Aug 12, 2022 - An armed man wearing body armor tried to break into the FBI Cincinnati field office Thursday morning, leading to a police pursuit and a lengthy standoff with law enforcement near Wilmington, Ohio. The man was eventually shot and killed by officers.

State troopers identified the man Friday morning as Ricky W. Shiffer, 42, of Columbus.

Here's what we know so far about the incident:

Law enforcement officials told the Associated Press Shiffer was believed to have been present at the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6 last year. Shiffer was not charged in relation to the insurrection, according to a USA TODAY effort to track those prosecutions, and does not appear in a Justice Department index of the prosecutions.

Although a possible motive for the breach has not been released, the incident came a day after FBI director Christopher Wray warned of online threats against agents and the Justice Department after the agency searched former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

"Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others," Wray said in a statement released Thursday after the fatal standoff. "Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans."

A USA TODAY review of online postings by an account in the name "Ricky Shiffer" shows the account had recently posted angry reactions to news of the FBI search. 

The same account posted during or just after the incursion at the FBI, appearing to describe the man's efforts.

"Well, I thought I had a way through bulletproof glass, and I didn't. If you don't hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I., and it'll mean either I was taken off the internet, the F.B.I. got me, or they sent the regular cops while"

The post, time-stamped 9:29 a.m. Eastern time, apparently ended mid-sentence. 

The Montgomery County Coroner's Office is expected to perform an autopsy Friday, according to Enquirer media partner Fox19. The coroner's office there provides contractual autopsy services for Clinton County.

The area near Center and Smith roads was closed for hours during a standoff Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022, in Clinton County, Ohio, after an armed man tried to breach the FBI's Cincinnati office and fled north on the highway.

Around 9 a.m. Thursday, a man wearing body armor attempted to breach the visitor-screening facility at the FBI building in Sycamore Township. After an alarm and response by special agents, the man fled north on Interstate 71.

Law enforcement sources told NBC News that a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle entered the FBI building and fired a nail gun toward personnel before he fled.

A state trooper spotted Shiffer's vehicle, a white Ford Crown Victoria, near a rest area on northbound I-71 in Warren County, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

The trooper attempted a traffic stop shortly before 9:40 a.m., but Shiffer continued to flee north. A suspected gunshot was fired from inside Shiffer's car, the patrol said. Shiffer then exited onto Ohio 73 and traveled east.

After that, he headed north and came to a stop around 9:53 a.m. on Smith Road near Van Trees Road, the patrol said. Shiffer exited his vehicle and exchanged gunfire with officers on two occasions. The standoff began after Shiffer took cover behind his car, officials said.

Shiffer was pursued by federal agents, state troopers and local law enforcement, according to a statement from the FBI.

Clinton County Emergency Management issued a lockdown for all buildings within a 1-mile radius of Smith and Center roads. People in the area were told to lock their doors and remain inside as the standoff unfolded.

During the long standoff, law enforcement officials attempted to negotiate with him and take him into custody. Non-lethal tactics were used, but those proved unsuccessful as well, the patrol said.

Troopers said Shiffer raised a firearm toward police, and shots were fired back by officers at the scene. He was pronounced deceased at the scene around 3:40 p.m.

The FBI says its inspection division is actively investigating the shooting. Officials did not report any injuries to law enforcement or bystanders.

The FBI headquarters in Sycamore Township, Thursday, August 11, 2022. Earlier, a man, dressed in body armor, tried to get through the visitor screening facility. 

The FBI's Cincinnati field office is located at 2012 Ronald Reagan Drive in Sycamore Township. It covers 48 counties throughout central and southern Ohio, including Brown, Butler, Clermont, Clinton, Hamilton and Warren counties, according to the bureau’s website.

The office oversees five satellite offices in Athens, Cambridge, Columbus, Dayton and Portsmouth.

First opened in 1913, the bureau’s headquarters in Cincinnati does counter-terrorism work and investigates white-collar crime, drug trafficking and child pornography, the website states.

