links for 2009-10-14

• October 14, 1939
  Extremely heavy rain all night & in the morning. Cleared up a little in the afternoon. Began digging patch by rhubarb, otherwise impossible to do much out of doors.
• Gopal Balakrishnan: Speculations on the Stationary State
  A crisis occurs sometimes lasting for decades. This exceptional duration means that incurable structural contradictions have revealed themselves and that despite this the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself are making every effort to cure them within certain limits and to overcome them. These incessant and persistent efforts (since no social formation will concede that it has been superseded) form the terrain of the conjunctural, and it is upon this terrain that the opposition organizes.
  (tags: politics economics marxism)