By Jonathan Michael Feldman, March 11, 2022 Russia is engaged in a hideous and immoral war. There’s no point in excusing Russia or being a “useful idiot” for Russian militarism. Yet, there is a point in understanding Russia’s security logic and how it’s not that different from those who want to join NATO or Swedish…
Continue readingNATO Logic or Magical Mantras? A Critique of Gunnar Hökmark’s Swedish NATO Appeal
This mural, a fossil and highpoint of Sweden’s anti-militarist culture, was unveiled at the Östermalmstorg subway station in 1965. One key slogan engraved in concrete says, “Down with weapons.” It is obvious that on the question of war the Marxist tradition presents neither unity nor clarity. One point was common to all the Marxist trends:…
Continue readingSweden’s Military Transfer to Ukraine for Beginners
By Jonathan Michael Feldman, February 24, 2022 The Ecological Mobilization that Wasn’t to the War Mobilization that Is: Mutually Assured Paranoia A systemic ecological mobilization at a fast pace, with necessary sacrifices, has been needed to avoid further climate catastrophes. Today wehave mobilization for war based on militarist managerialism. As various nations attempt to shift…
Continue readingMutually Assured Paranoia in the Ukraine Crisis: The Failures of Elite Planning
By Jonathan Michael Feldman, February 20, 2022, Revised February 22, 2022 What is Military Managerialism? Military managerialism is a principle described by thinkers like C. Wright Mills and Seymour Melman, two Columbia University professors who were among the leading anti-militarist intellectuals in the United States. The principle of military managerialism suggests that bureaucracies are based…
Beyond Terrorism and Militarism Redux An Analysis of 9-11: Twenty Years Later Notes from a Speech to Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Ungdomsförbund (Social Democratic Student Organization) By Jonathan Michael Feldman, Stockholm University September 11, 2021 Overview In this talk, I will first discuss the causes of the 9-11 attacks. Then I will address, the costs of the…
By Jonathan Michael Feldman, September 8, 2021 One core feature of advanced capitalist states are morally indifferent bureaucracies. Even though publics are alienated from them, they still have within their wages (after surplus value) disposable income which can be leveraged to create a credibility tax on companies. This tax can be applied by direction action…
August 26, 2021, Updated August 27, 2021 and September 2, 2021 By Jonathan Michael Feldman How We Got In, How We Got Out, and What We Should Do A number of observers want to focus on how we got into Afghanistan and others on the messy way we are getting out. Yet, there are two…
Continue readingThe Afghanistan Crisis: Another Example of the Limits of Left and Right
By Jonathan Michael Feldman, Stockholm University February 18, 2021, Updated February 19, 2021 Just Trash All Intellectuals In a recent essay on Herbert Marcuse, Matt Taibbi argues the following. He recounts a professor telling him, that intellectuals as intellectuals “can justify anything.” Then he elaborates by writing that “impactful lunacy is always exclusive to intellectuals,”…
Continue readingMatt Taibbi, Herbert Marcuse and the Journalistic Appropriation of Philosophy
By Jonathan Michael Feldman, January 30, 2021; Revised January 31, 2021 When Controlling the Means of Production is Not Enough Once upon a time, left intellectuals argued that the masses or working class should control the means of production or even the economy. Of course this proposition must have assumed that the masses or working…
Continue readingCoop Naysayers as “Religious” Thinkers Who Keep the System Going