redtea @ redtea @lemmygrad.ml

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816

Joined

3 yr. ago

Lots of ableism in the replies there. It kinda jumps out when you get used to not seeing it around here.

Maybe all this time they were counting down the days of China's actions causing the western economy to collapse.

Yeah, I thought, this isn't so bad, I know Biden should be censored but… I started frantically swiping back after the speech bit. I'll have to be in a stronger frame of mind to watch it through to the end.

Not sure about that but there was a study during WWII – in Britain, I believe – that showed a negative correlation between hours/productivity. Essentially, once you push workers past 40hrs week, they don't really produce any more than they would if their hours were capped. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, physical accidents, mistakes, all adds up across a workforce so the returns diminish quite quickly.

More tragedy. It's every day 😔

Is it the hail storms or something else?

Avant, pendant et après moi, le déluge.

Aww haha that's what I like to hear.

A puppy that even manages a tail wag in a still photo.

Caveat: I don't know if I've read the articles in question. I certainly haven't read them this week. So I'm going by limited info.

From the text of this new post, though, I wonder if Mason /Day rely on the popular retelling of the origins of Bezos, etc. While the common view is that they got rich by setting up e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, they also started rich, with cash lump sums. Does that affect the analysis at all?

I.e. did they really begin with 'control over newly created production processes'? Does it matter that social networks already existed before Facebook? It that online resellers existed before Amazon?

Does it matter whether someone begins with an investment and almost immediately starts buying out other shareholders and competitors? What's the difference between investing in a startup and being present with investment money when you and others start a startup? This isn't rhetorical.

I suppose that might be the point, that industrial and financial capital are married together. But that's not what's invoked by saying that someone starts one way and becomes something else later.

Another question is whether Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft are industrial capital, even at their inception? There's definitely finance capital involved now and to my (general) knowledge, there was from the very beginning. Does it only become finance capital when it's loaned? If so, what of any loans that are present when Facebook, etc, are created?

Does merchant capital factor into this at all, particularly with Amazon (for goods and services) and Facebook (for services)?

Finally, while I accept the value in using quotes, a quote alone doesn't necessarily mean that a writer is fully representing the person quoted. For example, take:

What promised to be a democratic and ultimately socialist dynamic has relapsed back toward feudalism and debt peonage, with the financial class today playing the role that the landlord class did in postmedieval times.

Yes, this quote uses the word 'feudalism' but taken in itself, this quote does not say to me that the author thinks that capitalism is regressing back towards feudalism-proper. It says to me that the author (Hudson?) thinks that imperialists are as decadent and dastardly as feudal lords. It's a metaphor. The context may contradict that interpretation, of course, and the sentence itself could be read literally.

Indeed, emphasis added:

Speaking of Lenin, this very much goes against his rule that “to criticise an author, to answer him, one has to quote in full at least the main propositions of his article”.

Again, I've not recently (maybe at all) read the texts in question, which may use longer quotes, but quoting one sentence from Hudson without the surrounding text does not do what Lenin is talking about here.

I'm not expecting answers to all these questions. I just think there's more to it than what's been addressed so far.

Plus, this: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=t8A62wr9bQI

Have you heard of Birds on a Wire? Some of their music has a medieval theme and I love it. They sing in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, too.

Analogous to China pre-Deng: they managed to develop the relations of production as far as they could go with the then-forces of production. To further develop the relations, they had to develop the forces, hence the need to open up the economy. Eventually they will hit another wall. Unlike the west, they'll be ready for it.

The west has developed it's forces of production for decades/centuries. But it's relations of production have lagged behind. All the elements of production can develop on their own, but only so far; at that point, the other elements have to catch up. Right now, as you point out, the relations of imperialism are holding back it's forces.

Under different management, the imperialist machinery – or, rather, the forces behind the imperialist machinery – could propel humanity into a gilded age that's hard to imagine. Like the China model but rolled out on a world scale.

But this can only work if the relations of production develop so that imperialists are no longer in control. Because they will do daft shit like asset strip productive companies and empty pension pots before disappearing with the cash.

David Harvey likes to quote footnote 4 in chapter 15 of Capital when talking about this kind of thing (I'll edit this comment to add the quote). The footnote includes six(?) relations, each of which develops alongside the others.

It's not an exhaustive list. But it implies what you state: we've developed about as far as we can under the finance capitalists; to develop further, they can't be in charge.

Essentially, I agree with you and I look forward to the blog post.

Edit:

Marx

A similar one is wellbeing. It's one of the most cynical words now. It's a cudgel to beat employees: we're doing it for your own wellbeing.

Is there someone you forgot to ask, mf?

People … think the US looks exactly like what they see on tv.

It does in parts, us proles just aren't allowed in or near those bits.

The faster you run from history the sooner you become the working class.

Was this company made just to poison SEO?

They just feel comfortable thinking history ended. It's just a cool name to them. They think the rightful heirs to the name are dead and gone. They don't know the spectre never dies and never goes. They don't know the people don't care for IP and will take back the name in a flash when only they organise themselves.

It was a project the Allende government planned to implement in Chile before the Pinochet coup. Main idea, ig, was to take Chile a step closer to FALC. Now it looks like the bastard bourgeoisie are co-opting the idea.

Hah. He writes some great stuff. I was thinking of this one: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

It's hard to be logical and a liberal because liberalism means avoiding uncomfortable conclusions.

Like: 'vote!' For who mf—all the candidates have the same policies? The logical conclusion is that capitalism and democracy are incompatible and that voting won't substantially change anything. Yet there they are, refusing to follow the logic.

I quite like that Roderic Day article on the masses and rebels: people accept the messaging in media not because they're brainwashed gullible idiots but because they choose to go long with it as a self defence mechanism. You can't shout, 'From the river to the sea' at work and keep your job in many places. So people stay silent or condemn Hamas or whatever instead.

Following the logic means accepting that you're peeling the liberal mask off the fascist beast and that you're happy with it. Or it means becoming a revolutionary. The first one is easy. The second one means a lifetime of hardship. Liberals choose the easy one, hence they must reject the premise of logic.

Better to stay silent? Sure. But for those who've abandoned logic, compassion, and principles for treats and acceptance by other bootlickers, what's support for one more atrocity?

Here's one site:

https://en.granma.cu/