What we have here is a collection of the last lengthy emails I sent to Loren Goldner in New York. In between all this there were also a few lengthy visits from Loren to my flat in Notting Hill Gate, London as Loren's lengthy travels throughout the world were coming to a close as old age gradually took its toll. My bro' Stuart also eagerly most or if not all of these get togethers so much so that I could get a word in edgeways, as Stu' tended to like to discuss books he recently read and Loren was invariably eager to join in often highly theoretical discussions, along with bottles of often home made wine and sandwiches. Actually, Loren only tended to reply to emails with a few sentences as it was the face to face encounter that mattered the most to him. A few years previously I had sent him a text I'd written on various rank 'n' file worker escapades here in the UK which he then read out to a large meeting of rebellious cum autonomous workers in South Korea. I really was amazed he could do this. There again I first met Loren in ex American situationist Bruce Elwell's gaff in New Yorks Lower East Side sometime in 1977 (correct date ?) as he was about to fly off to Brazil to attempt to join in with some worker uprising taking place in that country. However, more than that Loren did send me a lengthy text of his take on what had been happening rebellion-wise in the UK over the last 25 years or so..... As far as I know this text was never published apart from on the RAP web.....
As mentioned in the above paragraph Loren's email responses were generally spare but really warm and tender. The grim backdrop to this was that - almost unbelievably - all three of us developed - or were about to develop - prostrate cancer. For Loren and Stuart the cancer seemed manageable for months or even years and the two of them were thus reasonably cheerful even open and sanguine about treatment. This seemed fine for two or three years but then quickly their cancers metastasized and death was the outcome, first with Stuart in late 2021 and then Loren a couple of years later. In response to Stu's death Loren's emails though always warm and tender got fewer and fewer with less and less to say. Understandably he didn't want to discuss his deteriorating condition so I had no idea it was getting that serious...
So here goes with a selection of final communications..........
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Hi Loren, (August 12th 2013)
Yes, an interesting coincidence regarding anarchism in Spain. I finally got Miguel Amoros book Les Situationnnistes et L'Anarchie and find it fascinating and made more so by the guy's sheer knowledge (and feel) for genuine anarchism. It is dedicated to Pierre Lepetit and packed with lots of interesting details on French anarchism in the 1960s especially the ins and outs of various anarchist groups, some retarded; others like Sisyphus, Louise Michel, Henry Emile (a nice inversion of Emile Henry) and The Vandals all having a very sympathetic appreciation of the situationists. The book further sympathetically disputes a lot of Debord's analysis of anarchism in The Society of the Spectacle and is therefore not an orthodox history which I imagine has got quite a few people uptight still clinging onto the "our party" syndrome ( a somewhat exclusive arena for latter day Situationists still clinging to Debord's coattails) which by enlarge has now been transferred to Kurz and the "valueists" though ever ready to snap back into past obsessions. Furthermore, Miguel more or less says the situationists made a mess of their Anglo-American relationships though in a nuanced, thoughtful way coming down cautiously on the side of anarchist Murray Bookchin (giving prominence to his ground-breaking ecological critique which was far in advance of anything in France) and the young Ben Morea fleshed out via the surrealist oriented Rosemont's and I guess the experience of Franklin Rosemont's interviews and other memories of the Wobblies (IWW). Miguel in fact reckons that the base autonomy inherent in the CNT wouldn't have existed if it hadn't been for the previous example of the largely American based Industrial Workers of the World, etc. Amongst many other asides, he quotes with pleasure (in a footnote) Ben's comments in a talk he gave in Barcelona in 2011 just after that joint get together I did with Ben in London a few days previously....."On comprend l'ironie de Morea se presentant comme "la seule personne a avoir ete exclue de l'i.s. sans en avoir jamais etc membre" (causerie a la Casa la Solidaridad, Barcelone, 28 juin 2011).
Miguel also puts in a sympathetic presentation of Henri Simon and the ICO during May '68 and most likely much of this will be of great interest because relatively unknown to Spanish readers throughout the world. I agree Loren with what you say: "I want to contrast what "taking over" would look like in the far more decadent "advanced" countries today, where the first task will not be mass worker and peasant management of industry and agriculture but the abolition of God knows how many jobs that exist only because of capitalist social relations, and the second (related) task will be a radical shortening of the working day." However, concomitant with that I reckon there will have to be also an immediate – hopefully rather voluntary pleasurable and / or fulfilling return to some kind of wage-less 'working' - (maybe termed "free activity" around a re-finding of a literally personal 'hands-on' approach creating a new everyday life ambience. All this necessarily will be set against the vanquishing of the imperious backdrop, and utter vacuity of the ultra passive entertainment industry now sinking to the direst of infantilizing depths so much so that many people will be glad to see the back of it despite all its interactive, increasingly cybernetic ploys. (Maybe this future is beginning to be foretold in the way so many individuals are abandoning TV although that's hardly true of mobiles or tablets - so mustn't be too optimistic here).
I would think a possible future liberatory momentum would almost immediately involve a necessary re-connection with the land as the Monsanto, Dow Chemical's and Du Pont's of this now hideous world are phased out, or at least, chemical products used sparingly. I also envisage a reasonably quick return to some 'hands-on' building and both tendencies as they develop doing away with an all invasive destructive urbanism as the alienated planning of space and predatory technocratic 'total' architecture disappears. Hegel thought that the gothic cathedral was the pinnacle of architecture precisely because it pushed building to its limits - to the point of negation - an intensity that henceforth would only be superseded by the heights of lyric poetry, (as always with Hegel the rise and fall of form is central). Later in the 19th century both Ruskin and Morris tended to feel something of the same regarding the splendour of the gothic period though empathizing and honing in on the somewhat communal artisanal creation that amazing "craftsmanship made by all and not by one" to somewhat alter Lautreamont's famous dictum.... and the reason why Ruskin wowed the Bradford stonemasons simultaneously lamenting the "machine gothic" of his age. (All this sounds Enclopedie des Nuisances oriented and I guess it is!)
