Just finished The Melancholy of Resistance - it took longer than I would have liked, I lost a bit of focus towards the last 3rd of the book, with the exception of the concluding chapter. — Manuel

You might be interested to know I just saw Bela Tarr, Laszlo Krasznahorkai's cinematic collaborator, in-person in NYC on Monday in a very rare US appearance (his last visit to the states was 12 years ago). He introduced 4 of his movies, followed by a Q&A, which included Werckmeister Harmonies, which is based on Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance, and he helped write the screenplay. He signed my DVD of Satantango! Very friendly (and pretty funny!) man.

My fairly incautious guess, at this point, is thatDeSantis beats Trump in the primary, the latter forms his own independent party sabotaging the Republican vote in the general and Biden cruises into another four terms. — Maw

lol what a dumbass

Don Quixote might be up next

The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times by Giovanni Arrighi

Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In by C. L. R. James

Caravaggio: The Complete Works by Sebastian Schutze

Very cool

The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War by Arno J. Mayer

Just finished The Melancholy of Resistance - it took longer than I would have liked, I lost a bit of focus towards the last 3rd of the book, with the exception of the concluding chapter.

I can only compare it to Satantango, his only other novel I've read. It's hard to pick one, without spoilers, it seems to me that Melancholy is richer in general content than Satantango, and yet, and yet, the way the ending of Satantango went, tuned it from a decent book to a complete masterpiece, essentially focusing on a simple, yet very powerful philosophical idea/literary trick.

I struggled less with Satantango, and I felt it was somewhat more coherent, but again, Melancholy was richer in plurality of ideas... I suppose that Satantango's execution was just too good, so I'd give it the edge.

How does Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming compare with these two works?

I'll probably read one or two easy novels, then go back to a challenging one, then on to Baron - it requires some effort.

Any general thoughts? — Manuel

Melancholy of Resistance and Satantango are my two favorite books of Krasznahorkai, I'm not sure if I could pick my preference between the two. The concluding chapters for both are sublime. Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming was his only work I didn't fully enjoy. I think it was overly long. I do also recommend Seiobo There Below, which is composed of a number of shorter stories, and War & War. I also loved Chasing Homer which incorporated a music element via QR code. Very interesting. If you enjoy film, and how can anyone not, I recommend his collaborative work with director Bela Tarr.

1848: Year of Revolution by Michael Rapport

Let's see in 2024 if you are a fortuneteller, Maw. — ssu

we'll see, my DeSantis 2024 stock is decreasing week by week although it's also not clear what Trump's future holds.

The New Spirit of Capitalism by Eve Chiapello and Luc Boltanski

Best cast overall….. — Mww

Might be Oliver Stone's JFK

Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai — Manuel

Great book

My fairly incautious guess, at this point, is that DeSantis beats Trump in the primary, the latter forms his own independent party sabotaging the Republican vote in the general and Biden cruises into another four terms.

How likely do you think it is that Nikki Haley will be the first female president of the US — frank

0%

Of Angelopoulos I've seen only Eternity and a Day - loved it. The music is still stuck in my head. — SophistiCat

Angelopoulos is one of my favorite directors. Sham his movies are so difficult to come by. Music is an important element in The Weeping Meadow.

Would love to attend in NYC but I have a conflicting schedule unfortunately. I did read the Grundrisse along with his video series several years back.

Never heard of it. Sounds interesting. — T Clark

Can't go wrong with Klaus Kinski

What did you think of Brewster McCloud? — Joshs

Haven't seen it, but I did enjoy Altman's Nashville and The Long Goodbye

Also check out McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Great Silence

Some of you need to watch more non-American films

Another film I recommend of him is Good Morning (お早よう, Ohayō). — javi2541997

Love Good Morning. His silent film,I Was Born, But... which is loose remake, is also excellent.

Anything by Bergman is good, and Seventh Seal is certainly up there — but for me, Persona may be his greatest. — Mikie

(I'll check out Persona which I've never seen.) — 180 Proof

Persona is my favorite Bergman :up:

No order (and subject to change)

Seven Samurai (1954) - Kurosawa
Harakiri (1962) - Kobayashi
Alice in the Cities (1974) - Wenders
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) - Dreyer
Satantango (1994) - Tarr
Apur Sansar (1959) - Ray
The Weeping Meadow (2004) - Angelopoulos
L'Eclisse (1962) - Antonioni
Late Spring (1949) - Ozu
Dersu Uzala - (1985) - Kurosawa

Some of the above could rotate with (but not limited to) the below:

Ran (1985) - Kurosawa
Spirit of the Beehive (1973) - Erice
Cleo from 5-7 (1962) - Varda
Landscape in the Mist (1988) - Angelopoulos
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) - Olmi

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama

Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from the Renaissance to Enlightenment by Ellen Wood (rereading)

The above will most likely be my last book of the year so time again for my annual reading list. Sadly will be missing @Streetlight's list and recommended readings this year. In 2022 I read:

• Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality, and Advertising in Capitalist Society by W.F Haug
• Time, Capitalism and Alienation. A Socio-Historical Inquiry into the Making of Modern Time by Jonathan Martineau
• The Ego and The Id by Freud (reread)
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Freud (reread)
• Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
• Écrits by Jacques Lacan
• On the Reproduction of Capitalism by Louis Althusser
• Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Vladimir Lenin
• Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory by Enzo Traverso
• The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Žižek
• Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis by John Smith
• Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism by Intan Suwandi
• Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primative Accumulation by Silvia Federici
• Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James McPherson
• The Making of Bourgeois Europe: Absolutism, Revolution and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France and Germany by Colin Mooers
• Empire of Capital by Ellen Wood
• The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 by Christopher Wickham
• Medieval Europe by Chris Wickham
• Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social History by Rodney Hilton
• Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory
• Landscapes: John Berger on Art by John Berger
• Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development: From International Relations to World Literature edited by James Christie and Nesrin Degirmencioglu
• Art History as Social Praxis: The Collected Writings of David Craven edited by Brian Winkenweder
• Nietzche, The Aristocratic Rebel by Domenico Losurdo
• Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism by Peter Hudis
• The Civil War in the Unites States, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels edited by Andrew Zimmerman
• Old Gods, New Engimas: Marx's Lost Theory by Mike Davis
• Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517-1648 by Mark Greengrass
• The Glorious Revolution by Edward Vallance

The Glorious Revolution by Edward Vallance

Hey @busycuttingcrap is back!

GOP fucked up so bad Georgia will have two democratic senators until at least 2027

Depends what playing but yes

I've seen 98 of them now, some odd admissions but an interesting list nonetheless

Speaking of which, the highly anticipated Sight and Sound Top Movies of All Time is out

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time

I've watched all but four

I just watch 'Mulholland Drive' for the first (not sure why it took so long to get around to), and wow. One of the best movies I've ever seen. A film about film. — Changeling

One of the best films of the 21st century, although it's more about Hollywood than "film"

Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517-1648 by Mark Greengrass

I've heard a lot about Mike Davis and he passed away last month so figured I should finally check him out.

Old Gods, New Engimas: Marx's Lost Theory by Mike Davis

I dunno, his ‘Ron De-Sanctimonious’ jab was a big whiff, although I will admit that Trump has far stronger bulling tactics.

Frankly I think the outcome of this midterm was foreseeable given the surreal GOP messaging centered around abstruse topics like anti-trans rhetoric and legislation, anti-critical race theory, and of course the Dobbs decision and J6 Capital attack, in lieu of conventional messaging around the economy or inflation. The GOP is on autopilot in being more and more insane, and as off-putting as the democrats can be, it's clear that the Republicans are far more unpalatable to general Americans.

Hard to gauge at this time, but DeSantis looks like a sizeable obstacle to Trump's 2024 run. At this point, I would place a light wager on DeSantis winning the primary, given his massive win in Florida against Trump who, between the 2018 midterm, the 2020 election, and the 2022 midterm, is clearly a massive three-time loser, and who clearly just got lucky in 2016 by running against a nearly equally despised candidate. Trump also benefited as an outsider, which DeSantis cannot claim, and given DeSantis' all around lack of charisma and general reptilian demeanor, I very much doubt he'll win in a general election.

Additionally takeaways are that Beto and Abrams should stop running for senate, they do not have what it takes.

The Civil War in the Unites States, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels edited by Andrew Zimmerman

I'm curious how you find Hudis' read of Marx's corpus. Have you read After Capitalism by David Schweickart? If not, I can't recommend it more highly, comrade. — 180 Proof

I finished Peter Hudis' book and found it to be a well-grounded, well-reasoned, at at times an eye-opening reading of Marx's work and perspective. Per the title of the book, Marx does not delineate concrete mechanisms or detailed institutional forms that would comprise a post-capitalist, socialist society. Rather, Marx provides some conceptual lodestars. The most concise summary I can offer is that Marx's concept of the alternative to capitalism centers on the production process and humanity's social relationship to it. Marx wishes to flip the script so-to-speak, or inverse the subject-predicate logic that infests our current socio-economic horror show. Rather than value-production dominating and alienating the wage-labor that creates it, as we see in capitalism, the "total aggregate product" of a free and democratic association of labor "is a social product", which "remains social to renew or reproduce the means of production" or is consumed by individuals as subsistence as determined by "labor-time" (crucially distinct from socially necessary labor time, which is unique to the capitalist mode of production). The distribution and application of the social component to the social product requires conscious and democratic discussion and debate, the form of which Marx does not articulate or detail (aside from being "democratic) as the organization is up to the free association of producers.

Alternatives which fundamentally center on distribution, the abolition or alternatives to the market or private property, will continue to rely on a core constituent of capitalism, value-production, and its autonomous force that eclipses the autonomous power of free and democratic association of labor which is why (among other things) Marx wouldn't have called the USSR "socialist", "communist" etc. ("Capital without Capitalists").

Turning to David Schweickart's work, which as I said before I haven't read in about a decade and have recently just skimmed the section on the basic model of Economic Democracy. I think there are some elements that Marx would agree with and much that he would not. Focusing on the latter, most significantly, I think Marx would criticize Schweickart's "Social Control of Investment" as driven by the anarchic and autonomous force of value-production and therefore not centered of the free association of producers. As Schweickart himself states, "I use the term socialist to refer to any attempt to transcend capitalism by abolishing most private ownership of means of production". Marx would disagree on this appellative change as the abolition of private property does not entail the abolition of capital, and therefore its autonomous force of value-production remains intact. "Private property," writes Marx, "is the result, the necessary consequence of alienated labor". The "conceptual pivot" of Marx, writes Hudis, "the heart of the problem is abolishing capital itself, by ending the estrangement in the very activity of laboring."

Marx's conceptualization of the alternative to capitalism remains quite abstract, which I'm sure some might find unsatisfying. However, perhaps this is the price we pay now, for a future which will hopefully be deliberated, debated and exercised among and centered on a free and democratic association of social producers. I'll have to reread Schweickart's After Capitalism again this winter and chew on this more.