Daily Archives: May 15, 2022

Sally Rooneys debut novel, Conversations with Friends is getting the Normal People treatment as it becomes the next television adaptation from the author. Much like its predecessor the new series, which airs on BBC Three, also follows the romantic entanglements of two young Irish lovers, Frances and Bobbi.

The synopsis for the new series reads: "Though they broke up three years ago, Frances and Bobbi are virtually inseparable and perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin. Its at one of their shows that they meet Melissa, an older writer, who is fascinated by the pair.

Bobbi and Frances start to spend time with Melissa and her husband, Nick, a handsome but reserved actor. While Melissa and Bobbi flirt with each other openly, Nick and Frances embark on an intense, secret affair that is surprising to them both. Soon the affair begins to test the bond between Frances and Bobbi, forcing Frances to reconsider her sense of self, and the friendship she holds so dear."

Read more: Mel B shares hopes of getting the Spice Girls back together after Prince William chat

We've no doubt that you will recognise some of the people on this list. There is a large ensemble cast set to appear in the show. Here is who stars in BBC Three's new 12-part series, Conversations with Friends. Here's more information on how to watch Conversations With Friends and whether it's related to Normal People.

Alison Oliver - Frances

British actress, Alison Oliver stars as Frances in one of her first leading roles. She has previously featured in Fame Dogs, Woggie, and Home Brewed.

Talking to the BBC about her casting, she said: "When I read the book I just completely fell in love with it straight away and all the characters in it." Alison describes Frances as a "very cerebral and observant young woman who has a very dry humour" and has said that she worked primarily from the book to prepare for the role.

Will Alison achieve the same level of success as Normal People stars, Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones?

Sasha Lane - Bobbi

Sasha Lane, who plays Bobbi, is no stranger to TV work, having appeared in Utopia (2020). She also starred in the BAFTA-nominated movie, American Honey, the 2019 reboot of Hellboy and has even featured in music videos for Alicia Keys and Lewis Capaldi.

Sasha described how she wanted to take on the role because she's very "into people and their psychology". She also said that she used her past relationships as inspiration for her character.

Jemima Kirke - Melissa

Melissa is played by Jemima Kirke, who recently appeared in the third series of Sex Education but most people will know her as Jessa in American series, Girls.

Speaking about the story, Jemima told the BBC: "I think Sally Rooney describes anxiety very well. She creates this visceral experience of anxiety, awkwardness, confusion and shame. Its a very internal world that shes creating and its quite fun to try and express whats reality and what's her perception." Jemma has said that she feels the script for the new series "honours the novel".

Joe Alwyn - Nick

British actor Joe Alwyn stars as Nick and his claim to fame is that he is Mr Taylor Swift. The actor even co-wrote some of her songs including, August and Betty from her eighth studio album.

A jack-of-all-trades, Joe has had roles in Oscar-nominated film, The Favourite starring Olivia Colman and The Last Letter From Your Lover.

Joe said: "I loved it, I just tore through it. Sally is such a brilliant writer, shes so sharp and observant and often funny at times, but also moving."

Elsewhere in the cast, there is Derry Girls' Tommy Tiernan - Dennis. Tommy is a legendary Irish comic who has his own show on RTE and you'll have seen him in Father Ted, of course.

Caoimhe Coburn Gray - Aideen

Kerry Fox - Valerie

Sally Garnett - Evelyn

Catch Conversations with Friends on Sunday, May 15 on BBC Three at 10pm

Original post:

The full cast for Sally Rooney's Conversation with Friends - Wales Online

Opinion: sci-fi capitalists would have us believe that outer space is just another empty space waiting to be turned into a tech utopia

By Aidan Beatty, University of Pittsburgh

A number of prominent thinkers on the Left, from Mark Fisher to David Graeber, have argued that we live in a world where we no longer enjoy utopian visions of any kind of better future to come. In an age of climate breakdown, pandemic and the return of overt white supremacy, it can be hard to have a positive sense of the future. Yet one small remnant of utopianism lingers in an unusual place: the fantasies of tech billionaires, from Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, that they will one day launch privatised expeditions into the cosmos.

On the surface, these claims are often poorly thought out or even absurd and seem more like publicity stunts than realistic attempts to launch actual extra-planetary flights. Branson once promised that his Virgin Galactic company would become the first commercial spaceline, with flights starting in 2007 and flying 3,000 people in the first five years.

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From RT Radio 1's Morning Ireland, space commentator Leo Enright on Richard Branson's flight into space in July 2021

In the mock-up of Virgin Galactic's spaceship, there were ergonomic seats alongside large and numerous windows. The windows are themselves a give-away that this rocket would never exist; spaceships require tiny windows, and only a few of them. as a heat-saving mechanism.

In October 2021, Bezos invited Star Trek actor William Shatner on a flight with his Blue Origin company. The journey took all of 11 minutes and went no higher than 100km off the ground, the border line between a sub-orbital aeronautical flight and a full astronautical orbital flight.

