Laissez-faire Politics Thread - Praxis? I didn't play Deus Ex, sorry.

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https://twitter.com/Mike2020/status/1232056524681482240

https://twitter.com/Mike2020/status/1232056526145277953

[Pissy F Benny]

Will boot edge edge recreate the edstone too 

[Great Rumbler]

There's a whole Wikipedia page for that photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Miliband_bacon_sandwich_photograph

Why is he doing the Pete Buttigieg thing when he eats?

[team filler]

probably on some type of amphetamine tbh

[Joe Molotov]

There's a whole Wikipedia page for that photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Miliband_bacon_sandwich_photograph

the snack was put into the custody of Lord Wood, a senior shadow cabinet member

Sounds ominous.

[shosta]

paul krugman, thank you for upholding ML thought 

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/24/paul_krugman_richard_wolff_socialism_debate

he's still doing it

[benjipwns]

PAUL KRUGMAN: By the way, I don’t think — I don’t think the people who send me hate mail think — and I am the king of hate mail — think that I’m a centrist. Right? I’m for universal healthcare. I’m for deficit spending on infrastructure. I’m for universal child care. If that’s centrism, then, you know, let’s have it. By that standard, Denmark is centrist, right?

I am the king of hate mail

[shosta]

Have you seen the comments on his blog? There are few men so thoroughly reviled

[Tripon]

I know Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman are two different people, but I have a hard time separating them in my head. One of them wrote a book how an iPod was the technology of the future that I read when I was younger, and I thought this fucker must be astounding constantly with shit.

[OnlyRegret]

reading through the cuba stuff yields funny stuff

https://twitter.com/RafaelXofGod/status/1232381797352255492

https://twitter.com/RafaelXofGod/status/1232467654570463232

https://twitter.com/FeliciaFila202/status/1232462558096838657



 

https://twitter.com/SanaSaeed/status/1232127588904161281

 

[BIONIC]

@filler:

[Brehvolution]

Bernie never wrote love letters to kim jong un, believed putin when he said he didn't meddle in our elections, or let edrogan thugs beat on Americans on American soil.

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https://twitter.com/BTnewsroom/status/1232724636258963457

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[OnlyRegret]

smh at you commies not catching the most important bit of Das Kapital

[Flannel Boy]

From each according to his ability.

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/michacardenas/status/1233494860876931074

unbelievable.

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/CourtneySoliday/status/1233236833590562816

make it stahp

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[shosta]

https://monthlyreview.org/2020/03/01/hyman-minsky-at-100-was-minsky-a-communist/

MR publishing an article on Hyman Minsky's socialism...

[shosta]

https://twitter.com/profwolff/status/1234542990376480770

Big Dick Wolff

[OnlyRegret]

I've noticed an uptick of people taking the route of "no revolution and return to normalcy"
Like this usual suspect

https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1234675066886995968

This seems like generalized bougie clutching onto power phase of society, is there a specific term for it I just recall the description. I wanna read into it.

[OnlyRegret]

starting to read

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https://twitter.com/Tom_Fowdy/status/1235102396595888128

[OnlyRegret]

That book owns, probably helps to read Lenin's imperialism + first couple chapters of capital vol1 if u haven't cus a lot of the arguments follow from there imo

yeah, I'm at a loss at some points but it is presented/written such that the author actually intended for people to read it
bit depressing, poor Bangladeshis

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/Tom_Fowdy/status/1235102396595888128

So Tom is saying nothing would be any different except the lingo change?

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/TwinklingTania/status/1235297192757338113

[OnlyRegret]

thanks, just reading stuff on a whim, happening upon stuff and exploring what the rest of this board talks about

[OnlyRegret]

I see why you some of you clown on self-described socialists/communists at times
redistributing the value added revenue skimming to the local proles is not remotely internationalist labour solidarity

[shosta]

I posted this great meme once that captioned some Cultural Revolution artwork with "Stand with the workers of the third world! Seize the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund!" but I can't find it anymore :'(

[OnlyRegret]

I don't know what's going on at times but the book reads good.

