To perpetuate the kind of elitist control of society, where 1% if the population controls more than 50% of the wealth, yes, Capitalism is more suited than Feudalism. Humans are always confusing their culture for nature, though, so economic systems being the product of cultures, it is inevitable that we will assume the socio-economics are … Continue reading Humans Always Confuse Culture for Nature

Capitalism is not more natural to humans than let us say Feudalism. Feudalism is not more organic than Communism or varieties of Socialism. Capitalism and Feudalism serve different social ends, if not because of this, different social needs for those whose ends are not directly or principally served. A society develops the system it needs … Continue reading Capitalism is not More Natural

This journal, with its pages of Essays and its blog, where some of the essays are initially worked out, expresses the views of its author, JVR, who is also the Publishing Editor, sometimes referred to as the Editor-in-Chief. The essays are social and political commentary, although not primarily or ultimately. They may be personal or … Continue reading More About Us

Where does this journal take us, this literary journal, this review of the literary essay, in some places cached as The Essay Review and in others boxed as The Falling Leaf Review, formerly The Essay Review? Where then does this review go, arrive, take us . . . clearly into the world of thinking as … Continue reading From the Editor: About Us at The Falling Leaf Review

The Falling Leaf Review is managed as a critical journal, and the writing is in the tradition of essay writing as inherited through a nearly five hundred year old legacy begun with Montaigne. I don't want to debate the merits of this tradition, nor do I want to defend Western Civilization as it seems to … Continue reading To the Breach Once More

The Falling Leaf Review is a literary web journal dedicated to the literary essay. I have expressed as much in other entries, here in the blog and elsewhere in the Pages.  There is one I recall, an essay in which I outline the guiding metaphysics of this literary journal, originally called The Essay Review (and … Continue reading From the Editor (4/15/15): More About Us

Humanism is an idea, it is an ideal; it should remain a goal; it has been a tradition understood and cherished by the Publishing Editor. What has not been abandoned in these pages is a commitment to this tradition of Humanism, uppercase 'H' imperative. It is in its pages that this journal needs to be … Continue reading From the Editor (4/14/15): A Note on The Pages of The Falling Leaf Review

Last year was the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. The Nineteenth century did not close with the coming of 1900; it came crashing down in the abyss that was the First World War. The politics of that prior century extended into the next, the 20th, and brought about the … Continue reading The Gravity of the First World War

A world without viniculture is not a world I would prefer to live in. The world does present a choice of life with wine or life without wine. Perhaps if I had never had wine, this question might not come up. I do know Italians and Frenchmen for whom wine holds no special place, has … Continue reading Civilization and Wine

Pornography is sexually explicit material intended to elicit erotic responses rather than aesthetic or emotional ones. This is not a judgement against eroticism, nor is it to imply that aesthetic or emotional responses are always preferable when sexually explicit material is the message.  Pornography, though, is not limited to the representation of sexuality. We like … Continue reading Off Stage On Stage

What was Freudian analysis but the Totalitarianism of the mind. Anything anti-objective, anything arational, is attacked by Freudianism. Freudian analysis systematizes western bourgeois mentality and presents it as human. What was Marxist analysis of history but the incubation of Totalitarianism in society. Marx himself was an anachronism, being Stalinist in his personal relationships before Stalin. … Continue reading Totalitarian?

The duality of public and private space, public and private selves with a many-selves Self has been shattered. Am I too quick to conclude hyperbolically? Overstatement and understatement are broad and contingent categories; they are often mutual and reciprocal in their intensities in spite of their broadness; their dynamic energies have co-influence. The bull's eye … Continue reading Public and Private

I Without being a Marxist, I can say that virtually everything about Capitalism is obscene. I can say this without concluding that Capitalism is in itself evil. I am not going to venture an analysis of socio-economic systems. (I will repeat this in Part II.) I do not assent to Capitalism being an evil, nor … Continue reading How Capitalism is the Metaphysics of Obscenity; a Diatribe

Without being a Marxist, I can say that virtually everything about Capitalism is obscene. I can say this without concluding that Capitalism is in itself evil. I am not going to venture an analysis of socio-economic systems. I do not assent to Capitalism being an evil, nor do I agree that it is invariably good, … Continue reading Without Being a Marxist

I have to get back to my biography of Tennessee Williams. I haven't been in it since before we left for Philadelphia. What's it been now--almost a month of not reading it. I have read in the meantime other things, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Anne Sexton, Stefan Zweig, Lawrence Sterne--a few chapters of Tristam Shandy? Rereading. I … Continue reading Detained; or, Is There Such a Thing as Cubist Reading?

Duality is what it says. Dual is two. A duality is something in two; there are two parts, perhaps of one whole, but if os one whole, the sub-parts must be exclusive. When light can be said to maintain the properties of both wave and particle; this is duality. Duality focuses on the twoness of … Continue reading On Language: Duality Vs. Dichotomy

Without being a Marxist, I can say that virtually everything about Capitalism is obscene. I can say this without concluding that Capitalism is in itself evil. I am not going to venture an analysis of socio-economic systems. I do not assent to Capitalism being an evil, nor do I agree that it is invariably good, … Continue reading Capitalism, Obscene

We like to make more out of the alleged mystery of language than is worthwhile pursuing, that is, worth the while of any intelligent person. Good Friday is Good because everyone who is native t0 the English Language knows that the antonym of the word 'evil' is good. The translators of Nietzsche understood this when they placed the … Continue reading Good Friday

We have a professional military in America of a nearly incomparable size, that is, greater than almost all nations with the exceptions perhaps of China and India. This professional military, even when many are career soldiers and might presumably retire from active service without entering the job market, is a feeder trainer of many bureaucrats … Continue reading In Itself American: Beta

Yes, it was and remains true today what Jefferson warned us about more than two hundred years ago: banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Banks are more dangerous to our lives and welfare (not food stamps) than terrorists or other nations or fanatical ideologies. Financial institutions are banking institutions the way KFC … Continue reading Banks