Cool sock Prof Friedman
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 27 August 2018 15:24 (five years ago) link
And why do you need to abolish capitalism to fix it? You know there are capitalist countries where basically everything up to breast implants is 100% covered by the state, right?
― Milton, Monday, 27 August 2018 17:49 (five years ago) link
Actually, in many cases, you can get public grants for breast enhancement surgery here in Denmark, so imma scratch that
― Milton, Monday, 27 August 2018 17:53 (five years ago) link
we need to abolish capitalism because it's destroying the planet and can't be "fixed"
also, you're in the wrong thread, you want this one:
your terrible ideas
also, FP
― sleeve, Monday, 27 August 2018 17:57 (five years ago) link
what's with the proliferation of Danes
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:02 (five years ago) link
did Fred leave the back door open again?
― sleeve, Monday, 27 August 2018 18:02 (five years ago) link
why do you need to abolish capitalism to fix it?
Good lord, This is the reddest of red herrings. "Abolishing capitalism" is nowhere on the US political radar. the highest flights of contemporary US socialism extend no further than "Medicare for all", student debt relief, and some form of livable wages. There are minor rumblings about Universal Basic Income, but they are no larger than a tiny cloud on the horizon. Europe is also far from trying to abolish capitalism, afaics.
Simmer down a bit and try to address reality.
― A is for (Aimless), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:03 (five years ago) link
tbf my city council rep is on the record as in favor of nationalizing Amazon.com
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:05 (five years ago) link
european capitalism is good yo varying degrees capitalism isnt the problem tbh sorry
― flaneur brayin (darraghmac), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:07 (five years ago) link
there's only one capitalism
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:08 (five years ago) link
~ bob marley
― flaneur brayin (darraghmac), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:08 (five years ago) link
no point in a totalizing theory if it doesn't totalize
oh i enjoy the discussions dont mind me
― flaneur brayin (darraghmac), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:09 (five years ago) link
I was addressing an article that was posted here that criticized capitalism. Not crony capitalism, not unhinged capitalism, not neo-liberalism, not corporatism, not the state of the american economy. Unless the NY Times is in its own bubble way left of the US political radar, how am I off target?
Aboloshing capitalism because of environmental concerns is probably the only valid argument, yeah.
― Milton, Monday, 27 August 2018 18:19 (five years ago) link
just as well we're literally destroying the planet and it's the most pressing concern in the existence of the earth
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:22 (five years ago) link
an article that was posted here that criticized capitalism.
god forbid! we all know that capitalism is beyond criticism. btw, here is a direct quote from that article:
There’s not much discussion, yet, of classic socialist tenets like worker control or collective ownership of the means of production.
― A is for (Aimless), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:27 (five years ago) link
Someone tweeted that the Onion has moved to the left of Jacobin and it's all I think about when I see their political stuff now. https://t.co/KM69clgVAO— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) August 27, 2018
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 27 August 2018 18:33 (five years ago) link
god forbid! we all know that capitalism is beyond criticism.
Dude, i literally wrote in my initial post: "There are many arguments against and valid criticisms of capitalism". That doesn't mean that any unsubstantiated claim against it should stand unchallenged.
― Milton, Monday, 27 August 2018 19:49 (five years ago) link
how am I off target?
By implying that abolishing capitalism was the point of the article you were responding to.
― A is for (Aimless), Monday, 27 August 2018 20:06 (five years ago) link
It’s an op-ed, it’s not going to be “substantial”
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 27 August 2018 20:07 (five years ago) link
Capitalism has varying "iterations" but none, AFAICT, are sufficient to the task of the massive reorientation needed to circumvent climate catastrophe.
― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Monday, 27 August 2018 20:24 (five years ago) link
As soon as capitalism stops supplying me with cheap bup, it's in big trouble.
― calzino, Monday, 27 August 2018 20:30 (five years ago) link
bup?
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 27 August 2018 20:47 (five years ago) link
Fuckin' booze
― calzino, Monday, 27 August 2018 20:51 (five years ago) link
lol I looked that up and the internet told me it was UK speak for "bread and butter" but I was pretty sure u meant booze
― sleeve, Monday, 27 August 2018 20:52 (five years ago) link
I don't think some of the colloquialisms of Dewsbury make it to Urban Dictionary!