Enquirer reporter Brook Endale and Enquirer media partner Fox19 contributed to this story. ...Read More

August 11, 2022 - United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday renewed his plea for an end to all military activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine after it was reported that fresh shelling has damaged multiple radiation sensors.

Any damage to Europe's largest nuclear power plant could lead to "catastrophic consequences" in the region and beyond, Guterres said in a statement issued ahead of an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss security at the site.

Ukraine and Russia should proceed with "common sense and reason" to avoid doing anything "that might endanger the physical integrity, safety, or security" of the sprawling facility, he said.

"Urgent agreement is needed at a technical level on a safe perimeter of demilitarization to ensure the safety of the area," he added.

Guterres' comments came after Energoatom, Ukraine's state-owned nuclear power enterprise, said that missiles exploded near one of the plant's six reactors, damaging "several radiation sensors" and causing "extensive smoke."

As they did last weekend amid shelling that Guterres denounced as "suicidal," Kyiv and Moscow blamed each other for the new strikes at the plant, which is being operated by Ukrainian technicians under the supervision of Russian soldiers who have controlled the region since March.

According to Reuters, which was unable to verify either side's account:

Reiterating a demand that Guterres and other officials made just days ago, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday called for the International Atomic Energy Agency, a Vienna-based watchdog, to send inspectors to examine the safety situation at the plant as soon as possible.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, meanwhile, told Reuters that Zaporizhzhia "is as of today not only in the hands of the enemy, but in the hands of uneducated specialists who could potentially allow for a tragedy to happen."

"Of course, it's difficult to even imagine the scale of the tragedy which could come into effect if Russians continue their actions there," he said. "We have to prepare for any scenario. The state emergency services together with the interior ministry and the region's ministry is discussing different scenarios that are needed, including the question of evacuations."

Linda Pentz Gunter, an international specialist at Beyond Nuclear, warned earlier this week that "if even just one of the six operational reactors [at Zaporizhzhia] suffered catastrophic damage and released its radioactive inventory, we are talking about a humanitarian disaster that would dwarf Chernobyl."

Radioactive contamination from that 1986 nuclear accident in what is now Ukraine left an area of more than 1,000 square miles uninhabitable and caused the illnesses and deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands of people.

According to experts from Beyond Nuclear and elsewhere, reactors at Zaporizhzhia "contain far more radioactivity, both in the working reactors and in the irradiated fuel pools, than was present at the relatively new Chernobyl Unit 4 when it exploded." ...Read More

In a rare bipartisan congressional agreement, the U.S. House and Senate passed the CHIPS and Science Act last week, a significant step toward enacting substantial jobs and competitiveness legislation.

The bill authorizes $50 billion to bolster semiconductor research and manufacturing. This included more funding to create at least 20 regional technology hubs and to support manufacturing education, training, and jobs, a feature of the bill hailed explicitly by manufacturing industry advocates around the country. There is also language that calls for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to receive record investments in STEM--Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. This will build their science education capacity and ability to apply for massive government research grants more successfully. 

One such group is the Manufacturing Renaissance Campaign (mrcampaign.net). MRC includes leaders from labor, business, environmental justice, public policy, and community development. The campaign worked for nearly two years with the White House, Congress, and community stakeholders to ensure the inclusion of some of these provisions in the bill. Andrew Stettner, MRC leader and Director of Workforce Policy and Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation, remarked in a recently released statement:

MRC pressed leaders in Congress to invest heavily in rebuilding the U.S. manufacturing infrastructure. They first forwarded these ideas in the Manufacturing Reinvestment Corporation Act (HR 5124), introduced by Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky in August of last year. Two key features of that bill that didn't make it into the CHIPs Act, First was investing in the creation of 30 manufacturing renaissance councils around the country where local stakeholders would help direct industry investment. The second was making provisions to help people of color identify and acquire manufacturing companies whose owners have no succession plans.

