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vaperroreon · 1 year

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As a black woman, any feminism that treats womanhood as something you can opt into rather than an oppressive social construct that is used to oppress females while empowering males will always fail to meet my needs. When we broaden the definition of "woman" to the point that it doesn't have any bearing in material reality we lose the ability to clearly discuss the ways that women are treated specifically for being female (and while all women are affected by misogyny, a lot of more brutal and repressive forms of oppression tend to affect brown and black women disproportionately).

"Human female" is a clear and useful definition. Is 50% of the population not inclusive enough for you?

You’ve done what no gendercrit in my mentions has done and actually put an effort in an argument so I’ll be more nice than I usually am about this

For one, I just don’t understand how the terf/radfem/whatever ideology is meaningfully conductive to supporting black women. Ignoring the black trans women who get murdered and the response being just to call them men, the racism in the ideology is very specific. Like, I literally saw a tiktok of someone calling Zendaya a secret man and doing skull measurements to prove her point.

Skull measurements of a black women. In the current year. To defeat the evil trans women. Sure.

And I’ve said this before, but any ideology that arbitrarily cuts off womanhood at the point of how “woke” it is (which is a common accusation of trans people) will just end up fucking over black women. After all, it’s already happening.

And another thing: people opt into gender all the time. Gender is social, and we all socially decide our own perception of ourselves and decide our perception of others. Currently, the personal is political, and the radfem answer, like the fascist answer, is to just make some peoples personal too political, to the point of ostracizing them. But the real answer is to build a world where the personal isn’t political at all, because why should it be? Humans created the world the personal lives in, we can create it again. TERFs don’t abolish, let alone answer the questions of gender, they just enforce it in their own placebo-empowering way.

A TERF would tell you upholding personal as political is a meaningful protection of women when it’s really upholding the societal ills that hurt them, noticeably nonwhite women. This is another tie to fascism, and so is the idea that trans “ideology” is throwing out material conditions.

Throwing away the way that we have internalized the personal as political is not rejecting materialism. In fact, it’s refocusing the conversation on material conditions. The trans community’s material conditions, if you haven’t noticed, are fucked. Trans women speaking out against oppression and the right to self actualization is not an attack on cis women’s rights anymore than poor black people speaking out against oppression and the right to self actualization isn’t an attack on poor white people.

There is no zero sum game in this society, only the ones that the oppressor class create for their own gain. TERFs uphold the white supremacist and pro-capitalist idea that rights and support are things that marginalized people have to pry from eachother, denying women the ability to build their own united front against the threats of fascist misogyny and capitalism. Basically, TERF ideology is on the side of the people enacting these systems onto women. In countries where trans people are more accepted, there is no statistical evidence for cis women getting attacked. In fact, the opposite happens.

And let’s be clear, shit like “adult female” is a very poor way to describe women. It’s usually backhanded in its implications against trans people obviously, and the people using that term aren’t sending their best, but let’s ignore that. Let’s just look at it in an entirely descriptive lens. Let’s just look at it as an ability to describe 50% of the population.

Nah.

There’s a lot of good arguments against this but there’s one I prefer.

The issue, however, is not whether we can find some biological property that is acquired by most girls at least roughly at the same time that girls become women. Rather, the issue is whether the possession of any such property is necessarily tied to being a woman. There is reason to think that it is not, for we do not distinguish women from girls on the basis of whether they have reached sexual maturity or full height, or on the basis of whether they have completed puberty or have completed puberty but not too recently, or even on the basis of statistical averages for when any of these biological milestones are reached. That would entail that the age at which a girl becomes a woman is variable in ways that it is not. There is a wide range of ages at which girls complete puberty, but we do not, on that basis, recognize a wide range of ages at which girls become women. Moreover, research suggests that (in the United States) African American girls complete puberty, on average, almost a year earlier than white girls, and most girls complete puberty earlier than most boys. However, we do not infer that AfricanAmerican girls become women almost a year earlier than white girls, or that boys become men later than girls become women. Nor would we take seriously the suggestion that, because historically the average age for the completion of puberty used to be much higher, people used to become men or women much later than they do now. Insofar as we are prepared to recognize variability in the age at which people become women or men, it is typically because we recognize that, crossculturally or crosshistorically, variation in social norms has resulted in variation in the age at which manhood or womanhood is reached. In certain cultures, for example, young teens who pass certain initiation tests are then recognized as men or women. At least many of us are willing to allow that, in those cultures, manhood or womanhood arrives earlier than in our own.

It seems plausible, then, to suppose that, in the sense of “adult” in which one becomes a man or a woman when one reaches adulthood, “adult” denotes a social category. In the United States, for example, we start calling someone a man or woman at the age of 18 or 21 or thereabouts, not because we believe that some biological landmark has been reached within that age range, but rather because of social factors such as the new legal rights and responsibilities that are acquired at those ages and cultural norms about the appropriate minimum age for marriage, independence from one’s parents, etc. This is not to deny that “adult” has one or more biological senses that can be applied to mature human beings no less than to mature chimpanzees, but biological adulthood is certainly not the only factor that we rely on as a basis for distinguishing women from girls. We rely on social factors as well.

If you applied to a lot of concepts the same strict understanding radfems view womanhood, you’d begin to fall apart. People already meme it enough (“A chair is…”) but it’s true.

I’m not typing this much just because I happen to be 🏳️‍⚧️ trans 🏳️‍⚧️ . It’s because the only way to be ideologically consistent in a progressive worldview like mine (Not as a brag, just as a political descriptive.) is to understand the identifier of gender, like other things, as a varied and complex thing with various degrees of human interference & creation, and the path towards revolution does not require the subjugation or oppression of trans people.

#trans stuff #tw:transphobia #tw: long post #tahm talks

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feministdragon · 10 months

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Sasha Lilley: Let me end by asking you about, how you think that radicals can help push things in a way that we can unstick the situation that we're stuck in. I mean the prevailing ideology, as you've described, is one of really of a hopelessness about any change beyond the present. The present is the best.

David Graeber: They cultivate a hopelessness.

Sasha Lilley: Indeed. So how can we struggle against that hopelessness? And I don't mean in terms of a cheering squad. But how does one counter? How should radicals counter that ideological campaign, in a way that you think might be effective, shifting things in a different direction?

David Graeber: We need to look at both what's happened in the past and also what's happening now. I really think that, if we can't know whether a good society is possible, it's better to like, live with hope, you know? I say it's a responsibility to others to do that. I go further. I think there is a responsibility, to actually look at the possibilities for improvement, and take the risk. It is possible. But if you look around, what people do is the opposite. They look around, and they just can't believe that good things really are happening, when they are. An example: I always get, is Kurdistan, where I just got back from a few weeks ago. (2018)

David Graeber: And this is where the YPG is fighting against against the remains of ISIS, and now against Turkey, which basically had been the sponsor of ISIS all along, but now kind of dropped the pretense and attacked them directly.

Sasha Lilley: and have embraced a radical ideology. Radical politics.

