Metal Reviews

Ah, good place for me to ask this question, Brahm. Does Holkeskamp go into much detail about the late 150s-early 140s BC period? I'm co-designing another Roman-based role-playing game and I'm going to need more background info on a seemingly darkly lit period of its history.

Stephen King - It

Braverman - Labor and Monopoly Capital
Todd Gitlin - The Whole World is Watching.

Need to finish these before exams next week.

Have taught a ton of seminars on Labour Process Theory but have never read that book through. Feel like I know it off by heart, though...

It's not a narrative and very much a theoretical book about overall Roman Republican political culture, so I don't think it would be a good book for you. What sort of background info do you need? You've hit upon the problem that you've chosen two decades for which we have very little information. For primary sources, you can check out the fragments of Polybius, which go to 146 BC, and then Plutarch's Lives might also be helpful (check out the Life of Aemilius Paullus, although he died in 160, Cato the Elder, and Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus). Some of Cato the Elder's writings may also be helpful. In terms of a modern work... Well, tell me the sort of information you're looking for and hopefully I'll be able to help you.

I'm basically looking for anything on the grumbling of the increasingly exploited small farmers/enrichment of the elite. I'd like to be able to show convincingly the antecedents of the Gracchi. This period was kinda purposely selected for its darkness because it wouldn't be constrained in an RPG setting (we are wrapping a post-Gracchi game and explaining why there isn't a Marius has become increasingly difficult, even in our alternate history setting). I'll be sure to check out Polybius, thanks. And heck, I have the Plutarch lives, so I have a leg up as it is.

So have you actually addressed that exact book or just ideas it might share with other writers and texts?

Well, I've talked a lot about Labour Process and the Marxist critique of Taylorism, which Braverman is the key figure in. All the students have to at least cite it in passing in their essays.

So far it's really interesting. His critique in the introduction of 20th century Marxism is interesting and I've never thought really just how much work itself has fallen out of most analyses.

Finished The Collector by John Fowles the other day, which proved to be a fast read.

Currently trudging through Adam Bede for class. It's interesting to read and compare the form to The French Lieutenant's Woman (more John Fowles!), in regards to narrative intervention. I'm not terribly taken with the book, however, although I feel as though that is not totally the book's fault, as I am reading it in a summer class, meaning that the amount of time I have to read it is significantly reduced, and I can think of other things I would like to do other than read it copiously for the next few days, along with beginning to work on a research proposal for the same class.

On the plus side, not to sound like too much of a complainer, I have food, water, and shelter still, so things aren't too bad.

Hmm, so this is a bit difficult, but I've tried to think up some stuff. You can start off by also checking out the beginning of Book 1 of Appian's Civil Wars and parts of Sallust's Jugurthine War. In terms of modern works... A good overall narrative of the period is Scullard's From the Gracchi to Nero, which will present the traditional viewpoint and some of the history before the Gracchi. However, there are some good (though dry) articles and books by a scholar named Nathan Rosenstein who has challenged a lot of the traditional viewpoints. Works to check out would be the book "Rome at War: Farms, Families and Death in the Middle Republic" and the article "Aristocrats and Agriculture in the Middle and Late Republic." Hope that helps.

Just finished Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, now reading:

Diarmaid MacCulloch- Reformation: Europe's Divided House

Thanks! I knew you'd be a tremendous resource. I'm really interested in what Rosenstein has to say, and I'll post my thoughts here on what he wrote when I got to it!

Just arrived in the post



Quite hard going, actually.

I read some David Harvey this quarter called "The Right to the City" I liked it but my environmentalism teacher was pretty negative about his books. He seems to not understand the difference between value, exchange value and use value despite his focus being so often on Capital. And apparently his ideas on the crisis formation and exploitation that goes on under capitalism were best summarized through application in the book "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.

The article we read had really awesome ideas on how urbanization was another way of absorbing surplus capital in the same way militarization, planned obsolescence and consumerism work but when he actually tried to politicize it, the argument got rather weak.

Hm, that's strange- the entire first part of that book is on the difference between those types of value and how everybody else except him and Marx don't understand the difference between them, haha. Yeah that book seems to be half him analysing Capital and half him developing his theories about time and space compression etc.

She must have disagreed with him. Then again she wrote books about Deleuze so I feel like that kinda disqualifies her from having a standard viewpoint.

Harvey's analysis of value is quite difficult, I've found. He's talking about how the use value of the money form is needed in order to internalise the contradictions between "reflexive" and "inherent" exchange value that would occur in a barter economy. That ignites a quantitative form of circulation (M-C-Mi) rather than qualitative (C-M-C).

I think what he's trying to do is show how the theory of value isn't just an empirical, quantitative mechanism for determining prices- it's actually the cause of an embodiment of a whole set of social relationships. Which is what I'd thought all along, but hey. Hard going but worth persevering with I've found- I think it probably gets more interesting when he starts talking about the geographical implications of it- like you said, all that "cities as surplus capital" etc.

I thought that was basically Marx's argument in Capital?

Yeah. In this chapter Harvey is basically saying what he thinks Marx says. the CMC/MCMi thing is fairly common knowledge but what confused me a little is Harvey's argument (or his interpretation of Marx's argument) that the transition from CMC to MCMi is an inevitable consequence of the internal contradictions of the money form itself, which I'm still not sure I follow.

I don't think anyone disputes Aid isn't working, but I'm not sure the Western conscience would ever allow them to cut it off either.