I can recognize some well-placed sass

Bhagwati et al.’s emphasis on factor endowments opens the interest-ing  possibility  that  Bangladesh  may  be  overendowed  with  a  limitless  supply  of  people  desperate  for  work,  and  that  it  is  this  oversupply  that  explains  why  wages  are  so  low,  not  the  productivity  of  those  in  work.  This would imply that wages are depressed far below marginal produc-tivity,  and  gives  rise  to  a  notion  of  exploitation,  since  it  would  mean  that  Bangladeshi  workers  are  not  fully  compensated  for  their  product.  Bhagwati et al. are rescued from this dangerous notion by their impressive faith in Say’s law

[Crash Dummy]

watching a bunch of chapo kids turn to accelerationism as cope is something

[OnlyRegret]

Family around there tended to be rural farmers types and not urbanites. So no first-hand exposure to the sweatshop business.
Kind of nice to live in a bubble tbh, reality is bleak and eeking out my contradictory political positions without them collapsing is much more pleasant. Ignorance is bliss afterall.

Convergence theory was something I thought was plausible before, but digesting the mechanics of arms-length outsourcing and etc make it obvious it was never in the cards.

[OnlyRegret]

Watching this new clip, and reading the comments really fits in with what I was reading about.
Really hits up on the braindrain of educated people whose education was paid for elsewhere to leave behind the surplus, the localized wage depression, and the pitting of proles of different races against one another in a frame conducive to exploitation with the assumption that the economic frame is immovable. 

This is why the Bernie bros hate capitalism, and they're right to. But this isn't capitalism. It's cronyism

This is what happens when you support global capitalism.
Only nationalist economics will save our middle class

Capitalism isn't the problem... it is the laws in place that allow for "outsourcing"

 

[shosta]

reading the past few posts like



brings tears to my eyes

[OnlyRegret]

I can't reconcile my views, I do not know what esoteric or obscure political alignment I am

[jakefromstatefarm]

welcome to the club

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/jourdayen/status/1235286788589195265

 

[nachobro]

it me but with weed instead

[OnlyRegret]

browsing through random terms
must read into Juche and Socialism in One Country some time

[Great Rumbler]

must read into Juche and Socialism in One Country some time

[shosta]

This isn't an rpg, you don't have to pick a label or anything. Just search for knowledge and find your own truth.

I can tell you that this is actually the exact route I took during my own political evolution. Kara gave the fateful pregnant suggestions - first by dapping me for a Monthly Review article on Israel that I posted and then after we had a conversation later we were discussing some Jason Hickel piece op-ed about how global poverty has actually increased in raw terms and most of the reductions happened in China...

But once you're forced to confront the staggering disparities in the global economy you have to start undoing years of mental damage and indoctrination about free trade and economic development. And once you start questioning the basis of every major institution like the WTO, the IMF, or all of the think tanks that you've been outsourcing all of your thinking to for your adult life, that's when you hit that inflection point and elevate yourself beyond the eternal struggle between the left and right wings of capital. And you find your way to those communities which have been in plain sight this whole time but you couldn't see because you didn't have the right glasses on, communities which have painstakingly preserved and nurtured and expanded on schools of thought for literally hundreds of years (depending on whether you consider Rousseau or Henri de Saint-Simon to be the grandfather of the left).

Not that you'll do that or come to the same conclusions. My point is 1) nobody on Earth is internally consistent and 2) when you make a critical change in your worldview, the overall consistency will come over time as you try to reconcile and work out all the new contradictions as they come up. It's a long process and the only right way to go about it is to be honest with yourself about your hesitations or hangups, and do all the hard thinking yourself, not delegating to pre-established ideologies or your friends or some wikipedia article.

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It also helps if you're around people with different political views so that you're even aware of what your options are. Two years ago Kara made fun of me for saying I liked George Orwell and I was like "is this motherfucker serious rn" but now I'm 100% borktarded and spend every waking moment reading rosa luxemburg pamphlets saying kautsky's dick is small. you, too, can have this happiness.

