Wolfgang fritz haug biography of barack
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For(e)ward: An Invitation
A ‘ “message in the bottle” for a different future’, Fredric Jameson wrote 25 years ago, after the first four volumes of the (German-language) Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus (HKWM) – Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism (HCDM) – had been published. Admittedly, the Preface to the first volume may have approached the matter somewhat less modestly, stating that it was the HKWM’s task, ‘as if on Noah’s Ark’, to carry ‘humankind’s treasure trove of enlightening knowledge and social imagination […] into a new era’, so as to salvage it from ‘an enormous mountain of historical debris, one which threatens to indiscriminately bury both that system’s rational elements and seeds for the future, along with those elements which are irrational and hostile’ to life (, III).1
The time in which these lines were written – and, indeed, understood as a historic mission – was shaped by the aftermath of the collapse of the Sovi
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On the Dialectics of Anti-Capitalism - Wolfgang Fritz Haug
On the Dialectics of Anti-Capitalism1
Staring at evil contains an element of fascination. Therein, however, also an element of consent.
Horkheimer/Adorno, Dialectics of Enlightenment
The thought baffled me. Was that my thought? That was the thought of the enemy. Was I my own enemy? I distanced myself from myself, that means, I imagined a man who looked at me from outside.
Volker Braun, The Iron Car
The first massive appearance of a plural movement of globalisation critics in Seattle , greeted as the “New Aurora” (Ramonet ), may not have rung in a revolutionary turn in the world, but inasmuch as it turned against the rulers of world capitalism, it has brought about a turn of the globalisation critics towards the world. A memorable dialectics converted them into the pioneers of a different kind of globalisation. With a term borrowed from French, we call them “Alterglobalists” (altermondialistes). Their world-w
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If socialism and liberalism have both been central to modern political and social thought, during the 20th century it was socialism, in a loose ecumenical sense, that was the most successful of the two in terms of intellectual attraction and public te1 Socialism was emblazoned on the banners of mass parties in Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa—in fact, virtually every major country of the globe, with the exception of Nigeria and the us. It was embraced as a rhetorical goal, at least, by a range of locally powerful parties from Arctic Social Democrats to African nationalists. Socialism and Communism exercised a powerful attraction over some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century: Einstein was a socialist, writing a founding manifesto for the American Marxist journal Monthly Review; Picasso was a Communist, who designed the logo of post-World War ii Communist-led peace movements. In spite o