You misspelled "Laissez's Faire", hth
if you have the time/patience, please do make a thread on that as i am struggling to get my head around it, especially the tech componentRationalizing a political pasting on the grounds that it's energized the base / set the stage for something better is not advised in general, but especially not so when there's a looming recession that's going to be bad for everyone without obscene wealth.says the revolutionary socialist who believes in accelerationism :ussrcry
I believe those are mutually exclusive categorizations, but that's for another thread probably.
You misspelled "Laissez's Faire", hthIf the market cared, it would've fixed it.
ok so i'm with you as far as the first paragraph (although no idea as to the timeframe of this or why capitalism won't evolve/display some sort of self-preservation). the tech stuff comes from what little i've read of nick land's blog, which admittedly to me is largely word soup and makes me think i'm having a stroke (capital is sentient? what?) but apparently not only will some ai come along and rule all, sooner than we think, but it is somehow already engineering its own dominance?
Don't know about accelerationists in tech, but an accelerationist as I would use the term posits that capitalism will destroy itself eventually because it contains the seeds of its own destruction within it so accelerating its development is a realistic way of bringing about its collapse. (For a variety of reasons depending on the ideology of the accelerationist, e.g. tendency of the rate of profit to fall, dialectical materialism, inability to live in peace, whatever it is right wing accelerationists believe.)
Revolutionary socialists are one side of an old argument about how to build socialism. Necessarily they have taken the position that capitalism will not collapse into socialism per se and there has to be a roadmap to get there. The 20th century fascist phase provided an explicit example of something else that could be born from capitalism's ashes instead.
Lenin said that socialists should participate in bourgeois governments to demonstrate their dysfunction to the proletariat (in the case of the Russian Revolution at least) as part of building political power. I suppose there's something vaguely accelerationist in that but the notion that Leninism and its various lines are accelerationist is prima facie absurd.
The obvious historical example is the transition from feudalism to capitalism: landlords didn't disappear, they merely became a faction of the bourgeoisie.fair enough, i guess this is what happens when you rely on twitter! so your concrete example makes complete sense to me but the way some people tweet about it you think there's going to be michael bay-esque explosions everywhere.
I'm not terribly familiar with Land so I can't help you there.
Accelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies.
#Accelerate presents a genealogy of accelerationism, tracking the impulse through 90s UK darkside cyberculture and the theory-fictions of Nick Land, Sadie Plant, Iain Grant, and CCRU, across the cultural underground of the 80s (rave, acid house, SF cinema) and back to its sources in delirious post-68 ferment, in texts whose searing nihilistic jouissance would later be disavowed by their authors and the marxist and academic establishment alike.
On either side of this central sequence, the book includes texts by Marx that call attention to his own ‘Prometheanism’, and key works from recent years document the recent extraordinary emergence of new accelerationisms steeled against the onslaughts of neoliberal capitalist realism, and retooled for the twenty-first century.
At the forefront of the energetic contemporary debate around this disputed, problematic term, #Accelerate activates a historical conversation about futurality, technology, politics, enjoyment and capital. This is a legacy shot through with contradictions, yet urgently galvanized today by the poverty of ‘reasonable’ contemporary political alternatives.
while not working i found a reader on the topic https://libcom.org/library/accelerate-accelerationist-reader (https://libcom.org/library/accelerate-accelerationist-reader)QuoteAccelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies.
#Accelerate presents a genealogy of accelerationism, tracking the impulse through 90s UK darkside cyberculture and the theory-fictions of Nick Land, Sadie Plant, Iain Grant, and CCRU, across the cultural underground of the 80s (rave, acid house, SF cinema) and back to its sources in delirious post-68 ferment, in texts whose searing nihilistic jouissance would later be disavowed by their authors and the marxist and academic establishment alike.
On either side of this central sequence, the book includes texts by Marx that call attention to his own ‘Prometheanism’, and key works from recent years document the recent extraordinary emergence of new accelerationisms steeled against the onslaughts of neoliberal capitalist realism, and retooled for the twenty-first century.
At the forefront of the energetic contemporary debate around this disputed, problematic term, #Accelerate activates a historical conversation about futurality, technology, politics, enjoyment and capital. This is a legacy shot through with contradictions, yet urgently galvanized today by the poverty of ‘reasonable’ contemporary political alternatives.
Is this the dialecticBy L Ron Hubbard
Is this the dialecticnot all that shines is aufhebung
less than nothing?(https://www.thecoli.com/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/youngsabu.png)Is this the dialecticspoiler (click to show/hide)i got nothing[close]
Is this the dialecticnot all that shines is aufhebungspoiler (click to show/hide)i got nothing[close]
You misspelled "Laissez's Faire", hth
Crash, found some Madden memes you might like.:dead @ that second gif
(http://i.imgur.com/lcAkJd5.gif)
(http://i.imgur.com/hL8o7jf.gif)
1 Criterion a is from the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines socialism as public policy based on “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” Criterion b further focuses the discussion to rule out state ownership or regulation for other purposes, such as fighting a war. See also Samuelson and Nordhaus (1989, 833), who describe “democratic socialist governments [that] expanded the welfare state, nationalized industries, and planned the economy.”
2 For classical socialists, “communism” is a purely theoretical concept that has never yet been put into practice, which is why the second “S” in USSR stands for “Socialist.” Communism is, in their view, a social arrangement where there is neither a state nor private property; the abolition of property is not sufficient for communism. As Lenin explained, “The goal of socialism is communism.” The supposed purpose of the “Great Leap Forward” was for China to transition from socialism to communism before the USSR did (Dikӧtter 2010). The classical definition therefore stands in contrast to vernacular usage of communism to refer to historical instances of socialism where the degree of control was the highest, such as the USSR, Cuba, North Korea, or Maoist China. This report therefore avoids the term “communism.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vVF-Hvykg
https://twitter.com/Rhizzone_Txt/status/1026826041535356928
Grover Furr is the author ofthis guys bibliography is so spicy :whew
Khrushchev Lied. The Evidence That Every “Revelation” of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False (2011);
The Murder of Sergei Kirov. History, Scholarship and the Anti-Stalin Paradigm (2013);
Blood Lies: The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands Is False (2014);
Trotsky’s “Amalgams.” Trotsky’s Lies, The Moscow Trials As Evidence, The Dewey Commission. (Trotsky’s Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume One) (2015);
Yezhov vs. Stalin: The Truth About Mass Repressions and the So-Called ‘Great Terror’ in the USSR (2016),
Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan. (Trotsky's Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume Two) (2017)
are all available on Amazon.com.
I have spent many years researching this and similar questions and I have yet to find one crime that Stalin committed.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRPTZF5zSLQ
thankfully with etoliate no longer here to hand me L's I can engage in this Stalinist triumphalism :rejoicehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGUfyqe7PAkspoiler (click to show/hide)i'm now down the rabbit hole into Douglas Tottle's Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard Kara :doge
wait...Furr is the one who posted this PDF after Tottle disappeared with Furr claiming he died though no obituary has been found? Did Furr kill Tottle? Tottle was stupid, Furr was lucky, Furr would visit him soon?[close]
https://twitter.com/psythor/status/1056811593177227264?s=11 (https://twitter.com/psythor/status/1056811593177227264?s=11)Nothing new:
David Wall| April 11 @ 5:41AM|#
The biggest villains in AS--Jim Taggart and the Starns heirs--are also "billionaires". You can be sure a smear is coming when self-styled Rand critiques ignore this and go for their favorite class warfare theme to discredit Rand's work.
By the way, libertarians that seem to want to establish their more sophisticated, grown-up cred by saying they out-grew Rand are indicating a phoniness and lack of philosophic seriousness as much as the smear-mongering leftists--IMHO. Ye, hardly know her, or you wouldn't embarrass yourself with such comments.
Atlas Shrugged is the greatest philosophically complete pieces of fiction written. The more you understand what the woman accomplished with this work, the more foolish offhand ad hominems of it sound. Criticisms of AS reflect volumes more about the person making the criticism than the object of the criticism.
David Wall| April 11 @ 1:03PM|#
Don't worry about them. Such people won't make a damn bit of difference anyway. It is an intellectual war. The trenches of this war are amongst the professional intellectuals--academics and higher level journalist and commentators. The enemy they know they can't beat is Ayn Rand if it is a fair fight, but they might beat her through an intellectually unprepared enemy like the libertarians who are closely associated with her for better or worse.
The libertarians will soon have the full attention of the leftist intellectuals if these Mid-terms elections go like they now look like they might.
Then, the folks who need to know who they are, are the libertarians themselves. They better have their intellectual armor on and not be sitting on the fence about Ayn Rand. Because their enemies will force libertarians to own Ayn Rand or deny her. If they deny her, all of us lose and libertarianism will go into the ash bin of history just like the Repubs are likely to go. If they own her, they've got a chance to take a leading role in America's comeback. Even the Millennials know the way we are going cannot go on--it either breaks good or breaks really bad from here.
"I didn't know it was you!" says Albuquerque Police Department Lt. Greg Brachle moments after putting at least eight bullets into APD Officer Jacob Grant in January 2015.
Video from Brachle's lapel shows him running up to a vehicle that Grant was sitting in with suspects and yelling "gun," then promptly firing his weapon.
"Oh s---, that was Jacob! F--- me!" Brachle is heard saying. "Are you OK?" Brachle asks Grant. "No," Grant answers.
Jane Sanders, co-Founder & FellowGuess that golden parachute wasn't enough for her :money
https://twitter.com/BostonJoan/status/1067227202050318336
The fact that he does not seem to have an extensive review for the film The Death of Stalin makes my soul feel empty.
But looking to see if he had one did lead me to this, which was fun: https://espressostalinist.com/2016/06/09/why-does-the-pseudo-left-hate-grover-furr/
sorry kara but
https://twitter.com/matthewaraven/status/1076736408864415744
Ideas are important at such moments because those participating in the policy and political debates need a rationale to convince the country that disruptive change is necessary. That process often involves shedding old ideas that were useful and we thought were true in favor of other ideas that are useful and true. In the political marketplace, ideas matter in terms of the outcome, even if they were not the driving force. That’s different than saying that ideology or some ideological movement played a starring role.:dead
So in the book, I lay out several of those ideas and why they are have been pushed so far that they are no longer useful or valid.
Our goal should be: Use all the tools available in a democratic society to convince a broad swath of the public — frontline workers, middle managers, professionals, executives, academics, journalists — that certain types of business behavior are no longer socially acceptable.kara help
Unacceptable because they offend our moral sensibilities. Unacceptable because they are economically counterproductive. And unacceptable because they erode the trust and cooperation that are necessary for a successful capitalism, and a successful democracy.
Change the social norms in that way and the rules and laws naturally follow. That’s a goal that is more likely to be achieved, and more likely to be effective, than trying to change things by grabbing power and shoving a different set of rules and norms down everyone’s throats.
And while we are at it, why not create a new set of financial institutions — banks, insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds — that are owned by their customers rather than by shareholders.holy shit
"If anyone can save capitalism from the capitalists, it’s Steven Pearlstein. This lucid, brilliant book refuses to abandon capitalism to those who believe morality and justice irrelevant to an economic system." ―Ezra Klein, founder and editor-at-large, Vox
Didn't realize but it's over a year old now. He was representing himself in court and apparently heard about the whole thing from an inmate he met who filed a "friend of the court" brief for him.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/11/13/subway-jareds-self-filed-challenge-convictions-frivolous-and-shop-worn-judge-says/858187001/
He then requested that the judge recuse herself because, as the mother of two teen daughters, she is biased (she actually has one daughter in her mid-20's).
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/02/07/jared-fogle-judge-biased-because-she-has-teen-daughters/317945002/
I can't seem to find it on their site now so it might not have been Reason, but in any case some libertarian site did a story talking to some sovereign citizens in jail*, and one of them was a guy who was in for pretty much life, and after he got turned down twice for parole he started listening to the crazy guy in their cellblock and decided to do it just to fuck with the parole board. One of my few heroes in life.He was representing himself in court and apparently heard about the whole thing from an inmate he met who filed a "friend of the court" brief for him.That's gonna be pretty great. He'll add an additional 5 years of individual Contempt of Court charges due to ignorantly charging in to go head-to-head with people who actually understand how the legal system works.
I can't seem to find it on their site now so it might not have been Reason, but in any case some libertarian site did a story talking to some sovereign citizens in jail*, and one of them was a guy who was in for pretty much life, and after he got turned down twice for parole he started listening to the crazy guy in their cellblock and decided to do it just to fuck with the parole board. One of my few heroes in life.He was representing himself in court and apparently heard about the whole thing from an inmate he met who filed a "friend of the court" brief for him.That's gonna be pretty great. He'll add an additional 5 years of individual Contempt of Court charges due to ignorantly charging in to go head-to-head with people who actually understand how the legal system works.
*Apparently they are quite common in the northwest. Which probably is why the judges are so patient in the two videos of the Natural Living Man, common to deal with them.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-man-behind-a-third-of-whats-on-wikipedia/
V. cool that the CIA writes Wikipedia through a CBP employee. It's like they don't even bother anymore.
The idea of making it all free fascinates me. My mother grew up in the Soviet Union:drudge
to catch a predator, but with accountants instead of little girlsspoiler (click to show/hide)Imagining a better world where IRS Criminal Investigation and / or FinCEN do something similar but with fake financial planners and banks to catch big ticket tax evaders. :whew[close]
Description:
Is Slavoj Zizek a US propaganda psyop? I want to ask my comrades on the left to consider the possibility. After years of research, I have come to the conclusion that Zizek is a charlatan posing as a "Stalinist" to both discredit communists by performing a caricature Bolshevik and simultaneously, to smuggle fascist ideas including old fashioned Aryan supremacism and 19th century race theory, back into public discourse disguised as radical left critique of liberalism. I will focus on how he exploits his radical left image to spread imperialist propaganda and disinformation. I'll trace the origins of the Zizek Industry to his first anointing by the New Left Review, then edited by (among others) Quentin Hoare and Branka Magas, Croatian Nationalists and Tudjman supporters and founders of the Bosnian Institute, as the Balkan Leftist who would initiate, in 1990, the dominant strain of imperialist propaganda about Yugoslavia, and yet further back to his career as an antiMarxist, antiCommunist "dissident" and Slovene ethnic nationalist. I will discuss the way he has influenced a generation to the point where now right wing and reactionary ideas as well as pure white house disinformation and propaganda are routinely packaged as hip "lefty" and "radical" thought.
A panel presented at Left Forum, May 31, 2014.
Speakers: Ethan Hallerman, Molly Klein.
Moderator: Jacob Levich
VIII. IMPERIALIST WAR & THE NEW AMERIKAN ORDERi was kinda hoping this was literally about G.I. Joe
1. G.I. Joe Defends His Supermarket
RedKahina is the new hotness now, my good friend and ideological enemy benji.
https://twitter.com/cordeliers/status/1090314226743369728
i am getting way too into this, it's like when i discovered JASON UHRUE
"comprehensively appalling" :lawd
Anti-tax activist Tim Eyman is under investigation in the theft of a $70 office chair from the entryway of a Lacey Office Depot on Wednesday.
Lacey Police referred the allegation to prosecutors for a possible misdemeanor theft charge after Office Depot employees noticed the chair was missing, reviewed surveillance video, recognized Eyman and called the police.
In the video, Eyman, wearing a bright red shirt saying “Let The Voters Decide,” can be seen circling around the store’s lobby, peering in various directions. He walks through the store’s anti-theft devices into the vestibule and sits in a rolling office chair that was displayed there. He reclines, spins around three times and then stands up and wheels the chair out of the store.
Wesley Snipes :ufup
That which is founded on falsehood cannot be right. Institutions founded on false principles cannot be other than false themselves. This truth has been demonstrated by the bitter experience of ages and generations.
Among the falsest of political principles is the principle of the sovereignty of the people, the principle that all power issues from the people, and is based upon the national will–a principle which has unhappily become more firmly established since the time of the French Revolution. Thence proceeds the theory of Parliamentarism, which, up to the present day, has deluded much of the so-called “intelligence,” and unhappily infatuated certain foolish Russians. It continues to maintain its hold on many minds with the obstinacy of a narrow fanaticism, although every day its falsehood is exposed more clearly to the world.
By the theory of Parliamentarism, the rational majority must rule; in practice, the party is ruled by five or six of its leaders who exercise all power. In theory, decisions are controlled by clear arguments in the course of Parliamentary debates; in practice, they in no wise depend from debates, but are determined by the wills of the leaders and the promptings of personal interest. In theory, the representatives of the people consider only the public welfare; in practice, their first consideration is their own advancement, and the interests of their friends. In theory, they must be the best citizens; in practice, they are the most ambitious and impudent. In theory, the elector gives his vote for his candidate because he knows him and trusts him; in practice, the elector gives his vote for a man whom he seldom knows, but who has been forced on him by the speeches of an interested party. In theory, Parliamentary business is directed by experience, good sense, and unselfishness; in practice, the chief motive powers are a firm will, egoism, and eloquence.:putin
Such is the Parliamentary institution, exalted as the summit and crown of the edifice of State. It is sad to think that even in Russia there are men who aspire to the establishment of this falsehood among us; that our professors glorify to their young pupils representative government as the ideal of political science; that our newspapers pursue it in their articles and feuilletons, under the name of justice and order, without troubling to examine without prejudice the working of the parliamentary machine. Yet even where centuries have sanctified its existence, faith already decays; the Liberal intelligence exalts it, but the people groans under its despotism, and recognizes its falsehood. We may not see, but our children and grandchildren assuredly will see, the overthrow of this idol, which contemporary thought in its vanity continues still to worship.
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1101899322176659458
I had to see this awful shit so now you guys do too
#notallhentaifans
Previous studies, he said, suggested left-leaning populists in Latin America ramped up social spending but ultimately ended up creating “fractured and unequal states”. “That’s what I thought I would see, as someone who is trained as a political economist,” Doyle said.
https://twitter.com/LuigiEsq/status/1098056177538289664
Quote“We find that the sanctions [on Venezuela] have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018; and that these sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the U.S. is a signatory,” the report, published by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), says.
“They are also illegal under international law and treaties which the U.S. has signed, and would appear to violate U.S. law as well,” it says. Sachs co-authored the report with CEPR's Mark Weisbrot.
Excuse me, sir! Maybe you are not aware, but the United States is exempted from most international laws.
Well that and nothing but gusanos and compradores standing in opposition.
We're still maybe a decade or two out from this being true, but if Chavismo can withstand this much AmeriKKKan aggression and persist it will probably become as (comparatively) unimpeachable as Castroism on the left.If you think the Trump administration, or even a succeeding Democratic administration, will stop at a devastating economic siege just because it has no chance of succeeding in effecting a US friendly political and economic agenda, I have some Iraqi dinars you might be interested in.
Guess relatively milquetoast social democracy built on extractive industries can actually withstand the inevitable bourgeois counterrevolution provided it has political power outside the ballot box. Well that and nothing but gusanos and compradores standing in opposition.
Isn't this just a regional variation of exactly the same philosophy, minus the indigenous focus or secularism, respectively? Granted I'm not familiar with EZLN but I would like to think I have a good handle on Emiliano Zapata et al.spoiler (click to show/hide)Thankfully it skews more EZLN stan than Rojava stan.[close]
Isn't this just a regional variation of exactly the same philosophy, minus the indigenous focus or secularism, respectively? Granted I'm not familiar with EZLN but I would like to think I have a good handle on Emiliano Zapata et al.spoiler (click to show/hide)Thankfully it skews more EZLN stan than Rojava stan.[close]
to be completely fair the srebrenica take consists of two components, the first is that war crimes absolutely were committed but that albanians were also responsible for significant crimes that went totally unreported, and the second is that it wasn't "technically a genocide" because only men were shot. Not really "genocide denial", besides literally denying it was a genocide, more like stanning really hard for people nobody likes. Like a defense attorney. Or me during my wank dad phase.
I will never defend any of this in public, though, that will get me beaten to death or blacklisted
But I thought you were talking about Srebrenica?I should have phrased my post better. The book is about the targeted destruction of the entirety of Yugoslavia from sanctions to bombings, not just that one massacre or Bosnia. I just said "Albanians also committed crimes" because that was memorable to me as an example of a totally-victimized and never-scrutinized faction in the Balkan wars, not because I thought Srebrenica was in Kosovo. And also because Taken was a formative movie for me.
The most prominent war crime during the Kosovo war was the Racak massacre, and to defend or downplay that one doesn‘t require jumping through as many hoops as downplaying Srebrenica, since the reporting around the Racak massacre has been controversial.
Croatia always tried to emphasize their catholic identity to show that they are not really a part of the Balkans. They even sent their state orchestra out on a world tour to show that they appreciate western art.RELEVANT
I'm just a normal registered Democrat party voterthis is kinda sus
I've got absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I'm just a normal registered Democrat party voter who believes in freedom and liberty for all, and the execution of democratic elections to really express every man's interests.
:trumps
As part of their defense, their lawyers argued that the Front members were immune from prosecution because they had struck a secret deal with the CIA and the Department of Defense. In exchange for their help in locating American prisoners of war in Vietnam, the agencies had given the Front permission to do as it wished with the money raised in America.
Prosecutors scoffed at the claim. One defense lawyer, interviewed recently, insisted there was evidence to substantiate the men’s assertion, but the lawyer would neither disclose nor discuss it.
ProPublica and Frontline sought to obtain the entire case file to reconstruct what happened. Surprisingly, staff at the federal courthouses in San Jose and San Francisco said the file had been lost, and the Federal Records Center, which archives old court records, was also unable locate the documents.
The office of the current U.S. attorney in San Francisco would not discuss the case. The Department of Defense and CIA also both refused to talk about the Front.
The few court records that have survived, as well as interviews with some of those involved, show the case came to a sudden, anticlimactic end.
On January 4, 1995, some four years after the indictments had been announced, U.S. District Judge James Ware held a hearing on a motion made by lawyers for the Front members. The lawyers argued that their clients had been denied their right to a speedy trial. The judge, embarrassed, conceded that they were right, and dismissed the case.
Zwemke said he heard about the dismissal in a phone call from the prosecutor’s office. The assistant U.S. attorney said little more than, “Sorry, I wasn’t watching the clock,” Zwemke recalled.
“You got to be kidding me.”
Later in 1995, Louis Freeh, then the director of the FBI, visited the San Francisco office, where Tang-Wilcox had been grinding along in her pursuit of the Front.
For years, often working solo, she had pulled together a mountain of files from agents across the country, and had scoured them for ways to connect the group to more than two dozen criminal acts.
Finally given an audience with Freeh, Tang-Wilcox said she made a direct plea to him in front of other agents: Either give me the resources to pursue this case or shut it down.
Nearly 15 years after Lam’s murder gave an early intimation of the Front’s tactics, Freeh decided to make the group a priority. The investigation was formally declared a “major case” on organized crime and domestic terrorism grounds, a move that brought it additional agents.
Felix Biederman said gusano on this week's episode of Chapo. :lol
I might be playing myself but I thought I heard one of the hosts say it in a recent Citations Needed too.
Lou Dobbs has entered the building. I just realized they're rotating all their Fox news hosts like tag team wrestling all so they can get a shot in at Richard Wolff.Fox Business hosts :ufup
Just starting these (thanks Dmitri Dmitriyevich) but before I do I want to say that between this, the Bernie town hall, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mania, things are looking bright in the war of ideas, combrehs. Building social fascism together is going to be a lot of fun. :ussrcryYeah, with any luck, the democratic socialists will be at least as successful as George McGovern this time around
Thousands of workers from the University of California waged a one-day strike Thursday and found some unexpected allies out on their picket lines.
In an unusual move for a presidential candidate, the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent out targeted text messages and emails to its supporters in California a day ahead of the strike, urging them to join workers as they rallied against the university system in a labor dispute.
“Tens of thousands of workers in the University of California system are standing up this Thursday to stop the outsourcing and privatization of union jobs,” the email said. “We are hoping you can join these workers tomorrow.”
The note included an RSVP link and an address for a local picket.
Bolsonaro has publically been pro-weapon and police brutality. He signed a decree early May, relaxing rules of carrying weapons for collectors, hunters, and sports shooters, known by the acronym CAC.
The CACs can carry loaded weapons on the streets which were not allowed previously.
.(https://www.nchrd.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/yue-xin.jpg)
Should the U.S. Trash Capitalism?
After reading The Socialist Manifesto, I’d have to say no.
...
What I got instead was a book that mostly dwells on how socialist movements have failed throughout history, either falling short of their goals or descending into nightmarish authoritarianism. Even Sweden, famous for its generous welfare state, is treated as a cautionary tale. “The best we can say about socialism in the twentieth century is that it was a false start,” Sunkara writes. Out of this dismal track record, Sunkara tries to draw lessons about how today’s radical leftists can do better, but the result is not always inspiring. A more fitting title might have been The Socialist Manifesto: Let’s Try to Get It Right This Time.
First, the definition: From the get-go, Sunkara draws a bright line between social democracy—a capitalist economy where workers have strong legal rights and enjoy a robust welfare state, which is to say, Denmark—and democratic socialism, aka socialism, but with a democratically elected government. Social democracy sands off capitalism’s rough edges; democratic socialism feeds capitalism into the wood chipper, then builds something else in its place. Sunkara very much wants to make mulch from our current system of private enterprise.
But how, exactly, would he do it? Sunkara imagines a world where individual companies are technically owned by the state but collectively controlled by their workers, who get to keep and split the profits, while all lending and startup funding are handled by a government development bank (goodbye, J.P. Morgan). His utopia is not a Soviet-style command economy; businesses would still compete freely with one another. But the labor and financial markets as we know them would no longer exist. (Sunkara handles much of this description in an oddly whimsical chapter involving a pasta sauce factory owned by Jon Bon Jovi’s family and a political movement started by Bruce Springsteen.* The term “pasta proletarian” is deployed.)
First, the definition: From the get-go, Sunkara draws a bright line between social democracy—a capitalist economy where workers have strong legal rights and enjoy a robust welfare state, which is to say, Denmark—and democratic socialism, aka socialism
288 pages
24 pages
"Accessible, irreverent and entertaining, Bhaskar Sunkara has delivered a razor-sharp guide to socialism's history, transformative promise, and path to power. This book also serves as an irresistible invitation to join in building that power, and in shaping the radically democratic future that is our best hope in these make-or-break times."―Naomi Klein, New York Times-bestselling author of This Changes Everything and No is Not Enough
"American politics is gripped by the worst kind of debate over socialism: one where everyone has an opinion, but few know what they're talking about. In this book, Bhaskar Sunkara, one of America's leading socialists, shows what socialism is and how it might work. Whether you consider yourself a socialist or just want to argue with socialists, this is the place to start."―Ezra Klein, founder and editor-at-large of Vox
"In this erudite call to action, Sunkara, publisher of Jacobin magazine, draws lessons from the history of various socialist movements to imagine how socialism could rise in the U.S..... His recommendations for today's socialists are logical and well-informed."―Publishers Weekly
BUCH IST VERBOTEN
multinational conglomerate founded by Michael Eisner
barely anyone until 30 years later and then whoever the fuck wanted to
"Thanks to the dysfunctionality of contemporary capitalism, 'socialism' has reentered the American political vocabulary, especially among the young. In The Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar Sunkara gives us a lively account of socialism's history and current meanings, and makes the case for a genuine alternative to our deeply unequal social and political order."―Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, emeritus, Columbia University
"A brilliantly compelling vision of why the US is ripe for socialism in the twenty-first century, from one of the brightest stars of the American left. Essential reading for anyone who wants to build a new society based on people's needs, not profit for the elite."―Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and the author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
what ARE Bernie Sanders views on the lies about the Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution and famine in the Ukraine? :thinking
Checking your posts for likes and seeing people hate 😡
Despite the frankly hurtful accusations Dmitri Dmitriyevich hurls at me in the bad dragon show thread, I haven't read Girondin with any regularity since my baby leftist days, but I do follow Bhaskar and the gang on social media still because I'm a 9 to 5, lunch pail kind of doxxer (unlike my good friend and ideological enemy benji, the consummate flashy, hip hop doxxer) so I'm usually somewhat plugged in to whatever they're on about at the moment. The self-promotion for the Cooperative Manifesto has been a little odd, rarely talking too much about the content itself, but that's not too unusual for Verso type stuff. Contrast this with Comrade Daddy Furr who goes on long podcasts with humble aspirations to tell you exactly how many of Trotsky's lies are destroyed in his latest book.
This digression (and Kenny outing himself in the late stage capitalism thread) reminds me that I should probably look over my estate planning; I think all of it goes to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation right now if I kick the bucket.
This post confuses me because I assumed Kara was born an Old Bolshevik
How about, The Conquest of Head, and it's an anarcho-PUA guide to having sex in communesi want this written by someone like irvine welsh from the pov of those guys who go undercover investigating cults but by the end have joined the cult and are fully indoctrinated. the twist would be he's a deep state agent with a vd
New episode of RevLeft is entertaining. They brought on Alyson Escalante so it's almost like an episode of Red Menace in debate form. And it's everyones favorite subject "is Marxism a science?" Some bits on historical and dialectical materialism, lysenkoism, older and newer definitions of science, etc.
https://twitter.com/RevLeftRadio/status/1132522051804155905
The vast majority of that corn is for livestock anyway, hopefully beef prices soar through the roof
I think people tend to have an idea in their head of a commune as a sort of culty, do as thou wilt in a bad way type jim jones deal but id imagine that most people in urban commune just go to work and occasionally fuck strangers like everyone else.they also invent ridiculous terminology like "do-ocracy"
New episode of RevLeft is entertaining. They brought on Alyson Escalante so it's almost like an episode of Red Menace in debate form. And it's everyones favorite subject "is Marxism a science?" Some bits on historical and dialectical materialism, lysenkoism, older and newer definitions of science, etc.
https://twitter.com/RevLeftRadio/status/1132522051804155905
If you can't tell from my meme output, I was reading the 18th Brumaire recently and the lumpen sack of potatoes analogy stuck with me strongly. We just exist in these little fragments of social spheres, online and in the real world. We are not only split from each other by our class and the intense blurrings of those classes that distribution of financialization has created but also little isolated social pockets, leftism in the first world is mostly an aesthetic choice ffs and we act so 'uncomradely' as Kara put it behind those choices. At times it makes me think I never really left console wars.
Ed: I need to put the phone down I'm just ranting about nothing
If you can't tell from my meme output, I was reading the 18th Brumaire recently and the lumpen sack of potatoes analogy stuck with me strongly. We just exist in these little fragments of social spheres, online and in the real world. We are not only split from each other by our class and the intense blurrings of those classes that distribution of financialization has created but also little isolated social pocketsSPUD: Socially Passive Urban Dweller
If you can't tell from my meme output, I was reading the 18th Brumaire recently and the lumpen sack of potatoes analogy stuck with me strongly. We just exist in these little fragments of social spheres, online and in the real world. We are not only split from each other by our class and the intense blurrings of those classes that distribution of financialization has created but also little isolated social pockets, leftism in the first world is mostly an aesthetic choice ffs and we act so 'uncomradely' as Kara put it behind those choices. At times it makes me think I never really left console wars.
Ed: I need to put the phone down I'm just ranting about nothing
twitter is only good for one thing and that's giant anime titties
(https://i.redd.it/6y56msl0ip331.jpg)
Fun fact: undergrad economics students are mostly taught to use models that incorporate the assumption of zero profits.
Linking this jeremiad is #problematic and if you want to cancel me or critically support me for doing so then I understand.
https://medium.com/@stephensrl20/socialism-deferred-how-dsa-failed-in-the-fight-against-sexual-violence-racism-3ca541333d60spoiler (click to show/hide)Shout out to SMB-ianca and @turing_police's favorite member of the U.S. Imperialism Caucus Jason Schulmann getting name dropped in here.[close]
Aren't we at the point where wage theft actually outweighs total petty theft? I've heard this theory bandied around a couple times but couldn't find anything to support it in my Googles besides this. (https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-theft-protect/)
Expropriations of landlords and prohibiting to buy land for speculative reasons have entered the public discourse in Germany over the past weeks and months. :ussrcryIf you're having trouble getting the right on board with it you can make it racist, too, by raising the specter of chinese foreign investment. No nazbol, no nazbol, you're the nazbol
This reminds me that a few weeks ago I got sucked down a rabbit hole for two hours investigating this YouTube channel
Rejection or criticism of Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin etc. doesn't come from thin air.the reverence paid to Marx by marxists specifically for his polemics against the anarchist part of the internationales and/or other left hegelians is one of the most annoying things I see in meaningless internet lefter-than-thou discourse.
As for Marx's mountain dew fueled gamer rages, well we all have them. I think it's understandable given the forums posting taking place between the two of them. (https://i.imgur.com/UAPpyij.jpg)right. all of these guys were up to their eyeballs in bigoted horseshit, some of which was baked into their thought. they deserve no veneration. no writer does.
Engels and the magyars :dogeim trying to find the piece where he praises American expansion into Mexico in the 1840s. it’s p much the lazy mexican talking point verbatim
Not to veer away from (my) sociopolitical angst but this had me :deada little inside baseball, that figure being so specific because it was more or less revealed that one arm of the Foundation did not know the other arm was paying him that much, they thought it was more of a mutual advertising thing because his multi-million dollar Fox Contract would indicate there's no point in paying Stossel that much (also nobody actually watches most of the YouTube videos anyway unless some Democrat-friendly outlet/channel starts "debunking" them)
I didn't know.John Stossel was on this wave now.
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1138165329195163649
It’s shame libertarian has been so tainted by right libertarians in America that the mere prospect of libertarianism is scoffed by many liberals and the far left when many libertarian principles - personal liberty, personhood, stuff like that - are perfectly compatible. For example, the freedom to choose in relation to abortion. This is a libertarian - and by extension liberal expression. Definitely what happens when libertarians are ran by loons who prize businesses over people. Looking at the left libertarianism as expressed in European channels makes a lot of the principles of libertarian thought readily appealing. I truly wonder if the left in America could gain more in-roads politically by repackaging libertarian philosophy towards its more European definition. I think the concept of libertarianism (as expressed in the European vein) is identifiably a part of American values.there are historical reasons for this
Hayek and von Mises were notably critical of conservatism and emphasized the European liberalism they associated with libertarianism,im gonna read ‘emphasized’ as ‘made it their life’s work to reanimate after its catastrophic failures in the first half of the 20th century’ if that’s alright with you
The activists and parliamentarians of the SPD came from modest backgrounds, with little formal education. Their parliament, the Reichstag, stood more for the idea of democracy than its reality, and despite support from a broad swath of the German working class, the party had no influence over the formation of government. Figuratively flipping the building on its head, they transformed the Reichstag into a forum to go toe to toe with the powerful, giving workers a sense of being avenged and providing a model of courage through a canny strategy of political education, media distribution, and biting speeches.
All the SPD / GDR talk. I forgot to post this from when I went to Germany :doge
(https://i.imgur.com/kyVbwWI_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium)
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
(Who has betrayed us? Soical Democrats! just doesn‘t have the same ring to it in English)
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!was it limited to the left? or does it get appropriated by right wingers later on in the interwar period?
(Who has betrayed us? Soical Democrats! just doesn‘t have the same ring to it in English) has been a rallying cry of the left for over a hundred years for a reason.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!was it limited to the left? or does it get appropriated by right wingers later on in the interwar period?
(Who has betrayed us? Soical Democrats! just doesn‘t have the same ring to it in English) has been a rallying cry of the left for over a hundred years for a reason.
I’ve seen the whole first season of Babylon Berlin so I consider myself something of an expert on this
Es gibt da so 'nen Spruch von den alten Kommunisten
mit dem die 1918 ihre falschen Freunde dissten.
Natürlich ham wa heute 'ne andere politische Lage.
Und trotzdem passt der Spruch irgendwie in uns're Tage.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Wer hat uns verraten? Wer hat uns verkauft?
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Die ham' uns verraten und die ham' uns auch verkauft.
Ich glaub ich mach 'n Lied daraus mit 'nem Arbeiterkinderchor
Die singen den Refrain dann ihren arbeitlosen Eltern vor.
Es singen schon die Angestellten, die Studenten und die Bauern.
Bald singen sogar die, die noch um Ludwig Ehrhard trauern.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Wer hat uns verraten? Wer hat uns verkauft?
Wer hat uns schlecht beraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Die ham' uns verraten und die ham' uns auch verkauft.
Karl Liebknecht hatte diesen Spruch auf seinem Schreibtisch stehn.
Und er hängt als Poster heut' bei Oskar Lafontaine.
Und auch in Schleswig-Holstein versteht man gut den Sinn
Dort flüsterst's Heide Simonis beim Tango vor sich hin.
Wer hat mich verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Wer hat mich verraten? Wer hat mich verkauft?