David Graeber: Yes. The philosophy which has largely developed, has emerged from the PKK and the sort of movements of women within the PKK challenged its old marxist ideology and gradually Ojalan, the sort of intellectual leader of the PKK, embraced this stuff and especially while he's been in prison, he's been reading a lot of Murray Bookchin and took up the ideas of social ecology, democratic confederalism, but doing a Kurdish version of that, with a very strong emphasis not just on ecology but on women's rights and replacing those proletarian revolutions as women's revolution.

Gender has to come first. So basically, when I was (unintelligible), people said quite frequently, it's that, well we're anti capitalists, but we've learned from the 20th century that you can't get rid of capitalism without getting rid of the state. And you can't get rid of the state without getting rid of patriarchy. How to get rid of patriarchy? It's going to be long and complicated process. But making sure all women have access to automatic weapons, that's a start. You know, all those images you see of women with machine guns, that's not a coincidence. So that's also not just like, oh, they're desperate to harm anybody. No, it's very, very self conscious feminist ideology going on there. And the fascinating thing to me is why, aren't people all over the world, saying “Oh my God, it's Spain 1930s all over again!” I mean, some are, right? But the reaction on the part of probably the majority of leftist organizations is “This can't be real. They're faking it. They're pretending to be like libertarian communists and eco-feminists, just to get our attention.” Which is of course, first of all, deeply racist. But even aside from that, I mean, it's like the most narcissistic, absurd position I ever heard. It's like “that's right. Really they are a bunch of stalinists. This is the line. But in order to get like Western left support they're pretending to be anarchists. Like sure. If I wanted to fake an ideology to get international support, I choose anarchism. That's going to happen! Total idiots. If you’re going to fake an ideology you’re going to be liberal or an islamist, those kind of guns tanks and planes ideologies. But to show something about the sort of defeatism that people just can't believe it's really happening.

https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=298917

#radfem #women with submachine guns #PKK #Kurdish #David Graeber #Dawn of Everything #feministdragon

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cosmicanger · 1 year

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I deliberate didnt put source cause I knew wintercorrybriea was going to steal this image and it was an image you cant easily find using reverse image searching. Again winter and co hate me for shit they do themselves, it is hypocritical af.

even passed the badjacketing and abuse by proxy i face on here affecting my likes/social capital (everyone online has social capital), the way i blog proves that a Black marginalized gender person who calls out antiBlackness when it isnt socially profitable can post something first and a Black person w more social capital can post the exact same thing and get more likes and/or support. some basic dynamics that everyone knows but acts like cant somehow be described and they dont want to recognize the power dynamics at play here.

social capitalists like winter arent even mad at me, they are mad that i am honest and upfront about how social capital works and winter and others do not like that how I blog exposes their hypocrisy: they “dont know how social capital works” but always protect their own social capital, they “don’t care about social capital or clout”, but attacks anyone who disrupts said social capital they “don’t care” about. again, have you ever see winter or any of these other social capitalists used this much energy they use on me onto anyone nonblack being antiBlack? how about a Black person with a lot of clout being anti-Black? they are too scared to do all that so they punch down. winter literally started posting more Black content since i went back and made this blog all Black content and clothes.

y’all can hate me or avoid liking anything on my blog (but still following me) forever, i know my worth and i know how i blog does much more for Black ppl than whatever most of y’all say (lie) about doing for Black ppl. 99% of ppl on Tumblr are actively antiBlack and selfish af it shows. most of y’all stop wearing masks so y’all already part of the global, anti-Black eugenics project.

#wintercorrybriea2 #wintercorrybriea

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 1 year

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“‘Capitalist Kings’ Doomed C.C.F. Speaker Tells House,” Toronto Star. February 4, 1933. Page 3. --- Man Jailed in Toronto Police Court Because They Can't Get Jobs, Is Charge --- LIVELY DEBATE ---- Ottawa, Feb. 3 - Capitalism, for the second successive day, was subject to a barrage of criticism in the House of Commons yesterday from the fiery little group in the "southeast corner” as debate on J. S. Woodsworth's motion, calling for the immediate setting up in Canada of a co-operative commonwealth was resumed.

It was remarked upon in both lobbies that, while a motion of similar purport has been introduced at least twice before by Mr. Woods- worth, and had resulted in an academic discussion only, with both major parties holding apathetically off, an this occasion they had "taken their coats off" and stepped into the fray.

Col. G. R. Geary, J. R. MacNicol and Earl Lawson, Toronto Conservatives, rose to the defence of the present system, which, they said, offered advantages far superior to those of the "communistic state." which, they charged, the C.C.F. favored.

That the ultimate abolition of the present system was inevitable. was the keynote of an earnest address by E. J. Garland (C.C.F., Bow River), who quoted history to show no econemic system not founded on social justice could last.

And as an example of the social injustice existing under this system. he described a morning spent in a Toronto police court.

Out of Works Jailed "A steady stream of men, fine men, between the ages of 18 and 40, filed before the magistrate, charged with vagrancy. They were asked if they had jobs. No, they replied. 'We plead guilty to vagrancy. We've tried to get work, and cannot. And to each of these the magistrate said, Very well. Three months."

"Imagine," said Mr. Garland, "the social injustice of this. The magistrate was sympathetic. He was as much a victim of the system as the prisoners before him. Three months. What for?" and the speaker's words rang out through the chamber. "For the solitary crime of not being able to get a job under a system which makes it next to impossible for them to get one. Do you call this a Christian society? Do you call this a human society?"

Earl Lawson (Cons., W. York) appeared unconvinced. He wanted to know the date of Mr. Garland's experience in police court. "I don't have to give you a date. Go into any police court in Canada, and you will find the same thing," replied Mr. Garland, while government benches laughed.

The financial emperors, and capitalistic kings of to-day were doomed, just as surely as the despotic kings and emperors of history were doomed, predicted Mr. Garland.

He threw a challenge at the government, to "get up and tell us what solution they can offer to these conditions, conditions in which man has. not even the right to work, and is. kicked out of his job whenever the profits show his services can no longer be utilized. No. This system is definitely done. It has definitely come to its miserable conclusion.”

Conservatives Laugh Gloomy as was the future of the present system as pictured by Mr. Garland, its defenders as represented in the government benches, found it amusing, and laughter greeted Mr. Garland's dramatically delivered conclusion.

John R. MacNicol brought Mr. Garland to his feet again by charging he had refused to give the date of his visit to a Toronto police court. Mr. Garland promised to furnish the date of his visit, and the name of the magistrate presiding.

The claims of the C.C.F. were pure socialism, Mr. MacNicol went on. He attacked the attitude, which he said, the C.C.F. group took, that "if we do not take it in an orderly manner, we will have it jammed down throats, in a mighty upheaval."

Long after Earl Lawson. (Cons. York W.) had concluded his ringing defence of capitalism, the cheers of his confreres in the Conservative lobby were heard in the House. Mr. Lawson parried words with Mr. Woodsworth, whom he had accused of "extolling the conditions existing In Russia."

"The hon. member is twisting my words. I have never extolled Russia in the wholesale manner with which he accuses me," cried Woodsworth, shouting his words to overcome the uproar which his interruption stirred from government benches. Despite cries of "sit down." Mr. Woodsworth stuck to his point. He was out of order, ruled Speaker Black, and could not "make a speech now

Bourassa Scores System In a fiery address, delivered with all the gesture and vehemence which has made him famous as an orator, Henri Bourassa (Ind.. Labelle) slashed the injustices and malpractices of the present system. yet told the House he intended to vote against Mr. Woodsworth's resolution.

