Tijdens de discussies van de leesgroepen komen telkens vele verschillende titels en thema's aan bod. Dat levert meteen een diverse leeslijst op voor alle geïnteresseerden.
In de leesgroep die Marx in the Anthropocene door Kohei Saito bestudeert werden volgende titels, thema's en denkers aangehaald:
DENKERS
thema's
- Imperialist left
- Enclosure of the commons
- How to measure development – GDP
- New materialists
- Walkable city
- Use value/exchange value
- Metabollic rift
- Ecofeminism
- Production for wealth - production for needs
TITELS
- Slow Down by Kohei Saito
- Karl Marx called religion "the opium of the masses" because of the illusory relief it offered from the cold realities of capitalism. Today, the hard reality that we must face is that we have fundamentally and irrevocably damaged life on Earth, and while distracting opiates are everywhere, it is clear that the root cause is none other than capitalism itself.Building upon a completely unexplored facet of Marx's thought that has been lying dormant for more than a century, Japanese star philosopher Kohei Saito reveals how we are still caught in the trap that Marx diagnosed towards the end of his life - and proves that capitalism can never be compatible with a sustainable existence. Unless we can solve the dilemma that Marx spelt out in his final revelatory writings, and mend the breach we have torn in the fabric of the natural world, disaster awaits. A shock bestseller on publication in Japan, SLOW DOWN will help unleash the imaginative power necessary for us to create a better society in the age of climate crisis
- Systeembreuk by Kohei Saito
- Wat kan de mensheid doen om de klimaatcrisis te bezweren? In zijn verpletterende bestseller Systeembreuk betoogt de jonge Japanse filosoof Kohei Saito onomwonden dat we afscheid moeten nemen van het kapitalisme. Omdat het eeuwige groei boven alles stelt is het kapitalisme niet in staat het tij te keren. De roep om zogenaamd duurzame groei vormt een gevaarlijk compromis: die zorgt niet voor de noodzakelijke grondige systeemverandering. In plaats daarvan zoekt Saito de oplossing in deceleratie en degrowth, oftewel het vertragen en inkrimpen van de economische activiteit via democratische hervormingen. Zo pleit hij onder andere voor een herwaardering van essentieel werk boven bedrijfswinsten en verkorting van de arbeidsduur. Daarbij laat hij zich inspireren door de latere ecologische inzichten van Karl Marx.
- Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
- For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself. Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we begin to see what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 per cent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision and faith in the power of direct action.
- Municipalisme van Murray Bookchin
- De uitgesproken ideeën van de Amerikaanse filosoof Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) over municipalisme vormen de kern van deze uitgave. Hij beschrijft hoe mensen zich lokaal, in de gemeente of in de buurt waarin ze wonen, zouden moeten organiseren en hoe ze in directe relatie met elkaar besluiten kunnen nemen. De verschillende lokale organisaties kunnen dan in confederaties samenwerken. Buurtvergaderingen sturen afgevaardigden naar de confederale bijeenkomsten waar ze de inbreng van hun buurt naar voren kunnen brengen. Uiteindelijk moet het municipalisme de centrale staat vervangen.In een uitgebreide inleiding beschrijft Roger Jacobs hoe municipalisme in verschillende vormen in de praktijk naar voren komt. Hij maakt duidelijk hoe ver het municipalisme en de hierin gewortelde bewegingen in verschillende landen inmiddels naast en vaak tegenover de gevestigde politieke organisaties zijn doorgedrongen in de dagelijkse politiek.De anarchistische wetenschapper Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) beschreef in het hier ook opgenomen essay De Gemeente al aan het eind van de 19e eeuw wat zijns inziens de rol van de gemeente zou moeten zijn. Het is opmerkelijk hoe Bookchin’s ideeën aansluiten bij die van Kropotkin.
- Post-Growth Living: for an Alternative Hedonisme by Kate Soper
- The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities isn't only destroying the world, it is damaging ourselves and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable of confronting it head-on?In Alternative Hedonism, philosopher Kate Soper offers an urgent plea for a new vision of the good life, one that is capable of delinking prosperity from endless growth. Instead, she calls for a renewed emphasis on the joys of being, one that is capable of collective happiness not in consumption but by creating a future that allows not only for more free time, and less conventional and more creative ways of using it, but also for more fulfilling ways of working and existing. This is an urgent and necessary intervention into debates on climate change.
- Fully Automated Communism: a manifest by George Bastani
- A different kind of politics for a new kind of society--beyond work, scarcity and capitalism In the twenty-first century, new technologies should liberate us from work. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness--for everyone. Technological advance will reduce the value of commodities--food, healthcare and housing--towards zero. Improvements in renewable energies will make fossil fuels a thing of the past. Asteroids will be mined for essential minerals. Genetic editing and synthetic biology will prolong life, virtually eliminate disease and provide meat without animals. New horizons beckon. In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history.
The Code of Capital by Katharina Pistor
Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else.In this revealing book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively “codes” certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into capital—and lawyers are the keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best serve their clients’ needs, and how techniques that were first perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations—assets that exist only in law.A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.