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
Die ham' uns verraten und die ham' uns auch verkauft.
Und die Neuwahl die ham' die ja verloren, damit muss man sich ja befassen
Jetzt kann man endlich aus vollstem Herzen die Regierung wieder hassen.
Ja das Schiff das ist am sinken und die Ratten die flohen sofort.
Doch sie kamen wieder zurück und brachten die schwarze Pest an Bord.
Wer, wer, wer, wer, wer hat uns verraten?
Das war'n doch, sag mal war'n das nicht… Sozialdemokraten.
Das waren die Sozialdemokraten, die ham' uns verraten.
Die ham' uns verraten, die ham' uns verkauft.
Der Sozialstaat und der Sozialismus die sind beide tot.
Übrig sind nur hohle Phrasen und literweise rot.
Und wer steht an ihren Gräbern und hält lächelnd noch die Spaten?
Sagt nichts, lasst mich raten... Sozialdemokraten.
Und das ganze schöne Geld, wer hat's an die Reichen verbraten?
Das waren doch, sag mal waren das nicht... die Sozialdemokraten.
Wer hat uns verraten, wer hat so viel Geld?
Wer hat so viel Pinkepinke, wer hat das bestellt?
Wer, wer, wer, wer, wer hat uns verraten?
Wer, wer, wer, wer, wer hat uns verraten?
Wer, wer, wer, wer, wer hat uns verkauft?
There's a saying about the old Communists
with whom the 1918 disperse their wrong friends.
Of course, today we have a different political situation.
And yet the saying fits in somehow in our days.
Who betrayed us? Social Democrats!
Who betrayed us? Who sold us?
Who betrayed us? Social Democrats!
The ham 'betrayed us and the ham' s also sold us.
I think I'll make a song out of it with a working-class children's choir
They sing the chorus to their unemployed parents.
The staff, the students and the farmers are singing.
Soon even those who still grieve for Ludwig Ehrhard are singing.
Who betrayed us? Social Democrats!
Who betrayed us? Who sold us?
Who gave us bad advice? Social Democrats!
The ham 'betrayed us and the ham' s also sold us.
Karl Liebknecht had this spell on his desk.
And he hangs as poster today at Oskar Lafontaine.
And also in Schleswig-Holstein one understands well the sense
There, Heide Simonis whispers to himself at the tango.
Who betrayed me? Social Democrats!
Who betrayed me? Who sold me?
Who betrayed us? Social Democrats!
The ham 'betrayed us and the ham' s also sold us.
And the new election, the ham 'yes lost, so you have to deal with yes
Now you can finally hate the government again with all your heart.
Yes, the ship is sinking and the rats fled immediately.
But they came back and brought the black plague on board.
Who, who, who, who, who betrayed us?
That was it, tell me it was not ... Social Democrats.
They were the Social Democrats who betrayed us.
The ham 'betrayed us, the ham' sold us.
The welfare state and socialism are both dead.
All that remains are hollow phrases and gallons of red.
And who stands at their graves and still smiling holds the spade?
Say nothing, let me guess ... Social Democrats.
And all the nice money, who's got it to the rich?
That was it, tell me, that was not ... the Social Democrats.
Who betrayed us, who has so much money?
Who has so much Pinkepinke, who ordered this?
Who, who, who, who, who betrayed us?
Who, who, who, who, who betrayed us?
Who, who, who, who, who sold us?
The street art, and public transport were amazing. It's so painful to get a glimpse of what a good system looks like :-\ . I stayed in friedrichschain, and spent most of my time in kreuzberg and mitte. I don't know if i would visit Berlin again, but I think it might be nice to live there. The people were a little standoffish, but hey, I don't speak german so that's probably on me.Yet we constantly bitch about public transport. :lol
I mostly focused on history, I did a walking tour of berlin with the perfect tour guide: a neoliberal israeli who hated the soviets + gdr and loves germany :doge :doge :doge
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!was it limited to the left? or does it get appropriated by right wingers later on in the interwar period?
(Who has betrayed us? Soical Democrats! just doesn‘t have the same ring to it in English) has been a rallying cry of the left for over a hundred years for a reason.
I’ve seen the whole first season of Babylon Berlin so I consider myself something of an expert on this
Big ups to my french tour guide suggesting that my s/o and I use our professional talents to start firms in our specialties and hire out the majority of work to people of our same ethnicities back in their respective third world countries "at a fraction of the cost!" to keep ourselves in the black. "You can use your cultural connections to build something"
He was a retired finance guy. P. good Louvre tour though.
However, readers should note that Xi offers very little in the way of classical Marxist exegesis to justify his claim that “an economic system in which publicly owned enterprises are the principle part” and the “political system of the National People’s Congress” are the natural extension of Marxist theory to current world conditions. The claim is asserted more than proven; one suspects he would rather not have the readers of Qiushi thinking too hard about the details of classical Marxist texts.This forward seems a little biased ::)
:holeup :goty2Starship Troopers is our future. :goty
https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1139624888967340036
https://twitter.com/sunraysunray/status/1139986777823948803
Many socialists have analyses of fascism that it is capitalism in extreme decay of some sort, wherein the ruling class turn up the boot on the proletariat, borrowing tactics inspired by and reminiscent of imperialism and colonialism. Parenti wrote a whole section of Blackshirts and Reds, Losurdo has similar analysis apparently in Liberalism A Counter History. I have yet to read the latter.
I'm more dubious of the whole 1933 remarks who at a glance seems to take some hazy lessons of the events then and to project some present considerations from current US politics to German (or European ?) 1933 realities.
There were few Popular Fronts actually achieved in reality, that didn't include Germany (because I assume the "We're in 1933 and there's Nazis" mean that but maybe it's Europe. Doesn't affect the criticism), and quickly the Popular Front were made irrelevant because of collaboration alright but not the one he has in mind. Containing the far right by "class collaboration" with wide party coalition only became a thing fairly recently in Europe so I don't see how it is what put us in the mess. It make more sense from an US perspective with the rigid bipartism - obligatory big tent approach, but that's pretty specific.
https://twitter.com/sunraysunray/status/1139986777823948803
.I felt like I was out of my fuckin mind looking at pictures of protesters waving the british flag last week
Some of these are really great though.
(https://i.imgur.com/EmXBBPr_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium)
(https://i.imgur.com/Pcu5j5f_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium)
Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks :gopnik
I read The Origins of Family already.
ed: it doesn't even have to be marxist specifically, any resource on the origins of feudal society would be cool
Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks :gopnik
I read The Origins of Family already.
ed: it doesn't even have to be marxist specifically, any resource on the origins of feudal society would be cool
A number of prominent French historians had numerous works on middle ages and feudalism in France. Duby and Le Goff for instance, I've read one book by both IIRC. Don't know how well it was translated in English.
Since we have some Marxist alumni, what's the TLDR on the upcoming Green transition ? Because I would imagine it could classify as factoring in a mutation of the mode of production alongside automation. It strikes me as a global enough issue and it's certainly a material imperative.
It's not entering disconnect from the preceding discussion because as far as Europe is concerned it's pretty clear that the usual leftist talking points (labor conditions, material well being of the workers) is not cutting it anymore regardless of its merits and especially so with the "workers" (or how you want to classify its supposed natural demographic base). My layman impression is that the response to this in Europe is to argue that it the left is inhibited in what it can offer because of the EU but Euroskeptic Left parties are not really making any more inroads despite offering that and that more voters prefer the far right version of that argument. That might be because the left has to reconcile this with its own baked in globalism / internationalism calling. Whatever it may be, it's clear the ecological concerns are a rising force in politics that will flow in all of the political spectrum. Current Green parties are clearly on the left but it's probably not an inherent, immobile essence as far ecology is concerned. It is starting to get urgent to anchor it on the left to unify the vote. Well at least that's how I feel with my coffee and cigarettes.
I hoped someone smarter or more well read would respond to this but I'll give a couple thoughts.
There are some obvious environmental contradictions in a system where:
1) production occurs for profit and not according to need.
2) a small group of people (e.g. Koch brothers) can AstroTurf blatantly anti environmental policy. This is not in the people's interest.
3) an insane amount of productive power is wasted on products and services that really fuck up the environment
Raising the forces of production does create a lot of waste and use energy, but we've seen China for example make a lot of progress on clean energy technology in a short time despite being the worlds personal factory, whereas all bougie states are bandying about carbon taxes in confusion even in good cases. I'm not sure what Marxist party lines are on this, but I've noticed that even people who would call themselves capitalist or succdems at best have noticed the contradictions in the system hurtling us toward ecological collapse. Otherwise the #lsc movement wouldn't be so popular. Or something like Extinction Rebellion if you aren't an extremely online dork like me.
Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks :gopnik
I read The Origins of Family already.
ed: it doesn't even have to be marxist specifically, any resource on the origins of feudal society would be cool
A number of prominent French historians had numerous works on middle ages and feudalism in France. Duby and Le Goff for instance, I've read one book by both IIRC. Don't know how well it was translated in English.
Speaking of French historians: Marc Bloch wrote a monograph about Feudalism is well. :trumps
Bloch is always worth reading, even though I am sure some of his claims will be outdated by now.
Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks :gopnikin short, slavery was very common, even integral, to what we now call Europe up until about the 11th century*; and ‘feudalism’ is too loose a concept to apply over an extensive period of time and/or space and, as a result, is mostly useless.
English enclosure is usually the beginning of primitive accumulation in materialist conceptions of history?right. The materialist needs a causal account linking it with some preceding ‘feudalism’ and I’m saying you can’t do that with what ‘feudalism’ is typically modeled after (and was in Marx and Engels’ day).
As with regards to the Green and Marxism question, I hear both of you but in those approach ecological issues are an effect and a bit of an afterthought. I thought that maybe some theorists started considering it as its own set of material factors forcing a change of the mode of production and a reason to revisit what the road to Socialism entails.
I didn‘t expect a FDP reference. :obama
(https://www.welt.de/img/politik/mobile100498662/2722504647-ci102l-w1024/genscher-party-kissinger-DW-Politik-BERLIN-jpg.jpg)
Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks :gopnikin short, slavery was very common, even integral, to what we now call Europe up until about the 11th century*; and ‘feudalism’ is too loose a concept to apply over an extensive period of time and/or space and, as a result, is mostly useless.
*cf. McCormick, origins of the European economyspoiler (click to show/hide)’feudalism’ is at best an ideal type with about three different meanings and at worst a misreading of contract/fealty obligations that gets imposed onto contexts where it didn’t obtain. There’s been a lot of work over the past ~40ish years towards deflating the prevalence/importance of ‘feudal’ interpretations of social or economic or legal or political ties in medieval Europe. The annales schoolers -some of whom vomkriege and bismarckie mentioned- we’re somewhat paradigmatic in propagating the ‘myth of feudalism’ what with their mentalités allowing them to dump whatever phenomena they wanted into a box and call it a real historical artifact. But the ‘myth’ is a construction over the very long-term, starting in the early modern period by lawyers and historians looking to codify and legitimize the advent of a new period of history over against a backward ‘middle ages’.
The criticism of the specifically Marxist understanding of ‘feudalism’ is that there’s no reason to assume any kind of affinity between, say, northern French manorialism in the 13th century, Spanish encomiendas in the 15th, and English enclosure in the 16th. Additionally, Classical/Political Marxism obv uses a really robust realism wrt historical periodization that really doesn’t jive well with post-cultural turn social science/humanities. The people in the latter camps would be quick to argue for i) an explanatory framework that provincializes these European institutions and ii) a commitment to antirealism/constructivism about historical periodization.[close]
A Connecticut gallery owner was arrested after dropping a 10-foot-long sculpture of a heroin spoon in front of Purdue Pharma’s headquarters on Friday — and he says he plans to “gift” more spoons to other drug companies, as well as to politicians and doctors.
https://twitter.com/LydiaBurrell/status/1140831568291868674
One might reasonably ask what Eugene V. Debs would do in the eighties if he were the mayor of a city like Burlington — or if he simply ran for the office. It was a long socialist tradition basic reason for running for public office was to educate the people in socialist ideas. There is nothing in Sanders’ public record to show that his political horizon is wider than that of a Fiorello LaGuardia.
For the rest, I can hardly complain about the damning facts that make up so much of Higgins’ response. But they are “paradoxes” and “contradictions” only if one assumes that a socialist mayor’s main goal is to run a city rather than to educate its citizenry. Sanders does not profess to be a liberal Democrat. He professes to be a socialist, and his office wall is decorated with a photo of Eugene V. Debs. If one is in any way concerned with the moral integrity of socialism in the United States, indeed, with its very meaning and soul, he should not earn a reputation for efficiency at the cost of low-paying jobs and of “development” that brings huge profits to corporations, and fosters gentrification and real-estate speculation of scandalous proportions. He should not be known for his pacification of the peace, environmental, feminist, and gay movements through bombastic rhetoric and posturing.
Debs? What would Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler do? :hitler
I'm looking forward to you coming around to the idea that the rounding up and suppression of minorities so settlers can enforce land claims are exactly the fundamentals this nation was set upon.
troll post 😇
https://twitter.com/getfiscal/status/1142822428931964928
Shosta-kun, do you wanna join me in consuming something this awful :notlikethis :donot
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1141726217139306496
the war between chapo trap house and r/chapotraphouse continues
Amber and the red scare ladies are out here trying to do their best to get cancelled lol
(https://i.imgur.com/HGDurE6_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium)
Amber and the red scare ladies are out here trying to do their best to get cancelled lolstupidpol lives up to the name I guess
fuuuck :dead
https://twitter.com/whysimonewhy/status/1143280089133699072
The ACFTU [All-China Federation of Trade Unions] experimented with organizing Walmart workers “underground”. In less than two months, without Walmart’s knowledge, the ACFTU was able to set up close to twenty democratically elected Walmart union branches. But afterthe ACFTU publicized what it had done and demanded that, under Chinese law, Walmart must accept the union branches, Walmart cut a deal with the ACFTU. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed with Walmart to set up union branches in all of Walmart’s 100-plus stores with Walmart’s active participation.
Stalin : [Communists] would be very pleased to drop violent methods if the ruling class agreed to give way to the working class. But the experience of history speaks against such an assumption.
Wells : There was a case in the history of England, however, of a class voluntarily handing over power to another class. In the period between 1830 and 1870, the aristocracy, whose influence was still very considerable at the end of the eighteenth century, voluntarily, without a severe struggle, surrendered power to the bourgeoisie, which serves as a sentimental support of the monarchy. Subsequently, this transference of power led to the establishment of the rule of the financial oligarchy.
Stalin : But you have imperceptibly passed from questions of revolution to questions of reform. This is not the same thing. Don't you think that the Chartist movement played a great role in the Reforms in England in the nineteenth century?
Wells : The Chartists did little and disappeared without leaving a trace.
Stalin : I do not agree with you. The Chartists, and the strike movement which they organised, played a great role; they compelled the ruling class to make a number of concessions in regard to the franchise, in regard to abolishing the so-called "rotten boroughs," and in regard to some of the points of the "Charter."
Chartism played a not unimportant historical role and compelled a section of the ruling classes to make certain concessions, reforms, in order to avert great shocks.
Looks like the DemSoc who wants to turn Queens into an open-air brothel is going to win
https://twitter.com/gustavot888/status/1143238472381059072
Looks like the DemSoc who wants to turn Queens into an open-air brothel is going to win
https://twitt.er.com/NYWFP/status/1143713686764306433
http://ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/ (http://ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/)Ends with a To Be Continued before it offers concrete examples of modern managerial planning :beli
Interesting blog post about neoliberalism and economic planning (with an appearance by the subject of the new old ideology thread).
https://twitter.com/cordeliers/status/1143484410651697154
they actually ended up having Marianne Williamson on Chapo and she seems totally nice and pretty normal actually.. and they're talking to her about idealism vs materialism :dead
Not to veer away from (my) sociopolitical angst but this had me :deadI want to circle around to this. I was skimming The Smear by Sharyl Attkisson (most famous for CBS telling her to shut up about Fast and Furious and her saying "it's about family!" on
I didn't know.John Stossel was on this wave now.
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1138165329195163649
well, let's not get too uh... professional in our stone casting... about the quality of what readings people put on syllabi
:doge
[...]
I generally try to avoid piling on the books for more varied articles, chapters, etc. and I think I would want to find another work with the same sentiments and ideas if not specifically these rather than plucking out a part of Settlers, I admit I have not looked at any J Sakai articles though, it's highly likely they have already written oneLol at you taking seriously literature written by a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Road_Socialist_Organization), especially one writing under a pseudonym. The tone is the point, and contrary to what jake is hypothesizing, a significant portion of the enjoyment. Since you skimmed it you didn't even touch on the innumerable errata, like misattributing a quote to Lincoln (it was someone else in his campaign, in his proxy), or getting some numbers wrong. I fact-checked this book religiously while I was reading it and found the analysis of some sources to be... dishonest at best. But none of that is important, the book is still fun, illuminating to the uneducated, etc. etc.
I offered shosh a position in our PhD program and he never got back to me.your country might have deported my PMs
Lol at you taking seriously literature written by a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Road_Socialist_Organization), especially one writing under a pseudonym.i'm not seeing the difference here from much of the canon
When Kara first told me to read settlers I didn't know it was a meme because I'm not always-online and I actually read it, thinking it was a serious suggestion. When I PM'd him as much a week later to tell him I was radicalized I'm sure he was both surprised and embarrassed for me
Which one, the scathing ideological critique of Yugoslavian market socialism (:whew), or "In Defense of Socialist Planning"? Neither of those are a waste of your time imo
Kara/curly/shosta, y'all read any of the Chinese New Left 新左派 ? I have some Minqi Li wishlisted for reading later :thinkinghttps://youtu.be/x-3UltHAfRU
I'm kind of done reading analysis of China by baizuo :idont
Capitulation:heh
By the mid-1980s, it was clear in both Washington and Moscow that the Soviet Union was in trouble. It was not that the system of public ownership and planning was not working. On the contrary, recognizing the advantages of the Soviet system, the United States itself had emulated it to stimulate innovation in its own economy.
Is the read Settlers meme the same thing as people telling me to read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (which I did because it was a required book in undergrad.)Yeah, but it's like if the book wasn't totally lame and awful.
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
The Note: This great book should really be read by everyone. It is difficult to describe why it so great because it both teaches and inspires. You really just have to read it. We think it is so good that it demands to be as accessible as possible. Once you've finished it, we're sure you'll agree. In fact, years ago, we would offer people twenty dollars if they read the book and didn't think it was completely worth their time. Of all the people who took us up on it, no one collected.shit I could have made twenty bucks
Who is running in the 2020 Democratic Primary and what is the corporate media keeping from you?
Trump is a human garbage fire, but many of the democratic primary candidates are also pretty trashy. Instead of burying the dirt behind image consultants, public relation flacks, and the corporate media, we here at History Is A Weapon are hoping to offer a one stop shop, so you don't have to wade through the nonsense, and you can find the absolute best reporting and takedowns on the various candidates. That way, when your low information cousin discovers he really like "Mayor Pete," you can check in and find the best ahem material to read up on and score some valueless internet points on your facebook wall.
Name: Marianne Williamsonwow, so wrong already
Who? California congressman, huh?
Website:marianne2020.com
Short Answer: New Age progressive who you will never hear about again after reading this sentence.
Name: Senator Amy Klobuchar:teehee
Who? Minnesota senator, strong right arm
Website: klobuchar.senate.gov
Short Answer: Milquetoast jerk of a boss. Great if you want someone who republicans love.
Is the read Settlers meme the same thing as people telling me to read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (which I did because it was a required book in undergrad.)
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
What do they even want now in HK? They withdrew the bill and apologized.
benji help
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1319-marx-at-the-arcade
"Marx at the Arcade is an important, brilliant and timely read that reveals the oft-ignored lives of overworked and exploited game workers, as well as the rise of the global Game Workers Unite movement that is fighting for change. Placing games within the context of a wider cultural and political struggle, Woodcock makes a compelling case for combating the toxic and reactionary elements of games culture, and pushing games towards a more positive, radical role in the world." —Karn Bianco, Games Workers Unite
"Combining the unalloyed enthusiasm of the gamer with the critical gaze of the historical materialist, Jamie Woodcock's book cracks open the console to reveal the struggles over value, labour and the meaning of play that haunt the world of videogames. Even readers who last played a videogame in an arcade will gain much from this lucid and combative exploration of the industry that organizes the "free time" of countless millions."—Alberto Toscano, Reader in Critical Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea
“In this highly readable, up-to-the-minute counter-guide to videogame work and play, Jamie Woodcock skillfully breaks play out of the “magic circle,” not only revealing capitalism’s shaping influence on digital game culture but also restoring a political perspective on games as a site of struggle. Whether revisiting game history, analyzing individual games, unpacking the distinctiveness of the game commodity, or reporting on the increasingly contested working conditions of game developers, Woodcock richly illustrates the use value of Marxian concepts to the critical study of game media.” —Greig de Peuter, co-author of Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games
“Jamie Woodcock shows us what call-centers can tell us about bleakness and resistance in the modern workplace.” —VICE
fuck I saw the url and thought it was gonna be the Paris arcades :dead :dead :dead
If you belong to an organization run with democratic centralism you will be expelled from DSA by the letter of its laws.
https://twitter.com/mywifecameback/status/1146019719193014272
"The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
https://twitter.com/anachmn/status/1145977349017657345
Not since Dilbert has truth been spoken to power in soulless work settings.
What do they even want now in HK? They withdrew the bill and apologized.
Kim Kelly is a freelance writer and labor organizer whose writing on labor, politics, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the New Republic, Teen Vogue, the Pacific Standard, and many other publications.move that up behind WaPo at least
we did it fam, ruling class destroyed :rejoiceLooks like the DemSoc who wants to turn Queens into an open-air brothel is going to win
https://twitt.er.com/NYWFP/status/1143713686764306433
Uh oh looks like she was a psyop
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D99Tg2hUYAEWVPk.jpg)
The Democratic primary for district attorney in Queens, a race that drew nationwide attention, was thrown deep into uncertainty on Wednesday after a count of paper ballots flipped the primary-night result.
Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, saw her almost 1,100-vote lead evaporate, with Melinda Katz, the Queens borough president, edging out to a 20-vote lead.
I mainly wish Amber was a little more hopeful? It might just be her tone but I think she's ready to watch the world burn.
fave dumb amber take? mine was that China's internet policy is good
'online leftism is bad and you should all log off' - person who sustains herself from extremely online leftism
anyway, i think we should respond to her arguments with examples of why she's wrong rather than call her a nazbol. her insistence that anti-idpol left movements are the way to go in the imperial core don't seem to hold water from what i can see. the cpgb-ml dropped 'woke idpol leftism' and they're a joke to everyone now. historically, lots of people have come to leftism through struggles with other social issues; some obvious examples being the black panthers or ho chi minh. if focusing exclusively on the rural white peasant class is the most effective strat possible, why is the DSA poppin' and not Redneck Revolt? Why is she in the DSA longterm then, which is at face value a Bernie Sanders (social democracy) movement?
"Centrists use woke identity politics to undercut real material leftism" only makes sense if the 2016 Democratic presidential primary (as experienced through Twitter) is literally your only reference point in American politics.
The DLC was pushing Dem politicians to stand up toblack leaders"special interest groups" at the same time it was supporting means testing, work requirements, etc. Look at Jesse Jackson's platform in 1988. Hell, the early favorite among centrist Dems this cycle is Joe fucking Biden, who also was the first to have a major attack along racial justice lines.spoiler (click to show/hide)I know this post is limited to electoral/party politics, but it's in the context of someone arguing for the radical socialist change of Bernie Sanders so I think I'm okay here.[close]
If we look at societies that had successful proletarian revolutions they didn't exactly resolve all their racial and national contradictions after the fact...It's so obvious that I have to raise an eyebrow when that comes out of the mouth of someone who has voiced support for USSR/PRC before. The insistence on viewing these issues as purely a result of liberal society is an absurd claim (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:7:1327b).
Him getting banned at the same time as Assimilate was like when Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson.on this score, I think the :social crowd is just comprehensively right: the two of them were fueled by the same white (male) resentment, and this is what always held priority for them, tacit or not, no matter how or through what it got refracted
(http://i.redd.it/loub19edbk831.jpg)
and jakefromstatefarm's recent posting about historiography was (to be uncharitable and mean-spirited) essentially waving a big book that says "culture is important too"this motherfucker always playing me for a mark to get me to show my hand :rage
creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,Jackson 1984 campaign brochure: http://www.4president.org/brochures/1984/jessejackson1984brochure.htm
reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand"
reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs
cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration
declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation
instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union
giving reparations to descendants of black slaves
supporting family farmers by reviving many of FDR's New Deal-era farm programs
creating a single-payer system of universal health care
ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment
increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all
applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and
supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.
supporting family farmers by reviving many of FDR's New Deal-era farm programswhat is this, did Jackson want to cut production, too?
If Jackson should opt out, attention would likely turn to Ralph Nader. The consumer advocate remains one of the most identifiable and respected figures in American public affairs, and he has been among the most vocal critics of Clinton, particularly on issues such as NAFTA and GATT.Warren Beatty tried to talk to Jesse's people about helping him to run in 2000 against Gore and Bradley, this was after Bulworth came out
"Basically Clinton follows the power of the global corporations, who are his masters," Nader said last fall during the GATT debate.
Nader has said he believes Clinton is "certain" to face some sort of progressive challenge--most likely in the November election--and adds that he would probably support such a challenge. But when asked if he would be the candidate, Nader says no
...
"It's like the movie Field of Dreams," says Elsis. "If we want Jerry Brown to be President, we can do it."
Progressives around the country mention other potential candidates as well--including Representative Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who is the only independent member of the House, and Representative Ron Dellums, California Democrat.
There have also been suggestions that a "left personality," such as writer Barbara Ehrenreich, might be a strong candidate--much as Buchanan has parlayed his position as a columnist and television pundit into two Presidential runs. Ehrenreich, a respected author and columnist, and one of the original members of Democratic Socialists of America, could have a ready-made base of support.
Some progressive activists around the country say they are less concerned about who the candidate is than they are about the prospect that any challenge to Clinton might pull the President to the left.
https://twitter.com/RappGabriel/status/1147254695058010112
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (AFP) Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, no stranger to controversy, sparked a new brouhaha this week by repeatedly defending the practice of child labor.
“I’ve been working since I was eight years old… and today I am what I am,” the president said during his weekly live forum on Facebook.
Bolsonaro added the words, "Work ennobles."
“Look, when a child of eight or nine years old works somewhere, many people denounce it as ‘forced labor’ or ‘child labor,'” he added. “But if that child smokes coca paste, nobody says anything.”
“Work brings dignity to men and to women, no matter their age,” he said.
On Saturday, he republished a 2017 AFP video showing Frank Giaccio, the 11-year-old owner of a lawn mowing business and admirer of US President Donald Trump, trimming the White House lawn. Bolsonaro added the words, “Work ennobles.”
According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), some 2.5 million children and adolescents aged five to 17 work in Brazil.
Mine fled it too, well Kresy Wschodnie to be more precise.
Mine fled it too, well Kresy Wschodnie to be more precise.
My dad, who is an ethnic pole, refused to step foot on Polish soil for over 20 years.Funnily enough my mom who is ethnically German, which was one of the main reasons they couldn't endure living in Poland anymore, convinced him to go back to see his family again. Now they go there every year. :trumps
That is where all four of my grandparents were from. My maternal grandfather lived just outside of Lwow (Lviv). He lost everything (his estate, mill, family artefacts) and a mob of Ukrainians killed his sister. Fun times.
didn't know we had so many CDPR employees on here
I would also ask how many countries in the periphery or semi-periphery aren't reliant on remittances, but I also wield that criticism like a cudgel to dismiss the "horizontal" economy of SFRY so I'm probably inconsistent in my analysis.Remittances account for 31% of Kerala's GDP, and only three countries have a higher dependence on remittances (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true). I am not saying this is a bad strategy - let Kerala specialize in exporting skilled workers if that works for them. I'm only pointing out that such a unique economic condition can genuinely distort any attempt to evaluate any model of governance. For instance, one might reasonably wonder whether they are hampering the formation of local industries despite having a more educated workforce than literally every other state. Not my position, just JAQing off.
cheers!
https://twitter.com/katrinagulliver/status/1148934064990236672 (https://twitter.com/katrinagulliver/status/1148934064990236672)
https://twitter.com/Trillburne/status/1149018789411008517
toku / jake / anyone else who enjoys hate-parsing deus vult shit: the citations needed guys did a look at our favorite topic
https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-82-western-civilization-and-white-supremacy-the-right-wing-co-option-of-antiquity
save western civilization :lawd
The movement of capital from the metropolis to the third world, especially to East, South, and Southeast Asia to relocate plants there and take advantage of their lower wages for meeting global demand, has led to a desegmentation of the world economy, subjecting metropolitan wages to the restraining effect exercised by the third world’s labor reserves. Not surprisingly, as Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, the real-wage rate of an average male U.S. worker in 2011 was no higher—indeed, it was marginally lower—than it had been in 1968.5
At the same time, such relocation of activities, despite causing impressive growth rates of gross domestic product (GDP) in many third world countries, does not lead to the exhaustion of the third world’s labor reserves. This is because of another feature of contemporary globalization: the unleashing of a process of primitive accumulation of capital against petty producers, including peasant agriculturists in the third world, who had earlier been protected, to an extent, from the encroachment of big capital (both domestic and foreign) by the postcolonial dirigiste regimes in these countries. Under neoliberalism, such protection is withdrawn, causing an income squeeze on these producers and often their outright dispossession from their land, which is then used by big capital for its various so-called development projects [ :lawd ]. The increase in employment, even in countries with impressive GDP growth rates in the third world, falls way short of the natural growth of the workforce, let alone absorbing the additional job seekers coming from the ranks of displaced petty producers. The labor reserves therefore never get used up. Indeed, on the contrary, they are augmented further, because real wages continue to remain tied to a subsistence level, even as metropolitan wages too are restrained. The vector of real wages in the world economy as a whole therefore remains restrained.
[Global finance's] opposing larger taxes on capitalists is understandable, but why is it so opposed to a larger fiscal deficit? Even within a capitalist economy, there are no sound economic theoretical reasons that should preclude a fiscal deficit under all circumstances. The root of the opposition therefore lies in deeper social considerations: if the capitalist economic system becomes dependent on the state to promote employment directly, then this fact undermines the social legitimacy of capitalism. The need for the state to boost the animal spirits of the capitalists disappears and a perspective on the system that is epistemically exterior to it is provided to the people, making it possible for them to ask: If the state can do the job of providing employment, then why do we need the capitalists at all? It is an instinctive appreciation of this potential danger that underlies the opposition of capital, especially of finance, to any direct effort by the state to generate employment.
This ever-present opposition becomes decisive within a regime of globalization. As long as finance capital remains national—that is, nation-based—and the state is a nation-state, the latter can override this opposition under certain circumstances, such as in the post-Second World War period when capitalism was facing an existential crisis. But when finance capital is globalized, meaning, when it is free to move across country borders while the state remains a nation-state, its opposition to fiscal deficits becomes decisive. If the state does run large fiscal deficits against its wishes, then it would simply leave that country en masse, causing a financial crisis.
The state therefore capitulates to the demands of globalized finance capital and eschews direct fiscal intervention for increasing demand. It resorts to monetary policy instead since that operates through wealth holders’ decisions, and hence does not undermine their social position. But, precisely for this reason, monetary policy is an ineffective instrument, as was evident in the United States in the aftermath of the 2007–09 crisis when even the pushing of interest rates down to zero scarcely revived activity.6
There has been some discussion on how global value chains would be affected by Trump’s protectionism. But the fact that global macroeconomics in the early twenty-first century will look altogether different compared to earlier has not been much discussed.(https://media1.tenor.com/images/e5fe1e3b040779761983fa43152e2e5c/tenor.gif?itemid=9789067)
In light of the preceding discussion, one could say that if, instead of individual nation-states whose writ cannot possibly run against globalized finance capital, there was a global state or a set of major nation-states acting in unison to override the objections of globalized finance and provide a coordinated fiscal stimulus to the world economy, then perhaps there could be recovery. Such a coordinated fiscal stimulus was suggested by a group of German trade unionists, as well as by John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression in the 1930s. While it was turned down then, in the present context it has not even been discussed.
The second implication of this dead end is that the era of export-led growth is by and large over for third world economies. The slowing down of world economic growth, together with protectionism in the United States against successful third world exporters, which could even spread to other metropolitan economies, suggests that the strategy of relying on the world market to generate domestic growth has run out of steam. Third world economies, including the ones that have been very successful at exporting, would now have to rely much more on their home market.
Such a transition will not be easy; it will require promoting domestic peasant agriculture, defending petty production, moving toward cooperative forms of production, and ensuring greater equality in income distribution, all of which need major structural shifts. For smaller economies, it would also require their coming together with other economies to provide a minimum size to the domestic market. In short, the dead end of neoliberalism also means the need for a shift away from the so-called neoliberal development strategy that has held sway until now.
The third implication is the imminent engulfing of a whole range of third world economies in serious balance-of-payments difficulties. This is because, while their exports will be sluggish in the new situation, this very fact will also discourage financial inflows into their economies, whose easy availability had enabled them to maintain current account deficits on their balance of payments earlier. In such a situation, within the existing neoliberal paradigm, they would be forced to adopt austerity measures that would impose income deflation on their people, make the conditions of their people significantly worse, lead to a further handing over of their national assets and resources to international capital, and prevent precisely any possible transition to an alternative strategy of home market-based growth.
In other words, we shall now have an intensification of the imperialist stranglehold over third world economies, especially those pushed into unsustainable balance-of-payments deficits in the new situation. By imperialism, here we do not mean the imperialism of this or that major power, but the imperialism of international finance capital, with which even domestic big bourgeoisies are integrated, directed against their own working people.
In short, the ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. To sustain itself, neoliberal capitalism starts looking for some other ideological prop and finds fascism. [...]
Fascist groups of one kind or another exist in all modern societies. They move center stage and even into power only on certain occasions when they get the backing of big business. And these occasions arise when three conditions are satisfied: when there is an economic crisis so the system cannot simply go on as before; when the usual liberal establishment is manifestly incapable of resolving the crisis; and when the left is not strong enough to provide an alternative to the people in order to move out of the conjuncture.
This last point may appear odd at first, since many see the big bourgeoisie’s recourse to fascism as a counter to the growth of the left’s strength in the context of a capitalist crisis. But when the left poses a serious threat, the response of the big bourgeoisie typically is to attempt to split it by offering concessions. It uses fascism to prop itself up only when the left is weakened. Walter Benjamin’s remark that “behind every fascism there is a failed revolution” points in this direction.
[...] what we have today is not nation-based finance capitals, but international finance capital into whose corpus the finance capitals drawn from particular countries are integrated. This globalized finance capital does not want the world to be partitioned into economic territories of rival powers; on the contrary, it wants the entire globe to be open to its own unrestricted movement. The muting of rivalry between major powers, therefore, is not because they prefer truce to war, or peaceful partitioning of the world to forcible repartitioning, but because the material conditions themselves have changed so that it is no longer a matter of such choices. The world has gone beyond both Lenin and Kautsky, as well as their debates.
Not only are we not going to have wars between major powers in this era of fascist upsurge (of course, as will be discussed, we shall have other wars), but, by the same token, this fascist upsurge will not burn out through any cataclysmic war. What we are likely to see is a lingering fascism of less murderous intensity, which, when in power, does not necessarily do away with all the forms of bourgeois democracy, does not necessarily physically annihilate the opposition, and may even allow itself to get voted out of power occasionally. But since its successor government, as long as it remains within the confines of the neoliberal strategy, will also be incapable of alleviating the crisis, the fascist elements are likely to return to power as well. And whether the fascist elements are in or out of power, they will remain a potent force working toward the fascification of the society and the polity, even while promoting corporate interests within a regime of globalization of finance, and hence permanently maintaining the “partnership between big business and fascist upstarts.”
[R]evived political activity will necessarily throw up challenges to neoliberal capitalism in particular countries. Imperialism, by which we mean the entire economic and political arrangement sustaining the hegemony of international finance capital, will deal with these challenges in at least four different ways.
The first is the so-called spontaneous method of capital flight. Any political formation that seeks to take the country out of the neoliberal regime will witness capital flight even before it has been elected to office, bringing the country to a financial crisis and thereby denting its electoral prospects. And if perchance it still gets elected, the outflow will only increase, even before it assumes office. The inevitable difficulties faced by the people may well make the government back down at that stage. The sheer difficulty of transition away from a neoliberal regime could be enough to bring even a government based on the support of workers and peasants to its knees, precisely to save them short-term distress or to avoid losing their support.