I guess too this implies a revitalization of memories, a possible return to the best of a lost past – and not it's past horrors and stupidities - alongside a profound assembly oriented discussion with immediate practical implications on the good and the bad of developing automation as for certain no such reorientation debate would be a denial of contemporary science and the best of technology but its re-founding and transformation free at last from capitalism and money; so in that sense a science well distanced from a "future primitive" perspective. Rimbaud said in the early 1870s "What a century of hands" and his particular "never work" perspective came from precisely that fact. On the contrary nowadays 'hands' are tending to disappear not least through the exigencies of an increasingly semi-automated capitalism and building today is more and more geared towards a kind of legoland assembling of prefabricated parts rather than involving personal skills developed by means of the hand. But if the hands are going, going, gone the fingers most certainly aren't as the remote pressed by a finger increases endless command / prompt actions. (Today, even in the few steelmaking enterprises left in the Sheffield conurbation push button is more the essence of the manual forge worker in his clean and bright cordoned-off cubicle.)So in that sense maybe we should reformulate Rimbaud and say, "What a century of fingers"? So I would suggest a future proletarian uprising in the advanced countries would quickly involve a re-finding of the totality of our lost hands in a mass unfolding where each individual human being is collectively re-found and re-invented becoming richer in creative possibilities by the hour. Without waxing too lyrical and becoming ridiculous creating things like Chtcheglov's notions of "rooms of love" depending on personal dispositions etc... Why "ridiculous"? Well most of the world since the late 1850s is about an ever growing "Planet of Slums" and any revolution will be very much about the need for basic food supplies and clean water. Nonetheless, in all this the Spanish collectives of 1936-7 still remain as profound markers en-route to genuine liberation..... and where would Chtcheglov's "the Hacienda must be rebuilt" be without memories of Spain....?
As for us building over the last 15 years or so has more and more elided into conservation –wherever possible – meaning from then on it was just a short step - a mere extension of a drift - ending in ecological, communal re-wilding which has now created a massive ruckus and something we hadn't planned on. So far in Bradford the outcome is we've cost the council anything from £350,000 upwards. They've had to pull their pet vanity project as they've broken all planning and bio-diversity laws and some officials could quite frankly go to jail in consequence of our determined whistle blowing. However, the Mafia-like omerta still remains relatively intact. (I enclose here one of our latest soundings-off to Sustrans and a type of proclamation the authorities simply cannot deal with)..... as Bradford head's on down the road towards Detroit.......Finally, do you read any or all of these new websites like Mitch Feuerstein's planetponzi.com or, Ros Ashcroft's, renegadeeconomist.com (from the north of England)? There are many more and they keep getting plugs on Russia Today TV. They all seem to be coming from a perspective of disappointed neo-liberalism becoming more forthright by the month frequently punctuated with "fuck this / fuck that" so exasperated are these new wave of underground - though often suited - commentators.
The bottom line is a recognition that neo-liberalism no longer exists because there's no room any more for the genuine entrepreneur or the creation of 'genuine value' (none however seem to outline the definition of value as expounded by Marx though there is a kind of sympathy – even hope - for a world uprising) as we are now living under the reign of an utterly crooked crony capitalism (indeed they often say it is no longer 'capitalism' we are living under). Basically they now see the present system as a toxic mix of the political sphere – the higher echelons of the state – and ballooning ultra-obscure and secretive financial derivatives – debt driven but only to create even more debt - reaching out towards sheer insanity orchestrated by the Fed, the Bank of England etc. in league with the CEO's of giant banks and equally giant multinationals which will only end in a crash far bigger that that experienced in 2008. Moreover we are all "suckers" for putting up with this utterly crooked set up.......They seem to suggest we have in fact entered into a new aberrant phase of financial state capitalism – without naming the beast as such – which could presage the collapse of the capitalist mode of production, though yet again without deploying such characterisations. I would suggest that seeing much of the 20th century was about bending the law of value by an interventionist state isn't such a trajectory in line somewhat with what happened previously – well, up to the end of the 1970s - minus its former more inclusive social democratic / Bolshevik / even at times fascist disposition as after all this latest financial jiggery-pokery type intervention is purely about the fortunes of the super rich? Perhaps though the bottom line of this conundrum is the increasing difficulties encountered in extracting sufficient adequate surplus value for any renewed capitalist take-off and perhaps that's what's meant by Kurz's notion of increasing "insubstantiality"?
Anyway, all the Best: Dave
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Hi Loren, (14th August 2013)
I was wondering throughout your many journeys if you came across – even met – a guy called Miguel Amoros most likely in Spain. Perhaps you knew him as Miguel Torres and is (was?) a friend of Quim's (Etcetera) in Barcelona. We had a distant contact with him in the late 1970s after my longish sojourn in Barcelona having translated and published a fair amount of his stuff – among with others – in what became the book, Wildcat Spain Encounters Democracy. A little later and we had some discussion with him regarding a yea and nay conundrum – was the Spanish dockers' co-ordinadora a trade union of sorts? Miguel reckoned at that point that the co-ordinadora was an autonomous organisation and his assurances were good enough for us to go ahead and publish International Dockers Struggles of the 1980s set against the background of the miners' strike here with the implicit suggestion that something like a co-ordinadora set-up was needed in that struggle. Later we wrote things for La Estiba (the co-ordinadora's newspaper)..... No doubt soon after Miguel most likely changed his opinion on the co-ordinadora just as we did. Since then the guy has published in France in the last few years Les situationnistes et l'anarchie (maybe translated from the Spanish?) I only heard of the book recently and have ordered through French Amazon but it comes with good report from people I respect in France. Indeed a couple of weeks ago Michel Prigent reckoned we were mentioned in the book and have now just got an email back from Jack de Montreuil (L'Insomniaque) who says he told me this sometime ago. (So much for my useless memory ...) Anyway I started thinking again and have just realised Miguel has continued writing some other very good things indeed. It looks like (again through reports) that he has written a good account of Pellicer (founder of the Iron Column) and Durruti in the Labyrinth. In fact they look to be really accurate summations and by all accounts bring these terrific people alive probably no doubt assisted empathy-wise by the fact Miguel came from a Spanish anarchist family background so in that sense everyday life anarchism is in his blood. As for myself I still have very much a soft spot for the radical part of the Spanish revolution of 1936-7 not least because one of my earliest sentient memories at the age of 7 messing around on the living room floor with Christmas toys as railway workers from Heighington stn and the oldest railway passenger station in the world discussed sympathetically the activities of the POUM with my Dad. I was all ears!
