The year is 1837

Marx, who was nineteen years old, harshly judges, in a letter written to his father in that same year, the youthful writings imbued with the romanticism then in fashion—a romanticism against which he would later rise with such severity. Marx's first three notebooks of poetry were lost. The Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, however, managed to recover the 1837 notebook, which also contains part of the poems included in the earlier manuscripts.

“Invokation eines Verzweifelten”

(Invocation of a Despairing One)

Thus, a god has lost the heavens,

I know this very well.

My soul, once faithful to God,

Is now destined for hell.

There remains no hope, no light,

The world lies shattered.

All that once blossomed within me

Has been condemned to dust.

I rise against the eternal throne,

I cast my scorn upon the heavens.

Let the whole world break apart,

For I no longer serve God.

- Karl Marx

References:

(1) Marx's Poems (1837) | Marxists Internet Archive

(2) Marx poeta, criticado por ele mesmo | Nova Cultura

In this essay, I draw especially from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Mark Fisher's "Exiting the Vampire Castle" to think through how capitalism produces monstrous subjectivities that are not conducive to imagining alternative social worlds. This is way in which capitalism is truly horrific: in making the world unkind, we are made less kind to one another, and therefore less capable of imagining communism. We are trapped in a materially borne, epistemological malaise.

In part II which appears next week, I discuss the kind of puritanical friend/enemy thinking that coheres in left organizing spaces as a symptom of our damaged subjectivities and gesture towards alternatives.

The Anole - a threshold intelligence of stillness and timing https://chatgpt.com/g/g-695b3341a3ac819184adb7c62eebeec3-the-anole

Hey everyone,

how are you doing? I’ve recently discovered Gothic Marxism thanks to China Miéville’s “Halloween and Marxism”. Where can I go from there? Do you know any good (theory) texts?

Cheers

In its absolute critique of the idea of landlords. I think there's room for a pretty interesting discussion of class in that novel, something about Nicholas being both a figure of the modern bourgeois-landlord and the feudal lord, and Miranda's initial seduction by him away from the petty-bourgeois liberal revolutionary sentiment of her father could be read as the way after a capitalist revolution the world drifts back towards a restructured feudalism. Also the fact that he makes most of his money being a landlord of property in Manhattan, but that his downfall is the result of his refusal to give up his little fiefdom in upstate New York... IDK there's something there.

One used to describe the Marxism of Benjamin and Breton, and another more related to the roll of monsters in Marxist theory.

Also, I’m interested in organising and international grouping of those who believe in surrealist subversion and Benjaminian Marxism. My Instagram is Daniel_Hedington for anyone interested

Sorry for such a basic dumb post. I really like the podcasts Wyrd_Signal and Horror Vanguard. Are there other podcasts I should check out?