"We are very encouraged by the passage of the CHIPs Act, but after nearly two years of vigorously advocating for bottom-up investments in inclusive manufacturing, there is more work to be done," said Erica Swinney, executive director of Manufacturing Renaissance. This renowned Chicago-based non-profit promotes manufacturing eco-system expansion.

"Our coalition is very encouraged that members of Congress included some of our language. While it didn't go quite far enough, this sets the stage for organizations that serve disadvantaged communities to secure millions for programs in their local community that can directly lead to greater inclusion in manufacturing growth, including technology and HBCUs," added Swinney.

Andy Stettner also acknowledges key issues still needing attention: "Unfortunately, the legislation is missing important pieces. It does not include a part of the America COMPETES Act to reauthorize the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program. This omission would deny unemployment benefits and employment services to tens of thousands of workers yearly who lose their jobs due to globalization. This program expired on July 1, 2022, and Congress must find a new vehicle to reauthorize it."

The bill's massive investment in support for U.S. technology, specifically semi-conductor manufacturing, is obvious. But even senior members of the Biden/Harris administration note that more needs to be done.

"We used to make 40% of the world's chips. We make about 12% now," Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said during a recent virtual roundtable with President Biden. "The reality is, while we have invested nothing to spur domestic chip manufacturing, China has invested more than $150 billion to build their own domestic capacity. So we're very much behind."

With manufacturing representing just 11% of US GDP—less than a third of its position 50 years ago--Manufacturing Renaissance Campaign members insist that more needs to be done. 

"The nation is experiencing a skills gap in the manufacturing sector. Employers can't find talent, and there is a terribly inadequate pipeline to prepare that talent, particularly among the economically disadvantaged and communities of color," said Lee Wellington, Executive Director of Brooklyn-based Urban Manufacturing Alliance.

According to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), workers in U.S. manufacturing earned $92,832 on average, including pay and benefits, in 2020. "Are you believing the old and tired narrative that the manufacturing sector is declining? There were 856,000 manufacturing job openings in December, and by 2030, 4 million manufacturing jobs will likely be needed. But most communities of color don't have access to the training they need to get those jobs" added Dr. Michael Bennett, workforce scholar and President of the African American Leadership and Policy Institute in Chicago.

Progressives who promote more investment in proactively addressing the environment also cautiously applaud the bill's support for green technology.

"The bill we worked on with Congresswoman Schakowsky fostered a diverse workforce with the advanced skills and knowledge to design, manufacture, build and maintain new energy systems and their components. All these are required for the lighter eco-footprint production and transportation systems of the future," said long-time environmental and community technology activist Carl Davidson. "There is a long way to go, but the CHIPs bill is a step forward." 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. praised the CHIPs bill saying, "it will go down as one of the major bipartisan achievements of this Congress, along with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act," many industry advocates like the Manufacturing Renaissance Campaign say it's a good start, but there is much more to be done.

"Let's put even greater focus on education, training, and opportunities in manufacturing," said Ronald Damper, founder and President of Damron, the first African-American-owned company to be a national supplier to McDonald's. "Let's put the country back in the global manufacturing driver's seat—only this time, everyone should be on the bus."

Dan Swinney, founder of Manufacturing Renaissance, added, "It's time for a new paradigm in America where an inclusive, "high road" U.S. manufacturing and industrial policy restores the U.S. as an innovator and global economic leader. That's what we need to put Americans of all kinds into middle-income jobs or better, and rebuild disinvested communities." "We were in the conversation to get the CHIPs bill right, and we will continue to advocate for even more," he concluded. ...Read More

Erwin: It was great. It really was. Yeah, it’s really nice.

Erwin: Yeah. And I also saw a certain amount of unstuckness that I don’t see in white society.

