(Thread IKs:
dead gay comedy forums)
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Ferrinus posted:it should be noted that (i'm pretty sure) the gervais principle guy is some kind of lesswrong freak gently caress. what he writes in gervais principle in particular absolutely lines up with my experiences in various levels of corporate bullshittery, so I just kind of like the framing/narrative, but that sucks.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:13
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https://www.tiktok.com/embed/7215218808707992875 (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 28, 2023 00:09
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i have assigned reading from a marxist dsa caucus, i did not know this involved reading books
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Mar 28, 2023 15:45
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https://kites-journal.org/2023/03/13/the-rcp/ Here's an article about the history of the Avakian's RCP, I have not finished it but it's pretty interesting so far.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:25
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Thoughts on Fredric Jameson? Good, bad? I'm doing some writing that involves post-Lacanian Marxist theory on ideology (Althusser, Zizek) and my lit review is steering me towards Jameson, but I'm not super familiar with him.
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Mar 28, 2023 18:12
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Tempora Mutantur posted:gently caress. what he writes in gervais principle in particular absolutely lines up with my experiences in various levels of corporate bullshittery, so I just kind of like the framing/narrative, but that sucks. yes i enjoyed it on my first readthrough but then you've got him casually calling some of the characters whores or whatever. i think the basic observation of what it means to be a prole vs. a manager, subjectively for the person themselves, is pretty good, but the more he talks about bosses as these transcendent weavers of wonders crucified on their own brilliance the more he wears out his welcome
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Mar 28, 2023 20:27
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Ferrinus posted:yes i enjoyed it on my first readthrough but then you've got him casually calling some of the characters whores or whatever. i think the basic observation of what it means to be a prole vs. a manager, subjectively for the person themselves, is pretty good, but the more he talks about bosses as these transcendent weavers of wonders crucified on their own brilliance the more he wears out his welcome tbh I think the most useful thing I took away from that article was the concept of being an economic "loser" and the ways people reconcile that arrangement
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Mar 28, 2023 20:34
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Pepe Silvia Browne posted:tbh I think the most useful thing I took away from that article was the concept of being an economic "loser" and the ways people reconcile that arrangement yeah and not coincidentally that's the part that lines up most straightforwardly with boilerplate marx. oh you're trading v worth of your labor power for v worth of currency? lmao. sucker
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Mar 28, 2023 20:40
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I'd like 1.1v worth of salary if I’m being perfectly honest
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Mar 28, 2023 20:52
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indigi posted:I'd like 1.1v worth of salary if I’m being perfectly honest the conclusion the author draws is that upon realizing one is a "loser" ie producing more value for the company than they take home, they do one of three things: 1. Denial, basically take on the meritocratic explanation that this is because they are not working hard enough and if they just work harder they will eventually become a Winner. These are our Clueless middle level. 2. Accept that you are a loser and start minimizing your losses by doing the bare minimum per hours worked possible, our bottom level of Losers. 3. Realize that because you are already losing, you have nothing to lose by viciously climbing the corporate ladder past all the people who think they just need to work harder to get ahead. Top level Sociopaths.
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Mar 28, 2023 20:57
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there's almost no difference between 1 and 3 (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 28, 2023 20:59
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the difference is that the Clueless people are working until 9 pm while the sociopaths are the one's emailing them from home at 9 pm asking if that thing is done yet
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Mar 28, 2023 21:01
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indigi posted:I'd like 1.1v worth of salary if I’m being perfectly honest sorry but you only get the rate of profit multiplier if you're on the other side of that divide Pepe Silvia Browne posted:the conclusion the author draws is that upon realizing one is a "loser" ie producing more value for the company than they take home, they do one of three things: the problem here is that there's no "sociopath" class whose dark triad attributes allow them to climb the ladder. there's just owners of capital, in whose actual interest ambition lies, and owners of nothing, whose coping mechanisms may or may not be useful rather than simply irrelevant to valorization
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Mar 28, 2023 21:09
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Right, that's where his metaphor breaks down. Now if Ryan the intern were the nepo failson of Dunder Mifflin's owner, he might be onto something
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Mar 28, 2023 21:41
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speaking of i'm midway through volume 3 at this point and it has some cool stuff to say about how the rate of profit applies even to capitalists who don't strictly speaking produce (or cause to be produced) any surplus value whatsoever and also how capitalism itself creates the conditions, which capitalists are so wont to complain about or revel in, in which 99% of people are slumpo lazybones without a drop of creative ambition
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Mar 28, 2023 21:53
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Ferrinus posted:speaking of i'm midway through volume 3 at this point and it has some cool stuff to say about how the rate of profit applies even to capitalists who don't strictly speaking produce (or cause to be produced) any surplus value whatsoever and also how capitalism itself creates the conditions, which capitalists are so wont to complain about or revel in, in which 99% of people are slumpo lazybones without a drop of creative ambition I need to get back to vol 3, I got like 250 pages in before work got busy and I got too tired to do any theory reading .
