Leninbulb

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Alternate poster design by Gustav Klutsis, "Electrification of the entire country!" (1921)

Alternate poster design by Gustav Klutsis,
“Electrification of the entire country!” (1921)

Vladimir  Lenin, “Preface” to I.I. Stepanov’s
The Electrification of the R.S.F.S.R. and
the Transitional Phase of World Economy

Written: 18 March, 1922
First Published: Pravda No. 64, March 21, 1922; Published according to the text in I. Stepanova The Electrification of the R.S.F.S.R. and the Transitional Phase of World Economy, Moscow, 1922, checked with the manuscript
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 245-246
Translated: David Skvirsky and George Hanna
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters & R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V.I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Lenin: "Communism = soviet power [совласть] + electrification!"

Vladimir Lenin: “Communism = soviet
power [совласть] + electrification!” (1922)

I heartily recommend this book by Comrade Stepanov to all Communists.

The author has succeeded in giving a very able exposition of exceedingly difficult and important problems. He did very well in not writing a book for intellectuals (as is the practice among many of us who copy the worst manners of bourgeois writers), but for the working people, for the masses, for rank-and-file workers and peasants. To his book the author has appended a list of references for supplementary reading for the benefit of those who may find it difficult to understand some parts of it without further explanation. as well as for the benefit of those who would like to consult the principal works on this subject published in Russia and abroad. Special reference must be made to the beginning of Chapter VI, where the author splendidly outlines the significance of the New Economic Policy, and magnificently answers the “airy” scepticism that is displayed in some quarters about the possibility of electrification This scepticism is usually a cloak to conceal the absence of serious thought on the subject (that is, if it is not a cloak to conceal whiteguard, Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik hostility to all Soviet construction, which, in fact, is sometimes the case). Continue reading →

Black politics in the age of Obama

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Cedric Johnson and Mel Rothenberg

Platypus Review 57 | June 2013

On May 6, 2013, the Platypus Affiliated Society  hosted a conversation on “Black Politics in the Age of Obama” at the University of Chicago. The speakers included Cedric Johnson, the author of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics (2007) and The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans (2011); and Mel Rothenberg, a veteran of the Sojourner Truth Organization and coauthor of The Myth of Capitalism Reborn: A Marxist Critique of Theories of Capitalist Restoration in the USSR (1980). Michael Dawson, author of the forthcoming book, Blacks In and Out of the Left, was unable to attend due to an emergency. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation. Complete audio of the event can be found online.

Cedric Johnson: I want to demystify the Obama phenomenon, which dates back much further than the 2004 DNC, as it has unfolded over the past decade. I also want to demystify the notion of “black politics” generally.

I am not disappointed with Obama, because being disappointed would mean I had expectations that had not been realized. I certainly disagree with Obama, but he has done just about everything I expected him to do with respect to domestic policy, questions of inequality, or geopolitics. He has been fairly consistent.

The problem with the Obama phenomenon is that too many people got caught in the rhetoric of “change.” As a political slogan it was perfect: No matter where you were, you could find something you could connect with. This operated on at least three different registers. On one level, it simply meant a change to another party’s leadership. For some, simply turning the page on the Bush years counted as change. At another level, there was what might be called the Jackie Robinson effect: There were those who wanted to see Obama break the barrier and become the first black president. Finally, and this was the most dangerous, many believed that Obama was going to deliver some substantive revitalization of liberalism within the United States. The idea was that he would be the second coming of FDR. People have made the same argument more recently. Michael Eric Dyson made this case last year on Democracy Now!, in fact, urging support for Obama’s reelection bid. One or another of these arguments proved convincing for many who ought to have known better — not just liberals, but people who consider themselves Marxists or radical leftists. Continue reading →

Photo by Sammy Medina

Corbu conference

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Here are some photos I took from the international Le Corbusier symposium that took place on Saturday at the Center for Architecture, organized primarily by the architectural historian (and curator of the new MoMA exhibition on Corbu’s lifework) Jean-Louis Cohen. Also presenting at the conference were Kenneth Frampton, Mary McLeod, Stanislaus von Moos, and Peter Eisenman, to name a few. I’ll be posting a review of the event in a couple days. Enjoy!

