How Terribly Bourgeois!

Anyone else read Lauren Collins’ excellent essay in The...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:59:00 -0500

Anyone else read Lauren Collins’ excellent essay in The New Yorker about Gerard Depardieu giving up his French citizenship in order to steer his ship to clearer, tax-free waters? It’s wonderful, and not only because of the accompanying picture (above).

On the one hand, her essay is about Depardieu’s career and how his upbringing and celebrity represents, in a sense, the bourgeois fantasy of the man who grows up poor but ends up making something out of himself. Depardieu is, indeed, a self-made man; not just an actor, but a pretty successful entrepreneur as well. On the other hand, the essay reveals quite a bit about the current state of French socialism about which I was admittedly ignorant.

The issue here is that Depardieu refused to accept the tax rate of 75% on the superrich and has renounced his citizenship. He is now—if I’m not mistaken— living in Belgium or Russia. (He was recently given Russian citizenship and counts Vladimir Putin as one of his pals). A few interesting points here are 1) the 75% tax rate is a temporary measure (3 years) to dig out of a huge national debt, 2) the tax rate affects only about 3,000 people in France, as the divide between the superrich and the lower classes is not as drastic as it is in the United States (for example), and 3) the majority of the French people support this tax hike and it is one of the many reasons the Socialists were able to get back in power after 17 years or so in the wilderness.

Depardieu, an international celebrity who is, in a way, a symbol of modern French cinema, is now a figure of derision. It seems that many French people believe that paying taxes is their patriotic duty and that capitalist success stories, like Depardieu, should give back to the country who made them a success. But Depardieu believes that it is he who has given so much to France, and so why is everyone trying to punish his success?

Depardieu would have scores of people—and an entire political party, even— who would agree with his stance in the United States, but what’s fascinating to me is that Depardieu’s outlook has been discredited, ridiculed, and derided in France. The consensus is quite simply: Pay up asshole. The debate rages on here, but it seems to be quite settled back in France, where there is a mix of both capitalist and anti-austerity measures in order to bring that country back from financial insolvency.

Paraphrased from Marx’s famous dictum, this little cartoon...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:13:00 -0500

Paraphrased from Marx’s famous dictum, this little cartoon draws attention to the wonderful, little bourgeois toys that Marx could have never even dreamed would be available for proletarian consumption (and entertainment!): iPods, computers, televisions…

In fact, Marx probably would have never gotten around to composing the Communist Manifesto. He would have been too busy posting on tumblr.

I’m trying to unpack the meaning of this. On the one hand,...

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 00:27:00 -0500

I’m trying to unpack the meaning of this.

On the one hand, it is a statement of fact. People who shop at Forever 21 — young, middle-class women (including yours truly, except for the young part) — tend to be bourgeois. But there are probably poorer (read: working class) women who shop there, too; the rock-bottom prices allow anyone to look chic and fashionable. Young. Pretty. Forever 21. Isn’t that what everyone wants, regardless of how much money you have in your purse?

If one were to apply a more academic reading to this piece of clothing, one could say that it’s a tacit acknowledgment that class warfare exists. Forever 21 is a mega clothing store chain that has reaped the benefits of the worst tendencies in global capitalism. In order to open up these thousands of stores across America, Asia, and Europe, and sell fashionable clothing at cheap prices, they have to staff these stores with cheap labor and, most importantly of all, sell clothes at (probably) ridiculous markups because they can draw upon the cheap labor of (usually female) workers in sweatshops.

This sweater is a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of one’s privilege, but it draws attention not just to the economic circumstances (or, the status) of the wearer, but also the cultural and economic divide that exists between girls and women who enjoy the profits of a capitalistic system and those who suffer under it.

I found this here at Today in Social Sciences. It simplifies...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 22:47:00 -0400

I found this here at Today in Social Sciences. It simplifies some things, of course. You have at first the “feudal lords” who fight with the “serfs and peasants.” That conflict gives you a winner: “city life.”

Then those who enjoy “city life” clash with the “guilds.” That results in a new group of victors: “entrepreneurs” who in turn then end up fighting with the “proletariat” and then we finally get the final outcome: “communism.”

