Chernyshevsky’s ideas are important to the person who is certain of victory, important to us because we are building socialism, and building it consciously, because we have real power, even if limited, over events.
The cyclic revival of “Roman Antiquity” and “European Aristocracy” and “the Roaring ’20s” and “the ’70s” and “the ’80s” in Western fashion and mass-media, always curated so as to avoid improper focus on imperial genocide or slavery, resembles nothing so much as the boom-and-bust…
The relationship between the arts and politics is one of great theoretical importance. According to Dialectical Materialism, the arts and politics are neither separable nor equivalent.
In my past life as an evangelical for social action, I had a much-photocopied dossier in my desk drawer from the Procter & Gamble corporation. This surreal document was the company’s sadly necessary response to the urban legend that the manufacturer of Tide, Crest and Dawn was…
The Russian workers in practically all the large cities of Russia have already made their response in connection with the death of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. In one way or another, they expressed their attitude to the writer who produced a number of most remarkable works of art…
When Goebbels, the brain behind Nazi propaganda, heard culture being discussed, he brought out his revolver. That shows that the Nazis — who were and are the most tragic expression of imperialism and of its thirst for domination — even if they were all degenerates like Hitler…
Friends who live far away necessarily write to each other a lot. Sometimes a stray idea from this correspondence gets developed into an essay, but more often than not it’s forgotten. We decided to collect and share a few instances of wordplay to save them from oblivion, because…
A short time ago I told Comrade Hu Yaobang that I wanted to talk with the propaganda departments about problems on the ideological front, especially those in literature and art.
This is a book not only about poetry but also about the sources of poetry. Poetry is written in language and therefore it is a book about the sources of languages. Language is a social product, the instrument whereby men communicate and persuade each other; thus the study of…
Over the years I have told a number of friends that, if I had had access to a nuclear device when I was in seventh grade, there would be a huge crater in upstate New York centered on what used to be West Seneca Junior High School.
When people complain about sexually objectified images of women in advertising and other media, a typical MRA troll move is to counter that men are also sexually objectified. Male models are sex objects too, says the troll: impossibly ripped and handsome studs, sexy and…
Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was a Russian revolutionary renowned for his presentation of the materialist point of view.
The sea is beautiful; looking at it, we never think of being dissatisfied with it, aesthetically. But not everyone lives near the sea; many people never in their lives get a chance to see it. Yet they would very much like to see it, and consequently seascapes please and interest…
Despite the desires of its pontiffs and overseers, the capitalist literary process does not manage to escape the germs that creep into it from the base structure on which it rests, and to which it is tethered. The inherent contradictions — the growing and mortal contradictions…
Volume I of Hitler’s Mein Kampf [My Struggle] was published in 1925. Volume II was published in 1926. It’s important to bear these dates in mind because, according to historian David Schmitz, in 1933, when Hitler first became Chancellor of Germany, US officialdom was…
From 1850 until his death in 1880, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert compiled a “Dictionary of Received Ideas” as his catalogue of stupidities, inanities and misinformation. In this word association game, “Malthus” summoned up “infamous,” and “Louis XVI” evoked “unfortunate.”…
I’ve become very skeptical of the concept of “brainwashing.” Over the past few months this skepticism has boiled over into open and explicit disagreement with even well-meaning pushers within the Marxist-Leninist corner. I often find it difficult to explain concisely why it is…
Popular opinion on whether any given piece of media constitutes “a critique” is often split. Some people, for example, claim that Breaking Bad criticizes sexism, whereas others think it’s a sexist show. In this essay I want to shed some light on the different theories of…
I’ve been writing a four-part article for Field Newspaper Syndicate at the beginning of each year for several years now and in 1980, mindful of the approach of the year 1984, FNS asked me to write a thorough critique of George Orwell’s novel 1984. I was…
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the…
Let us broach a polemical subject. The British author George Orwell is very well known for works such as Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and his book about the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia. Throughout 2022 I intend to discuss each of these…
You can identify a Very Important Person because they get the proper VIP treatment: they come surrounded by an entourage of PR gurus, secretaries, agents, media handlers and bodyguards. Access to the VIP is limited and controlled, their public appearances are stage managed, their…
Geek culture dominates popular media. Comic-book films like Iron Man, The Dark Knight (both 2008) and The Avengers (2012) are among Hollywood’s highest-grossing blockbusters, while geek/slacker comedies like Superbad and Knocked Up…
On YouTube there are all these funny video compilations. Some are very specific and show nothing but people hurting themselves on slides or animals being clever. Others mix together everything anyone might consider funny: pranks, children being silly, failed acrobatics, etc. Most…
My noble friend, Lala Ram Saran Das, has asked me to write an introduction to his poetical work, The Dreamland. I am neither a poet nor a litterateur, neither am I a journalist nor a critic. Hence, by no stretch of imagination can I find the justification of the demand.
On July 26, 2020 I sat down for two hours and laid out on Twitter why I was skeptical of accusations that China was committing a genocide against the Uyghur people in its western province of Xinjiang. I spoke out, despite lacking professional credentials, because I was frustrated…
Iain M. Banks was a Scottish fiction writer. His most famous work, the Culture series, centers on a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens and advanced artificial intelligences living in constructed habitats spread across the Milky Way. In this essay he…
At the beginning of every essay, a writer has to decide how familiar their intended audience is with the terms they’ll be using. The focus of this essay, H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, occupies a strange position in that it’s both niche and mainstream (e.g. spellcheck…
Comrades! You have been invited to this forum today to exchange ideas and examine the relationship between work in the literary and artistic fields and revolutionary work in general. Our aim is to ensure that revolutionary literature and art follow the correct path of development…
There’s a common trope in media where it’s revealed, most often near the end of the story (but sometimes right off the bat), that trying too hard to do good makes you evil. Game of Thrones, HBO’s Watchmen, The Hunger Games, and many other shows, movies…
The only people who misunderstand George Orwell’s 1984 are those that go around trying to imagine it has a leftist message. It is mistaken to imagine that children in the English-speaking world get his work drilled into them like a mantra because, somehow…