Satire and the fantastic, vital literary genres in the 1920s, are often thought to have fallen victim to the official adoption of socialist realism. Eric Laursen contends that these subversive genres did not just vanish or move underground. Instead, key strategies of each survive to sustain the villain of socialist realism. Laursen argues that the judgment of satire and the hesitation associated with the fantastic produce a narrative obsession with controlling the villain’s influence. In identifying a crucial connection between the questioning, subversive literature of the 1920s and the socialist realists, Laursen produces an insightful revision of Soviet literary history.

Toxic Voices: The Villain from Early Soviet Literature to Socialist Realism (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory)

Literature & Fiction

Laursen, Eric

History & Criticism

Northwestern University Press

Understanding the Crash starts with a simple question that still haunts us all: What has happened to the world economy? With the kind of striking precision that only graphic nonfiction can provide, Seth Tobocman and Eric Laursen explain just how we got into this mess and how we can get out of it. Looking back across more than a quarter century, the authors outline the roots of our current economic crisis. They show how the troubles of a working-class community in Cleveland or a newly built suburb of Miami became an international financial crisis, explaining the complex new forms of credit that came into being because of financial deregulation, and how they created an economic whirlpool. From there they discuss how, over the same time span, a smaller and smaller group of people came to control a larger and larger percentage of the world’s money a result of rising inequality that, combined with the shortage of affordable housing, a decline in real wages, and our unwavering belief in an ownership society,” impelled poor people into debt. Tobocman and Laursen conclude with a consideration of a restructured financial system and a look toward a culture of sustainability one that covets real wealth in the form of security, meaningful work, and community.

Understanding the Crash

Business & Money

Tobocman, Seth

Economics

Catapult

"Readers mystified by the yawning gulf between public opinion and current political discussion might benefit from the background provided in Eric Laursen’s magisterial history, 'The People's Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan' The book offers more than 800 pages of fascinating if gory details about the lobbying efforts and misinformation campaigns aimed at bringing the program down."Nancy Folbre, NYTimes Economix Blog 
Laursen has given us a comprehensive account of the three decade long war against Social Security. . . . This is a fascinating history that progressives must learn, not only to protect Social Security but also to understand the dynamics behind an effective long-term strategy.”Dean Baker, author of False Profits: Recovering From the Bubble Economy
 This magnificent history documents the hydra-headed campaign to cut and kill Social Security, conducted over decades by rightwing bankers, foundations, economists, and politicians. [The People's Pension] is utterly urgent.”James K. Galbraith, author of The Predator State
 The People's Pension is both groundbreaking history and an indispensable guide for anyone concerned about one of the biggest issues in the upcoming election. With 95 percent of Americans participating in the program either as beneficiaries or through their payroll tax contributions, Social Security is quite literally the glue” that binds Americans together as a community. Yet in the aftermath of the debt reduction deal between Barack Obama and congressional Republicans, the 2012 election promises to be a kind of referendum on the size and role of governmentincluding economic support programs like Social Security. Arguing to democratize, not disable, the program, Eric Laursen suggests that the only solution for Social Security is taking it out of the government's hands altogether.
 Eric Laursen is an independent financial and political journalist, activist, and commentator. The co-founder and former managing editor of Plan Sponsor, a magazine for pension fund executives, Laursen is also the co-author of Understanding the Crash (2010). His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Huffington Post, The Nation, Institutional Investor, The Village Voice, and Investment Dealer's Digest.

The People's Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan

AK Press

The Duty to Stand Aside tells the story of one of the most intriguing yet little-known literary-political feuds—and friendships—in 20th-century English literature. It examines the arguments that divided George Orwell, future author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Alex Comfort, poet, biologist, anarchist-pacifist, and future author of the international bestseller The Joy of Sex—during WWII. Orwell maintained that standing aside, or opposing Britain’s war against fascism, was “objectively pro-fascist." Comfort argued that intellectuals who did not stand aside and denounce their own government’s atrocities—in Britain’s case, saturation bombing of civilian population centers—had “sacrificed their responsible attitude to humanity.” Later, Comfort and Orwell developed a friendship based on appreciation of each other’s work and a common concern about the growing power and penetration of the State—a concern that deeply influenced the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Shortly before his death in 1950, however, Orwell would accuse Comfort of being “anti-British” and “temperamentally pro-totalitarian” in a memo he prepared secretly for the Foreign Office—a fact that Comfort, who died in 2000, never knew. Laursen’s book takes a fresh look at the Orwell-Comfort quarrel and the lessons it holds for our very different world—in which war has been replaced by undeclared “conflicts,” civilian bombing is even more enthusiastically practiced, and moral choices between two sides are rarely straightforward.