Musk has promised full Martian colonisation, via his SpaceX company, but he has a tendency to ignore the harsh realities of conditions on Mars. The surface of the planet is covered with a toxic cocktail of chemicals that would wipe out living organisms. The ultraviolet light that hits Mars would sterilise the upper layers of any agricultural soil development. Carcinogenic radiation would indeed be an inescapable, perhaps fatal, problem.

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From 60 Minutes Australia, Elon Musk on his plans to colonise Mars

The lighter gravity on Mars would also have large-scale, probably detrimental effects, on the bone structure of long-term residents. Calcium degradation and muscle loss would be highly likely, as would a swelling of the optic nerve that already affects astronauts on the International Space Station. There is also a risk of infection from as-yet undiscovered Martian microbiological organisms. It could take 15 to 20 years for any viable food production systems to be operational. Martian dust-storms, which regularly reach up to 70 miles per hour, would prove hasardous for any construction efforts.

The absence of water on Mars would cause obvious problems, probably only solvable through urine recycling. Human feces would be the primary (or perhaps only) source of fertiliser. As one frank observer noted, there is a large remove between Musk's attractive fantasies of a fun life on Mars, and the only possible reality in which settlers would almost certainly have to "eat their own shit" (which is perhaps answers why Musk never seems to want to go there himself!). All this is aside from the basic fact that no technology yet exists that would allow for manned flights to Mars.

These tech billionaire space fantasies, couched in outlandish claims, are also inextricably bound up with the low-tax and pro-privatisation regimes of neoliberalism. These fantasies are only possibly with accumulated fortunes that would, in an earlier time, have been taxed at higher and more equitable rates. Indeed, the chances of privatised space companies sending a manned flight to Mars are probably lower today than in the era of large-scale Soviet and American investments in the 1960s and 1970s (though both SpaceX and Blue Origin receive heavy funding from the US government).

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From RT News, Star Trek actor William Shatner's short trip to space onboard Blue Origin

But it would also be a mistake to simply dismiss these endeavours outright. As the political theorist Jonathan Crary has stressed, these fantasies of sci-fi capitalism still do important work shaping and regulating our contemporary imagination, despite being absurd and unrealisable. In this case, they reinforce the idea that outer space is just another empty space awaiting its takeover by global capitalism. For true believers, it is the outlandishness that matters, serving up a soothing vision of a capitalist tech utopia just around the corner that counters the bleak futures we face here on Earth.

The spectre of climate change haunts these fantasies, with Musk describing his supposed Martian colony as a "back-up drive" for humanity and an escape from mass extinction. He has also said that travel costs could be in the range of $10 billion per passenger, though this can eventually be brought down to "only" $100,000.

For those who can't afford the fees, Musk suggested they could travel for free and pay off their debts with unpaid work when they arrive

As one commentator described it, Musk's Martian endeavour "looks a lot like joining a country club or gated community or any other model of private access to space for those who can afford it." With ever increasing numbers of climate refugees, outer space becomes an extreme way to avoid the dangerous mobs at home. Indeed, Mars might well be the ultimate gated community - or an off-planet version of Baghdad's Green Zone.

For those who cant afford the fees, Musk has suggested they could travel for free and then pay off their debts with unpaid work when they arrive. Such a scheme is eerily reminiscent of the indentured servitude practiced in the English colonisation of the New World. It is worth remembering that the (often equally utopian) colonisation of the Virginia Territory quickly ran into labour shortages, ultimately "solved" through racial slavery. An outer-space tech utopia would, at best, be a kind of sci-fi kibbutz. More likely it would be a postmodernist company town, one that controls its residents oxygen supply.

Dr Aidan Beatty is a Scholar Mentor and historian who teaches at the Pitt Honors College of the University of Pittsburgh. His new book, Private Property and the Fear of Social Chaos, will be published later this year by Manchester University Press.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RT

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Can we look forward to living in space? - RTE.ie

If youre looking to sample some new, seasonal delicacies in your old favourite restaurants, weve got you covered. These restaurants have curated new menus this May, and some of them are set to last all summer, to take your tastebuds on a gastronomical journey like none other!

Whether it be a basketful of steaming hot dimsums or a delicious handmade ravioli with ricotta cheese, if youre craving delicacies that are both Chinese and Italian, ChaoBella is the place to be. The restaurant is known for being the capitals only dual cuisine restaurant and launched its new menu in May. Indulge in an East meets West fare and dig into some delicious Chinese delights from not only the Cantonese region, but also the Hunan and Sichuan regions as well. Whats more, the Asian menu has delicacies from Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam as well, which feature complex Chinese flavours and Indian herbs and spices. Try dishes such as Melange of Mushroom, Cantonese Barbeque Fish, Crystal Chive Dimsums, Gyoza Dimsum, Khow Suey, Crisp Fried Lamb in Konjeenaro sauce, Stir Fried Udon Noodles, Stir Fried Duck Breast, and many more.