Even if capital controls are put in place, where there are current account deficits, financing such deficits would pose a problem, necessitating some trade controls. But this is where the second instrument of imperialism comes into play: the imposition of trade sanctions by the metropolitan states, which then cajole other countries to stop buying from the sanctioned country that is trying to break away from thralldom to globalized finance capital. Even if the latter would have otherwise succeeded in stabilizing its economy despite its attempt to break away, the imposition of sanctions becomes an additional blow.
[...]
And if all these measures fail, there is always the possibility of resorting to economic warfare (such as destroying Venezuela’s electricity supply), and eventually to military warfare. Venezuela today provides a classic example of what imperialist intervention in a third world country is going to look like in the era of decline of neoliberal capitalism, when revolts are going to characterize such countries more and more.
Also the understanding of 'judeo-christian' as a selective white nationalist ethnic bloc rather than an anti-islamic ideological bloc is new to me. I strongly associate white nationalism of any stripe with antisemitism, would be interested in seeing a more academic breakdown of this.Israel.
thank you kara for being able to wade through the cancer that I posted and still find it in your heart to like the post :dead
This is about as bad as when you said Trump was reflexively anti-war.And yet the globe is currently at peace in perfect harmony.
Likening Mandark to me is so insulting to him that I'm reporting my first post on The Bore.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/secret-life-of-the-professor-who-lives-with-nazis
:dead of course this story opens in Orange County, Californiaspoiler (click to show/hide)mein reich :goty2[close]
International Trade Liberalization and Domestic Institutional Reform: Effects of WTO Accession on Chinese Internal Migration Policy
Economic institutions that impede factor mobility become more costly when an economy experiences substantial transitions such as trade liberalization. I study how trade triggers changes
in labor institutions that regulate internal migration in the context of China’s Hukou system.
Using a newly-collected dataset on prefecture-level migration policies, I document an increase
in pro-migrant regulations following WTO entry and estimate the impact of prefecture-level
trade shocks on migration regulations from 2001 to 2007. I find that regions facing more export
market liberalization enacted more migrant-friendly regulations. I also find evidence that these
regulation changes amplified the effects of trade liberalization on internal migration.
These are the dumb struggle sessions I live for :lawd
Rewinding to the discussion a few pages ago, is there an article where Amber or whoever lays out the argument for anti-idpol feminism? I've mostly absorbed that whole debate through tweets.
Preemptive: I'm not going to a read a whole-ass book about this so none of you bastards try to make me.
*forums poster Mandark, Read Settlers :neogaf
Ughbhhhhmfjdndbd akahnwwh Google Angela Nagle and her work.
Example:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190713202700/https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/11/the-left-case-against-open-borders/
Zizek has some similar shit takes and is probably more popular. Some of his fans like Crash Dummy would be able to guide you :hitler
https://youtu.be/5dNbWGaaxWM
I haven't even watched the last season of Justified yet! C'mon!surviving Sam Elliott's head lean is the real struggle session
Completely off the top of my head without looking them up to be sure:
1. Season 2
2. Season 3
3. "Bulletville"
4. Season 4
5. Season 6
6. Rest of Season 1
7. Season 5
Super accurate. Pretty much every odd number season is great to mostly great. I don't think I would put 3 that high (is that the one with neal mcodnough villain? it was wild) but it had the hard task of following up the best season. Hard act to follow. Show is great tv all throughout and a really good ending.Yeah, season three is Quarles plus the first Limehouse, also the episode where Dewey Crowe had his kidney removed. I liked Quarles coming in as a brutal enforcer but not at all ready for Harlan County as it all starts falling apart.spoiler (click to show/hide)We dug coal togetherspoiler (click to show/hide):tocry[close][close]
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/cdmcvl/richard_d_wolff_here_professor_of_economics_radio/
Great comment section, 10/10 would read all the shitposts again
Me wondering if I want to spend 85 on the entire Buttigieg Prison Notebooks set ....
I have a clipped version with selections but it's ehhhh
(https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ConcernedWarmAntbear-size_restricted.gif)
jakefromstatefarm and benji circa 2015 vindicated. :ussrcry
https://twitter.com/communoah/status/1150233321416396800
Him getting banned at the same time as Assimilate was like when Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson.
Him getting banned at the same time as Assimilate was like when Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson.
i'm aware this transpired, but i was off the bore when this happened. can someone fill me in on the deets?
Him getting banned at the same time as Assimilate was like when Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson.
i'm aware this transpired, but i was off the bore when this happened. can someone fill me in on the deets?
Assy McGee and Floptimus were garbage posters so I perm'd them even though bork said not to.
A heuristic I've found useful is when someone says the left/liberals/Dems should make concessions and meet the people where they are on issue X, that person probably doesn't care about issue X or lowkey agrees with the right wing position on issue X.https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1147403313047953409
Our own Optimus (pbuh) said the left needed to drop the PC bullshit because it turned off voters, then gradually revealed that he had Some Thoughts on Muslim immigration, racial IQ gaps, false rape accusations, etc.
:pacspit :fbm :tocryHim getting banned at the same time as Assimilate was like when Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson.
i'm aware this transpired, but i was off the bore when this happened. can someone fill me in on the deets?
Assy McGee and Floptimus were garbage posters so I perm'd them even though bork said not to.
I listened to the Yang interview on Chapo. I liked it. It reminded me how good he is at eviscerating the modern economy without couching it in socialist anachronisms. Warren is someone else that can do this, Sanders unfortunately does not. I asked in jest if Will Menaker was going to say something stupid again, but this time it was Virgil during the discussion of taxes. Sad! Actually, this whole thing makes me lose respect for him. I thought he was like... the smartest guy on Chapo. Maybe that's still true but it turns out that's not nearly as smart as I thought.
https://twitter.com/markmackinnon/status/1152241649893945346
Why should I read “Voluntaryist?”what
The comic is worth reading for many reasons, but there is one reason that makes it stand out from any current main-stream production: It actually addresses government abuses. Many comics which have libertarian/anarchist themes only promote so subliminally. This comic series directly incorporates the growing abuses of government into its storyline to highlight the coming dystopian future in America and around the globe. The comic thus serves as an inspiration and warning to address the police state before it’s too late.
How does a hero fighting monsters, villains, and government, address “Voluntaryism?”
The promotion of voluntaryist values is a development of the series which is seen in the language of the main character and in the narratives. It comes across especially where the hero defends innocent people from being victimized for victimless activity.
TSA: Transportation Safety Administration. The government’s compliance branch for ensuring an obedient populace.i'm out :donot
GENERATIONS (Gs): A measure of power based on the average increase in human energy strength in each generation that lives in a world of Voluntaryist norms. When humans begin to maximize consent and minimize the initiation of violence, the evolution of human dexterity, healing, and abnormal abilities manifests. Within 10 generations (10G power), humans attain an average strength ability of peak human strength and a healing factor 10x the speed of the first generation. This metric is also used to describe the ability level of super-human characters.
Voluntaryist Engagement: Code of Conduct:doge
The Voluntaryists strive to maximize consent and minimize the initiation of violence. Because of this, they will do their best to not kill any enemy if they do not have to. However, they do not see killing in self defense as a moral or ethical harm in itself. A statist, whether human or transformed, who is attempting to use lethal force against the Voluntaryists or murder an innocent, is subject to lethal force. The Voluntaryists do not wish to create a culture of revenge though and, thus, will do their best to avoid engaging with defense or offense against humans that will likely lead to death.
The Voluntaryists do keep in mind though that they do not know the full extent of their own powers or the extent of the enemy’s willingness to push the offensive envelope. Because of this, the Voluntaryists are willing to put forward highly destructive tactics if the enemy’s offense requires it.
I wonder if there's like a Chinese version of Gulag Archipelago dedicated to our system sometimes.That would be pretty hypocritical, like Americans constantly pointing to the Gulag Archipelago during the great American crime wave.
I just finished a job where I was hired to examine a joint Indian-AmeriKKKan venture (which was both humbling and illuminating for myriad reasons) for a company who could then take that information to a real specialist to save money / know what they were talking about and the Indian government puts out a handy ~80 page booklet that's basically *Troy McClure voice* "So you want to open a business in India?"
Anyway, there's a section in there about tax treaties. In that section they say something to the effect of, "here's a snapshot of tax rates with certain key jurisdictions under treaties that have been signed," and show a table ofrankstax rates.
On that table you've got:
-the U.S. (go off, king)
-Mauritius (wait, what? I guess it is the [culturally, if not geographically] closest pretend country that's a tax haven...)
-Singapore (OK, starting to detect a pattern here)
-the Netherlands (yup, definitely a pattern!)
It's not that I don't know that """""""""development""""""""" of the semi-periphery is just large-scale tax fraud against people who need the tax funds the most, but seeing it so cynically broadcast in a government publication was, well, disabusing.spoiler (click to show/hide)They use the word cess in legal and government documents. Yet another crime of the British Empire that will go unpunished.[close]
His judgment of men was profound. He early saw through the flamboyance and exhibitionism of Trotsky, who fooled the world, and especially America. The whole ill-bred and insulting attitude of Liberals in the U.S. today began with our naive acceptance of Trotsky’s magnificent lying propaganda, which he carried around the world. Against it, Stalin stood like a rock and moved neither right nor left, as he continued to advance toward a real socialism instead of the sham Trotsky offered.
At the very least, Stalin was a more more talented poet than Lenin, whose sole contribution to the world of verse appears to have been an ode dedicated to the village where he spent his Siberian exile. It starts like this:Good. A revolutionary has no time for poetry which does not advance the revolution. :salute
In Shushensjoe, in the foothills of Mount Sayan...
And then stops. Eight words in.
Do you think the dude's banged them all, I say 2/5, maybe a little under the shirt action from a third.
I always heard (from multiple sources) that GOP side of the aisle is if you wanna get lots of "casual" sex that gets you in trouble with your bosses because the drama is spreading throughout the intern pool and tearing the offices apart.
Major state level government is so quaint and quiet in comparison.
Also the understanding of 'judeo-christian' as a selective white nationalist ethnic bloc rather than an anti-islamic ideological bloc is new to me. I strongly associate white nationalism of any stripe with antisemitism, would be interested in seeing a more academic breakdown of this.
Also the understanding of 'judeo-christian' as a selective white nationalist ethnic bloc rather than an anti-islamic ideological bloc is new to me. I strongly associate white nationalism of any stripe with antisemitism, would be interested in seeing a more academic breakdown of this.
The reason why this didn't scan with you is because it's bullshit. (Caught up on my eps today.)
Adam took a line of play (whiteness is a malleable concept) and stretched it out way beyond its capabilities when he made that claim. The first guest essentially invalidated it when she talked about how she was thought of as white until people dug up that she had a Jewish grandparent. He didn't even offer any evidence, he just said it like it was fact and proceeded from there. Seek truth from facts, Adam. :wag
BTW, I read that cursed Churchill speech or whatever about Zionism you posted about awhile back. Of all the people outside Russia that asshole has no excuse whatsoever for praising Denikin for being a friend to the Jews in 1920.
I get that there's a nonsensical connect the dots arc of euro-american value hegemony to some greater historically blind judeo-christian values idea stemming from israeli allyship from the american state, i just agree with Kara that the notion of jewishness still doesnt fit neatly to whiteness. We've seen this with slavs and in the past, irish people or italians etc, but i don't see it ever fully making the leap since us white nationalism historically draws on antisemitism from a bunch of different sources;oh, I didn't want to make that insinuation (and I didn't listen to whatever podcast) just to note that American versions of these groups have historical cultural factors that creates this seemingly paradox that European groups tends to discard
Defenders of global capitalism are obsessed with this story. It has been the focus of Bill Gates tweets, Dylan Matthews Vox columns, and even a self-congratulatory movie about American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks. Silicon Valley futurist guru Yuval Noah Harari dreams about it during his meditation retreats, Thomas Friedman thinks he discovered it while waiting for one of his imaginary friends, and Effective Altruists across the world repeat it to themselves under their breath as they walk into their soulless Wall Street offices (to do the Most Good They Possibly Can). Steven Pinker even did humanity the great service of taking 600 pages to make the very same argument (don’t worry, it’s a quick read—a good chunk simply consists of charts showing the arrow of good things going up and the arrow of bad things going down).:whew
This obsession makes complete sense. After all, if taken seriously, the “Don’t Worry, Everything is Better now” or DWEIB (pronounced “dweeb”) narrative is perhaps the most compelling defense of global capitalism out there. Sure, the wealthiest individuals might own a grossly disproportionate amount of global wealth, the rules may be rigged in favor of the rich, and hundreds of millions may continue to live without their basic needs met, but the DWEIBs (shorthand for those who promote the DWEIB narrative) are quick to point out that the system that produced these conditions has done more for the poor than any other. Global capitalism may not be perfect but the benefits it brings—namely, eradicating poverty as we know it—far outweighs its costs.That unrepenting acronym :lawd
Increasingly, even self-identified progressives are beginning to accept this narrative. The author who penned the “Land of Plenty” paragraph may be one of the last people you expect: Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman—the same Rutger Bregman who made headlines when he told the elite at Davos that they need to start paying their fair share of taxes, and then flayed Tucker Carlson over his phony populism.:kermit
On the surface, Bregman seems like a typical leftist. He is an avowed social democrat, bashes professions like consulting and banking, and argues for policies like a universal basic income, open borders and a 15-hour workweek. But, like many who have claimed the mantle of the left in recent years, something is off about Bregman. He believes the greatest challenge of our time is not unjust and exploitative system but a lack of imagination. He advocates for big, bold ideas, not simply because they will make the world more just but because they will make politics less boring. He speaks about the importance of “innovation,” “meritocracy,” and “cut[ting] the nanny state” while terms like “class conflict,” “distribution of power” and “structural violence” rarely, if ever, enter his political vocabulary.
Bregman, in other words, is the exception that proves the rule: When you believe that our existing economic system has brought with it unprecedented prosperity for all, then a view of politics as class conflict and collective struggle falls by the wayside—the only radicalism that remains is a radicalism of imagination.
Worse yet, to reach the $7.40 per day level Woodward shows that GDP would have to be 175 times its current level, at which point the average global income would be $1.3 million/year. In other words, under our current economic system, the average income would have to be over a million dollars per year just so that the poor could live on $7.40 per day.:larry
enjoy your future! :wow
On the surface, Bregman seems like a typical leftist. He is an avowed social democrat
You were not kidding about this plagiarizing Jason Hickel, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. :lolI mean he cites the material but those of us that have read the original content can plainly see he just flat out copied the structure of the arguments :doge
I love ha joon chang and steve keen because they have entire careers based on hating on capitalism in practice and then stopping at the last minute like fuck it... Don't wanna go too farWhen it comes to Keen, "last minute" is not an exaggeration.
Peter McCormack: Yes, and I will share that out in the show notes. It’s a long read. I’d probably need a couple of days to really digest it in detail and ask you, but what was quite interesting that came out was something that you quoted that Minsky said. That, “Capitalism is inherently flawed. It has to have flaws to function as a capitalist system.” Therefore, what is the alternative?tfw Minsky's parents were Mensheviks :beli
Steve Keen: The alternative is recognising you’ve got a flawed system. I think one of the great weaknesses of the human species is we have this belief of a perfect world, and you find it in every … Every culture has its Valhalla. Every society has this ideal world where everything happens perfectly, a bit Garden of Eden, etc., etc. It’s something in our psyche that wants something perfect. What economic theory, Neo-Classical theory promised was a perfect world on this planet. You get sucked into this belief in perfection.
Steve Keen: What Minsky is saying is get used to it. The real world is not a porcelain doll. The real world’s going to have pimples. In the case of the financial sector, what Minsky actually said, if you elaborate that quote, what he said was, “Capitalism is inherently flawed, being prone to booms, slumps, and crises. These flaws are due to characteristics a sophisticated capitalistic economy must have. Such a system will be capable of generating signals that induce an increased desire to invest and of financing that investment.” That’s the real link.
Steve Keen: You want capitalists. The good thing about the capitalist system is innovation and change. You want them to want to be investing. When they do it, the income distribution signal will change to make it worth their while, or looking like worthwhile to invest. They’ll get euphoric about those expectations, as Minsky argued. They’ll extrapolate forward good times and see fantastic times in the future. Then to do it, they’ve got to borrow money. When they borrow money, they accumulate debt, and the process of both borrowing money adds to demand, accumulating debt adds to a lock on the system, that when that inter distribution turns against them again, they’ve accumulated additional debt and you can be in a serious crisis.
Steve Keen: You recognise that mechanism exists and you say, “What other mechanism can we add to counter it?”
Glenn Greenwald on Chapo. I still hate his voice, his contrarianism, and his fans but man, he did some good work with the Lula scandal. Great listen so far. I don't know too much about politics but it sounds like a certain class are able to construct legal bodies and '''''''''investigatory forces''''''''' without too much trouble.
Inspired to make a meme while looking for an old political cartoon (like from the early 20th century).
(https://i.imgur.com/iSTOVnT.jpg)
OK, the fuck is Settlers? Why are y'all so into it?
OK, the fuck is Settlers? Why are y'all so into it?
OK, the fuck is Settlers? Why are y'all so into it?https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/the-settlers-history-collection/
OK, the fuck is Settlers? Why are y'all so into it?
http://readsettlers.org/text-index.htmlspoiler (click to show/hide)I still only skimmed parts of it. :doge[close]
Yeah OK I know what it is now and I'm too lazy to read all that #YesMandark
Come listen to Kyle Stegerwald give a summary and thoughts on the book, "Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern" by J. Sakai. You never think about the American War for Independence again!
*disclaimer* The views of the speakers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Revolutionary Students Union as a whole. The RSU itself is non-tendency, but is firmly anti-capitalist. **Double Disclaimer** SDS does not endorse or reject any of the views and ideas put forward in this video. This video was an upload by an affiliate (Revolutionary Students' Union) that has since changed their name to Univ. of Utah SDS. **Double Disclaimer** SDS does not endorse or reject any of the views and ideas put forward in this video. This video was an upload by an affiliate (Revolutionary Students' Union) that has since changed their name to Univ. of Utah SDS.
I wouldn't last a week(https://external-preview.redd.it/T2faaKpXP0UVPWPZLQybP6dDZgU35UpksGxB3ni2CJM.jpg?auto=webp&s=870c0f566c4100f576d35e46e2cbb5d95f59e10d)
Why's this thread have a picture of Winnie the Pooh in a gimp costume?
Why's this thread have a picture of Winnie the Pooh in a gimp costume?(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ed42ee5c-22f3-44b8-8b27-27fe05568034/d8xtcjw-db0aa44c-f7df-41c8-b57f-6bb0fb020b31.jpg/v1/fill/w_768,h_1040,q_70,strp/xi_jinping_by_klebas3d_d8xtcjw-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MjE2NiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2VkNDJlZTVjLTIyZjMtNDRiOC04YjI3LTI3ZmUwNTU2ODAzNFwvZDh4dGNqdy1kYjBhYTQ0Yy1mN2RmLTQxYzgtYjU3Zi02YmIwZmIwMjBiMzEuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE2MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.76S_IYJhaj4j8PLgk5vlwe7V0JeqbEubEq93N78zzDI)
Avakianites at it again :dead
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/19/los-angeles-police-informant-anti-trump-activist-protest
During an 11 October meeting, the informant approached Antonio and said, “Are we gonna do like any freeway things again…or major things like that?”, according to a transcript of a secret recording.
“I’m not sure,” Antonio responded.
The informant then said he was interested in joining future activities: “I thought the freeway thing was pretty good.”
In one case, police noted in a write-up that one of the activists was caught on the recording making a joke about the president, saying, “That’s an awfully hot coffeepot, should I drop it on Donald Trump?”
We talk to historian Sarah Churchwell about the Gilded Age in late nineteenth century America and the comparisons with today. Rampant inequality, racial conflict, fights over immigration, technological revolution: is Trump's America repeating the pattern or is it something new?
I thought combining the Bire‘s two favorite things, Juche and Yugoslavia, would net me more likes. :fbm
Avakianites at it again :dead
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/19/los-angeles-police-informant-anti-trump-activist-protest
#Benji/stost 2020 :american(https://i.imgur.com/jRun8bS.jpg)
Feeding children food instead of arguing for their right to participate in the wage labor market doesn't sound very libertarian :camby
Honest question: Why should any of us be socialists? I used to be socialist. I still agree with basically everything Bernie is saying. So maybe I still am. But social democracy might be as far as I want to go. I used to be libertarian socialist - an anarchist basically. The libertarian views stuck, the socialist views didn't. But given my exposure to socialists and communists why would I want them in charge? I've seen how socialists act when you go against their ideology. They demand such purity that when I study history it's very easy for me to come to understand why far leftists always purge their enemies with fire, blood, and bullets even if they were originally allies as seen by the social democrats and the bolsheviks.
Honestly, the SJWs demanding purity, et al and kicking me out of BLM for instance just because I thought,"maybe we shouldn't protest pride" has made me realize that if socialists did have power it would turn ugly indeed.
Convince me otherwise. I've never seen socialists sans social democrats espouse respect for human rights and things like free speech. On the contrary, often, they mock it. By mocking it, they show they don't value diversity in opinion and thought. That's where the purges start.
You guys keep talking socialism stuff on this board but I fear given my very direct experience with the far left that it'd turn into gulags at moments notice.
Antifa whackos are nuts. I lost a friend to antifa. I was apparently "hateful" and "turning the other cheek" by thinking "maybe it's not a good idea to go punching random people as it gives sympathy to their cause." We both agree the Richard Spencer's are poison but have different methods. But somehow I'm "hateful" for not willing random violence on people.
That's when I started to turn around on socialism: their tendency to talk about violence outright rather than as a last resort.
Antifa whackos are nuts. I lost a friend to antifa. I was apparently "hateful" and "turning the other cheek" by thinking "maybe it's not a good idea to go punching random people as it gives sympathy to their cause." We both agree the Richard Spencer's are poison but have different methods. But somehow I'm "hateful" for not willing random violence on people.
That's when I started to turn around on socialism: their tendency to talk about violence outright rather than as a last resort.
My issue with it is the definition of nazi is entirely arbitrary now and is synonymous with person you don't agree with. Resulting in a mob that gives itself carte blanche to assault people they don't like as anyone opposed to them is clearly the bad guy. It is self righteous and a complex that they are always the ones in the right tuned to a belligerent degree.
Starts with something people agree with (spencer) and feedback loops to include varying people and propagates due to the catharsis the mob feels (beating randos).
Leftists scare me.(https://i.imgur.com/mkKxujm.jpg?1)
It's interesting how events shape people's stances differently.
You feel driven Libertarian, I feel pushed more Authoritarian, as I find security and order to be pressing concerns.
It's interesting how events shape people's stances differently.
You feel driven Libertarian, I feel pushed more Authoritarian, as I find security and order to be pressing concerns.
The problem with authoritarianism is that states change. Rulers change. You can like authority be doled out on one group you dislike but what happens if the seasons change or the ruler changes and it's you on the firing end? This is precisely why when Trump won the presidency my trust in the state as an institution literally died overnight. Don't get me wrong, it's a valuable institution and unfortunately a necessary evil. But in America we have the potentiality of changing the state and the way it functions every few years. You can go from Obama to Trump and have most of Obama's legacy wiped out over just a few months. Do I trust in Trump's government to protect me? I bought a gun just a few months later after the revelation. That election was life changing and there is no going back.
Basically...
(https://i.imgur.com/Y9YYalA.gif)
A mixture of valuing order and a strong leader.
But a disdain for corrupt/oppressive leaders. Creates a contradictory stance of sorts since by nature oppressive and strong would likely come together with corrupt.
A mixture of valuing order and a strong leader.
But a disdain for corrupt/oppressive leaders. Creates a contradictory stance of sorts since by nature oppressive and strong would likely come together with corrupt.
So what happens when one ruler is strong but just, and the next one is corrupt? What do you do then? And how do you stave off assassinations to usurp power which are so prominent in governments like that?
There in lies the contradictions. There's no reason for those problems to not be prolific.
Do you support Trump and how did you come about preferring authority systems?
He's had a few good points along the way (shit sucks in the states), but continues along by being an idol of blunders and the entire idea of rich people being immune to consequences. made manifest
Honest question: Why should any of us be socialists?There once was a world famous scientist that used his audience to advocate for socialism, but this cost him a lot both personally and publicly. After his death we taught his name to every child but never mentioned he was a socialist. That scientist's name? (https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/)
Honest question: Why should any of us be socialists?There once was a world famous scientist that used his audience to advocate for socialism, but this cost him a lot both personally and publicly. After his death we taught his name to every child but never mentioned he was a socialist. That scientist's name? (https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/)
You know what kills me the most... Cindi, you waltz in here, asking, "Why would anyone want to be a socialist? They all end up being crazy SJW purists." First of all, one obviously doesn't imply the other and you know that, and second, you're asking us to defend that, which implies WE'RE like that (and telling Esch that out right just because he served you some piping hot sarcasm). Bitch, I stood up for your ass and got your account approved on Resetera.com, and then I personally stood up for you in threads there, and I STILL would have done that even if I knew you'd slap me in the face with some lazy Texas rhetoric two years later. When you want to ask me an honest question that treats me as an individual and not a punching bag for your bolshevik boogeymen, I'd be glad to tell you what I think and why I think it.
See? None of that was said much less hinted at but you get a passive aggressive post that presumes free speech is perfect (this was never said) and other assumptions because you don't fully agree with their ideology. Like I said, piety.
I legitimately don't give a shit about you being in line with my ideology, i just find your reduction of leftists, historical left movements and generalizations about mentality to be laughable and not worth engaging with in good faith.
A mixture of valuing order and a strong leader.
But a disdain for corrupt/oppressive leaders. Creates a contradictory stance of sorts since by nature oppressive and strong would likely come together with corrupt.
So what happens when one ruler is strong but just, and the next one is corrupt? What do you do then? And how do you stave off assassinations to usurp power which are so prominent in governments like that?
There in lies the contradictions. There's no reason for those problems to not be prolific.
Do you support Trump and how did you come about preferring authority systems?
He's had a few good points along the way (shit sucks in the states), but continues along by being an idol of blunders and the entire idea of rich people being immune to consequences. made manifest
You know what kills me the most... Cindi, you waltz in here, asking, "Why would anyone want to be a socialist? They all end up being crazy SJW purists." First of all, one obviously doesn't imply the other and you know that, and second, you're asking us to defend that, which implies WE'RE like that (and telling Esch that out right just because he served you some piping hot sarcasm). Bitch, I stood up for your ass and got your account approved on Resetera.com, and then I personally stood up for you in threads there, and I STILL would have done that even if I knew you'd slap me in the face with some lazy Texas rhetoric two years later. When you want to ask me an honest question that treats me as an individual and not a punching bag for your bolshevik boogeymen, I'd be glad to tell you what I think and why I think it.
To be honest I was a little confused about being accused of being a purity/piety(?) tester by a person who uses the word authoritarian as a shibboleth for whats Good and Bad... Who once got @ me for being too critical of drone bombings.
:doge
Yeah, I consider us friends as well. And I don't think youre uninterested. But you didn't even ask us to explain or have a discussion of the purpose of state arrangement or power. You just basically asked us to account for all the historical excesses of class warfare and then continued to pathologize leftists which... Most people aren't going to be receptive of?
:idont
My point was that from what I have seen and witnessed a lot of people on the left (the real left, not the American "left") fall into a mindset where different values, opinions, and viewpoints aren't considered. They're often combative towards views they disagree with
My point was that from what I have seen and witnessed a lot of people on the left (the real left, not the American "left") fall into a mindset where different values, opinions, and viewpoints aren't considered. They're often combative towards views they disagree with
Cindi!
This is you!
Multiple times!
Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.- Rosa Luxemburg
RE: authoritarianism. For me, authoritarianism is about flexing power to force a populace to do things while constraining their individual freedom. Who use unfair means to dole out justice to spread their authority. So Kamala’s history with imprisoning people, her views her on taking property by force, her threats of jail time, and being hard on crime are authoritarian to me. Maybe I’ve used the word too much, but it’s definitely a big concern. I guess it’s a mis-characterization for my part. In my experience, Democrats and Republicans are more authoritarian than leftists.
RE: authoritarianism. For me, authoritarianism is about flexing power to force a populace to do things while constraining their individual freedom. Who use unfair means to dole out justice to spread their authority. So Kamala’s history with imprisoning people, her views her on taking property by force, her threats of jail time, and being hard on crime are authoritarian to me. Maybe I’ve used the word too much, but it’s definitely a big concern. I guess it’s a mis-characterization for my part. In my experience, Democrats and Republicans are more authoritarian than leftists.
Whoa, hold on there. This seems like a bait and switch, Cind-chan. I don't think anyone would disagree with what you're saying here. But you weren't complaining about Kamala Harris putting parents in jail. You were complaining about shit like overbearing resetera mods, twitter shadowbanning rightwingres, and BLM activists being mean to you
RE: authoritarianism. For me, authoritarianism is about flexing power to force a populace to do things while constraining their individual freedom. Who use unfair means to dole out justice to spread their authority. So Kamala’s history with imprisoning people, her views her on taking property by force, her threats of jail time, and being hard on crime are authoritarian to me. Maybe I’ve used the word too much, but it’s definitely a big concern. I guess it’s a mis-characterization for my part. In my experience, Democrats and Republicans are more authoritarian than leftists.
Whoa, hold on there. This seems like a bait and switch, Cind-chan. I don't think anyone would disagree with what you're saying here. But you weren't complaining about Kamala Harris putting parents in jail. You were complaining about shit like overbearing resetera mods, twitter shadowbanning rightwingres, and BLM activists being mean to you
I've talked about Kamala very frequently and even have her as a cop as my avatar.
Honest question: Why should any of us be socialists? I used to be socialist. I still agree with basically everything Bernie is saying. So maybe I still am. But social democracy might be as far as I want to go. I used to be libertarian socialist - an anarchist basically. The libertarian views stuck, the socialist views didn't. But given my exposure to socialists and communists why would I want them in charge? I've seen how socialists act when you go against their ideology. They demand such purity that when I study history it's very easy for me to come to understand why far leftists always purge their enemies with fire, blood, and bullets even if they were originally allies as seen by the social democrats and the bolsheviks.
Honestly, the SJWs demanding purity, et al and kicking me out of BLM for instance just because I thought,"maybe we shouldn't protest pride" has made me realize that if socialists did have power it would turn ugly indeed.
Convince me otherwise. I've never seen socialists sans social democrats espouse respect for human rights and things like free speech. On the contrary, often, they mock it. By mocking it, they show they don't value diversity in opinion and thought. That's where the purges start.
You guys keep talking socialism stuff on this board but I fear given my very direct experience with the far left that it'd turn into gulags at moments notice.
In my experience, Democrats and Republicans are more authoritarian than leftists.
Given that many socialists and communists believe that the current paradigm should be replaced this forces you to ask questions. If this is how they act now, how would they act with power? So even if I agree with socialists on many issues, it's hard for me to trust them.how do you trust the Democrats and Republicans in power then
this all started after kamala said something about using exec orders to take away cindi's guns
RE: authoritarianism. For me, authoritarianism is about flexing power to force a populace to do things while constraining their individual freedom. Who use unfair means to dole out justice to spread their authority. So Kamala’s history with imprisoning people, her views her on taking property by force, her threats of jail time, and being hard on crime are authoritarian to me. Maybe I’ve used the word too much, but it’s definitely a big concern. I guess it’s a mis-characterization for my part. In my experience, Democrats and Republicans are more authoritarian than leftists.
Whoa, hold on there. This seems like a bait and switch, Cind-chan. I don't think anyone would disagree with what you're saying here. But you weren't complaining about Kamala Harris putting parents in jail. You were complaining about shit like overbearing resetera mods, twitter shadowbanning rightwingres, and BLM activists being mean to you
I've talked about Kamala very frequently and even have her as a cop as my avatar.
That...wasn't the point of my post.
I'm talking about this post:Honest question: Why should any of us be socialists? I used to be socialist. I still agree with basically everything Bernie is saying. So maybe I still am. But social democracy might be as far as I want to go. I used to be libertarian socialist - an anarchist basically. The libertarian views stuck, the socialist views didn't. But given my exposure to socialists and communists why would I want them in charge? I've seen how socialists act when you go against their ideology. They demand such purity that when I study history it's very easy for me to come to understand why far leftists always purge their enemies with fire, blood, and bullets even if they were originally allies as seen by the social democrats and the bolsheviks.
Honestly, the SJWs demanding purity, et al and kicking me out of BLM for instance just because I thought,"maybe we shouldn't protest pride" has made me realize that if socialists did have power it would turn ugly indeed.
Convince me otherwise. I've never seen socialists sans social democrats espouse respect for human rights and things like free speech. On the contrary, often, they mock it. By mocking it, they show they don't value diversity in opinion and thought. That's where the purges start.
You guys keep talking socialism stuff on this board but I fear given my very direct experience with the far left that it'd turn into gulags at moments notice.
In my experience, Democrats and Republicans are more authoritarian than leftists.Given that many socialists and communists believe that the current paradigm should be replaced this forces you to ask questions. If this is how they act now, how would they act with power? So even if I agree with socialists on many issues, it's hard for me to trust them.how do you trust the Democrats and Republicans in power then
Cindi, I think Wrath nailed it a couple years ago. Your 2015/2016 self was a really angry, unforgiving puritan on political matters and you wound up seeking and surrounding yourself with people who had similar mindsets and dispositions. Of course they were going to act like dicks when you shifted on some issues.
I don't really trust any form of government or state as I said earlier. Any trust in a state is small.
Although I agree with many socialists, how do I know if they're not more of the same - or worse?clearly there is a bigger problem if someone tells you they won't take away your freedom of speech and you refuse to believe them
I don't really trust any form of government or state as I said earlier. Any trust in a state is small.Although I agree with many socialists, how do I know if they're not more of the same - or worse?clearly there is a bigger problem if someone tells you they won't take away your freedom of speech and you refuse to believe them
So the issue is less socialism and the people I engaged with?
That's a depressing thought.
Is there a therapist that helps out with political views?
Is there a therapist that helps out with political views?
Jordan Peterson
I'd like to talk about this with a therapist but I couldn't trust themthere is that thing again
I'd like to talk about this with a therapist but I couldn't trust themthere is that thing again
A mixture of valuing order and a strong leader.
But a disdain for corrupt/oppressive leaders. Creates a contradictory stance of sorts since by nature oppressive and strong would likely come together with corrupt.
So what happens when one ruler is strong but just, and the next one is corrupt? What do you do then? And how do you stave off assassinations to usurp power which are so prominent in governments like that?
There in lies the contradictions. There's no reason for those problems to not be prolific.
Do you support Trump and how did you come about preferring authority systems?
He's had a few good points along the way (shit sucks in the states), but continues along by being an idol of blunders and the entire idea of rich people being immune to consequences. made manifest
So you’d be fine with Trump so long as he wasn’t a blunder bus, faced the consequences of his actions, and wasn’t a spoiled rich brat?
What are your thoughts on Brazil’s new PM?
:mjcryLet me suggest the buddy system. Get a person who you find is historically right about everything, who likes you personally, and who has a lot of patience. Consult with that person every time you have an opinion on something and let them decide your beliefs for you.
Stop :(
and let them decide your beliefs for you.
first thing we're going to do is a trust exercise where you give me all your guns
Is there a therapist that helps out with political views?
Jordan Peterson
you really think a democratic socialist is going to put political prisoners in labor camps
Who's going to tell her the katorga were a holdover from the tsar and the United States has the largest prison population on earth
I was hoping for someone to help me go through my thoughts here to help me understand why I'm so afraid of something I actually agree with.Same reason you like guns, you don't trust people and your brain has been poisoned by uniquely American narratives about liberty and socialism
So I'm thinking,"what if someone takes advantage of very legitimate socialist views and makes something awful like Castro did with Cuba?"What if someone comes along and tells the democratic socialists that he wants to get rid of the democratic part? Are you listening to yourself? What if half the country voted to shoot the other half in the head. What if someone comes along and says we should eat albino babies.
Are we not supposed to eat albino babies?you know, I wrote that and had forgotten that that actually happens (https://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-malawi-albinos-hunted-2017-story.html)
:nugenix
Here I am, rooting for Sanders - my guy from 2016 - who I personally agree with a large amount. And then there's a voice in my head talking about how he's socialist and this will only bring about chaos and gulags because of socialist collectivism.
Shosta: how to trust people again then
On Friday, July 19th, the Socialist Rifle Association became an official non-profit member of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF conducts expansive industry research, provides grants to colleges for firearms sports, and is the largest firearms trade association in America. The decision to become a member of the NSSF was made with the intent of living up to the SRA's goal of arming and training the working-class for self and community defense. While we understand the NSSF to be a fairly reactionary institution, our hope was to introduce the concept of left wing gun ownership and advocacy to the larger firearms community, especially through participation in events such as SHOT Show. Our announcement of membership in the NSSF was met with broad support from our members, who, like all proponents of the right to self-defense, want to ensure the protection of Americans' second amendment rights.
