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Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Aruan posted:

has largely ended

Which specific unrest are you talking about here?

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Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


Or, in other words, how do we move beyond theoretical to practical? How can we develop class consciousness in the United States? I don't think conditions will simply cause capitalism to collapse under its own weight. What does leftist activism look like to everyone in this thread?

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


Somfin posted:

Which specific unrest are you talking about here?

National-scale protests over police brutality. There was a period in which likely millions of people were taking to the streets to protest to what amount to fundamental inequities under our capitalist system. I had thought that that perhaps could be the genesis of a larger shift in class consciousness.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Aruan posted:

If you want to "check notes" I would love to here an explanation for why the current sporadic unrest which has ... *checks notes* led to no meaningful change and has nothing to do with labor conditions is a sign of anything other than the strength of the current capitalism system to effectively resist internal threats.

Wow, dude, you have not checked the unemployment numbers. You have not checked wages or work hours or debt levels or cost of living or rent or medical care or or or or or or OR OR.

You must live in a world above so many concerns to think that labor conditions are anything less than widespread squalor under a thin veneer of despair. Frankly, if you look at 6 straight months of rioting and don't see that as a change in and of itself, I don't know what to tell you. I could tell you that wages have increased slower than inflation. I could tell you that anyone who sees the last 4 years of America as anything but a sign of distress is delusional. But I don't think any of that matters to you, because I don't think any of that affects you. Because if it did, you would find the absurdity of your statement rather offensive.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

I am posting from 1903 in moscow and people are very annoyed but I do not see anything that would suggest the authority of the tsar is anything but absolute.

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


Cpt_Obvious posted:

Wow, dude, you have not checked the unemployment numbers. You have not checked wages or work hours or debt levels or cost of living or rent or medical care or or or or or or OR OR.

You must live in a world above so many concerns to think that labor conditions are anything less than widespread squalor under a thin veneer of despair. Frankly, if you look at 6 straight months of rioting and don't see that as a change in and of itself, I don't know what to tell you. I could tell you that wages have increased slower than inflation. I could tell you that anyone who sees the last 4 years of America as anything but a sign of distress is delusional. But I don't think any of that matters to you, because I don't think any of that affects you. Because if it did, you would find the absurdity of your statement rather offensive.

OK, where are the general strikes and widespread protests about minimum wage in the United States?

You're pointing out the same fundamental inequities that people have been pointing out for the last hundred years. And despite this, capitalism has not only continued to exist, it has grown stronger.

Capitalism in the United States is insidious in its strengths. If you (like me) see that the purpose of the government, regardless of political party, is to protect the capital owning interests, you can see the response to the recent protests as two sides of the same coin: violent repression (from the Republicans) and meaningless panaceas (from the Democrats). The combination of both responses worked.

OwlFancier posted:

I am posting from 1903 in moscow and people are very annoyed but I do not see anything that would suggest the authority of the tsar is anything but absolute.

I mean, if your answer is the United States needs to get wrecked in a world war, I'd probably agree with you :D But I would like to think there is an answer for how to transition to another system outside of "hope for outside events."

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Nov 13, 2020

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Aruan posted:

I mean, if your answer is the United States needs to get wrecked in a world war, I'd probably agree with you :D But I would like to think there is an answer for how to transition to another system outside of "hope for outside events."

Where/when has a transition away from capitalism ever been successful without outside events weakening the establishment?

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Aruan posted:

OK, where are the general strikes and widespread protests about minimum wage in the United States?

WTF are you talking about? 2 weeks ago 30 officers were injured in a riot in Philly.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-knife-wielding-man-philadelphia-police-presents-difficult/story?id=73847412


Aruan posted:

Capitalism in the United States is insidious in its strengths. If you (like me) see that the purpose of the government, regardless of political party, is to protect the capital owning interests, you can see the response to the recent protests as two sides of the same coin: violent repression (from the Republicans) and meaningless panaceas (from the Democrats). The combination of both responses worked.

It's been literally a week since an election that is still being challenged in court, and you are already declaring all public protest over? Is that what you're claiming?

