The Historical Materialism conference was proof, needed especially when the organised (British) left is in a fairly parlous state, that there are enormous amounts of non-organised but deeply politicised people capable of spending an entire three day Marxist conference talking, analysing and agitating on politics, economics and aesthetics without shouting at each other about who expelled who in 1973 or last week and the burning question of whether or not a defunct state was 'deformed' or not. There were, shockingly enough, more people there than expected, and more ideas than you'd find in a whole year of magazines that are 'interested in ideas', although they may be rather less palatable to advertisers.
My own small and fairly perfunctory contribution - I'm fully aware that discussions of 1920s architecture appear pretty fucking recherche in the midst of the current mess - is nonetheless posted up in full here, and if you want to encourage more discussion of 1920s architecture, well, it is taken from the unfinished thesis, so comments are especially welcome.
