Jackson Rising Review

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We invite readers to consider the following book review of Jackson Rising, then please return here and offer us your comments—the Editors.

We know that the literal meaning of the word Utopia is no-place. It doubles as a word meaning a perfect world. Appropriately, the Latin American literary giant, Eduardo Galeano, who came from the continent which has gifted the world so many of this and last century’s attempts to reach the unreachable, gave us the very best spin on the word. Utopia lay always “at the horizon.” “What then, is the purpose of utopia?” Galeano asked. “It is to cause us to walk.”

Utopia, Galeano knew, was nowhere, except in our dreams. It was a reverie. In contrast to the no-place of Utopia, struggle is terrestrial. It starts somewhere, and advances elsewhere, but is always grounded in place, even if with eyes fixed on the far horizon. This rootedness has often been a line of division between leftists in the Global North and South – whether the place in question is that of nation, land, or ecology. The agrarian question, the environmental question, and the national question are only disentangled with difficulty, and often only in thought. In the Global South, struggle often interweaves them into one piece of historical cloth. Where does a national question of liberating the land end and the agrarian question of land redistribution begin? Where does equitable land distribution end and sustainable farming begin? And where does the fight for sustainable farming end and the fight for national control over farming technologies, macro-economic architecture, and, increasingly, farmland itself begin?

A Socialist Southern Strategy
in Jackson

By Max Ajl

	click here to comment We invite readers to consider the following book review of Jackson Rising, then please return here and offer us your comments—the Editors. We know that the literal meaning of the word Utopia is no-place. It doubles as a word meaning a perfect world. Appropriately, the Latin American literary giant, Eduardo Galeano, who came from the continent which has gifted the world so many of this and last century’s attempts to reach the unreachable, gave us the very best spin on the word. Utopia lay always “at the horizon.” “What then, is the purpose of utopia?” Galeano asked. “It is to cause us to walk.” Utopia, Galeano knew, was nowhere, except in our dreams. It was a reverie. In contrast to the no-place of Utopia, struggle is terrestrial. It starts somewhere, and advances elsewhere, but is always grounded in place, even if with eyes fixed on the far horizon. This rootedness has often been a line of division between leftists in the Global North and South – whether the place in question is that of nation, land, or ecology. The agrarian question, the environmental question, and the national question are only disentangled with difficulty, and often only in thought. In the Global South, struggle often interweaves them into one piece of historical cloth. Where does a national question of liberating the land end and the agrarian question of land redistribution begin? Where does equitable land distribution end and sustainable farming begin? And where does the fight for sustainable farming end and the fight for national control over farming technologies, macro-economic architecture, and, increasingly, farmland itself begin? READ MORE at: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/06/05/a-socialist-southern-strategy-in-jackson/ (This is a link to the website of Viewpoint Magazine where this piece first appeared) click here to comment

A Socialist Southern Strategy in Jackson

By Max Ajl

A Socialist Southern Strategy
in Jackson