Is rebellion possible?

yeah, this is actually pretty complex.

right you smash up some local jp morgan chase branch and it makes the lives of the tellers who make 30k marginally more difficult, jamie dimon does not gaf

xp

but i don't think there are really reluctant capitalists. there are people who don't care, and people who don't understand, and people who are really quite cool with gross inequalities of wealth and life opportunities

what does being a 'capitalist' even mean in this context

it means being really quite cool with gross inequalities of wealth and life opportunities

which is the more trite cliche:

a) capitalism is the worst system except for the rest
or b) communism is a great concept on paper

that seems a bit broad, I don't think warren buffet is necssarily cool w/ the gross inequalities of wealth and life opportunities but he is quite clearly a capitalist

xp

xxp it's hard to say if people are "cool" with gross inequalities of wealth and life opportunities. "so, you like being a slithering maggot at the feet of your ALMIGHTY MASTER CHASE BANK?" "yeah, seems alright."

there's so much going on with this that it's hard to parse out offhand on a messageboard.

that's kind of what i was getting at Mordy, people sometimes pretend that they regretfully support the existing economic order because sure, it's awful for all those people at the bottom of the heap but hey, it's the best we've got, but i don't buy the regret. because if the way we distribute resources and the way we allow people to live and die doesn't make you gut-sick deep down to the point of wanting it to change for some better way of living then i doubt you're ever going to be "persuaded" that things could be different

in fact i think it's a waste of energy and time trying to turn on the unconverted to the evils of capitalism, better to organize and empower the people that want things to change

it's my impression that capitalism has lifted standards of living better than anything else so i guess i somewhat sign onto that particularly cliche

there are lots of ways to change the way we distribute resources that nevertheless fall under the broad and fuzzy category 'capitalism'.

xp

yeah i don't think it's too big a deal that it brought us here and made a lot of people comparatively wealthier and healthier than their ancestors. it was never an either/or situation or a choice of paths for humanity to collectively decide to follow. its historical benefits don't have much impact for me on the question "is this the best way we can organize our species now?"

but i don't think there are really reluctant capitalists. there are people who don't care, and people who don't understand, and people who are really quite cool with gross inequalities of wealth and life opportunities

― possible badger on malware thread (Noodle Vague), Friday, June 14, 2013 10:53 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Couldn't there be people who are not cool with gross inequalities of wealth and life but still prefer that to a system in which standards of living are lower across the board?

I mean, I think there are people who recognize capitalism's power as a wealth engine while wanting to sort of tame the beast, if that can in fact be done.

For the past week or so I've been reading Josephus's history of the jewish insurrection against the Roman empire circa 66 CE. Apart from the obvious imbalance of power between the jews and the romans, what doomed the jews to failure was constant vicious infighting over leadership and goals and a lack of discipline at every level. The romans, by contrast, were disciplined, efficient and never in doubt about who was in charge or what their orders were.

Even today this insurrection is widely romanticized, because of the siege of Masada. In fact it was a epochal catastrophe for the jews, leading to the final destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the diaspora. There are lessons here.

Well, that might not be entirely fair, I mean insurrections against powerful empires pretty much always have the cards stacked against them.

Aimless is pretty otm. Jerusalem certainly could've withstood the siege much longer than it did if the zealots hadn't burnt down the grain storehouses.

insurrections against powerful empires pretty much always have the cards stacked against them

"powerful" doing the heavy lifting in this sentence. if the insurrection has a) steady supply of weapons and b) support of the general populace, odds are pretty fair. especially if empire is overextended/operating in unfamiliar/unfriendly terrain.

In order to force the wealthy and more peaceably inclined citizens to action, the Zealots in their fury set fire to the storehouses containing the corn needed for the support of the people during the siege ("B. J." v. 1, § 4). This tragic event is recorded in Ab. R. N. vi. (ed. Schechter, p. 32), the only Talmudical passage that mentions the Ḳanna'im as a political party.

If rebellion is possible you definitely need food.

If you read the history, the infighting and indiscipline are unmistakable and its effects are equally obvious. For contrast, see the discipline and unity of the Vietnamese against an equally powerful empire.

this link in the omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread thread has a bunch of military studies supporting the doomsday resource/enviro/econo catastrophic shitshow scenario that i and others were discussing above:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism

great story. and it makes perfect sense. everyone is getting ready for zombie apocalypse in their own way.

