The Creative Class Rises Again
When first published in 2002, The Rise of the Creative Class quickly established its author Richard Florida as an urban policy and business management guru. The Rise of the Creative Class heralded the emergence of a new class of worker who promised to lead the economy, and along with it the rest ...
John Dewey’s Encounter with Leon Trotsky
The 1930s was one of the one eventful and productive decades in Dewey’s life. He published more than a half dozen books including Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. It was during this decade that he sharpened his understanding of radical democracy and a renascent liberalism. He interrupted his ...
Christine’s Story: Poverty and Paperwork
Rebooting RoboCop
Comparing 2014 with 1987
As someone who grew up with Paul Verhoeven's original 1987 RoboCop, I can't help but feel the dystopic and critical social commentary of the movie was lost in its reboot. What was once a critical and distopic film exploring the dangers of unchecked corporate power has become a soft endorsement ...
The Politics of Public Debt
Neoliberalism, capitalist development, and the restructuring of the state
This is the text of the Heuss Lecture (with audio of the Q & A below), delivered as part of the General Seminar series in the Wolff Conference Room of The New School for Social Research at 6 E. 16th. St. in New York on December 11, 2013.
From the ...
Top 10 List of Best American Historical Writing
Recently the net has seen various ten best lists of works in American history. I’d like to propose one of my own, but first I want to explain my rationale. American historical writing was transformed in the 1960s by two things: the realization that slavery and racism were the foundations ...
Who Stops Paying Social Security Taxes After Today?
Snyder and Orr Suckerpunch the Arts in Michigan
In a nifty move right out of the Reagan Revolution playbook, the governor of Michigan and his hand picked bankruptcy fixer finally revealed their plan for monetizing the art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The plan is brilliant in its simplicity and in its political nuance.
After months of ...
Against Social Determinism
On Scrooge and His Art Collection: A Little Xmas Offering
Jonathan Crary’s 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
When I was a kid in the 1960s one of the big questions I remember being tossed about was what to do with all of the free time that modern society would afford us. That there would be a virtually unlimited horizon of material abundance and thus leisure, and how ...