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[OnlyRegret]

I used to rag on Cuba and socialism for failing but didn't know much about Cuban history or CIA fuckery

Thanks though, I'll float through some literature and follow the current. TheBore, seems to double as a political realization front more and more and less the weird splinter forum.
Different, political views, lmao I'm in Alberta 

[OnlyRegret]

browsing through random terms
must read into Juche and Socialism in One Country some time

http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=24400.msg2507843#msg2507843

 

Kara

[shosta]

I want to emphasize that you really do have to undo indoctrination and going to college does not help. In college I was more conservative than at any other point in my life. You make the mistake of "getting involved" or being interested in politics and you're suddenly reading papers from Brookings Institute, you're taking micro-econ classes where they tell you that unions lower economic productivity, the reason immigration is good is because it brings in cheap labor, etc. Most people don't do any real thinking for themselves, they just outsource it to whoever they think is the smartest guy in the room, but all these guys have been filtered through decades of ideological conformity, hegemony, and outright academic purges. It's what Noam Chomsky refers to as "buying the experts" in Manufacturing Consent.

The economic orthodoxy is especially destitute. Wages and interest aren't determined by marginal returns to factors of production, they're socially and historically determined by struggles between labor and capital. The most prominent mainstream economist on the left is Paul Krugman and he's one of the most important people responsible for the ideological basis of the same trade liberalization which keeps Vietnamese workers in factories ten to twelve hours a day for $200 a month. The whole discipline is irrelevant especially in the post crash world.

[shosta]

must read into Juche and Socialism in One Country some time

ok don't do this

[OnlyRegret]

I was wondering why I had union-skepticism despite not having any real exposure to unions at all.
Yeah, regarding immigration and wages thing, that is definitely a big thing. I've been thinking more so that it really isn't the immigrants to blame for wage depression, they are just cogs like the rest. Other people pin the blame on them, which is likely the preferred response by bougie. Better to blame the immigrants for immigrating than to stop, take a step back and wonder what really is to blame.

The anti-immigration stance is people with capitalist-critique unaware of how to address and grapple with it and so fall along the most convenient path, ala Carlson clip.

[OnlyRegret]

This isn't an rpg, you don't have to pick a label or anything. Just search for knowledge and find your own truth.

ok don't do this

 

[shosta]

The tucker position against immigration is "low wages in other countries are sad, but that's not my problem" which could be a morally acceptable stance except whenever they try to raise their own wages, the international organizations call it a cartel, Hillary Clinton murders your union leaders, and if you had a political movement behind you your whole government is branded a dictatorship and a coup is organized against your president.

[OnlyRegret]

Yup, it excludes the conditions, a lot of why and background. The book touches upon the various bits of the oligopsony setup that permanently cripple any chance for improvement and the outsourcing style that hands-free forces conditions downwards.
None of this is a concern in the States because the plight of foreigners is irrelevant to what they are pushing.

Fox and co. are trying to shift the blame off naked capitalism to the foreign threat under a veneer of vaguely anti-cap talking points that become more and more transparent the more I read this book.

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https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1235582102550216704

[shosta]

My favorite Marxist was a huge fourth international guy... and in fact I think the Trotskyist and (some...) Eurocommunist authors did an important job of preserving and advocating for socialism without having to excuse everything the Soviet Union ever did. The pitfall is when you're so pure that you denigrate any revolution that ever happened and also let yourself be a tool for counter-revolutionary forces. Some authors are better at this than others.

[shosta]

I mentioned this but I'm getting into Ralph Miliband because he's one of the few marxists who had interesting insights into post-war capitalist democracies and strategies within them, and man, he just absolutely lays into the political parties, the union leadership, social democracy, etc. That and his commentary about "revolutionary reformism" is timeless... if you don't prepare to defend yourself, it doesn't matter how legitimate your political movement is, once you reach a critical point, you and everyone else will be fucking murdered.

Also I always found the concept of worker councils quaint and I like someone telling me that we can keep many of the organs of the state

[OnlyRegret]

History matters. The news matters. Ideology matters.

