(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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Aug 5, 2022 00:20
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lol good
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Aug 5, 2022 00:24
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cenotaph posted:That's a very good read. Roland Boer's Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners also has a good explanation of China's use of markets as a socialist tool, among other things. I posted some excerpts in the China thread several months ago. I enjoyed his anecdote about Losurdo from the intro when they met at a conference in China. quote:At one point, Losurdo said to me: ‘You need to be patient; we are part of the mainstream’. Of course, our mutual appreciation of and desire to understand the many developments of Marxism from Russia to China, especially during the era of socialist construction after a proletarian revolution, means that we are in fact part of the mainstream. This means too that all of the developments in Chinese Marxism, and thus of socialism with Chinese characteristics, is indeed the mainstream. This book is an effort to present central features of this mainstream development to those who may know relatively little but desire to know more.
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Aug 5, 2022 00:33
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HiroProtagonist posted:this reads like chomsky, eliding everything that happened pre-euromaidan and just assuming it de facto happened rather than looking at why the maidan occurred. basic bitch historiography assuming the western elite just suddenly took an interest after 2014    
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Aug 5, 2022 06:11
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remedial marxism: the proletariat consists of all people who perform socially necessary labor for a wage someone else gives them, and do not own their own means of production. note that an uber drivers or doordash deliverers may own their car but they do not own the means of production because the means of production is the system that takes the orders and distributes them to drivers. its like a plumber or electrician owning their tools, but they don't own the firm they work at. thats owned by the bourgeoisie, so still they're exploited. The owner holds all the power and uses it to lower the pay rate for the job, make unreasonable time demands, eschew safety, etc. most importantly, the proletariat is alienated from the product of their labor. which is to say, the things you produce at work rightfully belong to you for producing them. but the boss steals this from you and gives you a pittance on which to survive in hopes you won't come for what's yours. most of us. the lumpenproletariat are working class people who work outside the current formal economy that enriches the bourgeoisie, but still have to labor for a living. its important to note that the stated distinction between proletariat and lumpenproletariat seems - by my reading - to be people who labor to survive but the labor they perform isn't socially necessary. i think thats very subjective and not really useful or productive, and implies that the formal economy that serves the bourgeoisie totally encapsulates all socially necessary labor. i disagree. anyway i refrain from trying to separate them from the proletariat, thus my own definition above. maybe a little of that moral panic from the reformation still hanging around in germany, i dunno. working class is working class imo. these are natural allies. bourgeoisie: the ruling class. those who make the money to reproduce their lives by already having money and using it to buy and control productive property that produces more money with no labor by them. the bourgeoisie will typically (but not always) take advantage of (or create) conditions in which the proletarian has no alternative but to work for that wage. money - and more specifically profit - is their sole motivator at all times. they do not view money as a medium of exchange allowing them to purchase commodities for themselves - that's how the proletariat thinks. for the bourgeoisie the money itself is the thing. money exists to buy or produce commodities only so those commodities can be sold for more money. its fetishism, a brain disorder, and they will never stop until the bourgeois system is burned to bedrock. i consider the petit bourgeoisie to be maybe the trickiest one for a lot of people, especially americans. certainly took me a minute to understand it. it has some overlaps with the lumpenproletariat and the bourgeoisie but have their own unique conditions and social relations. the petit bourgeoisie are by definition people who own their means of production, but still perform their own labor with it. say you're a one of the electricians or plumbers above. youve got the knowledge, the tools, and your time at the firm have also given you the connections you need to strike out on your own. once you start your own firm and start making profit from it, you are petit bourgeoisie. this is true even if you work solo and don't hire anyone. you still have to work, but you're afforded greater security against the whims of the bourgeoisie because they don't own and control the way you make your living. a petit bourgeois person may and often does also hire and exploit people for a wage, which makes it easy to call them small business tyrants and lump them in the proper bourgeoisie (as i often do), but they are not. an important thing to remember to me is that historically, the petit bourgeoisie support the bourgeoisie right up until they they realize that the bourgeoisie is coming for them, too. Then a large percentage jump to join working class struggles. so while they are our enemies today, its fairly likely that they can become our allies tomorrow. this is why i also try not to exclude the lumpenproletariat. one will note that customers do not feature anywhere in the above, because being a consumer does not matter in any way vis a vis the belligerents in the class war.