Very recently I found some of Miguel's translated articles, which Libcom has put up, related to his more recent Nuisances period. (In fact we had published in a bad translation of History of the last 10 Years in the mid 1980s when it was more or less just hot off the presses... and we should have waited a bit....but whatever... and never knew Miguel had contributed to it!) He's recently done a postscript and it is very good indeed though what seems to stand out even more is his critique of the Indignados, Untimely Meditations for Silencing the Drum Circles and in January of 2013 The Middle Class, the partocracy and fascism. More specifically Loren I wondered if you knew what Miguel did for a living as most certainly he can't be an academic though I doubt if he worked on the buildings!!!!!
Anyway after all that, how are you? And how is your recovery? Alas, for myself things ain't been so good but that's because Tricia's eldest son Terry died of a sudden heart attack – he was no age but would never go to doctors. He was a real good guy and I really rated him and I was especially sympathetic to his life style of rejection based on working part time and living on next to nothing – often through barter – but doing so without putting his hands into neighbours' pockets etc and thus you could trust him with your life. He was also anti-travel, hating holidays and walking everywhere even disliking buses. Anti car too. He also was a single parent dad bringing up 4 really lovely, aware, decent kids virtually by himself. Moreover the only photos of Terry are of his back, as he disliked cameras so much and indeed the obituary pamphlet on him distributed at the humanist service only showed the back of his head covered in long hair like as if it was some anti-passport presentation! Except that Terry had never journeyed abroad and hardly ever left his particular East End turf even for an afternoon. That didn't mean the guy was closed down - on the contrary he was very open-minded augmented by very funny playful behaviour and his taste for the blues, especially Chicago blues music was immaculate. He was always downloading CD's for me. In the crematorium at terry's funeral that was when I cracked as a sublime Jimi Hendrix was played.......
His funeral turned into a fantastic East End of London extended working class family wake which not only included the traditional Jewish, Irish, Scottish mix etc., but also had now taken on board Turks, Indonesians, Jamaicans and Chinese. When I first met Tricia all of her immediate family (including her) were union manual worker shop stewards including Terry, (Tricia for school dinner ladies, Terry for supermarket shelf stackers etc). There was also a gangland element as Tricia had been married to a painter and decorator who was also an occasional affiliate of the Kray Twins gangsta set up and she has photos of herself with Ronnie and Reggie. (You may have heard of them, as they are part of modern folklore in the UK). However Denny (Tricia's husband – in fact she's always calling me Denny -) committed suicide beset by chronic depression leaving Trish to bring up 3 kids by herself. Later rather opportunistically though for understandable monetary reasons she married a gypsy who was also incidentally a NHS hospital porter shop steward! Consequently the Kray's leftovers, the Appleby's, were going to turn up at the funeral but were dissuaded by Tricia who being a powerful East End matriarch meant her wishes would probably be obeyed but there again there was always a chance they might not have taken any notice. The trouble is the Appelby's tended to look down on Trish's family, as "no-hopers" and it would have involved a punch-up. (I knew from past get-togethers - mostly marriages - that the drink would flow only to be followed by a bout of fisticuffs). Moreover, one of the 'new' family recruits a tough Jamaican boxer then said he was going to flatten the Appleby's and was immediately seconded by another tough young guy (a plumber on the obnoxiously horrendous Shard tower) from an equally 'new' Turkish family addition who had been in big trouble over involvement in the 2011 London riots. That had made the guy's dad – Uss – desperate with misery, as the lad was the chief bread earner for the family. His lawyer had the sense to emphasise this in court and the judge handed down a lenient community service sentence in stark contrast to the general brutal punishment administered to other 'criminals' of the 2011 uprising! And so on... (On reflection I guess this human collage – lower ranking gangland and trade unions – is probably quite common among what's left of working class communities in New York or Chicago... Certainly we never knew any such overlap in the railway / mining communities in northern England but possibly there was some such overlap in Liverpool, Manchester or say, Glasgow etc. Whatever....)
What was more interesting is that all of this extended family was really penniless and I couldn't help feeling things are now beginning to again somewhat resemble Jack London's portrait of the East End in Children of the Abyss despite the growing general atomisation that has severely hit former working class communities plus a real heavy sharpening of basic economic poverty that nonetheless still gives off an affluent surface appearance. Terry wasn't insured and apart from a couple of generous pub whip rounds, Stuart and I paid for the funeral not because we came from money but because of our chosen anti consumer lifestyle plus getting reasonably well paid as skilled trades peoples on the buildings meaning we had money to spare. Even Tricia's Jewish side of the family, even the 'posher' formerly reasonably well-off Cohen's and 'Uncle Frankie Isaac' hadn't a bean and so on. Anyway the up-shot was both Stuart and I have been declared honorary "East End diamond geezers" and furthermore seeing there was enough knowledge on us floating around on the Internet on what we've been up to in our lives (which often makes me blush – re the lack of accuracy – instantly keeping well away from further perusal) meant we were bombarded with questions in a friendly, clap-on-the-back way: "How long were you in nick?" / "How many coppers have you felled?" / "Were you really involved in armed shoot-outs in Portugal?" etc. etc. All I kept saying was "Don't believe a word you read" as Stuart was hugged by lots of women (later he said it was the best get-together good time he had in years). Needless to say any conversation around theoretical subtleties was thankfully at an absolute minimum. Somewhere among all of this one of the 'hard men' came up having heard about our Bradford troubles and the thugocracy that was set on us at one point, saying if we needed any 'assistance' just let him know.....I laughed and thanked him saying I'd keep it in mind. Truly these are heaven or hell people, show decency and they'll do anything for you.......
The real problem was that Terry's grown up kids have been made homeless as the Christian housing association immediately seized his rented property. (What can you expect of Christians??) Consequently I have been writing lots of letters to try and stop this, which have been reasonably effective. Trouble is the kids are in bits and a piece, squabbling with each other and the separated mother though warm-hearted is absolutely useless preferring to drink her self stupid. Consequently debts are piling up against them. Finally, it does look as though I am going to be able to get them re-housed in a short life, London-wide housing co-op on cheap rents of £80 per week which includes all utilities payments plus council tax etc. (In the shark-invested London property market that's a good deal!) However I was able to do this because we do maintenance work for them and one of the more influential bosses really like us (even approves of what we write though I've known her for decades from when she was a radical feminist plumber from a working class (Mormon!) background in the 1970s). Actually it cheers me up doing this basic maintenance for generally young people on zero hours work contracts etc. as most of them are more or less 'revolutionary' and while fixing locks, repairing cupboards, plastering walls etc you get good radical conservation and learn so much about horrendous day-to-day details about what's going down out there. Moreover you are able to do extras for them – getting keys cut, extra tins of paint etc - covered through material receipts which they are grateful for as they also are really penniless.