As for the Italian fare, be transported tomodern-day Trattoria in Italy. The handcrafted pizzas and pastas made in the live kitchen will ensure freshness, visual appeal and some of the most flavourful bites youve indulged in. Some dishes from the menu include Insalata Caprese, Prosciutto di Parma, Artisan Gnocchi, Pizzocheri, Ravioli, Risotto ai Funghi, Gamberoni, Filetto di Manzo, Scattodita, Lasagna Bolognese, Tiramisu and more.

Where: ChaoBella, Crowne Plaza New Delhi, Okhla

Timings: Lunch 12:30 pm to 3:00 pm; Dinner 7:00 pm to 11:0 pm

Price: Rs 3,000 + taxes without alcohol (for two, approx)

One of Delhis favourite modern Asian restaurants, Pa Pa Ya, has launched its new menus this May, and it features some gastronomic delights such as Laksa, Dimsums, and ramen (both soupy and soupless), a variety of sushi, tapas, and much more. Whats more, you can also opt for their teppanyaki offerings and enjoy treats grilled for you right in front of your eyes!

Where: Pa Pa Ya outlets in Delhi, Guguram, Mumbai and Kolkata

Theres nothing better to beat the scorching summer heat than a refreshing glass of fruity sangria. The beverage can trace its roots back to the Greeks and Romans, and one8 Commune is bringing together sangrias and our childhood favourite treats sorbet together this summer!

Their new menu includes fruity sorbets in a cocktail, created by mixologist Neeraj Sharma, and these grown-up slushies will refresh you like none other. On offer are Sunburst, a sweet and citrusy combination of kiwi sorbet with the infusion of lavender and elderflower in the classic Chenin Black, Green Sunset, a signature Sauvignon blanc infused with passion fruit and kaffir lime poured over fruity green apple sorbet, Berry Boss, which has Shiraz with a blast of berry-flavoured sorbet and a hint of cool watermelon, Mango Sizzle, which is a blend of chili mango sorbet with the flavours of fresh rose petals and peach brewed in the classic Cabernet shiraz.

Where: one8 Commune outlets in Aerocity, North Delhi, Punjabi Bagh, Kolkata and The Mills, Pune

The Claridges has put its heart into bringing Japan to its guests at the recently launched Japanese food festival. While the dishes are available every day, the Chefs special menu will be available on Sushi Suiyobi which translates to Sushi Wednesday. Pickwick, one of the many restaurants at the hotel, is offering the emblematic menu including Sake, Robatayaki, Pork Belly Salads, and Truffle Edamame as part of the offerings. Guests can taste specials such as Asparagus Cream Cheese Maki, Fire Cracker Maki, Shiitake Maki, Dynamite Maki, Real California Maki, Crocodile Maki Made With Black Tiger Shrimp Tempura, Crab Stick, Unagi, Tobiko, Avocado And Kabayaki Sauce. The extensive menu also incorporates Nigiri And Sashimi, Yakimeshi and Chicken Karaage, among other things, including a Passion Fruit Crme Brule and Wasabi Ice Cream.

Where:Pickwick in The Claridges

When: May 11 onwards, every Wednesday

Time: 12:30 pm to 3:30 pm

Price: Rs 3,000 plus taxes for the Chef Special Menu; Rs 995 plus taxes for unlimited Sake

No fruit spells summer like the juicy, sweet, golden mangoes. And to celebrate the fruit of the season, Balsa in Mumbai has curated a special mango menu, by Chef Karishma Sakhrani. The celebrity chef, known for her successful stint in MasterChef India season 4 and her work at brands such as Woodside Inn, Di Bella, The Pantry Coco Cafe, Candy & Green and now as the Culinary Director of Acme Hospitality, blends the versatile fruit into a series of sweet and savoury dishes to highlight the versatility of the summer fruit. Indulge in a spicy Thai Mango Avocado Salad, pulled Jackfruit/Chicken Tacos and Mango Pineapple Salsa, Pok Bowl which features chilli lime mango, Fried Chillies with Mango Habanero Sauce, Asian bhel and more, and end the meal with the popular Sticky Rice Mango, elevated with blue pea coconut milk and roasted moong dal. Head over to Balsa and enjoy their new Mmmangolicious Menu along with the best of tropical cocktails

Where: Balsa, Utopia Gate 4, Opposite Smaaash Go Karting, Kamala Mills, Lower Parel, Mumbai

When: Available until June 30, 2022

Contact: 022 4914 3107/+91 86579 29833 (for more information and reservations)

Among the new menus released in May is the one by Toast & Tonic, which features a variety of delectable summer treats. The Summer Side Up menu takes inspiration from classics across the world, using locally and sustainably sourced summer ingredients that celebrate Indias biodiversity. From their latest offerings, indulge in plates including Everything Summer Salad, Fresh Vietnamese Summer Rolls, and jackfruit tostadas, enjoy big plates such as Rigatoni in Summer Vegetables and Chicken Piccata and finish your meal with delectable desserts such as Alphonso Mango Panna cotta or Phalsa and Purple Jamun Sorbet.

The menu also has a range of summer-special cocktails such as Fraise & Tonic, Sunny Negroni, and more.