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Aug 6, 2022 16:52
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Your explanation of petit-bourgeois makes a lot of sense. Marx's original examples aren't super applicable today; and I'd been having some trouble understanding the line between say, labor aristocrat and petite-bourgeois. Like in the case of a doctor or a lawyer. I'd guess that a doctor that works for a private hospital might be considered the former, whereas a doctor with a private practice would be considered the latter. Labor aristocrat isn't a proper class, I know, but its very relevant in the American context due to how many people have aspirations to become part of the petite-bourgeois. I wonder if the reactionary tendency of American politics is due in part to the fact that the upper levels of the working class have, for decades, had certain petite-bourgeois class characteristics. Getting people invested in the stock market through tying benefits to stocks, and getting people invested in the real estate market by treating housing as an investment. This reinforces the narrative, often seen in media funded and created by the well-off, that you too could one day not have to worry about the bills due to "passive income". HOAs exist to protect property values, after all. My understanding of lumpenproletariat is that they do not own any means of production, nor do they acquire income by productive labor. Examples might be: somebody who makes a living off of credit card fraud, somebody too disabled to work, or somebody so marginalized from society that they can't work. unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 17:54 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 17:47
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unwantedplatypus posted:I wonder if the reactionary tendency of American politics is due in part to the fact that the upper levels of the working class have, for decades, had certain petite-bourgeois class characteristics. the "middle-class" has always been a project of capitalists to create a "class" of people who are paid a high enough wage that they will ideologically align with the bourgeois despite not actually sharing their class characteristics, in order to disrupt working-class unity and provide a legitimating vote in the false democracies of liberal capitalist societies
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Aug 6, 2022 17:53
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gradenko_2000 posted:the "middle-class" has always been a project of capitalists to create a "class" of people who are paid a high enough wage that they will ideologically align with the bourgeois despite not actually sharing their class characteristics, in order to disrupt working-class unity and provide a legitimating vote in the false democracies of liberal capitalist societies Right, but it goes further than just high wages, its about the relationship to their own income. If housing is an investment, and you want your house to grow in value. Your interests do, genuinely, align in part with the bourgeoisie. But these concessions are being revoked as time goes on.
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Aug 6, 2022 17:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:the "middle-class" has always been a project of capitalists to create a "class" of people who are paid a high enough wage that they will ideologically align with the bourgeois despite not actually sharing their class characteristics, in order to disrupt working-class unity and provide a legitimating vote in the false democracies of liberal capitalist societies imo since ww2 it's largely been about rebranding the various quality of life improvements that period labour organizing provided as a feature of the system rather than something the system spent hundreds of years desperately and violently suppressing.
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Aug 6, 2022 18:18
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also i saw this again and lolled again
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Aug 6, 2022 18:20
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Can someone be considered petit bourg without employees?
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Aug 6, 2022 19:50
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Can someone be considered petit bourg without employees? the neo-artisan class
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Aug 6, 2022 19:52
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Can someone be considered petit bourg without employees? Yes, I think Marx explicitly mentions self-employed artisans to be petit bourg. Although I think a lot of self-employed people today wouldn't count due to the reliance on media and distribution platforms owned by a third party. An author can write a book, but actually making money off of that book relies on selling through chain stores or online platforms like amazon or audible. Same for something like Uber, the driver ultimately has no ownership over the program that actually does the work of setting up the rides, marking them as finished, and handling payment. All of this is a necessary component of the service, moreso than just "owning a car".
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Aug 6, 2022 20:54
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Can someone be considered petit bourg without employees? a business owner with no employees is the simplest and most direct example of the class. edit: it does bear mention since for some reason some people look to political and economic theory for guidance on personal and moral matters ("who am i allowed to yell at"): someone who operates an etsy store but also works for a wage is not of this class. thats a proletarian with a side hustle. if the etsy store pays all their bills and they dont have to go work for a boss, thats a different story croup coughfield has issued a correction as of 21:33 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 21:28
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Aug 6, 2022 21:34
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Ok dude go ahead and quote things angry liberals bought for me it means you're making a point
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Aug 6, 2022 21:45
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croup coughfield posted:a business owner with no employees is the simplest and most direct example of the class. What's the role of the etsy store here? Is it basically just a cyber-landlord or does it represent some capital out of their ownership but necessary for the selling of their goods?
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Aug 6, 2022 22:03
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croup coughfield posted:a business owner with no employees is the simplest and most direct example of the class. sole proprietor is not a class signifier because you cannot exploit your own labor for surplus value. you are leveraging capital, true, but its not any different than investing in stocks if you're working for yourself anyway my wife is a 1099 employee which technically means she is her own one person business but there's no way you'd argue we are petit bourgeois based on that or her own income. i own basically nothing but my salary is stupid. this is how and why labor aristocracy as a term was developed. re: the latter part, i wouldn't say you're wrong but class interests develop along those lines, and as in the case of labor aristocracy as well as aspiring petit bourgeoisie you can and will have class traitors along both lines but those are usually the exception rather than the norm. you really don't need fancy terminology to look at what a person is saying and/or doing to be able to identify which part of class society they occupy, it's plainly obvious usually if someone is seeking to be or identifying with the overseers rather than the servants.
