Reviews for Lights, camera, democracy!

The average rating for Lights, camera, democracy! based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-05 00:00:00 John Tidwell This is a fabulous - I don't really agree with big parts of it, but it's a piece that keeps drawing me back to it for ideas and to help me revisit, rethink and rework my analyses because as well as not really agreeing with it, I paradoxically agree with it as well because of its challenges, provocations and openness. The authors - Mel King, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent & Holly Sklar - are some of the best writers on the US left making names for themselves in or befor the late 1970s, and all associated with the excellent Z Magazine and Z-Net (at ). Between them they are Marxists, anarchists, marxist-feminists, left activists from African-American politics, academics; the kind of impressive multi-dimensional activists for whom this kind of book is so valuable. Their objective is to outline a holistic humanist theory, strategy and politics of struggle organised around a number of axes - community, kinship, economics and the state. These categories disrupt the simplistic ideas of 'race', gender, class, sexuality and the like that seem to dominate left politics and the politics of identity to suggest ways to think, to analyse and to act in the contemporary capitalist world, where their holistic humanism it is hoped will help "promote autonomy in the context of solidarity" (p 145) alongside a recognition of legitimacy of other struggles but without falling into the traps of relativism. It is a big ask. It is made more so because of the diverse views the authors share; as a result this is open and non-dogmatic, and the final quarter of the book is turned over to debates between the authors about underpinning ideas and practical consequences. This then produces a radically open and dialogic text with the result that this is liberating theory - both in terms of liberating theory from its constraints and strictures, and in terms of giving us tools the be active with - theory for liberating. It is a must read, and the kind of thing we need to suggest ways beyond the politics of spectacle that seems to have become so important in recent years and beyond the cynicism of the present times. It sits alongside Marta Harnecker's outstanding Rebuilding the Left () as essential reading and reading for revisiting.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-26 00:00:00 Peter Pis 'Norquist’s—which I’ve discussed previously in The American Spectator—is a new roadmap for Republicans in 2008 and beyond. Norquist argues that Republicans should represent the Leave Us Alone Coalition, a group of voters who want to keep the government from taking their guns, money, and freedom, leaving the Democrats to champion a Takings Coalition of voters on the dole. The battle between the two coalitions, he says, will determine whether the United States becomes a European-style welfare state or not.' Read the full review, "Agenda for Anti-statists," on our website: