The formation of the proletariat by capital’s historic crimes — and the ongoing recomposition of the class by imperialism, racism, heterosexism, and immiseration — is not unlike the creation of Frankenstein’s monster. The working-class, as a whole, is a disordered and chaotic body. Labor was (and is) formed through the theft of forests, farms, continents, and people. It was (and is) formed in the creation and displacement of entire industries, gender norms and the shifts in social reproduction, the invention of “races” and “nations.” The targets of capital’s crimes were (and continually are) fused together and torn apart in their relation to capital. Labor does not become a class “for itself” by pretending otherwise. It must study the journals of the “men who made it.” But the class becomes conscious when each disordered element of the class defends every other disordered element.
Read MoreEvent: Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy (Thursday Nov. 12)
Join us on Thursday, November 12 (18:30 GMT, 1:30pm EST, 12:30pm CST, 10:30am PST) for a Locust Review panel discussion at this year’s (virtual) Historical Materialism conference. Our panel, focusing on “Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy” will feature Locust editorial collective members Alexander Billet on “The Case for Critical Irrealism,” Holly Lewis on “How Collective Dreams Can End the Sleep of Reason,” Adam Turl on “Their Weird and Ours: Socialist Irrealism vs. Fascist Occultism,” and Anupam Roy on “Representational Impossibility: A Propagandist’s Urgencies and Crisis.” More information follows below.
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