That’s a whole lot of simplification of Marx even accounting for the fact that the image was made for an undergraduate course called “Cultural and Institutional History of Modern Europe.” I’m not criticizing a professor’s choices, but merely pointing out that there are multiple ways to communicate the essence of Marx’s ideas about history to a somewhat apathetic young student population. And that it’s easy to fudge things.

To wit: what is interesting here is the way two of the categories are chronologically positioned: the “City life” people come first, and then the “Entrepreneurs.” Yet, as should be obvious, there’s (a) a lot of overlap between the two and (b) there’s nary a mention of the bourgeoisie here. As my esteemed colleague has been ably chronicling here and here, it is almost impossible to separate the notion of “City life” from definitions of the “bourgeoisie.” In fact, conceiving one is impossible without the other.

My point here? Teaching Marx (even to apathetic teenagers) demands some care in definitions.

Aelita (1924) was not the first science fiction movie set in...

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 13:54:00 -0400

Aelita (1924) was not the first science fiction movie set in space (that honor generally goes to Le voyage dans la lune [A Trip to the Moon] made in 1902). But it was probably one of the most influential early films in the genre. Aelita was based on a novel of the same name published a year earlier written by Russian novelist Aleksey Tolstoy. The movie was a sensation in Soviet Russia, and one of the first true “blockbusters” in the history of cinema. The man behind the movie was Yakov Protazanov, who had gained a modicum of fame already in pre-Revolutionary times, but whose Aelita elevated him to iconic status in the world of newly emerging Soviet cinema. Much like modern Hollywood movies, weeks of intense advertising preceded the release of the movie; airplanes dropped thousands of leaflets announcing the opening over several cities. Tickets for the premiere were sold out, and the size of crowd on opening night was so overwhelming that Protazanov himself was unable to attend.

Protazanov completely reimagined Tol’stoy’s original novel, which was about a Soviet soldier who travels to Mars and incites a proletarian revolution among the bourgeois Martians. In the book, Aelita, the queen of Mars, falls in love with the soldier, and shenanigans ensue. In Protazanov’s hands, the story becomes much more sophisticated. The protagonist, Los, is a soldier whose background is bourgeois and is married to sweet Natasha. He receives a radio message from Mars and becomes distracted from his marriage. Turns out that on Mars, Queen Aelita rules over a brutal state that exploits its workers. But the Queen herself becomes obsessed with Los who she can see through a telescope. She begins to reject the exploitation endemic in her state. Soon, Los and a fellow proletariat go to Mars on a rocket and help the Queen dismantle the totalitarian state, but it turns out that the Queen was simply making a grab or power; she had never intended to end exploitation. The revolution fails. In the end, Los wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.

In the movie, the revolution in Mars is riddled with ambiguities that don’t demarcate along binary poles such as capitalist vs. communist or bourgeois vs. proletarian. Even the outcome is ambiguous. Some have argued that such an approach was Protazanov’s commentary about the complexities of the New Economic Policy (NEP) initiated by Lenin in the early 1920s when there was a mixed economy (with limited private enterprise). Enabled by looser censorship restrictions, this was a time of rich and experimental artistic expression in film, literature, art, and pretty much everything under the Sun. Soviet society was complicated and driven by conflicting impulses.

Unsurprisingly, Protazanov’s ambiguous take on socialism rankled Soviet officials who wanted the soldier to overthrow the bourgeoisie and create a new proletarian culture on Mars. As late as 1928, Soviet newspapers were still complaining of the “petty bourgeois ending” of the movie where Los returns to the domesticities of marriage, and not the task at hand: socialist revolution.

Aelita was important for many reasons, but often forgotten is how much it influenced real people to do real things. It influenced a generation of Soviet space enthusiasts, many of whom later went on to create the actual rockets and spaceships that opened the Space Age in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the major Soviet projects in the 1960s to send humans to Mars (never finished, unfortunately) was affectionately named “Aelita” by its designer, Vladimir Chelomey, who remembered watching the movie as a kid.