Erwin: Not so uptight or stiff. In other words, because of the way they have been treated by the larger part of society, they see through much white pretense. And it was nice of my parents who let me bring Baby Dodds out to the house and Glover Compton, an old piano player who knew Jelly Roll Morton. I’d go down and pick them up on the South Side and bring them up to Glencoe.

Erwin: Right. Well, that’s understandable.

Erwin: The reason that’s understandable is they (Black musicians) have already experienced the blues and there’s no reason that they have to experience the blues anymore. So, they passed it on to another generation inadvertently.

Ivan: Yeah... ...Read More

In a much-discussed 2016 essay for the New York Review of Books, Masha Gessen offered this prescient advice about understanding the realities of fascism and other forms of authoritarianism:

During his CPAC speech, as reported by the Guardian, Orbán summoned up centuries-old lies about a Jewish cabal that secretly runs the world and manipulates Black and brown people, along with unwitting "leftists," into doing its bidding:

In a 2019 essay for the New Yorker, Margaret Talbot explored the horrific resonance that connects the pro-fascist "America First" movement of the 1930s and early '40s to Trumpism and the white right of the present day:

On Monday, the FBI searched Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, after obtaining a warrant from a judge. It has been reported that FBI agents recovered numerous boxes that may contain classified documents illegally taken from the White House. On Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that sources close to the investigation say some of those documents were related to national security matters, including U.S. nuclear weapons.

Predictably, Trump took to his Truth Social platform and issued a delusional edict, in which he again appeared to incite violence by his followers and proclaimed that he is the victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy:

Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook. ...Read More

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Photo: The Italian poster was created for Lamarr's 1946 World War II film, I Conspiratori (The Conspirators). Her image reflects the allure that led to her being called the “most beautiful woman in the world.” I Cospiratori (detail) by Luigi Martinati, c. 1940, National Portrait Gallery

By Alice George

Throughout her life, the Austrian-born Hedy Lamarr, known in the 1930s and 1940s for her smoldering performances on the silver screen, had complicated feelings about her gorgeous face. Her unparalleled beauty had made her the inspiration for two immortal cartoon beauties—Snow White and Catwoman—and in the 1940s, plastic surgery patients requested her profile more than any other. She would often claim that outward appearances were unimportant to her, but later in life, she became a repeated plastic surgery patient herself. She couldn’t bear to see her beauty fade.

That beauty is elegantly reproduced in a new acquisition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery honoring the actress. This Italian poster was created for her World War II film, Conspiratori (The Conspirators). Her image reflects the allure that led to her being called the “most beautiful woman in the world.”

However, there was much more to Hedy Lamarr than her stunning dark locks, translucent fair skin and sparkling green eyes. She was an ingenious inventor who planted a seed that would blossom into some of today’s most ubiquitous technology, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, cordless phones and cell phones. Her inventions were a part of a complicated life filled with contradictions and elusive truths that were not part of her film star persona.

Lamarr’s interest in invention had begun at age 5, when she dismantled a music box and reassembled it, and she never relinquished her curiosity. As an inventor, she worked with a partner—an eccentric composer named George Antheil. The pair worked mostly behind closed doors, and because Lamarr’s ghost-written autobiography doesn’t mention her inventions, further insights into her approach to the work are sadly missing. But inventor Carmelo “Nino” Amarena recalled speaking with Lamarr in 1997. “We talked like two engineers on a hot project,” Amarena said. “I never felt I was talking to a movie star, but to a fellow inventor.”

Disdaining the celebrity lifestyle, Hedy Lamarr concluded that “any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” Wikimedia Commons

Lamarr made her great breakthrough in the early years of World War II when trying to invent a device to block enemy ships from jamming torpedo guidance signals. No one knows what prompted the idea, but Antheil confirmed that it was Lamarr’s design, from which he created a practical model. They found a way for the radio guidance transmitter and the torpedo’s receiver to jump simultaneously from frequency to frequency, making it impossible for the enemy to locate and block a message before it had moved to another frequency. This approach became known as “frequency hopping.”