Anyway I again hope you are improving health-wise,
Best: Dave
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Dear Loren, (from Stuart Wise)
I was sorry to hear about the cancer. If caught early recovery rates are good, especially in the States. The pity is such treatment is not generalized to cover the entire world. It will be an unpleasant few weeks. I have quite fond memories of being in hospital - there is a willingness amongst patients to help each other which we termed "hospital communism". It certainly seems to bring the best out in people.
There is much empirical material in Owen Hatherley that can be used just like there is in Owen Jones. They both however hanker after a contemporary version of the post war Labour Government and cannot see beyond the 'parliamentary road to socialism'.
One such useful article was Owen Hatherley's – a few weeks ago - on the rash of luxury high rise towers that now dominate Britain's major cities; almost all of them were given the go-ahead by Labour Councils. The pivotal figure in this development is Sir Richard Rogers who built the Pompidou Centre with his partner Renzo Piano who designed Europe's highest building The Shard in the City of London. This recently completed building was originally given the go ahead by the 'socialist' mayor of London, Ken Livingstone ('Ken Livingdeath' as we called him and friend of Chavez and Castro). His "tall building complex" arose out of his visit to Shanghai, in his eyes the redemptive mirror image of Manhattan because 'socialist' rather than capitalist. It was a damascene moment and the grays and sandy pinks of old London stock associated with low rise developments went right out of the window and in came flexed steel and glass facades on a scale that was previously unthinkable, CAD making possible the previously impossible. Nothing in future was going to be built by human hand, machine assembly, the construction equivalent of the weightless, service economy of a finance capital gone stratospheric.
Rogers and Piano sought to justify the Pompidou Centre with references to May '68, knowing full well the role Les Halles (site of the Pompidou Centre) had played in the elaboration of genuinely revolutionary urban concepts. The rest of the so-called avant-garde architects in this country (up to then in hot pursuit of the 'drearies'!) recoiled in horror before the events of May '68 and clamped down on the merest mention of it, i.e. Peter Cook of Archigram fame published a book in 1971 called Fantastic Architecture. One would have thought a quite moderate figure like Constant (really a libertarian Le Corbusier still unable to decisively break with the role of grand designer) would have figured in the book. Wrong - even though Holland was by then mulling over the possibility of building a museum devoted to Constant. Rogers was that bit more open minded and receptive - the thickest hide unable to escape the influence of those heady days following May '68, especially if living in Paris. And so following the Labour Party's landslide victory in 1997, Rogers was appointed head of an urban task force. In 1992 he had produced a plan for New London, citing the Olympic Village in Barcelona as an ideal, particularly recommending its social mix of the private and public, cafes, cultural venues, businesses as opposed to the brutalist 1950s-60s council estate concrete monocultures. (Some now have become des. res. chic, like Park Hill in Sheffield and Trellick Towers in Notting Hill). Despite the landslide victory, there was going to be no return to Old Labour and New Labour was not going to repeal Thatcher's capping of the rates passed in 1986, a year after the miners' strike ended. For many this spelled the end of 'local democracy' (certainly its margin of manoeuvre which was always strictly limited) and its handing over to PR firms who engaged the services of celebrity artists and architects to rebrand cities and regions. (Gormley's Angel of the North on Tyneside, Heatherwick's B for the Bang in Manchester, The Deep (an interactive aquarium) in Hull etc ). Britain became a land of slogans, the power of advertising copy magically reconfiguring the landscape and the economy: Newcastle/Gateshead "world class culture", Kirkcudbright "scenic fishing town with an artistic heritage", Yorkshire "alive with opportunity", Liverpool "the world in one city" etc.
Eye catching buildings and big art/engineering projects became paramount and labour councils were seduced as never before by the language of advertising. To believe the lie became the 'socialist program' of Old Labour and New Labour as they hastened to broker deals with developers who were legally obliged under the local authority section 106 agreement to provide some sort of public infrastructure. In fact the deals they struck were full of holes and it beggars believe 'socialist councils' couldn't see through them. They showed a willingness to be conned on par with believing in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. 'Planning gain' meant for instance that 40% of luxury housing development had to be affordable housing set at 80% of market rent. (Hatherley goes into this). By definition a market rent fluctuates and so 'affordable housing' in a rising market became affordable housing only for top earners. And Livingstone still thinks The Shard a social project because of the payback, a bus station and a railway station roof – in effect not much more than a bus stop and a bit of cover. And the 'socialist' architect Richard Rogers went onto to build the world's most expensive piece of real estate: No1, Hyde Park. It makes me sick just to look at it, the ground floor a showcase of not-for-purchase luxury Rolex watches and MaClaren cars, money here just so vulgar - and middle class! For three years the building of it caused major traffic hold ups and it was easy to whip up bus passengers against the super-rich, especially when it meant missing train and coach connections at nearby Victoria Station. A few years back, we were passing through a ritzy square on the south bank of the Thames dressed in our building clobber, when one of the gang, Steve, seemed to stumble, crashing into an outdoor cafe table. Spilling coffee over the seated customer, he did not offer an apology merely exclaiming, "Well, well, it's the cunt that destroyed Paris". It was Sir Richard Rogers.
As for Renzo Piano - it's important that he is seen to hang on to his street cred, though it has to be said he has more opportunity to do so because of the increasing instability of Italy. And so in a recent interview in La Repubblica, a good part was taken up with him talking about his 30 year friendship with Beppe Grillo of the 5 Star Movement. I got the feeling that the world's most talked about architect with Rogers and Ghery was envious of the rise to international stardom of the virtually unknown stand-up comic who had been cast into limbo by Berlusconi`s media empire. He also advised Grillo to do a deal with Bersani`s 'socialists' which would mean the Grillini becoming a traditional political party. To get it so wrong more than suggests Piano cannot have had all that much contact with Grillo.