The picture above is a composite of four different scenes. On the top left, we see Queen Aelita (played by Yuliya Solntseva). The two shots of sets evoke the sets of Fritz Lang’s more famous Metropolis, which Aelita influenced.

For the complete movie, go here. For more on the culture of space enthusiasm in the 1920s, a good place to start is here or here.

Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath (1791),...

Mon, 28 May 2012 19:39:00 -0400

Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath (1791), which marked the emancipation of the French bourgeoisie, or the Third Estate, from the Estates-General.

Urban charters had grown out of collective efforts to sustain collective responsibility in the medieval town. Even though urban administrators were elected to their positions, medieval towns were not centers for democracy or equality. Quite the opposite, in fact. The medieval town was ruled by an urban oligarchy. A burgher was “elected,” or chosen, by his fellow burghers to serve at his administrative post. Prosperous merchants had the most to gain from charters, as it was they who controlled their towns’ governments. Generation after generation they looked out for themselves and their economic interests.

Did the development of urban charters and laws contribute to the bourgeoisie’s achieving class consciousness in the Middle Ages?

I would argue that establishing the customs of the towns—which emphasized the rights, privileges, and liberties of the medieval bourgeoisie— was a crucial process that set the bourgeoisie apart from both their seigniorial lords and the rural peasantry.

Sheila Delany provides a succinct overview of the reasons for which the medieval bourgeoisie began to claim for themselves specific legal freedoms and privileges, which she rather brilliantly connects to the bourgeois revolutions that marked the end of a bloody 18th century:

From the start the medieval bourgeoisie were in competition with feudal lords. They competed first for labour-power, for they required a pool of free workers and artisans to produce what they would sell. Free, that is, from feudal ties, free to move where they were needed, free to work when they were needed, and free from property. To this end most town charters guaranteed freedom to any serf who lived peacefully in the town for a year and a day…But the bourgeois himself, whether merchant, employer or financier, also required freedom from domination by lay and ecclesiastical lords. He wanted freedom to trade unimpeded and travel safely, freedom to hire and release employees, to raise or lower prices, wages or interest, to accumulate a fortune, marry a noblewoman or purchase an estate. The political privileges granted to the urban bourgeoisie were known as ‘liberties.’ Indeed the notion of ‘liberty’ was the distinctive contribution to European thought of the bourgeoisie breaking free of feudal bonds; it culminated in the slogans of French and American bourgeois revolutionaries of the 18th century.

I emphasize the last point of this passage to highlight the continuing relevance of the medieval bourgeoisie to our modern political discourse. Our modern conceptions of liberty and freedoms were derived, at least partly, from definitions that the medieval bourgeoisie had begun to codify in urban charters so that they could adequately protect and defend their economic interests.

I like you blog very much. Just wanted to check if it is okay to follow you - I'm a queer soft-cock anarchist so there's lots of porn on my tumblr blog. Cool if you prefer I didn't.

Fri, 25 May 2012 22:24:00 -0400

I don’t have you on my list of followers. If you would like to follow my blog then you should probably do that. I must say, though, that a “queer soft-cock anarchist” sounds suspiciously bourgeois rather than anarchist. You betray an alarming concern for lofty titles and weak members.

“Bourgeoisie you have understood nothing.” A poster made during...

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:01:00 -0400

“Bourgeoisie you have understood nothing.” A poster made during the May 1968 student riots in Paris.

Before WWII, higher education had been only for Europe’s wealthier classes, but in the postwar era there was greater equality in higher education, and a whole host of middle-class kids—baby boomers— were now able to get a university education. Reducing and eliminating tuition, government subsidies, and scholarships also helped bring about higher enrollments.And enrollments did grow dramatically as a result of these new policies; in France, for example, 4.5% of youth attended university in 1950, but this number jumped to 14.5% in 1965.