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

Aruan posted:

National-scale protests over police brutality. There was a period in which likely millions of people were taking to the streets to protest to what amount to fundamental inequities under our capitalist system. I had thought that that perhaps could be the genesis of a larger shift in class consciousness.

It was symptomatic of the accelerating collapse in material conditions that (obviously) is hitting Black and immigrant and indigenous communities first and hardest. But a) it's not over, only the people who wanted to parade with a sign have really gone home and many cities are still seeing large-scale protests and direct actions daily even though the news doesn't cover it because the election news is more riveting to TV watchers and b) the economic root causes of that crisis are growing rapidly, not going away. What happens when 35 million people can't make rent, the eviction moratoriums expire, and the government does nothing to help them because it's so paralyzed that it can't even act to save itself? The last six months of protests and riots were just the prelude to what happens next.

Related, a local mutual aid group has swelled up so much (in terms of people served, supplies donated, cadre organizers quitting their jobs to work on the project full time) the last couple of months that they just acquired a box truck to move all their mutual aid program gear and supplies from place to place, and as everyone knows, the appearance of mechanization among the communists is symptomatic of incipient revolutionary sentiment.

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


Disnesquick posted:

Where/when has a transition away from capitalism ever been successful without outside events weakening the establishment?

I don't think there has been one, unfortunately. I describe myself as a pessimistic/optimistic leftist - I'm pessimistic in that I recognize the strength of our system, but optimistic in that I hope an internally-led transition is possible, and that there is more to praxis than just theorycrafting better systems. I mean, waiting in the wings for climate change to finally tip things toward a crisis point seems too grim. :(

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

Aruan posted:

I mean, if your answer is the United States needs to get wrecked in a world war, I'd probably agree with you :D But I would like to think there is an answer for how to transition to another system outside of "hope for outside events."

Yeah or like a pandemic or something

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


The Oldest Man posted:

Related, a local mutual aid group has swelled up so much (in terms of people served, supplies donated, cadre organizers quitting their jobs to work on the project full time) the last couple of months that they just acquired a box truck to move all their mutual aid program gear and supplies from place to place, and as everyone knows, the appearance of mechanization among the communists is symptomatic of incipient revolutionary sentiment.

Could you talk some more about your experience with your local mutual aid group? I think this is the type of thing I'd love to takeaway from this thread.

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Aruan posted:

I don't think there has been one, unfortunately. I describe myself as a pessimistic/optimistic leftist - I'm pessimistic in that I recognize the strength of our system, but optimistic in that I hope an internally-led transition is possible, and that there is more to praxis than just theorycrafting better systems. I mean, waiting in the wings for climate change to finally tip things toward a crisis point seems too grim. :(

Praxis is the part that's distinct from theory by definition. Unfortunately I kinda think that's the way of all revolutionary change, really. The new system's proponents spend their time building up their movement so that, when the time is right, they can make a move. There's still a vast amount of work to do their, in preparation, but without that work, the crises will come and go without change. That's what makes organizations such as the Democrat party and UK New Labour so insidious: They divert attention away from that work so that the crises can come and go, so that the system can recover (albeit more and more briefly).

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Aruan posted:

I don't think there has been one, unfortunately. I describe myself as a pessimistic/optimistic leftist - I'm pessimistic in that I recognize the strength of our system, but optimistic in that I hope an internally-led transition is possible, and that there is more to praxis than just theorycrafting better systems. I mean, waiting in the wings for climate change to finally tip things toward a crisis point seems too grim. :(
1. You've claimed that despite an international pandemic, 6 straight months of violent riots, a disputed election, and the looming disaster of climate change, capitalism is somehow "fine". This isn't materialism, this is the lunacy of Liberalism painted up to fit in a sock puppet.

2. You have no comprehensive understanding of what a mass movement against capitalist oppression looks like because it is staring you in the face and you keep hand waving it away as "unrest".