Images from the conference

Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen
Stanislaus von Moos
Stanislaus von Moos
Stanislaus von Moos
Jean-Louis Cohen
Jean-Louis Cohen

The North Star to the rest of the Left: Disengage from Platypus, engage with [pseudo-]reformism

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by Corey Ansel

Untitled.
Image: Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Son (1819-1823)
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NOTE: Just to be clear about my own relationship to Platypus as an organization, I must again remind readers that I am not currently a member, though I am obviously still sympathetic to its cause. Corey’s statement defends Platypus against a number of misperceptions and baseless accusations that are commonly leveled against it. Even if such accusations were true, however, I find it the height of hypocrisy that anyone, especially university professors, would refuse to participate in Platypus events on the ground that it supposedly “lends ideological support” to reactionary ideologies like Zionism or imperialism. This is all the more true given the fact that most of them hold positions at universities and routinely speak on campuses subsidized by the U.S. military (and all the foreign military forces it aids), in return for the advanced weapons technologies their research and development departments provide.

Not to mention that the historical “Lenin,” unlike Richard Seymour’s epigonal pseudonym, didn’t hesitate for a moment to meet cordially and grant an interview to the Fabian socialist (and apologist for British imperialism!) H.G. Wells during the middle of a bloody civil war. 

Originally posted at the Chair Leg of Truth. My one editorial gripe would be that The North Star does not even insist that one engage reformists, since this would seem to suggest that a genuine reformism today exists. What exists today is rather a pseudo-reformism of sorts, which calls for “realistic” programs of reform to reinstate the welfare state or government-funded social programs, even when such programs are no longer viable. The reformists of yesteryear — Bernstein, Schmidt, and the lot — actually deserved to be taken seriously by the likes of Luxemburg. Anyway, for more on The North Star, a shitty webzine owned and chiefly inspired by the living fossil Louis Proyect, and two of its “leading lights,” please see:

1. Dario Cankovic’s report on the Platypus International Convention 2013 in Chicago
2. Ben Campbell’s Sidney Hook moment

For some responses to this hysteria written by Platypus’ president, Chris Cutrone, see:

1. On the so-called “rational kernel of racism”
2. Platypus’ “position” on “imperialism”

Apparently I was not the only person to learn a lesson or two from Homer Simpson in my childhood. It appears that The North Star is at it again, primarily its editor Ben Campbell, having taken to Homer’s immortal quotes to nourish a newly drafted letter calling for total and unconditional disengagement with the public fora and publications of the Platypus Affiliated Society: “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

In my article “Dissecting the Platypus,”1 published in issue #963 of the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Weekly Worker, I raised many political points about Platypus as a project that Ben Campbell and Chris Cutrone, the President of the Platypus Affiliated Society, were gracious enough to engage with in the letters’ page of the CPGB’s paper. Thus, I will waste no time attempting to continue my assessment of Platypus in the interest of leaving that dead horse be.

When it comes to a revolutionary regroupment of forces on the left, The North Star’s project is content to ‘try and try again’ in breathing air into the dead horse (or the “stinking corpse”, as Rosa Luxemburg put it) of the Second International. As of the time of this article, Ben Campbell’s letter calling for a disengagement with Platypus as a project due to its stated goal“to make war on the existing (“dead,” fake/pseudo) “Left” and to overcome it” has been posted on Richard Seymour’s Lenin’s Tomb blog and been signed by just over a dozen well-known figures amongst the Marxian left.2 Not surprisingly, the list of signatories includes numerous pseudo-Marxists such as Sherry Wolf, a leader of the US-based International Socialist Organization (ISO) and Richard Seymour, a former oppositionist within the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who after breaking with the group, has recently decided to add another sect, titled the International Socialist Network (ISN), to the sectarian embarrassment that has become the ostensibly revolutionary left. Ironically, I have attempted to engage both politically and polemically to no avail. Continue reading →

