories of surplus value, etc) simply because they werent written at precisely the right time for marxs thinking. 

i only just got my own copy a couple of weeks ago so i cant say too much more but i have skimmed through chunks of the pdf and its totally unavoidable in the secondary literature so im not totally unfamiliar. its one i plan on tackling in full very soon.

8. moneybags must be so lucky - robert paul wolff

another marxological one, this tiny book is a literary analysis of capital and in particular the first part of volume 1. wolff does a great job of deconstructing the arguments in chapter 1 to try and clarify what marx is doing and why with a lot of humor and philosophical tangents. one of his biggest points is that marxs heavy reliance on irony was the only adequate way of capturing the contradictory nature of capitalism and is therefore part of the theory itself, rather than simply being a way to dress up the theory and make it more palatable to readers. i approached this book after id already “read marx” too, but it was extremely useful because it wasnt until i read it that i finally started to actually understand marx. for that reason, i dont feel particularly bad about recommending it to anyone thats already familiar with capital because it does a great job of making the most difficult part of volume 1 infinitely more exciting and comprehensible – especially since its never enough to just read capital once. 

9. the production of commodities by means of commodities - piero sraffa

against my better judgement, i’m putting this on the list knowing full-well that i’m going to be harassed by an anon which has been on my ass for about a year now ever since i first recommended sraffa’s book in a reading list despite the fact that ive never finished it (barely even read it to be more precise). i do, however, know that its had a huge influence on the trajectory of marxian thought since 1960 and that many of the thinkers are still trying to recover from the theoretical displacement implicit in sraffa’s thesis. 

its a math-heavy book (which is why i havent been able to wade through it) and its status as a work coming from the “marxian” approach is hotly contested, but its certainly had its way with the marxian school (not to mention the neoclassical school, which has an easier time simply ignoring sraffa entirely), generating countless debates among scholars, many of whom simply wish that this book had never been written. for a short summary of the debate and whats apparently at stake, ive got an old post where i worked out some of the initial responses to sraffa and how this has snowballed into the controversy that it is today. ive got it on this list because of how unavoidable it is. you cant go into the secondary literature at anything resembling an intermediate level without knowing sraffa’s name and why everyone feels so strongly about him.

10. an introduction to the three volumes of karl marxs capital - michael heinrich

i dont quite like that im ending this list with a book that presents itself as an “introduction” when we’ve already established that this is a bunch of recommendations for someone thats already acquainted with capital, but sadly this is the only full-length book that heinrich has in the english language and its reading of capital is so unorthodox that it feels totally alien against all the traditional interpretations of marx. honestly, it doesnt feel like an introduction in the first place, reading more like a challenge and an intervention into the secondary debates about what marx is saying in capital which derives from the german debates which constitute the parameters for the “neue marx-lekture”, or “the new reading of marx”, which sits uncomfortably among the more typical marxisms that surround it on all sides, especially among non-german theorists/readers. 

as far as the dominant reading of marx goes, nearly everything this book says betrays marx’s project, but heinrich knows marx very well, better than most of us (as even his biggest critics readily admit). this may be considered reflective of a “new reading”, but that doesnt mean the old ones are any better or that this one is necessarily a “revisionist” project as many claim (or at least, i wouldnt consider it to be revising marx even if its guilty of revising “marxism”, which is by no means necessarily a bad thing). on the contrary, i think heinrich has the best understanding of marx out of pretty much everyone else right now and thats why i wanted to end with this one. yes, you should read all of the others, especially since you cant understand the way we read and think about marx without coming across the work of people like sraffa and sweezy, but that doesnt really change the fact that heinrich points to a big problem with the way we read and think about marx, that the debates have been getting it wrong all along and largely misunderstanding marxs actual project, miscontextualizing it and falling into dogmatism for various political or academic reasons. 

what heinrich does is to show how the way marx is read and interpreted often misses or downplays the most crucial elements of what marx is actually trying to get across. marxs critique of political economy simply gets converted into a newer, more correct political economy which simply builds on the classical school (shaikh), or it suffers in the hands of those that believe its foundations need to be updated as if it isnt all that relevant anymore (sweezy and baran), or that many of its categories are lacking utility and can simply be done away with (sraffa). rubin’s work plays a big part in establishing the NML reading and harvey draws on heinrich’s scholarship a lot, but nobody really does it as well as heinrich himself and i genuinely think hes lightyears ahead of everyone else. a lot of people are starting to agree and i was one of the most recent converts on the heinrich hype train which has been growing for the last couple of years. 

any day now, we should be getting one of his older books, the science of value, in english and i plan on devouring it as fast as i can, but sadly its been in limbo for several years, with its initial release scheduled for 2014 (if i remember correctly). in the mean time though, we’ve only got his introduction to capital and a bunch of shorter pieces/videos.  

so i guess thats my list of 10 things to read after marx with some explanations on why i think theyre important, culminating in ideologically correct heinrich-worship. this was sorta fun and if you have any other questions feel free to ask. 

