The final lecture in the Ideological Critique series has been delivered, recorded, edited, and processed, and will be uploaded on Thursday or Friday. So that project is completed. It was harder than I anticipated. I hope some of you get a chance to watch it. The final lecture is short, but it has a boffo ending.
Now I can turn my full attention to the train wreck we call politics in this benighted nation.
My next gig is a two day mini-speaking tour in late April to Brown University and MIT to talk about my work on the thought of Karl Marx.
Professor WolfF: When is the the MIT lecture and be open to the public?
ReplyDeleteDid a quick search on google and did not find any information.
Thanks, Bob, for turning me on to your paper on the future of socialism. Very interesting and thought-provoking--and depressing. Do you see any hope in the possibility that, just as racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities are mitigated by the unfolding logic of capitalism, perhaps extremes in income inequality will come to be mitigated in the same way? I guess I'm thinking of a macro, world-historical version of the [apocryphal?] meme we all learned as kids: Henry Ford paying his workers more than he had to so they could afford the Model A. In the present climate, one could add to the affordability issue the political risks of class resentment: i.e., the perceived threat to the top dogs of our electing a Trump or a Sanders. One thinks of the possibility that corporate America might support the efforts of a President Clinton to dramatically raise the minimum wage or defeat the TPP, etc. David Brooks, of all people, argues this morning that Republicans need to wake up and start supporting government interventions on behalf of workers. Maybe, a la your analysis in the paper, some hope lies in the logic of capitalism to save itself, as it did with the flattening of the business cycle.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, The MIT lecture is to a faculty study group led by a young man in the Poli Sci faculty there. I gather it will also be open to others in the Greater Boston area, and everyone has pledged to read my 25,000 word summary of all the work I have done on Marx. You might try contacting Lucas Stanczyk [sp?] and see what he says. I told him I would not come unless everyone reads the paper. we shall see.
ReplyDeleteAny chance of recording the Marx talk and posting it on YouTube, as you did with the Ideological Critique series? Since you are going to the trouble of doing all the prep anyway, it would be a shame not to be able to share it with a wider audience. I for one would love to hear it.
ReplyDeleteI will ask whether they have the capability to record it.
ReplyDeleteIf they can't video it, you can record the speech (as a speech) and put it in your blog as a podcast. I'm sure that MIT has the capacity to do that. Lots of us would be interested in hearing what you have to say about Marx.
ReplyDelete