Телеграм канал «Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)»

J.D. Bernal: A Life in Science and Politics Preface by Eric Hobsbawm A wide-ranging collection of essays focussing on different facets of the life and work of the extraordinary physicist, scientist and campaigner for peace and civil rights, J.D. Bernal. An eminent molecular physicist and path-breaking crystallographer, an eloquent and prescient writer on the social implications of science, an early foe of pseudo-scientific racism and an indefatigable campaigner for peace and civil rights: as a scientist and a Communist intellectual, J.D. Bernal was caught up in many of the dramas of the twentieth century. As Eric Hobsbawm describes here, Bernal played a major role in the dynamic ‘red science’ movement of the 1930s, whose ideas on links between science and society are only now being accorded their full significance. Bernal’s The Social Function of Science remains a classic analysis of the way in which wider social relations may determine the boundaries of both scientific understanding and practice. Impressed by Bernal’s relentless questioning of received ideas, Mountbatten recruited him to the brilliant scientific team of his ‘Department of Wild Talents’ during World War Two, to help in planning the Normandy landings. After the war, Bernal strove to combine running the Department of Physics at Birkbeck College, London, with travelling and campaigning through six continents against the nuclear threat of the Cold War. In a field notorious for its mysoginism, Bernal’s laboratories at Birkbeck were a haven for many of the leading women scientists of the day, among them Rosalind Franklin and the Nobel Laureate Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. And, as James Watson has acknowledged, Bernal’s X-ray photographs of molecular structures formed a vital piece of evidence on the path leading to the discovery of DNA. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, different facets of Bernal’s life and work are recounted and assessed by Eric Hobsbawm, Hilary and Steven Rose, Ivor Montagu, Ritchie Calder, Francis Aprahamian, Brenda Swann, Roy Johnston, Chris Freeman and Peter Mason, Chris Whittaker, Roy Johnston, Ann Synge and Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

The Plan is to Make the Internet Worse. Forever. Aaron Bastani Meets Cory Doctorow Did you know that the standard of Google searches has actually gotten worse over recent years? Once you think about it, it makes sense. Highly effective search means fewer searches overall. And fewer searches mean less ad revenue. The financial basis of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company, is, of course, digital advertising. Which means that undermining the quality of the company’s cornerstone product actually makes money. That’s how crazy the modern internet has become. There are, as the saying goes, many such cases. 00:00 Intro 04:21 Is the Internet Getting Worse? 09:11 Manipulating Stock Prices 13:07 The Death of Competition Law & the Rise of Monopolies 20:14 Facebook: An Ensh*tification Case Study 25:32 Jedi Blue: Illegal Collusion 27:45 How Amazon Rigs the Game 32:30 Is Big Tech Behind Inflation? 37:03 Uber and the Giant Toy at the Fair 40:03 Why Capitalists Hate Capitalism 45:40 Boobytrapped Technology 49:28 Time for a Post-American Internet 54:59 The Internet Is Swallowing the Real World 59:12:10 The Solution? Seizing the Means of Computation 1:04:48 Open Source Versus Free Software 1:07:50 Is Everything Getting Worse, or Just Big Tech? 1:11:00 How to Stop Big Tech From Capturing Policy? 1:15:20 How to Build Solidarity Among High and Low-Paid Tech Workers https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7wE8G-d7SnY

Cédric Durand - Where is Digital Technology Taking Us? In its August 2025 issue, Le Monde Diplomatique published an article by Evgeny Morozov offering a scathing critique of the concept of “techno-feudalism”, as proposed by economist Cédric Durand. This critique was more recently expanded upon by Frédéric Lordon, who fears the hypothesis of a new “techno-feudal” configuration of capitalism will have the effect of sidestepping the necessary break, not with this or that configuration of capitalism, but with capitalism as such. In this article, Cédric Durand responds to Morozov’s critique (and, in part, also Lordon’s) by examining the current macroeconomic dynamics of capitalism and the new forms taken by capitalism under the rule of Big Tech, which he believes the concept of “techno-feudalism” allow us better to conceptualise. https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/where-is-digital-technology-taking-us-cedric-durand-responds-to-evgeny-morozov

Catherine Malabou - Dear ChatGPT, are you an a priori synthetic structure? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnEVIfyCpo

S. Achilles - Literature, Ethics, and Aesthetics: Applied Deleuze and Guattari A conceptualization of the literary aesthetic for a concern for the Self. Bringing Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's constructivist thinking into a practical domain, Sabrina Achilles rethinks the ways in which literature is understood and taught.

Н. Канунников - На острове выученных уроков О книге Трауинна Эггертссона «Несовершенные институты» В течение нескольких столетий экономика Исландии — затерянного в северных широтах острова, скудного подходящей для обработки землей, — оставалась аграрной, хотя рядом плескалось богатое рыбой море. Как утверждает исландский исследователь Трауинн Эггертссон, его земляки век за веком возделывали поля не потому, что не знали, как забрасывать рыбацкие сети, а под влиянием сложившихся у них политических и социальных институтов. Понадобилось столетие реформ под руководством датской короны, чтобы исландское общество смогло перестроиться и невиданно разбогатеть. https://gorky.media/reviews/na-ostrove-vyuchennyx-urokov