Anyhow, all the best at the hospital on Tuesday
Cheers Stuart
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Hi Loren from Dave,
Sorry I haven't been in contact recently but all hell has broken loose on Woolley Colliery spoil heap near Barnsley, Sth Yorks and me –and Stu' –have been immediately stuck into a real fight to save that great inspiring terrain. It has meant engaging with many ploys relating to The Art of War –decoys, subterfuge, hit & run tactics –you name it. Actually, it has been approaching the brink for a year or so. And then: WHAM! It seems like Barnsley Council is determined to develop this magnificent "landscape of contempt" at all costs seeing (or rather, as they see it) as just a post-industrial eyesore that needs eliminating to be replaced with some nicey, nicey park and garden ornamentation and domesticated, lifeless horticulture and the kind of stuff the new, aspirant highly mortgaged tenants of Woolley Grange regard as nature. Ugh! At all costs the great wildlife that has superbly come to the fore here after the pit closed has to be put to the sword. God riddance to it and too all the misfit 'wild' human beings who also find themselves at 'home' here forever walking through this topsy-turvy odd void pregnant with amazing possibilities.....And then you meet them and the encounters are nearly always memorable. Often the conversation starts with; "Are you for or against Arthur?" meaning which side were you on in the great miners' strike of 1984-5-and not really about Arthur Scargill at all - and this as often as not coming from fellas' in their late 20s who weren't even born then! Occasionally and it's even a great gal whether 70 or17! It's an immediate but certain way of broadly testing the waters, never forgetting that Woolley was where Scargill worked as a young lad. Replying immediately "Arthur, of course" and then warm smiles all round and an immediate cut to the subversive chase as the whole fuckin' system is attacked. Exhilarating stuff! Also, it mustn't be forgotten that part of the bottom end of the new estate of Woolley Grange was built on the very spot where the somewhat monumental Stalinoid structure of Woolley's pit winding gear once stood. It is probably the most horrific piece of new, turn of the millennia, anti-life urbanism it is possible to find anywhere and you literally hardly ever pass a living person on these deadly, manicured pavements with only 4 by 4's "stink wagons" (as Wobbly Joe Hill way back in 1912 rightly called them) endlessly staring back at you. This new estate was deliberately built here – its epicentre if you like - so that all ex-miners could finally be punched in the face once and for all: shit on yer strike forever and ever.... Here is the new, eternal age of the transcendental, neo-liberal agenda......... Like it or go and top yourself!!!
There's no need to hide much in such memorable conversations tho' nothing could be farther from the truth with the powers-that-be here and in other areas we make interventions. To these arseholes we have nothing to say and we keep permanently away from the suits never revealing ourselves by name. Moreover we have a bad, bad reputation in northern England and in many respects virtually barred from Bradford and Newcastle so it's become truly a contemporary Tale of Two Cities). After a horrendous experience in Bradford 2013-4 where if we'd been nailed down we'd have been fined colossal sums – if not jailed – we quickly learnt how to disappear and re-appear only to vanish overnight again.
As for support in what is regarded as something of a rarefied revolt well it was virtually zilch so it was essential the bastards can't / don't catch us. We quickly learnt we were at war with dumb-fuk official ecodom and an ever-extending nature bureaucracy getting ever more important and impotent at one and the same time; a nature bureaucracy which is mind-blowing stupid, utterly passive and always supporting the developmental agenda. Inevitably because we alter the landscape, thugs in the pay of builders like Wates or through goons employed by council bureaucrats come after us. Alongside this, machinery is despatched to our favoured areas to do a bit of discreet damage - something like, a kind of symbolic advanced warning from some boss gangster of what they'll do to us if we persist. And persist we do.......
Moreover Loren we've introduced into these areas rare wild creatures/ plants, etc, after carefully preparing the terrain – which can take a year or two - so they can successfully survive and flourish here. This really fucks-in the developers/ council goon's heads in because they are species often quite heavily protected by European laws. It means the aforementioned bastards are then in a complete quandary knowing they are going to lose millions of spondoolies yet they can't prove a fekking thing! We also make a game out of pretending we've created forces that are much bigger than they are, forces moreover who are with us all the way and willing to use aggressive tactics if necessary. So we call the council officials, the developers, the official ecos, - CUNTs – as that really upsets them as well as putting the backs up of the nicey, nicey PC brigade.
Under aliases, posts are put up on Sheffield's STAG Facebook, etc posts that are also well informed and accurate and STAG have put – and are still putting up – a great fight in that city. And dare Barnsley Council go down the same road as nearby Sheffield Council which has massively lost all the reputational insurance it once had? So Loren we've made these films whose URLs I'm putting in here. The first posted on YouTube over a year ago is aggressive and up-for-a punch-up, the second, a more lyrical cum scientific statement was posted on April Ist this year (Ah, the fools day – on purpose) edited and produced by Lola Bueno and in fact inspired by a woman anarcho-surrealist gal friend of Stu's in Madrid. And the music? Why an inheritance from the Dada / Surrealist avant-garde (maybe Durrealist in the sense of Durrutti, the amazing Spanish anarchist from 1936) with a lift from Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali and one of the finest films ever made and which knocked me out In Newcastle in 1962. Introducing culture here or more precisely putting culture hopefully into deadly play we are messing with the bureaucrats' heads as they don't know how to deal with such things because so fekking dumb. On the one hand they are scared of appearing as philistines, on the other hand they dimly recognise a big connection between avant-garde culture and finance capital e.g. how say, Manchester's burgeoning dollario hipster reputation – its selling image – comes from a recuperated psychogeography/ situationism via Ivan Chtcheglov and the Hacienda club of Madchester's Summer of Love in the late 1980s. And wouldn't Sheffield and its Barnsley subsidiary like something of this hipster patina! Yet at the same time these short films are deliberately amateurish – something done in haste – maybe knocked out quickly by ex-miners hence the deliberate juxtaposition of the greatest insurrectional folk song from these islands, The Dirty Black Leg Miner.... And after all our family on our Mum's side did come from a radical mining background close by the area the song came from and which had a huge influence on us......but more about some lost terrific stories from The Great Unrest later and which Mum and Dad handed down to us...... Yes we have to get all what we are doing out in the open in its unadorned truth because it probably will have a great impact ......but today is not YET the day.....
Best. Dave
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Friday, 13th of June 2014 from Dave W To Loren
Hi Loren,
Long time no hear so I hope you are OK and that recovery from your op is going OK too. I liked the text on CRL James. What I wanted to know is did you ever read his text (book?) on the British shop steward movement. It's probably out of print but I noted Dave Black mentioned it in his recent ultra-left oriented book. I didn't know CRL had some involvement with Nelson, a Lancashire cotton town which I like and close to Bradford. What made me laugh was the fact the place was called "Red Nelson". I didn't know this! I only knew Red Nelson as the blues singer who sang blues to Cripple Clarence Lofton's boogie piano. I was obsessed with both of them from about the age of 11 onwards as my American, Chicago born, GI uncle, living as a shipyard engineer in Newcastle, got me blues and jazz records from America which were never off the old fashioned wind up turntable much to my Mother's annoyance. I think it is the type of co-incidence which would have made CRL laugh! I even chalked up on a wall in Bradford recently CRL's quip: "What knows he of cricket who only cricket knows?" - and Bradford can go cricket mad although most of the local teams based on factories and firms are now mainly Asian, as the whites seem to have abandoned the company cricket team.
