About

“It’s just the simple thing / that’s hard, so hard to do.”

Notes and Commentaries” intends to be a blog irregularly posting articles and commentaries about theoretical topics and current events, written from an independent Marxist perspective. It does not pretend to any importance or quality, but it strives for objectivity and nonsectarianism. De omnibus dubitandum est.

The author can be reached by email at firstname dot lastname at brunel.ac.uk.

Comments

Hello McCaine,

I saw your review of the J. Sakai ‘Settlers’ thesis and was wondering whether you would be willing to share your thoughts about it. I’m much interested in what you think of the general idea of a white, or first world proletariat not existing? Is hard third-worldism the only correct position to take? Is it of any value to stand up for the rights of first world workers other than the poorest ones? Will the Dutch workers as they are today be of any use in the revolution?

That’s a lot of questions. I hope you find time to answer them.

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

Armin Halilovic

@My post here:

My bad, I didn’t notice this commentary section was for your latest specific blog entry. I thought this was a general commentary section. Please move or delete this comment as you see fit. Sorry!

This page is fine for general questions. Also, you ask a very good one. I do in fact have considerable sympathy and agreement with the Third-Worldist viewpoint, hence also my links to the Maoist-Third Worldist organization MSH/LLCO. I am planning to address these questions much more extensively in the future, but this requires substantial research which I am still working on at the moment. Therefore, fully developing my views on this is still a work in progress.

McCaine,

Do you have any recommended reading on Ulbricht/Honecker and/or the DDR economy? I was quite impressed with Farms to Factories & Red Plenty, which I found via your Amazon reviews, and am looking for something in this vein.

MsG,

– Franz

Hey McCaine, I lurked LF for a long time and enjoyed your posts. It’s somewhat odd that a person could be an intellectual influence simply to another by posting thoughts on the internet, but your posts were always lucid and you argued decisively. I like your book reviews; I’m now reading Limits to Capital along with Capital itself, in coordination with the free Harvey lecture series. I tried reading it once before in the past but it was an immature abortive attempt, but this time I am really starting to grasp the basic language and concepts and see how the dialectic works, and it’s really exciting to move on from there. Just thought I’d say thanks!

Ian

Ran into your review of Harvey’s Condition of Postmodernity. Please do continue to transcribe your reviews on popular sites (Amazon or Goodreads), they’re really really valuable, for us, uh, people in the public. 🙂

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