#Caffimorning 15. “possibilities” was a magazine that only appeared once. It had 4 editors covering different “arts”. (One was painter Robert Motherwell, another musician John Cage).Caffi’s “On mythology” was one of the longer contributions and was illustrated with BW Mark Rothko material.

#Caffimorning 14. “politics”, edited by Dwight Macdonald, and the people around it, were analysed superbly by Gregory Macdonald in his 1996 “Dwight Macdonald and the “politics” circle”. We were delighted Gregory Sumner had a few things to say about our book.

It’s remarkable the number of prolific writers who wrote for the short-lived politics magazine. These include C. Wright Mills, Lewis Coser, David Riesman, Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, George Orwell, Paul Goodman, Mary McCarthy, Daniel Bell, Nicola Chiaromonte, among others.

#Caffimorning 12. The twelfth essay in the book is “Mass Politics and the Pax Americana”. First published as an appendix to Dwight Macdonald’s The Root is Man, this moves from critique of Arthur Koestler to mass politics and the alternative. (Quoted by Colin Ward in Anarchy in Action).

#Caffimorning 11. The eleventh essay in the book is “In Today’s Newspaper”, from “Instead”. Using a newspaper report of a murder in Manchester (England) Caffi builds an argument about the nature of History. Incidentally, it is believed an innocent man was hung for this murder.

#Caffimorning 10: the tenth essay in the book is “The Myth and Politics”, also from “Instead”. This is a transcribed discussion on the role of myth in politics between Caffi and his friend Nicola Chiaromonte which took place in Toulouse.

#Caffimorning 9. The ninth essay in the book - again, from “Instead” like yesterday’s- is “Machine and Myth”, applying some of the ideas of “On mythology” to the growth of machinery in human society. As its Caffi, this takes us into interesting areas.

#Caffimorning 8. The eight essay in the book is “A glance at Marx’s horizons”, an analysis of Marx’s relationship to Hegel among other things. It was Caffi’s first essay in “Instead”, the journal edited and run by Lionel Abel and then surrealist painter Roberto Matta.

#Caffimorning 7. The seventh essay in the book is “On mythology “. This appeared in the single issue of “possibilities”, one of whose editors was John Cage. Caffi explains myth as communication of “things that do not exist but which are”. This essay has been attracting attention recently.

#Caffimorning 6. The sixth essay in the book is “The French Condition “. This introduces the “politics” special on French Political Writing, and is a historical and political survey which is still relevant. Caffi’s fellow authors in this edition include Sartre, Camus, Bataille, de Beauvoir.

#Caffimorning 5. The fifth essay in the book is “Violence and Sociability”, an essay which shows Caffi’s breadth of reference in a superb sociological/philosophical analysis of the role (and dysfunction) of violence in social change. A vital essay.

#Caffimorning 4. The fourth essay in the book is “Notes on Mass Culture”. It includes a systematic analysis of issues in Mass and other culture. Highly critical - the category of “anti-culture“ seems prescient - it also gives pointers to an alternative…

Can’t wait to read this! I think the mileu around McDonald, Caffi and others can help us better navigate so much of today. A lot of great work has helped by examining the less know voices of the right, but we need more on those lost voices on the left! Who knows what answers they can help us find…

#Caffimorning 3. The third essay in the book is “Is a revolutionary war a contradiction in terms?” and it sees Caffi debate Dwight Macdonald, his editor, and start to develop his nonviolent approach to socialism.

#Caffimorning 2: the second essay in the book is “Towards a Socialist Program”. Caffi gives some pointers for a way forward but notes:”And we should never forget that freedom cannot exist without some disorder.”

#Caffimorning 1: First essay in the book is The Automatization of European People: a mix of first hand reportage and a caustic view of European politics, from Caffi’s viewpoint in post WW2 Toulouse.

Who was Andrea Caffi (1887–1955), and why does he matter today? Here’s my interview with @miketyl.bsky.social discussing his book and the life and ideas of Andrea Caffi: youtu.be/76IDJnle3fY

Very pleased to announce that this book is now available. It’s been something I’ve worked with LittleBigEye on for some time, and we are pleased to see it out and available.

NEW: Andrea Caffi: The New York Essays, ed. by @miketyl.bsky.social — a collected volume of essays by one of Europe’s most neglected yet influential radical thinkers. Written in the shadow of fascism & the emerging Cold War, Caffi’s critique of violence, nationalism, mass politics remains prescient

This passage from Gurvitch's Bill of Social Rights captures what I see as his central critique of the institution of law and his proposed alternative: the emergent group property he calls 'social law.'

Max Nomad (1881–1973) was a Polish-American dissident who was a lecturer in New York. While sympathetic to socialism and anarchism, he adhered pessimistically to elite theory, which was popularized by Pareto and postulated that all societies have a governing class that dominates a governed class.

Today is release day for our new album, Now,Here. It’s focused on William Morris’s utopia News from Nowhere. You can get it from the @wormholeworld.bsky.social Bandcamp: but hurry, at present there are only 2 left. wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/now-he...

Georges Palante (1862–1925): French sociologist/philosopher who contrasted individualism to the “herd mentality”. Drawing on Nietzsche, Tarde, and Simmel, he dissected how social norms crush individual’s lives—alienation, ressentiment, and the tragedy of being an individual in mass society.