On Monday, July 22nd, the SRA received an email informing us that our membership in the NSSF had been rescinded and our $200 nonprofit membership dues were refunded. In a followup email, a representative of the organization claimed that the NSSF stands for "free market capitalism" and that a socialist organization being a member of their trade association would be contrary to their "core values". Further, they claimed both publicly and in the followup email that the SRA had joined through their "automated membership system", with the clear insinuation that they had accepted our membership without knowledge of our organization's values and purpose.
First, a point of fact. The SRA joined via the NSSF's online form, however we followed up with both phone and email correspondence to set up our account and spoke to an individual claiming the title of "Manager, Retail and Range Services". While setting up our online account, an NSSF employee even created the temporary password "Socialist1" for us. While the NSSF board may have been ignorant of our membership, their staff was clearly aware and comfortable with socialists joining their organization. The NSSF board appears to have been notified of our membership Monday due to a social media and phone campaign organized by members of the forum "AR15.com". While we don't wish to generalize the opinions of all members of AR15.com, the thread where this campaign was organized contains antisemitic memes, an individual proffering dox on one of the SRA's board members, and at least two death threats. One of the participants in the thread left a message on the NSSF's voicemail and received a response confirming our expulsion.
The decision by the NSSF to rescind its sponsorship of The Socialist Rifle Association follows a flurry of angry forum posts from those opposed to the SRA on issues unrelated to legal gun ownership. We at the SRA are greatly dismayed that the NSSF has allowed a minuscule, albeit vocal minority of supposed guns rights "activists" to dictate their membership policies to them. The SRA not only represents gun owners who align politically to the left, but also minority groups and members of the LGBTQ+ community who feel unwelcome in many circles that claim to support the Second Amendment rights of ALL Americans. The people that make up these circles represent the same voices that seem to have scared the NSSF away from its initial decision to broaden its scope to include a large contingent of gun owners that feel voiceless in regards to mainstream gun politics.
It is worth questioning the NSSF's wisdom in barring socialists from participating in their trade association. Free market capitalism is deeply unpopular – a 2018 Gallup poll found that a majority of millennials prefer socialism to capitalism, with the latter becoming less popular every year. While many of these millennials may define "socialism" as some form of social democratic system, it is undeniable that "free market capitalism" is not a winning message with the soon-to-be majority age demographic in America. If the NSSF wishes to preserve the right to bear arms, they would be well served by casting as wide an ideological net as possible, so as to avoid becoming irrelevant.
There is a misconception among many conservatives that liberalism and socialism are synonymous, and that both necessarily entail the disarming of the populace. But this is not the case. Gun control is a fundamental component of neo-liberal capitalism and its tendency to commodify, infantilize, and enslave working-class people. Socialism, on the other hand, is a philosophy concerned with emancipating working class people and allowing for their greatest development of individual will and expression. And the right to bear arms for self and community defense is a critical component of that mission. It's a common saying on the left that, "If you go far enough left, eventually you get your guns back." Indeed, there is a long tradition in both socialist and left-anarchist theory of supporting the right to bear arms.
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." – Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital
"Recollect that in arming yourselves, as you are bound to do unless you are willing to be forced into abject slavery, you are safely within the spirit and letter of the law." – Eugene V. Debs, five-time US Presidential Candidate
"The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an 'equalizer.' Egalite implies liberte. And always will." – Edward Abbey, American anarchist author
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." – George Orwell, author, member of the P.O.U.M. militia in the Spanish Civil War
"Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any moment." – Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party
While conservatives may doubt our conviction, or believe that our support for gun rights is temporary or conditional, we assure you that we are quite sincere. The right of self and community defense is essential, and firearms are the most practical and equalizing tools for securing that right. If the NSSF and other gun organizations are serious about preserving the second amendment, they would do well to set aside their petty partisan instincts and work to build a diverse coalition that protects the right of all working people to defend themselves.
For what it's worth you're right to be skeptical and extremely critical of the state and whoever is in it, that's why I don't mind anarchists, they encourage everyone else to maintain a healthy check on state behavior.FACT CHECK: No, we don't.
The imperative of capitalist profitability ensures that no true assault on the commanding heights of world scientific development and the division of labour can be launched from a low material-social base. Storming the commanding heights would involve competition with the most advanced capital for the most advanced labour processes – a competition that a less developed or, as Che Guevara described it, ill formed capitalist social formation, is ill suited to carry out. This is why frontally challenging imperialism will not deliver the highest available profits to Chinese capital. Challenging imperialist monopoly at its margins is necessary to make profits. Yet a frontal challenge risks complete debacle.
For this reason, the interests of Chinese capital will never form the social basis for a full blooded assault on imperialist dominance (even ignoring the politically perilous level of working class social mobilisation that would be required for an underdeveloped society to wage such a serious campaign against imperialist supremacy). Chinese capitalism is not and can never become the revolutionary social force that can storm the heavens of US power.
There is no ladder from ordinary to advanced labour accessible to Third World societies – except with the cooperation of imperialist core states. Every Third World society is continuously pulled back into the mundane routine of ordinary labour for the simple reason that this is where their capitalists can make money. There has been no change in that basic social structure of imperialism over the last several decades. Only the technical composition of what constitutes high and low-end labour has evolved in tandem with the general development of the human labour process itself.:shaq2
In an unusual move, the Cuban government will defend itself in a U.S. federal court to fight a lawsuit filed by Exxon Mobil seeking compensation for a refinery confiscated by the Fidel Castro government in 1960.
“It’s a new departure. Based on historical records, most people assumed they would not defend themselves in a U.S. court,” said lawyer Robert Muse, an expert on U.S. laws regarding Cuba. “This is genuinely interesting.”
Oh, O.K. I thought you were being metaphorical about going on a grail quest. Yeah, if you go to Glastonbury and go to the Chalice Well, there’s a spring that does taste like blood. I guess it’s really because there’s a lot of iron in the water. But legend had it that in that place was a grail chalice, or two cruets rather, one of blood and one of sweat. But that led to there being talk that people had come to Rhode Island, and they were looking for something as well.
I am teaching a class in Roman History of Law next semester and I looking for some different perspectives. I am reading Zosimus‘ Historia Nea and other shit of course, but what got my attention is Michael Parenti,‘s The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome .
I ordered it on amazon. :juche
I flipped through this at a bookstore. I doubt its good from an academic perspective, but i like it as a historiographical experiment. It's basically attempting to be a proletarian/People's History of Rome, which I wish we had more of. The only thing I've seen in a similar space is Settlers, I guess. The writer noted that most of our primary accounts of the time period are from the patrician class or people who benefited directly from upholding that class, so he tried to reverse-engineer a history from that. I'm not sure if the end conclusion is so perfect (Caesar was Good, Actually) and I can't help but read through the lines to see Parenti's underlying animus (Marxism-Leninism was Good Actually) but I enjoyed what I read as a thought experiment.
:trumps
Reading through this three part series on marxism and modernity by j moufawad paul. it's a fun read if you want some philosophical wall o' text.
Enlightenment, science, sovereign power in three parts.
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/radiating-disaster-triumphant-modernity-and-its-discontents/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/the-transplanting-of-heaven-to-earth-below/
Over 200 years after Kant attempted to conceptualize the meaning of Enlightenment some of its worst proponents, who speak its name in order to justify conservative ideology, are still trapped in the 18th century with Kant, acting as if science and human reason haven’t changed since this period. For these thinkers––the Jordan Petersons and Sam Harrises––Enlightenment is a static concept, an especial European event that occurred two and a half centuries ago. This mythologizing of the European Enlightenment is thus entirely immodern.Leadbelly annihilated
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/the-transplanting-of-heaven-to-earth-below/
And yet, post-Marx, radical political philosophy has re-centred the category of sovereign power. We thus find––thanks to Giorgio Agamben’s synthesis of Foucault, Heidegger, and Schmitt––a plethora of contemporary radical thinkers who utilize the category of sovereignty to think politics. Although these theorizations of sovereignty (and connected concepts such as “governmentality” and “biopolitics”) imagine themselves to be radical, what we are in fact witnessing is a return to the ideological constellation of bourgeois Enlightenment thought where pre-materialist categories were preserved so as to legitimate bourgeois power.:ohhh
I like josh because rhe idea of an academic maoist is amazing and he pulls no punches. maoists who want to embody the spirit of the GPCR have to ruthlessly question and criticise authority, but.... As an academic he also has authority which manifests in some :lol :mynicca :derp analysis.I looked it up because he mentioned that book in the second essay and... uh... if the height of marxist development is Shining Path, maybe we shouldn't have been making fun of Jason Unruhe all this time. Brb, signing up for Leading Light. :doge
I'm probably going to read his Continuity and Rupture book soon. Some other articles I like by him, but there's a lot of gold on his blog:
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2010/11/j-sakais-settlers-meta-review.html?m=1 (#ReadSettlers)
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/05/trotsky-stalin-mimesis.html?m=1
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2012/06/hegemony-and-class-revolution.html?m=1
I think moists undersell how hard it is just to keep a socialist state together and you're seeing that right now in China with a 3 way pull in the CCP between maoists, nationalists and libs. The same shit happened in the USSR.Once China experiences its first huge crisis during the extent of its capitalist development strategy and those 26 million farmers and fishers in the CCP start voting out the libs... :lawd that's gonna be crazy to watch
Fred Flintstone was a wage giant dad???
Fred Flintstone was a wage giant dad???
:beli :dead
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1163112167421468673
As a little girl, Ryu Hee-Jin was brought up to perform patriotic songs praising the iron will, courage and compassion of North Korea’s leader at the time, Kim Jong Il.
Then she heard American and South Korean pop music.
“When you listen to North Korean music, you have no emotions,” she said. “But when you listen to American or South Korean music, it literally gives you the chills. The lyrics are so fresh, so relatable. When kids listen to this music, their facial expressions just change.”
Now, there is evidence that South Korean K-pop is playing a similar role in subtly undermining the propaganda of the North Korean regime, with rising numbers of defectors citing music as one factor in their disillusionment with their government, according to Lee Kwang-Baek, president of South Korea’s Unification Media Group (UMG).
The trend, fueled by growing cellphone ownership in North Korea and the country’s still buoyant border trade with China, has provoked a new clampdown by Pyongyang in the past year, according to reports on Daily NK, a defector-led news service with extensive links in the North. That followed Kim Jong Un’s 2018 vow to “crush bourgeois reactionary culture.”
A survey of 200 recent defectors by UMG released in June found that more than 90 percent had watched foreign movies, TV and music in North Korea; three-quarters knew of someone who had been punished as a result; and more than 70 percent said it had become more dangerous to access foreign media since Kim Jong Un took power at the end of 2011.
Ryu is one of many defectors who say K-pop and Western popular music opened their eyes, convincing them that North Korea was not the paradise it was made out to be and that their best prospects lay abroad.
In her bedroom in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Ryu would sometimes stay up all night watching a single music video on repeat — surreptitiously, for fear of the police.
“We were always taught that Americans were wolves and South Koreans were their puppets,” she said, “but when you listen to their art, you’ve just got to acknowledge them.”
She remembers Celine Dion, the British violinist “with the crazy hair,” Nigel Kennedy, and the Irish boy band Westlife, as well as K-pop bands TVXQ, Girls’ Generation and T-Ara.
Born into a musical family, Ryu played the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument similar to a zither, at an arts school in Pyongyang. A spell in the national synchronized swimming team was followed by a job as a waitress in southern Europe. There, she spent evenings in nightclubs, dancing “Gangnam Style” with co-workers and friends from South Korea. In 2015, at the age of 23, she defected to the South.
The risks for viewers are real, with a special unit of the police and security services known as Group 109 in charge of the renewed crackdown. Even minors who are caught can face six months to a year of ideological training in a reeducation camp — unless their parents can bribe their way out — while adults can face a lifetime of hard labor or, for sensitive material, even execution.
It’s not just the melodies and lyrics that prove catchy, it’s also the performers’ clothes and hairstyles.
“The kind of thing I wanted to do was dye my hair and wear miniskirts and jeans,” said Kang Na-ra, 22. “Once I wore jeans to the market and I was told I had to take them off. They were burned in front of my eyes.”
Kang, who had been a singer at an arts high school in Pyongyang, defected in 2014, so “I could express myself freely.” She tried to make it in K-pop but says the singing styles are too different. Now, she has a successful career as a TV personality and an actress, mainly portraying North Koreans in South Korean films and dramas.
Han Song-ee was just 10 years old when she first saw a video of Baby V.O.X performing in a “Unification Concert” in Pyongyang in 2003, to an audience of comically impassive North Korean bigwigs. “At first it was so shocking and weird to see these ‘capitalist vandals,’ but as I listened to their music, I realized it was pretty catchy,” she said.
Soon, she was hooked. Her father became angry with her mother for copying the band’s hairstyle. Later, Han and her friends began to wear the colorful hot pants popularized by South Korea’s Girls’ Generation — but only in their neighborhood, not the city center.
Han defected in 2013 and is now a well-known vlogger in Seoul, where she also appears on radio and television. She says she dreams of North Koreans being able to watch her broadcasts, and of her parents tuning in, “so they can see how free I am.”
Last year, Kim attended a South Korean musical performance in Pyongyang that featured older music divas, male rock musicians and young K-pop acts, including a trendy girl band called Red Velvet. The concert was broadcast in its entirety in the South but only in snippets on news programs in the North.
One woman in her late 20s, who escaped North Korea last year, said video of the concert was shared behind closed doors in her hometown near the Chinese border.
She spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.
“Kim Jong Un apparently clapped and cheered at the performance, but we could only watch smuggled footage of it in hiding because consuming South Korean music was still a crime that could land us in prison,” she said.
After she defected, Ryu said, she learned from a TV documentary that Kim Jong Il, the father of the country’s current leader, was a fan of South Korean cinema and TV shows.
“I was so, so angry,” she said. “We would literally cry when we sang about the hardships of Kim Jong Il’s life. I never imagined he was watching South Korean TV.”
These days, Ryu is studying for a business degree but still dreams of breaking into K-pop or — better yet — Hollywood.
“It’s so incredible how far I have come,” she said. “South Korean music really played a central role in guiding me through this journey.”
Sounds like the type of shit you'd be into, stost.I thought this was about the episode, turns out you meant Mattick. :whoo This stuff is such a rabbit hole. Now I want to read the One Dimensional Man, too. You're right, the reading list truly never gets any smaller.
https://twitter.com/thucydiplease/status/1166517935877132288
https://twitter.com/buckligerzwerg/status/1166726599171084288
https://twitter.com/buckligerzwerg/status/1166726599171084288(https://i.imgur.com/WTSNEYF.png?1)
Reading through this three part series on marxism and modernity by j moufawad paul. it's a fun read if you want some philosophical wall o' text.
Enlightenment, science, sovereign power in three parts.
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/radiating-disaster-triumphant-modernity-and-its-discontents/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science/
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/the-transplanting-of-heaven-to-earth-below/
(https://i.imgur.com/PKSGGF2.png)
Victor Carey, a 45-year-old, muscular, mustachioed self-described “patriot” who wears a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones on it, drove up from Sykesville, Md., to show his support for Paul. He laid out some of his concerns. “The people who own the Federal Reserve own the oil companies, they own the mass media, they own the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they’re part of the Bilderbergers, and unfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”:american
Two grandmothers from North Carolina who painted a Winnebago red, white and blue were traveling around the country, stumping for Ron Paul, defending the Constitution and warning about the new “North American Union.” Asked whether this is something that would arise out of Nafta, Betty Smith of Chapel Hill, N.C., replied: “It’s already arisen. They’re building the highway. Guess what! The Spanish company building the highway — they’re gonna get the tolls. Giuliani’s law firm represents that Spanish company. Giuliani’s been anointed a knight by the Queen. Guess what! Read the Constitution. That’s not allowed!”
Quote"(U)nfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”
http://ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/ (http://ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/)Ends with a To Be Continued before it offers concrete examples of modern managerial planning :beli
Interesting blog post about neoliberalism and economic planning (with an appearance by the subject of the new old ideology thread).
Christopher Hitchens repeatedly cited Saddam's draining of the Iraqi marshlands as a point in favor of the Iraq war, both before and after the invasion.I won't speak to Hitchens specifically but I presume that most mentions of that was related to the ethnic cleansing of the Marsh Arabs that went along with it
I don't think it convinced anyone or was even really intended to. It was more a troll for conservative audiences: "these libs say they care about the environment, but..."
That's sorta what I meant with my Trump "is the greatest non-interventionist president of all time" statement
He got Iraq "right" simply because he was posturing
https://twitter.com/AllisonJRiggs/status/1171546487085395968Without looking into it, on its face, this is actually superior to most "independent" redistricting methods. Most maps are corrupted by where the lines are begun to be drawn, it's the easiest way to draw favorable partisan maps.
A lot of states that run into these problems are because the mandate for minority-majority districts creates small single Democrat districts and larger multiple Republican districts inherently as long as partisan voting keeps patterns. If you split the population of a city to create say, two more evenly weighted partisan districts you can trigger the Voting Rights Act. If you don't split the population of a city leaving you with the above you're often good according to the courts.
thread
https://twitter.com/ishaantharoor/status/1171859029225869313
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1171859029225869313.htmlQuoteHard right Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, who believes climate change is a Marxist conspiracy, is speaking at @heritage right now. Currently complaining about left "infiltration" in the system.
mentions Araujo says @jairbolsonaro is creating "a liberal-conservative amalgam" on top of "nationhood, family, traditional ties" and opposed to "globalism."
mentions This is a fascinatingly ideological speech for a foreign minister abroad (and somewhat incoherent). "Our civilization is losing its symbols," he says. Now is talking about theories of "hegemony" and lecturing about Rosa Luxembourg and "symbolic confiscation."
mentions Straight up projection here: Re the left, "what they're criticizing is what they're preaching."
mentions I've never heard Araujo speak before and it's striking how rambling and incoherent his remarks are. Now says something about 21st century socialism being Gramsci meeting the drug cartels. Now is namedropping Marcuse and the whole Frankfurt school. Now is talking abt Foucault.
mentions This is amazing. Unclear if he's ever read critical/neo-Marxist theory beyond Wikipedia entries, but he's asking a lot of an audience at the Heritage Foundation to know what he's talking about. Okay, now to the meat of his views:
Globalism is three parts: Climate change ideology, hatred of one's own and another I missed, sorry.
"The whole point of climatism is to end normal, democratic debate," says Araujo, and now lumps his people alongside Americans, Brexiteers and says the "system" of climate change activists (I guess) want to end freedom of speech.
"Climate became a debate shutter," says Brazil's foreign minister, complaining about the uproar over the Amazon. Says Trump and Bolsonaro "are the main ones fighting the system," "outside of the globalist pact."
The speech by the Brazilian foreign minister at @heritage could have been delivered by a US campus conservative as a PragerU, complaining about the media, globalist system, etc. It's been an endless screed of victimhood from someone in power.
mentions Yep, Araujo now complaining about the evil left wanting to take red meat away from us.
mentions "Social justice" is only "a pretext for dictatorship," says Araujo. Now they want to do the same with climate change, he adds. "Brazil is being Otherized." He's firing shots across the bow ahead of a politically fraught week at the UN later this month.
mentions Concluding statement: "The Amazon is ground zero in the fight against globalism and the recovery of human dignity [or was it soul?]."
mentions There's a fascinating disconnect between US right and whatever it is Araujo represents: The latter truly sees his politics as a reaction to a left-wing orthodoxy (hence all the snarling at Lacan, Lukacs, and all the other leftist intellectuals he name-checked.)
mentions Beyond its moping about campus leftists, the American right would never care about these people or engage their ideas (however absurdly) in a foreign policy speech. Araujo offered a distinction between Leninism and Stalinism, as if anyone in @heritage gives a damn.
mentions When I interviewed Brazilian VP @GeneralMourao earlier this year, he seemed pretty exasperated with Araujo. washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/…
mentions Bem-vindos, meus novos seguidores brasileiros. Assine aqui a minha newsletter :)
Like most episodes of Making Sense, this one consists mostly of Harris rehashing the myriad ways he feels he has been mistreated or misunderstood by progressives. As any consistent Harris listener can attest, the man sustains an immense amount of self-righteous anger over this. The problem is the measure of anger outpaces his understanding of the topics he’s angry about.
Like his late friend Christopher Hitchens, Harris is a gifted rhetorician who possesses the preternatural ability to speak not only in complete sentences but complete paragraphs. This talent can be mesmerizing, but it masks something The Hitch never had to hide and of which the Diamond episode is a prime example: a general hollowness of mind reinforced by a stunning lack of intellectual rigor and curiosity.
I always assume that actors in the government are trying their best.
People who apply a classical framework think having a capitalist society that arose from feudal society is the sole criterion to measure capitalism. But the ancestry of capitalists within a socialist society—a society which is still in the process of becoming capitalist—is very different. That’s why it looks different. Let me explain how people with a metaphysical way of looking at things approach this question. If you look at maggots and earthworms, they all seemingly belong to the same non-flying species. And flies and hummingbirds both seemingly belong to the flying species. Here, we’re just looking at whether they’re able to fly or not. Yes, flying is a big difference but maggot and fly are the same species. So, you cannot just say: “Oh! Flies—or capitalists—came from the feudal society. But look at maggots, they cannot even fly. How come they can be capitalists?” This is ridiculous! If you wait, maggots will, of course, become flies. So, capitalists in socialist society are in the “maggot stage.” They constitute the nucleus of the capitalist class in the “fly stage.”
https://twitter.com/OsitaNwanevu/status/1171793575849398272
Read this and it really goes nowhere. Trump is vulgar (obv), except when he talks about America (not really), and the key to beating him is to go after America or something.Thanks. I feel vindicated in not bothering to track it down. :doge
I assume Zizeks been exiled to the Spectator because of all the shit idpol takes
https://twitter.com/GarbageApe/status/1171457462676803585Stephen decided to go for the easy money. I'm sad he sold out but I can hardly blame him.
His shameless obscenities serve as signs of solidarity with so-called ordinary people (‘you see, I am the same as you, we are all red under our skin’), and this solidarity also signals the point at which Trump’s obscenity reaches its limit. Trump is not totally obscene: when he talks about the greatness of America, when he dismisses his opponents as enemies of the people, et cetera, he intends to be taken seriously, and his obscenities are meant to precisely emphasize by contrast the level at which he is serious: they are meant to function as an obscene display of his belief in the greatness of America.
Public obscenity that proliferates today constitutes a third domain between the private and the public space: the private space elevated into the public sphere. It seems to be the form that fits best our immersion into cyberspace, our participation in all possible forums; Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. No wonder, then, that Trump makes most of his decisions public through Twitter. However, we don’t get here the ‘real Trump’: the domain of public obscenities is not that of sharing intimate experiences, it is a public domain full of lies, hypocrisies and pure malevolence, a domain in which we engage in a way similar to that of wearing a disgusting mask.
I assume Zizeks been exiled to the Spectator because of all the shit idpol takes"They are telling me the refugees are the new proletariat. No... no! That is wrong!"
I assume Zizeks been exiled to the Spectator because of all the shit idpol takeshe kinda said nothing, only interesting part to me was:
When he was elected president, I was asked by a couple of publishers to write a book which would submit the Trump phenomenon to a psychoanalytic critics, and my answer was that we do not need psychoanalysis to explore the ‘pathology’ of his success – the only thing to psychoanalyze is the irrational stupidity of the left-liberal reactions to it, the stupidity which makes it more and more probable that Trump will be re-elected. To use what is perhaps the lowest point of Trump’s vulgarities, the left has not yet learned how to grab him by the pussy.
When I first asked to profile her in advance of her new book, How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics, I did it over Twitter DM. She agreed, but seemed to get anxious as we got closer to settling on a meeting time. “Hold on lol,” she wrote. “Are you not following me? Feels like that would be helpful for a profile. And, not gonna lie, that makes me a bit apprehensive!”
When we eventually met in person in mid-August, she clarified the source of her anxiety a bit more. “I assumed it meant you were one of my haters,” she said. “There’s a level of reasonable paranoia. It’s weird being public-facing. It’s weird to interact with an idea of you.”
Her rise coincided with Teen Vogue’s own political awakening as a leader in the anti-Trump resistance. Suddenly the country realized that Teen Vogue wasn’t just focused on makeup and fashion; it was giving young people a place to read about social justice, politics, inequality, and the power of activism.
Whatever the general public might think of Duca’s personal politics, her book, How to Start a Revolution, is set to be published on Sept. 24. The 178-page manifesto has the lofty goal of laying “the groundwork for a re-democratizing moment as it might be built out of the untapped potential of young people,” according to the book jacket. It’s been blurbed by heavy hitters, including Rather, Janet Mock, and Ariel Levy, the latter calling Duca “the millennial feminist warrior queen of social media.”
Duca also spent this past summer teaching “The Feminist Journalist,” a six-week New York University journalism course for both high school and college students. After Duca agreed to our interview, she also acquiesced to letting me sit in on the final day of the class. She asked her students to come prepared with questions for her for what would be an AMA-style session in Washington Square Park. Her students sat in a circle around her in the wet grass. It was, I imagine, exactly what Tucker Carlson would envision a liberal journalism class might be: a bunch of kids from varied backgrounds, ethnicities, orientations, and gender identities, who could each afford a $6,500 class, wearing T-shirts that said “GenderQueer” or “Kill Patriarchy.”
In the park, Duca praised her students for their ideas and pitches: “You so totally learned what I was trying to teach you.” Nearly four weeks after the course ended, however, her students sent a collective formal complaint to the heads of the NYU journalism school about Duca’s conduct. “We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor with more interest in promoting her book than teaching a group of students eager to learn,” they wrote. In the days after the course ended, several of the students also reached out to me to share more of their concerns. “Her ability to exploit the movement is really frustrating,” one former student said.
At Teen Vogue, Duca was brought on to work the weekend shifts by Phillip Picardi, then the magazine’s online editor. “She demonstrated a range of coverage: She could write things from a perspective that would bring in a social or cultural commentary that I felt was important to add to Teen Vogue,” he told me. “It also helped that I found her, and still do find her, extremely funny.”
Together, Picardi and Duca had big plans to make TeenVogue.com more than just a fashion and lifestyle site by bringing politics to the forefront of its coverage. Teen Vogue Editor-in-Chief Elaine Welteroth was doing something similar at the time for the print side. This was in the — comparatively — halcyon days of 2016 and 2017, when people on the left were still struggling to figure out what to do. Seemingly every weekend there was a march — the Women’s March, A Day Without Immigrants, A Day Without Women — even the Juggalos came out for their own.
...
Duca’s piece wasn’t the only or the best example of Teen Vogue’s foray into politics, but it did hit the hardest. “The gaslighting piece was able to sum up a lot,” Picardi said. “It created a consciousness around misinformation and abuse of power that I think was extremely sharp and really cut through the noise. Obviously the numbers and Lauren’s trajectory speaks to its impact wholeheartedly.”
Duca’s book certainly speaks to its readers in very simple terms — it defines “democracy” and “oligarchy” and “gaslighting,” terms that you might be familiar with if you’ve ever taken a civics class or two. But for Duca’s audience, whom she considers to be between 14 and 24, it’s a perfectly reasonable and non-condescending education; how else are you going to get young people to care about politics if you don’t explain it to them? “I think a lot of political writing is written from this high-perch, omniscient view that it's just not accessible, and it’s disempowering at times,” Duca told me. “I think I tend to forget how much I have the IV plugged in and how high my knowledge level is.”
The book has some confusing factual errors, too. In one chapter, Duca uses the infamous 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese as a case study for the bystander effect, when in fact that specific myth around Genovese’s murder had long been debunked. (Though she uses this comparison, she also concedes on the next page that the events are disputed.) Finished copies of the first hardcover printing also come with this erratum slipped in: “On page 29, reporter David Folkenflik is incorrectly identified as a media consultant for the NRA. Mr. Folkenflik works at National Public Radio, where he is a media correspondent.” The cover itself — George Washington in pop art makeup — has also been readily mocked.
Privilege comes up often when criticizing Duca, and her book does her no favors on this front. Like the work of a lot of white women in political writing, the book only fleetingly examines the intersection of race when she talks about political engagement. “Before the 2016 election, I only ever understood politics as a spectator sport,” she writes early in the book. “Once upon a time it was possible to say ‘I don’t like politics’ as if expressing a distaste for olives.” Which of course makes you ask: Who exactly has been so lucky to spend their entire pre-2016 life thinking this?
The real purpose of the book — as stated by Duca in our interview — is to help galvanize young people to get involved in politics and help them be informed. “Well, friends, being a good citizen is as easy as three simple steps,” she writes in the conclusion. Her steps include “learn — empower yourself with information,” “decide — form a political opinion,” and “act — put your beliefs into action.” It’s simple, but sometimes simple is enough. Simple can make you go viral with a message that’s far more helpful than just sitting around and waiting for someone to leave office. “I think that journalism is necessarily an activist practice,” she told me. “I think the function of journalism should be to empower people with information, and the information people need to act and raise their voices.”
“This moment is not about suddenly caring. It’s about finally doing,” she writes in How to Start a Revolution.
While the right attacks her with outright inhumanity, some on the left questions her sincerity in the movements she writes about and engages in, and wonder whether she deserves whatever success she’s had. Plenty of the criticisms, according to Duca, are just bad-faith arguments. “An example is Pride of 2017: I ate pussy for the first time the night before, and I tweeted the next day, ‘Happy Pride to everyone because no one’s 100% straight.’ I was just, like, pumped. People, women, predominantly in New York media, framed it as if I was All Lives Mattering Pride.” Duca later deleted the tweet after she received backlash.
“Their idea is that I’m espousing equality for personal gain, and that’s what they’re attacking. They're using the language of equality to attack me,” Duca says. “[Do] they think someone who’s out here putting their literal life on the line — death and rape threats, the word ‘literal’ does apply here — to stand up for equality and blaze a trail for young women is doing that to get famous and to — I don't know — barely be able to have health insurance and a home and write a book?”
Older tweets have also resurfaced, ones where she mocked fat people and community college attendees. These, at least, Duca will acknowledge and apologize for. “That’s something I really had to evolve from. I thought I was fucking fat when I wrote that. I was bulimic when I wrote that. I was miserable when I wrote that and I was socialized to think that fat jokes were okay,” she said. “I don’t defend that shit at all. I apologize. Those were horrible. I appreciate that someone would feel skeptical, and I think if their heart is in the right place, they would also be able to hear me say I’m sorry and understand that it was a different time, 2012, in terms of what we understood as politically correct, and we’ve all had to evolve.”
Duca was hesitant to allow me to join her for her last day of her NYU class, and I understood why. After her syllabus started circulating on Twitter, so did the endless mockery. The syllabus seemed to focus heavily on personal branding (students would have to tweet for 20% of their grade) and ironically included Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed as required reading. Plus, she spelled Rashomon wrong, which upset just about everyone.
“I think that they’re fucking corny. They’re making fun of me — for putting Twitter on my syllabus — on Twitter, which is the only place they have a voice,” Duca said. “I wish the people who spent a ton of time criticizing me would use that energy to make a thing. To have an idea.”
A few days after I sat in on Duca’s class, I received a number of emails, unprompted, from her former students who wanted to talk about their six weeks in her class. “It was an interesting experience to say the least,” one student wrote.
Out of 10 students, five spoke to me on the record, under the condition of anonymity, specifically due to fear of reprisals from Duca or any of her professional connections. All of them had similar allegations against Duca and the class’s structure: that Duca didn’t follow her own syllabus, that she spoke often and inappropriately about her personal life, that she would belittle and yell at students, and, most pressingly, that she targeted one student in particular. All the students wrote a formal letter of complaint to NYU and signed it, “Sincerely, ‘The Feminist Journalist’ Class - Summer 2019.” When I reached out to Duca for her comment on the complaint, she started by saying, “I guess I'm not a teacher.”
The complaint, filed to NYU journalism school’s institute director, Ted Conover, and associate director, Meredith Broussard, on Sept. 11, details many of the same things the five students told me. “There was a consistent lack of professionalism that persisted throughout every aspect of the course,” the complaint reads. “We are disappointed at the department and NYU as an institution for hiring a professor without a syllabus and classroom management skills. We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor without a clear course objective.”
Most of the students had never taken any sort of structured journalism class before, and their ages ranged from high school students to college students in their mid-twenties, some of whom had a few internships under their belts. “There was no syllabus or clear expectations of what she would be teaching us. The class kind of banded together to teach each other things so that we weren’t the subject of Lauren’s wrath,” said one student. “I was expecting to learn how to write an article.”
“I created a dynamic, experimental, ever-evolving course structure that pulled from my syllabus, added things in based on our conversation and allowed each of them to individually craft their pieces, and I watched the pieces evolve over the course of the semester,” Duca said in response. “I think that they, on some level, internalized some of the objectives, whether they know that explicitly or not.”
All five students alleged that Duca’s class was disorganized and “a master class in Lauren Duca’s personal life.” (“The point of it is that I'm oversharing all the time. And I think that, yeah, some people like it, some people don't. Apparently you fucking hate it, but that's fine,” Duca told me.) They said that she would vanish for 30 to 45 minutes per class to “meditate.” (“It was a three-hour class and we took a break and I would meditate for 15 minutes and they would be gone getting snacks and stuff,” Duca responded.) And that the class was a “waste of six weeks for all of us, and we don’t want anyone else to make this mistake again.” They claim Duca would snap at them for small problems, accuse them of not having done the readings, and never actually read any of the assignments they submitted to her.
Duca responded that she did read all the assignments, though she added: “It's okay if I'm not a great teacher because I'm great at lots of other things.”
But most galling is that all the students — both in interviews and in the formal complaint to the college — claim that Duca went out of her way to target one student in particular: an exchange student who was visiting New York for school. “Her English wasn’t perfect but that’s hard,” one student told me. “She came from another country. She was very courageous for taking this class.”
The students claimed that Duca would unfairly admonish this particular individual in class. “We all clocked it two or three classes in,” said a classmate. They claimed that Duca said the student “won’t have a lot to say” during class presentations, that she refused to accept assignments from this student while accepting them from others, that she called her work “basic” and “vague,” and that during one class Duca made the student cry during a one-on-one meeting. To this Duca responded, “I said, ‘You need to do the work’; she cried. Like, come on. Is that targeting? What am I supposed to do? ‘You didn't do the work; here's a trophy’?”
“That day was the day that I decided that there’s no way we’re going to let this person teach students again. It was awful. It was absolutely awful,” one of the students told me. “She definitely picked favorites, and she picked people she blatantly didn’t like,” said another. (In the complaint the students wrote to NYU, it says that Duca “consistently targeted this student on the basis of a communication difficulty the student cannot change.”)
“We received a complaint pertaining to Ms. Duca’s course only yesterday and are carefully assessing it,” Conover told me in an email statement on Sept. 12. “After our review, we will determine the course of action that is in the best interests of our students and their education.” Since receiving the complaint, Conover has already reached out to one student to meet in person and discuss the complaint in more detail.
As I continued asking Duca for comment about the specifics of the complaint, she became more and more agitated. “You should put in there that my tone was expressly pissed off and frustrated,” Duca told me. “You're being so fucking hard on me, Scaachi, and I really, really, really, really would ask you if you would be grilling a man in this same way. It's amazing. The shit that I have endured to continue to sustain a voice where I'm just fighting every inch for the same thing that I think that you want, which is public power and equality, and I'm trying my goddamn best, okay?”
The line went silent and I asked Duca if she was still there. She was, and she continued questioning me about my motives around this article before saying, “Congratulations, you thrillingly, thrillingly adept journalist, you have discovered that Lauren Duca is not perfect. Put it in the headline, baby.”
Duca is already on her way to writing a second book, this one about her “major, major god experience,” which she is tentatively titling Ego in Retreat. Since our first interview and my observation of her final NYU class, Duca has unfollowed me on Twitter.
In Mao’s China, the working class was the master of society. So, when there is a lot of different opinions among workers, how are you gonna resolve that? This was the key issue. Today, people always talk about “democracy.” In many cases, that is a lie! Active, day-to-day democracy was exercised in Mao’s China! For heaven’s sake, tell me: People were getting into arguments, even getting into fistfights to defend what they think was right! If this is not the working class in power, tell me what it is?