Where: Toast & Tonic, BKC, Mumbai

Time: 12:00 pm to 12:00 am (children below 18 are permitted only for lunch)

Cost: Rs 3,000 plus taxes (for two, including a drink each)

This is the season of sunshine and endless frozen treats, and among the new menus in May include delectable offerings by The Bombay Canteen. Their all-new Summer Menu, curated by Executive Chef Hussain Shahzad, celebrates the season with regional dishes and produce think, ripe summer tomatoes, bael, brinjal, amaranth, petha and more. Imagine innovative dishes such as a chilled Rasam vada, a crunchy Summer Greens Patta Chaat with a dollop of pickled dahi; warm, smoky Baigan Chokha; Chilled Seabass Sev Puri and a lot more which tingles your tastebuds and leaves you wanting more. Whats more, they have sourced the finest mango varieties from India for you to sink your teeth into the golden, ripe fruit and relish the tropical summer flavour.

Where:The Bombay Canteen, Unit-1, Process House, S.B. Road, Kamala Mills, Lower Parel, Mumbai

Time: Monday to Friday 12:00 pm to 1:00 am; Saturday-Sunday 11:00 am to 1:00 am

Delivery: Monday-Friday: 12:00 pm to 11:00 pm; Saturday-Sunday 11:00 am to 11:00 pm

Call: +91 88808 02424 (for reservations)

Order online here.

Summers call for refreshing meals and cooling beverages, and among the new menus curated this May is by Ginkgo, a Pan-Asian cloud kitchen based in Mumbai. Enjoy treats such as a Thai Iced Tea (condensed milk, black tea, star anise & cardamom), or the more subtle Lemongrass Iced Green Tea(green tea, fresh lemongrass, kaffir lime & citrus). Or opt for their Vietnamese Iced Coffee for a tasty way to beat the heat. Whars more, theyve blended the fruit of the season mango into theirMakes a Mango Crazy, which features fresh mangoes, young coconut and rice milk, among other many flavourful treats.

Where: Delivering in Mumbai

Time: 11:30 am to 1:30 am

Order here.

Among the new menus this May that celebrate seasonal fruits is Cafe 49. Featuring the yummy favourite, mango, the place has designed smoothies, mocktails and decadent dishes such as Mango & Fresh Cream Cake, Layered Mango Cream Cheese & Chocolate Fudge, Fresh Mango Tart to Mango & Fresh Cream with Rose Garnish. Mango Chipotle Bonbons, Mango Chocolate parfait, Mango Coconut Mousse, Raw Mango Cilantro Hummus and more to keep you indulged and refreshed, at the same time!

Where: Cafe 49, The Emerald Hotel, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai

Time: 11:00 am to 11:00 pm

Call: +91 92233 79080/96

Ice cream is synonymous with the summers, and its milky, icy, slushy varieties offer refreshment from the summer heat. And Indias leading milkshake and ice cream brand, Keventers, has launched three delectable new ice cream flavours this May Tutti Frutti, Tiramisu, and Cookies & Cream in 100ml and 450ml packs. The new menus boast refreshing delights that cool you down and pack a flavourful punch while reminding you of your childhood favourite flavours.

Where: Keventers outlets across India

Hero and Featured Image: Courtesy of ChaoBella, Delhi

More here:

Yummy new menus you need to try this May at these restaurants - Lifestyle Asia India

Luce Irigaray is one of the most renowned and polemical philosophers of our time. The author of more than thirty books, she is well known for her critical engagements with canonical figures of psychoanalytic and philosophical traditions through her landmark feminist texts such as Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), which prompted her expulsion from the Lacanian cole Freudienne de Paris (EFP) because of its searing depiction of Platonic and Freudian representations of women; This Sex Which Is Not One (1977); Elemental Passions (1982); Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (1991); and The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger (1999).Her latest book, the lyrical and often autobiographical A New Culture of Energy: Beyond East and West (2021), was published by Columbia University Press, and draws deeply on her decades-long practice of yoga and pranayama, which she considers, as always, through the lens of difference and gender.

I WROTE THIS BOOK to thank one of my yoga teachers for having accepted to ensure my training without payment when I was involved in a lawsuit with the owners of the flat that I rented, because they sold it illegally. I began the book explaining why I approached this practice, and how doing yoga little by little has modified my way of living the real and my relations to others, and even to myself. Starting from mere narration, the book develops from a concrete lived experience to the discoveries, in living and in thinking, that an everyday practice allowed me, but also to the problems that it raised for a subjectivity trained in Western cultures.

All the chapters pass on the message that I want to express. Some correspond more to the key argument, while other chapters allow the new ideas to emerge, to be perceived and tasted. For example, the chapters on compassion, on becoming incarnate with the help of animals and angels, and on the spiritual path opened by a cultivation of perceptions are particularly relevant. The Mystery of Mary, which has been published separately in other languages, has been added to the volume at the request of Columbia University Press. That text shows how it is possible to approach a religious figure differentlyparticularly through breath.

