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

[curly]

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.

To piggyback on this I think the orthodox Marxist answer would be that capital is by its very nature inclined to seek out new centers of profit which will lead to overproduction and overconsumption of resources, which puts us on an inevitable road to ecological collapse, so capital must be abolished and environmentalism goes hand-in-hand with anti-capitalism. The Green New Deal would be an example of something in the US that tries to wed ecological concerns to socialist politics even if everything it proposes is guiding and managing capital with an occasional wink at transitioning to a new mode of production.
My impression as an idiot American is that the European left's problems are the same ones that always bedevil the left, the national question and the tendency towards chauvinism among a privileged stratum of labor, with obviously many particularities specific to the local situation.

[BisMarckie]

From Slavery to Feudalism in South-Western Europe by Pierre Bonassie.

I remember citing passages from that book way back when. I don‘t know  if it‘s a good read though.

[VomKriege]

Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks

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.
Bloch is always worth reading, even though I am sure some of his claims will be outdated by now.

It's not stricto sensu the topic and a flimsy conparison but having Bloch recollection of WW2 (the part he lived to saw) it's indeed a pleasant writer but maybe somewhat dated conclusions.

[VomKriege]

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.

[jakefromstatefarm]

Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks

in 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 economy

spoiler (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]

[BisMarckie]

Since my background is in legal history, if we don‘t trust in legal documents, we might as well live in anarchy and chaos.

[Kara]

English enclosure is usually the beginning of primitive accumulation in materialist conceptions of history?

[jakefromstatefarm]

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).

affinity might not’ve been the right word

[Kara]

Thanks for clarifying.

[curly]

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.

The New Left Review just had a whole string of articles debating basically this topic, broadly boiling down to degrowth vs a green investment plan, but unfortunately it's all paywalled. Robert Pollin and Jason Hickel are two names you can look up, although I'm not knowledgeable enough to say they're the best reps for their respective camps.

[Kara]

The degrowth camp is problematic because a lot of the time it feels like it's informed by things that stopped existing (like Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union but before the rise of Chavismo in Venezuela). The green growth side on the other hand feels a little too inductive in its reasoning when it says we'll be fine to grow if we're growing based on needs instead of wants / profits.

[Kara]

To me the operative question to ask is why was the Montreal Protocol successful but Kyoto, Paris et cetera failed? (Besides the fact that the former solved a much smaller problem.) Moneyed interests have undue influence in bourgeois states by design, but bourgeois states have the internal contradiction of being at least nominally liberal.

It'd be nice to stop killing the planet while building socialism but I don't think horizon on that is far enough out to permit it because it has to happen in the U.S. And while green politics are generally conceived of as a left position the most successful green party in the economic core could be charitably described as "the Freie Demokratische Partei for people who like to sort their rubbish." Green liberalism exists and we're going to have to align with it.

If there's any kind of radical transformation we can insert ourselves into strategic industries instead of repeating the mistake made with tech (not entering it at all) and leverage that after we're all not dead. If it's just something simple like "requiring the market to actually price climate degradation into itself" then I guess it's back to the drawing board.

[Kara]

^log out, Earl Browder

[BisMarckie]

I didn‘t expect a FDP reference.

[BisMarckie]

You‘re right though, look who is voting for green parties: Young voters with higher education and in the upper third of the income bracket. To describe them as left would be a misnomer, especially when it comes to economic factors. I refer to the greens, as the cynic that I am, as the party people vote for to feel better about themselves while they are driving an SUV and shop at our equivalent to Whole Foods.
Heck, the minister-president of the State Baden-Württemberg is from the green party, but if nobody told you, you would think he is the same kind of CDU politician that have ruled that state for ever.

This shouldn‘t discoumt the fact that the idea to prohibit buying land for speculative purposes came from. The green party in that very same state-So it‘s not like they are 100% neolib.

[Great Rumbler]

I didn‘t expect a FDP reference.


(Image removed from quote.)

How is Kissinger still alive?

[Kara]

Computer, show me the most Slate headline in existence.

https://twitter.com/Slate/status/1140622492387762176

[VomKriege]

Appreciate all the answers and you're touching what I'm getting at : Green have lineage to the Left in general but there's no reason to assume that political options (and its voters) are permanently anchored to the Left and every major party have already or will start addressing it on their own terms -offering to transition via a command economy or liberalism and what not-. It would be a terrible negligence for traditional left parties to not capitalize on having been early compagnons de route especially since in a lot of European countries the "left" camp sorely need those votes.

[VomKriege]

Anyone got any good resources on the transition to feudalism from 'slave society'? thanks

in 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 economy

spoiler (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]

Yeah that's why I explicitly wrote "...in France" when mentioning those historians. As far as I can remember, the books I read didn't cover the transition from slavery to feudalism, they're more a study of what the latter was in France (or parts of France, I remember one bit being the consolidation of power visible through the reduction of hyper local keeps to regional capitals) from a legal perspective and fleshing out, as you said, the whole fealty/reciprocal obligations (one, I duly note, has been challenged since then).

[Kara]

 
 https://twitter.com/osamabishounen/status/1140768747721859072

[Kara]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Inspired by the U.S. politics thread.

[close]

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/LydiaBurrell/status/1140831568291868674

[Rufus]

https://twitter.com/willmenaker/status/1141011518898790400

[BisMarckie]

Looks like God is a double agent.

[team filler]

https://time.com/5320384/fernando-luis-alvarez-purdue-pharma/

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.

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/LydiaBurrell/status/1140831568291868674

I work at a fucking school and we don't do the pledge of allegiance anymore.

Also, just get a physical flag, holy shit.

