Switching Roles |
"All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life,
and stultifying human life into material force."
- Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto
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Why melt? |
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The site's title, All That is Solid Melts Into Air, is Karl Marx's description of modernity in a capitalist economy in his Communist Manifesto.
His melting vision, as interpreted by American writer Marshall Berman, refers to the impermanence of objects and social relations
in the highest order of bourgeois society.
Read relevant passages from Marx's writings
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Notes on modernity |
Reaffirmations from the financial meltdown
posted on Sept. 23, 2008 | 6 p.m.
Last week�s serious turmoil in Wall Street and the collapse of
financial titan Lehman Brothers signified a critical point for
the global capitalist order. It was more than just bankruptcy
� it was a glaring expression of imperialism�s fatal course.
read more
Reflecting on the Modern Experience
posted on Aug. 18, 2008 | 3:45 p.m.
Marshall Berman, in his 1982 book All That is Solid Melts into Air,
talks about the roots of modernity and explains the contradictions in a
modern society. He traces modernism in literature and arts and modernization
in politics and economics in a single historical plane. Karl Marx,perhaps
for the first time, has been regarded as an enlightening thinker on modernity.
read more
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About the author |
Jose Carlos Maningat is a senior journalism student at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He actively supports the anti-imperialist struggle inside and outside the academe.
More about the author
E-mail me
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Modern (Dis)order |
Major thoroughfares like EDSA are generally perceived to imply order and safety. However, such order displaces
human life from public space and naturalizes the chaotic breeze of machines.
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Thanks to Notepad, my sole construction tool in building this site.