This was because, instead of urging all classes of people to co-operate righting the wrongs of to-day by a gradual process, it attempted by at revolutionary change in the very constitution of the country to effect these badly needed changes.

"In the name of all that is true and legitimate in private initiative and private property, which is now being expropriated as fast as it can created in Russia: in the name of ali that is best in our past traditions, Canadian, British, or French, I seriously call upon the members of the various parties in this House to forget for a moment their party differences, and do all they can, not to counteract every new idea that is presented as being a form of bolshevism. but to listen attentively and sympathetically to every suggestion which is made, prepared to accept what we think right.

“Do not let us endeavor to crush the growing feelings and aspirations of a suffering people by telling them that what was good enough for their fathers is good enough for them. Do not let us tell them this is a passing crisis, and that things will adjust themselves. We have deceived them. too long.”

Gordon Wilson (Cons., Wentworth), the oldest member in point of service in the House "by the grace of providence, and the use of sweet cider." thought Canadians should do as their ancestors had done in times of stress: “tighten up their belts and take to the woods."

Chides Miss Macphail He waxed witty at the expense of Miss Agnes Macphail, whom he dubbed Oil Queen of the West" and whom he claimed "had left the ranks of anti-capitalists and invested in oil.”

Proof, he thought, of the capitalistic tendencies of the only woman in parliament was the fact that, after she had addressed the Rockton Women's Institute recently, that body had received that bill for covering Miss Macphail's expenses.

He read from a dispatch which. he said the Toronto Daily Star had sent to all their correspondents, instructing them to interview their local member on the Russian barter proposal.

‘I told The Star's correspondent that I did not wish to make a statement until the government had had time to examine the feasibility of the proposal. My statement appeared in The Star," he said.

Col. G. R. Geary said that like other members, he had watched with considerable interest the formation of the C.C.F.

"I expected this would furnish us with details of the planned economy we are hearing so much about," said the member for Toronto South. "But so far I have been disappointed. We have heard little but a diatribe against capitalism."

Col. Geary asserted the new movement looked toward the capitalization of unrest, whether conscious or not. He declared that the small vote received by Norman Thomas in the last presidential election showed how little support there was in the United States for this sort of thing.

Against Speculators "The member for Bow River made. an attack on capitalism. I think I could agree with him that we should clip the wings and destroy the power of those who manipulate the stock market and otherwise take unfair advantage of the producer and worker," he added.

Something could be said both for and against a central bank, the speaker continued. It would be expensive and, so far as the members. of the C.C.F. were concerned, they would still be in the hands of the bankers.

A blunt challenge to the two "old parties" to state one concrete proposal for bettering present conditions was thrown by William Irvine, (C.C.F., Wetaskiwin)..

The C.C.F., on the other hand, offered something tangible, he claimed.

The C.C.F., he said, "guarantee to every Canadian economic independence."

"Too utterly vague," was the way A. W. Neil, quiet-spoken Independent from Alberni, B.C., summed up the aims of the C. C. F. While much of their program was very desirable, he felt called upon "reluctantly to vote against them."

Brings in Libel Case Grave charges that political pressure had been brought to bear in connection with the case of James Harpell, recently convicted of libel in printing accusations against the Sun Life Insurance Co. of Montreal, were made by Henri Bourassa seeking to show that all large enterprises in Canada were "built upon fraudulent processes or watered stock."

One example, he said, was the lumber industry, which had suffered. from the "brigandage of a handful of the most unscrupulous financiers. in Canada."

"Another example." he continued, "is the operation of the Sun Life Insurance Co. There has been sensational trial of a man in Montreal who. I think, wrote foolish. articles. Not that what he wrote was untrue, but he wrote in a very foolish tone. But the manner in which that trial was conducted is a striking picture of the spirit that prevails. He had engaged 'good lawyers to defend him. Those lawyers made to understand if they took up his case they were done for as far as the favor of the Quebec government is concerned, the head of which is a director in the concern.

"They quit the case.. The case was shifted from one court to another till it reached the judge who I do not wish to be disparaging. I think he is a very nice man-before he became a judge had all his life. been a corporation lawyer, connected. with the organization of some of the most shameful enterprises of this. country."

He had studied a report of this company, he said, a report which I had been "thrown out" through the efforts of Hon. Mr. Robb and G. D.. Finlayson. This report, on its face. showed a diminution of $6.000.000 in their assets. Yet they increased the dividends to their shareholders from 5 to 75 per cent, in one year, with the result that the shares, originally $100, were quoted at some $3,000 to $4,000.”

#parliament of canada #parliamentary debate #co-operative commonwealth federation #canadian socialism #anti-capitalism #capitalism in canada #capitalism in crisis #policing the crisis #poverty crimes #conservative party of canada #conservative politics #j. s. woodsworth #henri bourassa #politics of chaos #great depression in canada

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serenata-your-neighborhood-lefty · 3 years

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all).

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

#politics for ts #long post #anonymous #ask

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pandoratheprocrasticreator · 3 years

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I listened to the TAZ Grad finale!

Fellas is it gay to become imbued with the essence of the sea after influence from your water genasi teammate, pester said teammate afterwards to name a boat after you, and sail away with them into the sunset to run a cruise line scam and become morally righteous pirates?

Ive been looking at people’s reactions on the finale and yeah I loved the chaos magic parts! The whole issue with the mishandling of D&D mechanics was never really a problem with me, although I know some people feel more strongly about that than I do.

Personally, I’ve always listened to TAZ for the story and not the actual D&D so I never really took issue with any of the DM-ing mistakes Travis did. Parts of the actual story had problems (the centaurs, Ranier, other points where Travis tried to be inclusive but implemented it where it wasn’t relevant) but overall I think the enjoyable parts far outweighed the bad.

And the McElroys in general are funny as hell so even though Grad wasn’t as profound as Balance or as sad as Amnesty I still enjoyed it a lot! I would probably put Grad above Amnesty but below Balance, but of course Balance holds a special place in my heart.

A problem people had with the finale that I didn’t notice while listening was that of all their talk of “destroying capitalism,” the trio settled down to comply with capitalist society at the end. And while I do agree that the “this system is bad but let’s slowly make change from within” message has been done to death, I don’t think that the ending was necessarily performative and disingenuous on the McElroy’s part.

The first point is that even though the trio decided to participate in Nua’s society in stereotypically “exploitative” careers, (particularly in Fitzroy and Firbolg/Gary’s case) they did so explicitly to keep people from being exploited by the system. Not to mention their paths fit their character arcs pretty well.