3. You are relying heavily on an electoral narrative to support your delusional points which is anti-materialist.

So, please, stop.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Aruan posted:

Yes I understand Marx's theory of why capitalism will inevitably collapse, but that doesn't seem to conform the reality in which we live, in which capitalist systems are stronger than ever. I am skeptical if climate change will be a fatal shock to the system if a pandemic which has killed hundreds of thousands and put one third of people out fo work has inspired more anger against restrictions than against the system which allowed people to die in the first place. Instead, I think its far more likely that the end effect of climate change on capitalist system is a return to earlier colonialism-style exploitation where the western nations are willing to cannibalize the other continents for their resources to maintain standards of living.

IIRC Kliman and others argue that Marx doesn't quite say that the falling rate of profit will necessarily cause capitalism to collapse, but rather that the falling rate of profit will necessarily cause cyclical crises and increases in misery and inequality such that a proletarian revolution will become increasingly easy/necessary to carry out.

Owlspiracy
Nov 4, 2020


Disnesquick posted:

Praxis is the part that's distinct from theory by definition. Unfortunately I kinda think that's the way of all revolutionary change, really. The new system's proponents spend their time building up their movement so that, when the time is right, they can make a move. There's still a vast amount of work to do their, in preparation, but without that work, the crises will come and go without change. That's what makes organizations such as the Democrat party and UK New Labour so insidious: They divert attention away from that work so that the crises can come and go, so that the system can recover (albeit more and more briefly).

What do you think that work looks like? I think, in my eyes, the first step is just widespread education about the alternatives to the current status quo. If you look at the work of some Marxist scholars in the 1930s and 1940s they point out that one of the most insidious elements of capitalism is by coopting culture it functionally limits thought.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

1. You've claimed that despite an international pandemic, 6 straight months of violent riots, a disputed election, and the looming disaster of climate change, capitalism is somehow "fine". This isn't materialism, this is the lunacy of Liberalism painted up to fit in a sock puppet.

2. You have no comprehensive understanding of what a mass movement against capitalist oppression looks like because it is staring you in the face and you keep hand waving it away as "unrest".

3. You are relying heavily on an electoral narrative to support your delusional points which is anti-materialist.

So, please, stop.

I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about.

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Technically, wages in a worker coop ARE THE PROFIT MARGIN :psyboom:

JK...kinda.

They specifically are not, technically. Colloquially sure.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Perhaps the reason revolutions tend to happen after major crises (external or internal) is because these crises expose the weaknesses of an already unstable system.

If it keeps having escalating crises it seems increasingly likely that a revolution might happen.

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

Aruan posted:

Could you talk some more about your experience with your local mutual aid group? I think this is the type of thing I'd love to takeaway from this thread.

Yeah, I bring them as much as I can afford (going off of whatever they've posted on their socials as the highest needs in the communities they serve the most recently, to the extend I can find it), as often as I can manage the time, and I don't inject my politics into their work. They've got enough misery to deal with without getting supplies from someone who thinks material support needs to come with a side of discourse.

If you're looking for more practical advice than "don't cross the streams," there's a ton of good posts on this subject in the Mutual Aid, Activism, and Organizing thread, which is stickied next to this one in this very forum: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3943326

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil

Aruan posted:

Is there any evidence that capitalism is failing? Why? I would argue that our capitalist system is stronger and more entrenched than ever. Pointing out that capitalism is exploitative and doesn't meet the needs of many people (and far fewer than other systems) does not, inevitably, mean that capitalism is failing (outside of Marxism, I guess).

I think in some ways this thread is the evidence of the strength of this system - we're theorycrafting hypothetical anarchist responses to a pandemic.

How can we transform capitalism into a better system? Educating people about better alternatives is an important first step, but its just a first step.

https://mronline.org/2018/05/05/there-is-a-structural-crisis-of-capitalism/

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Somfin posted:

Contact tracing + lockdowns (both at a personal and a regional level) is enough to contain and kill this.

Th-That's what I said!!

DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Nov 13, 2020

Acerbatus
Jun 26, 2020

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

The Oldest Man posted:

Ed: by the way, the idea that this pandemic needs some kind of space program to solve it is bunk. The best solutions available right now are cheap or free: people stay apart, keep to their own homes, and use mutual aid from the community's pooled resources to ensure everyone remains housed and fed such that the desperation of one does not jeopardize the safety at all.

I mean, isn't the government doing gently caress all to actually enforce it - or in other words, anarchy - basically what's happening right now and not working?

