Translated material
Foreign Library, #3
From the compilers. The fact that gay people have problems due to their orientation hardly seems sensational. But there is a country where gay people have a problem with not being gay enough. Why? You can't compromise on principles. Although there are also problems with principles: did the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève spy for the USSR? What did the dialectical principles that he respected so much tell him? It's hard not to sense a serious theoretical question in this spy parable. Why, spies - simple Italian couturiers - represent a complex tangle of problems of the information society. This is political economy, gentlemen. What is a couturier if ordinary Filipino workers do not have proper working conditions? How can one calmly eat a hamburger instead of fighting for their rights? Although you need to think not only for yourself, as the well-known imperative says, but also - in the American manner - to yourself: what kind of world order can we talk about if the American military “is so short of money that aviation has not made training flights for years, submarines are dangling where fishing vessels are hit and damaged, the artillery shoots at its own people due to the lack of training of junior officers and general moral decay.” Perhaps workers from third countries can sleep peacefully: they will be benefited strictly on a first-come, first-served basis (in the original language: first come - first served ).
Agent of the world spirit, or how the KGB nurtured postmodernism
The Spy Who Loved Hegel by Matthew Price
www.linguafranca.com
The scandal erupted in September when Le Monde published excerpts from a French counterintelligence memo showing that the famous philosopher Alexandre Kojève spent the last 30 years of his life spying for the Soviet Union. Not so much a scandal (no documents directly confirming Kojève’s work in the field of building socialism were presented), but a theoretical discussion about how close the path of Stalin’s agent was to the most famous interpreter of Hegelian philosophy in the 20th century. The fact that Kojève, in a Marxist way, easily managed to connect theory with practice is confirmed by facts from his biography: since 1948, Kojève worked selflessly in the French Ministry of Economics. He was the author of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the theoretical founding father of the European Union. All participants in the discussion agreed that from speculative discussions in the ways of the world spirit to direct complicity with it through participation in bureaucratic form-creation is not a long way. Opinions differed only on the issue of determining the actual bearer of the world idea at the historical moment corresponding to Kojève’s alleged espionage activities. The question is this: if Kojève really believed that Stalin was the finisher of history, then he most likely collaborated with the KGB so as not to remain aloof from world-historical achievements. If he thought, like Hegel, that Napoleon was the embodiment of the world spirit, then it would be more logical for him to faithfully serve the French Republic, whose design was largely determined by Napoleon. While the discussion is not yet completed, it would be useful to remind the disputants that Alexander Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov was our man and acted, most likely, according to the original domestic principle “maybe it will blow through,” but the KGB could have far-reaching educational goals: among Kozhev’s listeners there were Henri Breton, Georges Bataille, Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, Raymond Queneau. We have something to be proud of.
Quote: Kojève read Hegel idiosyncratically - as if Marx did not need to put Hegel on his head at all, because he was already a materialist from beginning to end. For example, already in Hegel’s parable about the struggle between a slave and a master for mutual recognition, Kojève saw a Marxist class struggle. In one place Hegel described Napoleon as riding the horse of the world spirit, and Kojève, inspired by the writings of the young Hegel, which became public knowledge in the 1930s thanks to the research of Alexandre Koyré, decided that Hegel really considered Napoleon the consummator of history. It doesn't matter whether Hegel believed that the end of history can be dated precisely; what matters is that Kojève definitely believed it. Only, according to Kozhev's calculations, the red Napoleon - Stalin - was supposed to complete the story.
It's good to be gay, or what did you fight for?
The New Gay Moment by JESSE GREEN
New York Magazine
Quote: The woman was furious - and more so than I had seen for a long time. It is certain that she was angry all evening - if not for several decades in a row. When it finally came time for questions and answers, she stood up and screamed, shaking her fist at the podium with the presenters and participants. How could we - she seemed to be referring to the generation of forty-year-old homosexual men to which I belong - betray a movement, a movement with which she fought and to which she sacrificed herself? How dare we dishonor her suffering and her ideals, not to mention the thousands of dead?.. With what? She was not very successful in clarifying this. Perhaps because we became parents (my friend and I have two boys), or because we collaborate on regular magazines, or because we participate in discussions to which she is not invited. I think she was shouting: “You are only pretending to be homosexuals!” What would that mean? Maybe my hair is not all right?
Every liberation movement - no matter whether it fights for the freedom of women, blacks, gypsies or homosexuals - has a so-called “second stage” in the history of its development. In practice, it is marked by a transition from violent ideological debates and blaming everyone for the misfortunes of those in whose name the struggle is being waged, to the real improvement of their lives through influencing legislative policy, participating in administrative decisions and conducting peaceful business negotiations with the authorities. In theory, this stage coincides with the point at which wrestlers begin to question their own goals. What is better: to make the life of your supporters really better or to fundamentally insist that this life is very different from what it should be. After some reflection (for which the author of the article spent the night after the above-described meeting, absentmindedly rocking the cradle of his youngest boy), this generally solvable question takes on a dizzyingly theoretical character: does not every struggle for the rights of minorities end with the disappearance of these minorities themselves? Doesn't equality also mean accepting the average sameness of normal citizens? Is a homosexual who has children still a homosexual in the proper sense? Or - if this is not too close - which of you would want to marry a feminist activist in whom all that remains of a woman is that which cannot be equalized without surgical intervention - primary sexual characteristics? It means they fought for a homosexual, but got a wonderful family man. And if anyone is worse off from this, then it’s not the state.