It’s “a lot bigger than a few back-and-forths on Twitter,” Javier Miranda, the 25-year-old leader of the DSA chapter in Ames, Iowa, told me. “There’s a fear that if we engage in too much electoral organizing we are losing our capacity to imagine outside the system that we are currently living in,” he said.That's right. That's exactly right. Unsurprising it takes a local chapter to raise this viewpoint while city libs go insane that some people aren't spending 100% of their time being megaphones for Our Lord And Saviour Bernie Sanders
https://twitter.com/QueenInYeIIow/status/1174799923583377408
https://twitter.com/QueenInYeIIow/status/1174799923583377408
Hillary and Warren didn't like each other, so why did Hillary supporters seem to move en masse to Warren?
on todays episode of what zizek is up to:
https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1174326717357289472 (https://twitter.com/EvanPlatinum/status/1174326717357289472)
(https://i.imgur.com/8yW2OWU.jpg)
I know it's fun to dunk on them but Jacobin is basically all the American left has right now for socialist perspectives that counter the hegemonic conservatism that dominates the -
https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1174533573585432577
Fuck, never mind.
There’s definitely a strain of marxist thought that’s committed to historical materialism as a nomothetic science and drains any role for normative discussion.This doesn't quite cover the same space of debate but I was reading this and I think it gives a great overview of the specific critiques of Engel's Marxism, how resolutely the "classical" Marxists like Luxemburg believed in the scientific aspect of socialism, epistemological challenges, etc. I feel like you've read these arguments before so posting this more for other people who might be interested like Esch.
prescriptive marxists are upfront about and can sincerely say that communism is desirable. Scientific marxists can’t but in practice, no one like this ever existed because it’s so perverse (absurd?) to be committed to a descriptive political state of affairs while not endorsing any normative theory.
The first of these axes, the concept of history as an objective process independent of human will was the main issue in Rosa Luxemburg’s classic defence of Marxism against the revisionism of Bernstein, in her pamphlet, Reform or Revolution, first published in 1900. Luxemburg’s pamphlet is above all a defence of scientific socialism. For her, the understanding of socialism as objective historic necessity was of central importance to the revolutionary movement: ‘The greatest conquest of the developing proletarian movement has been the discovery of grounds of support for the realisation of socialism in the economic condition of capitalist society. As a result of this discovery, socialism was changed from an ‘ideal’ dream by humanity for thousands of years to a thing of historic necessity’ (1973, p. 35).
Echoing the distinction made by Engels between scientific and utopian socialism, Luxemburg sees the notion of economic or historic necessity as essential if the emptiness of endless calls for justice is to be avoided. Criticising Bernstein, she writes: ‘"Why represent socialism as the consequence of economic compulsion?” he complains. “Why degrade man’s understanding, his feeling for justice, his will?” (Vorwärts, March 26th, 1899) Bernstein’s superlatively just distribution is to be attained thanks to man’s free will, man’s will acting not because of economic necessity, since this will itself is only an instrument, but because of man’s comprehension of justice, because of man’s idea of justice. We thus quite happily return to the principle of justice, to the old war horse on which the reformers of the earth have rocked for ages, for the lack of surer means of historic transportation. We return to that lamentable Rosinante on which the Don Quixotes of history have galloped towards the great reform of the earth, always to come home with their eyes blackened.’ (1973, pp. 44-45)
The scientific character of Marxism is thus seen as its defining feature. The scientific basis of socialism is said to rest ‘on three principal results of capitalist development. First, on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution’ (1973, p. 11).
The third element, the ‘active factor’, is important for Luxemburg: ‘It is not true that socialism will arise automatically from the daily struggle of the working class. Socialism will be the consequence of (1) the growing contradictions of capitalist economy and (2) the comprehension by the working class of the unavoidability of the suppression of these contradictions through a social transformation’ (1973, p. 31). Thus, although Luxemburg, in common with all the revolutionary theorists, rejects the quietistic interpretation of the inevitability of socialism favoured by many in the German Social Democratic party, the emphasis on the importance of subjective action is located against the background of the objective, historic necessity of socialism. Socialism will be the consequence of (1) objective trends, and (2) subjective comprehension and practice. The focus on the subjective is added to the understanding of Marxism as a theory of the historic necessity of socialism; or, perhaps more precisely, Marxism, as a theory of objective necessity complements and fortifies subjective class struggle. Whichever way around it is put, there is the same dualist separation between the objective and the subjective — ‘the classic dualism of economic law and subjective factor’. (Marramao 1978, p. 29)
If I recall correctly he thinks labor theory of value is the worst part of marx.Who's "he"?
Jake, but I can't find the post :mafhttp://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=44608.msg2291958#msg2291958
As John Holloway phrased it the objective reality is the support for the subjective struggle of socialists. Asking "so what if there is exploitation, why ought I become a socialist?" is like asking "so what if it's poisonous, why shouldn't I eat it?"there’s an ought in both these arguments. You might think the one in the second is so obvious it’s trivial but it’s not. It needs to be there if you wanna say “you shouldn’t eat something poisonous”.
The task of Marxist analysis is to lay out a picture of political economy so stark (and yet true in all its claims), and a future so plainly better, that participation is the only rational choice.this is the rub. The kind of scientific marxism I tried to draw up as an ideal type closes itself off from making normative claims dependent on ‘justice’, ‘right’, sometimes even ‘morality’ because it thinks those terms are shot through with capital’s (or something else specific to a certain temporal/material setting) influence/interest. So it’s not terribly clear in what sense communism would constitute a ‘better’ state of affairs than capitalism. To reply: “it’s better because there isn’t exploitation or alienation” doesn’t work, because under this account (viz. scientific marxism) these terms are purely descriptive. To claim they aren’t would be to equivocate.
My purpose in quoting this is to show that the people who were the most committed to the scientific aspects socialism when it was seriously under debate were in fact the ones who were the most vociferous in advocating for class struggle, who were the most involved in the actual political movements that swept through Europe in the 20th century, people who literally died for it.its exactly those people who were so committed to the cause that they were willing to sacrifice, even die, for it that I find so hard to believe also wouldntve said communism was desirable. It might* be expedient, in purely means-ends terms, for people within a cause to believe they have iron-clad necessity on their side. But that’s different than thinking it actually is and that (some) people should be committed to that cause. It’s that pair of claims that I think is incoherent.
If "no one like this ever existed"... who were you talking about?
Rousseau wrote Discourse in response to an advertisement that appeared in a 1749 issue of Mercure de France, in which the Academy of Dijon set a prize for an essay responding to the question: "Has the restoration of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?" According to Rousseau, "Within an instant of reading this [advertisement], I saw another universe and became another man."
Rousseau [said he] was totally blinded by a sudden inspiration ... in which ... [he had] seen in a single glimpse his entire philosophical system.He claimed multiple times thereafter to have these visions of the entire philosophy displayed to him.
The kind of scientific marxism I tried to draw up as an ideal type closes itself off from making normative claims dependent on ‘justice’, ‘right’, sometimes even ‘morality’ because it thinks those terms are shot through with capital’s (or something else specific to a certain temporal/material setting) influence/interest.You can't criticize an "ideal type" of scientific marxism if, as you have already pointed out, it has never existed and never been argued for. You're obligated to address concrete arguments.
its exactly those people who were so committed to the cause that they were willing to sacrifice, even die, for it that I find so hard to believe also wouldntve said communism was desirable. It might* be expedient, in purely means-ends terms, for people within a cause to believe they have iron-clad necessity on their side. But that’s different than thinking it actually is and that (some) people should be committed to that cause. It’s that pair of claims that I think is incoherent.My whole point is that they do say it's desirable and they've said it a million times over in the clearest possible terms, buttressed by facts they claim to be objective. Your attitude toward the history of marxist polemic is so sterile here it's incredulous.
re: the objective reality being the support of the subjective struggle. I mean, I’d hope it would be. Having the best descriptive account is exactly what every other political program claims, and itd also be entirely consistent with a ‘prescriptive’ marxism.Not only is this an irritating hand-wave but it's also wrong. Most political stalemates are arbitrary struggles between ideas. "People have the right to self defense". "Everyone deserves to go to college". "We shouldn't let certain species go extinct". Descriptive accounts by comparison are so powerful they can change the terms of the entire discussion. How much has environmentalism benefited from the science of climate change?
To reply: “it’s better because there isn’t exploitation or alienation” doesn’t work, because under this account (viz. scientific marxism) these terms are purely descriptive. To claim they aren’t would be to equivocate.What sick son of a bitch did this to you? :'(
The difference between ww1 and ww2 is unbelievable. During the 20 years the whole meaning of warfare changed. WW1 was already a modern war yet a sense of... honour still remained. No longer was it a battle between the kings but as Churchill said it was a battle between nations but human values were the same. WW2 on the other hand was brutish and so murderous that it's hard to believe that they were sperated only by a generation.
People would play catch with the enemy trenches and throw cigarettes to each other. WWi seems like a fever dream compared to modern warfare
https://twitter.com/BetaODork/status/1175544996235218944
My whole point is that they do say it's desirable and they've said it a million times over in the clearest possible terms, buttressed by facts they claim to be objective. Your attitude toward the history of marxist polemic is so sterile here it's incredulous.i perfectly well acknowledge that some have said it’s desirable, and also emphasize its inevitability and also that justice, right, and morality are shibboleths. I’m saying this bundle of claims is untenable. The marxists who thought otherwise were being inconsistent. The marxists who thought that communism wasn’t desirable but still effectively advocated for its inevitability are the ones I’m saying never really existed, because either not honest about or not aware of the actual contents of their minds. If that sounds too woolly for you, I’d ask whether it’s really that much more woolly than thinking that moral and ethical claims are all cynical illusions designed to help siphon resources up a social hierarchy.
You're way, way more familiar with this stuff than I amim really not though. The regulars in this thread have read way more of the canonical socialist/communist authors than I have (excepting the Frankfurt schoolers). I can’t pull quotes with the same facility you guys can. And I don’t want to shit up this thread, because you guys are better at conducting it. I can really only ask: is it not the case that socialism/communism as an historical inevitability is an actual line of thought in Marxist discourse, more prominent maybe ~100 years ago? And is it not also the case that it exists alongside another trend that urges commitment to revolutionary causes? Both strains existing in the same thinker, sometimes within the same text?
Not only is this an irritating hand-wave but it's also wrong. Most political stalemates are arbitrary struggles between ideas.i think Rawls and Nozick have substantive disagreements over the best method of distributive justice, and over which political values should be prioritized the most, and over a handful of other stuff too. I think people who argue for markets bring to bear certain facts about how markets work that are designed to “buttress” their case in pretty much exactly the same way you seem to be claiming marxists do. We can think that all of these people are wrong, but i fail to see how these are merely arbitrary struggles between ideas, or how they’re not informed by descriptive accounts of states of affairs.
"People have the right to self defense". "Everyone deserves to go to college". "We shouldn't let certain species go extinct".well...do they? Don’t they? Shouldn’t we? If you’re taking issue with the state of popular political discourse, then I’m right there with you in viewing it as vapid, ineffectual, and unhealthy. But I don’t see how you can make these (legitimate) problems just disappear by taking away the vocabulary to talk about them. In fact, that sounds like it’d make the problems worse. I feel like I might be misunderstanding you here, though.
Descriptive accounts by comparison are so powerful they can change the terms of the entire discussion.Are you saying that we should be attracted to purely descriptive accounts because they cut to the chaff? And because they’re more expedient means to realize desired ends? This is just old normative wine in new descriptive bottles. We care about people’s lives, livelihoods, etc. for normative reasons. You haven’t stepped outside the sphere of moral discussion.
How much has environmentalism benefited from the science of climate change?im deliberately remaining agnostic about how theory links up to practice. I have no idea, but I imagine that the solution is a lot hairier than most of us realize.
idk what else to tell you here. For ‘exploitation’, we could equally read “the capitalist’s taking wealth generated by the laborer”. If we accept this, then we still also need a separate normative account that says exploitation = a bad thing before we can commit to a political program that tries to eliminate exploitation. Because by itself, the theory explaining how the capitalist takes wealth from the laborer doesn’t tell us that that shouldn’t happen anymore than Newton’s third law tells us that objects shouldn’t exert an equal and opposite force on objects that hit them. Again, to reply: “whatcha mean, ‘its not a bad thing?’ It’s right there in the term: to exploit”; this is why I cautioned against equivocation. This sneaks in the colloquial sense of a word at the end of an argument after we’ve already decided that talk of right, justice, and/or morality is horseshit.To reply: “it’s better because there isn’t exploitation or alienation” doesn’t work, because under this account (viz. scientific marxism) these terms are purely descriptive. To claim they aren’t would be to equivocate.What sick son of a bitch did this to you? :'(
The marxists who thought that communism wasn’t desirable but still effectively advocated for its inevitability are the ones I’m saying never really existed, because either not honest about or not aware of the actual contents of their minds.
Kara is the one who radicalized me, but you were the one who gave me my homework! (http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=24400.msg2507829#msg2507829) :lolQuoteYou're way, way more familiar with this stuff than I amim really not though. The regulars in this thread have read way more of the canonical socialist/communist authors than I have (excepting the Frankfurt schoolers). I can’t pull quotes with the same facility you guys can.
Abigail Disney Has a Plan to Fix Capitalism
The heiress has become a warrior for income inequality, but she's no socialist. If you like capitalism, she says, you "better fix it."
Sitting in her newly renovated Manhattan apartment, Disney tells me, “I don’t think the problem is capitalism; I think it’s fundamentalist capitalism that we’re practicing right now. And every fundamentalism does a violence to the text that supports it, right? Because the letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life. We need to bring a social and emotional intelligence back into the way we understand the practice of business.”
Disney has said she is worth “around $120 million” and estimates that she has given away $70 million over the past 30 years to such causes as the Global Fund for Women and Peace Is Loud.
In the course of “do-gooding around New York City,” she got invited to join a group of women on a trip to Liberia in 2006, which had just come out of a civil war and a period of brutal military dictatorship. There she met the peace activist (and future Nobel laureate) Leymah Gbowee, who became the subject of the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which Disney herself produced. Up to that point she had been a stay-at-home mom to her four children. “It was really a lucky break,” she says. “If I’d been left to my own devices, I don’t know if I ever would have figured out my life.”
She has since produced dozens of documentaries and directed one, 2015’s Emmy-winning The Armor of Light, about the evangelical minister Robert Schenck’s change of heart on gun control. “We couldn’t be more opposite in so many ways, religiously, politically, culturally—certainly in terms of our economic status,” Schenck says. “But through this project, which I reluctantly took on, we forged a friendship. And that friendship took me on an odyssey that precipitated a huge shift in my opinions on a whole range of things.”
In 2017, Disney was approached by Killer Content co-founder Adrienne Becker with a plan to buy the Weinstein Company library and channel the profits from reselling it to victims of sexual assault. “I just thought that was genius,” Disney says. But the women grew disillusioned with the process, which they came to feel favored a rival bidder, so they decided to transition what they had taken to calling Project Level Forward into Level Forward Inc.
They backed Broadway’s recent revisionist staging of Oklahoma!, which won a Tony for best revival, as well as the one-woman show What the Constitution Means to Me, which was nominated for best play. Their next show, the Alanis Morissette musical Jagged Little Pill, comes to Broadway in November.
Disney’s next documentary as director, as yet untitled, will be an in-depth look at income inequality. “I’m trying to get it out really quickly before the next election,” she says, “because I think this issue is going to be very prominent.” When asked about 2020, she expresses admiration for Elizabeth Warren but says she isn’t ready just yet to commit to a single candidate. “I’m waiting for the field to break out,” she says, adding that she knows who she won’t support.let there be Disney Revolutionary Justice™ :jeb
“I’m not a socialist. I think capitalism works very well when it’s done with a human angle. We have a class of people who are living so far above everyone else, it’s corrosive to democracy.”
When I start to say, “So your position is that if you like capitalism—” Disney is quick to finish the sentence.
“You better fix it.”
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1175567531362250753
https://twitter.com/HelenaVillarRT/status/1175847908756905986
Benny Johnson is bad at this.
:brain
I like my auto I stink fan fic:
we are capable of automating tons of jobs, but due to the erosion of labor rights, it never pays out to automate menial jobs like fast food workers or warehouse pickers. So instead, it’s only our bosses that get automated and we all just move into menial labor jobs that pay minimum wage.
If you’ve ever been to a Walmart distribution center, this is kind of how it works. There is like this Alexa like computer that speaks out of a headset that all of the warehouse “pickers” wear. It tells them where to go next and how many to grab. It’s basically the dispatcher and it’s just a computer. But all of the actual picking is done by humans. That’s our future. We just pull all the levers that the machine tells us to.
https://twitter.com/Lexitmovement/status/1176581363777978368
https://twitter.com/Lexitmovement/status/1176581363777978368
Social democracy is BACK baby! Your masters have decreed thusly :lawd
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Cosmo Asks Bernie Sanders the Questions Young Women Want Answeredthe looping image at the top of the article is the greatest thing since he scared that dude with SOCALISM!
In new series The Candidates Come to Cosmo, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders sits down with Editor-in-Chief Jessica Pels to talk reproductive rights, climate change, gun control, and why he could really, really use a vacation.
If he gets a new lease on life because the intellectual atmosphere is so much more sympathetic to his craziness now than it was ten years ago that's going to really suckagreed. i'll read the article at work tomorrow though but i imagine i'll come out thinking if only his mum took the morning-after pill
Here is one way to check out any idea you don’t want to believe: assume it’s true, then build a new reality around that axiom. Once you fail, you get to say: I can’t see how this could be true. I don’t want to believe the CIA did 9/11. I try to build a reality in which it did. I fail spectacularly. I go back to believing it was an al-Qaeda conspiracy. I don’t want to believe OJ is guilty. I assume he’s innocent, then look for the real killers. But I can’t even imagine them.can't help but make it racial even when it's irrelevant :dead
My own kids accuse me of owning “way too many old books about Hitler.”:dead
The House has not dipped below an 80% incumbency rate since 1938, the Senate below 60% since 1980; the usual figures are 90+ and 80+; seniority and other rules easily clog this institutional gap. Yet in theory the voters could trivially replace the House and easily the Senate—rules and all. They do not; so in theory, they must be satisfied. Yet Congress’s normal popularity rating is under 20%.just the kind of :brain shit I would expect from the right
Crash Dummy, we're going to hate read all of these :vrwell that's a given right? i'm not enamoured by his methodology and i think you're being too kind with the evola comparison
i'm not enamoured by his methodologyha, if you can even call it "methodology"
I think you're being too kind with the evola comparisonBeing kind certainly wasn't my intention. Julius Evola was a disgusting human being.
so I saw an ad for the new Jack Ryan show again and, I gotta ask: Esch, are we gonna watch it? Because I think we have to hate watch itHow about, The Conquest of Head, and it's an anarcho-PUA guide to having sex in communesi want this written by someone like irvine welsh from the pov of those guys who go undercover investigating cults but by the end have joined the cult and are fully indoctrinated. the twist would be he's a deep state agent with a vd
The book would be called Mutual AIDS, and it starts off with the main character dropping off assault rifles in Venezuela for compradores.
new moldbug doing the rounds on twitter even anyone cares about nrx shit https://americanmind.org/essays/the-clear-pill-part-1-of-5-the-four-stroke-regime/
filler, what do you think this thread is?I can't read portugeuse :trumps
audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard for consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants.
filler, what do you think this thread is?I can't read portugeuse :trumps
The social and economic issues inherent to liberalism are acknowledged as a constant factor throughout the history of liberalism, but there is no vision to resolve them aside from the application of Strong and Stable Leadership.she also brings up an educative dimension though. The liberal fascination with heroes is completely pathetic, but the failure to form liberal citizens is a legit macro-problem and I find it really hard to believe that the over-prioritization of technical, professional education doesn’t have at least something to do with it. So I think she’s right about that much.
Hey Jake, the lost history of liberalism author:It's true, the Justice on the far right of that picture had to recluse himself from a Supreme Court case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Neagle) because it stemmed from that time in California he had been arrested for murder. None of the justices today can inspire me like that.
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1178146718380113920
Hey Jake, the lost history of liberalism author:It's true, the Justice on the far right of that picture had to recluse himself from a Supreme Court case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Neagle) because it stemmed from that time in California he had been arrested for murder. None of the justices today can inspire me like that.
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1178146718380113920
The Chinese Communist Revolution that culminated in the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China fundamentally transformed class relations in China. With data from a nationally representative, longitudinal survey between 2010 and 2016, this study documents the long-term impact of the Communist Revolution on the social stratification order in today’s China, more than 6 decades after the revolution. True to its stated ideological missions, the revolution resulted in promoting the social status of children of the peasant, worker, and revolutionary cadre classes and disadvantaging those who were from privileged classes at the time of the revolution. Although there was a tendency toward “reversion” mitigating the revolution’s effects in the third generation toward the grandparents’ generation in social status, the overall impact of reversion was small. The revolution effects were most pronounced for the birth cohorts immediately following the revolution, attenuating for recently born cohorts.:jawalrus
Sorin Hines, 17: Between anarchism and democratic socialism
North Carolina | he/him/his
My father was a devout libertarian. My dad was raised to be, is still, and will likely die a very rich man. He failed to ask for the perspective of the actual human beings who were being affected by the system he loved to complain about.
When my parents divorced two years ago, I was no longer constantly expected to uphold the same ideology as my father. I could express nonlibertarian opinions in my own home without being accused of being a socialist/communist sympathizer or an enemy of the poor. It was also the first time that I could openly question my gender, and I realized that I was (and still am) trans. I could say, as I always wanted to, that I wanted there to be laws in place protecting the LGBTQ+ community — my community — from workplace discrimination.
Then I got into the punk scene. That was like putting gasoline on a campfire. I had only known anarchism as the more extreme sect of libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism. I now understood anarchism to be much more vast than that. Anarchism inspired my belief that a just world could be created through communities that were wholeheartedly interested in and able to support their fellow people once they are no longer held down. In order to shift power from those that hold it, we need to destroy the pieces of the system that hold capital where it is. But if a politician were to introduce good policies, I would be in support of that.
Lydia Hirsch, 19: Marxist
Los Angeles, California | she/her/hers
My politics have always been vaguely on the left, due in part to having a father who wrote songs about the war in Iraq and how he hated George W. Bush. I was brought deeper into politics by the 2016 Democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders stood out to me because he offered policies that would be beneficial to students and workers and was not afraid to use the word "socialism," something I didn't expect. I was frustrated by how everything turned out.
I started studying more history and reading theory. I could never understand why I should identify less with an Iraqi child than a U.S. soldier. I went to a few meetings of local organizations and demonstrations against ICE. I began to consider myself a committed leftist. I also listened to a lot of Phil Ochs.
I spent a few months in France in the fall of 2018, and happened to be there during the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) demonstrations, one of which I attended. It was the first truly mass demonstration I'd been to. I met many communists and anarchists in Paris. When I got home, I was determined to study as hard as I could. I read through [Karl Marx's] Capital, Volume 1, most of [Vladimir] Lenin's works, some [Peter] Kropotkin, [Rosa] Luxemburg, some [Leon] Trotsky, some works by historians, and many articles and online texts. I joined discussion groups and met a lot of other leftists.
I consider myself a Marxist but am still sympathetic to anarchism in the sense that I do think there is a meaningful distinction between libertarian and authoritarian conceptions of communism, and that the need to abolish the state must be emphasized. I'm still learning a lot, and I want to work with others to understand how to liberate humanity and abolish class society and wage labor.
Elizabeth Warren is going to be president huh :whew
https://www.wsj.com/articles/business-roundtable-steps-back-from-milton-friedman-theory-11566205200
Asked to respond to Sen. Sanders’s comment that billionaires should not exist, Zuckerberg offered an unexpected viewpoint, considering his Facebook ownership makes him worth over $69 billion.
“I understand where he’s coming from,” Zuckerberg said. “I don’t know that I have an exact threshold on what amount of money someone should have but on some level no one deserves to have that much money.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBIttqZcIho
Whatever this is, it is the opposite of Praxis.
Random thought but my problem with Jacobin even more than it's politics is that there needs to be a leftist publication somewhere between unreadably dense academic language on one hand and basic propagandising on the other and it consistently fails to be that.teen vogue ;)
https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1180575947856236545What if the petty bourgeoisie were the most reactionary class? :ohhh
To riff of this old post i went into a bookstore today and all the anarchist lit was thrown into a kook section. Kropotkin, Graeber, Bookchin etc next to books about peyote, magic, aliens and LSD astral projection from the 60s.(https://i.imgur.com/WHgWng4.png)
There was a Western Philosophy section next to it with other left lit. The disrespect is real :whew
:lol :lol :lol
https://twitter.com/poaststructural/status/1181358684355661829 (https://twitter.com/poaststructural/status/1181358684355661829)
https://twitter.com/SatansJacuzzi/status/1181992779293106178Random thought but my problem with Jacobin even more than it's politics is that there needs to be a leftist publication somewhere between unreadably dense academic language on one hand and basic propagandising on the other and it consistently fails to be that.teen vogue ;)
I'd catch a ball game with hitler :smugYeah, smoke meth together.
Professor Otto Ranke realized in 1938 that there was a medicine out there that was highly popular in the German civilian population. This was Pervatin methamphetamine, and he read some of the reports ... [that] concluded that methamphetamine reduces the fear level, if given in high dosages, and also reduces the need to sleep. ... So he started doing tests in 1938 and in 1939 on young medical officers in Berlin. ... [And] he came to the conclusion that meth is the perfect drug for soldiers, and he suggested this to his superiors. He said, "We should distribute meth officially among the troops."
https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/professional-managerial-chasm/ (https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/professional-managerial-chasm/)
Really liked this piece. Most clear-headed analysis of the current situation on the left I've read.
Ok but it doesn't tell me who is right ? :confused
As the class from which both Sanders and Warren draw their activist support has gradually caved in, it has set in motion not one but two efforts to find a path out of the wreckage. The Sanders effort seems willing to go farther, understanding that he cannot actually make good on his goals through the ordinary legislative process. Warren is poised on the margin. She clearly recognizes the rising discontent of the PMC and its increasing resonance with working-class grievances, and seeks to respond in meaningful ways. But her campaign remains more thoroughly in the rehabilitative mode: putting democracy back on its feet, cleaning up the system, and putatively giving her decomposing social base the chance to recompose itself. A Warren victory would be cleansing, marking a return; a Sanders victory would open a new chapter—though a vaguely defined one. But in contradistinction to all these pretenders to socialism, a Tulsi victory would be most revolutionary of all.
(https://i.imgur.com/MMZMA3L.jpg)
Chile has declared a state of emergency following riots that have engulfed the capital city of Santiago in recent days, Bloomberg reported.
Soldiers and military vehicles patrolled the streets Saturday to restore order as authorities assessed the damage from what has been described as the worst rioting in the city in decades.
More than 150 police officers have been hurt, 19 subway stations burned, and buses were set on fire and stores looted among the chaos which saw law enforcement unleash tear gas on the rioters.
Apparently this is a somewhat well known cult in Austin. Texas... here I come.
On October 12, a contingent of anti-revisionist combatants confronted a public meeting of the Kansas City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Online propaganda from the DSA and their supporters has tried to portray the event as a brutal attack on the elderly, but in reality, a DSA member who attacked a woman combatant was repelled, taking multiple blows that left him bloodied and sent to the hospital.
Only two local DSA chapter leaders and two other members who were helping to set up for the event were present when the militant activists blocked the door to the venue and made their way inside.
Upon entry, a speech was read by one of the revolutionaries detailing the rotten nature of DSA’s practices locally and nationally, as well as how the struggle against fascism must include confronting social-fascism, as revisionism is the enemy of genuine socialism.
The charges made against DSA were that nationally they have had police union organizers in elected positions of leadership, that they act as foot soldiers for the imperialist Democratic Party, and that they are a revisionist formation that is aiming to corral the working class under the wing of the bourgeoisie in the name of socialism by encouraging participation in the bourgeois electoral farce.
During the speech, propaganda materials and the projector were confiscated by the revolutionaries, DSA leadership making no attempt to stop them. “Revolution’s not for play, down with the DSA!” and “DSA will never win, social democracy is fascism’s twin!” were chanted as the event supplies were taken.
It was at this point that a local activist, Carl, who has been kicked out of another organization for defending sexual abusers and is known for trying to publicly expose the identities of communists, rushed at the combatants attempting to reclaim his propaganda yelling, “This is a safe space!”
He threw the first punch, targeting one of the woman revolutionaries, but was immediately beaten back by the combatants, while one DSA leader tried to defend him. The brawl broke out again when Carl grabbed another revolutionary and tackled him to the ground. The revolutionaries rallied and freed their comrade, and Carl was left bloodied along with the remnants of his propaganda strewn on the floor.
Greg Mueller, another of the local DSA leaders, called the director of the space to rush to the scene, while Kansas/Missouri Dream Alliance (KSMODA), who were holding a DACA clinic next door called the police, showing their bourgeois character.
KCDSA, Carl, and his wife Brianna, have subsequently crafted an online counterpropaganda effort to blur the real contradictions that led to this action, painting the actions against Carl as as “attacking the elderly” and referring to him as a “disabled veteran.” KCDSA traffics in identity opportunism when convenient to their cause.
Before the skirmish, the revolutionaries had made it clear that the reason for their disruption and confiscation of materials was due to the social-fascist nature of DSA. Carl targeted a woman revolutionary and the other revolutionaries responded accordingly. The primary contradiction was between communists and revisionists, and necessary force was used to repel the man who had singled out a woman to attack.
The local branch in Kansas City (KCDSA) has misled the masses into think that the fight for socialism amounts to little more than hosting book clubs, film screenings, and ineffectual rallies. KCSDA has served as a magnet for cast-off activists and protest hoppers, as well as doing the leg work of local Democratic candidates.
The DSA acts as a conveyor belt for bringing bourgeois ideology to the masses and attempts to organize them behind the party of capitalism with a leftist veneer. The historical antifascism that they gathered to celebrate was not organized through “left unity” or by revisionists like themselves, but by genuine Communist Parties that took up arms against fascists and correctly identified social democracy as social-fascism and combatted it ideologically, politically, and militarily. A real antifascist day of unity cannot include revisionists. Democratic socialism, like all forms of revisionism, poses the utmost danger to the struggle for revolution.
When revisionists are wounded, as they were last weekend in Kansas City, even observers who are otherwise critical of the DSA may cringe, appalled by the violence that took place. And yet many of these observers, for all of their nonviolent protests and online comments, have not managed to deal any serious blows to the revisionism which has clamped down on socialist revolution in the US for most of the past century, which has kept workers exploited, nations oppressed, and the masses downtrodden.
To those who side with the bourgeoisie, the images of blood from last Saturday are disturbing, but to revolutionaries, what happened is fine. Revisionism will not magically disappear on its own. It caters to the least oppressed among the masses and seeks to dupe the rest by parading counterfeit socialism. Saturday’s bloodshed stains this charade; its forgery slowly unmasked as revolutionaries wage a merciless struggle against revisionism and opportunism.
Listened to the Zizek Chapo and it was kind of boring. He reiterated a lot t of his recent tirades on game of thrones, Greta thunberg, Trump etc. And then of course made the point multiple times that the left needs to shoot for Trump voters and Bernie Sanders is the only one that can do that.i hate so much my cunt face i don't watch my videos :dead
If they weren't cowards they'd have let Don have a full episode on the labor aristocracy and settler colonialism, with Amber on the episode.
:zzz
Old article, but I thought it was good and made me want to read Zak Cope more.I'm going to pick this book up. You should, too.
https://monthlyreview.org/2015/07/01/imperialism-and-the-transformation-of-values-into-prices/
Until those get here, parking enforcement asks people to use the ParkMobile phone app to pay for parking. Officers said they will not ticket people who park at meters that do not use the parking app.:dobbs
:dead this gig is amazing
https://twitter.com/ItalySocialists/status/1187045861341171712
https://twitter.com/ArabSocialists/status/1187090767904497664
https://twitter.com/SocialistsWhite/status/1187128001416314882
https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/professional-managerial-chasm/ (https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/professional-managerial-chasm/)
Really liked this piece. Most clear-headed analysis of the current situation on the left I've read.
It didn’t work out. The professor and his wife walked out. First, they denounced me personally—they brought a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, which they read aloud from, only whenever Mao was denouncing liberals, they would say “Barbara.” It was just bizarre, and it was painful at the same time.
QuoteIt didn’t work out. The professor and his wife walked out. First, they denounced me personally—they brought a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, which they read aloud from, only whenever Mao was denouncing liberals, they would say “Barbara.” It was just bizarre, and it was painful at the same time.
I saw similar things going on in other parts of the country. For example, there were fights that would break out in food co-ops—they were called the “Twinkie wars.” People wanted the food co-op to carry the highly processed, no-doubt-bad-for-you foods that they could get in the supermarket. and the more PMC types did not want that.:lol we're fucked
Ecuador’s indigenous movement said on Wednesday that it paused talks with President Lenin Moreno because of the government’s “persecution” of the group’s leaders since a halt to violent anti-austerity protests.:teehee
Jaime Vargas, head of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, or CONAIE, said the group had entered the talks “in good faith,” but an atmosphere of trust did not exist. “We cannot be at the table while they are pursuing us,” Vargas told reporters.
Determined to preserve his country’s reputation as a beacon of stability and sound economic management in a continent not famous for either, Chile’s billionaire president Sebastián Piñera defines himself as a committed crusader against populism. His fight is an increasingly solitary one.
Latin America’s two biggest economies, Brazil and Mexico, are governed by populists of the right and left respectively; neighbouring Argentina looks set to eject Mr Piñera’s close ally Mauricio Macri and return to Peronism in elections at the end of this month; and pro-reform presidents in Peru and Ecuador are fighting for their political lives.
But Mr Piñera is unbowed, invoking classical myth in his fight against the demagogues. “Ulysses tied himself to a ship’s mast and put pieces of wax in his ears to avoid falling for the . . . siren calls,” the silver-haired 69-year-old leader tells the Financial Times during a conversation at the presidential palace in Santiago. “We are ready to do everything to not fall into populism, into demagoguery.”
Closer to home, Mr Piñera is sympathetic to the electoral plight of his neighbour Mr Macri, who polls say will lose his bid for re-election in Argentina by a wide margin on October 27.Also because Benji has infected me with his curse I now read the comments section and while the FT one is pretty level headed as far as comments sections go they hate the Chilean protestors. Guess it's hard to see the faults in the gold standard of neoliberalism.
“Macri is a good guy,” he insists. “I have been very good friends with him for many years,” dismissing an aide’s suggestion that the remark should not be quoted.
But he is quick to point out the sharp differences between Chile’s consistently well-performing economy and its sickly Argentine neighbour, as well as the generally unhealthy region of which they form a part.
“Look at Latin America,” Mr Piñera said. “Argentina and Paraguay are in recession, Mexico and Brazil in stagnation, Peru and Ecuador in deep political crisis and in this context Chile looks like an oasis because we have stable democracy, the economy is growing, we are creating jobs, we are improving salaries and we are keeping macroeconomic balance . . . Is it easy? No, it’s not. But it’s worth fighting for.”
The headline is a comic bravado from a politician that in his first term kowtowed to the left and opened Chile political system to populism with its ambiguous policies that damaged competition and private initiative and his inability to stand firm to oversized demands for social freebies. Populism is already well entrenched in this small country with limited resources, partly because its elites and workers have long seen themselves as the Europeans of Latin America and deserving of the same social largesse of countries with a multiple of its per capital income. Once again, as those international meetings approach, the government propaganda machine will harp on Chilean hollow exceptionalism.
You seem to have mixed up the Chilean case with Argentina and Uruguay....Chile is different; its economy has strongly diverged form its undisciplined, sleazy neighbours since the mid 1980's
This article is about Chile, but the authors should limit their use of 'populism' to 'economic populism', as their reference to Brazil as 'governed by populists of the right' is highly misleading. Brazil is currently implementing what is arguably the MOST AMBITIOUS ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION program on the PLANET! Brazil's economic policy is NOT POPULIST!
Brazil should be the real focus for anyone analyzing the South American continent. The nation is 10X+ larger than Chile, with a 200+ million population, compared to Chile's 20 million. Chile is a reference, a model, a blueprint, an example for the region and Brazil's current administration absolutely relies on its precedent policies to guide its current reforms. Brazil's economic liberalization program is far-reaching and all-encompassing, including complete tax policy reform, pension system reform, labor market liberalization, central bank monetary policy independence, financial market deregulation, transport/communications market deregulation, large-scale privatization program.
Of course, the real point of this article is to highlight the power of Chile's institutional development and stability, accomplished following decades of difficult policy implementation and associated political negotiation. Countless analysts attribute Chile's success to Pinochet's complete freedom during his dictatorship to implement any economic policy his team wanted, regardless of any resulting social pain and disruption. However, claiming only 'right-wing' administrations can implement economic liberalization programs is absurd.
