The Friends of the Classless Society intake to Endnotes 5 is a straight-up piece of social fiction, discussing in great detail how a communist utopia would function. It is quite satisfying on an immediate level to read such a detailed piece of utopian social imagining, and our discussion in this episode ranges quite widely.

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Read the essay here: https://endnotes.org.uk/file_hosting/EN5_Contours_of_the_World_Commune.pdf

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How does the revolutionary insert themselves into the capitalist totality? What kind of totality is capitalism, anyway? It has a definite beginning, but is it possible that it is logically determined to stretch into infinity? How do we extricate ourselves from this totality? As a totality based on a particular mode of production, capitalism can be located in its physical residue—infrastructure in the form of technology and architecture. Is technology neutral in the class struggle? We enter into all of this and more via a discussion on contemporary COVID politics and some reflections on the past summer, and what might come of the second summer of the Pandemic Age.

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Read the essay here: https://endnotes.org.uk/file_hosting/EN5_Error.pdf

We read and discuss the first proper essay in the fifth volume of the Endnotes journal, “The Passions and the Interests.” This essay, “We Unhappy Few,” breaks the fourth wall and reflects on the experience of the Endnotes as a collective. The major innovation in terms of theory is the introduction of Wilfred Bion’s theories of group psychology, which bring in a whole new theoretical palette to the journal’s theorization so far. The essay is long and, surprisingly, quite optimistic.

Read the essay here: https://endnotes.org.uk/file_hosting/EN5_We_Unhappy_Few.pdf

Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fwEKsqV5w9M

A loose episode where we break off the fifth edition of the Endnotes journal, discussing the very short editorial; most of our time is given to discussing the future of the podcast.

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In this episode, we are reading and discussing two essays from the Berlin communiser group Friends of the Classless Society. We spend a fair amount of time recounting a history of 20th century revolution that we are all familiar with at this point; we also discuss Adorno and his idea of a “classless class society,” as well as some of his ideas on culture.

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On Communisation and Its Theorists: https://endnotes.org.uk/other_texts/en/friends-of-the-classless-society-on-communisation-and-its-theorists

28 Theses on Class Society: https://kosmoprolet.org/en/28-theses-class-society

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kHlR8rj750c

Breaking from the format of the show for a bit, in this episode we are not discussing a primary text, but rather reflecting on the past year of pandemic life, what possibilities remain open to us, and how it relates to this project in particular.

This essay from the New Institute for Social Research explores the concept of the council, originating out of the “council communist” tendency, which is closely related to communisation. A lot of this essay is given over to a form of “social fiction,” wherein the author tries to imagine how the council, as a relational process, would be the form of complex social organisation in a post-revolutionary future. We enter into the topic via the concept of the “mega-machine,” taken from the Deleuze and Guattari’s book “Anti-Oedipus.” And we spend some time ourselves imagining how a post-revolutionary communist utopia might appear.

Read the essay here: https://isr.press/Theses_on_the_Council_Concept/index.html

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Download the mp3: https://umt.world/wp-content/uploads/ep26.mp3

Subscribe to the RSS: https://umt.world/category/footnotes-to-endnotes/feed