[bitternanami]

im really really excited by this idea, i think its brilliant. on reading this post it had me thinking, like. how much expertise would be necessary to produce something like that? what would it take to implement it?

if i may im gonna spitball a little on this. pls bear with me, bc im going into a fair bit of detail as to potential hurdles, but overall i dont think this is unachievable at all. it would help a lot of people enormously.

im also putting it under a cut bc it got Really Long. oops

(ill note im coming at this from a usamerican perspective, so im not sure how this would work globally, though that would obviously be the larger objective. more research needed.)

i think the main reason this might prove difficult is that a lot of the time, comorbidities with chronic illness can span across the fields of a variety of different specialists. specialists who absolutely Hate to talk to each other 🙄

depression borne of thyroid disease is a great example here. i would be surprised to run into a psychiatrist who even like.. knows that that is a thing that can happen, or at least has internalized it to the extent that its something they would honestly suggest. doing that would mean putting into focus the interconnectedness of human bodymind systems, which doesnt jive well with the way the health industry has compartmentalized our care into distinct little boxes at all.

and this obviously sucks. it leaves our hypothetical patient out in the rain, with no real recourse to learn what the actual problem is, short of doing all of these doctors' jobs for them, as is the case now. ideally it would not work like this at All, but if we assume that for our purposes here that we're maneuvering within the flawed framework as it exists, then it means giving practitioners across the board access to multidisciplinary information they otherwise wouldnt be bothered to look for themselves. in order to do that, one needs to compile it in the first place.

creating an accurate, referable directory of comorbidities with the according sets of diagnostic checklists would have to be a multi-pronged effort, because of how varied and multifaceted the area of study is. so itd likely require the formation of several specific focus groups consisting of ppl from a range of bgs, most critically those with lived experience, as well as good-faith medical scholars. each of these groups could maybe develop a list of common symptoms, comorbidities that currently exist in patients, risk factors.. answers to the question 'what does it look like when you have both [x] and [y]?'

like, the answers to those questions Exist already ! the raw quantitative data isnt necessarily there rn--we're not currently recording a lot of these statistics outside of like. medicaid/medicare, which means the sample set is inherently gonna have some degree of bias, but even still thats Something to work with. we can use what we have to back up any findings and like. Tell people about them.

when it comes to pitching this resource to the established systems.. training existing practitioners as well as appending this information to medical curricula…. who has the authority to do this? legislature? national health associations? those are made of people, and like…. in theory we can talk to people, right?

i mean, im definitely being reductive abt the amount of bullshit youd have to wade through to enact this on a large scale; i know doctors are a standoffish, stubborn bunch on the whole, and therefore no doubt highly resistant to change of any sort. but the healthcare system has been improved before, yknow? it sucked to do and it happened too slowly. many many many lives could have been improved, saved, if the those treating us considered it a priority to listen to sick people. but if they dont want to do that, then there must be ways to make them.

upon implementation, the database would also require updating as we collectively learn things about chronic illness, in order to make a questionnaire/test directory like that a functional tool even as research progresses. so you need the resources to do that, to be up on the current medical texts alongside regularly repeating the initial fact-finding process, to see what, if anything, has changed over time. maintenance would comparatively be a lot simpler than establishing it in the first place tho.

like, its a large large project. it might be out of an individual's means but it really feels doable when i look at it as a, a grant proposal to bring to a nonprofit or patient advocacy group or something. id need to look into whats out there for chronic illnesses broadly, bc i know a large number of those are focused on specific diagnoses, but. i dont know!! am i way off base here ?? are there people working on projects like this already? is it embarrassingly naive to think theres a chance of actually affecting how this all works???

when you get diagnosed with a chronic illness they should automatically offer you free tests for the ten most common comorbidities.