Oh, great. By wargaming a group of doomsday scenarios one predictable side effect is that those who took part or were briefed on them will be much more willing to act as if a catastrophe is imminent, even when the signs of such a catastrophe are weak or mixed. So, we get to military/industrial tyranny even more rapidly than if they hadn't done the planning and wargaming. When the boogeyman lives in your heart, you act out of fear.

the u.s. military (and the insurance industry) has been preparing for this stuff for years, it's not a new development. they take it much more seriously than the politicians and the vast majority of the public.

already noted this on the other thread too but that article's argument "NSA Prism is motivated in part by fears that environmentally-linked disasters could spur anti-government activism" is constructed out of thin air

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/business/insurers-stray-from-the-conservative-line-on-climate-change.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

just in case you missed that one. pretty good. they have really great climate data! the insurance companies.

helpful info:

"Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts, and floods. These changes are likely to increase losses to property and cause costly disruptions to society. Escalating losses have already affected the availability and affordability of insurance. More frequent losses, increased variability in the type and location of impacts, and increases in widespread losses that occur at the same time would increase the risks to insurers and their customers."

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/society.html

Climate change will affect certain groups more than others, particularly groups located in vulnerable areas and the poor, young, old, or sick.
Cities are sensitive to many impacts, especially extreme weather impacts.
Climate change may threaten people's jobs and livelihoods.

Power struggles are always going to end in corruption pretty much. A real rebellion would have to be at a fundamental level. Like, rather than destroying banks or hanging Wall St. crooks we would just all decide that money is meaningless and we're going on a barter system from now all. Instantly all their power would be gone. The good thing is that while there are so many systems in place to control us, it is us who have created them, and we can pretty much sweep them away easily. The three branches of government, the Constitution, etc. it's all conceptual, it has no real world value unless we all give into it.

That the US is so casually just walking over it's own laws is really doing alot to underscore the arbitrariness of all that stuff.

revolutions always reconstitute in new form the pre-revolutionary dialectics

in walks the boy graeber with an overlong thinkpiece i have yet to read

What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur—as with, say, the rise of feminism—it’s likely to take an entirely different form. It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolutionaries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille.

At moments like this, it generally pays to go back to the history one already knows and ask: Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be?

https://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide

what a load of bullshit

Similarly, the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a world revolution ultimately responsible for the New Deal

this guy knows nothing about anything

I think he means Huey Long

or at least the progressive stuff that came after

the new deal has much more to do with traditional american reform movements, like the populist party of the 1890s, than it ever did with any russian revolutionary movements, and most major american progressives were pretty staunchly anti-communist. in any event, the actual russian revolution didn't have much of an effect on american progressives; it coincided with america's entrance into the first world war, when the progressive movement was virtually destroyed by wilson's wartime police state.

Huey Long's revolutionary slogan: Every man a czar king!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/1017389_468711429870404_1039609795_n.jpg

dooo yoooo seeeee

a facebook thing I don't hate!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Living-Off-the-Grid/228080417303590?fref=ts

Today we'll probably have the biggest protest in years in Brazil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AIBYEXLGdSg

the new deal has much more to do with traditional american reform movements, like the populist party of the 1890s, than it ever did with any russian revolutionary movements, and most major american progressives were pretty staunchly anti-communist. in any event, the actual russian revolution didn't have much of an effect on american progressives; it coincided with america's entrance into the first world war, when the progressive movement was virtually destroyed by wilson's wartime police state.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, June 14, 2013 6:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Russian Revolution was "responsible" for the New Deal inasmuch as fear of communism made it possible to and encouraged the passage of more moderately socialistic reforms in order to stave off the threat of communist traction in the US.

It's no accident that the dismantling of welfare states across the west has coincided with the end of the Cold War.

the reason rebellion is impossible in the US/UK is bc (in general) ppl's lives are too comfortable to want to make radical shifts in our economy + political system

yeah... the reason rebellion is impossible is because no one wants to have a rebellion

Yeah I said that upthread. I don't think it's the only reason in the US, because here people's lives are becoming increasingly uncomfortable, and I think a lack of socially binding institutions, the spread-out way people live, etc., and myths like the protestant work ethic contribute (cf the famous Steinbeck line ""Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.")

But any population that is large enough and poor enough for long enough is kind of there for the organizing if someone can figure out how to do it.

theoretically ppl's lives here could be uncomfortable enough that rebellion becomes possible, but i don't see that happening any time soon. even the US's embarrassed millionaires have a higher quality of life than most of the world