I don't understand this idea of anarchy that has SOME central leadership.

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil

Aruan posted:

Or, in other words, how do we move beyond theoretical to practical? How can we develop class consciousness in the United States? I don't think conditions will simply cause capitalism to collapse under its own weight. What does leftist activism look like to everyone in this thread?

Personally, its turning out to events and providing requested support to local organizations doing stuff like farmworker organizing, homeless.and addiction outreach and suppport etc. Participating in movement building organizations (like DSA, or SALT or Black Farmers Co-operative Collective or whatever), using socratic irony and insanely high levels of raw charisma to convince people I meet in the day to day to think about things in more class conscipus ways, participating in mutual aid and community respurce development projects, meeting with legislators and twstifying at the capital to build support for legislative efforts, im also personally very lucky to be employed as a co-op organizer/developer so my job is helping people do socialism, and then jusy generally being a stinker online in a way that will hopefully put chinks in people's capitalist ideology. Basically, I think thay everyone ought to be giving whatever they are able to a wide variety of left movement efforts but I reapect the folks who triple down on a single strategy or cause or whatever too.

Also, I personally belive the left project is an inherently doomed one because we live in hell but I intend to go down swinging

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Acerbatus posted:

I mean, isn't the government doing gently caress all to actually enforce it - or in other words, anarchy - basically what's happening right now and not working?

I don't understand this idea of anarchy that has SOME central leadership.

Anarchy implies a lack of hierarchy, not necessarily a lack of central leadership.

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil

Acerbatus posted:

I mean, isn't the government doing gently caress all to actually enforce it - or in other words, anarchy - basically what's happening right now and not working?

I don't understand this idea of anarchy that has SOME central leadership.

You should perhaps read some of the many books on the topic such as What is anarchism? By Emma Goldman or AnarchoSyndicalism by Rudolf Rocker. The idea thay anarchism means absolute individualism and the complete absence of concerted action or coersion is about as stupid as it sounds, which is why A) very few believe in this and B) 100+ years of capitalist[and communist lol] propoganda has made such a concerted effort to paint the tradition this way.

Baka-nin
Jan 25, 2015

Acerbatus posted:

I mean, isn't the government doing gently caress all to actually enforce it - or in other words, anarchy - basically what's happening right now and not working?

I don't understand this idea of anarchy that has SOME central leadership.

Government's are doing plenty, they're just prioritising keeping the economy going which is why so many of them are doing so badly at containing the spread, the main points of infection are in the workplaces or in the schools, and the schools have to stay open so the parents can go to work.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Yes, characterising the government as "doing nothing" when they are still dutifully organizing and bankrolling the police to come beat you up if you fail to pay your rent in time (or at best, saying they will do that in a few months rather than right now) thus forcing you to go to work and your kids to school, promoting infection, is certainly not government inaction. You're just so used to it that you think of it as a state of nature rather than a thing they do deliberately.

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil

Disnesquick posted:

Anarchy implies a lack of hierarchy, not necessarily a lack of central leadership.

It doesn't even imply that in most cases, it is most often a philosophy of reducing the amount of heirarchy to the maximum extent practicable and building in sagegaurds, culture and practices that will prevent anyone from accruing an outsized ampunt of power. It does not require absolutely flat organization though for all but the most hardlined and definitely not for most of the prominent thinkers and activists operating under that banner for the last century+.

Lets put it this way: if everyone in my community actively participates in the decision to create rules and empower some people in the community to enforce them through mutually designed and agreed upon methods, whith oversight, feedback and the ability to alter the rules or disempower enforcement, that all still totally falls under the rubric of anarchism. Again, if this makes you think 'but that doesn't sound like neat and tidy capital A anarchism like in the encylcopedia' you are right, because like ferrinus keeps saying actually existinf systems of governance are not platonic ideal versions of their political philosophy.

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil

Aruan posted:

OK, where are the general strikes and widespread protests about minimum wage in the United States?

You're pointing out the same fundamental inequities that people have been pointing out for the last hundred years. And despite this, capitalism has not only continued to exist, it has grown stronger.