Soviet auto-building in the 1930s

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With a 1928 poem by
Vladimir Maiakovskii

Untitled.
Image: Poster on the side of a building in Leningrad
that reads “Automobiles are Workers” (1929)

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Image Gallery (captions coming)

“Letter to Comrade Kostrov”

Comrade Kostrov,
…………..I’m sure you won’t mind —
I know,
……..generosity’s one of your merits —
if part of the lines
…………..for Paris assigned
I’ll squander
…………..on petty lyrics.
Imagine:
…….a beauty
…………..enters a hall
framed
…….in necklace and furs,
and I
…….says to her
…………..with no preface at all
these very selfsame words:
I’ve
…….just come
…………..from Russia, comrade.
In my country
…………..I’m a figure. Continue reading →

Le Corbusier’s Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (1928-1936) over the years

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Planning and construction

Model of Nikolai Kolli and Le Corbusier’s Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow, 1928
Le Corbusier with Nikolai Kolli in front of the construction site for the Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (March 1930)
Le Corbusier sitting in front of the construction site for the Tsentrosoiuz Building in Moscow (March 1931)
Le Corbusier surveys the work site for the Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (1931)
Le Corbusier surveys the work site with workers for the Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (1931)
Corbusier’s Tsentrosoiuz building under construction in Moscow, 1931

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In his 1928 proposal for the Soviet Central Union building, Le Corbusier invoked his much-vaunted principle of pilotis. As a postscript to his 1930  Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning:

Pilotis

Since we no longer have to lay foundations in the ground for the carrying walls; since on the contrary all we need is posts covering only .5% of the surface built upon and furthermore, since it is our duty to make the house more healthful by raising its bottom-most floor above the ground, we will take advantage of this situation by adopting the principle of “pilotis” or stilts.

What is the point of using pilotis? To make houses more healthful and at the same time allow the use of insulating materials which are often fragile or liable to decay and so should be placed far from the ground and possible shocks.

But most of all: behold, they are available to work a thorough transformation in the system of traffic on the ground. This is as true of the skyscraper as of the office building, of the minimum houses as of the streets. One will no longer be “in front of” a house or “in back of” it, but “underneath” it.

We have to reckon with cars, which we will strive to channel into a sort of river with regular banks; we need to park these cars without, at the same time, blocking up the river bed. When we leave our cars we must not paralyze traffic all along the river and when we come out of our buildings, we must not obstruct the areas reserved for movement. Continue reading →

Verdun 1918

The charnel-house

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Literary & historical extracts

Untitled.
Image: Human skull at Verdun (1918)
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Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity. Pg. 232:

The pricks of conscience have become blunt, since the deed’s evil spirit has been chased away; there is no longer anything hostile in the man, and the deed remains at most as a soulless carcass lying in the charnel-house of actualities, in memories.

Karl Marx, “English-French Mediation in Italy.” Pg. 480:

The death’s head of diplomacy grins after every revolution and particularly after the reactions which follow every revolution. Diplomacy hides itself in its perfumed charnel-house as often as the thunder of a new revolution rumbles.

Georg Lukács, Theory of the Novel. Pg. 64:

[S]econd nature is not dumb, sensuous and yet senseless like the first: it is a complex of senses — meanings — which has become rigid and strange, and which no longer awaken interiority; it is a charnel-house of long-dead interiorities. Continue reading →

Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus costume parties (1924-1926)

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With “Life at the Bauhaus”
by Farkas Molnár (1925)

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Image: Bauhaus costumes by Oskar Schlemmer (1925)

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Translated from the Hungarian by John Bátki.
From Between Two Worlds: A Sourcebook of
Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930.
(The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA: 2002).

Bauhaus costumes, 1920s
Bauhaus costume, 1920s
Bauhaus costume, 1920s
Bauhaus costume, 1920s
Bauhaus costume, 1920s
Bauhaus costume, 1920s
Bauhaus costume, 1920s
Bauhaus costume, 1920s
Illustration 14: Scene from the Triadic Ballet. Photo by Karl Grill.

