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8 February 2015 You begin to realise how much Marx actually crafted his writing when you compare Capital I to Capital II. The former is beautifully edited, funny, extensively footnoted, erudite, and with a gorgeous narrative structure that inexorably push you forward as the book goes on. Not so Capital II which was assembled from […]
6 February 2015 “For a ship is a bit of terra firma cut off from the main; it is a state in itself; and the captain is its king.” (Melville, White-Jacket – did Conrad plagiarise Melville as I often think he does? See the Conrad quote I use as an epigram) This might have been […]
There is very little that is original in this post, but I want to put it down anyway, because the affects of this moment are lovely; something that I want to remember when I think about so much that is functional, or dry, or frustrating, or riven with anger, power asymmetries and exploitation. What strikes […]
Stand-Up Beer Hall Walter Benjamin Sailors seldom come ashore ; service on the high seas is a holiday by comparison with the labour in harbours, where loading and unloading must often be done day and night. When a gang is then given a few hours’ shore-leave it is already dark. At best the cathedral looms like a dark promontory […]
pulp fiction n. fiction of a style characteristic of pulp magazines; sensational, lurid, or popular fiction. 1928 Decatur (Ill.) Herald 10 Aug. 6/5 Wood-pulp fiction commands a price of two—sometimes three—cents a word (The Oxford English Dictionary) I sometimes think that pulp fictions touch on the zeitgeist, that they pick up on undercurrents of politics […]
I am reading two books simultaneously through both of which trains rattle and whistle and snake… But which in some ways are as different as they can be. Bill Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis is a panoramic history of the making of Chicago in the 19th century; it is a work of virtuoso research and of historical imagination. It is […]
I am reading Bill Cronon’s extraordinary Nature’s Metropolis. For obvious reasons, the chapters on credit, on canals and water transport, and on the railways are most interesting to me. This, however, came as a surprise: Before the invention of standard time, clocks were set according to the rules of astronomy: noon was the moment when the sun stood […]
‘[Golden Dawn] created battalions against their political opponents, and then they rented them out, to whoever wanted to rent them,” he told Channel 4 News. In one of the most important cases, a network of businessmen active in the shipping industry allegedly involved Golden Dawn in their continuing struggle against the stubborn unions which wouldn’t accept […]
Last week, huge protests took place in Brussels, with the trade unions reporting some 130,000-150,000 people showing up; and major clashes with the police. The protests in fact have been going on for some time now. And in the April protests, “hundreds of marchers adorned in the orange bibs of the BTB-ABVV docker’s union from Antwerp […]
I have already written about ships as workplaces, and of workers held captive on ships. Now, the NY Times reports on a massive floating refinery which is going to look for fossil fuels in the Indian Ocean. The ship is HUGE: More than 530 yards long and 80 yards wide, it was constructed with 260,000 […]
