Andy Battle
is a historian and an editor with Common Notions.
The Critique of Value at Belshazzar’s Feast:
A Review of Anselm Jappe’s The Writing on the Wall
By Andy Battle
In the years since the 2008 economic crisis, renewed interest in Marx and Marxism has begotten interest in heterogeneous varieties that in one way or another violate the framework of the “traditional,” “official,” or “orthodox” Marxism that underpinned the workers' movement in Europe and state socialism in the countries of the Eastern bloc.
Back to the Future: On Eric Adams’s New York
By Andy BattleEight months in, the contours of an Eric Adams mayoralty are gradually emerging. An Adamsite New York—“my city,” in the words of a mayor whose fondness for the first-person possessive has become a calling card—is one that appears poised to reverse even the limited departures from the playbook of the post-fiscal crisis era realized during the de Blasio administration.
American Factory
By Andy BattleAmerican Factory, directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert in 2019, begins with scenes of hope. In 2008, General Motors shut its factory in Moraine, Ohio, just south of Dayton. Nearly 2,500 auto-workers lost their jobs. Counting workers in ancillary local industries, the jobless toll rose to 10,000. When Fuyao, a Chinese auto glass maker, announced in 2014 that it would take over the old GM plant and employ 800, the reaction was relief.
