Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Of Race, Racism And Racially Motivated Offences: A Review Of The Hate Crime And Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, Olufemi O. Ilesanmi, Danielle Mckandie

Class, Race and Corporate Power

A relationship of social and legal significance seems to exist between the prohibition of expressions or manifestations of racism and the society’s preservation of racial diversity. To discourage racial prejudice and thereby protect each race, the state must manage its diversity well by legislating against racist hate offences. In Scotland, for example, the government boldly accepted that hate crimes, including racially motivated offences, are a serious problem requiring closer attention. Through its Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, the state resolves to tackle related criminality.

Focusing on the Act, this review examines whether or how race within the …

The Profits Of (The Critique Of) Patriarchy: On Toxic Masculinity, Feminism, & Corporate Capitalism In The Barbie Movie, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article explicates the political, social, economic, and cultural contribution of Barbie (2023). Through a critical and normative analysis of four different prominent reviews of the film, this essay explores the quality of discourse surrounding Barbie, with particular emphasis on its feminist critique of toxic masculinity and lack of a coherent criticism of capitalism.

Apple “Porn” 2.0: Apple’S Vision (Pro), Suzanne E. Ferriss

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article extends the argument made in “Apple ‘Porn’: Design Videos as Seduction and Exploitation” (Ferriss 2018) to consider the corporation’s filmed representation of its newest device: an augmented reality headset dubbed Vision Pro. It argues that Apple’s latest narratives further relegate human work and community to the margins by presenting human experience as thoroughly mediated by computer-enhanced simulation, its pinnacle achieved through its Apple Vision Pro headset that turns the home and workspace into one immersive audiovisual world. Rather than its devices and software becoming an inseparable part of our personal and shared spaces, they become the spaces. We …

Banshees Of Late Capitalism: War, Ecology, & Alienation, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This review essay explores the concepts of war, ecology/human-nonhuman relations, and alienation through a critical analysis of McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin (2022).

The Comedy Of Cancel Culture In A Post-Carlin United States: On The Politics Of Cultural Interpretation, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Taking the form of a critical review of the HBO documentary George Carlin's American Dream, this essay explores the character of George Carlin's political and cultural criticism, its implications for contemporary debates about so-called "cancel culture," and the broader political significance of cultural interpretation.

Why Scorsese Is Right About Corporate Power, James Mcmahon

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This is a lightly edited compilation of a two-part series originally published by Notes on Cinema in June and July, 2021. It has been re-published here with permission of the author.

Our thanks to Notes on Cinema and James McMahon.

Absolute Impunity: On The Legacies Of 9/11 & The Policies Of The War On/Of Terror, Bryant William Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

It has been a little over twenty years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and thus we are also going to be coming up on twentieth anniversaries of some of the most heinous restrictions on civil liberties in US history (though there is a lot of competition) and the twentieth anniversaries of instance after instance of unjustifiable atrocities committed in the name of the Stars and Stripes. Through autoethnographic reflection in conversation with Netflix’s Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2021) and Spencer Ackerman’s Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (2021), …

Understanding The Paris Commune On Its 150th Anniversary, Dan La Botz

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The Paris Commune of 1871 only lasted from March 18 to May 28, just 72 days, yet it is one of the most celebrated events in socialist history. It is a legend. Yet, what was it? What is it for us today? A model for socialists? A heroic failure? Negation of the state? Or the first workers’ government? Karl Marx wrote the most famous contemporary account, yet he failed to take up some of the Commune’s serious problems. Why?

This article was originally published in New Politics on August 4, 2021 (pt. 1) and in the Summer 2021 issue (pt. …

Realizing A Green New Deal: Lessons From World War Ii, Martin Hart-Landsberg

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Many activists in the United States are working to build a movement for a Green New Deal transformation of the economy in order to tackle both global warming and the country’s worsening economic and social problems. To this point, Green New Deal advocates have been far more interested in discussing the programs to be included than in how to achieve the desired transformation. Helpfully, we have the experience of World War II to provide some guideposts. This paper begins by highlighting the enormity and speed of the US economy’s wartime transformation from civilian to military production. Then, it describes the …

Canadian Financial Imperialism And Structural Adjustment In The Caribbean, Tamanisha J. John

Class, Race and Corporate Power

From the start of the early 1980s, structural adjustment was already normalized in the Caribbean given the power of a variety of self-interested actors, including the U.S., IFIs, and Canadian investors who continued to advance and support— by any means necessary— structural adjustment policies in the Caribbean. Debt traps, coupled with incursions on Caribbean state’s sovereignty would see the neoliberal and capitalist doctrine accepted by all of the independent states in the English-speaking Caribbean region by the mid-1980s. Structural adjustment drastically intensified the existing inequalities in states and removed the ability for governments to alleviate these situations. Alongside Caribbean structural …