Fitzroy’s “who will protect the weak from the strong” speech doesn’t indicate a sleazy lawyer willing to exploit the law to make a quick buck. One person described him as one of those pro-bono lawyers and I agree with that comparison. Fitzroy is a morally good person at his core, and he initially thought the hero society would help him do good, and after becoming disillusioned with hero society, he decided to carve out his own system to allow him to do good, both by being a lawyer and by being a pirate that only attacks rich assholes. (I really like that he clarified he would only attack rich assholes my chaotic good lawyer boi <3)

Firbolg’s whole character arc of being conscientious of resources to help the community instead of hoarding things to himself, in my opinion, culminates neatly with his decision of becoming a financial advisor. He has learned that both the “share all your resources without regard for the future” ideals of the Firlbolg and the “hoard all your resources for your own benefit” ideal of Nua’s society are both flawed extremes, and has dedicated his career to helping communities find a balance between the two.

Argo’s cruise seems more of a small business to me than a capitalistic venture, but I have never taken an econ class in my life so I digress. His character arc was about finding something to live for other than the past and I think it’s a good conclusion to his arc that he commemorates his mother and friends with the cruise line but still seeks out his own future outside of that by becoming a pirate. His original plan was to go with the establishment and work with one of the most powerful heroes in the world until he gets revenge, so it’s nice to see him grow to find his own self sustaining outside of the establishment.

The second point is that TAZ Grad was never about destroying capitalism. That was a joke that Travis laid the foundation to, but it was the players who made that joke and rolled with it. Tumblr user @fitzroythecreator wrote a really good analysis of how the main theme of Grad was self reliance which I agree with. While that is one of the main themes, I will be focusing on the theme of capitalism that a lot of people tend to focus on.

The characters’ goal was to destroy the HOG, which was an allegory for how organizations function under capitalism, but never a direct parallel with capitalism as an ideology or functional system itself.

When they first joked about “ending capitalism” by blowing up the HOG I was concerned because that’s not how anything works. The HOG was just one cog (heh) in the capitalist machine that was Nua’s society, and while destroying it would cause significant damage and change, it wouldn’t immediately shift everyone’s worldviews to discard their capitalist society as a whole. If the boys carried out the mission and all of a sudden the whole world was fixed, it would be even more disingenuous to present a utopian solution to a pressing, real world problem that simply cannot be solved this way.

I’m glad that they didn’t end capitalism. Social issues like this can never realistically be resolved by three spunky heroes on an adventure. You would need action from an entire population. Often violent action. There were already issues with too many NPCs in the spotlight so describing and entire population’s uprising would have exacerbated the problems even more. As four white men, the McElroys neither had the answers for how to end capitalism, nor would their medium of a D&D podcast have allowed them to present them effectively.

From my perspective, the way they would have actually ended capitalism was to go to war like Chaos and Order wanted. In this case, the entire social order and way of life for Nua would have been overturned. The main characters, Fitzroy most vocally, reject this option because of the human toll (or elves, or dwarves...whatever the term for that is for D&D races). Instead, they disturb the system to expose its flaws and let society recognize said flaws in the background. (Again, they couldn’t focus too much on it as it would take away from focus on the main characters.) Then, they choose to find their own place in the system and fix it from within.

I’m not surprised that the McElroys would pick the “change the flawed system from within” route over the “use continuous and possibly violent action to force rapid social change” route in the end. While the second stance could work if written correctly, there’s a lot more room for the message conveyed to be catastrophically bad if the writing doesn’t work. I’m personally glad that the McElroys, who don’t have a solution, presented the tamer first take instead of trying to give a solution with the second take and failing spectacularly.

TAZ: Grad was social commentary on the problems of late stage capitalistic society, but it never tries to present a clear answer on how to end this society. Rather, it recognizes that this is a problem that can’t be solved by one small group of people. It presents several possible solutions to navigate this society to bring yourself happiness within this soul crushing system while slowly changing the attitude of the society. After all, if everyone quietly changed societal attitudes for the better, then perhaps one day the population will be united enough to bring about the drastic social change that we all hope for.

#taz: graduation #taz grad #fitzroy maplecourt #argo keene #taz firbolg #SHUT UP JESSICA #this is the kind of analysis i do with media when im bored #except none of my friends that i share my bad takes with know about taz grad so #its your problem now

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comrade-meow · 3 years

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Soviet anti-prostitution poster: “After the destruction of capitalism — the proletariat will abolish prostitution — the great scourge of humanity!”

In the first part of this series, we deconstructed the notion that “transwomen are women” from a Marxist perspective. In that piece I said that notion is perhaps the most destructive facing the left today, but I’m going to have to reconsider that assertion as we tackle the next anti-feminist/anti-Marxist “big lie” facing the left today, the notion that “sex work is work”. Marxism has always recognized prostitution as one of the vilest forms of exploitation; every major Marxist revolutionary has condemned it in unequivocal terms. The Communist Manifesto openly proclaims that the socialist revolution will do away with “prostitution both public and private.”[1] In her first major work, Nadezhda Krupskaya, described how revolutionary workers, during one night of major labor strikes, also directed their rage at the brothels, destroying eleven of them in a single night.[2] And, yet, despite this damning and overwhelming Marxist condemnation of prostitution, the left has started to drink the “sex-work” Kool-Aid. This ranges from assertions that prostitution (and pornography, which is just filmed prostitution) is just a job like any other to outright proclaiming it liberating for women, a strike against bourgeois moralism! Pimps have become re-cast as “managers”, and johns as “clients”. Some so-called “Marxists” have even come out in support of collectivized brothels under socialism! Unsurprisingly, most of these declamations are being made by men who, distraught that the revolution wants to take away “their porn” and “their women”, are now trying to have their cake and eat it too by twisting the Marxist notion of free love and the Marxist attacks on bourgeois morality to suit their own exploitative ends. In this they are assisted by the “PhD Prostitutes”, well-off bourgeois women, often holding advanced degrees, who engage in prostitution as a lifestyle “choice”. Joseph Goebbels would be proud.

But for now, we will leave these reactionary elements to stew where they are. First, it is incumbent to debunk the central assertion behind all of this, that “sex work is work”. To tear this apart, we need to first answer the question, what is labor? In his first major published work, The German Ideology, Marx defines labor as such:

“The first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, [is that humans] must be in a position to live in order to be able to ‘make history’. But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life.”[3]

To put it in more succinct terms, labor is the process by which human beings create, and facilitate the use, of products of social value. Does the act of sexual intercourse in of itself have social value? Does pornographic material have social value? The answer is no. Sexual intercourse is not a fundamental human need in the way food, water, clothing, and shelter are. Nor does intercourse in of itself help us interpret and understand the world in the way that science and art do. Intercourse does take on social value when its purpose is reproduction, in that case it becomes reproductive labor. It also holds social value when it becomes a means of interpersonal communication, such as intercourse between lovers, but that is not necessarily labor as it does not produce anything of wider use for a community. In Prostitution and Ways of Fighting It, Alexandra Kollontai said, “prostitutes are all those who avoid the necessity of working by giving themselves to a man, either on a temporary basis or for life.”[4] She is clearly separating it from labor, rather defining it as the last act of the most desperate and rejected members of society. What does prostitution create, then? It creates, and increases, alienation and exploitation of the worst kind. Kollontai also railed against prostitution because it “threatens the feeling of solidarity and comradeship between working men and women, the members of the workers’ republic. And this feeling is the foundation and the basis of the communist society we are building and making a reality.”[5]