Capitalism in the United States is insidious in its strengths. If you (like me) see that the purpose of the government, regardless of political party, is to protect the capital owning interests, you can see the response to the recent protests as two sides of the same coin: violent repression (from the Republicans) and meaningless panaceas (from the Democrats). The combination of both responses worked.


I mean, if your answer is the United States needs to get wrecked in a world war, I'd probably agree with you :D But I would like to think there is an answer for how to transition to another system outside of "hope for outside events."

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Uh, how is this trolling??? Post-Iraq War and Occupy Protests I don't think its unreasonable to expect that the most recent round won't have much lasting structural impact and I definitely don't think thay these protests have been focused on labor concerns, even while obviously those are a factor.

Like, I think there is a case that the structural crisis of capitalism is heightening but I don't think it should be out of bounds to question taking it as a given.

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

DrSunshine posted:

Th-That's what I said!!

It is indeed! I guess the important thing is that I wanted to downplay the plural you put in there- it's not "things" in New Zealand's case, it's literally just one other thing in addition to the lockdown. There is another thing, and this is probably a bit more tricky to implement and one of the major reasons that New Zealand could pull this off, which is a society-wide understanding that folks both 1. can and 2. should to talk about where they've been and who they've been in contact with to the authorities. There's no requirement that hospitals report obvious minor crimes like drug taking to the police, for example, and ambulances are specifically third parties to make this even stronger. New Zealand's major outbreaks / breaches / risks (after the initial lockdown) have been folks, usually returning from countries with worse citizen-government relationships, either "trying not to get people in trouble" or "trying to make a point."

One of 'em showed up at an anti-lockdown Q rally later on lol.

E:

Disnesquick posted:

Anarchy implies a lack of hierarchy, not necessarily a lack of central leadership.

You could very easily have a central / core group whose various qualities mean that they are the people folks turn to when the going gets rough, who are deemed trustworthy by the community, and whose advice is meant to be heeded, without that group needing to be granted authority by some artificial, gameable legitimisation process like voting, or being granted any power. Those tend to show up organically- if you've ever done unionisation or workplace organisation you'll usually find that some of the folks just naturally become low-level authorities on various subjects, and other folks just know to listen to them, or know who to turn to. They're not better than you, they're not in charge, they don't have any additional power to enforce their will; they're just the leaders, and folks pretty easily understand that.

Somfin fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Nov 13, 2020

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil
For the record I am also not personally convinced that 'capitalism' (not sure if we sre talking jusy in the US or globally here) is on the verge of collapse either although I wouldn't deny it feels closer to a rupture than at any point in my lifetime.

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil
Soft power is inevitable and accounting for it is a major part of healthy anarchist organizational design. Its actually phenomenon like soft power that mean anarchism requires structure to function.

Iconic text on the topic: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Crumbskull posted:

Uh, how is this trolling??? Post-Iraq War and Occupy Protests I don't think its unreasonable to expect that the most recent round won't have much lasting structural impact and I definitely don't think thay these protests have been focused on labor concerns, even while obviously those are a factor.

Like, I think there is a case that the structural crisis of capitalism is heightening but I don't think it should be out of bounds to question taking it as a given.

The point is always worth questioning. However, repeatedly refusing to engage with anyone's response is not the sign of good faith engagement. I rebutted them multiple times, and always there was a pivot away from the response instead of honest engagement.

However, since it was raised, I do wonder how one would quantify what the collapse of capitalism would look like materially. What signs in the world around us signal the cracks in the foundation of capitalism, and what would we expect to see in the future as those cracks grow (if they even exist)?

witchy
Apr 23, 2019

one step forward one step back

Cpt_Obvious posted:

The point is always worth questioning. However, repeatedly refusing to engage with anyone's response is not the sign of good faith engagement. I rebutted them multiple times, and always there was a pivot away from the response instead of honest engagement.

However, since it was raised, I do wonder how one would quantify what the collapse of capitalism would look like materially. What signs in the world around us signal the cracks in the foundation of capitalism, and what would we expect to see in the future as those cracks grow (if they even exist)?

