Just finished The American Trap, a memoir about a French energy executive getting tied up by American DOJ using corporate law as an economic weapon against their allies. The specific story he uncovers is that the US DOJ uses the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (which allows them to investigate any contract made in US dollars or if any email has been exchanged via servers in the US) to punish foreign companies for practices that every company is doing, removing competition for US corporations. In the author's case, he was imprisoned in America (along with 2 other executives) to put pressure on his company, who ultimately sell off a huge amount of their business to GE. It's an interesting example because economic imperialism is usually thought of as a thing in the past and only done to impoverished countries, but here's an example (along with a history of investigations) from 2014 in France, ostensibly an American ally. Other than this revelation, I can't recommend the book - it's very focused on his imprisonment and the legal minutiae of the case. The author's not a leftist, so the best he can do is urge his government to act but this certainly isn't radicalizing material.
The Civil War in the United States which is a collection of articles and letters written by Marx and Engels about the Civil War.
It's a really good read, though a huge amount of it is focused on the Trent affair and the different positions and reasons for those positions of the British Press on slavery and the South.
Marx does a good job of breaking down the lie that the war of secession was "defensive" or about anything other than slavery. He shows that the economic output of the slave states was falling not because of tarrifs, but because a slavery based mode of production required constant expansion and breeding of new slaves. Especially when accelerated by the insatiable British textile industry.
This expansionist tendency meant that no matter what the Confederates said, their war was a war of expansion and conquest. One that even if they somehow won was doomed to failure because the British textile industry was on the verge of a crisis of overproduction anyways. All the global markets at the time were saturated with textile products and the British mismanagement of India meant they had no import market to absorb the surplus and no organized labor to replace Southern cotton.
Overall a good read for a material and systemic analysis of the Civil War and the influence of the bourgeoning global market on it. Also the formation of the organized and militant American proletariat (which came from Appalachia and the North).
Still with Old Gods, New Enigmas for the book club, second discussion post will be up tomorrow.
Also started reading a new book called Microverses by Dylan Riley, its essentially a collection of very short essays (mostly only a page or two long) on various topics that the author scribbled down during the pandemic. Its not the usual kind of thing I read but the short writings are alright bedtime reading.
Im reading lineages of absolutist state, it’s very dense reading wise, dunno if I remembering anything other than couple of broad strokes from such wall of information. Although it’s written with nice dry marxist bent
The chapter is huge. Its fascinating and Davis is a great writer but jesus dude, give us a break lol.