I have already broached the importance of silence in other books, notably in To Be Two and Sharing the World. On this subject, it is useful to distinguish two sorts of silences: the one that women have been forced to respect in a culture built by men, and the one that they freely desire to keep. In fact, the two can be productive. To be excluded from a cultural discourse permits women to more easily wonder about it, and even leave it. There is no doubt that the silence they decide to keep is more decisive in constructing their subjectivity and a culture suitable for them. Eastern cultures teach us the value of silence more than Western cultures.

Western cultures are based on a split between body and spirit. This, perhaps, explains why women practicing yoga do not want or dare to speak publicly of their practice. Personally, I think that such a split must be overcome, and that doing yoga represents a means of building a bridge between our body and our spirit. All the more so since yoga is a practice that is not only physical but also spiritual given the importance of breathing. Furthermore, the opportunity regarding this bridge comes from another tradition and corresponds to a concrete way of constructing an intercultural world in which cultures enrich one another.

As women do not have the same body as men, it is understandable that they breathe differently. Women have an important relation to the internal and intimate body. Welcoming the other in themselves, whether a lover or a fetus, asks them to breathe in a manner that differs from that which is needed to act outside themselves, as is more the case with men.

I often hear discourses that describe my thinking as utopian. And yet it generally corresponds to my way of living and not to an imaginary plan. Perhaps many people are, henceforth, so far from the real and so unable to reach it that they consider my way of living utopian. Indeed, it is foreign to their existence because it is closer to nature, less captured in past culture, and in search of the elaboration of a new culture. And it is true that changing the world does not go without a certain utopia. However, I do not want to prescribe anything for anyone. I just offer the fruit of my experience to those who attempt to make their own path. Some, with gratitude, receive from my thoughts words that are useful for their life and work. When that is not the case, searching for other thinkers and other texts is better than contenting oneself with criticism. Personally, I am very happy when I find suggestions that can rescue the world and humanity as they are in our times.

As told to Lauren ONeill-Butler

Continue reading here:

Shifting the world through breath - Artforum

It seems everyone agrees: American democracy has been corrupted by corporate lobbying. Donald Trumps promises, however disingenuous, to take on the role of money in politics by draining the swamp resonated with his frustrated followers. Meanwhile, progressive liberals like Elizabeth Warren have focused on addressing corruption by limiting the influence of business over our elected leaders. Though radically different, both apparently see corporate power as a bug, not a feature, of our political system.

Academics, searching for an explanation for the explosion of inequality in recent decades, have also identified business lobbying as the culprit. Thus, in their widely influential book Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson contend that an explosion of lobbying since the 1970s has overpowered labor and other interest groups. This has resulted in the policy shifts that have facilitated the upward distribution of wealth, and the erosion of the middle class, during the neoliberal era.

The main effect of this framing is to narrow the focus of our political critique. If class power is primarily an outcome of business lobbying, then the main objective of progressives and the Left should be to restore normal pluralist democracy by limiting the influence of business on elected representatives. This will allow the policy pendulum to swing back toward labor and permit the enactment of pro-worker policies. The state, from this point of view, is essentially an impartial referee, balancing the interests of competing interest groups.

This liberal narrative is largely a myth. The power of capital does not depend on corporate lobbying but rather is built into the states DNA. In fact, the state plays an indispensable role in actively organizing capitalist class power. Individual businesses are motivated by the need to compete and to maximize their own profits, not by broad, classwide concerns. Consequently, a relatively autonomous state is necessary to act in the long-term interests of the system as a whole. Rather than simply doing the bidding of particular capitalists, the state organizes capitalists into a coherent class.

In this way, the state acts on behalf of capital, if not necessarily at its behest. However, it must also build support from business for the policies it develops. As I show in my book Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power, one way it does so is by forming and mobilizing lobby groups. Such organizations do not just advocate for preexisting business interests but are also venues in which the state builds consensus around the classwide interests of capital. As such, they are part of an integral state, whereby state power extends beyond formal government institutions to incorporate civil society organizations.

The book traces General Electric (GE)s role at the center of this integral state through the first century of American corporate capitalism. As it shows, the company collaborated with state officials to form the Business Council, the Business Roundtable, the Committee for Economic Development (CED), and other major lobby groups. Its executives worked in these forums to organize corporate support for the New Deal, wartime production planning, tariff reductions and free trade, and the wage and price controls implemented during the 1970s crisis as well as the neoliberal reforms that would end it, plus the construction of a globalized imperial state.

By the time of the 1929 market crash, GE had already stepped out from the shadow of J.P. Morgan to become one of the first managerial-controlled behemoths. At the same time, its managers played the leading role within the Business Advisory Council, created by Franklin Roosevelt within the Commerce Department to build a base among business for the New Deal. Though support for these reforms among capital was thin at times nonexistent GE executives worked to convince capitalists that they were necessary to save the system and end the waves of class struggle from below.

GEs place within the vanguard of the new managerial elite was further reflected in its pivotal role within the state-corporate system for planning World War II production. While GE president Charles Wilson became the most important figure on the War Production Board, he was also a key force in forming the Committee for Economic Development. The latter aimed to extend support among an often-reluctant capitalist class for the creation of the state-led economic planning regime as well as the consolidation of a permanent military-industrial complex after hostilities ended.