Alex, my black American mate, knew CRL in Brixton said he had "a topsy-turvy bohemian-like, poor flat". What surprised me is that Alex didn't know about Selma James, his partner and hadn't heard about the "wages for housework campaign" even though when the campaign took off, Alex was living in Brooklyn. Maybe the "wages campaign" had no profile in New York at that time? Anyway, keep up the good work Loren.
Best: Dave
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Saturday, 14th of June 2014
Hi Loren,
Bradford is complicated re fundamentalist Islam throwbacks, advanced and retarded at one and the same time. Basically retardation comes via the traditional Madrasa schools which are Muslim world famous and 'venerable'. Never forget, the Iranian dictator, Ayatollah Khomeini spent time in one near the city centre close by where Peter Sutcliffe - the Yorkshire Ripper - at the same time worked as a council manual employee (even joining in wildcat strikes like The Winter of Discontent). I remember Pete amusingly called Khomeini, "A Bradford home boy!" and also remember Bradford was the only European city where Rushdie's Satanic Verses were burnt openly – with discreet official council sanction - in the 1980s.The FT news flash you refer to is about another educational institution: the new free academies and quite different to the ancient Madrasas. Ex PM, Tony Blair was the guy really responsible for setting up the 'academies' and were a means of getting round the 'stultifying' state/ public realm in education through a form of PPP (Public Private Partnership). This though wasn't about independence in any true sense of the term but for Blair meant he could push through quasi faith schools promoting more fundamentalist Christian views, Church of England and / or Catholic, where say, the science of The Origin of the Species could be questioned as to its veracity. And this indeed did happen a little later in Gateshead-on-Tyne with its big, unorthodox Jewish population where the world was suddenly made in the Born Again Christian seven days time span! No surprise then that some academies have slipped the Christian leach morphing into some form of fundamentalist Islam which has kind of 'taken' over some academies especially in Birmingham. There's a form of pseudo democratic input to these academies in a spurious free market sense so it's no surprise that some quasi-professional outfit can influence the content of the education. However, so far there's only been one such example in Bradford which like Birmingham has been given the makeover of democratic parent / teacher encouragement. But the press have made too much of a big deal out of this 'democracy'. More interesting are the relatively recent angry splits between Sunni and Shia in Bradford and one city taxi driver I know goes crazy when he discusses Shia ideology with me, saying, "Surely you must hate Catholics like I hate Shia." I say "No" but nothing goes in! Why I like him is because he's just a warm-hearted, welcoming Bradford yob, spitting on the pavement every few seconds with a 'cunt' and 'fuck' spicing up every sentence as he downs yet another can of beer. And beyond that, in many ways the main racial antagonism tends to be Asians against East Europeans especially Rumanians.....The rule of the Bradford Asian elders and their influence over educational institutions both ancient and modern is in reality in a state of crises even breakdown. Don't forget George Galloway and his Respect party came to power in Bradford West because young Asians (especially the women) disobeyed the seemingly all powerful political alliance of the Baradari brotherhood which is very strong in Pakistan. This was unprecedented, even unheard of and was undoubtedly due to effect of western feminism on young Asian women. However, Galloway's victory was also multi-racial and one cannot underestimate the contribution of often young ex 'middle class' alternatives - many from the south of England – who now live in Bradford because its dirt cheap and there's no general stigma attached to being penniless and skint. Some of these people are now in the process of creating something like a neo-punk sub-culture with bands like Young, Stupid & White along with Kill the Poets. Stu' reckons we influenced the latter!!!!!Yes, I understand and sympathise with nostalgia for the days of Uncle Joe. Also as an attachment I enclose here a thing I've just written on the former anarchist inspired Street Farmers. Again, it is in relation to the things we've been doing in Bradford.
Best: Dave W
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neMDIOVf3Qs
The Small Blue Butterfly at Woolley Colliery, South Yorkshire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJYyIQ4-OjM
Small Blue butterfly /Greater Yellow Rattle: Woolley Colliery, Barnsley, S. Yorks
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Hi Loren, From Dave W (on America in 2016)
Don't know what to say. I was dreading Hillary Clinton but completely gutted by Trump. I hardly dare look at his face on TV as I feel so sick.
While we were up north the terrible news broke that Trump had been elected as president in the USA. Shaken to the core - and remaining so – we are no different in disposition of our closest friends. I was even nervous phoning up my bessy mate Alex, the black guy from Brooklyn who lives a few doors from me, wondering how he was feeling. Inevitably, he was feeling freaked out but better for talking openly about things....Was this quasi-fascism that could become the real thing, or maybe just a kind of right wing punk performance of gesture and not much else???? We noted that some of the language of Breitbarts News' Steve Bannon like "Up against the wall"" etc, was a kind of nasty recuperation of some of the radical New York movements (and language) of the late 1960s. Was this any different from say how the Nazi's "national socialism" in the early 1930s mimicking to some degree the empty shell of Russian Bolshevism? All this but remembering too when our Dad – eyes blazing – suddenly spun round on us at the age of 7 passionately declaiming; "If you stand next to a fascist your blood runs cold. You can't argue reasonably with him, all you can do is kill him." Shit, although too young to know what he was really talking about, it completely struck home remembering decades later every searing word. Only later did we find out about his escapades in Middlesboro' in the 1930s – bicycle chain in hands – thrashing fascists. I also learnt about a lot of other exemplary incidents like throwing buckets of water over the top hats of railway bosses in the North East when on strike....and then getting the sack! Thus I remember the guy with the greatest affection. Interestingly here a lot of people who voted Brexit - that "maimed working class revolt" I think I called it - are horrified by Trump's victory. What I should have added is that a big part of petite bourgeois, aspirant suburbia also went Brexit so it was a combination of leftist and rightist Little Englander. True in the weeks after Brexit there was a small resurgence of strikes but now the right wing Little Englander is in the saddle and they hate the very notion of any type of social equality as typified by the mass of manual workers largely of yesteryear. Although I didn't vote - but with sympathies towards Brexit – largely because I hang out with manual working class people there's been a turn against the right, tho' how durable is another matter. Tricia who voted Brexit hates Trump as do the members of her senior citizens knitting class who all hail from the sharp end. Again many of them had voted Brexit. Her son, Mark who is an electrician and voted Brexit came home to find his wife Karen in a state of fear saying, "We're all doomed, doomed" and their little son Freddy ran into a cupboard and locked himself in! It took ages – and much reassurance - to coax him out. Amanda, Tricia's grand daughter who works as a clerical organiser in a London NHS hospital cracked-up knowing Trump was to rule and wrote a heartfelt desperate paragraph on her Facebook which is very moving indeed, more or less saying we are all dead people on leave now.