Comte After Positivism (1996) is an important book in the revival of Auguste Comte that has taken place since the 1990s. One of the key arguments is that John Stuart Mill’s polemical & often misguided criticisms of Comte led to the neglect of Comte and laid down the framework for logical positivism.

Andrea Caffi (1887–1955) was an obscure but influential figure. A participant in the 1905 Russian Revolution, wounded in WWI, imprisoned several times, and tortured by fascists in Italy, he led a fascinating life and wrote many works, which have been undergoing a revival in Italy.

Happy Comte day! Today, the 19th of the month of Moses (according to the Positivist calendar), is the bday of Auguste Comte. Former secretary to Saint-Simon, founder of positivism & sociology, & self-proclaimed High Priest of Humanity, he shaped modernity in more ways than we tend to acknowledge.

The British Positivists ensured a lot of Comte was translated. Lots of big volumes sitting in libraries now. Sidney Olivier and Sidney Webb bonded at a reading group looking at The Positivist Catechism in a room the size of a cupboard in No. 10 Downing Street.

Happy Proudhon day! Not only was he a pivotal influence on Socialism, Marxism, Anarchism, and Mutualism, but also Sociology, Philosophy, Federalism/Confederalism, and arguably even Economics and International Relations.

Sometimes I can’t help but think that Marxism’s attempt to go beyond the “utopian socialisms” ironically resulted in the most utopian form of socialism around.

Correct. There is actually very little of Saint-Simon’s, and French socialist thought more generally, that has been translated into English. With the exception of Comte’s work, the English world has never taken much interest, despite it all fundamentally shaping the way the world has developed.

International Law is the 2025’s biggest joke

Four years ago today, the wisest person I ever knew passed away. She never attended school, drove a car, or swam, but somehow turned out more in-tune with reality than anyone else I’ve encountered. I will forever be profoundly impacted by my limited time with her. Rest in peace Hajiya.

I haven’t finished it yet but I’ve been surprised by how good this is. I just happened to stumble on it in an used bookstore. It’s really a collection of the writings of the German-American sociologist Werner Cahnman (1902-1980), who notably was a Jew who was in the concentration camps at one point.

Timasheff was the only one who really developed Petrazycki’s ideas for the sociology of law continue to be an “illustrious unknown” in the field despite having published his book (though many quote his work) in USA. Perhaps too ambitious for his time The link between Gurvitch and Parsons was Pound.

I find the exiled Soviet sociologists, namely Sorokin, Timasheff, and Gurvitch, particularly alluring. While well-known in their day, all of them slid into neglect following their deaths and were overshadowed by Parsons, who none of them appreciated, probably because of how he outmaneuvered Sorokin.

Review of Saint-Simon’s recently published Correspondence by @thomaslalevee.bsky.social. The work being reviewed was edited by Pierre Musso, who is probably the leading Saint-Simon scholar today. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GT7XF...

Durkheim’s biggest shortcoming imo is that he almost exclusively treats society as something external to the individual. For example, he argued that social facts exert a “pressure” onto individuals. He misses the internal aspects of society, namely how social facts can “fuse” to individuals.

Henri de Saint-Simon turns 265 today.

Here’s a good one and probably the best critique of sociological positivism around. Rather than theology and philosophy culminating in a sharply differentiated social science, Solovyov emphasized the holistic connection between them and how all three needed to be kept in dialogue.

We published the open access article 'Organized Callousness: Gaza and the Sociology of War' by Siniša Malešević and Lea David in our forum on Israel-Palestine on May 11. tinyurl.com/st55f868

I used to know some people who argued that all social interaction ultimately sought to find a “smooth flow”. At the time, I bought the argument. Now, I’m convinced that this view loses sight of the contradictory nature of social life, namely that people often have conflicting social bonds.

In case you missed it, my review of @emilyherring.bsky.social's terrific bio of Henri Bergson is #1 at the Los Angeles Review of Books right now. It’s my love letter to the GOAT of philosophy—take a seat and have a chat with him here 👇 lareviewofbooks.org/article/when...

Learned recently that both the Marxist theorists Henri Lefebvre and Maximilien Rubel completed their doctoral theses under Georges Gurvitch. It’s noteworthy to me since Gurvtich had such an unorthodox interpretation of Marx, essentially claiming that he was a Proudhonized Saint-Simonian.

Too bad Beesly and Marx never wrote anything together. I would be fascinated to see how sociology would have played out with a Positivist-Marxist synthesis approved by Marx.

New #sociology paper on Mauss, total social facts, and bridging bio-psycho-social accounts www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I think this is such an important book at this moment in time. It describes our current situation better than any other that I'm aware of. Collectively, and not just in the US, we are headed down a very dark path.

Now available for advance ordering and/or free download… Anarchy in Alifuru: The History of Stateless Societies in the Maluku Islands by Bima Satria Putra www.minorcompositions.info?p=1596

Proudhon’s Critique of Nationalism in His Federalism Vision by Lingkai Kong (2025) www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/10...

Apparently in the late 19th century, some Jewish anarchists held Yonkiper beler (“Yom Kippur Balls”) antireligious festivities.

You can now download the book on the publisher's website: press.umich.edu/Books/P/Publ... (open access of course)