Populists have their days counted in Latin America, no matter what the Alberto Fernandez'es-of-the-world, or the AMLO's of-the-world claim. Objective realism, NOT the 'magical realism' of legendary authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Borges, is the name of the game now in Latin America. Strongmen, nationalists, and economic populists do NOT have a good track record enhancing prosperity and development.
(https://preview.redd.it/ha5vmkplkwu31.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=eab60b1e1018abce9481821c5ac886718b585976)in california, capitalism burns you! ;)
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watching Chilean capitalism burn :aah
Did Emma Sulkowicz Get Redpilled?
"This story starts with me being on Tinder,” Emma Sulkowicz explains. “I don’t have TV, so all I can do is swipe left and right on men.” It’s mid-afternoon, and we’re in a deserted Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Manhattan, near the on-ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge. Sulkowicz is telling me about the “political journey” she’s lately been on, a listening tour of ideological positions that she’s always considered too right-wing to engage: centrists, conservatives, libertarians, and whatever Jordan Peterson is — various and sundry souls that Jezebel has canceled, whose names chill dinner conversation across progressive New York. Sulkowicz hasn’t been redpilled; she’s still a feminist and an advocate for survivors of sexual assault. What’s changed is her posture. “Even if I disagree with this person,” she says, “it doesn’t have to piss me off.”well, that was a freebee
All these ‘new friends’ just happen to be conservative and libertarian men who have mansplained the meaning of true happiness to her ( it no longer involves blue hair or art, but does involve the National Review) If you can’t beat em, join em, I guess? just so long as her privileged little ass stays on the radar, even as a mascot. At least she’s still trendily gender-fluid so she can keep her hand in if she decides that proclaiming this all a troll is more lucrative and personally beneficial. How nice to have the privilege for all this!
By the way, Emma, most of us who gained much success in adulthood (raising hand) didn't wait until the age of 27 to "make some decisions for myself and decide what kind of adult I want to be." Good luck. You'll need it. Meantime, better find a day job.
She wasn't able to translate her activism and porn into her preferred career in left wing advocacy. So now she's a free agent seeing who else she can front so she doesn't have to work for a living.
And so what? What present context makes this person’s pedestrian philosophical enquiry of possible interest to anyone beyond her social/professional circle? She has made no recent art, written no book, is not running for office. Add that the opinions given are neither deep or revelatory...WHY?:yikes
#reclaimingmytime
last month, she started a full-time, four-year master’s program in traditional Chinese medicine
Eisenhower's "-industrial complex" speech is arguably about the emerging PMC.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.As she notes, the Ehrenreichs were members of what Eisenhower terms the "scientifictechnological elite" rather than the working class.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
a quote to support my conclusion
thank you for posting a quote to support my conclusion it is very kind of youhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_new_class_analysis (https://www.stopbullying.gov/)
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even when Dilas wrote a book literally named it cribbing Trotsky he adhered to the rule. (Although to be fair he was largely describing the Soviet and Yugoslav experiences. And he totally was not Party Line.)it's kind of funny that you can give Dilas a pass on making a class analysis specific to stalinist bureaucratic socialism but you won't give the same leeway to barbs doing it for post-war western capitalism. as kara once warned you (http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=41489.msg2642315#msg2642315), this might be a stumbling block for your career in contrarian shitposting...
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it's kind of funny that you can give Dilas a pass on making a class analysis specific to stalinist bureaucratic socialism but you won't give the same leeway to barbs doing it for post-war western capitalismTwo points, in order of least important to most important: First, I didn't criticize Ehrenreich specifically for doing this, I criticized the American-Western Left for resisting (and both Press and the author of the N+1 piece for perpetuating) any analysis that didn't subscribe to it. The Ehrenreich's wavered on how to place it but (and as she notes in the interview) were ultimately writing for a Left audience and so conformed their analysis. Second, Dilas lived inside an authoritarian system that suppressed his work and then imprisoned him for like 10-15 years as a "dissident" and only let him write on toilet paper for years AND he was originally writing like 25 years before the Enhrenreich's and "neoconservatives" discovered the New Class for Left canon. They lived in somewhat better circumstances.
it's kind of funny that you can give Dilas a pass on making a class analysis specific to stalinist bureaucratic socialism but you won't give the same leeway to barbs doing it for post-war western capitalismThe N+1 piece does some amusing stuff with this when talking about medical workers, then constantly stopping at nurses, because "doctors" of course never would seem like an employee. But in today's medical system they certainly can be and spend their whole lives in that position much like the lawyer example.
Shenzhen is experimenting with a “party and technology” development model as it aims to become a “socialist model city”. The city, which is known for its technology industry, was told by Beijing in August to find “the best modern governance practices that promote high quality and sustainable development so it can be held up as an example of civilised society of law and order where people enjoy a high degree of satisfaction”.Ok... what does that mean?
“We will be the world’s first modern powerhouse not built on the road of capitalism, but by practising socialism with Chinese characteristics. The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Speaking on the sidelines of the recent World Internet Conference in Wuzhen in Zhejiang province, a Shenzhen official, who declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak on the issue, said the city began its big data and smart city plan in 2013.Ah, I understand now. Socialism is about mass monitoring of the civilian population.
The goal then was “collecting as much data as possible, and mining the data deeply to provide useful information to leaders for the management of any potential risks and the provision of public services for people’s convenience”, he said.
“This is one of our most concrete answers to the leadership’s call to modernise our governance system and capability.”
Shenzhen established a Government Services and Data Management Bureau to handle big data collection and analysis in February, he said.
As well as data sets covering populations and the economy, the official said Shenzhen had also built “thematic databases” that could empower officials who handled social disputes and public grievances.
As party of the city’s plan, Shenzhen also launched its “Weaving Net Project” in 2013 under which it divided the city into thousands of data zones and designated an “information collector” to each zone.
The system also uses 2 million surveillance cameras dotted about the city.
Li Shihua, head of the video division of the city’s public security bureau, said at a forum in August that big data and video analysis were widely used.
“About 80 per cent of criminal cases are solved with the help of video surveillance. Almost all criminal cases can be solved in 24 or 48 hours with the help of these technologies,” he said.
Shenzhen is also the first Chinese city to launch a “party building measurement indicator” backed by big data and artificial intelligence. Hu Jin, who runs the project said: “Now we have a standardised, scientific and quantifiable method for measuring the quality of party building.”:science
One of my best anecdotes [came while I was] presenting this paper in an academic setting. There had been a managerial accountant in the room. She had done some cost accounting and said, “We had one manufacturing facility that had 42 different cost centers in it only for tax planning purposes. The cost centers could facilitate the transfer pricing and where goods and what costs went.” That was not only international, but also for state-level purposes and generating certain tax credits. What this paper is trying to capture is all that complexity that goes on merely for getting a good tax [rate].
But the political violence that once defined the movement began to rear its ugly head again in 2012, when a paramilitary group calling itself the New IRA emerged, seeking to unite dissident Republicans under a single banner, and referring to themselves simply as the IRA. They have steadily grown since, absorbing members of other dissident groups into the fold while launching more and more attacks.:phil
Key to their growth, experts warn, is Saoradh, an upstart political party out of Derry.
Just over a mile from where McKee was murdered, a uniform row of red-brick residential houses is broken by the green and white of Junior McDaid House that comprises Saoradh’s headquarters.
Formed in 2016, the group bills itself a political answer for those who feel abandoned by Sinn Féin, the left-wing Irish Republican party, and are still suffering from poverty and alienation.
“We felt the need for a vacuum to be filled,” Paddy Gallagher, Saoradh’s 27-year-old national press officer, told VICE News.
The group claims to provide a welfare assistance program to help those struggling to get government benefits. It collects food donations and distributes them to locals in need. It even established a youth wing, called Éistigí, in a bid to recruit teenagers looking for help.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland, meanwhile, have called their headquarters in Derry “the mouth and the hub” of the New IRA.:dead
"People can think what they like,” Gallagher told VICE News, in a room filled with replica firearms and military uniforms. “Saoradh has stated multiple times that we have absolutely no link to the Irish Republican Army.”
But the murals that cover Junior McDaid House appear to undercut the group’s claims. On the outside of the very building where Gallagher uttered these words, there's a mural that simply says: “Join the IRA.”
Human rights lawyers are preparing to bring a landmark case against British American Tobacco on behalf of hundreds of children and their families forced by poverty wages to work in conditions of gruelling hard labour in the fields of Malawi.
Leigh Day’s lawyers are seeking compensation for more than 350 child labourers and their parents in the high court in London, arguing that the British company is guilty of “unjust enrichment”. Leigh Day says it anticipates the number of child labourer claimants to rise as high as 15,000. While BAT claims it has told farmers not to use their children as unpaid labour, the lawyers say the families cannot afford to work their fields otherwise, because they receive so little money for their crop.
The case, potentially one of the biggest that human rights lawyers have ever brought, could transform the lives of children in poor countries who are forced to work to survive not only in tobacco but also in other industries such as the garment trade.
wow, how could you bernardJust learned I'm possibly right-of-center on immigration.
https://twitter.com/KevinKlawitter/status/1192436969650831360
The Economics of Taxing Wealth
- Current proposals by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren
- How US already taxes wealth (of some, not others)
- How other countries tax wealth
- How US enables/allows wealth to escape taxes
- Redistributing wealth: pros and cons
In connection with Wolff’s discussion of the main topic above, he will also cover the following issues at the November 13, 2019, event:
1. The protest movements in Chile, Lebanon and beyond and how they differ from those in Hong Kong
2. The overdue critique of “libertarian” capitalism
These programs begin with 30 minutes of short updates on important economic events of the last month. Then Wolff analyzes several major economic issues. Our goal is to develop all participants’ understanding and ability to explain current economic events and trends to others. When time permits, we open the floor to questions and comments.
Partly hidden behind a high-rise known as the "Turkish Restaurant" and flanked by lower-lying buildings, the location of Tahrir Square makes it a stronghold. At the square, protesters said, they created what the government has been unable to since the 2003 US-led invasion - a functioning pseudo state.
"The people have taken to the streets and achieved what the government couldn't do," said Abdul Jabar, 31, an Iraqi flag draped around his shoulders.
Equipped with a seemingly functional hierarchical structure, water and food, street-sweepers, and prayer rooms, the square offers basic services. These include some that the oil-rich country has struggled to provide Iraqis with, such as healthcare.
Al Kasim al-Abady, a 31-year-old activist, said the rehabilitation of the square and its surrounding areas has been one of the great successes of the uprising.
In the Turkish Restaurant building, a strategic high-rise taken over by protesters on October 25, they have "delivered electricity, water and shelter for hundreds of people who live there", said al-Abady.
In the green heart of the square, barbers give tired demonstrators free hair cuts. Across the road, beneath a flimsy tent, volunteers hand out water and food. A middle-aged man, named Hissam, and his team of 30 provide six free meals a day, including their own home-baked bread. Most of the food is paid out of the volunteers' own pockets, some are donated by other protesters.
Amid the demonstrators are also the poor and hungry of central Baghdad, who have found in the ongoing chaos a place to sleep and eat, as well as medical care.
Interior Minister Gonzalo Blumel announced late on Sunday that the government would move to draw up a new constitution, saying that Congress would be responsible for rewriting the document, which would then be put to a public referendum. [...] A new constitution has been a central demand of protesters, who see the political and social inequalities as a result of the economic model built by Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990.
This constitution, which Chile still has today, created the legal basis for a market-driven economic model that privatised pensions, healthcare and education.
Purge the Brooklyn community. The hogs have become feral and need to be culled. :camby
Marxism is amphetamines. Needed to survive, it keeps you going on a daily basis. Without it, you feel exhausted and confused, and eat too much. It makes you want to get up out of your chair and get shit DONE. Works best when blended with others to take the edge off.
https://twitter.com/Ange_Amene/status/1192869337100455936
https://twitter.com/Ange_Amene/status/1192869337100455936
My OPINION OVERRIDES YOURS AT ALL TIMES.
https://twitter.com/ange_amene/status/1120530447082172417
:badass
demanding Felix Biederman name four women he actually likes :lol
the best fans are the ones who have a love/hate relationship with the material. get over it!
Walmart has sought court orders for police protection in protest-wracked Chile after more than 120 of its supermarkets were looted or burned.
The Chilean subsidiary of the U.S.-headquartered retailer (WMT.N) lodged orders with courts in six Chilean cities, saying the attacks on its stores had put its staff’s safety and jobs at risk, “gravely” affected its ability to operate in the country and caused it “enormous economic damage”.
“The state of Chile has failed to fulfill its duty to guarantee public order and internal public security,” it said in court documents submitted on Wednesday and made public on Monday.
I miss Kara :(
What government has she overthrown
spoiler (click to show/hide)The Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic campaign is shaking loose all sorts of stuff.[close]
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJxaI-rXkAA2AV3?format=jpg&name=large)There's an apocryphal story of when Dwight Eisenhower, proletariat revolutionary, was President of Columbia that they were going to place sidewalks and there was a testy fight over where exactly to place them. The wise class philosophe President General told them to wait a year, for the students would trample paths in the grass and that is where the sidewalks should be placed.
that looks about right
One expects a certain institutional lag. Mainstream economists nowadays might not be particularly good at predicting financial crashes, facilitating general prosperity, or coming up with models for preventing climate change, but when it comes to establishing themselves in positions of intellectual authority, unaffected by such failings, their success is unparalleled.
spoiler (click to show/hide)The Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic campaign is shaking loose all sorts of stuff.[close]
The most racist person I know in real life currently has "#Together Against Antisemitism" (yes there's a hashtag even though the words are separate) on his FB profile pic.
“How to stop a civil war” says the cover of the latest Atlantic magazine. I can suggest a fix: the international community should intervene in the US. Of course Americans have a right to self-determination but the priority now is saving democracy.
It’s hard to assess the risk of political violence, given the US tradition of everyday gunslinging: the rival candidates for state elections in Montana, who each made ads showing themselves firing rifles at television screens, looked like actors playing Afghan warlords. Still, the recent ethnopolitical terror attacks in El Paso, Pittsburgh and elsewhere were shocking even by US standards.
The much tamer UK needs watching too. Like Americans, Britons have been upgrading their political views into their identities and dismissing opponents as traitors. Both countries now intend to resolve their conflict with winner-take-all elections.
Such scenarios rarely end well, warns former Yemeni government minister Rafat Al-Akhali, a fellow at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. He says: “A lot of people in the regions that we work with thought we had to transfer their experiences of national dialogue to the UK and other countries.” So what should interventions in the US and potentially Britain look like?
Washington used to advocate a set schedule for countries in conflict. A binary election only worsens polarisation. Instead, says Al-Akhali, the first step is power sharing: a transitional government that includes all conflicting sides.
Next comes an Afghan-style loya jirga, or grand assembly, to kick off a national dialogue. Yemen’s brought together political parties, but also youth, women, civil society, southern secessionists and northern Houthi rebels. A US dialogue could look remarkably similar.
Given the death of truth, a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission wouldn’t work in the US. Americans may also need to abandon the polarising impeachment of Donald Trump and let him seek exile in a friendly country: the model could be Ukraine’s kleptocratic pro-Kremlin former president Viktor Yanukovich, now based out of Russia.
The loya jirga writes a new constitution. This would be Britain’s first, and for the US, a much-needed update of its antiquated 1787 document. Japanese jurists could help draft it as a thank you to Americans for writing Japan’s excellent 1947 constitution.
The new text would dispense with vagaries such as “high crimes and misdemeanours”, define presidential corruption and end political control of the judiciary. If it’s undemocratic for the Polish or Hungarian governments to appoint judges, why can the US president do it?
The new constitution must cantonise the US, going way beyond “states’ rights” to neighbourhood rights. The smaller the units of power, the less important becomes the national political conflict. The US’s second republic will also need a new electoral system that favours coalitions instead of winner-takes-all rule.
The new constitution must also tackle foreign election-meddling. Ideally, a non-partisan institution would be put in charge of handling this, but the only one now somewhat trusted across the American divide is the military, and you generally don’t want soldiers in post-conflict transitions.
After Russia’s successes in the US and UK in 2016, half the world will be interfering in the next elections. Indeed, a British support group for India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party boasts of campaigning for the Tories in 48 marginal seats. British Conservatives and US Republicans may welcome the help, but they should realise there’s at least a theoretical possibility that foreign powers might one day shift to their opponents.
In fact, if Russia feels any need to hasten Britain’s break-up and international isolation, it can already choose between Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, the Brexit party, the Scottish Nationalists, Sinn Féin and Plaid Cymru, while encouraging infighting between Remain parties.
Once the new constitution is signed, it’s time for closely scrutinised elections. Even before the US elections of 2000, the journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote: “The United States loves nothing better than to certify other countries’ ballots as ‘free and fair’, so there can hardly be any principled objection to a delegation of monitors from democratic nations taking up position, pens in hand, as America makes its ‘choice.’”
If only he’d been listened to. The problem is worse today: given gerrymandering and voter suppression, states such as North Carolina and Georgia are no longer full democracies. Tories are learning from Republicans: they’re now planning to make voters show identification, precisely because many poorer Britons don’t have any.
Whoever becomes leader must reach out. Andrew Yang, a no-hope Democratic candidate, has it right: “After I win the . . . election, my plan is to go to the district that voted for me the least in the entire country and say, ‘I know you didn’t support me, but I will be your president too.’”
But let’s not get over-optimistic. At best, intervention will freeze the US’s overlapping ethnic, economic and regional conflicts. The question for the international community then becomes: how much blood and treasure is it willing to expend on a country that may not be ready for democracy?
Simon Kuper is a British author. He writes about sports "from an anthropologic perspective."
Now, now, let's have some basic respect here.
(https://i.imgur.com/yi205y3.jpg)spoiler (click to show/hide)The Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic campaign is shaking loose all sorts of stuff.[close]
He says without disclaiming that he's been mostly avoiding libertarian or similar websites despite their being good sources for Wank Dad content because the cycle debate has already started and ramped up to include whether or not "true libertarians" should support Trump on impeachment.
For the record and for your amusement, it usually breaks down like this:
Cosmotarians - Support the LP if possible, impeachment is a regular good
"Constitutional" Libertarians - Support Trump because the LP won't enforce the borders if they somehow win, impeachment will let illegals take over
"Lifelong" Libertarians - Support Trump and the GOP because the LP won't enforce the borders, protect us from terrorism or regulate Facebook if they somehow win, impeachment will let the Democrats let illegals take over
Objectivists - Support Trump if only to oppose the Cosmotarians, but are currently too exhausted from trying to get everyone to pay attention to the recent Canadian elections because Objectivists are like 75% Canadian, this is a truth fact; impeachment will let Islamists take advantage of our weak foreign policy
Rothbardians - ongoing existential crisis
Ancaps - voting is immoral, but vote LP purely to spite all of the above; impeach him for violating the Constitution instead, then shrink down to a night watchmen state!
Paulites - Ron Paul 2020 (Dad used to hit homers and never got beat up by his neighbor.) WWRPD?
good work kara
https://twitter.com/SMuhrine/status/1199553440021667840
When I think of Benji, I think of unbridled capitalism.
https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1200278788480946178
https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1200618578703073281
real marxism: demsuccs:: Godard: the guy who did Stepbrothers
He recently even joined the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, proudly proclaiming on Twitter that “I consider myself a democratic socialist. Always have.” When I ask him why a successful Hollywood filmmaker would do something like that, he looks at me completely shocked, even disappointed: “Why not?”:badass
“I went back after I got to know him, and I rewatched the Anchorman movies, and Step Brothers and Talladega Nights,” says Adam Davidson, cocreator of NPR’s “Planet Money” and a frequent collaborator of McKay’s. “I went back and really saw that passionate voice shouting through these funny movies and realized ‘Oh, those were, like, angry, pointed, and brilliant dissections of our culture.’”
Davidson served as an adviser on The Big Short where, despite very different temperaments and politics, he and McKay hit it off. “Our entire first year of collaborating was arguing about trade,” McKay says with a smile. “To his credit, he conceded some points.” Where McKay had the populist fervor, Davidson was trained in economics at the University of Chicago. “[McKay’s] texting me every single day on a huge range of topics about how does the world actually work and how should the world actually work,” says Davidson. “I don’t think I have anyone else in my life who is as voraciously curious about every aspect of it and whose brain is on fire trying to understand it.”
McKay tells the story of the radical anti-capitalist roots of Chumbawamba’s 1997 megahit “Tubthumping,” which he introduces as “the ultimate populist, activist story”: “[the song] was part of their deliberate thirty-year strategy to empower the working class and overthrow the status quo of England.” Davidson goes quiet. “I honestly don’t know if you’re doing a bit right now,” he says.
McKay backs up and sets the scene — Thatcher’s rise in the UK, the 1984 miners’ strike, and a little anti-capitalist collective, Chumbawamba, trying to figure out what the hell they could do about it. With McKay playing clips of their ever-evolving sound, we hear how the band eventually traded in the fuzzed-out guitars and guttural punk howling for drum machines and slick vocals, ditching the subculture to go pop. But their goal wasn’t money — it was to wage class war. And after fifteen years, it paid off with a hit that was no doubt heard by legions of workers around the globe — maybe more. The defiant chorus, still stuck in the heads of millions to this day, was about working-class resilience even after all the defeats: I get knocked down, but I get up again. You are never gonna keep me down.
McKay even shot an epilogue in which Derek Jeter, playing himself, acts as a kind of left-wing Deep Throat (with a touch of Matt Taibbi), handing our heroes their next assignment, this one on Gold-man Sachs: “The whole damn system is clogged up with dirty money. And the news doesn’t say a word about it,” says Jeter. “’Cause who owns them? The same corporations who own the government.” It was cut from the theatrical edition.
“The audiences hated it,” McKays says. “We would screen it, and it would just thud.” So he decided to drive home his point, instead, in the end credits, with a slickly crafted animated presentation on the startling rise in economic inequality. It charts everything from the explosion of the CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio to a comparison between the NYPD retirement benefit and the average chief executive package. Everything he’d been wanting to scream at his audience came pouring out in that sequence. It was a risky move — going full Bernie Bro just one year into the Obama presidency, when Bernie Bros didn’t even exist yet.
After The Other Guys, McKay tried to get a comic book adaptation off the ground — The Boys, by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, set in a world where superheroes are very much real, but are also deeply corrupt and dangerously unaccountable corporate-sponsored celebrities. The title refers to a secret black-ops team tasked with keeping those superheroes under control — by any means necessary.why is this happening
It’s the total antithesis of The Avengers and its celebration of libertarian billionaires thumbing their nose at democracy. “The famous line where [Tony] Stark lands and he’s like . . . what did he say? ‘The US military is privatized,’” McKay says, wincing. The dangers of an arrogant, unaccountable elite with blood on their hands flying around the world? For McKay, they might as well be hedge fund managers on coke. He cut a proof-of-concept trailer for The Boys and shopped it around town, but nobody would bite.
Study up, folks :ufupI was going to say what my score was, but I was reading the chart counterclockwise from No Treason so I got to "Precursors of Ancap" and saw "Ayn Rand" and now I refuse to participate.
(https://i.imgur.com/nv07uXR_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high)
One problem with helicoptering is that there are virtually no flying clubs, at least of the sort that exist for fixed wing, so pilots get very little chance to swap stories, unless they meet in a muddy field somewhere, waiting for their passengers. As a result, the same mistakes are being made and the same lessons learnt separately instead of being shared - it's comforting sometimes to know that you're not the only one to inflate the floats by accident! Even when you do get into a school, there are still a couple of things they don't teach you, namely that aviation runs on paperwork, and how to get a job, including interview techniques, etc - flying the aircraft is actually less than a third of the job. Another is that nobody really tells you anything, either about the job you have to do (from the customer) or how to do it (the company) - you will always be up against the other guy who managed to do it last week! Sure, there will be training, but, even in the best companies, this will be relatively minimal. This book is an attempt to correct the above situations by gathering together as much information as possible for helicopter pilots, old and new, professional and otherwise, in an attempt to explain the why, so the how will become easier (you will be so much more useful if you know what the customer is trying to achieve). In short, this is all the stuff nobody taught me - every tip and trick I have learnt has been included.
The essays contained in this volume were the result of many years of intensive thinking and reading about liberty. They address a topic, anarchist strategy, that is underdeveloped. Many people have written about how a free society might operate. But relatively few have applied hard thinking to the key question of "What do we do to achieve that world?" In the few instances people have, their proposed solutions have always been vague (a generic call for "education") or unconvincing (defeating the state through black markets - "agorism"). This is a problem. As long as we lack a comprehensible plan to bring about a free society, we will be unable to convince people that our ideology has a future. This will make them unwilling to act on our behalf. A person acts, as Mises explained, only if he believes that by acting he will successfully remove a felt uneasiness. Until we develop a plan to beat the state, I do not think our movement will inspire the hope necessary for action. The essays in this book are an attempt to solve this problem. In them, I outline a comprehensible plan for ending the state.
https://arzamas.academy/materials/1269
https://arzamas.academy/materials/1269i'm a filthy centrist (https://cdn-s-static.arzamas.academy/x/384-1917-xxJJkkqp/1258/images/share_en/eser-center.jpg)
On the subject of quizzing, I want you to take the Canadian one, Benji.(https://i.imgur.com/smlGc8l.png)
https://votecompass.cbc.ca/canada/
On the subject of quizzing, I want you to take the Canadian one, Benji.(https://i.imgur.com/smlGc8l.png)
https://votecompass.cbc.ca/canada/
I think the "French Canadians have no human rights" and "Quebec should be turned into an open-air slave farm" positions affected my vertical position.
I think the 'democratic socialist' innanet movement really does believe that it's the antidote to fascism and capitalism in decline in the first world (despite how many years of history to the contrary). Corbyn and Bernie stans have a lot to shake hands over, they both summon great man theory to lionize washed up demi-Trots as their saviors and collapse in agony whenever reality punches them down. They genuinely believe what they're doing and saying is new and will work and people will just tail their politics because hell, they have People First Politics right? The dissonance comes when they are forced to come to grips with the reactionary nature of the classes they want to recruit. Look at jezzas platform itself, the confusion is clear when the Brexit Question is put on the table.
https://twitter.com/famiconsumer/status/1205692843634782208
https://twitter.com/famiconsumer/status/1205692843634782208Any flip-floppers who went from "it's secretly alt-right" to... this?
any good articles etc on hypermodernity?
demsocs ain't slick
https://twitter.com/kirstiealley/status/1207028067849396224
Will doubling down on BERNIE OR BARBARISM in this week's free Chapo. :existential
I did nearly drive off the road when Matt described Melenchon as "anti-NATO, genuinely antisemitic" though. :lol
https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1206959362050265089https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1205256289816895490
Everyone mocked Anna Soubry when she tweeted that Brexit is “the most important decision facing our country since WW3”, but I have no doubt whatsoever that Brexit could lead to a fourth world war. They won’t be laughing then.
Titania McGrath is a Spiked employee's joke alt.Why would you go on the internet and tell lies like this, Kara? I really thought better of you.
Titania McGrath is a Spiked employee's joke alt.Why would you go on the internet and tell lies like this, Kara? I really thought better of you.
The failure of Corbynism was a failure on the level of theory. It’s important to contextualise the decline of the Labour party. This wasn’t an isolated incident; the traditional centre-left is dying across Europe and across the world. Social-democratic politics are (mostly) a mass politics, and the last forty years have conspired to shatter all masses. Neoliberalism and deindustrialisation and the assault on the unions have disrupted collective subjects and collective solidarity – but new technologies do the same thing. Marxism was the ideological expression of the printed word, and we’re all illiterates now.
everybody probably already seen this but it's new to me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xr4xtD8AXk
Slavs or western spies?spoiler (click to show/hide)QuoteCorn in the video so they are clearly revisionists[close]
By Dr. James Stangle, DVM:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol
https://twitter.com/jaymart222/status/1210266716128841731
https://twitter.com/feggnews/status/1210609694835953665
https://twitter.com/feggnews/status/1210609694835953665
You can't abort a fetus, but you can put a child in a closet and let it starve to death.
Having tracked the libertarian “movement” for much of my life, I believe it is now pretty much hollowed out, at least in terms of flow. One branch split off into Ron Paul-ism and less savory alt right directions, and another, more establishment branch remains out there in force but not really commanding new adherents. For one thing, it doesn’t seem that old-style libertarianism can solve or even very well address a number of major problems, most significantly climate change. For another, smart people are on the internet, and the internet seems to encourage synthetic and eclectic views, at least among the smart and curious. Unlike the mass culture of the 1970s, it does not tend to breed “capital L Libertarianism.” On top of all that, the out-migration from narrowly libertarian views has been severe, most of all from educated women.F
There is also the word “classical liberal,” but what is “classical” supposed to mean that is not question-begging? The classical liberalism of its time focused on 19th century problems — appropriate for the 19th century of course — but from WWII onwards it has been a very different ballgame.
Along the way, I believe the smart classical liberals and libertarians have, as if guided by an invisible hand, evolved into a view that I dub with the entirely non-sticky name of State Capacity Libertarianism. I define State Capacity Libertarianism in terms of a number of propositions:
1. Markets and capitalism are very powerful, give them their due.
2. Earlier in history, a strong state was necessary to back the formation of capitalism and also to protect individual rights (do read Koyama and Johnson on state capacity). Strong states remain necessary to maintain and extend capitalism and markets. This includes keeping China at bay abroad and keeping elections free from foreign interference, as well as developing effective laws and regulations for intangible capital, intellectual property, and the new world of the internet. (If you’ve read my other works, you will know this is not a call for massive regulation of Big Tech.)
3. A strong state is distinct from a very large or tyrannical state. A good strong state should see the maintenance and extension of capitalism as one of its primary duties, in many cases its #1 duty.
4. Rapid increases in state capacity can be very dangerous (earlier Japan, Germany), but high levels of state capacity are not inherently tyrannical. Denmark should in fact have a smaller government, but it is still one of the freer and more secure places in the world, at least for Danish citizens albeit not for everybody.
5. Many of the failures of today’s America are failures of excess regulation, but many others are failures of state capacity. Our governments cannot address climate change, much improve K-12 education, fix traffic congestion, or improve the quality of their discretionary spending. Much of our physical infrastructure is stagnant or declining in quality. I favor much more immigration, nonetheless I think our government needs clear standards for who cannot get in, who will be forced to leave, and a workable court system to back all that up and today we do not have that either.
Those problems require state capacity — albeit to boost markets — in a way that classical libertarianism is poorly suited to deal with. Furthermore, libertarianism is parasitic upon State Capacity Libertarianism to some degree. For instance, even if you favor education privatization, in the shorter run we still need to make the current system much better. That would even make privatization easier, if that is your goal.
6. I will cite again the philosophical framework of my book Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals.
7. The fundamental growth experience of recent decades has been the rise of capitalism, markets, and high living standards in East Asia, and State Capacity Libertarianism has no problem or embarrassment in endorsing those developments. It remains the case that such progress (or better) could have been made with more markets and less government. Still, state capacity had to grow in those countries and indeed it did. Public health improvements are another major success story of our time, and those have relied heavily on state capacity — let’s just admit it.
8. The major problem areas of our time have been Africa and South Asia. They are both lacking in markets and also in state capacity.
9. State Capacity Libertarians are more likely to have positive views of infrastructure, science subsidies, nuclear power (requires state support!), and space programs than are mainstream libertarians or modern Democrats. Modern Democrats often claim to favor those items, and sincerely in my view, but de facto they are very willing to sacrifice them for redistribution, egalitarian and fairness concerns, mood affiliation, and serving traditional Democratic interest groups. For instance, modern Democrats have run New York for some time now, and they’ve done a terrible job building and fixing things. Nor are Democrats doing much to boost nuclear power as a partial solution to climate change, if anything the contrary.
10. State Capacity Libertarianism has no problem endorsing higher quality government and governance, whereas traditional libertarianism is more likely to embrace or at least be wishy-washy toward small, corrupt regimes, due to some of the residual liberties they leave behind.
11. State Capacity Libertarianism is not non-interventionist in foreign policy, as it believes in strong alliances with other relatively free nations, when feasible. That said, the usual libertarian “problems of intervention because government makes a lot of mistakes” bar still should be applied to specific military actions. But the alliances can be hugely beneficial, as illustrated by much of 20th century foreign policy and today much of Asia — which still relies on Pax Americana.
It is interesting to contrast State Capacity Libertarianism to liberaltarianism, another offshoot of libertarianism. On most substantive issues, the liberaltarians might be very close to State Capacity Libertarians. But emphasis and focus really matter, and I would offer this (partial) list of differences:
a. The liberaltarian starts by assuring “the left” that they favor lots of government transfer programs. The State Capacity Libertarian recognizes that demands of mercy are never ending, that economic growth can benefit people more than transfers, and, within the governmental sphere, it is willing to emphasize an analytical, “cold-hearted” comparison between government discretionary spending and transfer spending. Discretionary spending might well win out at many margins.
b. The “polarizing Left” is explicitly opposed to a lot of capitalism, and de facto standing in opposition to state capacity, due to the polarization, which tends to thwart problem-solving. The polarizing Left is thus a bigger villain for State Capacity Libertarianism than it is for liberaltarianism. For the liberaltarians, temporary alliances with the polarizing Left are possible because both oppose Trump and other bad elements of the right wing. It is easy — maybe too easy — to market liberaltarianism to the Left as a critique and revision of libertarians and conservatives.
c. Liberaltarian Will Wilkinson made the mistake of expressing enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren. It is hard to imagine a State Capacity Libertarian making this same mistake, since so much of Warren’s energy is directed toward tearing down American business. Ban fracking? Really? Send money to Russia, Saudi Arabia, lose American jobs, and make climate change worse, all at the same time? Nope.
d. State Capacity Libertarianism is more likely to make a mistake of say endorsing high-speed rail from LA to Sf (if indeed that is a mistake), and decrying the ability of U.S. governments to get such a thing done. “Which mistakes they are most likely to commit” is an underrated way of assessing political philosophies.
You will note the influence of Peter Thiel on State Capacity Libertarianism, though I have never heard him frame the issues in this way.
Furthermore, “which ideas survive well in internet debate” has been an important filter on the evolution of the doctrine. That point is under-discussed, for all sorts of issues, and it may get a blog post of its own.
Daniel Klein
January 1, 2020 at 5:44 am
Here, on January 1, 2020, you diss "classical liberalism" as a "question-begging" expression, ill-suited to modern times.
Yesterday, December 31, 2019, in your Modi post, you identified, without qualification, as classical liberal.
Pedagogical esotericism? Does Homer nod? Other?
God of Thunder
January 1, 2020 at 11:25 am
What a difference a year makes!
For one thing, it doesn’t seem that old-style libertarianism can solve or even very well address a number of major problems, most significantly climate change.
Same way I don't think of you as a Soviet composer anymore. Well I might by the time this forum is over :doge(https://i.imgur.com/fCP0ge8.png)
We're still maybe a decade or two out from this being true, but if Chavismo can withstand this much AmeriKKKan aggression and persist it will probably become as (comparatively) unimpeachable as Castroism on the left.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro Thursday announced that the Venezuelan Great Housing Mission (GMVV) achieved its 2019 goal by completing the delivery of 3 million dwellings to the Bolivarian people as planned.didn't even have to wait a decade
“Despite the Imperialist economic, trade and financial blockade, which robbed us of so many resources in 2019, the construction industry did not stop,” Maduro said at an event in the state of La Guaira where he handed over the keys of the dwelling number 3 million to a local family.
The housing program, which seeks to deliver at least 500,000 new dwellings in 2020, has a new goal to achieve: to deliver 5 million dwellings by 2025.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/ejhb55/just_a_quick_shoutout_to_all_the_libertarians/
:hmmQuoteLet's get real: Who voted for Gary Johnson? I did, but the like-minded "libertarian" people I've talked to almost all voted for Trump. WTF?Allow me to explain...first off, Gary Johnson is exactly the kind of candidate that makes everyone thing the LP is a joke. He never seemed to be prepared for appearances. When you add in the possibility of Hillary Clinton -- who was more of a danger to liberty than any of the other candidates -- winning office, a lot of people would've have voted for the devil himself because any alternative was better than Clinton.
https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/vgames/index.html
In MIM's political economy, settlers play an important role, especially in the question of nationalism. The reason that settlers have been important in the united $tates, I$rael, Au$tralia etc. as well as within the exploited nations is not handled here. With all the wrong political messages, "Settlers" the game should be skipped.
which reeee mod is this :lol
None, because unlike anyone on REE she actually went out and did something.User Banned (And Killed): Attacks on staff, misrepresenting staff, cross-site drama, inflammatory commentary, off-site drama, modwhining, history of sex scandals, inflammatory metacommentary, not leaving The Bronx, drive-by derailing
The process didn’t go as he expected. It’s the stuff that libertarians like Elrod dread: Low-level staffers with limited industry knowledge issuing seemingly arbitrary decisions that can save or smash a company’s bottom line.:mindblown :dead
Every few weeks, a list comes out with a new batch of lucky winners, and losers. “Non-electrical wall candelabras, of wood, each with 3 wrought iron candle holders” received a pass, for example, but none with one or two candles.
