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

Benjamin J. Brisson - Charting the Road to Behemoth's Lair: F. A. Hayek's and Franz L. Neumann's Studies of Totalitarian Economic Governance

Did capitalism or socialism produce the conditions favorable to National Socialism? This question has been asked and answered since the 1930s, and the historian Benjamin Carter Hett has called the answer a “historical Rorschach test” due to its divisive nature. This article puts two original figures in this debate, the so-called neoliberal F. A. Hayek and the neo-Marxist Franz L. Neumann, into conversation as a means of exploring this question and finding common ground beyond it. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Neumann's revised Behemoth were both published in 1944 and have informed subsequent attempts to understand the roots of totalitarianism. Renewed interest in each scholar highlights their relevance to our own time, yet no work has addressed the complementary elements of their thought, nor their overlapping time at the London School of Economics. Despite Hayek's and Neumann's distinct answers to the capitalism/socialism question, they shared common criticisms of the Nazi regime's fragmented sovereignty, its political compromise between competing factions, and its particularistic application of legal principles. These features of what Hayek termed a “middle way” and Neumann termed a “polyocracy” created conditions favorable to totalitarianism. Hayek's and Neumann's insights foreground issues that continue to concern us today, irrespective of capitalist or socialist allegiances.

Александр Бикбов - Расколдовать эффект Фуко

Александр Бикбов — к столетию французского мыслителя

К столетию Мишеля Фуко социолог Александр Бикбов разбирает условия, в которых стало возможным невероятное сочетание интеллектуального стоицизма и социального эпикурейства, свойственное французскому философу, — и приходит к выводу, что посмертная демистификация этой фигуры не столько лишает ее магии «гениальности», сколько возвращает надежду на то, что критически мыслить могут не только обитатели парижских олимпов.

https://gorky.media/context/raskoldovat-effekt-fuko

Frank W. Elwell - Technique and Control. Jacques Ellul's Sociology

Jacques Ellul was a prolific writer and brilliant sociologist whose work on technological society and propaganda remains relevant today, despite coming from a distinctly French, postwar perspective. Technique and Control re-introduces Ellul’s main body of work to social scientists and readers curious about technology and social life. Frank W. Elwell has updated and supplemented Ellul’s examples of lifeworld domination through physical technology, organization, and an underlying mindset of technique that prioritizes efficient goal-oriented behaviors guided by experience, empiricism, calculability, predictability, and logic. Particular attention is given to the development of human techniques of control such as education, propaganda, and other modes of socialization. By re-invigorating these writings for contemporary readers, Elwell illuminates an important body of sociological work for a new generation of social scientists, students, and those interested in modern society and its continuing evolution.

J.S Tan - Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry 

As tech bosses fall in line with the right, tech workers are fighting back. This is the rousing inside story of their movement and the way it spawned an anti-worker backlash now reshaping the industry. After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the tech industry sprang into action to oppose his right-wing agenda, with workers and CEOs alike joining mass mobilizations against the new president’s anti-immigrant policies. But it wasn’t long before the tech bosses started to fall in line with the new administration.

In response, tens of thousands of tech workers protested against their own employers for betraying the progressive values that once defined the industry including organizing against military contracts, walking out to protest sexism, and even launching a wave of union drives. By the early 2020s, these workers had sparked what observers were calling the tech worker movement, one that seemed capable of checking the industry’s reckless growth and reactionary drift. But as their struggle grew, so did the employers’ backlash. A new class consciousness took root among tech's billionaire owners. Hell-bent on stamping out any and all dissent, tech executives embraced Trumpism, fired organizers, and began lashing out against the “woke” ideology they blamed for turning their once loyal employees against them and replacing the good tech jobs of the 2010s with incessant layoffs, grind culture, and a management style that treats workers as disposable. Against Tech Oligarchy provides a gripping account of this inspiring workers' movement and the rise of the hostile labor politics that define Silicon Valley today.