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

Richard Maxwell, Toby Miller - How Green is Your Smartphone?

Every day we are inundated by propaganda that claims life will be better once we are connected to digital technology. Poverty, famine, and injustice will end, and the economy will be “green.” All anyone needs is the latest smartphone. In this succinct and lively book, Maxwell and Miller take a critical look at contemporary gadgets and the systems that connect them, shedding light on environmental risks. Contrary to widespread claims, consumer electronics and other digital technologies are made in ways that cause some of the worst environmental disasters of our time conflict-minerals extraction, fatal and life-threatening occupational hazards, toxic pollution of ecosystems, rising energy consumption linked to increased carbon emissions, and e-waste. Nonetheless, a greener future is possible, in which technology meets its emancipatory and progressive potential. How Green is Your Smartphone? encourages us to look at our phones in a wholly new way, and is important reading for anyone concerned by the impact of everyday technologies on our environment.

Rebecca Comay - Lumpendialectic

‘Disappointment’ might be too mild-mannered a word to capture the horrors of relentless counterrevolution militant despair might be more apt but it captures the untimeliness and illegitimacy of the current epoch: disappointment as belatedness (a missed appointment or assignation); diappointment as symbolic disinvestiture (the delegitimation of authority and office); disappointment as disillusion (the demystification of progress and other Enlightenment canards). Within the Marxist tradition, the Eighteenth Brumaire is the locus classicus for thinking about revolutionary failure, defeat, setback or impasse, which should be distinguished from each other. More people are reaching for the Eighteenth Brumaire these days; in an epoch of farcical imposture and authoritarian populism, it’s an easy reach, and this is so regardless of whether one joins the chorus of laments over a working class that has yet again failed to meet its historical appointment. These are analogies and possibly not the most apt ones for the current moment. But why the compulsion to analogise at all?

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rp221_comay.pdf

Lorna Finlayson - Normativity from the Standpoint of Its Victims

German philosopher Jürgen Habermas both inheritor and critic of the Frankfurt School, best known for his theories of discourse ethics, communicative action, and deliberative democracy died in March at the age of ninety-six. One of his last public political acts, five weeks after the beginning of Israel’s war of annihilation against the people of Gaza following the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was to publish a statement, entitled “Principles of Solidarity,” with three colleagues at Normative Orders, a research network based at Goethe University in Frankfurt. The statement sought to identify “some principles that should not be disputed” amid the “cascade of moral and political statements and protests” following “Hamas’ extreme atrocity and Israel’s response to it.”

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/normativity-from-the-standpoint-of-its-victims/

Labor parties in postindustrial societies (1991)

Vast changes in western societies have dimmed the prospects of the labour-based political parties that emerged a century ago, and then became major contenders for government power. The contributions in this volume, coming from international commentators, make evident the problems generated for left parties by the emerging postindustrial international economic order. Not only are traditional working class constituencies shrinking, but traditional projects are losing force and credibility as the world in which they were crafted is transformed. Despite common difficulties, each party confronts the new problems of postindustrialism in the context of different national political heritages, and weighted by different internal party legacies. These differences, in turn, go far toward explaining the relative success of some parties, and the disarray of others.