Salvador Medina Ramírez Entradas

Karl Marx thought rumors were just «background noise» and he didn’t think they were important. He wrote in the preface to the first edition of Capital: «[e]very opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine: Follow your own course, and let people talk!» However, Mladen Dolar’s book Rumors (2025) has made…

Engineering has undoubtedly made great advances in civilization. Among its modern marvels are the provision of water and drainage and the construction of buildings and infrastructures that enable social reproduction. However, like all other modern disciplines, engineering is subsumed by the logic of capital. For this reason, as with other disciplines, its application is usually directed towards works that allow for the accumulation, circulation and reproduction of money. Although this is known, especially among Marxists,…

In a text written by the Marxist John Bellamy Foster (2023), he raises the issue of the emergence of new irrationalisms, building upon the thesis put forth by Lukács in The Destruction of Reason (1980) regarding the influence of irrational philosophy in the emergence of Nazism, with a particular focus on Heidegger. This was no mere coincidence; rather, it was a direct consequence of the very nature of class struggle and the development of capitalism.…

“Quien crea que el mundo puede seguir creciendo indefinidamente de forma exponencial o ha perdido el juicio o es un economista” Kenneth E. Boulding I. Introducción Desde la década de 1970, el filósofo Wolfgang Harich planteó la cuestión de cómo alcanzar un comunismo que no dependa del crecimiento económico constante en el libro ¿Comunismo sin crecimiento? (Verso, 2023), una obra considerada un clásico del ecosocialismo. En tiempos más recientes, ha surgido una interpretación novedosa de…

Despite the fall of the communist bloc decades ago and the decline of related parties in the West, anti-communist discourse continues to exist in different configurations and places around the world. While it might seem that such a discourse ought to be a thing of the past, it endures. Nonetheless, it remains prevalent in contemporary discourse. Anticommunism, a form of hate speech, has not faced similar condemnation for the incitement of crimes as fascist speech…

Anna Kornbluh (2023). Immediacy or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Verso Books. La inmediatez, una característica de la vida actual, relacionada con el uso de las redes sociales y los teléfonos inteligentes, se ha vuelto cada vez más dominante. Las peores tragedias y triunfos son transmitidos el día de hoy en cuestión de segundos, incluso por sus mismos participantes, como sucedió con la invasión rusa a Ucrania o los ataques israelíes a Palestina. Así,…

Anna Kornbluh (2023): Immediacy or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Verso Books. Immediacy, a feature of contemporary life associated with the use of social networks and smartphones, has become increasingly dominant. The worst tragedies and triumphs, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the Israeli attacks on Palestine, are now transmitted in a matter of seconds, even by their participants. Thus, one of the peculiarities of these cases is that the intermediation of…

In the reinterpretation of a work lies its actuality so that it does not become a museum piece or a dead historical document; that is to say, a reinterpretation has the power to update the discussion of some topic. This is the case of Godzilla, the Japanese monster invented in 1954, which returned in 2023 with a new film called Godzilla Minus One. The same is true of Oppenheimer (2023), which brings to the screen…

Agradezco mucho la invitación a presentar el número de febrero de 2024 de la Revista de la Universidad Nacional, que cuenta con un diseño agradable, que toca temas contemporáneos, y que así puede llegar públicos más amplios, fuera de la comunidad de la UNAM y académica. El mensaje también esta en la forma y lo hace muy bien la revista en este aspecto. Es claro que sin fondo, la forma es insuficiente, y el presente…

En la reinterpretación de una obra radica su vigencia para no volverse una pieza de museo o un documento histórico muerto; es decir, una reinterpretación tiene el poder de actualizar la discusión de algún tema. Éste es el caso de Godzilla, el monstruo japonés inventado en 1954, que regresó en 2023 con una nueva película llamada Godzilla Minus One. Sucede lo mismo con Oppenheimer (2023), que lleva a la pantalla la biografía del científico plasmada…

“De acuerdo, pero aparte de la asistencia sanitaria universal, la regulación social de la economía, la educación gratuita… ¿qué hará por nosotros este nuevo comunismo? ¡Nada!”  (p. 256) La humanidad hoy enfrena amenazas desde diferentes direcciones de corte apocalíptico como el cambio climático, pandemias, la guerra, hasta la manipulación total biológica y mental del mismo ser humano. En consecuencia, las libertades ganadas en las luchas del pasado enfrentan nuevos peligros y ya no basta luchar…

  «Anyone who believes that the world can continue to grow indefinitely exponentially has either lost his mind or is an economist.» Kenneth E.Boulding In the last three years, a new interpretation of Marx has emerged: the idea of «degrowth communism» by Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito. The author has published three books so far, including his manifesto Capital in the Anthropocene (Penguin Random House, 2022), which has sold more than half a million copies in…

Hegel es un filósofo que sigue generando controversias a casi dos siglos de su fallecimiento. Durante décadas, innumerables autores han tratado de contraponérsele o de señalar que dio en el punto, pero no de manera adecuada y debe replantearse, tal como ejemplifica Marx y la llamada inversión hegeliana. En años recientes, existe un renacimiento del estudio de Hegel, y destacan una nueva serie de relecturas que, a diferencia de las anteriores, lo reinterpretan para situarlo…

In recent years, conspiracy theories have flourished all over the world. They have taken on important political dimensions by attracting certain sectors of the population. The current example par excellence is QAnon in the US, a group born of conspiracy theories that became a political support base for the right-wing government of Donald Trump, to the point of storming the Capitol in 2021 when he lost the presidential election. Conspiratorial explanations of reality are flourishing…

«It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism», this phrase by the Marxist Fredric Jameson and popularized by Slavoj Žižek is a critique of the dominant capitalist ideology and the failure of the left to build a vision that encourages social change. For the ideology of «capitalist realism,» as defined by Mark Fisher, capitalism is not only the dominant system, it is the only viable one, there are…