The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort

British & Irish

"By what cunning perversion of logic and history has the modern capitalist State persuaded us that it is the only possible form of polity? Why do we passively accept its claim to inevitability and its lame excuses for the increasingly invasive surveillance of our private lives? How do the already powerful hide short-cuts to even greater influence and wealth across a ruined environment and vast stretches of poverty? In thoughtful, provocative, and engaging reflections on the modern State, Eric Laursen seeks deliberate withdrawal from the self-fulfilling mechanism he so appropriately calls 'the operating system.'" --Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University "We hear from many quarters that social justice requires a strong and competent State to redress wrongs and advance the interests of oppressed minorities. We also hear it said that the State is dead or nearly so, that it is being drowned in the bathtub of neoliberal capitalism. Eric Laursen presents a sobering argument that the modern State has not said its last word, nor have we heard the final word about the oppressive character of the State and the urgent necessity of its abolition.The Operating System is a much-needed patch to the software of anti-authoritarian critique, particularly in its attention to the way that the State and identity-based forms of oppression work together." --Jesse Cohn, author ofUnderground Passages "Eric weaves together a rich history of the State, reminding us it is not inevitable and that it is not reformable. Learning to live together without the State is our best chance for the survival of humanity and the planet herself." --Lisa Fithian, author ofShut It Down "Anarchists have foughtthe State since its inception, but along the paths of liberation in the twenty-first century it's been missing from the conversation. Laursen's engaging exploration revisits ideas of the State, its apparatus of controls, and why we should openly oppose it." --scott crow, author ofBlack Flags and Windmills One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is "the state"? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system like Windows or MacOS. Like a state, an operating system "governs" the programs and applications under it and networked with it, as well as, to some extent, the individuals who avail themselves of these tools and resources. No matter how different states seem on the surface they share core similarities, namely: <ul> <li>The State is a relatively new thing in world history</li> <li>The State is European in origin and outlook</li> <li>States are "individuals" in the eyes of the law</li> <li>The State claims the right to determine who is a person</li> <li>The State is an instrument of violence and war</li> <li>The State is above the law</li> <li>The State is first and foremost an economic endeavor</li> </ul> Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the amateurish response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves--at our expense. The state won't solve our most pressing problems, so why do we obey? It's time to think outside the state.

The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State

Computers & Technology

Programming

We have so much more to learn about (the author of) The Joy of Sex!, this biography covers it all:&nbsp;the life of a young poet, pacifism, anarchist activism, academic life, the 60s counterculture, starting over in California, The Joy of Sex, aging and death.&nbsp; Polymath is the first biography of one of the most remarkable and wide-ranging intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century. Alex Comfort was a British poet, novelist, biologist, cultural critic, activist, and anarchist, and the author of the international bestseller, The Joy of Sex. He played a vital role in making gerontology (the study of aging) a viable branch of modern science, energizing the direct-action movement for nuclear disarmament, revitalizing anarchism as a political philosophy in the post-World War II decades, and persuading 12 million readers of his most popular book to banish guilt and anxiety from sex in favor of pleasure and closer human understanding.&nbsp; The Joy of Sex spent eleven weeks atop the NYT bestseller list--and&nbsp;seventy-two weeks in the top five. But the book took on a life of its own as a couple generations of youth and adults used The Joy of Sex as a tool to understand pleasure outside the realm of guilt and shame and opened the doors to a healthier sexual culture.&nbsp; Comfort liked to say that everything he did was part of "one big project": to bring about a new consciousness, grounded in science, of the importance of personal responsibility in human relationships, including the obligation to disobey when authority was being exercised abusively. Polymath traces the intersection in Comfort's life and work between biology and literature, anarchism and humanism, sex and sociality, and how his writings, research, and activism&nbsp;continue to shed critical light on the moral and political choices we make today.&nbsp;Laursen's book relates the event-filled life of a brilliant and complex figure, including his victory over a possibly career-ending disability, his tumultuous second marriage, his struggles with the scientific establishment, and the fascinating story of the making of The Joy of Sex. It will be vital reading for anyone who wants to understand how the personal became political and the political became personal in the last 100 years.

Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr Alex Comfort, Author of The Joy of Sex

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal (Volume 2, 2005)

Rosset, Barney

Decker, James M.

Gifford, James

Paul Hanson

MILLER, HENRY

Honda, Yasunori

Jemsen, Finn

Commengé, Béatrice

Independently published

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