But if prostitution is not labor, what is it? The answer is simple. Sexual slavery; contractual rape. Continuing on her points already made, Kollontai reasoned that “Prostitution arose with the first states as the inevitable shadow of the official institution of marriage, which was designed to preserve the rights of private property and to guarantee property inheritance through a line of lawful heirs.”[6] This is a summation of what Engels described in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State; that prostitution allowed for men to engage in carnal relations outside of their marriage. In the society that gave birth to prostitution, women were either the de facto property of men, or their de jure property, as in the case of wives. The prostitute was essentially a slave, with no rights or autonomy of her own; her entire existence was devoted to serving men. This continued in the age of feudalism, where prostitution was highly organized and ubiquitous, in order to maintain the chastity and faithfulness of men’s daughters and wives, who remained their property. But it is capitalism that has brought forth the full horrific nature of prostitution, where now the whole lot of woman is threatened with prostitution if they cannot afford to feed themselves and their families, or pay their bills, afford an education, or any of the other necessities working people struggle to obtain and secure. Again we see the separation of prostitution from labor; the prostitute in capitalist society is the woman who cannot make an existence by labor alone. The prostitute is not even considered a human being, but rather a commodity. They are below even the lumpenproletariat, that great mass that contains both those almost totally squeezed dry by capitalism, as well as the criminal element of society, which are still recognized as human. This is the class to which the pimp belongs to.[7] The pimp is a parody of the parasitical capitalist who profits off the labor of the working class; in the case of the pimp, he profits off the dehumanized woman turned commodity.

The industrial and technological revolutions that have occurred under capitalism have only made the prostitute’s life worse. With the advent of mass pornography, especially in the modern age of mass and instant communication, the prostitute is no longer the commodity of just one john, but of millions of johns, who fuck her by proxy; in turn the pimp’s profits are doubled, tripled, quadrupled beyond anything they ever were. And not just women now, but also homosexual and gender non-conforming men, who as “exiles” from the community of men are increasingly finding themselves subjected to the lot previously reserved almost exclusively for women. Almost every pornography website has a section for “transsexual” porn. In prostitution we see the development of patriarchy and capitalism in microcosm; the mass dehumanization of human beings aimed at smashing our solidarity with one another, leaving us increasingly alienated and isolated, viewing one another not as comrades in a common struggle, but vessels to derive selfish pleasure.

The pro-“sex work” advocates would have one believe that entering prostitution is a “choice” freely made on the part of the prostitute, and to deny this is to deny the prostitute’s “agency”. To illustrate their point, they trot out the “PhD Prostitutes” mentioned above. But Marxists should know better than to take such evidence at face value. The Marxist method looks not at the conditions of individuals isolated from society as a whole, but at the individual within the larger social context they exist in. A study conducted by the Soroptimist International, “an international volunteer organization working to improve the lives of women and girls, in local communities and throughout the world” found that most prostitutes “were sexually and physically abused as children, deprived and pushed into selling sex at age 14, on average.” It also goes on to say:

“In one study of prostituted women, 90 percent of the women had been physically battered in childhood; 74 percent were sexually abused in their families, with 50 percent also having been sexually abused by someone outside the family. Of 123 survivors at the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in Portland, Oregon (an agency offering support, education, shelter and access to health services to clients of all sex industries), 85 percent reported a history of incest, 90 percent reported a history of physical abuse, and 98 percent cited a history of emotional abuse.”

The study also notes that women of color, women from the third world, and indigenous women are even more likely to be forced into prostitution.[8] Additionally “71 percent reported being physically abused and 63 percent reported being raped by a customer. In a rigorous study of pimps in seven cities in the United States, 58 percent of prostitutes reported violence, while 36 reported having abusive clients.” It also challenges the notion that “high-class” “call-girl” prostitution is safer than street prostitution, finding that escorts will be abused by johns at least twice a year. But perhaps the most damning evidence presented in the study to the “choice” argument, is the evidence that “more than 90 percent of prostituted women in various surveys want to leave prostitution, but lack viable options.”[9]

Despite this, the pro-“sex work” crowd insist that prostitution is not contractual rape, because prostitutes are giving their consent. But how can “consent” obtained under economic coercion truly be consent? This sounds like arguments put forward in defense of capitalism as a whole; for example, that workers who do not like the conditions of their work or their wages can always “choose” to get a different job. Marxists rightly recognize this argument as a diversion, because of the external circumstances that prevent individuals from just easily choosing the job they want to do. It is the same with the prostitute; her “consent” is only a passive consent, not the active consent that recognized as being necessary for a truly consensual sexual relationship. The “PhD Prostitutes” who are able to freely choose and screen their “clients” represent an incredibly small minority, and perhaps cannot even be considered prostitutes, but bourgeois dilettantes “playfully” aping the suffering of the classes beneath them.

Similarly, abolitionists have come under attack from the “sex work” crowd, being accused of moralism and puritanism. They argue that criminalization only worsens the plight of prostitutes, whereas bringing them into the recognized workforce through legalization and unionization will ease their suffering. In this first part, they are correct. The criminalization of the prostitute is an expression of not just bourgeois, but patriarchal hypocrisy, because the prostitute is essentially punished for trying to survive, punished for fulfilling the desires of the ruling class. The second part, however, is dead wrong. The countries that have legalized prostitution have seen a dramatic increase in human trafficking, because contrary to the free choice arguments of the “sex work” hypocrites, there exists nowhere near enough women who want to commodify themselves to meet the demand.[10] In Australia and New Zealand, legalization has decreased the agency of prostitutes, and increased the power of pimps, by introducing the “all-inclusive”, a single fee paid to the pimp instead of directly to the prostitute, essentially depriving prostituted women of what little power of negotiation they had.[11] In Germany, a pregnant prostitute was coerced into having group sex with a bunch of men who “wanted” a pregnant woman; under German law, this was perfectly legal. The prostitute in question said she felt like she had no power to say no, as her agency had been usurped by the brothel.[12] Similarly, the “sex worker unions” advocated for by the “sex work” activists are another vehicle for pimps and their supporters to exercise their dominance; the Scarlet Alliance, Australia’s largest “sex worker union” even harassed survivors of the sex industry.[13] Rosa Luxemburg did advocate for the formation of revolutionary unions of prostitutes, but not to “regulate” prostitution, but to smash it. In fact, the advocates of full legalization (with or without regulation) belong in the company of fascists, not revolutionary socialists. The Nazis established an extensive and centralized system of brothels in cities and military camps, as well as in the concentration camps themselves. When Franco seized power in Spain, he overturned the abolitionist reforms of the Republic, and re-legalized prostitution so that men were guaranteed their brides were virgins and not “spoiled goods”.[14]