As far as what to read or what to do*, that completely depends on what you figure out is important and why.

*don't become a Trotskyist

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trotskyist

 

https://urbandictionary.store/products/mug?defid=12648439&utm_campaign=onpage&utm_source=define&utm_medium=web

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Didn't know UB got in on $$$ merchandizing

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[toku]

I can't reconcile my views, I do not know what esoteric or obscure political alignment I am

Just say you're an anarchist then don't engage in any discussion about it

[Joe Molotov]

Leon Trotsky, the original Trotskyist.

[OnlyRegret]

maybe I should

[OnlyRegret]

The  proletarians  of  the  semi-colonial  countries  are  its  first  victims,  but  the  broad  masses  of  working  people  in  the  imperialist  countries  also  face destitution. The new, youthful, and female proletarians of low-wage countries  dug  capitalism  out  of  the  hole  in  which  it  found  itself  in  the  1970s. now, together with workers in the imperialist countries, it is their mission to dig another hole—to excavate the grave in which to bury capitalism and thereby secure the future of human civilization.

Mostly done reading it now, glazed over the heavier parts naturally but I think I've taken away stuff to think about. Thanks guys.

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[OnlyRegret]

in 1991 the GnP was turned into the GdP—a quiet change that had very  large  implications.  under  the  old  measure,  the  gross  national  product, the earnings of a multinational firm were attributed to the country  where  the  firm  was  owned—and  where  the  profits  would  eventually  return.  under  the  gross  domestic  product,  however,  the  profits  are  attributed  to  the  country  where  the  factory  or  mine  is  located, even though they won’t stay there. This accounting shift has turned  many  struggling  nations  into  statistical  boomtowns,  while  aiding the push for a global economy.

in  this  case,  an  increase  in  the  capital  value  of  a  firm,  as  measured  by  its  share price, is arbitrarily ascribed to an increase in the firm’s intangible assets; this is transformed into a purely imaginary addition to this firm’s value-added,  yet  depreciation  of  this  firm’s  tangible  assets  remains,  as  before,  excluded  from  the  calculation  of  its  gross  value  added.  each  of  these highly dubious procedures raises many complex issues that require a much more detailed examination than is possible here. it is sufficient to note, for present purposes, that if it wasn’t for these changes, the long-term and accelerating decline in GdP growth in imperialist economies discussed in the next chapter, would look even more dramatic.

But if GdP is a true measure of a nation’s product then the residents of Bermuda, a “British overseas ter-ritory,”  which  in  2006  boasted  the  world’s  highest  per  capita  GdP,  are  among the most productive members of humanity.27 This tax haven leapt above luxemburg to take the top spot after becoming a favorite destina-tion for hedge funds left homeless by the destruction of the world Trade Center in 2001, and was given a further boost by the devastation of new orleans by hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Financial Times reported that “Bermuda’s reinsurance business has exploded in scale. The rapid growth started  after  the  September  11  attacks  in  2001  and  gathered  pace  fol-lowing  .  .  .  hurricane  Katrina.  These  disasters  .  .  .  pushed  up  the  cost  of insurance premiums . . . prompt[ing] hedge funds and private equity groups to dash into the sector, hoping to reap fat profits if premiums stay high. Bermuda became their favoured location.”28

its  per  capita  GdP  in  2006  stood at PPP$5,549, 8 percent of Bermuda’s, or just 3 percent at market exchange rates. according to raphael Kaplinsky, workers in its footwear factories make shoes out of imported components, thereby adding 30¢ to the value of each pair of shoes—just 2 percent of the final selling price—and to the dr’s GdP, to be shared between the state, the capitalist owners of the shoe factory, and the workers.31“yet, in international trade statis-tics, the unit value of shoe exports was not the added value of 30¢ but the gross value of the final product, which was more like $15,”32while trade in value-added (TiVa) statistics (were they available) would count $0.30 toward dr’s exports—and if the shoe factory is a foreign-owned subsid-iary, part of this $0.30 would be repatriated to the parent company.

I did not know of this and the GDP shenanigans