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It is the first institution in Europe dedicated to realizing the achievements of the new arts for the purposes of human existence. Its inception was the first step toward a recognition that has become widespread by now: that “atelier art” has divorced itself from life and is dead, and that every person possessing creative powers must seek his or her vocation in the fulfillment of the practical needs of everyday life. Today’s scientific and technological advances will not become assimilated into general culture as long as humankind still lives under medieval conditions. The machine is still a foreign object in the houses of today; the documents of technological culture are still relegated to books atop fancy carved desks, radio music by the fireplace. The age demands a style, a common denominator for its visible phenomena. However, “style” is an unsuitable word, we do not like to use it, for it usually refers to the external pseudo-unity of things, a system of decorative forms.

Each and every object that we have to build anew will be different, according to its material, function, and structure, instead of resembling each other in form. The common denominator will be provided by the object’s functionality and beauty demanded by its practicality; it will be the kinship of objects equivalent in their quality.

Golden Sphere Costume

The architect Walter Gropius, founder and director of the Bauhaus, was among the pioneers in the fight against entrenched historical forms. His prewar creations (such as the Faguswerk in Alfeld) had already demonstrated that he was able to realize his goals with absolute technical mastery. He conducted the task of organizing the Bauhaus with the greatest consistency and perseverance in spite of the difficult circumstances and lack of understanding on the part of the authorities. The Bauhaus as organized is the prototype of a new kind of educational institution that does not merely “educate for life” but actually places its students into practical real-life situations. It is articulated into three subdivisions: 1) the school itself where theoretical and practical professional instruction is given in workshops, 2) the production workshops (stone, wood, metal, and glass processing shops, as well as textile, ceramics, murals, printing and theatrical workshops) where work is done on commission and ongoing experimental work is conducted, and 3) the architecture and design department, for the design and construction of all sorts of building projects.

At the time of its founding Gropius declared that in our days there are no architects and no artists capable of executing the loftier tasks of our age in practical form. Therefore the new artists would have to develop here, learning in the course of a constant immersion in materials the ability to think realistically, to make cool-headed calculations, and to draw daring conclusions. We live at a time of the greatest possibilities, a time of the greatest need. Unaccomplishable projects can only hinder us. The artist’s pride obstructs development and progress, which is promoted by the forward thrust of mechanical aptitude. Continue reading →

The brothers Golosov

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Built and unbuilt works

Untitled.
Image: Il’ia Golosov, competition entry
for the Leningrad Pravda office (1924)

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Note: Translation forthcoming of the lecture notes below! “New paths in architecture,” by Il’ia Golosov.

«Новые пути в архитектуре»

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Лекция, прочитанная И. А. Голосовым в 1922 г. в Московском архитектурном обществе. Приведены лишь отдельные выдержки из этой лекции, касающиеся построения архитектурной формы. ЦГАЛИ СССР, ф. 1979, оп. 1, д. 69. Полный текст ее опубликован в сб. Из истории советской прхитектуры (1917—1925 гг.). Документы и материалы, М., Изд-во Академии наук СССР, 1963, стр. 26—31.

(…] Почему все еще громадное большинство пережевывает жвачку повторения и комбинаций древних форм, имевших смысл в сооружениях древних, но совершенно не подходящих к новым сооружениям, и нам кажется несомненным, что новое вино надо влипать в новые мехи и что современная архитектура должна найти себя на пути правильного отражения идеи сооружения — его души.

Конечно, высказываемая мысль приложима не только к архитектурным сооружениям, но к любым созданиям человека. Возьмем, например, паровоз. В современном мощном красавце-паровозе, олицетворенном воплощении силы и как бы готового к прыжку стального зверя, от первоначальной его формы, похожей вполне на грубые игрушки, нет и следа. И, несомненно, художник имел бы право голоса наряду с техником в усовершенствовании и конструировании паровоза так, чтобы его внешняя форма, без ущерба для целей техники, олицетворяла и ярче выражала его идею, его душу.

И во всяком случае, украшение вещей не в духе их идей, не в духе их назначения является вандализмом.