However, when Lamarr and Antheil offered their creation to the U.S. Navy, engineers rejected it, saying it was too cumbersome. During the mid-1950s, with the availability of lightweight transistors, the Navy shared Lamarr’s concept with a contractor assigned to create a sonobuoy, which could be dropped into the water from an airplane to detect submarines. That contractor and others over the years used Lamarr’s design as a springboard to bigger ideas. Although the patent belonging to Lamarr and Antheil did not expire until 1959, they never received compensation for use of their concept. In 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis, all U.S. ships on a blockade line around Cuba were armed with torpedoes guided by a “frequency-hopping” system.

Lamarr, who was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Vienna, later would deny her ancestry—even to her own children. Antheil’s memoir, Bad Boy of Music, reports that she initiated their effort to invent weapons for the Allies because “she did not feel comfortable sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state.” She often expressed contempt for the Nazis, some of whom had dined at her table when she was married to an Austrian munitions manufacturer, Fritz Mandl. She remembered that the Germans and other potential buyers discussed secret weapons at her home, but it is unclear whether she had access to these conversations. Among those who entered her home was Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. She later claimed that Adolf Hitler dined in her house—an assertion that is not accepted by her biographers because both she and her husband were Jews, which was why lower-ranking Nazis visited them at home rather than meeting in a more public place. She contended that her husband often consulted her about new weapons, and it is possible that these conversations sparked her interest in creating weaponry. Some have asserted that she stole the idea of “frequency hopping” from Mandl or his guests, but she denied it and no German weapons used the design.

Though years away from getting her U.S. citizenship, Lamarr also played a public role in bolstering the war effort by traveling to 16 cities in 10 days to sell $25 million in war bonds. She also started an MGM letter-writing campaign that generated 2,144 letters to servicemen and appeared at the Hollywood Canteen, where she signed autographs for off-duty GI Joes.

Many Americans knew about Lamarr’s six marriages, but few realized that she had the intelligence to be an inventor. Her patent on “frequency hopping” had expired before widespread implementation of the idea, but she lived long enough to see her brainstorm begin expanding into a vast industry late in the 20th century. In 1997, her work received recognition when she was honored with the Pioneer Award of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Although she never made money from any of her inventions, “frequency hopping” alone is estimated to be worth $30 billion. Frequency hopping is often a component of wireless communication systems that allows more users to communicate simultaneously with less signal interference. Multiple signals can employ the same frequency, and if the signal fails or is obstructed, it hops to another one. ...Read More

These titles will be released in 2022, but you can order them from Hard Ball Press just in time for the holidays!

Tune of the Week:  Rising Appalachia - Bring It On Home ... 5 minutes

“Belfast” is unquestionably Kenneth Branagh’s most personal film to date, but it’s also sure to have universal resonance. It depicts a violent, tumultuous time in Northern Ireland, but it does so through the innocent, exuberant eyes of a nine-year-old boy. And it’s shot in gentle black-and-white, with sporadic bursts of glorious color.

In recalling his youthful days in an insular neighborhood in the titular city, Branagh has made a film that’s both intimate and ambitious—his “Roma,” if you’ll forgive the inevitable comparison to Alfonso Cuarón’s recent masterpiece. That’s quite a balancing act the writer/director attempts to pull off, and for the most part, he succeeds. It’s hard not to be charmed by this love letter to a pivotal place and time in his childhood, and to the people who helped shape him into the singular cultural force he’d become. Long before the dedication that plays in front of the closing credits—“For the ones who stayed. For the ones who left. And for all the ones who were lost.”—we can feel Branagh’s wistful heart on his sleeve.