[team filler]

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/jkass99/status/1141566517122752512

[toku]

https://twitter.com/taslimanasreen/status/1140856456222146560

world really ending soon huh?

[team filler]

[Kara]

In the spirit of that meme, I skimmed the Murray Bookchin article Mandark posted in the U.S. politics thread out of morbid curiosity.

I won't go to deep in the paint on Murray, hindsight is hindsight after all. That said, I did smirk a lot during the endeavor knowing that the greatest actualization of his ideology was a U.S. military base from which a civil war is being waged. Bernie's betrayals as mayor somehow pale in comparison with that.

In several instances I had to remind myself that this had been written in the 1980s instead of today. One thing that helped with that were the frequent references to Monthly Review. Unless you're ancient, deep in academic eco-socialism, or a low level member of / adjacent to a ML organization no one is talking about that periodical today with any frequency. It almost felt like it occupied the space Jacobin does today in the #discourse.

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.

War, war never changes...

[benjipwns]

Debs? What would Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler do?

[Kara]

Debs? What would Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler do?

Deep cut.

[shosta]

no, but you know I can't help myself

[toku]

https://www.infowars.com/the-eerily-accurate-predictions-of-cyberpunk-2020/

[Kara]

Guess the task of listening to the rest of that pod falls to me. *insert quote from Die Maßnahme here*

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.

[Kara]

troll post 😇

https://twitter.com/getfiscal/status/1142822428931964928

[curly]

troll post 😇

https://twitter.com/getfiscal/status/1142822428931964928

I was coming here to post that

[Kara]

Shosta-kun, do you wanna join me in consuming something this awful

https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1141726217139306496

OK, finished this.

idk who this guy is other than that I see his galaxy brain hot takes get retweeted for the purposes of dunking on Twitter from time to time. (I would prefer it if no one replied to this telling me who he actually is... ignorance is bliss.) Since this pod was unreasonably obsessed with college campuses and paranoia about press suppression due to Russian tampering I assume he's a "I'm a '''free speech''' guy" . . . our shittier version of Brendan O'Neill perhaps.

Anyway, a strength and weakness of Bhaskar is that he's sort of an empty cup in interviews and plays to his interviewer. This means that when he goes on Novara he does some real niche socialism talk and when he goes on the New York Times podcast with Ross Douthat (who is worse in audio than any Chapo Reading Series could convey) he talks about how democratic socialism is just social democracy with some workplace democracy. This pod was firmly in the weakness camp because he was playing to an insipid imbecile.

Some high / low lights from the last half:

Loser host: "Hey have you heard the new Tay Tay Swift?" Bhaskar: "No."

Bhaskar saying we need to have both a sword and a shield RE: Nazis.

Bhaskar: "Kamala Harris is more reliable than Elizabeth Warren on Medicare for All."

Bhaskar: "If you want to punch Nazis just make sure you run away from the cops."

[curly]

the war between chapo trap house and r/chapotraphouse continues

[Kara]

Angela Nagle was on Red Scare recently.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/gustavot888/status/1143238472381059072

[curly]

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

(Image removed from quote.)

idk man if I was working with a rapist I probably wouldn't hang out in the walk-in freezer by myself

[shosta]

Amber and the red scare ladies are out here trying to do their best to get cancelled lol

stupidpol lives up to the name I guess

[Kara]

fuuuck

https://twitter.com/whysimonewhy/status/1143280089133699072

I thought Dasha's parents were entertainers? They're still in Las Vegas iirc.

Why are you interrogating me about whether or not I listen to Red Scare when there are some men outchea trying to silence women's voices instead of amplifying them. SMGDH.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

idk why Jeet Heer beefs with that podcast (besides its content, obv.) but I never stop finding it amusing.

[close]

[Kara]

Going through some old tweets of mine and found some gems.

http://en.hkctu.org.hk/node/140 (problematic source)

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.

Imagine having unions that could do that here.



https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm

H.G. Wells interviewed Stalin once.

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.

[toku]

https://twitter.com/lukeisamazing/status/1143107228494389254

[Kara]

https://www.soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-80-animal-rights-as-media-and-pop-culture-punchline

There are so many "but that's none of my business" moments in the newest episode of Citations Needed.

 

[curly]

Looks like the DemSoc who wants to turn Queens into an open-air brothel is going to win

[Tripon]

Looks like the DemSoc who wants to turn Queens into an open-air brothel is going to win

https://twitter.com/NYWFP/status/1143713686764306433

[Baiano19]

https://twitter.com/gustavot888/status/1143238472381059072

I actually said out loud What the fuck

[team filler]

[curly]

http://ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/

Interesting blog post about neoliberalism and economic planning (with an appearance by the subject of the new old ideology thread).

[curly]

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

Uh oh looks like she was a psyop

[shosta]

I thought Club de Cordeliers was an alt account for Red Kahina 

[curly]

https://twitter.com/cordeliers/status/1143484410651697154

[shosta]

http://ppesydney.net/neoliberalism-and-the-strange-non-death-of-planning/

Interesting blog post about neoliberalism and economic planning (with an appearance by the subject of the new old ideology thread).

Ends with a To Be Continued before it offers concrete examples of modern managerial planning

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/cordeliers/status/1143484410651697154

https://twitter.com/moreindustryplz/status/1143585565545127936

https://twitter.com/cordeliers/status/1143517270553047040

This guy thinks Justice Democrats is a front for Billionaires. That's a twist I didn't see coming.

[shosta]

I read Bo Xilai's Wikipedia page

[toku]

Dunno whats more my shit, this ep or the alan moore ep where they talked about his current definition of magic and cursed architecture

#occultgang