Criticizing Past And Modern Ideology Through Twisted Comedy Series: A Case Of "Comrade Detective", Damian Winczewski, Slawomir Czapnik

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The objective of the paper is to solve the interpretative controversies around Comrade Detective, one of the most original TV entertainment productions of the recent years. This production is a pastiche of American buddy police films. The plot refers to the reality of the socialist Romania in the 1980s and presents in a satirical way the local militia’s fight against the American threat. We have attempted to prove that its not only deriding the reality of the political system, but the series constitutes also a satire on American propaganda films. Although the humour in the series seems vulgar and …

It's Capitalism, Stupid!: The Theoretical And Political Limitations Of The Concept Of Neoliberalism, Bryant William Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This polemical essay explores the meaning and function of the concept of neoliberalism, focusing on the serious theoretical and political limitations of the concept. The crux of the argument is that, for those interested in overcoming the exploitative and oppressively destructive elements of global capitalism, opposing "neoliberalism" (even if best understood as a process or a spectrum of "neoliberalization" or simply privatization) is both insufficient and potentially self-undermining. This article also goes into some detail on the issues of health care and climate change in relation to "neoliberalism" (both conceptually and the material processes and policies that this term refers …

The Life And Times Of Jimmy Hoffa, Chris Wright

Class, Race and Corporate Power

In light of Martin Scorsese's popular movie "The Irishman," it is a good time to reassess Jimmy Hoffa. He's probably the most famous union leader in American history, but the only thing most people know of him is that he ran the Teamsters and was closely connected to the Mafia. He is often seen as nothing but a corrupt, evil, greedy sellout. The reality is a little different. In this article I discuss his record as a labor leader, the attacks on him by the McClellan Committee and Bobby Kennedy, and his ties to organized crime. I try to contextualize …

Sorry To Bother You With Twelve Theses On Boots Riley’S "Sorry To Bother You": Lessons For The Left, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

As one of the most overtly anticapitalist major motion pictures to be released in recent times (perhaps ever), Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) offers many crucial lessons for today’s Left. This essay provides short, open-ended discussions on twelve of those lessons.

Easy Riders Lost In America: Marx, Mobility And The Hollywood Road Movie, Steven E. Alford

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The movement of people and settlement of the American west has been psychologically and sociologically represented as engendered by a sense of Manifest Destiny. Yet, the western migration was fueled by capitalist corporations seeking profit by exploiting international markets for goods through extractive practices (principally animal pelts, fish, and lumber): the Hudson's Bay Company, the North West Company, and millionaire American capitalist John Jacob Astor. The economic foundations of settlement have, however, been erased in cinematic representations of this history, replaced first by the Hollywood Western and its myth of frontier individuality, and subsequently by the Hollywood road movie, concerned …

Popular Radicalism In The 1930s: The History Of The Workers' Unemployment Insurance Bill, Chris Wright

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Historiography on the Great Depression in the U.S. evinces a lacuna. Despite all the scholarship on political radicalism in this period, one of the most remarkable manifestations of such radicalism has tended to be ignored: namely, the mass popular movement behind the Workers’ Unemployment Insurance Bill. This bill, which the Communist Party wrote in 1930, was introduced in Congress three times, in 1934, ’35, and ’36, as an alternative to the far more conservative Social Security Act. Its socialistic nature ensured that it never had any chance of becoming law, but it also enabled it to become enormously popular among …

Exploring The Shadows Of America’S Security State (Or How I Learned Not To Love Big Brother) Reprinted From Tomdispatch.Com Courtesy Of Haymarket Books, Alfred W. Mccoy

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This piece has been reprinted from TomDispatch.com and is an adapted and expanded version of the introduction to Alfred W. McCoy's new book: In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power (Haymarket Books, 2017). Thanks to TomDispatch.com, Dr. McCoy and Haymarket Books for allowing us to reprint this here.

We Are The Beast: On Toxic Masculinity And Social Responsibility In Disney’S Beauty And The Beast, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This essay reflects on how Disney's (1991) animated classic Beauty and the Beast and the (2017) live-action remake differentially treat social responsibility, with respect to the various side characters and communities represented, for the toxic masculinity exhibited by its most prominent male characters, Gaston and the Beast. Furthermore, this essay uses Beauty and the Beast as a heuristic to understand the relationship between social responsibility, toxic masculinity, contemporary capitalism, and radical political and economic change.

The Epic Failure Of Labor Leadership In The United States, 1980-2017 And Continuing, Kim Scipes

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The organizational failure of labor leadership in the US is more than individual failures, which could perhaps be overcome by the election of new leaders. The author argues that the model of trade unionism that has dominated US unionism—business unionism—offers no viable way forward and must be replaced by another model— social justice unionism.