And yet, because we’re witnessing the events of the summer of 1969 from the perspective of a sweet child named Buddy—Branagh’s stand-in, played by the irrepressibly winsome Jude Hill—there can be an oversimplification of the upheaval at work, as well as an emotional distancing in the way the film is shot. We see and hear things the way Buddy does: in snippets and whispers, through open windows and cracked doors, down narrow hallways and across the cramped living room, where “Star Trek” always seems to be on the TV. (Haris Zambarloukos, who has shot several of Branagh’s films including “Cinderella” and “Murder on the Orient Express,” provides the evocative, black-and-white cinematography.) When a Protestant mob charges down his block as he’s playing make-believe in the middle of the street, trying to root out the neighboring Catholic families, the trash can lid he’d been using as a toy shield suddenly becomes a vital piece of protection against flying rocks.

This is the constant push-pull that serves as a through-line in “Belfast.” It’s a film that frequently feels at odds with itself, resulting in equal amounts of poignancy and frustration. Ultimately, though, the sincerity on display wins you over. You’d have to be made of stone otherwise, especially in the simple, quiet moments when Buddy learns valuable life lessons to the strains of Van Morrison. (Yes, the words feel cheesy as I’m typing them, but gosh darn it, that kid is adorable.) It’s a lovely touch that the girl Buddy has a crush on—a pig-tailed blonde who happens to be Catholic—also happens to be the smartest student in class, and the way he woos her inspires fond laughter.

Given Branagh’s longtime stature as an actor, it’s no surprise that he’s drawn warm, authentic performances from his top-tier, perfectly chosen cast. Within this modest, working-class, Protestant setting, Buddy views his parents as movie-star glamorous—larger-than-life as the actors in the pictures he yearns to see each weekend at the local movie house. Known to him (and to us) only as Ma and Pa, his mother (Caitriona Balfe) is elegant and feisty, while his father (Jamie Dornan) is charismatic and kindhearted. Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds have an effortless chemistry as his grandparents, teasing each other mercilessly from a place of deep love and affection and a lifetime of commitment—to each other, to this place. The scene in which they transition breezily from giving each other a hard time to dancing in the living room, Pop serenading Granny in her ear as he holds her close, is perhaps the film’s highlight.

It’s a brief respite from the growing danger that’s surrounding them, disrupting the feeling of camaraderie that’s connected families on this block for decades, regardless of their religious or political beliefs. Buddy struggles to understand The Troubles, as they’d come to be known, and entreats the grown-ups he trusts to enlighten him. These exchanges may seem cutesy but they hammer home the senselessness of the violence that tore this region apart for so long. They also affirm once again what astonishingly subtle actors Dench and Hinds are; the way they find nuance and heartache in simple platitudes is a marvel to behold. (And speaking of Marvel, Branagh inserts a brief but clever reference to his own role as a filmmaker shepherding along the MCU.)

Within the steady hum of the threat Buddy and his family face is an impossible decision: Do they stay in this neighborhood where they’ve lived their whole lives, where everyone knows everyone, or do they move somewhere safer and start over? Pa’s work has been taking him to England for weeks at a time as he tries to pay off his debts—maybe the whole family should just join him there? Or perhaps a city that’s idyllic but far away, like Vancouver or Sydney? The achingly romantic final shot signals their choice in a way that hits harder than any of the nostalgia that came before it. ...Read More

Fei Huang is Lecturer at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China, Beijing.

Shuang Liang is Research Fellow at the Center for Marx-Engels-Literature Research

As one of the most prestigious scholars in China who specialize in the study of Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) and Marxist philosophy, Lixin Han, Professor at Tsinghua University, first published Studies of the Paris Manuscripts: The Turning Point of Marx in Chinese in 2014. It brought him several top academic awards. The English edition in 2020 introduces Han’s work on Marx’s Paris Manuscripts to the wider world.

In contrast with the position taken by European and Japanese scholars such as Oizerman, Althusser and Hiromatsu, who believe Marx’s thought transition takes place in the German Ideology, Han aims to advance a new explanation of early Marx; namely, that it is in the Paris Manuscripts (Comments on James Mill in particular) that Marx accomplishes a transition from his early to his mature period. The mark thereof is the transition of Marx’s framework from individual to society, so that the explanatory principle of society shifts from man’s intrinsic elements to extrinsic economic relations, and this conversion eventually leads to the advent of historical materialism.