A somewhat glib answer would be the reemergence of fascism as a mainstream ideology, which has historically served as the last gasp of liberalism when the capital class realizes liberalism itself is unworkable.

E: I think there's a distinction here that might be tripping people up. The fact that capitalism will collapse does not mean that it necessarily must imminently collapse or collapse completely. There have been other periods in history where there were crises that could have led to the collapse of capitalism (and in fact did in some countries!) but were averted for one reason or another. The theory generally tends to be that there will be a "final crisis" of capitalism that puts an end to it for good globally but the event(s) responsible will likely only be obvious in retrospect. However the lack of such a crisis or the resolution of a potential crisis does not dispel the contradictions that lead to those crises, ensuring that down the line there will be more. At some point everything lines up (sufficiently severe crisis, poor recovery from previous crisis, mismanagement by those in power) and it all goes to hell.

witchy fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Nov 13, 2020

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Similarly, if you were to warp me back to the middle ages of some parallel timeline, I could confidently predict that feudalism will collapse and be supplanted by some more powerful mode of production, but I couldn't tell you whether that was going to happen tomorrow or in several hundred years, and in any case it'd have to be something that the rising bourgeoisie did on purpose rather than something that just happened unbidden due to unthinking geological processes.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Cpt_Obvious posted:

However, since it was raised, I do wonder how one would quantify what the collapse of capitalism would look like materially. What signs in the world around us signal the cracks in the foundation of capitalism, and what would we expect to see in the future as those cracks grow (if they even exist)?

Materially? Like, physically? I mean, I would imagine something like the rich building bunkers because they've lost faith in their safety for the near future as they see the writing on the wall caused by rising unemployment. The collapse of basic infrastructure as more and more resources are diverted to rent extraction rather than fundamental growth.

The pace of technological advancement slowing down due to underinvestment in basic sciences that don't pay off immediate returns and the financialization of the intellectual capacity of generations as the best and brightest minds are sucked into nonproductive, parasitic sectors. The rise of unproductive bullshit jobs as millions of workers need to get paid and pretend to work because wage-slavery is held as an ideological norm, but actually physically produce nothing of value.

The wholesale abandonment of necessary and productive technological adaptations to deal with imminent existential risks. The decline of birth rates due to a crisis of affordability.

I think there's a lot of signs that show the physical crack-lines already emerging.

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

The reason capitalism will collapse is that it only has one thing it can ever do: extract profit. Eventually you hit a point where the wealth you're extracting from labor is so significant that workers can't afford to buy the things you need them to buy for the system to continue to function. I think it's pretty clear that since the 70s, we've entered the terminal crisis as capital has more or less run out of runway and the only thing it can do now is privatize what social-democratic niceties remain until the whole thing finally shuts down.

Who knows how long this will take, though. A decade? Two hundred years? My bet is that as the cliff finally comes into view, governments will try to push for more regulation and welfare that will just barely keep everything afloat and significantly extend capitalism's zombie half-life. I think the further we get into that period the more vulnerable the system is to a serious left challenge, but if one doesn't arise I think it can get very, very bad and trundle on for a very, very long time.

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






China’s ability to contain Coronavirus isn’t because it’s using a socialist mode of production, it’s because the population in general follows government advice. There are dozens of reasons for this but immediate ones include:

(1) a lot of families have 40+ years of lived experience of increased prosperity, expressed in tangible things like good infrastructure, more discretionary spending, consumer goods that their parents didn’t have and so on, even if they’ve had to live precarious lives as migrant workers to achieve this;

(2) the government runs the world’s most extensive and technologically sophisticated surveillance and censorship system and enforces harsh penalties for spreading forbidden information; and

(3) there are real and immediate consequences for NOT complying with government advice.

I can’t speak for Vietnam but the idea that Chinese companies are workers co-ops is incorrect. They are ruthlessly capitalist organisations in the world’s most cutthroat consumer market, which is why China now has nearly 400 publicly acknowledged billionaires (and who knows how many who have kept their fortunes secret). One of the biggest problems here in South China is endemic non-payment of workers. E: and this is only the private sector; SOEs aren’t worker co-ops either although workers do usually get paid their (artificially low) wages on time.