The May 1968 student riots began with middle-class youth (they were later joined by the working class, who went on strike, almost crippling the French economy). The generation that revolted in the ‘68 riots were relatively affluent and had been the targets of mass advertising and consumerism. Popular culture was primarily consumed by the middle classes and reflected middle-class interests. The products of postwar popular culture—music, television, films, Coca-Cola— were advertised as lifestyle choices; buying and consuming such products not only communicated to the outside world the socio-economic privileges that you enjoyed, but also were indicative of who you were as a person.

The ‘68 riots was, in effect, a bourgeois response to bourgeois consumerism. Students demanded a greater voice in administration of their universities in May ‘68; they took over buildings, invited industrial workers to support them, and were keen on starting a revolution. As these protests spread all over Europe and abroad to America (most notably at Columbia University), it became clear that the students were protesting against the authoritarian nature of university administrations and harbored anti-war, anti-imperialist attitudes. Most striking, however, was that these movements were really about the narcotic of mass consumerism— the fundamental rejection of bourgeois values that had become increasingly identified with the ownership of products that were massively produced, advertised, and consumed in the postwar era.

With the assistance of Gustave Eiffel, Le Bon Marché boasted the...

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:57:00 -0400

With the assistance of Gustave Eiffel, Le Bon Marché boasted the first metal roof structure in the world, making it a monument of architectural innovation.

New industries in the late 19th century helped expand the market for consumer goods, which brought the economy out of stagnation by the end of the century. Overseas imperialism also opened new markets for European consumer goods. New forms of retailing and marketing appeared—department stores, chain stores, packaging techniques, mail-order catalogs, and advertising—which simultaneously stimulated and fed consumer demand.

A new way in which goods were being consumed was through the development and construction of department stores in the mid-19^th century. Department stores, such as Le Bon Marché in Paris (apparently the first department store ever) sold a wide selections of consumer goods under one roof. These modern stores increased the economic pressure on small traditional merchants who specialized in selling only one kind of product. In a traditional shop, the retailer (who was also the producer) offered a single product—gloves, for example—in limited quantity at a fairly high price. Oftentimes, this price was not set and the customer would haggle with the shopkeeper until a price was agreed upon. “Browsing” was virtually unheard of— an individual who entered a shop was expected to make a purchase.

Department stores, however, made profits from a quick turnover of a very large volume of goods set at low prices. In order to stimulate sales, department stores sought to make shopping a very pleasant experience by offering well-lit expanses filled with alluring items, well-trained and friendly clerks, in-store reading rooms, and restaurants.

Middle-class women especially were encouraged to patronize these stores even though critics had charged that these stores turned sober housewives into irrational shoppers, who were wasteful of family resources and let their consumer fantasies run wild in a store like Le Bon Marché. Indeed, women were the ones who primarily participated in the vast expansion of consumerism and domestic comfort that marked the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Women filled their homes with manufactured items such as clothing, china, furniture, carpets, drapery, wallpaper, and prints. In these decades, women’s pursuit of fashion in their home furnishings seemed to lean towards imperial motifs as Empire began to increasingly invade the domestic spaces of the bourgeois household: Persian-inspired designs were seen on textiles, oriental carpets were laid across floors, wicker furniture was placed in drawing rooms, and Chinese porcelain was used at mealtimes.

Most people, if they think of punk music, generally focus on the...

Mon, 21 May 2012 01:14:00 -0400

Most people, if they think of punk music, generally focus on the sound associated with bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, and so on, i.e., fast, loud, minimalistic, and short guitar-based songs. But in many ways, the real revolution was not punk, but post-punk, which loosely defined the bands that came in the wake of original punk. Although there’s a visceral frisson to that original music, it was also somewhat conservative and doctrinaire in its musical sensibilities: guitar, bass, drum, fast, loud, yelling, etc. So when bands like Joy Division, Gang of Four, the Pop Group, Talking Heads, the Slits, etc. began to literally dismantle the building blocks of modern pop music and rebuild entirely new idioms, it seemed like a a brave new world. This period, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was arguably the most innovative period in the history of modern pop music. Simon Reynolds has written an entire book about this time, Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984.