In the North East where my Dad worked there seems to be quite a stir against Trump even though a solidly Brexit area. One thing about the North East, it is solidly anti-fascist and has remained so ever since the 1930s. About 2 years ago Sunderland football club appointed as manager an Italian neo-fascist. There was uproar and demonstrations against him at every match – even singing the Internationale, etc. The situation became totally ungovernable and the guy after only six months was forced to resign. More recently, that ultra right wing outfit Pegida from Germany launched their first English demo in Newcastle of all places. (Hadn't these bozos done any historical researches on this city with its proud anti-fascist traditions?) They were outnumbered 10 to 1 by a counter demonstration with Pegida stooges receiving a good thrashing. What a relief!
But maybe I am overstating things and getting too unhappy and maybe Trump will only last six months providing people cut up untidy day-in and day-out?
Best: Dave
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Loren Goldner to David Wise
Thu, May 20, 2021 at 3:39 AM
Hi Dave-
I wrote in haste a couple of days ago. I'm of course quite worried about
Stu'. Can you send me an update on his condition?
When I get it, I'll tell you a bit about me.
All the best, comrade
Loren
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On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 4:38 PM David Wise wrote:
Hi Loren,
Hope you OK and am sorry I didn't reply to you earlier or indeed ask how you are getting on health-wise. Point is I didn't know where I was at re health problems related to Stu' and Tricia and my own needs needing cataract surgery on left eye and leg pains. I am kind of having to shuttle between Tricia's and looking after Stu and it is difficult and very depressing. Finally, its been revealed that Stu has advanced prostate cancer though I don't know how advanced. I think it's got into his bones though possibly hasn't travelled far. He's now undergoing a course of heavy treatment involving (I think) radium (radio?) therapy plus chemo. His depression is terrible and he's hardly speaking although always thanking me for helping him. Whilst in hospital last time - nigh on a couple of months ago - I totally reorganised his flat as the council were threatening to throw him out. He always was a mucky pup but I've got him an OK Filipina social worker who is real nice. Also I really blagged it with housing officialdom and they have now kept their distance. I did throw out about 30 big bags of rubbish and washed his place out, etc. Reorganised his vast library plus all his seed trays, etc. When feeling better psychologically occasionally he is stuck into Hegel for hours on end or else William Hazlitt, etc. But that's Stu -when the shit hits the fan read something intensely intellectual. When people ask me "as twins are you alike" I reply, "No, Stu is intelligent and well read, I'm stupid" meaning basically I'm more inclined towards the nuts and bolts of everyday life. He could never have gone out with a Tricia as needs intellectual conversation that nonetheless cuts to the nitty gritty. On the contrary I like to hear repeats of conversations Tricia has with her women friends, etc. And then as my Mam said to me before she died in her broad Yorkshire accent: "You are going to have to look after Stuart otherwise he will end up on't moor end with sheep". And indeed of all things on a recent Yorkshire vet TV programme right next to where my Dad lived as a kid and where my grandah was a signalman, there was this guy living in a terrific self-constructed mud hut looking after sheep near a place called "Midnight Farm" which I knew so well as a kid. He was called Moses Wise and so erudite too!!!! Well. I never -definitely related!
Loren I would be delighted if you could give me any information related to prostate cancer and/ or how you have dealt with it. How is your prostate progressing? I think Stu's maybe permanent but containable. Any information to stop his rampant paranoia??? Tonite have been talking to him about tomorrow's so-called "Freedom day" when finally Blow Job fully imitates Trump, Bolsonaro and Modi. Stu is terrified as he sees it as "the survival of the fittest". It is appalling, the English ruling class at their worst. Burn down Eton public school....... FOR STARTERS
Best. Dave x
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From Loren Goldner
Dear Dave'
One day I'm going to collect all your brilliant emails into an anthology!
To cut to the quick, as soon as my prostate cancer was detected 6-7 years
ago I immediately had it removed (called a "prostetectomy") Unfortunately
the surgery was not 100% effective and it's became a permanent thing. I control
it with a daily pill called bicalutimide which seems to halt the spread. My
"PSA" (the key measure) is 14 to 16 and my doctor says it all looks OK.
Years ago she said I have "a long life ahead of me" but I forgot to ask in what
condition. Her last phone call 2 weeks ago was upbeat. So I'm relaxed.
I'd love to discuss Hegel with you two. I confess he's much clearer in German
but that's probably not an option for Stu. German truly is a language for
philosophy. Beautiful in a way.
I just finished reading Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London .No sentimentality,
to put it mildly. Without Sharon paying most of the bills I've always feared
I could wind up that way. Did Orwell actually live that life or was he slumming?
COVID has sort of put my China/ Chinese study on hold, so my daily reading is
newspapers and other stuff I find on line. I go for daily walks around our fairly
decent Brooklyn neighborhood. I've gone into Manhattan a few times for
doctors and dentists. I have 1-2 local friends and the rest is email or on the phone.
Without Sharon I'd jump out the window.
As usual, a lot of reading, I don't know if I'll ever write anything of substance again.
My head has been in China but who in the west at least still supports China?
So the polemical edge is missing. Fascinating history, though.
I'll stop there for now. Hugs to you and Stu and Tricia, and please keep me up to
date on medical developments.
With COVID easing in the NE US, travel may again be possible. Stand by!
Your friend and comrade always
Loren
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On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 7:09 PM Loren Goldner wrote:
Hi Dave
Quick reply for now.
I read about 10 pages of the attached and will read the rest asap.
I wish I'd met you two earlier.
I'll get back to London as soon as I can
Love from your friend and comrade always
Loren
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On Monday, November 12, 2018 10:08 PM, Loren Goldner wrote:
Right! Great to see you and Stu. I'm reading your book re the Critical Hidden History of King Mob right now. Worth all the books at the HM conference.
