The Longreads Blog

What Marx got right—and wrong—about capitalism: 

The most obvious mistake in his version of the world is to do with class. There is something like a classic Marxian proletariat dispersed through the world. But Marx foresaw that this proletariat would be an increasingly centralised and organised force: indeed, this was one of the reasons it would prove so dangerous to capitalism. By creating the conditions in which labour would be sure to organise and assemble collectively capitalism was arranging its own downfall. But there is no organised global conflict between the classes; there is no organised global proletariat. There’s nothing even close. The proletariat is queuing to get into Foxconn, not to organise strikes there, and the great danger facing China, which is in a sense where the world’s proletariat now is, is the inequality caused by fractures within the new urban proletariat and the rural poverty they’re leaving behind.

“Marx at 193.” — John Lanchester, London Review of Books

See more #longreads from John Lanchester

What it’s like to be one half of a couple where one partner is HIV positive, and the other is not:

We go to the mall and spend too much. We go to multiplexes and laugh at bad horror movies. We scrape by, for several months, on turkey sandwiches and canned soup and whatever meals we can eat with my parents. He offers good advice. He listens to me when I talk, which I’m not sure anyone I have ever dated or loved has ever really done. We, at times, have sex that is identical in every position and maneuver and duration as the time we had it before and yet we both, it seems, enjoy it just as much if not more. We have sex without worry.

“Odd Blood: Serodiscordancy, or, Life With an HIV-Positive Partner.” — John Fram, The Atlantic

See also: “Life After Death.” — Michael Harris, Walrus Magazine, Aug. 15, 2011

A former Dartmouth College fraternity member speaks out about rampant hazing and alcohol abuse at the Ivy League school. But reforming the frat culture might be too much for just one whistleblower: 

On January 25th, Andrew Lohse took a major detour from the winning streak he’d been on for most of his life when, breaking with the Dartmouth code of omertà, he detailed some of the choicest bits of his college experience in an op-ed for the student paper The Dartmouth. ‘I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,’ he wrote. He accused Dartmouth’s storied Greek system – 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three coed houses, to which roughly half of the student body belongs – of perpetuating a culture of ‘pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,’ as well as an ‘intoxicating nihilism’ that dominates campus social life. ‘One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth – one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men – is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,’ he said. ‘Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.’ Lohse concluded by recommending that Dartmouth overhaul its Greek system, and perhaps get rid of fraternities entirely.

“Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses.” — Janet Reitman, Rolling Stone

See also: “Confessions of an Opium Seeker.” — Nick Tosches, Vanity Fair, Sept. 1, 2000

A blow-by-blow account of a political negotiation gone wrong. President Obama and Republican House speaker John Boehner came close to a deal last July that would cut federal spending and bring in billions in new revenue. But a series of missteps led to its demise:

From Boehner’s perspective, it’s not hard to see why he came away feeling Obama betrayed him. ‘He had to have known that this was going to set my hair on fire,’ Boehner told me when we sat together in his office on the first day of March. He was seated in a leather chair by a marble fireplace, his cigarette smoldering in an ashtray at his side. Three aides sat nearby.

‘You have to understand,’ he went on, ‘there were hours and hours of conversation, and he would tell me more about my political situation than I ever would think about it, all right? So when you come in and all of a sudden you want $400 billion more — he had to have known!’ Boehner shook his head, as if he was still puzzled by it all.

“Obama vs. Boehner: Who Killed the Debt Deal?” — Matt Bai, The New York Times Magazine

See more #longreads from Matt Bai

Featured Publisher: San Francisco Magazine. See their stories on the ‘female Mark Zuckerberg,’ California foreclosures, a woman in a witness protection program, plus more on their #longreads page.

Clarke, who served three presidents as counterterrorism czar, believes that the United States was probably behind the cyberattack on Iran—and the U.S. is now vulnerable to having it turned back against it:

‘I think it’s pretty clear that the United States government did the Stuxnet attack,’ he said calmly.

This is a fairly astonishing statement from someone in his position.

‘Alone or with Israel?’ I asked.

‘I think there was some minor Israeli role in it. Israel might have provided a test bed, for example. But I think that the U.S. government did the attack and I think that the attack proved what I was saying in the book [which came out before the attack was known], which is that you can cause real devices—real hardware in the world, in real space, not cyberspace—to blow up.’

“Richard Clarke on Who Was Behind the Stuxnet Attack.” — Ron Ronsenbaum, Smithsonian

See more longreads on cyber security

A former Major League Baseball No. 1 draft pick battles alcoholism. He’s now in jail, charged with three felonies: 

In a sport where alcohol plays such a massive part in all social settings—on the same day Bush was arrested, Boston reliever Bobby Jenks, another player with alleged alcohol issues, was charged with a hit-and-run DUI as well—there was a great story in Bush’s continued sobriety, one to tell when he finally arrived in the big leagues. Like Josh Hamilton, another former top overall pick who struggled with addiction, Bush’s successes were redemptive, even inspiring to addicts who fight to stay clean for even a day or a week. During a two-hour conversation last spring, Bush detailed the goriest times of his life, the lowest of lows, sure that talking about them would prevent their recurrence.

‘If you want to hear the whole story, I can give it to you,’ he said. ‘It might take a while.’

“The Tragic Fall of Matt Bush.” — Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports

Previously: “How Lenny Dykstra Got Nailed.” — David Epstein, Sports Illustrated

Confronting a letter writer who fears he may be too ugly for a romantic relationship:

This, sweet pea, is where we must dig.

You will never have my permission to close yourself off to love and give up. Never. You must do everything you can to get what you want and need, to find ‘that type of love.’ It’s there for you. I know it’s arrogant of me to say so, because what the hell do I know about looking like a monster or a beast? Not a thing. But I do know that we are here, all of us — beasts and monsters and beauties and wallflowers alike — to do the best we can. And every last one of us can do better than give up.

“Dear Sugar: Beauty and the Beast.” — Dear Sugar, The Rumpus, (2010)

See more #longreads from Dear Sugar

Life on the job with a team of nuclear divers. As nuclear power plants age, they require more upkeep—and much of that work can happen underwater:

Last March, a tsunami hit Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, leading to a disastrous series of reactor meltdowns. The consequences were immediate. Germany vowed to phase out nuclear power, and other countries spoke of following suit. In the U.S., the nuclear-energy renaissance was left suspended in time. But even as its future remains uncertain, nuclear energy remains an indisputable part of our present. And as our power plants continue aging with no viable replacements, the challenges facing the nuclear industry will only continue to grow. So will the potential for another disaster. The threat of radiation poisoning hangs over everyone who works at or lives near a nuclear plant, but no one more than the divers, who literally swim in the stuff.

“Swimming on the Hot Side.” — David Goodwillie, Popular Science

See also: “The Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age.” Ron Ronsenbaum, Slate, Feb. 28, 2011

Nieman Storyboard’s “Why’s This So Good” explores what makes classic narrative nonfiction stories worth reading.

This week: Tim Carmody examines Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Ketchup Conundrum,” which was originally published in The New Yorker’s Food Issue in Sept. 2004:

Note: I can’t stand ketchup. Any ketchup. I think it’s disgusting, and always have. I was averse to it as a kid, and unlike almost every other one of my wide list of childhood prohibited foods, it never made it off that list. But I am riveted by the story of ketchup regardless, because Gladwell’s offered me a route, through history, science, and the words of men and women here and now, to understand these odd human beings around me who love the stuff.

“Why’s This So Good?” No. 35: Malcolm Gladwell on Ketchup