The claim that the military-industrial complex has captured the state, forcing it to engage in needless conflict to boost arms sales, is wrong. Since the capitalist state does not control economic production directly, it relies on corporations to produce the goods and technologies necessary to maintain a global empire. Indeed, particularly striking about US planning for its postwar empire was how autonomous from business it was. Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations served as a forum for developing a shared understanding of the national interest between state planners and corporate executives, including GEs Phillip Reed, within the new US-led world order.

In fact, capital was quite reluctant to support the unprecedented levels of peacetime taxation demanded by the new imperial state. It was also deeply skeptical about the monumental and expensive effort to rebuild Americas major industrial rivals through the Marshall Plan. Particularly concerning for business was the drastic, unilateral, across-the-board slashing of tariffs advocated especially by State Department officials. These fears were understandable, as American business had thrived since the nineteenth century behind what were among the highest tariffs in the world.

In this context, the State Department worked to build business support for the Marshall Plan, while the Treasury took the lead in organizing a consensus around the Bretton Woods trade regime. As a result of intense wrangling by state officials, supported by GEs Phillip Reed, the CED emerged as the primary base of corporate support for these measures. Reeds participation was especially noteworthy, since the state was then unleashing an antitrust onslaught that demolished the network of cartels GE had constructed over a half-century to control global electrical equipment markets.

To deflect protectionist pressures over the longer term, state officials and corporate allies worked to concentrate power over trade policy within executive agencies that were largely insulated from lobbying pressures. The frustrations this engendered were reflected in the backlash to a further round of tariff reductions in the John F. Kennedy years, as business claimed its concerns and objections went unheard especially as such agreements increasingly closed off avenues for even temporary trade adjustment assistance.

Far from being imposed on a passive state by business lobbying, state agencies worked continuously to hold together a shaky free-trade consensus through the rest of the century.

As the postwar boom slowed by the end of the 1960s, union wage militancy increasingly squeezed corporate profits, leading to declining investment and economic stagnation the so-called stagflation crisis. Throughout the crisis decade of the 1970s, state officials struggled to formulate a strategy for restoring labor discipline. While the Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter administrations fumbled with mandatory, and then voluntary, wage- and price-control schemes, these efforts were fraught from the very beginning. It gradually became clear that a deeper restructuring was necessary.

However, neither business nor the state had any sense of how to proceed. In this context, Treasury secretary John Connally and Federal Reserve chair Arthur Burns met with GEs Reginald Jones and John Harper of Alcoa and urged them to form a high-level organization to collaborate with state officials on finding a way out of crisis and in shoring up business support for wage and price controls while an alternative could be devised. This led to the formation of the Business Roundtable in 1971. Consisting solely of CEOs from the biggest corporations, it was a political powerhouse.

Rather than advocating for a pregiven agenda, the Roundtable worked with state officials to develop policy and mobilized its members in support of these measures. This collaborative approach distinguished it from other business associations. Thus even as business and the public gradually turned against wage and price controls, the Roundtable persisted in supporting them as the least of a variety of possible evils. While state officials and the Roundtable both sought to return to markets, the need to impose class discipline made this impossible especially as runaway inflation was jeopardizing international confidence in the dollar.

In the end, the crisis would be resolved through a two-pronged strategy: raising interest rates to engineer an economic recession, and further globalization. Shortly after becoming Federal Reserve chairman in 1979, Paul Volcker hiked interest rates to unprecedented levels, leading to a recession and skyrocketing unemployment. Though business and the state had sought to avoid the pain and uncertainty of a recession throughout the decade, it had ultimately become clear that there was no other viable path to restore class discipline. And it worked.

The Volcker Shock dramatically concentrated power over economic policy in the highly autonomous Federal Reserve. It also paved the way for further globalization through the removal of barriers to the movement of capital, opening the vast low-wage workforce of the global periphery to exploitation. Although the legitimacy among business of state efforts to pursue free trade had hit a low point during the crisis decade of the 1970s, the state ultimately succeeded in overcoming lingering doubts from the Kennedy days, keeping protectionist forces at bay.

To do so, it created a trade-advisory system of unprecedented scope within the Commerce Department, encompassing firms from across the economy. However, the real levers of power were safely located an arms length away, within the new Office of the US Trade Representative. Later, to support the passage of the agreement, Carter formed the Presidents Export Council, headed by GEs Jones and comprised of business executives and members of Congress as well as token trade-union representation. Though ostensibly advisory bodies, the purpose of these organizations was understood to include consolidating the free-trade consensus among business.

By the end of the 1970s, these efforts had succeeded in creating sufficient support for the elimination of Bretton Woods capital and exchange controls and for the creation of a new world of seamless capital accumulation. The power of finance, already pronounced by the 1970s, became even more significant, along with its ability to discipline industry. Yet integral state organizations especially the Roundtable were able to hold together an unstable class consensus between these different fractions of capital, which would be consolidated over the neoliberal years.