The things that ARE attributable to a socialist economy are that the CCP took a very underdeveloped country and built and fed a huge and decently well educated workforce so that when it did re-introduce markets and open up to foreign capital it was able to rocket ahead to Global #2 in just a few decades, AND maintained protectionist policies skilfully enough that its domestic industries could challenge western multinationals. That’s a huge achievement that required both Mao then Deng in succession. Surface level analyses that ignore the combined effect don’t add much IMO.

Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Nov 13, 2020

Crumbskull
Sep 13, 2005

The worker and the soil
Personally I don't think 'capitalism' will have 'collapsed' until the capitalist mode of production has been meaningfully supplanted globally with some other one. This is part of why I'm not convinced this is imminent, fascism is being proposed as the kind of terminal end stage of capitalism but plenty of fascist governments have reveryed back to good old liberalism and the fascist mode of production is capitalist (isn't it?).

Like, capitalism is not incompatible with societal collapse (see:'anarchocapitalism') so societal collapse does not imply the end of capitalism. I'm still not sure I agree with how that probated persons responses are being charecterized, but in any case I think their question about 'what should we be doing right now in order to improve the chances of a potential rupture presenting opportunity for meaningfully left structural change' is a legitimate one.

Personally, and you'll all eventually put me on ignore for constantly banging on about this, but I view co-operative association as an extremely potent strategy for altering productive relationships (i dont know if thats whay its called i havent read any marx i jusy use context clues) AND they give people an actual material opportunity to practice worker democratic management, develop class solidarity, improve their life materially through anticapitalist action etc. I get a lot of push back from ostensibky.more radical anarchists and 'communists' in town about how co-ops don't go far enough or at risk of succumbing to identity crisis and isomorphism with capitalist enterprise and I guess my answer is: well, no poo poo but until you can figure out another way to pay your bills and get socialism practice at the same time why don't you come to my office and I'll show you how to draft a pro forma.

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ronya
Nov 8, 2010

I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

OwlFancier posted:

Capitalism requires growth. It grows by finding new places, people, resources to exploit, or increasing what it can squeeze out of the existing ones. That is why it makes new things to sell to people and favours removing their ability to meet needs themselves so it can sell them new things to meet those needs.

But it can't grow forever, there are not infinite spaces, resources, and people on the planet. Climate change is a crisis of capitalism because it is an expression of its inability to abide contraction, it must keep destroying the planet because if it does not, it will stop growing, and that causes economic collapse under capitalism. Of course if it kills a billion people and renders a large swathe of the earth uninhabitable that will also cause a collapse, but that will be involuntary. That's how it goes, it keeps booming until it collapses under its own weight.

One of the big reasons it needs to grow constantly is because of the rate of profit thing. Basically as outlined earlier in the thread, if you invent a machine that makes gizmos twice as easily as before, then the value of gizmos falls, because they're twice as easy to make. This means the gizmo market has one of two things happen, either it booms as people buy twice as many gizmos (necessitating twice as many resources to fuel gizmo production) or the arse falls out of it because now gizmos are worth half as much and people are still buying the same amount. Either it grows, or it collapses. Production efficiency gains translate to reduced rate of profit because of how the market works.

The other option is price fixing, where all the gizmo producers agree to keep the price the same and pocket the extra cash, but that requires either a cartel or a monopoly. And the issue with that approach long term is you cut your wage payments in half with the efficiency gain but you're still charging people the same amount. But if you keep doing that everywhere, where's the extra money gonna come from? Whos gonna be able to buy anything if nobody is working cos you automated all the jobs away? Either you gotta cut the price or you gotta grow the economy and get people new jobs so they can buy things. Cos you're sucking all the money out with profit extraction.

It grows, or it collapses. The rate of profit falls and must be buoyed up by growth.

Someone who is gooder at theory please check this I am not a theory person.

note the subtle distinction between pursuing profit vs pursuing the rate of profit

Marxian firms don't maximize profit. They maximize the rate of profit, which is why a firm would keep investing in additional capital accumulation even beyond neoclassical profitability

it is this which is doing the conceptual work when comparing the LTV to contemporary concepts of value

ronya fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Nov 13, 2020

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