Among the many bands he covers is a long-forgotten feminist band known as The Au Pairs who sang about gender and sexual politics. Much of their music — choppy, catchy, tense — was a critique of what they considered bourgeois sexual relations: conventional ‘boring’ romance between men and women trapped in their prescribed roles played out through entire lifetimes. There’s courtship, then sex, then marriage, the missionary position, children, separate spheres for men and women, etc. On their debut album, Playing with a Different Sex, Au Pairs lead frontwoman, Lesley Woods, an outspoken feminist (and lesbian, for what it’s worth) articulated a stark world where men and women are trapped and sapped of life by modern capitalism/bourgeois life.

My favorite Au Pairs song is “Come Again” in which she expertly problematizes rote sex between a man and a woman in which they ask each other to “come again” like robots having sex. The footage above is from the famous Urgh! A Music War, a massive multi-day concert in 1980 that brought together many post-punk bands. [See also Feminist Music Geek and The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion, and Rock’n’Roll (1995) by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press.]

1906 photograph of Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo. Speaking of...

Sat, 19 May 2012 11:11:55 -0400

1906 photograph of Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo.

Speaking of bourgeois exhibitions that display the reach of imperial power, one of the biggest attractions at the Paris World Fair of 1889 — which was meant to highlight “progress from 100 years of freedom” (i.e., the French Revolution)— was the human zoo. The “Negro Village,” as it was called, held about 400 indigenous Africans. They were placed in a village-type setting so that cultural and racial differences between Europeans and non-Europeans could be on display.

A number of these human zoos were founded on the idea of scientific racism, which placed a number of indigenous people—especially Africans—on the evolutionary continuum between the great apes and people of European ancestry.

The transept from the Grand Entrance of the Crystal Palace,...

Thu, 17 May 2012 04:23:37 -0400

The transept from the Grand Entrance of the Crystal Palace, Souvenir of the Great Exhibition, William Simpson (lithographer), Ackermann & Co. (publisher), 1851.

With the rise and dominance of the bourgeoisie in the late 19th century, the relationship between imperialism, commerce, and consumerism begin to be celebrated in—what I call— “spectacles of Empire,” in which technological advancements and industrial growth were put on display in great exhibitions meant to communicate the “greatness” of Empire. The idea behind such exhibitions is that anyone—but really middle-class families— could buy tickets and “enjoy” the Empire on the weekend.

One of the most famous exhibitions of the 19^th century was the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in London in 1851, otherwise known as the Crystal Palace exhibition. A monument of modern iron and glass architecture, the exhibition housed and displayed an abundance of goods from British colonies and other nations. Karl Marx himself even commented on the exhibition, saying that it represented the height of some sort of capitalistic fetishism of commodities.

New inventions were also crucial to the success of this exhibition. The Tempest Prognosticator, for example, was an ingenious little device that utilized leeches to predict storms.

Un bar aux Folies Bergère by Édouard Manet (1882, English: A Bar...

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:45:00 -0400

Un bar aux Folies Bergère by Édouard Manet (1882, English: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère)

Edouard Manet was born to a bourgeois family that boasted political connections to the Swedish monarchy and the French judiciary. Manet could have had a brilliant career in either the army or law, but instead chose to strike out and become an artist instead, with a particular focus on topics that were of interest to 19th-century bourgeois gents such as himself: domestic pleasures, leisure activities, and events that touched upon French political and foreign interests.

Manet’s work is what prompted his critics to coin the term “impressionism” in the first place. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is a famous painting and tries to mirror, almost quite literally, the traditional still-life painting. Unlike a traditional still-life, however, this painting shows objects of commercial consumption in a setting where leisure itself was consumed.

Many art critics believe that Manet intended this painting to be a social commentary on late 19^th century life—especially the disconnection that people felt (which one may see in the expression on the barmaid’s face) to the social encounters of modern life. Shop girls and barmaids such as this one shown above had to supplement their meager incomes through prostitution, and the foreboding image of the bourgeois, well-dressed fellow in the background suggests that the woman herself could have been seen an object of consumption.

frenchhistory: Nicolas de LARGILLIERRE Paris, 1656 - Paris,...