The most effective method of combatting prostitution has been the Nordic Model, which is made up of two components: 1) The decriminalization of selling sex, and the criminalization of pimps and johns; and 2) The creation and strengthening of state resources, such as education, professional training, counseling, and community support, to help prostitutes make a safe exit from the industry. Countries that have adopted the Nordic Model, such as Sweden, Norway, and Iceland have seen dramatic reductions in prostitution. The Swedish Ministry of Justice found that since the adoption of the Sex Buyer Law in 1999, prostitution has fully halved, and continues to decline.[15] Additionally, no evidence has been found that prostitutes are being forced underground as a result of this policy.[16] And most importantly, not a single prostitute has been murdered by a john since the law came into effect. What the pimps, johns, and their apologists cannot stand about the Nordic Model is that it ends their monopoly on power, and actually punishes their exploitation of women, all while empowering their former slaves. This is why they always try to erect obfuscations against the Nordic Model, even outright crying about how it victimizes the “poor johns”. Some of the more cunning faux leftists argue against the Nordic Model on the basis that it increases the power of the bourgeois state and police; or they claim that there is no use in combatting prostitution since no reform under capitalism will eliminate it. On the contrary, the Nordic Model represents a perfect example of a transitional demand. Trotsky defined the transitional demand as being a bridge between the minimum demands of social democracy and the maximum demands of revolutionary socialism; demands that would allow the oppressed to win not just key reforms, but also to increase their strength and confidence against the capitalist state. Transitional demands are not just calls for reform, but calls for openly revolutionary action that will spark reforms and strengthen existing ones. The Nordic Model is a perfect example precisely because it is a reform that strikes at the heart of the patriarchal and capitalist system; it allows the masses to see just who supports and benefits from prostitution. Eugene Debs, when he was city clerk of Terre Haute, advocated for a kind of proto-Nordic Model, refusing to assess fines on prostitutes, because the police took no action against the pimps or the usually wealthy johns. As for the false concerns about increasing the power of the bourgeois state and police, the Nordic Model, like any good transitional reform, forces the state and the police to actually work for, not against, the people they claim to represent. Would these same “socialists” so worried about the cops being unleashed on pimps and johns have cried the same tears when Eisenhower sent in the National Guard to enforce the desegregation of schools in the Jim Crow south? It would, at the very least, be amusing to see a socialist cite this as an example of giving the bourgeois state “too much power”.

To reiterate, every socialist revolution has struck with the full force of its power against prostitution and the sex industry. Every major socialist revolutionary has recognized the emancipation of women from sexual slavery as one of the basic tasks of the revolution. These “sex work socialists” are more than just hypocrites and revisionists, they are outright misogynistic reactionaries. The degeneration of the revolutionary left in the western world, especially in the Anglophone world is what has allowed these trends to sprout and grow. The pernicious influence of neoliberalism and postmodernism have infected the body of the revolutionary left; slowly eating away at it like gradual poisoning. The Marxist concept of free love aims to eliminate the current patriarchal system of sexual coercion and exploitation, and replace it with a humane and open system of actively consensual intimacy. Those who believe otherwise would best be served by dropping the act, and joining the Libertarian Party, because that is where their politics truly lie. The left needs to remember its mission; the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world, and take an active stand against the pimps and johns playing dress-up as communists.

#Anglo.txt

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years

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The fascist insurrection in Washington DC—which resulted in the storming of the US Congress, the panicked dispersal of terrified senators and members of the House, the delay of the official validation of Joseph Biden’s Electoral College majority, and even the occupation of the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—is a turning point in the political history of the United States.

The hoary glorifications of the invincibility and timelessness of American democracy have been totally exposed and discredited as a hollow political myth. The popular phrase “It Can’t Happen Here,” taken from the title of Sinclair Lewis’ justly famous fictional account of the rise of American fascism, has been decisively overtaken by events. Not only can a fascist coup happen here. It has happened here, on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.

Moreover, even if the initial effort has fallen short of its goal, it will happen again.

What occurred yesterday was the outcome of a carefully planned conspiracy. It was instigated by Donald Trump, who has been working with a gang of fascist conspirators strategically positioned within the White House and other powerful institutions, departments and agencies of the state. Wednesday’s operation carries with it the overwhelming stench of the Trump sons, close aides like Stephen Miller, and numerous others working behind the scenes within the military, the National Guard and the police.

The conspiracy utilized the well-known techniques of modern coups. The plotters identified the meeting of the Congress to ratify Biden’s Electoral College majority as the propitious time for action. The assault was prepared by weeks of lying claims by Trump and his minions that the 2020 election had been stolen. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rendered critical service by withholding Republican recognition of Biden’s election for weeks, thus providing time and legitimacy to Trump’s efforts to discredit the election with totally fraudulent claims of ballot fraud.

A majority of Republican congressmen and a substantial number of Republican senators orchestrated Wednesday’s political debate at which the legitimacy of the Electoral College vote was challenged, to provide the necessary pretext for the planned right-wing uprising. The final signal for the storming of the Capitol building was given by Trump himself, who delivered an insurrectionary harangue to his supporters, who—one can be certain—were directed by elements with police, military and paramilitary training.

It has already been widely noted that the fascist gangs encountered virtually no resistance as they stormed the Capitol. In the most critical and vulnerable areas of the Capitol building, the police were hardly to be seen. To politically evaluate the police response on Wednesday, one has only to recall the violence deployed last June against a peaceful anti-police brutality demonstration in Lafayette Park.

Had a left-wing protest been called in Washington to protest Trump’s efforts to overthrow the results of the election, the demonstrators—as everyone knows—would have been met with a massive show of force by the police and National Guard. There would have been police sharpshooters placed strategically on every building in the vicinity of the protesters. Military helicopters and drones would have been circling overhead. The slightest unauthorized movement by the crowd, however peaceful, would have been met with demands for its immediate dispersal, followed within minutes by the launching of barrages of tear gas cannisters. Hundreds, if not thousands, would have been kettled and arrested.

The response of the Democratic Party to the coup has been a pathetic display of political spinelessness. The first hours of the insurrection passed without a single prominent Democratic leader issuing a clear denunciation of the conspiracy, nor did any prominent Democrats call for popular resistance to the coup. Former President Obama and the Clintons, who are followed by millions on Twitter, remained silent throughout the day.

As for the president-elect, Biden waited hours before finally appearing before the public. After describing the attack on the Capitol as sedition, Biden made this extraordinary appeal to the leader of the conspiracy: “I call on President Trump to go on national television now, to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”

Normally, when confronted with an attempt to overthrow the constitutional regime, the political leader threatened by the conspiracy must immediately seek to deprive the traitors of all access to the mass media and a nationwide audience. But Biden, instead, called on Trump to appear on national television—to call off the insurrection he himself had organized!

Biden concluded his remarks with the following clarion call. “So, President Trump, step up.” This bankrupt appeal to the would-be fascist dictator will go down in history as Biden’s “Hitler, do the right thing” speech.

The Democrats, let alone the media, have no intention of exposing the full depth of the conspiracy and holding its plotters and organizers responsible. The effort to cover up the crime has already begun, with the media bloviating on the need for Democrats and Republicans “to come together in bipartisan unity.”

The decision of the House and the Senate, in the evening hours, to uphold Biden’s election is not the end of the crisis.

Appeals for “unity” with the conspirators clear the path for the next effort to carry out a fascist coup d’état. This is the lesson of the invasion of the state Capitol last April by armed fascist thugs in Lansing, Michigan and the subsequent conspiracy in the autumn of 2020 to kidnap and assassinate the Democratic governor of the state, Gretchen Whitmer. The Democratic Party and media quickly suppressed coverage of these crimes and hardly defended Whitmer against the attack. The plotters, thus far, have received little more than a slap on the wrist.