A head in tights, or How fashion constrains thoughts
The Clothing of the American Mind. Fashion in the Information Age By David Brooks
The Weekly Standard
As you know, one can talk about the fate of modern society in two main modes: irony and anxiety. The author of the article manages to use both, moving from the first to the last in the manner of a classical tragedy. And all because of a visit to the Gigi show in Milan, which served as the starting point for a flight of thought: after all, the obviousness that fashion is not by chance so significant in the modern world, in a sense, certifies this world itself as fashion. Simply put, what we consider to be the “newest trends” in business or culture (a thing, according to the author of the article, is far from safe) is in fact a new form of life, namely the information society. This beast is distinguished by free agents (this is such a crowd of professionals who gather to work on occasion - in this case, on the occasion of a fashion show - and then scatter in different directions), a "genius", around whom - or rather, around whose emanating genius - something... something generally happens, and, oddly enough, the bet comes at a price, you know, in life. Plus a direct proportion between the scope of a business and its success, and also a short memory, drowned in e-mail, faxes and other attributes of modernity.
Quote: One of the important consequences of brand consciousness is the way in which it multiplies the importance of journalists and celebrities. They are destined to make noise. They attract attention to a particular brand. If you own a restaurant, you want supermodels to frequent it. If you own a fashion house, you want Madonna in the show. And at shows, the crowds are ordered based on who sits where. In the front row are usually celebrities and the journalists covering them. They are in full view of the crowd, indifferent to what is happening on stage, chatting on their cell phones. Next in line are the big-box buyers making millions of dollars in real estate. Money is important, but it is also secondary to the noise, because the money is where the noise is. Ordinary journalists sit even further back: not the top editorial level, but those who write. They can see it the worst. Some specialize in fashionable shoes, but their low status does not allow them to sit close to the stage, so they don’t see the shoes. But still they are inside. Everyone else is waiting outside.
Order a full translation of an article? Money and power, or Who will awaken society from economic sleep
War - what is it good for? By Niall Ferguson
Financial Times
Quote: Economic determinism appeals to the most cynical in us. Whatever we read about in the morning paper - be it Godon Brown's next budget or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's divorce - we only need to identify the hidden economic motive (Brown wants votes, Kidman wants money) to feel confident that we understand. what's really happening. It used to be common to think that Marxists were the only adherents of economic determinism. Today everyone is free to refer to financial root causes.
Indeed, Clinton won because he promised to cut taxes inflated by Bush Sr., and Al Gore lost to Bush Jr. because he boasted poorly about the economic successes of the Clinton administration. It is obvious that politics is the same as economics, only presented in a language understandable to the people. So Berezovsky says that “capital hires the executive branch; elections are just a procedural moment of such employment.” One thing that is not clear is why the people constantly rebel, interfering with the work of such cooperative benefactors of humanity as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.
History removes the veneer of obviousness from everything. In this case, it is sufficient to consider the history of the formation of each of the elements of the modern political-economic system separately in order to understand that in fact everything is determined... by war. The main financial institutions, the tax system and even parliamentarism were answers to the military needs of European states, which, as historical statistics show, love to fight most of all: not a single 25-year period in the history of Europe since 1495 has been without war, and interstate wars only in the period between 1815 and 1992 there were 210. That’s why the people are rebelling, because their hands are itching - it’s finally time to fight.
Order a full translation of an article? To work well. And good work is even better
Realizing Labor Standards: How transparency, competition, and sanctions could improve working conditions worldwide. By Archon Fung, Dara O'Rourke, and Charles Sabel
Boston Review
Quote: Nowadays it has become very difficult to determine where such simple things as baseball caps and T-shirts are made. However, it is equally difficult to understand where complex things like computers and cars are made. The reason is that most world-renowned manufacturers market jointly produced products or products produced by a network of contractors and subcontractors. Such networks make reporting difficult both in their number and in their complexity. Manufacturers, for example, of clothing, constantly move from country to country and from continent to continent, changing suppliers. Almost all of them do this in order to relieve themselves of responsibility for the enterprises that produce their products.
After the so-called civilized world established very high standards for working conditions (which forced its entrepreneurs to turn to the uncivilized world in search of cheap labor), it decided to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves due to lack of time and energy at that time, - about the poor Vietnamese, Filipinos and Chinese, who do nothing but work, thereby violating all possible standards of the civilized world. Respected researchers do not ask about what makes them work this way. All they care about is how to make them work less. To do this, the authors propose to use a special strategy of their own development under the very interesting name “Ratchet of Labor Standards”. Acting on the proposed strategy, labor activists will gather non-governmental organizations (funded, apparently, by the governments of the civilized world), which will tirelessly monitor working conditions in uncivilized countries. The difference between this remarkable strategy and the legally established standards currently applied is that this strategy will be informal: it will not impose standards from above, it will raise them from below. We know how this is done. How to do this - read the article.
Order a full translation of an article?The military has its own secrets
The Monica Military by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
The American SpectatorThe army is going through a deep crisis. Due to insufficient funding over the past 8 years, equipment has not been repaired at all. Highly qualified officers are forced to leave the armed forces because they have nothing to do there: there is so little money that aviation does not make training flights for years, submarines hang around and damage fishing vessels, artillery shoots at its own due to the lack of training of junior officers and general moral decay. Military research has ceased. The military-industrial complex is slowly dying without receiving new government orders.
Don't rush to yawn - this is not about us . This is about Americans. It’s joyful to know that at least in some ways we are similar. Or does the military have its own secrets - about how to die with any amount of funding?
Quote: Consecutive cuts in the military budget undertaken by the Clinton administration led to a deterioration in the maintenance and material support of the army. In terms of the quality of maintenance and training, the army is at the same deplorable level at which President Carter's administration left it. Significant expenditures are required to maintain military equipment and equipment in a condition that is safe for those who use it.
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