bc chronic illnesses DO often come in bundles like that and people experiencing them often struggle with recognizing symptoms in things we’ve lived with sometimes for our entire lives meaning we have to a) identify that something we experience is a symptom of something that hasn’t been diagnosed and b) believe it’s possible/important/realistic to address that symptom AND c) communicate this to our doctors often/clearly/emphatically enough that we eventually can get tested AND, usually, d) figure out what’s causing it ourselves because let’s be real doctors often don’t care enough to figure it out themselves and will often just shrug unless you mention a specific possible diagnosis for them to check

and all of this could be made one trillion times easier if after someone did that ONCE and got diagnosed, if it was standard practice for the doctor to then pull out their handy dandy reference app and put in the New Diagnosis and be given a list of the most common comorbidities that they must now check you for.

like they don’t even have to run the lab tests if that’s too expensive! Just go over the diagnostic criteria and proactively ask, “Do you experience these symptoms?” and suddenly people will have adequate diagnoses and possible treatment options SO much faster

[i-am-very-very-tired]

NICOLE July 5, 2017 at 7:22 am Please stop using mental illness as an excuse to be an asshole. Mental illness does not force you to be horrible to people. Also remember Kanye was doing this long before his breakdown. Rap is built on beef so frankly I’m not surprised he came for Kanye. He came for his wife and by all gossip accounts Kimye are obsessed with Bey and Jay. 4:44 is pretty great and some of Jay’s best. It’s also more than this stupid beef MARIA F. July 5, 2017 at 7:31 am I totally agree. Maybe Kanye’s environment should have prevented him from performing in such a state, but of course, he is their cash cow. But even if he was not feeling well, Jay Z has the right to be offended by what was said. At the end of the day, i believe this is all about controversy and selling records. Everybody has been focused on that line since the album dropped. RENEE2 July 5, 2017 at 7:39 am Okay, Deriding people’s mental health issues is sh*tty and I don’t condone it. But I don’t understand why people are acting shocked at Jay-Z, as though he were of such staunch moral fiber before. The guy is smart, successful, and can be funny but he is also a mercenary, deeply misogynist, and frankly, more than a bit sleazy. I mean, people have heard his rhymes about women, right? Not to mention his profligate use of the nword. Dude is hardly PC. Kanye is also a douche. Again, how many times has he been offensive. This is another misogynist, and one who has used homophobic slurs in his rhymes although he professes to be queer positive. We’re supposed to forget all that because we now deem him to have mental health issues??? As Nicole stated, we should not give him a pass just because he is not well, dude is an *sshole, plain and simple. NICOLE July 5, 2017 at 7:49 am Exactly. People act like having a mental illness is a magic wand that makes people forgive and forget what you did easily. That’s not how that works. It doesn’t erase why you did or how people felt because of your actions. I tell clients this all the time. You cannot control how people react to you. Being mentally ill may give them a framework for more understanding but again it does not erase the action. And Kanye was an ass before this. So yep. DEM July 5, 2017 at 8:13 am “he is also a mercenary, deeply misogynist, and frankly, more than a bit sleazy. I mean, people have heard his rhymes about women, right?” Jay Zs lyrics on women are actually among the least misogynist of the genre. Two weeks ago we had an Eminem post and not only was there no mention of his violent lyrics against women, it was filled with “he is so cute” comments. And my post on his lyrics some of which threaten a specific woman by name were moderated out. But here we are, the instant the subject is a black dude…. Its “dude is hardly PC”. “Not to mention his profligate use of the nword”…..lmao As if the N-er word was not already on the tips of white tongues. Yes’ its the song about black people in Paris and not white peoples unadulterated hate thats the problem. Those black people who dont wish to reclaim ithe word are entitled to that opinion and should just not use it. I stand firmly and proudly in the reclaim camp. This site reclaims “bitchy”, gay people reclaim the F word and Its not your business that black men and women have reclaimed the N word. RENEE2 July 5, 2017 at 8:32 am @DEM, I can’t tell if you are trolling (I think you probably are) or not but here goes: 1) The point that I was making was that BOTH Jay-Z and Kanye have used problematic language so we shouldn’t be shocked if that Jay is being insensitive in this instance, nor should we necessarily be sympathetic to Ye in this instance because he has a history or being an insensitive clod too. 2) I can’t comment on the Eminem thread as I am also not here for that trick for numerous reasons, including his misogyny, so uh, nice try 3) Though I wasn’t