Aaron Wistar

Associate Editor @beaconpressbks. Words in @jacobin, @LAReviewOfBooks, @curaffairs, and elsewhere.

[Aaron Wistar @aaronwistar]

Scammers have been impersonating me, trying to get authors attention. Please don’t take the bait!

[Phenomenal World @phenomenalworld]

“American structural power had endured not despite, but because of the doomsayers.”

In AMERICAN POWER, Tim Barker examines discourses of “declinism” and the US security establishment.

[dylan saba @shaabiranks]

Banger from the inimitable Tim Barker

[Rosemary Kelanic @RKelanic]

New reporting from Reuters indicates that Israel has issued evacuation orders covering 20% of Lebanon, far beyond the "buffer zone" it previously announced to the Litani River.

More than half of the evacuation orders were *north* of Litani.

Gaza tactics in Lebanon.

[Aaron Wistar @aaronwistar]

https://t.co/Wv2p9NNaAX

[Aaron Wistar @aaronwistar]

Tim Barker evaluating Samuel Huntington’s argument that “The United States is unlikely to decline so long as its public is periodically convinced that it is about to decline.”

[Louis-Philippe Rochon @Lprochon]

Congratulations to Giuliano Yajima for being this year's winner of the Joan Robinson Prize, @ReviewofPE , for best article published in 2025 by a young scholar.

His paper can be found here:

https://t.co/RF20rPho1Y

[Brad Lander @bradlander]

Ilana Glazer and I are both proud Jewish New Yorkers who believe unapologetically that our safety is inextricably bound up with that of our neighbors, including Palestinians. And that AIPAC and the candidates they support aren’t making any of us safer or freer.

[Alex Colston @enoughformethx]

There are three things that are important to mention in all of this:

1) Ben-Gvir should not be seen as scapegoat. The Israel Prison Service is a tortuous nightmare with or without him.

2) What happened to us at Ashdod is negligible compared to what Palestinians endure every day

[Annie? Rauwerda? @anniierau]

"why use google?" webpage from 1999

[Adam Nathaniel Furman @adamnfurman]

It isnt well known, but the Monadnock building, Chicago’s masonry skyscraper (still the tallest load-bearing brick or masonry building ever constructed) was intended 2 be constructed from a polychromatic gradient of bricks from deep brown at the base, 2 bright yellow at its crown

[alex bronzini-vender @alexbronzini]

Nothing gets past this guy

[npj @TiltingatM3]

Schumpeter in a nut shell:

— Capitalism forces “rationalization” and the rationalist worldview, which just ends in an almost nihilistic skepticism that corrodes everything traditional that it touches: in particular “family life” and the aristocracy.

— The traditional bourgeoisie aren’t utilitarian individualists, they’re glory-seeking lineage-makers; the only reason they accumulate so much property is so their dynasties will outcompete other bourgeois dynasties in their preferred measure of prestige (money). Once women realize that traditional family values are bullshit (thanks to the rationalist individualism capitalism disperses) the lineage-making stops, and therefore so too does the most powerful reason for endless excess accumulation.

— The dispersion of capital ownership via the new corporate form will dim the bourgeoisie’s passionate defense of private property; corporate managers takeover the old heroic entrepreneur’s functions so it’s no longer that fun or glorious anyway. Bourgeoisie “can’t say boo to a goose.”

— The aristocracy was the necessary bulwark against rising socialist tide because they had the “habit of command” required to put down the street ruffians back in their place. Rationalist skepticism gets rid of that bulwark too.

— Enlightenment and mass education over produces “intellectuals” as a class, who are habitually disgruntled and instinctively attracted to the idea of rational planning. The bigger this group gets, and the more resentful they get about their lack of proper recognition in a world where money is the metric of prestige, the more they’ll go for capitalism’s throat.

In schematic form:

Capitalism —> rationalism/individualism

—> decline of family values + (rise of corporate form —> dispersion and devaluation of property + automation of entrepreneurship) —> bourgeoisie gives up

—> aristocracy gets axed and removed as a private property defender

—> overproduction of intellectuals, who are structurally predisposed to be socialists, take over the all the available ideological space and overwhelm state actors, bending their instincts towards socialism too

Capitalism doesn’t fail for economic reasons—economically, it could go on forever; the Marxists and radical Keynesians are wrong about that—it fails because capitalism produces a culture and sociology inimical to itself.

[dylan saba @shaabiranks]

@enoughformethx What’s actually happening is some parts of the left are trying to organize the Democratic Party towards reform. I know probably 1 guy trying to do right entryism. Seems to me like the furor about left entryism on the right is really a displaced debate about the first thing

[Aaron Wistar @aaronwistar]

As someone who once bought and did not read this book, I approve this message

[Bathhouse Agitator @gusselsprouts]

more people should read this extremely intimidating and challenging book

[jon repetti @pourfairelevide]

Nobody of my generation is writing in English with this combination of intellectual ambition and style. Missouri is the best of us. Vivisectors is a must-read if you care about where the novel is going.

[Kersplebedeb @kersplebedeb]

(NEW!) The Paris Commune: A Global History

https://t.co/tl7f5020iG

The Paris Commune as world revolutionary event and laboratory for republican and socialist ideas.

[Nate Holdren @n_hold]

No one is talking about the large numbers of Marxist university professiors who pretend that listening to audiobooks is actually reading while opposing the construction of The People's Data Centers because they're all PMC sellouts and I am SICK of it - my latest in Compact

[Melissa Wear @MelissaMWear]

The Pope should release an encyclical about the search function in Outlook.

[Aaron Wistar @aaronwistar]

US overreach with sanctions and tariffs has pushed adversaries into hardening their financial systems, accelerated the development of substitutes for American products, and forced allies into self-sacrificial choices while offering them nothing in return, says Quinn Slobodian.