For a long time, early industrializing countries were absorptive. They were endlessly able to absorb new labor inputs … - Joshua Clover

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I believe that independent film making is the last frontier of creative expression available. So I'm always willing to lend a helping hand to a young film maker who's just getting into the business.

Joshua Clover

For a long time, early industrializing countries were absorptive. They were endlessly able to absorb new labor inputs to keep expanding. This was both an economics and a worldview. Here in the United States, we have the Statue of Liberty sitting in the harbor in New York, which says in huge letters, We stand for absorptive capital. A poetic version: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. " But what it means is, Come here, we'll absorb you. We absorb these inputs and add them to our growing economy, and we manage this with liberal democracy.

Country, Economics, Inputs, Mean, Stand, Tired

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People often say, "Riots aren't revolutions. " That's true. The vast majority of riots never become revolutionary. On the other hand, show me the revolution that started without a riot.

Hand, Majority, People, Revolution, Show Me

People who oppose violence often defend strikes, forgetting that strikes are historically every bit as violent as riots. They recast history so that strikes were always this ascetic refusal rather than open warfare with private or national military forces, where many, many people died so as to have some possibility of a decent work life, affordable housing, protections - the most practical goals we can imagine.

Forces, Goal, Life, Military, People, Violent

There are places in the world where it's easier than in the US to be a person who produces theory and not require the university for sustenance. And there are still places in the world where there is lively poetry communities largely divorced from academia. That's been destroyed in the US. In the US, famously, there were a lot of counter-spaces that lasted into the 60s and 70s, like the Black Arts Movement. They were systematically broken, often by the government, and the workshop arose in their place.

70S, Academia, Art, Broken, Community, Workshop

Even as I've become more reticent about the political possibilities of the academic space, I want to note that students have played significant roles in insurrectionary activity across the globe for decades and centuries, and I don't think that we've crossed some threshold where that's never going to happen again. We still need to take the university space quite seriously.

Crossed, Political, Possibilities, Roles, Students, Thinking

The university is one of various funding structures by which people who want to do theoretical work stay alive, the same way that people go to grad school, not because they think it's going to change the world but because there's no patron system anymore, and they need some scaffolding of support while they're trying to figure out how they can proceed in their lives. I think that's utterly legit. A lot of our better theorists and thinkers, that's what the university is for them.

Alive, People, School, Thinking, Utterly