Thanks for bringing me up to date on the balance of class forces in the UK. Please send any worth while texts that come your way. I'll be interested in how these Trotskyists in the BLP apparat behave when they have real power.
Best
Loren
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Loren Goldner To :David Wise
Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 2:41 AM
I'm worried. No reply from you.
Please just send me a brief sign of life.
Your friend and comrade always
Loren
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On Thursday, July 26, 2018 8:16 AM, Loren Goldner wrote:
Hi Dave-
It's been a while. I've just re-read your last couple of emails- brilliant as always.
I've gone thru something of a rough patch since receiving them: one damn physical
ailment after another. This included food poisoning that left me so weak for 4-5
days that I had to have a big friend of mine come over and lift me off the floor.
It was something we ate at home--we narrowed it down to some day-old chicken
salad I ate too much of. I never felt so weak in my life- thank God Sharon is a doctor
so I was in good hands. I can't imagine what I would have done if I'd been alone.
On Aug. 17 I'm having fairly major surgery to finally fix this kidney stone problem
that till now I've had treated in a provisional way (4-5 times) but this has to stop.
I'll spare you the longer list of physical woes (none really serious) since I'm writing to say that I'll be in London from roughly Nov. 8 to Nov. 13 or 14. Seeing you and Stu is at the top of
my list. I presume you'll be in town those days?
I've continued to work on the Chinese working class and learning Chinese, more
recently as a way to get my mind off of Trump's America. I've been putting off writing
something for too long since it seems like such an immense reality. But I have this
irrational faith that the Chinese proletariat will shake the world, this time (in contrast
to Mao, 1949, etc.) for real. I have a study group with a lovely young Chinese-American
woman on the Chinese working class. Sometimes it's hard to focus on the reading if
you know what I mean. But the age gulf between us is unbridgeable, even with
deep political rapport and remarkably similar interests.
I'm volunteering one night a week as a Spanish interpreter working with undocumented
immigrants, which I definitely want to ramp up. The stories are generally pretty incredible.
I'd like to also write something about how the U.S. counter-insurgency in the 1980s,
and the resulting destruction of social life, is the true backdrop to the massive
refugee crisis at the Mexican border, and yet is rarely if ever mentioned.
The people running this country now are, as I'm sure you know, contemptible scum, more so than the average run of bourgeois politicians and their entourage. You may have heard of this charismatic Latina woman who recently knocked off an old Democratic Party pol in a primary election for Congress here in NY. Her program was and is the mildest social democracy, yet her victory knocked the political class for a loop. It's almost hilarious to see the right wing, across the country, revving up the old red-baiting propaganda machine over a program that would be middle of the road in Sweden etc. but in the U.S. comes across as Bolshevism. The establishment of the
Democratic Party is just as upset, seeing these young upstarts threatening their chance
for a big surge in the November elections. In much of the country, the so-called "red states",
they're running these retired military officers, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who are
a few inches to the left of Trump. This mild reformist organization DSA (Democratic Socialists
of America) have been recruiting tens of thousands of young people new to politics; I knew
them as wimpy academics 30 years ago and seeing them being red-baited is, again, hilarious.
I'm sure you and Stu' can tell me similar stories about Corbyn et al. and the youth surge
supporting him.
I guess I've have to work up some article on Trump before the trip as I'll be giving talks in
5-6 countries before arriving in the UK. This includes Greece, where I've never been,
since I was invited there by this group the TPTG. Know anything about them? They invited
me after reading my stuff so they can't be too bad (?)
OK, Dave; I'll wind this up for now and hope to be swapping tales with you and Stu
in November.
Drop me a note and much looking forward
Best Loren
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From Loren Goldner
Many thanks!
I know what you mean about the dangers of the tube; I have the same feelings about the
NYC subway. Fortunately I have only had to take it twice since March. Without email I'd
die of isolation. With beautiful fall weather here my neighborhood walks are also
consoling.
Has Stu' managed to get a date with that Indian nurse? Give him my best in any case.
And to Trish as well.
I'm very glad we have an appreciation for Bordiga in common! What a character! His Italian
is very idiosyncratic and full of Neopolitanisms but that's how I learned to read Italian.
I hope I manage to write some kind of report or review on this new anthology. Unbelievable
the prices that Brill charges, since of course they mainly sell to libraries. I got a review
copy as the "scholar" who introduced Bordiga to the English-speaking world in an obscure
article from 1995 published in Ticktin's journal Critique. (article attached) As you know,
Bordiga is mainly known in Italy thru the PCI denunciations of him. When Togliatti got off
the plane from Moscow in 1944, his first question was: "what is Bordiga doing?" When
his PCI comrades said "Nothing" Togliatti said "I don't believe that for a minute". Now at
least there is a "Bordiga Institute" (probably in someone's basement) that is publishing
the complete works, about 20 vols. in all. I'd love to score a "review copy" but.... I myself
(I turn 73 next week) have limited time left in this mortal coil. My China project (3-4
years on) is on hold since the pandemic started in March as I've been devouring news.
Trump's indifference to COVID seems to be catching up with him, especiially since he
now has it himself. Go virus! I say. Some "young people" danced outside the White
House when they heard the news. If he croaks, I'll be out there with them to celebrate.
How such a sick, empty, ignorant blowhard became the most powerful man in the
world says everything about our times. He makes Nixon seem like a statesman.
Closer to home (!) that rib bruising thanks to the Russian nurse is healing...a bit.
But since I have to reschedule the surgery because the elevator in our building
is down until 11/20 for repairs I may have to face her again.
Meanwhile our 12-14 yr.. old cat Rosa (named of course for
Rosa L.) came back from death's door after a 24hr stay at the vet.
I don't like this aging stuff one bit, as I'm sure you understand.
Once again, my best to you and Stu and Trish. Keep me posted and
I'll do the same.
Loren
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Loren Goldner To: David Wise. (Loren's final poignant email. Sad, Sad, Sad)
Sun, Feb 6, 2022 at 6:39 AM
Hi,
As before, I've wanted to write something to buck you up, if that were possible.
I myself am pretty down, though my melancholy pales next to what you're going
through,
I hardly wish to add to your woes. As before, I'd love to come see you, if that would
help, but right now that kind of travel is not on the cards.
I'm with you, Dave, for what that's worth,
Your friend and comrade always
Loren
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