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:01:11 -0400

frenchhistory:

Nicolas de LARGILLIERRE
Paris, 1656 - Paris, 1746

Le prévôt des marchands et les échevins de la ville de Paris
1689

@credits

The Provost of Merchants (prévôt des marchands), or Dean of Guild, headed the burgh council and the burgh’s merchant company

The merchant bourgeoisie painted in all of their glory. The rise of bourgeoisie as the dominant class in modern Europe has its origins with the development of a new class of merchant elites and their ability to exercise political power in their cities and towns. Because they were the first capitalists and thus the richest members of their urban communities, becoming part of the merchant elite afforded one with a whole host of opportunities. For example, holding political office (such as being part of the burgh council, as mentioned above) was contingent upon one’s membership to the merchant guild.

Detail from the frontispiece to De Regimine Principum by Giles...

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:01:00 -0400

Detail from the frontispiece to De Regimine Principum by Giles of Rome (c. 1243-1316), Bibliothèque nationale de France

See part one here on the origins of the bourgeoisie.

Town members made considerable investments in the fortifications of the town, for whose upkeep they must have collected financial resources. Thus, urban governments and book-keeping were first developed for safeguarding the community.

Some fortified areas, or burgs, eventually became towns, for by the 12^th century a borough was a town or city, inhabited by burghers or burgesses, who will become to be known as the bourgeoisie. Even today, the association lingers in such places as Edinburgh in Scotland, Hamburg in Germany, and— to use U.S. city as an example— Pittsburgh!

Townspeople were initially subject to the tolls and taxes levied by the noble, bishop, or monastery within whose territory their town lay. But, at an early date, the town’s wealthiest inhabitants, primarily those who made their living by trade (the merchants), began to band together to oppose these taxes and to agitate for privileges essential to their calling: freedom from servile dues; freedom of movement; freedom from having to pay inordinate tolls at every bridge or castle; freedom to hold property without any feudal or manorial services; and freedom for legal self-management.

By the 12^th century townspeople began to obtain charters that guaranteed many or all of these privileges. The agitation for urban autonomy was so widespread that historians have labeled this phenomenon the communal movement of 12^th-century Europe. In effect, each charter issued to the bourgeoisie of each town helped them carve out semi-autonomous political and legal entities— called communes in many parts of Europe— which had their own local government, courts, tax-collecting agencies, and legal customs (which will be the subject of the next post in this series on the medieval bourgeoisie).

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the...

Sun, 13 May 2012 02:09:00 -0400

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the avant-garde sensibilities of Russian art were infused with a kind of utopianism, manifested in a dizzying array of aesthetic approaches that cut across fiction, poetry, art, architecture, photography, graphic design, theater, and film. Much of this explosive and experimental wave in the 1920s was designed explicitly to counter bourgeois ideas about art and culture.

One early manifestation of this mood was Proletkul’t (or Proletarian culture / Proletarskii kul’tur), a movement organized in September 1918 by Aleksandr Bogdanov, a comrade-in-arms to Lenin and author of the trend-setting cosmic fiction novel Red Star (Krasnaia zvezda, 1908) about a socialist revolution on Mars, the red planet, get it?. Proletkul’t’s goal was to foster and develop culture among the proletariat in order to allow it to participate in the proper organization of society. To a large degree, Proletkul’t’s mandate derived from Bogdanov’s belief that a cultural revolution among the proletariat had to precede a political one. Proletkul’t disseminated Bogdanov’s notion that not only was there such a thing as proletarian culture, but also proletarian science, which unlike bourgeois science recognized that science was socially determined. (Modern philosophers of science, of course, now basically agree that science is socially determined and not structured around objective notions of “reality”).

By 1919, Proletkul’t had about half-a-million recruits who were actively fostering working class culture and art, helped by as many as 34 publications, 300 local organizations, and even a university. As work by Lynn Mally and others have shown, Proletkul’t had a significant degree of autonomy from Bol’shevik orthodoxy and was a genuine contribution to avant-garde art. This forward thinking ethos came, I like to think, because Proletkul’t members took the most forward thinking ideas from bourgeois art, ejected all the elitist stuff, and added a dollop of millenarianism.