The Democrats’ response to the fascist conspiracy is not dictated merely by cowardice or stupidity. Rather, as representatives of the financial-corporate oligarchy, they are frightened that the exposure of the criminal conspiracy and its political aims would ignite a mass response within the working class that would spiral into a movement against the capitalist state and the interests it serves.

The effort to conceal the conspiracy must be opposed. Workers must take up the demand for the immediate removal and arrest of Trump. He cannot be allowed to remain in office, utilizing the immense power of the presidency to continue his plotting. His retention of the White House represents a massive threat to the people of the United States and the world. Trump still has the power to declare a national emergency and even launch a war. His finger remains on the nuclear trigger.

Nor should his co-conspirators be left in office. The Republican senators and congressmen involved in the conspiracy must be likewise removed from the Senate and Congress, arrested, placed on trial and sent to prison.

The continuing reference by the Democrats to their “Republican colleagues” is itself a mockery of democracy.

The demand must be raised for a public investigation with open hearings, aimed at identifying all those involved in the conspiracy, leading to their arrest and imprisonment.

Absolutely no confidence should be placed in the in-coming Biden administration—assuming that his inauguration is not blocked by a further uprising—to hold the conspirators to account and defend democracy.

It must never be forgotten that Biden and the Democrats represent nothing more than another political faction of the same ruling class. As Obama declared immediately after Trump’s election, the conflict between the Democrats and Republicans is nothing more than an “intramural scrimmage,” i.e., a friendly fight between members of the same team. In a statement issued Wednesday evening, Obama singled out Republicans for praise, writing obsequiously: “I’ve been heartened to see many members of the president’s party speak up forcefully today.” The only purpose of such a statement is to conceal the truth about the extent of the fascist coup.

The events of January 6, 2021 must be taken as a warning. The working class must elaborate a political strategy and plan of action to defeat future efforts to impose a dictatorship.

The political and economic dynamic of capitalist reaction and counterrevolution will continue, even with Trump out of office. This dynamic will not abate after January 20. The Democratic Party, whose congressional and senatorial delegation is stacked with millionaires and people with the closest ties to the CIA and the military, are no less capable than the Republicans of organizing a conspiracy to suppress democratic rights.

In any event, the policies of the Biden administration, which will pursue policies set by Wall Street and the military, will perpetuate and escalate the anger and frustration exploited by the fascists.

Throughout the past year, as it has conducted an unrelenting struggle against the ruling class policy of herd immunity, the Socialist Equality Party has shown in detail the connection between the ruling class’s inhuman response to the pandemic and the Trump administration’s assault on democratic rights.

The danger has not passed.

It is essential to build a network of rank-and-file committees in factories and workplaces capable of organizing broad-based popular resistance through the mobilization of all sections of the working class.

Above all, workers must understand that the disintegration of American democracy is rooted in the crisis of capitalism. In a society riven by staggering levels of social inequality, it is impossible to preserve democracy.

Draw the lessons of January 6!

Take up the fight for socialism and the defense of democratic rights by joining the Socialist Equality Party.

#coup #january 6 #capital hill #socialism #fascism #biden #democrats #republicans

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rametarin · 3 years

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progress.

I’m very bitter about the miseducation I received on the subject as a child. It was early 90s/late 80s propaganda, and I am still so fucking mad about it. It scarred me.

This is why I like to point to just how much progress we’ve made and how we’re almost at the end game for cheap, endlessly repeatable solutions for big issues such as climate change and pollution. I was not told of these as a child. I was given doom and gloom by people trying to psyche me up to yes-man vote for every bit of legislation they wanted to pass in the name of ‘saving the earth from greedy white western industrialists’, no matter how vacuous or pointless or counterproductive it actually was when critically examined.

It’s not that I don’t take climate change or pollution seriously. I absolutely do. That’s why I’m practically a frothing vitriol pile when I meet supposed “ecologists” and environmentalists that pretend nuclear isn’t a thing worth investing into, or object to it on,.”moral grounds.” Then have the audacity to say shit like, “but nuclear doesn’t break up hegemonieeeees! :C we need to restructure society!” Like the energy crisis is just a weapon to wield for social change.

But the thing is?

I want them to get more extreme in this way.

These same people are the sort of disingenuous people that claimed to just hate general, universal wrongs like, “sexism,” and “racism.” But, they’re the exact sorts that talked a big game about it, but ONLY ever talked about sexism against women. Only ever talked about racism, from whites, to literally anyone else, and only sorta barely kinda begrudgingly acknowledged one non-white group could be racist to another non-white group. Because the label was made specifically to make a histrionic headfuck about how evil whites are and how white western society is.

But when people started using their stated logic and philosophy to go after sexism against men, racism against whites, suddenly they mysteriously had issues with it, or objected to anti-sexism or anti-racism laws or policies being used to punish or reprimend people that way.

“oH, i’M SoRrY, i JuSt HaTe RaCiSm So MuCh! I gUeSs yOu MuSt hAtE iT lEsS tHaN i Do!” And so that weapon was used to beat the shit out of any legislation or social policy that self-described “progressives” used to try and benefit minorities but detriment regular caucasoids, state-side.

It was enough to prompt them to put, in writing, unambiguously and into philosophical policy not as a voluntary position, but as default, with Privilege Theory. Now they refused to acknowledge any definition of racism that DIDN’T accommodate Privilege Theory and define racism as Privilege + Power. Of which, they argued, being white inherently gave you this third party proxy advantage called privilege, being black meant you had none, hence ideologically it became impossible in any context for black people to be racist to whites. Problem solved, riiiiiiight?

Except, no. Not at all. That just highlighted and put to paper that ghost that had been haunting racial equality discourse for decades, in the judicious enforcement of those anti-racist policies. And now, black&white, clear as crystal, that stigma will have to live with the Intersectional Feminists as they argue for policies based on it. Instead of make it operating moral policy that cannot be proven to guide them and only be accused, they now own it.

I want these social-environmentalists to own the avenue from which they argue, now. Being “for the environment” won’t just be enough anymore, when the capitalists and the industrialists are dancing to every seemingly reasonable, seemingly benign step and STILL turning a profit while NOT contributing either to the models of global climate change or polluting the environment.

And we started to see that when nuclear was getting touted again as a good solution to both CO2 producing climate changing aersols, and pollution, and the energy crisis.

“But.. but.. the problem with nuclear is it doesn’t overturn social hierarchies and enforces the current capitalist nationalist hegemonyyyyyyy!! :(((((((((”

Well shit, Moonunit, here I thought you just cared about some carbon-oxygen and cow farts making the climate unlivable. That’s sure a complaint horse of a different color, now isn’t it?

So I look forwards to these disingenuous fucks being forced to own their REAL gripe and put it to words. I look forwards to when the only gripe left about environmental issues is that they’re “too capitalist, despite working.” I want capitalist solutions to environmental problems that don’t hurt the environment, but help it. When the only avenue of capitalism they have left to attack, is corporatist attachment to government itself, causing these problems.

