The formation of the proletariat by capital’s historic crimes — and the ongoing recomposition of the class by imperialism, racism, heterosexism, and immiseration — is not unlike the creation of Frankenstein’s monster. The working-class, as a whole, is a disordered and chaotic body. Labor was (and is) formed through the theft of forests, farms, continents, and people. It was (and is) formed in the creation and displacement of entire industries, gender norms and the shifts in social reproduction, the invention of “races” and “nations.” The targets of capital’s crimes were (and continually are) fused together and torn apart in their relation to capital. Labor does not become a class “for itself” by pretending otherwise. It must study the journals of the “men who made it.” But the class becomes conscious when each disordered element of the class defends every other disordered element.
Read MoreThe Utopia Principle
Read MoreDear comrades-descendants, the labourers of the 20th century are writing to you. Tell your children and grandchildren how we struggled for your right to immortality. We lived in heroic times when great discoveries were made, when the world was shaken by revolutions and wars burned the planet. […] You have probably already eliminated all harmful bacteria and viruses and live without ageing or sickness. But it was us who helped you in this, when we discovered the mysteries of cancer and overcame the barrier of tissue incompatibility.
Locust #4 ~ Call for Submissions!
Submissions are now open. As always, we want your words and images, your prose and poetry, your “this doesn’t quite fit in a normal world, in more than one way.” It needs a place. We have always sought to give it a place. We reckon, as the world spasms and unravels in so many unpredictable directions, it will continue to need a place.
Read MoreEvent: Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy (Thursday Nov. 12)
Join us on Thursday, November 12 (18:30 GMT, 1:30pm EST, 12:30pm CST, 10:30am PST) for a Locust Review panel discussion at this year’s (virtual) Historical Materialism conference. Our panel, focusing on “Irrealism as Socialist Cultural Strategy” will feature Locust editorial collective members Alexander Billet on “The Case for Critical Irrealism,” Holly Lewis on “How Collective Dreams Can End the Sleep of Reason,” Adam Turl on “Their Weird and Ours: Socialist Irrealism vs. Fascist Occultism,” and Anupam Roy on “Representational Impossibility: A Propagandist’s Urgencies and Crisis.” More information follows below.
Read MoreLabor Under An Alien Sky
We found the corpse of Capitalist Realism. Rona-riddled, the initials “ACAB” carved in its forehead. It was discovered in the burnt shell of a Minneapolis police station. On discovery it opened its eyes and stood up and told us to go back to work. We refused. It reached for us, moaning a voracious hunger of unholy sadism, unquenchable violence, an unknowable cosmic horror, stinking of gout and fresh teargas.
Read MoreAnnouncing Issue #2 of Locust Review!
You cannot stop us. We are legion. We are Locust. Our second issue will be coming back from the printers soon, and it contains a new passel of the bizarre and bombastic, the cosmically communist. You know you want to read. You know you want to subscribe. A copy of Locust Review issue two will give you art from Adam Ray Adkins, Leslie Lea, Anupam Roy, James Walsh, Sambaran Das, John McVay, plus a continuation of Tish Markley and Adam Turl’s Born Again Labor Museum. There will be poetry and fiction from Alexander Billet, Tish Markley, Adam Marks, Frank Fucile, Lane Powell, Mike Linaweaver, Adam Turl, Evan Edwards and many others.
Read MoreAnnouncing Locust Review
We are pleased to announce the first issue of Locust Review — forthcoming in late October 2019. Locust Review is a socialist journal of the radical weird. Printed four times a year in relatively affordable and anachronistic black and white newsprint, as well as online, we will be offering up art, fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction, and whatever else we think may directly fuel the imagination and hunger for a different future in our drab end times.
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