There is no mechanism for appeals.
This paper provides insight into the wage gap between partnered lesbians and other groups of women. Using data from the 2000 Decennial Census, we find that wages of never-married lesbians are significantly higher than wages of previously married lesbians and other groups of women. Results indicate that controlling for previous marriage reduces the estimated lesbian wage premium by approximately 20 percent. Our research also reveals that wage patterns of previously married lesbians mirror those of cohabiting heterosexual women. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that the lesbian wage premium is driven, in part, by differences in the labor-market commitment of lesbians and heterosexual women.
https://twitter.com/TajinderBagga/status/1215324386531561472
https://twitter.com/minhtngo/status/1215013877559091200
People still fighting the OG Kulturkampf :jebit pops back up every few months like clockwork. i legit love this wrinkle in modern politics/religion and have more than one sincerepost in me about it
Attacking a politician’s religion is easier, especially when it remains a minority in the United Kingdom, with the Church of England the dominant branch of Christianity (and inexplicably with the Queen continuing to serve as the head of the church).
Don't just hint at sincereposts. Post them :mjcry
This situation stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about a bill he reintroduced, which would allow public sector employees to go on strike. For at least the past 70 years, engaging in work stoppages would automatically be considered a resignation for Virginia employees, without the possibility of getting rehired for a year. Carter’s bill, inspired by teachers’ strikes across the country, would change that policy.
When he first introduced the bill last session it did not get a hearing, largely due to concerns from fellow lawmakers that letting law enforcement strike could lead to a decrease in public safety (a contention that Carter disagrees with). The Manassas delegate’s modified bill for the 2020 session does not allow law enforcement to strike.
But the intent of the bill, and the fact that law enforcement currently are not allowed to strike, has been lost. Instead, it has been lumped into a broader category of bills that gun-rights advocates and far-right groups allege are designed to take away their freedoms after Democrats won control of the General Assembly in November. Since then, dozens of jurisdictions in the commonwealth have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” in opposition to the gun control measures expected to pass in the legislature, like universal background checks and red flag laws.
Social media posts began erroneously characterizing Carter’s legislation as trying to make sure police enforce gun control legislation on threat of being terminated from their jobs, in concert with Northam (“who I’m not particularly a fan of,” Carter notes). An article in Law Enforcement Today alleges that Carter’s bill is trying to “punish police,” and pro-confederate group the Virginia Flaggers tweeted that the bill would allow the commonwealth to “fire law enforcement officers if they won’t enforce unconstitutional gun laws.” Ultimately, those claims made their way into a Wall Street Journal editorial (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/second-amendment-sanctuaries-11577661926), which said that a Virginia lawmaker “introduced a bill that requires firing police officers who don’t enforce a gun statute.”
Red Guardsread into the Heidi Sloan thing again and the whole thing is just so... mentally ill. Made me pretty sick reading it :goty2
Red Guardsread into the Heidi Sloan thing again and the whole thing is just so... mentally ill. Made me pretty sick reading it :goty2
:dead
Both scenarios are great because one on hand someone probably had to read the little red book to cosplay like an episode of Brooklyn 99 or some Austin white kids took it way too far. Both equally plausible
I'm thinking about Tri-Power, thoughts?
I'm thinking about Tri-Power, thoughts?It can get confusing but remember that one of them is the father, and another the son, but they're still the same person. When the son prays to the father, he's not praying to himself. But once the son dies for his father, he returns to his father, but their consciousnesses are still separate, but when you die you become one with both of them. You'll figure it out.
Here is the incredible double paradox that forms the backbone of the climate-migration-industrial complex: right-wing nationalists and their politicians claim they want to deport all undocumented migrants, but if they did, they would destroy their own economy. Capitalists, on the other hand, want to grow the economy with migrant labor (any honest economist will tell you that immigration almost always leads to growth in GDP), but if that labor is too expensive, then it’s not nearly as profitable.
Trump is the Janus-faced embodiment of this anti-immigrant, pro-economy dilemma and the solution to it–not that he necessarily knows it. With one hand, migrant labor is strategically criminalized and devalorized by a xenophobic state, and with the other, it is securitized and hyper-exploited by the economy. It is a win-win situation for right-wing capitalists but a crucial element is still missing: what will continue to compel migrants to leave their homes and work as exploited criminals in an increasingly xenophobic country?
This is where the figure of the climate migrant comes in. What we call “climate migrants” or “climate refugees” are not the victims of merely “natural disasters,” because climate change is not a strictly natural process–it is also highly political. The causes of climate-related migration are disproportionately produced by rich Western countries and the effects are disproportionately suffered by poorer countries. The circumstances that determine who is forced to migrate are also influenced by the history of colonialism, global inequality, and the same conditions that have propelled economic migration for decades. In short, the fact that climate change benefits the perpetrators of climate destruction by producing an increasing supply of desperate, criminalized, physically and economically displaced laborers is no coincidence. In fact, it is the key to the Trump “solution.”
It's hard not to think they're some sort of law enforcement operation. A comparable group in the Boyle Heights part of LA is known more for menacing "gentrifying forces" than basically everyone else, though they did have a dust up with DSA LA about a food pantrythis made me think of these guys:
The Victorian sewage article you postedthe what now?
Wasn't me, but thank you for tonight's bedtime reading :-*
https://twitter.com/GabrielArcari2/status/1220080763141591041these guys didn't even read the eurocommunist literature :fbm
:science
https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1223569182148694016
i'll admit to liking this even before the obvious reveal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVWjVQ8mtZ8
On the poorer outskirts of the city, residents continue to struggle with water shortages and malnutrition. And in the countryside beyond, Venezuela is falling apart, with residents lacking even the most basic services, like electricity and the police.
But the wealthier areas dotting the capital have undergone a striking economic boom in recent months.
Shopping malls that were deserted six months ago are bustling, and imported SUVs course through the streets. New restaurants and bars are popping up weekly in the wealthier parts of town, their tables packed with foreign businessmen, fashionable locals and government insiders.
After years of nationalizing businesses, determining the exchange rate and setting the price of basic goods — measures that have long contributed to chronic shortages — Mr. Maduro seems to have made peace with the private sector and let it loose. And while the country’s economy continues to contract overall, the declining regulations have encouraged companies serving the wealthy or the export market to invest again.The way the Times article phrases this makes it sound like they are two independent movements, the whole of the country shrinking because of Maduro, and Caracas doing quite well because of "reforms", but in fact they are the exact same motion. If the overall economy is contracting but the high income areas are growing, that means that investment is shifting from basic goods to luxury goods and capitalist consumption - at the expense of consumer goods production. That is why bars and malls are exploding. Meanwhile the rest of the country is left behind. Maduro thinks he is saving the country by allowing dollarization to occur but really he is just selling the country out.
In a sign of newfound market confidence, about 100 Venezuelan companies have applied to issue new bonds in 2019, the highest figure in a decade. The country’s biggest rum producer, Ron Santa Teresa, last week completed the country’s first new issue of shares on the local stock exchange in 11 years.
The government has slashed red tape and turned a blind eye to taxation, fueling a boom in private exports of everything from oil to chocolate, enriching the politically connected and traditional business elites.
Imports by private companies overtook those done by the state for the first time in Venezuela’s modern history last year, according to Mr. Molino, the economist.
“There’s a lot of money going around at the moment, you just need to know how to find it,” Zairet López, an accountant, said recently at a packed music festival in Caracas, which charged a $70 entry fee, or the equivalent of 14 months’ worth of the country’s minimum salary.
“This is savage capitalism that erases years of struggle."
Saying Google Glass was “heavy artillery in the meme war,” White held out a tin cup. He begged activists to cough up $3,000 for two pairs of Glasses and more dough for accessories and to jet to San Francisco for a “personalized 1:1 fitting experience.”:doge
White’s fundraiser, dubbed “OccupyGlass,” read like Hammacher Schlemmer met the Communist Manifesto. Glass was a “potential force multiplier — like barricades in 1848.”
https://twitter.com/GovHowardDean/status/1225069823039811586
poli compass is only useful for memes anywaythis is the proper system:
https://twitter.com/ibrahimpols/status/1225927067163865088
Wut.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Thursday the United States and its allies should consider the highly unusual step of taking a "controlling stake" in Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson to counter China-based Huawei's dominance in next-generation 5G wireless technology.When conservatism morphs into militarist corporatism :money
In a remarkable statement underscoring how far the United States may be willing to go to counter Huawei Technologies Co, Barr disclosed in a speech at a conference on Chinese economic espionage that there had been proposals to meet the concerns "by the United States aligning itself with Nokia and/or Ericsson."
Barr said the alignment could take place "through American ownership of a controlling stake, either directly or through a consortium of private American and allied companies."
All these DSA darlings, The Squad - take a look at their non-domestic policies. These people, our supposed "leaders" have the same outlook as Mike Pompeo.Gonna disagree with this. Rose twitter went pretty hard in the paint when Venezuela happened, when Bolivia happened, and when Iran was escalating. In fact they were the only people making a ruckus. Meanwhile, people who call themselves progressives but try to split the difference between moderates and innanet socialists, those guys all recognized Guaido and kept their mouth shut about sanctions and the foreign policy apparatus. I don't have any complaints.
In... *squints*... Ecuador?
1. What’s the probability of Sanders’ track record if he is a crypto-communist? Here, I’d go high. Most crypto-communists in Sanders’ position would be look like him. I give this 75%.What's the probability this needs an editor?
2. What’s the probability of Sanders’ track record if he isn’t a crypto-communist? Sanders view have long been extremely unpopular, but quite a few non-communists on the radical left would have shared them. So I’ll give this 1.2%.
Bernie's voted for imperialist war multiple timesI'm glad you've finally changed your mind about the Yugoslav Wars (http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=45863.msg2620769#msg2620769) :hitler
With respect to upholding the 'common sense' of the state department line on a color revolution.... as you said there's no debate to be had so we'll agree to disagree!:leon
theres also no route to pressure his administration towards a more leftward approach in international relations with the coalition he’s trying to build*, if anything, the opposite’s the case.it just dawned on me that some of the low income families that make up the bulk of our volunteer soldiery might actually have an interest in not seeing their kids die, so who knows? :whatsthedeal
But pointing out that people with poster brain get hypocritical is fish in a barrel and not really relevant.Look, it's taking longer than I thought for the Hitchens infection to leave my brain. Thinking about flying to Russia for treatment.
Yep. The levers of power are huge, they're inaccessible to public office, and they're directly beholden to the interests of capital.there’s even a hot n ready revleft take on this: soc dem’s robust wealth transfer schemes are just as implicated in the exploitation of their periphery as their rightward neighbor’s liberal regimes are. of course they’d take up the mantle of enforcing empire when it comes to be their time in the driver seat.
Since the CIA is running candidates in broad daylight (not just talking about Buttigieg) and nobody really cares aside from Twitter leftists I see the chance of an about face from elected officials on foreign policy unlikely.slightly related cause you just reminded me -what about the volte face from the jacobin-and-adjacent intelligentsia who’ve put all their eggs in bernie’s basket?
[snip]yeah and this is just like, wrt anti-war. if you wanted anti-interventionism and positive (meaningful) support for democratic causes abroad, you’d have to entangle their self-interests with those people we’re potentially intervening in or supporting. and those voluntary associations would have to be transnational, extra-state, and also something that holds actual bargaining power over states. so good luck with that
They can eat the L and say it's the opening of a movement (technically they aren't wrong if you ignore or misinterpret 200 years of history).Idk what specifically you’re referring to in the parenthetical, but I do think this might be an actual watershed moment in us politics. like the start of a seventh party system, or whatever the fuck benji says we’re supposed to be on now. the weight of the neoliberal consensus between carter and barry o has splintered the floorboards enough that figures like bernard and the donald have managed to slip through. and while the latter’s administration has obv been in 98% continuity with the pre-2015 GOP, that 2%, which mostly consists in style and outward facing appearance rather than anything substantive, is non-trivial. they also can’t affect any of their agenda and it’s not merely because trump is an idiot who surrounds himself with idiots, it’s because modern american conservatism is ineffectual, and ineffectual because it’s accomplished most everything it set out to do already.
Sorry, I wrote half of that while i was passing out and it's pretty incoherent. I agree with you that the neoliberal mode of production is nearing it's end, what will come out of it is up to various factors. I'm not sure where else stagnant or crisis capital can turn in its latest series of death throes for rejuvenation but it won't be pretty. We've seen an imperial core nation in hospice and the right wing always wins - contrast with the more mixed results of the periphery. As you've noted the timing of it all is bizarre. On it's face the movements obv the movements aren't that extreme. Donald's fascism would be normal to many nations under the comprador jackboot, and Bernie would be a centre-left politician elsewhere, but the fact that it's even happening here is notable.https://twitter.com/Brett_Fairchild/status/1226948904815595522
I guess what I'm trying to get across is that even if they are successful on any level, the counterrevolution will be swift and vicious. I think people are stunned by the workings of Iowa and they're getting the first taste of what socialists of all stripes in the economic periphery get every day, what they are simply not ready for is blackshirts in the streets breaking legs. I think they'll fail because I think the social basis for actual, heiling fascism is not just strong but the baseline of american society. And i think when push comes to shove when the cards really get on the table thanks to climate change these closed borders social democrats will not become internationalists.
if your points just that the chapos arent good brainthinkers then i think we’re all in agreement
as much of an autist as i wanna be about plebs getting the s word wrong, de-chudifying america after a century+ of firm-as-fiefdom agitprop is a little more important right now than capital-t Theory
now that the primary is underway and there's something to distract the left's interest from navel-gazing over the flaws of its celebrities.
when's the last time you read the Illiad or the Odyssey in the original Homeric Greek? When's the last time you had a student come to your office at the University of Iowa to cry and express her doubt that she had what it took to complete your course?newsfeed
A U.S. Senate candidate in Maine has selected an unusual logo for campaign T-shirts – the guillotine – citing the need for a revolution to remove big money from politics.
The logo, unveiled this week by Democrat Bre Kidman, recalls the execution device known for its role in the 18th century French Revolution and is intended to symbolize revolt by low- and middle-income people, Kidman said.
“The guillotine is an image which calls to mind what people have done for revolution before,” said Kidman, an attorney who’s running for the seat held by Republican Sen. Susan Collins. “If we can find a better path to revolution than that we owe it to ourselves and our country.”
Kidman said the campaign, which had raised about $16,000 by the end of last year, stopped actively fundraising in July. Merchandise, including t-shirts, patches and buttons, with the new logo is not for sale and instead will be given away to people who want to talk about the campaign ideas with fellow Mainers.https://twitter.com/BeeKay4ME/status/1225177542853828608
Kidman said the logo is not supposed to be taken literally.
“We’re not going to start a guillotine in Monument Square (in Portland) and start beheading people,” Kidman said. “It’s a symbol of the work we have to do to overcome flaws in our system – flaws that have become deeply evident in the last few weeks.”
cpp supporting the hongkie protestshttps://twitter.com/damoj/status/1048500649027985414
shosti, you gotta get in on that :bolo:gurl
dialecticspart of what you find out is that this is just a giant red herring getting in the way of actually understanding anything. not in the sense that ‘it’ is bullshit, but in the sense that ‘it’ depends entirely on who’s talking and how theyre using it.
The IDRlabs Communist Beliefs Test (IDR-CBT©) was developed by IDRlabs International. The IDR-CBT is based on principles developed by notable communists such as Marx and Engels. The IDR-CBT is not associated with any specific researchers in the fields of political psychology or sociology, or any affiliated research institutions.
The IDRlabs Communist Beliefs Test was informed by classic works of literature and the historical foundations of Marxist communism to create this free online test. As a political ideology, proponents of communism believe that society’s resources should be communally shared, while social classes should be eliminated. IDRlabs International and the present IDRlabs Communist Beliefs Test are independent from any researchers who have produced work in the area of communism or any such related topics.
The current test was created by professionals certified in the delivery and scoring of numerous psychological measures, who have worked professionally in various fields of psychology including social psychology, political psychology, and personality testing.
I just want to read hegel for hegel.this is a good look. one of the biggest things i’m alluding to above is that virtually everyone points to hegel when they need to explain ‘dialectics’ and it turns out that that’s just an awful way of understanding what’s going on in the phenomenology or the rest of his system. there’s a kernel of truth to it, but the term brings too much osmotic baggage with it, to the point where it’s better to just scrap it and start with a clean sheet
(https://www.thecoli.com/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/whoa.png) guys, going through kant and hegel is cool and fine, but you don’t have to read everyone in the canonTM. best piece of advice someone can give you is don’t let reading get in the way of things you actually want to read. you’ll better understand marx, or whoever, just by reading marx.https://twitter.com/LassPeaches/status/1230942720975233024
Stolen from NeoGAF.com during the 504 Gateway Error Period: https://www.idrlabs.com/communism/test.phpQuoteThe IDRlabs Communist Beliefs Test (IDR-CBT©) was developed by IDRlabs International. The IDR-CBT is based on principles developed by notable communists such as Marx and Engels. The IDR-CBT is not associated with any specific researchers in the fields of political psychology or sociology, or any affiliated research institutions.
The IDRlabs Communist Beliefs Test was informed by classic works of literature and the historical foundations of Marxist communism to create this free online test. As a political ideology, proponents of communism believe that society’s resources should be communally shared, while social classes should be eliminated. IDRlabs International and the present IDRlabs Communist Beliefs Test are independent from any researchers who have produced work in the area of communism or any such related topics.
The current test was created by professionals certified in the delivery and scoring of numerous psychological measures, who have worked professionally in various fields of psychology including social psychology, political psychology, and personality testing.spoiler (click to show/hide)(https://i.imgur.com/xtFIoaG.png)spoiler (click to show/hide)I got like third highest score on the new NeoGAF.com. :doge[close][close]
The 20 murderous villains are: Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler, Albert Speer, Karl Doenitz, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Ulrike Meinhof, Osama bin Laden, Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, Idi Amin, and Muammar Gaddafi.
browsing elsewhere on idrlabsThey have two separate pyschopath tests.
https://www.idrlabs.com/villain/test.php
You are 89% Libertarian, which makes you a Hardcore Libertarian.:notlikethis
Watch out, we've got a badass over here.
browsing elsewhere on idrlabsThey have two separate pyschopath tests.
https://www.idrlabs.com/villain/test.php
Also:
https://www.idrlabs.com/libertarian/test.phpQuoteYou are 89% Libertarian, which makes you a Hardcore Libertarian.:notlikethis
Watch out, we've got a badass over here.
Left / Right TestI got 75% left-wing, this is why I can hide in plain sight despite being a badass.
Based on the scientific work of John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith and John R. Alford, this test aims to guess your political orientation based on your lifestyle.
Philosophical discussions are mostly:
Boring
Fun
Pointless
The #1 question for discerning political stances from ostensibly non-political questions would be "Agree or disagree: college basketball is more entertaining to watch than the NBA because of the teamwork and fundamentals."
https://www.idrlabs.com/political-left-right/test.phpQuoteLeft / Right TestI got 75% left-wing, this is why I can hide in plain sight despite being a badass.
Based on the scientific work of John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith and John R. Alford, this test aims to guess your political orientation based on your lifestyle.
You are 0% Libertarian, which makes you Not Libertarian.
In your case it is safe to say that you are *not* a libertarian. Whether because you prefer a greater degree of social discipline or economic regulation (or possibly both), you probably tend to find large swatches of the libertarian program to be far-fetched, extremist, and possibly even downright repulsive. If you are not the argumentative type, you had best stay clear of libertarians - they have a reputation for being insufferable in an argument.
You are 0% Libertarian, which makes you Not Libertarian.
In your case it is safe to say that you are *not* a libertarian. Whether because you prefer a greater degree of social discipline or economic regulation (or possibly both), you probably tend to find large swatches of the libertarian program to be far-fetched, extremist, and possibly even downright repulsive. If you are not the argumentative type, you had best stay clear of libertarians - they have a reputation for being insufferable in an argument.
(https://i.imgur.com/l5t9uCh.png)(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERgJqOBXkAYe7US?format=jpg&name=small)
How long do you guys think she lasts at the times
Working on: Which Bore mod are you?
Currently still in development.
There's a whole Wikipedia page for that photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Miliband_bacon_sandwich_photograph
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
paul krugman, thank you for upholding ML thought :bettyhttps://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/24/paul_krugman_richard_wolff_socialism_debate
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?
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
https://twitter.com/Tom_Fowdy/status/1235102396595888128So Tom is saying nothing would be any different except the lingo change?
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
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"
must read into Juche and Socialism in One Country some time :thinking
:bow Karabrowsing through random terms
must read into Juche and Socialism in One Country some time :thinking
http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=24400.msg2507843#msg2507843
:lol
must read into Juche and Socialism in One Country some time :thinkingok don't do this
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
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
I can't reconcile my views, I do not know what esoteric or obscure political alignment I am :stahp
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.
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 :leon
But none of them admit that capitalism has been the most effective way to eliminate poverty in history. Today, in former socialist states like India, there have been big reductions in poverty thanks to increased capitalism. In China, where communism sadly still deprives more than a billion people of their basic rights, hundreds of millions benefit from a system that is slowly shedding socialism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the extreme poverty rate in the world has been cut in half. And it didn't happen because Southeast Asians were raising the minimum wage.
The more reason we give anyone to think that capitalism means crony capitalism, the more they’ll clamor for socialism.
investors.com
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61b3WrP8kEL.jpg)
It may be asked, are not these non-productive activities providing “common goods” necessary for the reproduction of society? Shaikh and Tonak provide a cogent response: “To say that these labors indirectly result in the creation of this wealth is only another way of saying that they are necessary. Consumption also indirectly results in production, as production indirectly results in consumption. But this hardly obviates the need for distinguishing between the two.”77 To see the veracity of this argument, consider an economy made up of laborers and security guards.78 The laborers produce all of the goods that both they and the security guards need to live on; the security guards provide a “common good,” security. it is plain that the higher the ratio of security guards to laborers, all other things being equal, the lower the total product, and it is therefore logical to regard this economic activity as unproductive labor, a form of social consumption.
I've actually got an idea about what fascism really is after being confused about it due to internet discourse.Go straight to the source breh: http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm
Fascism is a very interesting ideology
Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State (16).
Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it. As for the individual, so for the nation, and so for mankind (4). Hence the high value of culture in all its forms (artistic, religious, scientific) (5) and the outstanding importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, by which man subjugates nature and creates the human world (economic, political, ethical, and intellectual).Well, sans the one word fascism of course
the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity (11). It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual (12). And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State (13). The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people (14).:klob
No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State (15).
Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the StateIf only we had an emote for that one, one of the crying+flag ones.
I think the broader view of fascism as a human inclination which persists forever is still useful... Umberto Eco's famous essay is quite good
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism
So I'm not annoyed so much when someone says "that's fascist".
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascismhuh, didn’t realize how much my last couple posts...echo Eco :dice
I've never heard anyone shit on that piece (which I got from sphagnum, pbuh), what's the gist of the criticism?ah, fuck i cant find the thread. iirc it was too idealist for them? as i google around for it im turning up more posts on the sub that are warm to it than posts that arent, so i guess i just stumbled on the three people who didnt like it.
https://twitter.com/creature_maria/status/1237161051529121793
not surprised at hitting the woman, alt-righters really dislike women alongside jews, and non-whites
I think most people aren't familiar with the Cultural Revolution :idont
You learned about the cultural revolution in a world history course? Why? :heh
The Cold War grew in intensity as the Soviet Union developed atomic weapons
in an effort to catch up militarily to the U.S. An arms race continued for decades,
as the superpowers competed over advancements in nuclear weapons technology.
After a long civil war, communists, led by Mao Zedong, came to power in China,
expanding the geographic scope of the Cold War. The presence of communist
China complicated the earlier bipolar Cold War world, as tensions developed
between the two communist powers. The Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and the
Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) caused massive turmoil in China. Students should
learn about the unrest and disorder in China during these years; elites were made
to work on farms; revolutionary justice was arbitrarily applied; and the Red Guard
even turned on members of Mao’s own party.
The question How was the Cold War waged all over the world? can continue
to frame students’ understanding of the Chinese experience. Moreover, if students
learn about the ascent of communism in China in the middle of the twentieth
century, the groundwork will be laid for their understanding of its later status
when its markets opened, but its political system did not.
Young people are supporting the failed ideology at an astronomical rate and it's because of our education system.in a way, hes not wrong :idont
wow that high school curriculum is like, deliberately designed to choke out critical reassessments of modern history. are the essays that just regurgitate boring liberal agitprop the ones that get 5s?
https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1237584835394203649
They never heard about China? :doge
defending trotskyism...I support the jdpon :hmph
But if you reduce the number of security guards, and more of the goods the laborers produce are stolen, or eaten by wild animals during the night, then doesn't that lower total product? Are theft and waste counted as consumption? And say you have an overseer, who whips the laborers from time to time to make them go faster. If you converted him into a laborer, that could conceivably lead to lower total product; does that make whipping the laborers a productive activity?Theft is an illegal transfer - it doesn't lower the total product because the product has already been produced. Crop damage is depreciation. If adding a night patrol increases yield then that's productive work and that added labor becomes part of the production technique. In the example given I think by security guards we mean general shared security, like a police force.
Yeah, among the things I got tripped up over at times were things like his deliberation on productive work. When I was reading his bit on explaining how transporting goods falls under the purview of productive it felt odd as it seemed entirely intuitive to consider transport productive and more so he was convincing himself.That section in the chapter proceeds a part where he's saying that productive vs unproductive is different from industry vs services. It's not meant to convince the author, it's meant to clarify a common misconception.
I also bought the Parenti book I read, I intend to try and get other people to read it. Plant a seed in some minds.
Now that's praxis baby 8)
did you guys start the german idealism reading group thing btw?
https://twitter.com/faizashaheen/status/1239545623814254592The foundations of society are repressed so that they stay in place.
As liberty can never subsist without equality, nor equality be long preserved without an agrarian law, or something like it; so when men's riches are become immeasurably or surprizingly great, a people, who regard their own security, ought to make a strict enquiry how they come by them, and oblige them to take down their own size, for fear of terrifying the community, or mastering it. In every country, and under every government, particular men may be too rich.(https://www.thecoli.com/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/jbhmmm.png)
...
But, will some say, is it a crime to be rich? Yes, certainly, at the publick expense, or to the danger of the publick. A man may be too rich for a subject; even the revenues of kings may be too large. It is one of the effects of arbitrary power, that the prince has too much, and the people too little; and such inequality may be the cause too of arbitrary power. It is as astonishing as it is melancholy, to travel through a whole country, as one may through many in Europe, grasping under endless imposts, groaning under dragoons and poverty, and all to make a wanton and luxurious court, filled for the most with the worst and vilest of all men. Good God! What hard-heartedness and barbarity, to starve perhaps half a province, to make a gay garden! And yet sometimes even this gross wickedness is called publick spirit, because forsooth a few workmen and labourers are maintained out of the bread and the blood of half a million.
far left professor does not cover Judeo-Christian foundations of America at all, instead spends weeks claiming that many of the Founding Founders were radical liberals, has wasted class time to childishly mock President Washington:fbm
dox
It's a conflict between different factions of capital, not a proletarian consciousness arising from the big bourgeoisieBritney Spears?
It's a conflict between different factions of capital, not a proletarian consciousness arising from the big bourgeoisie :trumps:isthis is this the sublated individual?
https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1242636826864574464https://twitter.com/Carrion_Crawl/status/1242878882195243009
Subway developing a class consciousness? :doge
Every day someone has tweeted a version of that: "We're really panicking about something that's only killed X people?"
I bet if you curated them it would be a great demonstration of the concept of exponential growth.
Every day someone has tweeted a version of that: "We're really panicking about something that's only killed X people?"
I bet if you curated them it would be a great demonstration of the concept of exponential growth.
Cons crying crocodile tears and hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over "suicides" due to an economic are disgusting, because I guarantee they didn't give one single damn about mental health issues before all this started up.
Cons crying crocodile tears and hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over "suicides" due to an economic are disgusting, because I guarantee they didn't give one single damn about mental health issues before all this started up.
Not true!
Look at the three days following any mass shooting.
The failure to prepare for and react to the outbreak did not just start in December when countries around the world failed to respond once COVID-19 spilled out of Wuhan. In the United States, for instance, it did not start when Donald Trump dismantled his national security team’s pandemic preparation team or left seven hundred CDC positions unfilled.9 Nor did it start when feds failed to act on the results of a 2017 pandemic simulation showing the country was unprepared.10 Nor when, as stated in a Reuters headline, the United States “axed CDC expert job in China months before virus outbreak,” although missing the early direct contact from a U.S. expert on the ground in China certainly weakened the U.S. response. Nor did it start with the unfortunate decision not to use the already available test kits provided by the World Health Organization. Together, the delays in early information and total miss in testing will undoubtedly be responsible for many, probably thousands, of lost lives.11
The failures were actually programmed decades ago as the shared commons of public health were simultaneously neglected and monetized.12 A country captured by a regimen of individualized, just-in-time epidemiology—an utter contradiction—with barely enough hospital beds and equipment for normal operations, is by definition unable to marshal the resources necessary to pursue a China brand of suppression.
After her victory in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez encouraged progressives to follow in her footsteps and run for Congress with the backing of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, even if it meant taking on powerful incumbents. Sixteen months later, the Missouri primary isn’t the only one Ocasio-Cortez is steering clear of.
Of the half-dozen incumbent primary challengers Justice Democrats is backing this cycle, Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed just two. Neither was a particularly risky move: Both candidates — Jessica Cisneros in Texas and Marie Newman in Illinois — were taking on conservative Democrats who oppose abortion rights and later earned the support of several prominent national Democrats.
Ocasio-Cortez’s reluctance marks a break with the outsider tactics of the activist left, represented by groups like Justice Democrats. This election cycle, the organization is trying to boot not just conservative Democrats but also some liberal Democrats and to replace them with members who are more left-wing. In other words, to replicate what it pulled off against Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018 by recruiting Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez’s shift coincides with turnover among top aides in her congressional office — replacing some outspoken radicals with more traditional political professionals — along with a broader reckoning on the left on how to expand Sanders’ coalition after his failure to significantly do so in the presidential primary. Some progressives have questioned whether Sanders should have softened his anti-establishment rhetoric and tried to build bridges with mainstream Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 rather than betting big on turning out disaffected and first-time voters.
Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement moves are not a fluke but part of a larger change over the past several months. After her disruptive, burn-it-down early months in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez, who colleagues say is often conflict-averse in person, has increasingly been trying to work more within the system. She is building coalitions with fellow Democratic members and picking her fights more selectively.
The changes have divided her supporters, with some lamenting she's been co-opted in short order by the system — and others asserting she's offering the left a more viable path toward sustained power.
In February, she dubbed Pelosi the “mama bear of the Democratic Party.”when socialism gets old :lawd
Originalism comes in several varieties (baroque debates about key theoretical ideas rage among its proponents), but their common core is the view that constitutional meaning was fixed at the time of the Constitution’s enactment. This approach served legal conservatives well in the hostile environment in which originalism was first developed, and for some time afterward.
But originalism has now outlived its utility, and has become an obstacle to the development of a robust, substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation. Such an approach—one might call it “common-good constitutionalism”—should be based on the principles that government helps direct persons, associations, and society generally toward the common good, and that strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good is entirely legitimate. In this time of global pandemic, the need for such an approach is all the greater, as it has become clear that a just governing order must have ample power to cope with large-scale crises of public health and well-being—reading “health” in many senses, not only literal and physical but also metaphorical and social.
Assured of this, conservatives ought to turn their attention to developing new and more robust alternatives to both originalism and left-liberal constitutionalism. It is now possible to imagine a substantive moral constitutionalism that, although not enslaved to the original meaning of the Constitution, is also liberated from the left-liberals’ overarching sacramental narrative, the relentless expansion of individualistic autonomy. Alternatively, in a formulation I prefer, one can imagine an illiberal legalism that is not “conservative” at all, insofar as standard conservatism is content to play defensively within the procedural rules of the liberal order.
This approach should take as its starting point substantive moral principles that conduce to the common good, principles that officials (including, but by no means limited to, judges) should read into the majestic generalities and ambiguities of the written Constitution. These principles include respect for the authority of rule and of rulers; respect for the hierarchies needed for society to function; solidarity within and among families, social groups, and workers’ unions, trade associations, and professions; appropriate subsidiarity, or respect for the legitimate roles of public bodies and associations at all levels of government and society; and a candid willingness to “legislate morality”—indeed, a recognition that all legislation is necessarily founded on some substantive conception of morality, and that the promotion of morality is a core and legitimate function of authority. Such principles promote the common good and make for a just and well-ordered society.
Common-good constitutionalism is not legal positivism, meaning that it is not tethered to particular written instruments of civil law or the will of the legislators who created them. Instead it draws upon an immemorial tradition that includes, in addition to positive law, sources such as the ius gentium—the law of nations or the “general law” common to all civilized legal systems—and principles of objective natural morality, including legal morality in the sense used by the American legal theorist Lon Fuller: the inner logic that the activity of law should follow in order to function well as law.
Common-good constitutionalism is also not legal liberalism or libertarianism. Its main aim is certainly not to maximize individual autonomy or to minimize the abuse of power (an incoherent goal in any event), but instead to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well.
Constraints on power are good only derivatively, insofar as they contribute to the common good; the emphasis should not be on liberty as an abstract object of quasi-religious devotion, but on particular human liberties whose protection is a duty of justice or prudence on the part of the ruler.
Finally, unlike legal liberalism, common-good constitutionalism does not suffer from a horror of political domination and hierarchy, because it sees that law is parental, a wise teacher and an inculcator of good habits. Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects’ own perceptions of what is best for them—perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them. Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.
This is not the occasion to offer a bill of particulars about how constitutional law might change under this approach, but a few broad strokes can be sketched. The Court’s jurisprudence on free speech, abortion, sexual liberties, and related matters will prove vulnerable under a regime of common-good constitutionalism. The claim, from the notorious joint opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that each individual may “define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” should be not only rejected but stamped as abominable, beyond the realm of the acceptable forever after. So too should the libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology—that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech, that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,” and so on—fall under the ax. Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources.
As for the structure and distribution of authority within government, common-good constitutionalism will favor a powerful presidency ruling over a powerful bureaucracy, the latter acting through principles of administrative law’s inner morality with a view to promoting solidarity and subsidiarity. The bureaucracy will be seen not as an enemy, but as the strong hand of legitimate rule.
Elaborating on the common-good principle that no constitutional right to refuse vaccination exists, constitutional law will define in broad terms the authority of the state to protect the public’s health and well-being, protecting the weak from pandemics and scourges of many kinds—biological, social, and economic—even when doing so requires overriding the selfish claims of individuals to private “rights.” Thus the state will enjoy authority to curb the social and economic pretensions of the urban-gentry liberals who so often place their own satisfactions (financial and sexual) and the good of their class or social milieu above the common good.uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :doge :doge :doge :doge
Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule (/vərˈmjuːl/[1], born May 2, 1968) is an American legal scholar, currently a law professor at Harvard Law School.
Since converting to Catholicism, Vermeule is now an advocate of integralism, a Roman Catholic political doctrine which calls for the abolition of the division between church and state, in order that the resulting theocratic state can promote a religiously-determined "Highest Good" in place of the personal autonomy of a liberal democracy. Their ideal is to create this new confessional Catholic regime through "strategic raillement", or transformation from within institutions and bureaucracies, rather than by winning elections. The groundwork for a full integralist regime would then be in place when liberal democracy dies. The new state would "exercise coercion over baptized citizens in a manner different from non-baptized citizens".[9][10][11]
To achieve this end, Vermeule has suggested giving confirmed Catholics priority in immigration, allowing them to "jump immediately to the head of the queue". Vermeule describes this as being essential to "the eventual formation of the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and ultimately the world government required by natural law".[12]
I don't know where else to share this but I just need curly to see itshe hot?
https://twitter.com/RedKahina/status/1245711159434653697
https://twitter.com/RedKahina/status/1245472220937404416
https://twitter.com/RedKahina/status/1245163515524124679
https://twitter.com/RedKahina/status/1245164619330719744
she is NOT handling this well
There’s been a tendency on the part of some Marxists to dismiss the relation between these three thinkers. That means setting aside the forty years of work Marx did on the real patterns of capitalism. Marxists become complacently satisfied with the ideas of exploitation — which they understand as an abstract process, a seriously inadequate conception, in my opinion — and alienation.:whew
But why did Marx then bother with things like the “reserve army of labor,” “circuits of capital,” “schemes of reproduction,” “prices of production,” “differential and absolute rent,” etc.? Couldn’t he have been a “good” Marxist and just stopped at “surplus value,” “exploitation,” and “commodity fetishism,” devoting the rest of his life to politics? In my view the conventional Marxist focus compresses and diminishes Marx’s work to a particular range of topics with which Marxists have become comfortable.