Based on his analysis of the First Paris Manuscript, Han argues that Marx’s concept of alienated labor is logically inconsistent, which shows that his thought is not mature at that time, and the main reason for the inconsistence is Feuerbach’s frame of self-alienation. Indeed, disregarding the moment of the subject’s return to itself in Feuerbach’s alienation framework, alienation leads to the loss of the self. However, its limitations are fully exposed when the concept is used to address social relations including the ‘other’ person or social relations among people.

These problems force Marx to realize that Feuerbach’s concept of alienation was not suitable for analyzing the relations of modern civil society, especially those of private property. Hegel’s view of alienation, which Marx criticizes for a long time, implies a possibility to penetrate the deep nature of modern civil society and unlock the mystery of private property. In the following Comments on James Mill and the Third Manuscript, Marx begins his transition from Feuerbach’s to the Hegel’s framework. Thus, he establishes his own theoretical model of alienation by critically absorbing Hegel’s concept of alienation.

Han believes that Marx’s main effort in the Paris Manuscripts is to reveal the nature of private property, showing that capitalist private property is ‘private property II’ (137), which refers to labor owned by capital, rather than ‘private property I’ (136), which refers to producer-owned products. The main task of the First Manuscript is to demonstrate the view that capital is the accumulation of other people’s labor. In the conclusion of the First Manuscript, Marx takes on two new assignments: first, to reveal the nature of private property from the perspective of the social relations between the owners of private ownership; second, to uncover the origin of alienated labor and private property from the perspective of history. Therefore, Marx positions the alienated labor theory in the field of commodity economic relations in the horizontal direction, thus opening up a field for the alienation of intercourse theory. At the same time, by guiding his examination of the origins of private property into a vertical, historical domain, Marx enters a theoretical level similar to his later theory of the primitive accumulation of capital.

After exploring Comments on James Mill in the Paris Manuscripts, Han points out a contrast between the First Manuscript and Comments on James Mill. In the First Manuscript, man’s essence is defined as the intrinsic essence of the individual’s living activity, namely free conscious activity, but in Comments on James Mill, man’s essence is construed as that of a communal being or social essence. If the former is to be considered as a bipolar subject-object relation, then the latter is a tripolar structure that includes the intersubjective relation besides the subject-object relation. The transition from the bipolar to the tripolar structure signifies Marx’s change of perspective from isolated individual to social relation. For this reason, Comments on James Mill indicates the ‘transition from early thought to maturity’ (215). In this sense, Han’s interpretation of Comments on James Mill shows the significance of the alienation of intercourse theory, which not only resolves the theoretical aporia of the First Manuscript and further promote Marx’s horizon to an unprecedented level, but also lays the ground for establishing Marx’s concept of society. It is through constructing the alienation of intercourse theory that Marx makes a deep analysis of civil society, which lays a foundation for the formation of his social concept and the establishment of historical materialism. Therefore, the alienation of intercourse theory is regarded by Han as the turning point of Marx’s thought.

From the Third Manuscript in the Paris Manuscripts, Han concludes that even though starting from praising Feuerbach’s criticism of Hegel, Marx finds the great significance of Hegel’s dialectics as a result, which even surprises Marx himself. Marx reveals the significance of the dialectics of labor in Hegel’s philosophy, reveals the evolution and alienation of the human self. Although Marx does not publicly denounce Feuerbach, the Third Manuscript already contained elements of the Theses on Feuerbach written in 1845. Han does not deny that Marx’s transition to communism is connected with Feuerbach’s materialism or humanism, but he emphasizes the influence of Hegel’s philosophy, especially the alienation-centered dialectics, on the young Marx. Han believes that all these facts show that Marx has already departed from Feuerbach and comprehensively adopted Hegel’s dialectic, and this critical theoretical reconstruction ‘signifies the formation of historical materialist methodology’ (340). That is Han’s conclusion after talking about all the major components of the Paris Manuscripts.