Contrary to common understandings, the rise of neoliberalism resulted from neither corporate lobbying nor state officials attempting to impose the economic doctrines of Friedrich von Hayek or Milton Friedman. Rather, the basic package of neoliberal policies deregulation, tax cuts, slashing welfare programs, monetarism, and globalization was arrived at through a long search for a way to restore class discipline, amid considerable uncertainty. Neoliberalism emerged not from the brains of state officials or conservative economists but from the crucible of class struggle.

Bringing neoliberalism to an end therefore involves much more than convincing state officials to read more John Maynard Keynes. Rather, breaking with the environmentally and socially destructive policies of the past four decades requires shifting the balance of class forces. While electoral victories or reforms aimed at limiting corporate lobbying may help to create space for this, a far broader and deeper class-based mobilization is necessary to challenge neoliberalism which first and foremost means breaking with globalization.

This is especially the case since the interconnection of finance and industry today makes it impossible to isolate finance by identifying it as the cause of bad capitalism (as opposed to good manufacturing). This is not only due to the success of state efforts at negotiating a compromise between these sectors but also because of the deep restructuring of the industrial corporation itself, such that finance has become more prominent within it. Today, industrial corporations are effectively run by investment groups and increasingly resemble financial institutions which has strengthened competitiveness and increased pressures to maximize profits.

However far away it may seem given the weakness of the Left and labor, the project of democratizing the state that is so necessary today goes far beyond limiting certain pathways for businesses to influence specific officials. What is called for, rather, is a deeper transformation of state institutions, such that instead of managing capitalism, they serve as organs of a democratically planned socialist economy. Individual reforms can be useful, but they must be part of a broader project of challenging capital at a systemic level ultimately aimed at replacing private control of the economy with democratic participation.

As we cross one ecological tipping point after another, challenging the class power of capital is no longer just a path to an uncertain utopia but necessary to ensure human survival. Yet this dire situation also offers us a unique opportunity to create a socialist future. A socialist strategy for dealing with this crisis should aim to take the productive capacities of private corporations under public control and to deploy them in the interest of social and ecological need.

Only by democratizing the state, such that decisions over what we produce and how become matters of democratic deliberation rather than corporate power and market discipline, can we hope to create a future worth fighting for.

Continued here:

The State Organizes the Capitalist Class. The Working Class Will Have to Organize Itself. - Jacobin magazine

Did you ever see the footage of the night The Cure were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the band shuffled up the red carpet in New York to accept the honour?

Millions have. The clip went viral because of its accidental comedy value and whatever it tells us, if anything, about the occasional differences between certain British and American attitudes.

There is a very excitable interviewer on stage, bubbling with enthusiasm.

Her name is Carrie Keagan and she is absolutely determined or certainly gives that impression that these old English rockers should want to whoop it up.

Hi, guys. Hey! How are you? Im Carrie. Its soooo nice to meet you. Hi! Congratulations. The Cure, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, 2019. Are you as excited as I am?

At which point 59-year-old lead singer Robert Smith, who is already scratching his chin, gives her a sideways look that can be described only as a mix of bemusement and wonder. His timing is immaculate (he is a musician, after all) and his response is a moment of beautiful awkwardness.

Umm, he deadpans. By the sounds of it, no.

To give Smith the benefit of the doubt, he probably didnt mean to sound dismissive. Its just two very different people bouncing off one another. An English-American thing? It doesnt really matter where they are from. They are just different. Its going to need time, possibly quite a lot of time, before they get one another.

And that, in a nutshell, seems like a reasonable synopsis about how a lot of Leeds United supporters feel about Jesse Marsch now we are two and a half months into the getting-to-know-you stages at Elland Road, and there is growing evidence (just look at the comments section on any Leeds article on The Athletic, for starters) that many of those fans are already starting to look at their American leader through suspicious eyes.

Marsch is certainly confident and, heck, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. A bit of confidence can be vital for a football manager and, while it is true that maybe Marsch is still learning about his audience, he is not the first person at that club to go down the tub-thumping route.

People hate Manchester United because they are so successful, Jonathan Woodgate, then a Leeds player, said in 1999. People will hate us in a few years because we shall be winning everything.

Well, almost, Jonathan.

Leeds were relegated within five years of that statement and, even before they went down, had been financially shipwrecked because of mismanagement that led to a headline in the old News of the World UK tabloid of Post-war Iraq is being better run than Leeds.

They did reach a Champions League semi-final before the roof caved in. But they were also on their way to the third division of English football and administration in an era when the souvenir stalls outside Elland Road sold a T-shirt with the message: 2004 Premiership, 2005 Championship, 2007 Sinkingship, 2008 Abandonship.

The lesson, perhaps, is that sometimes it is better not to shout from the rooftops until there is something worth shouting about. Dont make promises you cant necessarily keep. Dont say stuff that might be held against you if it never happens.

It is something, for example, that Manchester City have done well since they got to where they want to be.