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Mar 28, 2023 22:12
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Ferrinus posted:how the rate of profit applies even to capitalists who don't strictly speaking produce (or cause to be produced) any surplus value whatsoever whats this mean
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Mar 28, 2023 22:28
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mila kunis posted:whats this mean commercial and financial capitalists, for starters, but even a hypothetical capitalist whose business is 100% animated and whose operating expenses include no wages alltogether, are still entitled to a (1 + r/100) multiplier on their capital investment where r is the general rate of profit expressed as a percentage if the global rate of profit is ten percent, then no capital is ever going to get out of bed unless they're getting x1.1 returns on their capital, and the surplus actually produced through exploited labor basically gets averaged out and redistributed to make this the case one fun consequence of this is that ALL capitalists have an interest in keeping wages minimized and the length of the working day maximized across ALL industries because any worker victory anywhere drives the average rate of profit down
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Mar 28, 2023 23:15
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Ferrinus posted:commercial and financial capitalists, for starters, but even a hypothetical capitalist whose business is 100% animated and whose operating expenses include no wages alltogether, are still entitled to a (1 + r/100) multiplier on their capital investment where r is the general rate of profit expressed as a percentage good or bad news for my waifu factory?
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Mar 28, 2023 23:25
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good news. just add up the server overhead for all your ai image generators and multiply
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Mar 28, 2023 23:31
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Was rereading Imperialism and came across this important section:quote:And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its complete development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features: I) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; ,) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this "finance capital," of a financial oligarchy; 3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; 4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share the world among themselves, and 5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. He later includes: quote:an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several Great Powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony. (Belgium is particularly important for Germany as a base for operations against England; England needs Baghdad as a base for operations against Germany, etc.) What struck me about this is that the most recent form of imperialism does not have any division because there is only one large monolithic empire. So I thought I'd ask the thread how this would impact the analysis. Lenin puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of monopoly in imperialism going so far as to conclude that imperialism is just a form of monopoly. Well, what happens when there is a monopoly on empire?
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Mar 29, 2023 04:30
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my dad posted:e: I don't think he ever went full Malthusian, though, but you'd best get that answer from someone who knows a hell of a lot more about him than I do the theory of survival of the fittest was partly inspired by malthus
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Mar 29, 2023 04:42
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The empire decays due to a lack of challenges. Civilizations have risen and fallen before. The west won't fall anywhere near the same way, but short of some miracle changing it's course it will fall, regardless of who it puts in front of it to fall onto.
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Mar 29, 2023 04:46
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 That's just reheated fascist rhetoric about weak men in good times. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2023 04:47
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Thoughts on Fredric Jameson? Good, bad? I'm doing some writing that involves post-Lacanian Marxist theory on ideology (Althusser, Zizek) and my lit review is steering me towards Jameson, but I'm not super familiar with him. he's cool
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Mar 29, 2023 04:49
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Was rereading Imperialism and came across this important section: i've seen it argued that lenin was specifically attempting to describe the imperialism of the early 20th century and we shouldn't expect all of the specific features he identified to necessarily be true of imperialism a hundred years later. for instance, i'm not sure that the US actually exports more capital than it imports nowadays (although it certainly throws economic and military weight around to keep itself at the center of a web of extremely unfair trade arrangements) and the specific export of US capital to china following china's reform and opening up may well have been an attempt by the US to imperialize china but that's not how it worked out in practice
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Mar 29, 2023 04:51
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Cpt_Obvious posted:
I dunno I was thinking more that decay was staved off by fear alone of the Soviet alternative. I'm thinking the lack of alternatives causes a decay similar to what I expect in the quality of a business that becomes a monopoly (which preventing them from becoming doesn't stop because profit, but becoming one vastly accelerates). I wonder if the US would be in better or worse shape of it was still having to worry about the Soviets. Edit: Maybe they'd be worse off because they'd still be feeling the inexorable pull of profit and tear themselves apart sooner due to having more stressors? I could see that. Edit2: I'll admit I have a very narrow perspective having lived in a white household in the Midwest whose main jobs are in government pencil pushing/bean counting thechosenone has issued a correction as of 04:58 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 04:54
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Cpt_Obvious posted:
no it isn't. hope this helps you with your political education.