Although Proletkul’t basically died off in the early 1920s by the time Lenin died, it cast a long shadow over Soviet art. You had futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky taking on many of its themes, the rise of proletarian theater, a fascination with modern technology, and often even bits of iconoclasm. The most famous example of this outpouring were probably Russian director Sergei Eisenstein’s movies of the 1920s, including Battleship Potemkin (1926), one of the one most critically revered movies of all time.

A curious postscript about Bogdanov: He became rather obsessed with various “sciences” such as tectology and the science of blood transfusion. He came to believe that blood transfusion between people could be the model of a collective society (as a path to eternal youth). Alas, he died in 1928 after he injected himself with the blood of a student who had tuberculosis to test out his theory. Nikolai Krementsov in a recent biography of Bogdanov connects Bogdanov’s early work on science fiction, his Bol’shevik political work, his campaign for Proletkul’t, and his blood transfusion research as reflective of a single unified ideology about collective notions of existence.

todayinlaborhistory: Today in labor history, May 12, 1902: ...

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:36:00 -0400

todayinlaborhistory:

Today in labor history, May 12, 1902: Nearly 150,000 anthracite coal miners go on strike in Eastern Pennsylvania for higher wages, better working conditions, and recognition of their union: the United Mine Workers of America. After months of an extreme coal shortage, President Teddy Roosevelt intervened, a commission was set up, and the strike was called off after 163 days.

I would like to know a little bit more about where this cartoon was published. Of note, I think, is the common artistic motif of the laborer looking strong and virile and the bourgeois capitalist looking weak-chinned and ineffectual.

Chinese tea gained popularity in Europe in the same period as...

Sat, 12 May 2012 09:57:00 -0400

Chinese tea gained popularity in Europe in the same period as coffee rose to dominance; the expanding importation of tea to Europe was fostered by the mercantile relationship with China. Over the course of the 18^th century, the Chinese had a monopoly on the production of tea and, gradually, tea became from being an occasional drink of the bourgeoisie to a mass commodity consumed in both Europe and North America.

The cultural aspects of the introduction of tea to Europe contrasted with those of chocolate and, especially, coffee. Tea gardens and tea houses became popular in the 18^th century and were open to both men and women. The particular popularity of tea in Europe was associated with “civilizing” tendencies, and with the feminine. Tea gardens were associated with domesticity and the family, as opposed to the male, and very public, character of coffee and coffee houses.

The tea ceremony—afternoon tea—became strongly associated with elite femininity in northern Europe, and by the 1740s tea was an important meal in England, the Netherlands, British North America. The tea ceremony began to increasingly reflect the respectability of the bourgeois household.

soviet-posters: Не растить барчуков! Do not raise...

Fri, 11 May 2012 21:39:27 -0400

soviet-posters:

Не растить барчуков!

Do not raise lordlings!

Spare the rod, bourgeois the child.

The Chocolate Girl (known also as La Belle Chocolatière, or Das...

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:48:01 -0400

The Chocolate Girl (known also as La Belle Chocolatière, or Das Schokoladenmädchen) is one of the most famous works by the Swiss artist, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), and depicts a pretty maid serving a tray of hot chocolate.

See my post here about coffee and coffee houses.

At first, the consumption of caffeinated drinks were used for medicinal purposes, but soon after their introduction into European life, they were drunk for pleasure, as we all know that caffeine tends to stimulate you quite a bit (ahem!). Caffeinated beverages also tend to stifle hunger, especially hot chocolate! Drinking chocolate was first introduced into Europe by way of Spain who were exposed to the wonders of the cocoa plant from their colonies in the New World. The drink was made by pulverizing the dried beans and boiling them in water with vanilla, cinnamon, or chili peppers.

The first chocolate-drinking establishments were set up in the 17^th century and were open to those who could pay the entrance fees. By the 18^th century, all European countries were consuming chocolate, but Spain had by far the highest consumption levels in Europe and it was, for some time, reserved for the elite primarily (i.e., the nobility and the bourgeoisie).