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Aug 6, 2022 22:05
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unwantedplatypus posted:Examples might be: somebody who makes a living off of credit card fraud quantitatively different than but qualitatively similar to the bourgeois. curious example to pick
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Aug 6, 2022 23:50
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HiroProtagonist posted:Ok dude go ahead and quote things angry liberals bought for me it means you're making a point could you remove the ="username" and "post=" from the quote so that the avs line up? please and thank you
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Aug 6, 2022 23:54
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The Voice of Labor posted:quantitatively different than but qualitatively similar to the bourgeois. curious example to pick Perhaps I'm failing to describe what I'm thinking. I mean stealing someone's identification and buying things in their name, that type of fraud. I'm lumping it in mentally with other forms of theft. Unless that's what you're talking about when you say it being similar to the bourgeois?
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Aug 7, 2022 01:02
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unwantedplatypus posted:Perhaps I'm failing to describe what I'm thinking. I mean stealing someone's identification and buying things in their name, that type of fraud. I'm lumping it in mentally with other forms of theft. Unless that's what you're talking about when you say it being similar to the bourgeois? The difference is that one steals opportunistically and the other has created a system of plunder, backed by the force of arms
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Aug 7, 2022 01:13
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Ownership of some form of capital is pretty important to the definition of bourgeoisie as a class. Theft requires no capital.
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Aug 7, 2022 01:16
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unwantedplatypus posted:Ownership of some form of capital is pretty important to the definition of bourgeoisie as a class. Theft requires no capital. to the thefty both are functionally identical 
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Aug 7, 2022 01:25
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo4kXQ4St7Q attended this talk tonight, enjoyed hearing his perspective and picked up the book
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Aug 7, 2022 03:05
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unwantedplatypus posted:What's the role of the etsy store here? Is it basically just a cyber-landlord or does it represent some capital out of their ownership but necessary for the selling of their goods? the etsy-pintrest industrial complex is doing marketing and payment middleman work and the artisan is paying them for it. you can still try to sell your art locally or through your own online presence or what-have you. whether or not thats feasible due to the business practices of the aforementioned cartel is another conversation HiroProtagonist posted:sole proprietor is not a class signifier because you cannot exploit your own labor for surplus value. you are leveraging capital, true, but its not any different than investing in stocks if you're working for yourself anyway saying "well my wife and i cant be a part of the bad classes because we're good people!" is doing the exact thing i was rolling my eyes about in my edit. regardless of whether or not you perceive social class as some kind of referendum on someone's personal morality, you're still only focusing on the money. like the amount or whatever. a person belongs to a particular class not due to their money, but due to their relationship to the means of production in a capitalist society. telling me your wife is a contractor with no further context (like where her money actually comes from) tells me nothing about her class or class interests. telling me how much money you make is irrelevant beyond whether its enough money to be your primary source of income. much more important is how you make that money. who pays you and why? do you get your income from multiple clients/customers or just one? what is the nature of the obligation they're paying to discharge and who has control of that obligation? its these pressures that direct an individual's interests and consequent behavior. you really gotta stop conflating politics and personal morality. no offense.
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Aug 7, 2022 03:30
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croup coughfield posted:the etsy-pintrest industrial complex is doing marketing and payment middleman work and the artisan is paying them for it. If we were to take this to its logical conclusion, would this indicate Uber is correct to say it doesn't employ its drivers, but rather they are independent contractors? After all, you could attempt to be an independent ridesharer, with your own independent app. But that's an absurd proposition. Their ability to meaningfully participate in this economic activity is dependent on these platforms. I think it goes beyond merely providing a service, the distribution platform is necessary for the labor to produce market value, and arguably use value. unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 04:14 on Aug 7, 2022 |
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Aug 7, 2022 04:12
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Etsy and Uber have different models, even if they both are digital platforms. Uber directs drivers, controls pricing, and has even gotten involved in lending to drivers. They essentially began as an unlicensed taxi dispatcher, and they still resemble that today. Etsy, as far as I know, is still mostly a platform to sell items by small scale producers. They don't control pricing or command sellers focus on certain items. The most common feature between the two is reviews, but bad reviews on Uber can get drivers fired. Etsy sellers can be banned or suspended, but it's easier for them to switch to a different marketplace like eBay, Facebook, or Craigslist. Uber drivers can maybe only switch to Lyft? So Etsy and Uber are both "digital platforms," but frankly that doesn't tell us about the relation to the people using the platform. Uber drivers are all but legally employees, and have a clearly proletarian position. Etsy sellers seem to be artisans/petite bourgeoisie, and are giving a cut to Etsy for digital space.
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Aug 7, 2022 05:18
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unwantedplatypus posted:If we were to take this to its logical conclusion, would this indicate Uber is correct to say it doesn't employ its drivers, but rather they are independent contractors? etsy is not required to sell ugly bullshit. peopleve been buyin ugly bullshit by the side of the road since the neolithic and we will do so until the very end. people also do very well on other online platforms. the relationship to their labor (making stupid crap and selling it) is unchanged regardless of uber driver is a logistics job and in order to perform a logistics job, you need an infrastructure to support it. as you yourself say, its absurd to suggest this is attainable by a common person. these people are not remotely in the same position in terms of their relationship to the produce of their labor.
