It’s Friday morning and I’m buying a return ticket for the train. Yet again comparing notes with the woman in the ticket office about our hoped for retirement dates. It feels as if time is in limbo and we are both frozen for ever in a world of toil. Like billions of others. She asksContinue reading “Coming Soon…Radical Folkestone Walk”
Author Archives: DannyB
Shopping Vignette with Hans Memling
Triptych of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist (detail), Hans Memling, 1479 “Could you help me?’ an elderly woman bent over a large trolley in Marks & Spencer asked. She was smartly dressed in a dark blue woollen jacket with a flowing red scarf and well cut black trousers and black boots.Continue reading “Shopping Vignette with Hans Memling”
Unconscious Collective
The train comes into Liverpool Street Station, platform 17 with a metal on metal sound of wheels on rails, the sound of bombs bursting, machine guns, rockets crashing through the glass canopy, people screaming, playgrounds, maternity hospitals and system-built housing estates collapsing in the explosions and fires. Soldiers, conscripts, mercenaries, cheap flop house petty thiefContinue reading “Unconscious Collective”
A Walk to the Shops
Money is integral to what we do and to some extent, who we are. Money determines where we live and how we live. But the psychology of money doesn’t get much attention. I’m going to return to reading the Grundrisse which attempts an explanation of money in great detail. It feels as if days haveContinue reading “A Walk to the Shops”
Nevzdáváme se – We Don’t Give in
I first met K – in the street. We would say hello as we passed each other with bags of shopping. She walks with a stick and often wears a red hat. And for about a year she always got my name wrong. ‘Are you Steve?’, she would say. I would laugh and explain thatContinue reading “Nevzdáváme se – We Don’t Give in”
Marxism and A Pattern Language
The preparation for the Radical EC1 Walk continues with the usual diversions and tangents and books being brought together without obvious connections. I’ve been reading Communitas by Percival and Paul Goodman, a lot of Christopher Alexander and the first chapter of the Grundrisse. I suspect I understand about 10 percent of what Alexander and MarxContinue reading “Marxism and A Pattern Language”
The Study of Consumption
There is no moral framework for production within capitalism. Nation states give priority to the production of nuclear missiles, chemical weapons, cluster bombs, police truncheons, tear gas, water cannon; feeding people and providing shelter, health services and education are secondary, or less. Even outside the arms industries there is plenty of immoral production; oil, builtContinue reading “The Study of Consumption”
The Problem of London- Prologue
It was possibly Patrick Keiller who first raised the question, ‘the problem of London’. As there are no money-making opportunities in answering this question it has been neglected. But it is surely one of the key questions, not an incidental one? London is a large city. The building and maintenance of London requires immense quantitiesContinue reading “The Problem of London- Prologue”
A day or two…
Marx’s Grundrisse is a set of notebooks. Sometimes the sentences themselves are merely short points, in the way we all make notes at times. There are digressions into detail which may be ignored. It is the substance which is of great interest and discovering how Marx worked out his ideas. There are moments while readingContinue reading “A day or two…”
The incidental dominance of exchange-value
A journey from reading the Grundrisse at 6am to a shopping centre and then EC1 at night. I spent a lot of time in a department store just watching the high definition televisions on display. It is as if the world is now a background which can be enhanced with film editing software, made brighter,Continue reading “The incidental dominance of exchange-value”
Cornucopia City 