What does Han contribute in his book? The Paris Manuscripts is Marx’s important treatise on private property and civil society, which is Marx’s early attempt to combine political economy, classical German philosophy and the theory of communism. It is difficult to come up with a new interpretive framework for the Paris Manuscripts because previous researchers have offered a variety of different interpretation: for Lukács, the distinction between objectification and alienation; for Althusser, the break between ideology and science; for Hiromatsu, the leap from alienation theory to reification theory; for Mochizuki, civil society and alienation of intercourse.

Han tries to establish an interpretation framework and make his own contribution, including putting forward such paradigms as ‘from individual to society, from state to civil society, from Feuerbach to Hegel, from alienated labor to alienation of intercourse, logic of Sache selbst, and from subjective, intrinsic principle to objective, extrinsic principle’ (344). Han critically absorbs the perspectives and methods of Japanese Marxist researchers such as Mochizuki and Hiromatsu, and pays special attention to social relations. He takes the category of social relations as the coordinate system to explain Marx’s thought, and points out that the essence of Marx’s thought transition is the change from isolated individual to social relations, and this change comes from the critical absorption and innovation of Hegel’s thought and method.

How does Han’s work differ from other views? Different from the traditional mainstream view, Han analyzes Marx’s Paris Manuscripts from the perspective of social relations, and finds that the analysis of the First Manuscript is based on the subject-object relation of an isolated individual, while the analysis of Comments on James Mill is based on the social relations between private owners. This is not a whim of Han’s, but based on evidence from philological research over the last decades. In 1969, the Soviet scholar N. Lapin published a paper arguing that Comments on James Mill was of a higher ideological level than the First Manuscript. Japanese scholars at the same time found the same problem, and gradually formed a consensus in the Japanese academic circles on the order of writing: the First Manuscript ? Comments on James Mill ? the Second Manuscript ? the Third Manuscript. Han draws on the international achievements of philological research on the Paris Manuscripts, and his interpretation of the manuscripts follows this writing sequence. Han focuses on the argument from the perspective of intercourse alienation, and points out that the turning point of Marx’s thought is Comments on James Mill in the Paris Manuscripts, rather than the German Ideology as traditionally thought, which provides a new perspective for the academic research on Marx’s thought transition.

What are the characteristics of Han’s method? Han’s work embodies the combination of philology and philosophical theory. His argument not only draws on the achievements of philology related to the Paris Manuscripts since the 1960s, but also makes a rigorous argument from philosophical theory. These theoretical arguments include not only studies of Marx’s early works, but also discussions of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Jena Manuscripts. This work critically absorbs Hegel’s dialectics based on political economy and applies it to the study of the Paris Manuscripts, which thus opens up a way to interpret the Paris Manuscripts from the perspective of Hegel’s philosophy. Han’s aim is not to disguise Marx as Hegel, but to explain Marx on his own level, a level based on Hegel’s philosophy. In this book, Han advocates the research path of combining Marx’s philology research with Hegel’s theory research, which is of great significance for improving the traditional paradigm of early Marx research.

What arguments or inspirations might Han’s work cause? Han advances the study of Marx’s thought from both viewpoint and method, and at the same time prompts readers to think further about some questions: Which is of more significance to Marx’s thought transition, ‘practice (subject-object relation)’ or ‘social relations’? What role does the theory of alienation play in the changes in Marx’s thought throughout his life? What are the internal relations between Hegel’s dialectics and the establishment of historical materialism? What is the driving force of Marx’s turning from socialism to communism? It is believed that these questions would be better answered in future with the discovery of more philological evidence and further theoretical debates in the academic world.

5 August 2022 ...Read More