Сооружения исключительно технического характера, например подъемные краны, доки и пр., нельзя себе представить в дружном сожительстве с чисто украсительными формами. В сооружениях Этого типа нет места бесполезной детали, здесь все сливается с основной идеей вещи и, я думаю, не может быть спора о том, что встречающиеся иногда в подобных сооружениях формы исключительно украсительного характера или вовсе не замечаются, или производят впечатление явной их ненужности и неуместности. Трудно себе представить, чтобы формы паровоза можно было усовершенствовать введением орнаментировки его частей, так же трудно представить автомобиль или аэроплан в стиле какой-либо эпохи. Отсюда ясно, что техника вырабатывает свои, индивидуальные, только ей присущие формы. Само собой разумеется, что здесь не может быть и речи о применении классических форм, ибо здесь живет форма исключительно как таковая, в художественном своем выражении логически совпадающая с целью самого явления, то есть самой вещи.

Il’ia Golosov, project submission during the Stalinist period (1935)
Il’ia Golosov, Elektrobank project in Moscow (1926), similar to the plan realized in Zuev
Panteleimon Golosov, variant design for the Moscow printing plant, Moscow (1930-1935)
Il’ia Golosov, House of the people in the name of Lenin (1926)
Il’ia Golosov, Elektrobank project in Moscow (1926)
Il’ia Golosov, competition entry for the Leningrad Pravda (1924). Already Golosov’s fascination with towers is manifest
Panteleimon (brother of Il’ia) Golosov’s submission for the Narkomtiazhprom contest (1934)

Continue reading →

Hannes Meyer and the Red Bauhaus-Brigade in the Soviet Union (1930-1937)

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A photo gallery & translation

Untitled.
Image: Poster for an expo of the
Bauhaus Dessau in Moscow (1931)

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An extract of an interview from Pravda, 1930:

Hannes Meyer: After many years of working within the capitalist system I am convinced that working under such conditions is quite senseless.  In view of our Marxist and revolutionary conception of the world we, revolutionary architects, are at the mercy of the insoluble contradictions of a world built on animal individualism and the exploitation of man by man.  I have said, and I say again, to all architects, all engineers, all builders:

Our way is and must be that of the revolutionary proletariat, that of the communist party, the way of those who are building and achieving socialism.

I am leaving for the USSR to work among people who are forging a true revolutionary culture, who are achieving socialism, and who are living in that form of society for which we have been fighting here under the conditions of capitalism.

I beg our Russian comrades to regard us, my group and myself, not as heartless specialists, claiming all kinds of special privileges, but as fellow workers with comradely views ready to make a gift to socialism and the revolution of all our knowledge, all our strength, and all the experience that we have acquired in the art of building.

[From Pravda, Berlin dispatch dated October 10th, 1930]

And here are some exceedingly rare photographs of the second Bauhaus director, Hannes Meyer, along with his team of architects, in the Soviet Union.

Image gallery

Hannes Meyer and his wife Lena Meyer-Bergner in Batumi, Georgia (1930)
Natja Catalan, Tibor Weiner, Philipp Tolziner, Konrad Püschel, Margarete Mengel, Lilya Polgar, Anton Urban – members of the “Hannes Meyer architectural group” in Moscow, mid-1930s
Red-baiting political cartoon depicting Bauhaus Dessau director Hannes Meyer being shipped off to the Soviet Union (1930)
Hannes Meyer greater Moscow 1932
Hannes Meyer’s greater moscow regional map 1932
Hannes Meyer Greater Moscow scheme
Hannes Meyer regional plan
Hannes Meyer Birobidzhan 1932
Hannes Meyer’s regional plan for Perm, USSR (1934)
Hannes Meyer’s climatological project for Birobidzhan, 1933
Hannes Meyer’s submission to the Palace of the Soviets competition
Hannes Meyer’s plan for the sotsgorod Nizhne-Kurinsk 1932
Hannes Meyer delivering a speech at WASI in the Soviet Union
Hannes Meyer’s submission to the Palace of the Soviets competition
Hannes Meyer’s submission to the Palace of the Soviets competition, view from above