― calzino, Monday, 27 August 2018 21:02 (five years ago) link
hey have you guys ended capitalism yet
― Οὖτις, Monday, 27 August 2018 21:02 (five years ago) link
we've only just started this morning, jeez
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 27 August 2018 21:03 (five years ago) link
ah, I heard some leftists were fighting about it and figured we were almost there :(
― Οὖτις, Monday, 27 August 2018 21:06 (five years ago) link
lmao "crony capitalism" doctor friedman you are unmasked
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 27 August 2018 23:59 (five years ago) link
brony capitalism
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 00:00 (five years ago) link
It's good to know that in 2018, long after logins became required, people can still Google shit and randomly end up on ILX.
― louise ck (milo z), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 00:05 (five years ago) link
The marketplace of ideas, at least, still works.
This may be an opportune moment to note that I've been working my way through Jodie Dean's book The Communist Horizon since I stalled out with Donna Haraway in Anthropocene or Capitalocene.
The Dean book has 6 relatively short chapters, and so far I'm finding them alternately right-on on the one hand and decidedly Marx-apostate on the other. "Our Soviets" makes an interesting argument for a recovery of some of the Soviet legacy, "Present Force" is a dumb chapter that lays out communism as--you might guess--a present force. The next overlong chapter argues that 'the people' should replace the laboring class as the revolutionary subject, and sometimes I think she's onto something and sometimes I think she's just being another post-Marxist looking for a way to differentiate herself.
Next on the list is Radicals in the Barrio and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Gonna be a substantive end to summer reading.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 01:40 (five years ago) link
Also for people interested in doing & improving organizing work, I wanna highly recommend a couple biographies I read this year, of Fred Ross (who taught Cesar Chavez) and Bob Moses (who led SNCC in Mississippi). Social Arsonist is the Fred Ross book and the Moses book is Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots. Both men with very compelling lives, both well written by people who aim to draw out the subjects' organizing methodology through biography. I learned a ton.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 01:45 (five years ago) link
'The next overlong chapter argues that 'the people' should replace the laboring class as the revolutionary subject, and sometimes I think she's onto something and sometimes I think she's just being another post-Marxist looking for a way to differentiate herself.'
Isn't this basically just a variation of Maoism?
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 06:42 (five years ago) link
Support the National Prison Strike, y’all:
https://incarceratedworkers.org
― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 07:07 (five years ago) link
By implying that abolishing capitalism was the point of the article you were responding to
Don't know what the point of the article is. The author clearly states socialists believe that those bleak realities are inherent to capitalist society. Doesn't that imply that you would have to get rid of capitalism to escape them?
― Milton, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 11:42 (five years ago) link
― Frederik B, Tuesday, August 28, 2018 6:42 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah that's a way of thinking it -- she explicitly frames it in terms of our current conjuncture, that is "the super-wealthy" vs "the rest of us," but i think you're right to key into that
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 15:56 (five years ago) link
and like mao still held onto the importance of the laboring class as the movers of history but dean goes "actually this whole notion of an empirically delineable working class is a red herring in the age of networked capitalism where we're all producing all the time for various corporations extracting value from our posts online"
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 16:00 (five years ago) link
which imo is spurious
something to it but spurious
It kinda sounds like she's substituting socialist theory for just straight up anti-elitist populism, and using 'networked capitalism' as an excuse. I don't know.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 16:41 (five years ago) link
usually marxists get mad when you suggest "the people" vs the rich as it deemphasizes the class relation implicit in worker v capitalist
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 16:50 (five years ago) link
ya when i realized that's what she was doing my notes in the margins became more and more incredulous
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 16:52 (five years ago) link
Obviously what the revolution needs is an even more abstract ontology of the status quo
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:04 (five years ago) link
I've often mentioned I've Got The Light of Freedom on here -- a friend uploaded an epub version here if you're into epubs. Easily the single most important book I've read.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:12 (five years ago) link
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, August 28, 2018 5:04 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i hear what you're saying here, but the question she's aiming to resolve is whether organizing the so-called working class (what's that? who's in it in 2018?) ought to be the project of those who aim for an egalitarian society freed of exploitation, or if where we are today suggests a different subject of that project
i don't think the question is a waste of time, and one finds lots of arguments within the labor movement about which sectors of the economy are properly 'strategic' to pursue organizing that can build labor-stoppage-power against capital, which in essence is the same set of questions in the more restricted vocabulary of unionism
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:16 (five years ago) link
aw hoos I'm at work and posting nonsense b/c I'm bored engaging in a strategic labor stoppage I didn't think you'd be all thoughtful and shit about my snark
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:25 (five years ago) link
always be stealing time
http://knowfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/steal-your-time-300x258.jpg
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 17:33 (five years ago) link