critiquing Jay’s use of the nword, but rather was saying that his use of it demonstrates that he does not subscribe to notions of what is considered to be acceptable, I am also not here for that term. It is ugly, it is violent, and I don’t think that it’s something that Black people need to reclaim. I don’t know how you got that I was not Black from my comments but I am so you can step off with telling how I should feel about. ERINN July 5, 2017 at 8:47 am Dem - I know Em has been called out plenty on this site. He hasn’t gotten a big magical pass by any means. I don’t actually think I saw the recent Em post – and I’ve been on this site for like 5 years or more. Some posts slip through the cracks, or people are busy, or whatever. Personally I think Em is incredibly talented – but also someone who grew up with a really f—ed up life. It doesn’t excuse his behavior as an adult, but I also don’t look at him and think “he had every chance, and a healthy relationship with women, why is he talking this shit”. He was a mess, he’s gotten a lot better about certain things, but the Slim persona is played up so much, and a lot of awful things are said across so many categories. I tend to think of Jay similarly. He got dealt a sh-t hand growing up – he pulled himself up, but unfortunately his lyrics still are incredibly problematic at times. He’s still incredibly talented, and I don’t think his lyrics are an exact display of who he is as a person. I think most artists exaggerate like crazy and try to keep a persona kind of separate from their real life, but it doesn’t mean that it’s ‘okay’ that they say the things they do. I’m not writing him off as a person because of it though. As long as there is growth happening – that’s great. But if they suddenly devolve into a much worse place, then I’m going to have to stop supporting them as artists. KONFUSED July 5, 2017 at 9:28 am @Renee2 whether you are black or not is irrelevant when you say “I don’t think that it’s something that Black people need to reclaim”..you should step off on telling other people how you feel about their use of the N-word it really doesn’t matter if you approve of it or not SANDERS July 5, 2017 at 9:58 am Nicole, from previous posts including this one, it sounds like you are a therapist. I’m surprised you are minimizing JayZ use of words crazy and insane to describe someone with a mental illness. Of course people with a mental illness have to examine their behaviours and coping strategies etc, though in the midst of a breakdown, self awareness takes a back seat. Lets also hold JayZ responsible for his mocking of people with mental health issues and I encourage you to check out the excellent comments from Claire down below. Me= If she's a therapist, I don't want her as mine. She probably works for talkspace? RENEE2 July 5, 2017 at 10:56 am @ KONFUSED Why should I step off telling a poster how I feel about the word when said poster is putting words in my mouth and twisting what I wrote? And again, the reason that I mentioned my racial identity was because the poster stated that I wasn’t in a position to comment on Jay Z’s use of the nword because they assumed I was not Black. Everyone comes here to offer an opinion and get on our respective soapboxes so GTFO with telling me not to share my thoughts on a topic. BRIDGET July 5, 2017 at 11:20 am @Konfused – you’re coming off like you don’t actually have something to say and just want to be mean to someone to make yourself feel better. RENEE2 July 5, 2017 at 11:53 am @KONFUSED Yep, that’s me, the proverbial angry Black woman, lol. Hope it’s not too damp where you’re stationed under the bridge. @ Bridget, Thank you!! IDONTKNOWYOUYOUDONTKNOWME July 5, 2017 at 2:05 pm Well, for example borderline disorder and what is perceived as “a-holeish behavior” kindof come hand in hand RONALDINHIO July 5, 2017 at 5:03 pm Whilst you are all saying mental ill health doesn’t give you a pass I’m gonna have to stop ya Many of the behaviours that West exhibited could be signs of a growing mania and paranoia that could present or exist co morbidly with and anxiety disorder or depressive illness. As reported he may have bi polar disorder which might not have been accurately medicated. All or none of these things may have been his actual disorder and all may have been exacerbated by lack of sleep and over work. His grandiosity, rambling, hyper activity, sensitivity moving into paranoia psychosis or mania all sounds like it could be easily described by a mental health disorder. Ignoring the lack of control someone has during an episode of mental ill health or trying to blame them when they often have little control is poor form. LLAMAS July 5, 2017 at 10:51 pm Sick. I have BPD and have never been described as an a**hole. People with BOD treat themselves the worst. FLORC July 5, 2017 at 7:04 pm And being a jerk can be a sign of mental illness. You cannot know either way unless you are much much closer than a commenter here. Im reserving judgement. Kanye is outrageous a lot of the time and shows erratic behavior, but also has appeared to have experienced some incredibly traumatic events. That doesn’t get healed easily if ever.