That’s partly because you don’t need to deal with competition and all the complex phenomena to which it gives rise if you start off with the assumption of monopoly. This is the orthodox line within Marxist theory, which I reject.
https://williambowles.info/2020/04/05/why-coronavirus-could-spark-a-capitalist-supernova/
By John Smith (author of Imperialism in the 21st Century)
I think everyones trying to be cool but nobody here in america at least seems to be thinking past May 1st in any capacity rn. It's really scary.
We haven't really talked about it in here but this corona thing has been a massive blow to everyone in organized labor. Hotels around here for example fired all the union employees asap as soon as this happened, to sum up all my interactions its been a real hollowing out of several strongly unionized industries and a lot of organizing is going to have to start over from block one. Sucks big ass. People are talking about how the bernie L will get people in the DSA or PSL or whatever but as far as legacy organized labor I don't have anything good to say :(Article I saw today but have not read beyond the topline: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-union-where-coronavirus-puts-98--of-members-out-of-work
Unite Here was a rare union success story. But then the coronavirus decimated the restaurant, food service and hotel industries, where most of its 307,000 members work. “We’re fighting for our survival,” its president told ProPublica.
I think everyones trying to be cool but nobody here in america at least seems to be thinking past May 1st in any capacity rn. It's really scary.in the first world we'll just push the keynesian gas pedal. I'm confident it'll work. There are so many businesses idle and ready to go. The Fed is also fully accommodating and we, luckily, had our next financial crisis prematurely so things will be sorted out by the time everything has to be online again. We might have a lot of net loss still, and it'll be painful for a while, but nothing like the depression or even as bad as the last recession.
(https://i.imgur.com/nSwV4Gy.jpg)
The anger in the comments :dead
https://twitter.com/DemSocialists/status/1249351571831435269
Critical support for Big Baller Jezz for aspirations of teaching the crimes of the English Empire in schools but he's going to need to go all the way for me and advocate for it's dismantling. Some bonuses would include things like shattering every statue of the monarchy and Winston Churchill. I think we might also want to look into community service projects to help English youth learn from Bangladeshi and Irish farmers in the fields. This would of course be means-tested to select for the heirs of english banks and landlords.
spelling his name wrong :hehYou saw nothing.
Lizzy 2 is still on your money, isn't she? Small wonder.Critical support for Big Baller Jezz for aspirations of teaching the crimes of the English Empire in schools but he's going to need to go all the way for me and advocate for it's dismantling. Some bonuses would include things like shattering every statue of the monarchy and Winston Churchill. I think we might also want to look into community service projects to help English youth learn from Bangladeshi and Irish farmers in the fields. This would of course be means-tested to select for the heirs of english banks and landlords.
perfidious albions complicit in the deaths of millions of irish and bengali among many others yet I never heard about it in schooling
Speaking of social-fascism anybody else peep all the news coming out of the Labour party report that got dropped this weekend? I know this is Cursed Albion and all but this really feels like another step in the disintegration of the social-democratic pact, like read through some of this stuff :neogafQuoteIt shows references to Corbyn-supporting party staff as “trots”, conversations referring to former director of communications Seumas Milne as “dracula”, and that he was “spiteful and evil and we should make sure he is never allowed in our party if it’s last thing we do”. There were also mentions of Corbyn’s former chief of staff Karie Murphy as “medusa”, a “crazy woman” and a “bitch face cow” that would “make a good dartboard”.
:dead
Who do you guys trust for political takes on perfidious Albion? Their media is somehow even worse than ours with the exception of really niche outlets like New Left Review which aren't exactly up to date on the latest developmentsNot a news source, and not solely focused on Britain, far from it, but...
^what companions would you recommend for capital?
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1249777968471130112https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1251259137830379522
they pay this guy to write shit like this :lawd
I posted some hott quotes in the garbage thread from a single page of ResetERA's thread on that if you're feeling self-destructive :kermit
The SPD should never be let off easy :pacspit but I do agree that forums poster curly should join the united front instead of nurturing his crush on Gloria La Riva :hitler
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1249777968471130112https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1251259137830379522
they pay this guy to write shit like this :lawd
I don't wanna post about memes, sectarian shit or Reddit in this thread unless I absolutely have to but this one got me. So many levels of ideology to this, it's like a barolo with a decade of age. You have to be completely borktarded to tease out all the little secondary notes :deliciousfinally, I've found it. the worst tweet in history
https://twitter.com/COMPLETEANAR/status/1251546958025707521
marxists.org is a blocked site here :dead thanks for sharing though, will try find alternative sources^what companions would you recommend for capital?
Really I think there's a couple different ways to approach it and that depends on who you are and what your needs are. I started off reading v1 and v2 using the big harvey companion Verso sells. I think that book is pretty good, but I think I still struggled for a while because I didn't read any classical poli econ in schools aside from maybe a little smith? and i think he doesn't 100 percent nail things like the value-form. Anyway its annoying because marx spends tons of time directly addressing their arguments sans context but only someone with genuine enthusiasm for this like shosta is actually gonna sit there and read Ricardo. I'll just list off some secondary stuff that helped me and why. As far as marx himself reading wage price profit and the grundrisse helped me as well.
:yeshrug
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/index.htm
this book is a great overall companion. easy to navigate in this form too and its free.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/index.htm
Isaak Rubin has some good writing just on value itself.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/anikin/pre-marxian-economy.pdf
this old soviet textbook talking about the objects of investigation and philosophy of economics up until marx is great imo, i love all the bitchy dunks on say and sismondi and it helped me understand how political economy as a science developed historically from a marxist worldview. easy read. enjoy this stuff because it gives context as to why and how these investigations took place and the historical conditions that gave birth to them (e.g. ricardo and smiths professions giving them insights but also showing how their investigations were hindered by the conditions of their time and class obligations) and i like the side of marxism that explores how material conditions give rise to the possibility for a specific school of thought or insight to be conceived and thus, the possibility for knowledge itself
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/index.htm
Ilyenkov's work was useful to me for understanding the core logic and "philosophy" of capital, ie the object of marx's investigation isnt an object but a process. shit like that. I think this stuff is probably gonna get less mileage from you cuz u strike me as someone who's given some reading time to idealism/materialism/logic in general but i figure it can't hurt.
(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/535/091/d97.jpg)Sorry, unlike some other posters, whenever I make suggestions about things related to ResetERA.com outside of the garbage thread please consider them entirely directed at stost, Vom, etc. (sometimes Esch and others) more than most non-garbage thread posters like yourself or jake or Mandark.spoiler (click to show/hide)I might :stahp[close]
Seeing Xanax Joe's latest commercial made me want to throw my lot in with curly and Kara and show some love to Gloria at the ballot box. I'm over it. :trumps
https://twitter.com/jewcommie/status/1255308398507278336
:kermit
https://twitter.com/ExtraSmallRobin/status/1255800047154925569
Idk if we're gonna make it past May.
different to corona how?????????https://twitter.com/ExtraSmallRobin/status/1255800047154925569
Idk if we're gonna make it past May.
the virus wasn't a real virus, but NANOMACHINES created by a megacorp with various goals including manipulation of politicians
:comeon
different to corona how?????????https://twitter.com/ExtraSmallRobin/status/1255800047154925569
Idk if we're gonna make it past May.
the virus wasn't a real virus, but NANOMACHINES created by a megacorp with various goals including manipulation of politicians
:comeon
Welp, I've spent a lot of the quarantine in the idealist world while comparing and contrasting with the relevant left philosophy but: My take is that we basically don't know in the end wrt ontology and may never know but i came out with more questions (how stable are the boundaries between natural science and social science really?) than answers. ussr and prc thinkers had a lot of thoughts about this and i haven't taken a strict line but one thing i really do agree with is the idea that material circumstances shape ideology and consciousness and in that respect acknowledging this is essential for both analysis of history and political action. but TBH i'll have to check back with you in a year or something.I've settled on this being true regardless of any heavy reading I won't do anyway. Can't see how it wouldn't be. Can't escape the meat prison and all its needs.
:mjcry
are you guys materialists? like wrt general ontology, do you think that everything there is is reductively physical? ive been bored and am wondering whether its necessary to be if you wanna employ something like histmatI had way too religious an upbringing
are you guys materialists? like wrt general ontology, do you think that everything there is is reductively physical? ive been bored and am wondering whether its necessary to be if you wanna employ something like histmathttps://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1256733482501447685
you can still think all the facts are physical!currently imagining a monkey named entailment with a long ass tail that physically pushes the premises together
https://twitter.com/camilateleSUR/status/1256963936093683712https://twitter.com/gianfiorella/status/1257113002698051587
didnt know where to post this one
Not all Republicans are racistYou could call 90% of them racist and still satisfy the catch. Meanwhile Repubs have to eat the bigger pill, the only thing trickling down is you pissing yourself.
So is the takeaway that Progressives can compromise, or is that compromise is bad when it's the wrong people compromising?https://twitter.com/bigbossserdar/status/1257595848659173381
By using the most popular and democratic rhetoric available to explain and justify their aristocratic system, the Federalists [viz. the supporters for the ratification of the Constitution in the late 1780s, not the supporters of the Washington and Adams administrations of the 1790s] helped to foreclose the development of an American intellectual tradition in which differing ideas of politics would be intimately and genuinely related to differing social interests. In other words, the Federalists in 1787 hastened the destruction of whatever chance there was in America for the growth of an avowedly aristocratic conception of politics and thereby contributed to the creation of that encompassing liberal tradition which has mitigated and often obscured the real social antagonisms of American politics. By attempting to confront and distinguished mentally-challenged fellow the thrust of the Revolution with the rhetoric of the Revolution the Federalists fixed the terms for the future discussion of American politics. They thus brought the ideology of the Revolution to consummation and created a distinctly American political theory but only at the cost of eventually impoverishing later American political thought.
Please post socialist/communist literature for someone that has read the Manifesto and Einstein's socialism essay. I guess Das Kapital?short answer is Lenin's state and revolution.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (https://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0312626681) - Bore favorite Barbara Ehrenreich's undercover survey of low wage work in America. Quite a famous book
The Act of Killing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-349HTKhPno) - Shocking documentary following an old man reminiscing on his role in the massacre of two million accused leftists in Indonesia
On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane (https://www.amazon.com/Clock-Low-Wage-Drives-America-Insane/dp/0316509000) - 2019 version of Nickel and Dimed for our AI supervised Amazon hell
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006) - recommended by prolific GAF communist Chichikov and benji
Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat (http://readsettlers.org/) - Kara told me to read this as a joke but I accidentally took it seriously and now I'm an extremist
Israel in the U.S. Empire (https://monthlyreview.org/2007/03/01/israel-in-the-u-s-empire/) - "short" essay from Monthly Review that I think everyone should read if they want to understand Israel's relationship with the United States
The Limits to Capital (https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Capital-David-Harvey/dp/1844670953) - This book by David Harvey is Marx remixed, reinterpreted, reapplied to contemporary (late 70s) conditions. Absolutely essential reading.
As to the points about the slow growth of employment in wage-labor, part of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall wrt expanded reproduction is that variable capital expands slower than constant capital [...] So the growth of surplus population that becomes lumpen reserve armies of labor doesn't necessarily negate the idea that the industrial proletariat [...] is still the active struggling force against the contradictions of capital to create a new form of society.I agree with you, and it seems you also agree with the nplusone piece, that the relationship people have with production will always be a central aspect of socialist struggle. But just to nitpick, let's not take the falling rate of profit for granted. I think it'll hold true in the long run but it's not technically true (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okishio's_theorem), but also it not being technically true is not technically true (http://gesd.free.fr/baragar.pdf) (p. 12), and also Sraffa himself thought that Marx's reasoning was essentially correct but that technical change tended to be neutral wrt to capital intensiveness, but there's also the recent explosion of the service industry, but one has to be careful about that because some of that is productive work and some of that is social consumption (throwback to the discussion with curly), and also...
https://twitter.com/profwolff/status/1259516547388841985
Big Dick Wolff puts out bangers like this every day but I just had to share this one :lol
Heideggerliterally the only guy in the CanonTM that i legit dislike. you get enough of the mickey mouse reception of him through osmosis to not have to read him too intensively. unless you just really wanna get into continental phenomenology
...Europe lies in the pincers between Russia and America, which are metaphysically the same...
tweet bernie punished guy: dont read anything(https://i.imgur.com/FCPs0GK.gif)
che guevara: spends 900000000000 hours studying political economy (http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2311/1/U615258.pdf)
:titus
The first thing the JDPON should do when it takes power is outlaw keurig cups.
there’s also some b-plot where “an insider”(:neogaf) divulged that actually, the girls hate each other, and they’ll totally cave soonaccording to that splainer, it's true, alexandra is already not speaking to sofia and she's trying to make amends with Portnoy :lol
http://www.empirelogistics.org/fuckkkkk yes, I've been wanting something like this for a while: hard data backing up where the most effective supply chain strikes should be
:ohhh
The Carthaginian constitution deviates from aristocracy and inclines to oligarchy, chiefly on a point where popular opinion is on their side. For men in general think that magistrates should be chosen not only for their merit, but for their wealth: a man, they say, who is poor cannot rule well- he has not the leisure. If, then, election of magistrates for their wealth be characteristic of oligarchy, and election for merit of aristocracy, there will be a third form under which the constitution of Carthage is comprehended; for the Carthaginians choose their magistrates, and particularly the highest of them- their kings and generals- with an eye both to merit and to wealth.
The distribution of offices according to merit is a special characteristic of aristocracy, for the principle of an aristocracy is virtue, as wealth is of an oligarchy, and freedom of a democracy. In all of them there of course exists the right of the majority, and whatever seems good to the majority of those who share in the government has authority. Now in most states the form called polity exists, for the fusion goes no further than the attempt to unite the freedom of the poor and the wealth of the rich, who commonly take the place of the noble. But as there are three grounds on which men claim an equal share in the government, freedom, wealth, and virtue (for the fourth or good birth is the result of the two last, being only ancient wealth and virtue), it is clear that the admixture of the two elements, that is to say, of the rich and poor, is to be called a polity or constitutional government; and the union of the three is to be called aristocracy or the government of the best, and more than any other form of government, except the true and ideal, has a right to this name.
shosta cryposting about how much he hates itI love careposts, dude. And yours are among the best here :heartbeat
i think something like this reemphasis on democracy -what it means and how we’ve been failed by the people who’ve claimed it- can easily be wedded to certain persuasions; if you’re really in love with your histmat or your post-keynsianism or whatever this isn’t gonna kill you. but for the purposes of evangelization i think it’s important to have something in the arsenal that doesn’t require minnesota fed papers to explain (not that that’s unequivocally bad), and you even get to cite everyone’s favorite 4th century slaveowning gay-hating misogynist while you do it!Isn't there already a coherent tradition of left thought with a semi-distinct lineage from marxism: progressive humanism? Anti-war, pro public goods, pro liberal freedom... this is a whole language and worldview that's already widely employed and has secured its permanent seat in American politics. In terms of evangelism for the purpose of getting votes, this is the right place to start, and is strictly broader than your radical democracy. Moreover, if you read Luxemburg or Lenin, the classical marxism you make fun of has already tapped into this language a long time ago. It also features prominently in the Democracy at Work crew like Richard Wolff and Bhaskar Sunkara.
Earlier this year, the company No Evil Foods, which sells a variety of socialist-themed vegan meats, fought a union drive at its Weaverville, North Carolina plant that included numerous “captive audience” meetings where management told workers to vote against a union.
Motherboard obtained a 23-minute video of No Evil Food’s CEO and co-founder Mike Woliansky repeatedly imploring workers to vote “no” in the union election, and telling workers that a union could hamper the company’s ability to “save lives” and “change the world.”
In his speech, Woliansky compared joining the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which represents tens of thousands of meatpacking workers in the US, to “hitching your wagon to a huge organization with high paid executives and a history of scandal and supporting slaughterhouses,” he said. “I don’t think that’s an organization you want to support with your dues money."
No Evil Foods brands itself with a socialist messaging and sells $8 packages of vegan products with leftist names like "Comrade Cluck" (a chicken substitute seasoned with garlic and onion), and "El Zapatista" (a mock chorizo)
In recent weeks, the company fired several workers who led the union drive at its manufacturing plant (known as “the Axis”), according to a report in the Appeal. Four employees told Motherboard that the company has fired five workers active in labor organizing since April.
Isn't there already a coherent tradition of left thought with a semi-distinct lineage from marxism: progressive humanism? Anti-war, pro public goods, pro liberal freedom... this is a whole language and worldview that's already widely employed and has secured its permanent seat in American politics. In terms of evangelism for the purpose of getting votes, this is the right place to start, and is strictly broader than your radical democracy. Moreover, if you read Luxemburg or Lenin, the classical marxism you make fun of has already tapped into this language a long time ago. It also features prominently in the Democracy at Work crew like Richard Wolff and Bhaskar Sunkara.yes, 100%. im definitely not reinventing the wheel here. the kind of radical democratic and egalitarian moral language im groping towards is definitely informed by, and should be complementary to, 20th century left progressivist moral language (or at least the parts that are worth keeping). but i don’t think the latter swallows the former, mostly because it centralizes a problem that usually gets viewed as ancillary by the broad progressivist tradition, namely, governance. like, politics as politics, rather than as ethics/moral sentiment writ broadly (liberal & left progressivism) or political economy (marxism; a lot of post-keynesian projects). if left progressivism tries to clarify the question “what conditions need to be met in order for a democratic society to be minimally just”, then i think this alternative language would help clarify “what conditions need to be met in order for our society to be maximally democratic”. and that’s where sortition, referenda, thinking about what democracy’s extension into civil society would mean (democracy at work is specifically something i had in mind), and whatever else come in. again, not claiming the novelty of this, it’s actually something i think is implicitly at work in left american politics over the past decade that im trying to tease out with the help of The Canon (pbuh).
and jokes on you, i love luxembourg the radical democrat :bolothe joke’s still mostly on me though. i’ve been meaning to go through her for a while now but haven’t yet b/c the verso books are just too expensive :crybaby
the joke’s still mostly on me though. i’ve been meaning to go through her for a while now but haven’t yet b/c the verso books are just too expensive :crybabyimo the primary value of luxemburg is as a primary source of the buildup to WWI. And the main lesson to take away in general from the German experience or the Finns or the Chileans is that they will drag you out of your house and fucking kill you.
https://twitter.com/KarlMarxJunior/status/1259970850780053506
:kermit
Struggle session time. Hong Kong riots, Chilean riots, Minneapolis riots: why do I care about property damage so much? What piece of latent ideology am I still holding onto subconsciously? :thinking I am clearly on the wrong side :doge
https://twitter.com/PatBlanchfield/status/1264227186728411137
https://twitter.com/PatBlanchfield/status/1264229212963196930
https://twitter.com/PatBlanchfield/status/1264231156926611457spoiler (click to show/hide)https://youtu.be/FOiPSlqV_p8[close]
I just want to take all this energy and put it into real change or at least sustainable pressure, not formless chaos that fizzles out after three days :stahp
I just want to take all this energy and put it into real change or at least sustainable pressure, not formless chaos that fizzles out after three days :stahpnot to go all thiel on you but have you read any rene girard?
not to go all thiel on you but have you read any rene girard?never heard of him
can i get the crib sheet on that section of left twitter? im a little mystifiedThey've seen what's on the other side of The Source Wall.
My conclusions are less apocalyptic than those implied by Marx’s principle of infinite accumulation and perpetual divergence (since Marx’s theory implicitly relies on a strict assumption of zero productivity growth over the long run).theres a fuller discussion earlier in the introduction (https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf) but thats pretty much the long and the short of it
can i get the crib sheet on that section of left twitter? im a little mystified
nvm im wrong he didn't get off easy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottlieb_Fichte#Nationalism
:dead
Fichte tried to argue that "active citizenship, civic freedom and even property rights should be withheld from women, whose calling was to subject themselves utterly to the authority of their fathers and husbands."
The atrophy of political imagination shows up in approaches to strategy as well. In the absence of goals that require long-term organizing — e.g., single-payer health care, universally free public higher education and public transportation, federal guarantees of housing and income security — the election cycle has come to exhaust the time horizon of political action. Objectives that cannot be met within one or two election cycles seem fanciful, as do any that do not comport with the Democratic agenda. Even those who consider themselves to the Democrats’ left are infected with electoralitis. Each election now becomes a moment of life-or-death urgency that precludes dissent or even reflection. For liberals, there is only one option in an election year, and that is to elect, at whatever cost, whichever Democrat is running. This modus operandi has tethered what remains of the left to a Democratic Party that has long since renounced its commitment to any sort of redistributive vision and imposes a willed amnesia on political debate. True, the last Democrat was really unsatisfying, but this one is better; true, the last Republican didn’t bring destruction on the universe, but this one certainly will. And, of course, each of the “pivotal” Supreme Court justices is four years older than he or she was the last time.
Marx only concerns himself with one thing : to show, by an exact scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social relations, and...which he moves on from, seemingly accepting the whole passage as a reasonable reading of his work. so it seems like all the hoopla over the Engelsian deterministic phil of history being a later accretion in the marxist tradition is a little overstated. it appears like there’s already a fair amount of diamat inside marx’s original histmat. relatedly, in the meat of the book as he’s introducing manufacture as it influenced modes of production:
For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over ; and it is a matter of indifference whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious of it or not. Marx treats the social movement as a process ofnatural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence...
We are concerned here only with broad and general characteristics, for epochs in the history of society are no more separated from each other by strict and abstract lines of demarcation than are geological epochs.which adds an interesting wrinkle in his realism wrt periodization. epochs have to act as compartments of sorts which contain sets of, e.g., nomothetic laws that obtain given the conditions that constitute that epoch (and these conditions are themselves products of other nomothetic laws that obtained in earlier epochs). so far, pretty paint by the numbers histmat. but if the lines of demarcation aren’t strict, it gets trickier to identify when the conditions are sufficiently constituting an epoch distinct from all the others. it’s a much more attenuated realism than i think often gets attributed to him. and speaking of attenuation, what surprised me the most:
We presuppose labour in a form in which it is an exclusively human characteristic. A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind be fore he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally. Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature ; he also realizes [ver wirklicht] his own purpose in those materials. And this is a purpose he is conscious of, it determines the mode of his activity with the rigidity of a law, and he must subordinate his will to it. This subordination is no mere momentary act. Apart from the exertion of the working organs, a purposeful will is required for the entire duration of the work. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work and the way in which it has to be accomplished, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as the free play of his own physical and mental powers, the closer his attention is forced to be.in this account of intentionality, he couldn’t be more explicit that, at the micro level, mental activity is irreducibly involved in casual series that include physical activity. what’s more, he employs it here as the lynchpin argument for his anthropology -how the human is distinguished from other animal life- plugging it into his account of homo faber (itself obviously the cornerstone of his account of human flourishing). this is a much more qualified variety of materialism than you’d initially expect if your only exposure to the materialism-idealism debate was through the way that marxists talk about it. i think this opens up an interesting dialogue, if not rapprochement, with his sources; i’ve longtime been of a mind that hegel’s ontology, esp. wrt the social and the political, is usually only crudely understood and is much closer to a marbled ontology full of physical, mental, and mental but non-rational causes. if that’s true then the gap between the two is a lot closer than is usually taken to be the case in polemics
a lot of them dont give a fuck about the purported explanatory force of something that doesnt jive with, frankly, a fairly narrow construal of mathematical modeling of social behaviorMy favorite example of this that happened in the aftermath of that book is the Summers critique of Piketty that r > g implies something that conflicts with the econometric estimates of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor... but those studies presuppose that the model is an accurate description of how the economy actually works! A model where there is one single gelatinous good called capital (measured in what, leets? as Joan Robinson would say). If the model doesn't agree with the stylized facts, and the stylized facts are pretty indisputable here, the model should just be thrown out. The critique is completely backwards. It wouldn't happen in any other discipline.
Haven't read Piketty but I remember after that book came out people on the right very suddenly decided that land wasn't capital.property is broader than capital because only the latter is productive and that makes the analysis vulnerable to asset price inflation or Tobin's q going up, which has happened because brrrr
hyper-meritocrats are gonna eventually win a majority and redistribute the wealth they think capitalism is supposed to be securing for them. where that leaves the working poor is i guess largely up to how the coalition is built.Google becomes a worker co-op... The 50% ROP is redistributed to Da Workers and now every engineer makes $400k instead of $200k. That's justice baby
https://twitter.com/SonerCagaptay/status/1278320424988934151
Can't deny it.... I'm a huge fan of this meme template :lawd
https://twitter.com/thecontentfan/status/1278445466112442371
i picked up his new one and will report when im donefinished it about two weeks back. after reflection i think id go so far as to say the two books jointly constitute what is probably the timeliest social science of the moment, whatever it’s boundaries are, that we’re living in. i mean that in nietzsche’s sense. im not aware of another intellectual product of the past ~10 years that captures and answers the anxieties of its present with more lucidity. and if one of it’s intuitions proves right -that we’re standing at a liminal moment in political history- i think later generations will look back on the two books, and Capital and Ideology in particular, as definitive pieces of scholarship, whatever their failings.
Inequality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and political. This is no doubt the most striking conclusion to emerge from the historical ap proach I take in this book. In other words, the market and competition, profits and wages, capital and debt, skilled and unskilled workers, natives and aliens, tax havens and competitiveness—none of these things exist as such. All are social and historical constructs, which depend entirely on the legal, fiscal, educational, and political systems that people choose to adopt and the concep tual definitions they choose to work with. These choices are shaped by each society’s conception of social justice and economic fairness and by the relative political and ideological power of contending groups and discourses. Impor tantly, this relative power is not exclusively material; it is also intellectual and ideological. In other words, ideas and ideologies count in history. They enable us to imagine new worlds and different types of society. Many paths are possible.link (http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/ideology/Piketty2020HUPExtracts.pdf)
This approach runs counter to the common conservative argument that in equality has a basis in “nature.” It is hardly surprising that the elites of many societies, in all periods and climes, have sought to “naturalize” inequality. They argue that existing social disparities benefit not only the poor but also society as a whole and that any attempt to alter the existing order of things will cause great pain. History proves the opposite: inequality varies widely in time and space, in structure as well as magnitude. Changes have occurred rapidly in ways that contemporaries could not have imagined only a short while before they came about. Misfortune did sometimes follow. Broadly speaking, however, po litical processes, including revolutionary transformations, that led to a reduc tion of inequality proved to be immensely successful. From them came our most precious institutions—those that have made human progress a reality, including universal suffrage, free and compulsory public schools, universal health insur ance, and progressive taxation. In all likelihood the future will be no different. The inequalities and institutions that exist today are not the only ones possible, whatever conservatives may say to the contrary. Change is permanent and inevitable.
Nevertheless, the approach taken in this book—based on ideologies, insti tutions, and the possibility of alternative pathways—also differs from ap proaches sometimes characterized as “Marxist,” according to which the state of the economic forces and relations of production determines a society’s ideological “superstructure” in an almost mechanical fashion. In contrast, I insist that the realm of ideas, the politicalideological sphere, is truly autonomous. Given an economy and a set of productive forces in a certain state of develop ment (supposing one can attach a definite meaning to those words, which is by no means certain), a range of possible ideological, political, and inequality regimes always exists. For instance, the theory that holds that a transition from “feudalism” to “capitalism” occurred as a more or less mechanical response to the Industrial Revolution cannot explain the complexity and multiplicity of the political and ideological pathways we actually observe in different coun tries and regions. In particular, it fails to explain the differences that exist between and within colonizing and colonized regions. Above all, it fails to impart lessons useful for understanding subsequent stages of history. When we look closely at what followed, we find that alternatives always existed—and al ways will. At every level of development, economic, social, and political systems can be structured in many different ways; property relations can be organized differently; different fiscal and educational regimes are possible; problems of public and private debt can be handled differently; numerous ways to manage relations between human communities exist; and so on. There are always several ways of organizing a society and its constitutive power and property relations. More specifically, today, in the twentyfirst century, property relations can be organized in many ways. Clearly stating the alternatives may be more useful in transcending capitalism than simply threatening to destroy it without explaining what comes next.
THROWBACK
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The other major one is Schröder and I'm not very on point with this but I'm sure he's probably viewed closer to Blair than success (unemployment and pensions reforms IIRC...).pretty sure Schroder just lowered taxes and cut spending (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010)
The other major one is Schröder and I'm not very on point with this but I'm sure he's probably viewed closer to Blair than success (unemployment and pensions reforms IIRC...).pretty sure Schroder just lowered taxes and cut spending (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_2010)
(https://i.imgur.com/xC7nz77.jpg)
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40 you have Socialists in France winning the Presidency and passing some massive measures even if the economic program was discontinued two years in.
(https://i.imgur.com/obmZqrf.jpg)
I feel like stost would fit nicely into these pics (https://i.imgur.com/ZyF12NZ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/xC7nz77.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/5ZjGlxs.jpg)
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an American evasion of democracy
In a purely democratic state the nation, to be quite accurate, is not represented: the people reserve for themselves the right to make their will known in the general assemblies, which are composed of all the citizens. But as soon as the people have chosen magistrates who have been made depositories of its authority, then these magistrates become their representatives. And according to whether more or less power has been reserved by and for the people, the government either becomes an aristocracy or it remains a democracy.(https://www.thecoli.com/media/jbhmmcac.12995/full?d=1493449201)
https://twitter.com/red_tanjirooooo/status/1289071683547037697
:rogan
will you beat me daddy if I pee on your desk?
Red Kahina is deranged even by the standard of internet personalities.
https://twitter.com/lib_crusher/status/1288574789150547968
(https://i.imgur.com/9AjX9nv.jpg)
Can't imagine why #3 is here.
https://twitter.com/ev4ngeIion/status/1290801671182983169
https://twitter.com/ev4ngeIion/status/1290801671182983169
https://twitter.com/ev4ngeIion/status/1290801671182983169
:juchesad
for real, whenever i see this right wing hitpiece type shid i'm always like damn that sounds sick as hell(https://i.imgur.com/9AjX9nv.jpg)
Can't imagine why #3 is here.
All that sounds pretty dope tho?
for real, whenever i see this right wing hitpiece type shid i'm always like damn that sounds sick as hell(https://i.imgur.com/9AjX9nv.jpg)
Can't imagine why #3 is here.
All that sounds pretty dope tho?
Whatever, I don't have much love for communism with my background ("your country of origin was not real communism!!! :smug", I know jack off), but ehhhh, I could have done without an episode tackling the subject matter in such a blatantly stupid American cold war hot take way.
None of y'all praising Communism ever heard of Voldemort and it shows.
“Are you a communist or something?” he asked, in a friendly, sparring way. “I mean, it’s okay if you are; I’m so far right that I’m in Maoist territory.”
The PRC is wild, man. They have right wing Maoists, but not because socialism has achieved victory and the struggle is between better and ultra-leftism.
The pair worked as assistants to Niall Ferguson, the conservative historian who had gotten himself into trouble at Stanford’s Hoover Institution for encouraging “oppo research” on a liberal student. “Oh man, it was bullshit. They only got Ferguson because Susan Rice’s son accidentally forwarded a whole email chain to some unreliable student.”
“Wait, you mean Susan Rice—”
“Totally conservative, her son, yeah,” said Undergrad One.
Tucker riled his audience a bit when he exposed his knowledge of the American left. He found bits to admire in Warren’s “economic patriotism,” and as long as the left kept quiet about the minorities and the migrants, some of them were promising candidates for a left-right nationalist pact. For this was Tucker’s great insight: the social-democratic left was essentially right about economics. It would be good to nationalize social media; it would be good to boost American wages.
I took my seat early at the dinner for Hawley. A recent convert to Mormonism was bad-mouthing the Supreme Court justices: Trump had to do better. “You really don’t like Kavanaugh?” I asked her. “No, I mean Gorsuch. Have you read his decisions on Indians? He wants to give it all back to the Indians. Insidious rulings.”
The Jakarta Method, so hot right now. Can't believe how much play this book is getting from liberalsyeah, been seeing this book referred to a lot and the claim that pretty much everything is a cia psyop on twitter
The Jakarta Method, so hot right now. Can't believe how much play this book is getting from liberalsyeah, been seeing this book referred to a lot and the claim that pretty much everything is a cia psyop on twitter
None of y'all praising Communism ever heard of Voldemort and it shows.
Voldemort was a true progressive, Harry was a status-quo neoliberal. :juche
It takes a lot of guts and love to be shot at multiple times and insist that the carceral archipelago is not a solution. That's unrivaled character.
I genuinely don't understand why it's possible or legal for him to just sign an executive order and give away so much land.Because that's how most of the land was protected in the first place.
:leon I thought congress declared federal lands individually, my bad;)
this is why you're marxist and I'm the student
Xavier: Renegade Angel is back. :rejoicealmost pissed myself laughing at this :lol
I like your creative way of interpreting expropriation, we need that kind of ingenuity in the socialist movement. :likeI'm being cheeky but only to point out why "germany didn't raise taxes" can't explain chartalism's failure in the german empire. It did tax the public, just not legally.
It is disingenuous to pretend like the economic consequences are primarily the result of the financing decisions of the government. To the extent that Germany expected to plunder its borders, there was a shortfall. But inflation was stabilized to 2% by the end of the war and it didn't become a problem again until the French decided to fuck Germany to death.
Adolph Reed is a son of the segregated South, a native of New Orleans who organized poor Black people and antiwar soldiers in the late 1960s and became a leading Socialist scholar at a trio of top universities.
Along the way, he acquired the conviction, controversial today, that the left is too focused on race and not enough on class. Lasting victories were achieved, he believed, when working class and poor people of all races fought shoulder to shoulder for their rights.
In late May, Professor Reed, now 73 and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter. The match seemed a natural. Possessed of a barbed wit, the man who campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders and skewered President Barack Obama as a man of “vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics” would address the D.S.A.’s largest chapter, the crucible that gave rise to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a new generation of leftist activism.
His chosen topic was unsparing: He planned to argue that the left’s intense focus on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black people undermined multiracial organizing, which he sees as key to health and economic justice.
Notices went up. Anger built. How could we invite a man to speak, members asked, who downplays racism in a time of plague and protest? To let him talk, the organization’s Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus stated, was “reactionary, class reductionist and at best, tone deaf.”
“We cannot be afraid to discuss race and racism because it could get mishandled by racists,” the caucus stated. “That’s cowardly and cedes power to the racial capitalists.”
Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps the nation’s most powerful Socialist organization rejected a Black Marxist professor’s talk because of his views on race.
(https://i.imgur.com/6Umxfed.png)
The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate" thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.
holy shit david graeber died last weekHe lives on in previously unreleased interview footage!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9rvRsWKDx0
love her
"any time you engage with people who are on the front lines of any type of being targeted or suffering. the extent that you align yourself and then you're open to learn from them, it means that you expose yourself even if you're not legally vulnerable to endure the conditions that they're enduring. like between emotional connectors in terms of learning from each other, in terms of shared intelligence. that there is a bonding that goes on and you carry that with you." ;)
Rawls didn’t emerge out of nowhere, and despite the story that’s often taught by political philosophers, he didn’t revive political philosophy from its postwar slumbers. His political thought was part of a liberal response to changes in the twentieth-century administrative state—as Anne Kornhauser suggests, he’s one part of a longer legal tradition of critical liberalism—and also as a particular American response to the changes in global politics after World War Two.
To take a couple of examples: on the one hand, Rawls developed a vision of society that flattens certain types of conflict and prioritizes certain forms of consensus quite common among postwar “liberal consensus” theorists. On the other, Rawls also borrowed ideas from liberal critics of the administrative state—for instance, Frank Knight, one of the early neo-liberal economists at Chicago. These connections to mid-century liberalism were often submerged in Rawls’s published philosophical writings, so his unpublished materials collected by archivists at Harvard University are crucial to making sense of them. But it’s clear when reading those materials that Rawls’s account of society and the state emerged from a particular ideological constellation in the postwar US, when many liberals were skeptical about the extension of the state and were looking for novel ways to both legitimize and critique it.
...and presumably, it [the political regime] turns into a democracy when the poor are victorious, when they kill some of their opponents and send others into exile, give an equal share in the constitution and public office to those who remain, and when public office in the city is allocated for the most part by lot.:money
https://twitter.com/ethanbrown72/status/1262733756160446466Hey man, they're not called No Evil Business Practices. :doge
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