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Aug 7, 2022 05:36
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Atrocious Joe posted:Etsy and Uber have different models, even if they both are digital platforms. Uber directs drivers, controls pricing, and has even gotten involved in lending to drivers. They essentially began as an unlicensed taxi dispatcher, and they still resemble that today. Is this a difference in type or difference in degree though? Some workplaces are much more restrictive than others. Some bosses are more lenient than others. What doesn't change is the fundamental power relationship between owner and worker. The material conditions that allowed independent artisans to persist in the earlier days of capitalism, when Marx was alive, I do not think exist anymore. I would wager that the vast majority of people on Etsy or similar platforms would not be able to make any more than a completely negligible amount of money without some form of platform that they do not have the capital to independently buy or develop. Currently handicraft sellers have many options, with those options being relatively easy to work for; but does that speak to a more fundamental difference in the types of labor being performed, or is it simply circumstantial? unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 05:53 on Aug 7, 2022 |
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Aug 7, 2022 05:42
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croup coughfield posted:etsy is not required to sell ugly bullshit. peopleve been buyin ugly bullshit by the side of the road since the neolithic and we will do so until the very end. people also do very well on other online platforms. the relationship to their labor (making stupid crap and selling it) is unchanged regardless of In order to make a living selling ugly bullshit, not just as a hobby, but to have it as your primary source of income; requires some sort of distribution platform. I'm 100% open to being proven wrong here, but that is my understanding of it. The independent artisan and the travelling salesmen are dead economic niches. Without access to a platform, you're not getting that income; no matter how many goods you produce. All of your ugly bullshit will simply sit at home, occasionally being thrust upon pitying friends and family rather than being sold for market value. And it goes without saying that some people who use Etsy or ebay or whatever would have some other means of distributing their goods; but I'd be willing to wager a significant amount of sellers would not. unwantedplatypus has issued a correction as of 05:52 on Aug 7, 2022 |
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Aug 7, 2022 05:45
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Farmers in the US Midwest in the latter half of the 1800s often ended up in conflict with railroad companies. The companies were often times the only option for farmers to transport their goods to market, and even dictated where the goods may go. No matter how much the farmer produced, the food would rot if they didn't play by the railroad's rules. Were those farmers proletarians and actually employees of the railroad?
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Aug 7, 2022 06:07
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only fat 20 something it trans women are true proletariat all of you will join the reparations corps
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Aug 7, 2022 06:10
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Atrocious Joe posted:https://twitter.com/anarchobestie/status/1554528197445763073?s=20&t=gzmQXo4BKD9yHJQ7fmFxUQ its not that they're dirt poor but they're also not dirty rich. So they know what lies in wait rather than being people with nespotism jobs just lined up.
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Aug 7, 2022 06:11
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Atrocious Joe posted:Farmers in the US Midwest in the latter half of the 1800s often ended up in conflict with railroad companies. The companies were often times the only option for farmers to transport their goods to market, and even dictated where the goods may go. No matter how much the farmer produced, the food would rot if they didn't play by the railroad's rules. Were those farmers proletarians and actually employees of the railroad? Good point, petite bourgeois then, this discussion has been helpful.
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Aug 7, 2022 06:12
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i guess i'd have to go back and check but don't think an independent artisan who owns their own tools, buys material to work on, and then sells their product for more than the material + wear and tear cost is any kind of bourgeoisie until they start exploiting employees. i don't think they're proletarians, either - they're just a more old-fashioned kind of worker which is rapidly getting squeezed into nonexistence by market competition. they have the same problems that rosa luxemburg attributes to worker co-ops, in that they are not technically being exploited (to echo someone upthread, you can't exploit yourself) but they are subject to immiserating market pressures all the same and just end up serving as the inputs and/or outputs in other, bigger transactions that involve others' exploitation anyway
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Aug 7, 2022 07:39
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HiroProtagonist posted:this reads like chomsky, eliding everything that happened pre-euromaidan and just assuming it de facto happened rather than looking at why the maidan occurred. basic bitch historiography assuming the western elite just suddenly took an interest after 2014 ischenko has written a bunch about colour revolutions etc he's not eliding anything lol
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Aug 7, 2022 14:30
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dude has actual research papers out specifically about euromaidan and its context
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Aug 7, 2022 14:31
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lol https://twitter.com/jacobin/status/1556233701394186240?s=20&t=ph0-tmSCSDbIoHUKXwav5g
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Aug 7, 2022 15:24
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MLSM posted:lol Groaning real loud now
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Aug 7, 2022 15:32
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