You can start where you like with a visit to the Rabenhof estate in Vienna. Walk all the way around the perimeter, explore the alleyways and passages, watch the world go by, sit and read a book, sketch the buildings; what ever you do, make sure to explore. If you need a meeting place, theContinue reading “Rabenhof, Vienna: A Radical Walk”
Tag Archives: history
Autonomous Networks
Starting points…where to start? It seems a flood, of hate and bile and anger and screwed up raging faces. Influencers, social media companies, the right wing press, the shock troops of the new right, lies and dis-formation. Anything goes. Pointing fingers, provocative behaviour, murder-speech, writing lies and far right propaganda. A newspaper claims a ‘pro-Palestine’Continue reading “Autonomous Networks”
Fragment of a Radical Walk
I have to accept that a write up of a Radical Walk will never be along the lines of, “meet outside the Bishopsgate Institute, turn left into Artillery Row, proceed in a southerly direction to Middlesex Street, note the estate on the corner, here is the heart of the East End; it’s quite some distanceContinue reading “Fragment of a Radical Walk”
The Gateway Flats, Dover
The Gateway Flats in Dover were completed in 1959. Over 200 council flats, with sea views and easy access to the sweeping, curving promenade by the harbour. There was some controversy at the time, and small echoes of that rumble on. Why should council tenants have such elegant and graceful housing? Why this intelligent andContinue reading “The Gateway Flats, Dover”
Cité-jardins de Champigny-sur-Marne
“In Paris in 1885, a judge declared that for a landlord to be compelled to lay on water in his houses for the use of the tenants was an interference with the liberty of the subject, and held that a water-supply was not an indispensable necessity for maintaining the healthiness of the a dwelling” CatherineContinue reading “Cité-jardins de Champigny-sur-Marne”
Ostheim, Stuttgart
Ostheim was discovered by chance, and perhaps the experience was more enjoyable for that. I was going to the REWE supermarket to buy a couple of bottles of beer. I walked along Landhausstrasse and slowly my senses started to pick up that there was something rather attractive here, rather unusual, in the local streets. I’mContinue reading “Ostheim, Stuttgart”
The train to Paris, a city of Capital
There’s a crowd of people slowly moving toward platform 7 and the 13.31 train to Paris. I become aware of a young woman and man in close proximity. Why them? There are plenty of other people within a few inches or so. And yet no one bumps another and if they accidently do, they generallyContinue reading “The train to Paris, a city of Capital”
Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds
A woman in a trim blue padded coat stopped and asked if she could help. Blond hair blew in whisps across her face. She was all smiles and sparkly eyes. I was standing at a road junction near the railway station at Shepherdswell studying an Ordnance Survey map. I looked at her over the topContinue reading “Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds”
In the beginning was the commodity
The question is raised as to why Marx starts Capital with the ‘commodity’. It’s right there in the first line of the first chapter of the first volume: “The wealth of societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production appears in the form of an ‘enormous accumulation of commodities’ “. Why did Marx start withContinue reading “In the beginning was the commodity”
Visions of Marx….endlessly
The only part of Capital to be published in Marx’s lifetime was volume one. It first came into being in Hamburg in 1867. Throughout the book Marx confidently asserts that ‘more of this will appear in volume two’, ‘this argument will continue in volume three’ and so on. But those later volumes were not finalisedContinue reading “Visions of Marx….endlessly”
Commodity Fetishism 