John L. Lewis And His Critics: Some Forgotten Labor History That Still Matters Today, Staughton Lynd

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The purpose of this essay is to propose a new answer to the question of "what happened to the Congress of Industrial Organizations?" Lynd argues the CIO became what its creator, United Mine Workers (UMW) president John L. Lewis, intended it to be. This approach is juxtaposed with the approach taken by A.J. Muste, who helped to lead the cotton textile strike of 1919 to victory, then founded the Brookwood Labor School—probably the most radical and effective school for workers in American history.

Time To Tackle The Whole Squid: Confronting White Supremacy To Build Shared Bargaining Power, Erica Smiley

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The operators of global capital, who have representatives in both US political parties, use a system of white supremacy and structural racism to keep working people disorganized and isolated from each other so that they do not collectively (and successfully) disrupt their ability to continue to concentrate resources among a tiny, select few. And thus in order to truly confront global capitalism and reverse the dramatic trends of inequality in the US and elsewhere, the struggle against white supremacy must be a central element of any strategy to build working class power.

Screen Savior: How Black Mirror Reflects The Present More Than The Future, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Despite the media treatment of Black Mirror as a dystopian series dealing with the (near) future, this essay explores season three of Charlie Brooker's immensely successful Channel 4-turned-Netflix series in order to show how the central themes of the series are actually more concerned with the present than they are with the future. The present that is reflected is, to put it mildly, not very pretty, but it offers the necessarily dark vision of the current conjuncture that we need if we are to fully appreciate where our present tendencies are leading us.

Capitalism Rejected Is Education Perfected: The Imperfect Examples Of Tarzan’S New York Adventure And Captain Fantastic, Steven E. Alford

Class, Race and Corporate Power

One of the more beguiling films of 2016 was Matt Ross’ Captain Fantastic, a tale about a father raising a brood of children in the Pacific Northwest woods, and the challenges the family faces when it emerges into “civilization” to confront a family crisis. A much earlier film, 1942’s Tarzan’s New York Adventure, shares its narrative structure: Tarzan and Jane must leave their jungle paradise and confront a threat to their family in the canyons of New York. Both films explore the problems associated with parents’ attempt at educating their children. And in both films the families’ pedagogical …

Parenting For Progress: Reflections On Matt Ross’S Captain Fantastic, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Matt Ross's film Captain Fantastic explores the difficulties of raising one's kids to be critical of modern capitalistic society. This essay explores the parenting lessons that can be taken from the film in connection with contemporary politics and protest movements. As people who are concerned with social justice, this essay attempts to think through the question: how should we be raising our children in these tormented, unjust times?

Capital Revenge: Ideologiekritik And The Revenant, Bryant W. Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Though superficially The Revenant is an expertly written, acted, and directed new age Western about one man's wild quest for revenge. It is all of those things to be sure, but this critical review essay goes deeper and explores the ideological dimensions of the film, arguing that the film's main antagonist is actually a capitalistic hero representing the mindless application of the endless drive for profit and wealth. Furthermore, this essay concludes with the dialectical assertion that it is precisely because of the audience's situatedness within the ideological confines of capitalism that they are able to view the antagonist as …

Marx At The Gold Coast: Reflections On Teaching And The Confrontation With Ideology, Allan Ardill

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article engages with Marx in Miami and the strategies and pedagogical experiences of teaching Marx and Marxism. It relates the experience of teaching Marxism in a compulsory law course at the Gold Coast, Australia. Marx rarely makes an appearance in law schools and this poses particular challenges when it is taught to politically conservative students. Therefore the article supplies a case for teaching Marx arguing why it is not just appropriate for lawyers but irresponsible to exclude it.

Neglected Masterpieces Of Cinema, Louis Proyect

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article will acquaint you with ten of the more important leftwing films I have reviewed over the past sixteen years as a member of New York Film Critics Online. You will not see listed familiar works such as “The Battle of Algiers” but instead those that deserve wider attention, the proverbial neglected masterpieces. They originate from different countries and are available through Internet streaming, either freely from Youtube or through Netflix or Amazon rental. In several instances you will be referred to film club websites that like the films under discussion deserve wider attention since they are the counterparts …

Revolutionaries In Space? A Counter-Review Of Interstellar, Bryant William Sculos

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Should the radical Left interpret the Nolans' Interstellar as a tribute to (neo)liberal expansionism or should we view it as a cautionary tale about a future that is just around the corner, which won't be solved by worm holes or time travel? This review takes the latter position against the recent Jacobin review, which argues the former. Here, I show that Interstellar can be productively reinterpreted as a film about a series of things that will NOT save us from our-late-capitalist-selves.