Ignore that old line from Sir Alex Ferguson about Manchester Uniteds noisy neighbours. You wont ever hear Pep Guardiola, or anyone else at City, talking about how many (more) trophies they are going to win, how long they expect to dominate English football, or how they are going to expand and improve the club. PR-wise, the policy at City is: do it first, talk about it after.

Plainly, Marsch takes a different approach.

He has a new set of fans to impress. He wants to talk big. Maybe he thinks, deep down, we dont need to be so stuffy, so reserved, so very English. He has some grand plans and he seems to go by the old Kevin Keegan rule of thumb that every football fan, deep down, is a dreamer.

Keegan was too, if you remember that when his Newcastle United side were promoted to the top flight in 1993 he had the nerve in his next programme notes to include a message for the attention of Manchester United: Watch out Alex, we will be after your title.

Marsch has not gone anywhere near as far but, in a relatively short space of time in Leeds, he has probably established a couple of things about the Premier League.

First, that every sentence to emerge from a manager tends to get dissected if the results on the pitch are not good. And, second, that maybe the scrutiny is even more intense when those words are spoken in an American accent and there is still an attitude among some English fans arrogance, ignorance, call it what you will that managers from the US can be an awkward fit for Premier League clubs.

It is an old-fashioned stigma and, put bluntly, it would not be tolerated if it applied to other groups.

And we know Marsch feels it because he has already talked to The Athletic about the experiences of his friend and former colleague, Bob Bradley, during a tough, brief, spell at Swansea City six years ago in which the then-Premier League clubs players, as well as the fans, found it hard to believe in the former US mens national-team manager.

I was angry about it, honestly, Marsch said. I knew how hard hed worked to get himself there and watching it crumble was awful. To see that happen to someone I knew had invested his entire life in the sport to be rejected in the way he was, it was hard for us Americans to swallow.

Bradley lasted 11 games at Swansea, winning two and losing seven, from October to December 2016.

Marsch has taken charge of 10 so far at Leeds three wins, two draws, five defeats and it was always likely there might be some early issues when another obvious problem, in the eyes of many Leeds fans, is that his name is not Marcelo Bielsa.

At the same time, it is also true that Marsch has not always helped himself when he has tried to be, well, more Carrie Keagan than Robert Smith.

In one interview this week, Marsch was asked what he thought Leeds United would look like in three years. It looks like the best academy in Europe, he replied, with young players who are playing in the first team consistently, and where we are competing for Europe consistently.

His intention, he explained, is to bring through world-class players who can perform here but can also help us financially by selling them to the most massive clubs for massive amounts of money, then reinvest that into the infrastructure of the club, until we get to the point five or 10 years from now when we can really talk about competing for titles and being one of the best teams in Europe. Thats the goal.

It sounded like some kind of football utopia and, in ordinary circumstances, which set of fans would not like to hear from their manager that he is ultra-ambitious and fully intends to drag their club into a brave new world?

Unfortunately for Marsch, these are not ordinary circumstances.

Leeds are in the bottom three with only two games of the season to go, and the fingers of relegation are tightening around their neck, just two years after they finally escaped an EFL they spent 16 painful seasons in when they last dropped out of the elite.

He has been parachuted into a club, and a city, living on their nerves.

Leeds have been undermined by injury issues but also shot themselves in the foot by having the worst disciplinary statistics of any team in 30 years of the Premier League. Marsch cannot take all the blame for that, having been there less than three months, but it has been a confetti show of yellow and red cards on his watch, too.

Perhaps there is also a slight cultural difference here, in terms of football-speak, and Marsch has not fully grasped that there are certain things he might say now that will jar with his new audience in Yorkshire.

This might never have been such an issue at the first European club he led, serial Austrian champions Red Bull Salzburg, or while he was managing New York Red Bulls in MLS back home before that.

It is actually a shame, in one sense, that a manager who is unafraid to show his personality and prefers not to speak in cliches already seems to be opening himself to scorn and based on his latest round of interviews after Leeds lost 3-0 at home to Chelsea on Wednesday now appears to be taking a more cautious approach to what he says.

On reflection, he probably wishes it had not been made public that he has tried to bring together his players by reciting quotes from Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa.

In another sense, it is difficult to pass over his decision to announce, on a national UK radio station, that the fans still-beloved Bielsa was guilty of over-training the players, and had left them physically, mentally, emotionally and psychologically in a bad place. Where to start? It was silly and unnecessary and, even if he believed every word, the kind of thing Marsch really ought to have kept to himself.

More than anything, however, lets not forget that the best place to judge a football manager is almost always on the pitch rather than what he says into a microphone.

If it isnt to end well for Marsch at Leeds, it will be because they have gone down and do not look like a side that will swiftly come back up.

Lets judge him by his tactics and his ability to motivate his team. Lets see what happens in the next two games and the reaction from the fans.

Its just starting to feel like Marsch, 10 games in, is straying dangerously close to finding out that the people who fill Elland Road can chop you down to size if they dont like what they are seeing and hearing.

(Top photo: Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

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Leeds United and Jesse Marsch are going to need time to get one another - The Athletic