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Mar 29, 2023 05:02
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Oh, well then I take it back. Mb.
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Mar 29, 2023 05:05
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Oh, well then I take it back. Mb. No problem. Does anyone else not like Beau of the fifth column? Like I'd prefer if my dad didn't listen to him because he sounds really dumb. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2023 05:30
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Was rereading Imperialism and came across this important section: if this was the case it was a relatively brief period of like 20-30 years and it's ending, the monopoly was on financial services and in particular us dollars. that's curently fracturing. this was not exactly surprising and trying to secure things while the trajectory was nearer top is exactly why american switched to a more direct attempt at extraction
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Mar 29, 2023 05:38
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Thoughts on Fredric Jameson? Good, bad? I'm doing some writing that involves post-Lacanian Marxist theory on ideology (Althusser, Zizek) and my lit review is steering me towards Jameson, but I'm not super familiar with him. I'd also be interested in Jameson takes. I thought the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism was a very good read, but I'm not familiar with the breadth of his work. He seems to be referenced quite often.
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Mar 29, 2023 15:19
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thechosenone posted:No problem. Does anyone else not like Beau of the fifth column? Like I'd prefer if my dad didn't listen to him because he sounds really dumb. He's a shitlib anarchist who voted Biden, it seems like he's genuine in giving a poo poo about changing things from what I've seen of his videos but it's very much reacting to headlines of the day and no long term analysis (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2023 15:36
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Cpt_Obvious posted:What struck me about this is that the most recent form of imperialism does not have any division because there is only one large monolithic empire. So I thought I'd ask the thread how this would impact the analysis. Lenin puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of monopoly in imperialism going so far as to conclude that imperialism is just a form of monopoly. Well, what happens when there is a monopoly on empire? This has happened before: Genoa, Netherlands, and Great Britain. All three attained capitalist hegemony, but as the rate of profit continues to fall, states shift from industrial to financial logic to continue accumulation. The industrial base shifts outside the borders of the imperial metropole, where it accumulates a power of its own. The empire, the hegemon, cannot maintain its status. Through a series of crises, it will fall to an emerging industrial rival, usually one built up by its own financialized investment. Yesterday, that was the United States. Today, it's China. There is no monopoly on empire.
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Mar 29, 2023 15:55
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Beau of the fifth column was also convicted of human trafficking and profiting from illegal immigrant labor. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2023 16:24
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I watched some Beau video awhile ago that was linked somewhere and my recommendeds for the next 3 months always included the video he did that day, which 90% of the time read like one of those Snopes articles to the tune of "Yes it may be factually true that Joe Biden once twirled his thin moustache before blowing up an orphanage, BUT" No clue about his personal ideology or whatever, I assume it's just bog standard neoliberalism with a different background. I'm sure there's worse people around but if you're wanting to radicalize people versus making them a small bit unhappy with a small part of the status quo, I wouldn't think he's got much to offer. Wolff is a better general recommendation for actually getting people to think about things even if I have my own issues with him. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2023 16:29
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Polgas posted:Beau of the fifth column was also convicted of human trafficking and profiting from illegal immigrant labor.  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2023 17:08
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you should be killed for knowing and watching all these youtube personalities
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Mar 29, 2023 17:10
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Speaking of killing, can someone recommend me a good biography of both marx and engels?
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Mar 29, 2023 17:11
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Lenin wrote a pretty decent and short biography of both, I'm pretty sure e: there's quite a lot of these i guess https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/index.htm I've only read the lenin ones but they're solid intros the bitcoin of weed has issued a correction as of 17:21 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 17:18
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