Because technologically, they’re running out of black boxes and immovable objects to argue for their preferred outcome. And they know it.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

Text

Pluralistic: 26 Mar 2020 (EFF's videoconferencing backgrounds, the ideology of economics, LoC plugs Little Brother, Canada nationalizes covid patents, Exponential Thread, Sanders on GOP stimulus cruelty, record wind power growth, social distancing and other diseases, Badger Masks)

Today's links

EFF's videoconferencing backgrounds: With a deep cut from the NSA's secret listening post.

The ideology of economics: Economics doesn't have "laws" it has "policies."

LoC plugs Little Brother: Open access FTW.

Canada nationalizes covid patents: An Act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19.

Exponential Threat: Trump threatened to sue media outlets that aired this spot.

Sanders on GOP stimulus cruelty: "Millions for plutes, but not one cent for workers."

Record wind-power growth: Covid stimulus could start a Green New Deal.

Social distancing and other diseases: Do we trust IoT thermometer companies, though?

Badger Masks: UW Madison's open facemask design.

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

EFF's videoconferencing backgrounds (permalink)

Telework is a quiet reminder that we live, in some sense, in an age of wonders. As terrible as lockdown is, imagine it without any way to videoconference with your peers and colleagues.

But it's also a moment where we tremble on the precipice of cyberpunk dystopia, when calls for mass surveillance – both for epidemiology and stabilizing states that are bruised and reeling – meet a world where everything is online and amenable to "collection" by spooks.

This is, basically, the moment that EFF has been warning about for 30 years: the moment when the "digital world" and the "real world" fully merge, and where the distinction between "tech policy" and "policy" dissolves.

One way you can help keep this in your colleagues' minds is to use EFF's amazing, free/open graphics as your videoconferencing background (most of these are the creation of the brilliant Hugh D'Andrade).

Now, those are all great, but this one is Room 641A at AT&T's Folsom Street center, where the whistleblower Mark Klein was ordered to build a secret room so the NSA could illegally spy on all US internet traffic.

The ideology of economics (permalink)

Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century" advanced a simple, data-supported hypothesis: that markets left to their own will cause capital to grow faster than the economy as a whole, so over time, the rich always get richer.

https://boingboing.net/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-t.html

He's followed up Capital with the 1000-page "Capital and Ideology" – whose thesis is that the "laws" of economics are actually policies, created to "justify a society's inequalities," providing a rationale to convince poor people not to start building guillotines.

The first ideology of capital was the "trifunctional" system of monarchist France, dividing society into "those who pray," "those who fight," and "those who work."

After the French revolution, we enter the capitalist phase, then social democracies, and now, "meritocracies."

"Meritocracies" invest markets with the mystical power to identify and elevate the worthy, in a kind of tautology: those who have the most are worth the most. You can tell they're worth the most because they have the most.

("That makes me smart" -D. Trump)

In Piketty's conception, "Inequality is neither economic nor technological. It's ideological and political," where "ideology" "refers to a set of a priori plausible ideas describing how society should be structured" (think: Overton Window).

https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-thomas-piketty-takes-ideology-inequality

The major part of the book seeks to explain how the post-war social democracies gave way to the grifter meritocracies of today, pulling together threads from across the whole world to tell the tale.

On the way, he described alternatives that were obliterated, and others that were never tried, and shows how "meritocracy" gave us Trump, xenophobia, Brexit, and the Current Situation.

In particular, he's interested in why working class people stopped voting (spoiler: they no longer perceive that elites will pay attention to them irrespective of how they vote) — and what it would take to mobilize them again.

The elites' indifference to working people is grounded in an alliance between the Brahmin Left (educated, well-paid liberals) and the Merchant Right (the finance sector). Notionally leftist parties, like the Democrats, are dominated by the Brahmin Left.

But more than any other, Macron epitomizes this alliance: proclaiming his liberal values while slashing taxes on the wealthy — punishing poor people for driving cars, exempting private jets from his "climate" bill.

Life in a "meritocracy" is especially cruel for poor people, because meritocracies, uniquely among ideologies, blame poor people for poverty. It's right there in the name. French kings didn't think God was punishing peons, rather, that the Lord had put them there to serve.

"The broadly social-democratic redistributive coalitions of the mid-twentieth century were not just electoral or institutional or party coalitions but also intellectual and ideological. The battle was fought and won above all on the battleground of ideas."

As Marshall Steinbaum writes in his excellent review, Piketty's work doesn't just highlight new ideas in economics: it highlights the intellectual poverty of the economics profession and its tunnel vision.

"Economists cannot be allowed to be the arbiters of the intensely political concerns Piketty takes up in the book, and the good news is that there is reason to believe they won't be."

LoC plugs Little Brother (permalink)

Honored and pleased to have my book Little Brother included on the Library of Congress's excellent collection of open-access ebooks in its collection, which you can always access gratis but which may be of especial interest during the lockdown.

https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2020/03/more-open-ebooks-routinizing-open-access-ebook-workflows/

If you enjoyed Little Brother and its sequel Homeland, you might be interested in the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface, which Tor is publishing on Oct 12.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

If you're looking for more topical reading, Infodocket's carefully curated list of coronavirus resources is here for you:

https://www.infodocket.com/2020/01/31/2019-novel-coronavirus-resources/

Canada nationalizes covid patents (permalink)

Canada's Parliament has passed Bill C13, "An Act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19," amending patent law to create automatic compulsory licenses for any inventionused to fight covid, including diagnostics, vaccines, therapies or PPE.

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-1/bill/C-13/third-reading

As E Richard Gold writes, it's an "important signal that Canada will not support IP delays…While most firms are helping find solutions, this will prevent those who try to take advantage-by raising prices or limiting supply-or those who cannot deliver to block what is needed."

Exponential Threat (permalink)

"Exponential Threat" is a remarkable – and factual – political ad, one that contrasts Trump's statements on coronavirus with the spread of the disease in America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkMwvmJLnc0

More remarkable: Trump has threatened to sue the media for airing it, which is a totally cool and normal thing for someone who has sworn a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to do.

https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/2017/web/hero_images/Redacted_PUSA_Letter.pdf

"In case you needed more, here's an (admittedly incomplete) list of Trump statements on the novel coronavirus and COID-19"

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2020/03/25/exponential-threat-the-covid-19-themed-ad-that-the-trump-pence-campaign-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

Jan. 22: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China."

Feb. 2: "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It's going to be fine."

Feb. 25: "CDC & my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus."

Feb. 25: "I think that's a problem that's going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we're very close to a vaccine." [White House | New York Post]

Feb. 26: "We're going very substantially down, not up."

Feb. 27: "One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."

Feb. 28: "We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical."

March 2: "You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?"

March 2: "A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they're happening very rapidly."

March 4: "If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work, but they get better."

March 5: "I never said people that are feeling sick should go to work."

March 6: "I think we're doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down."

March 6: "Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. And the tests are beautiful. They are perfect just like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good."

March 6: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."

March 6: "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

March 8: "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus."

March 9: "The Fake News media & their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power to inflame the Coronavirus situation."

March 10: "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

March 13: National Emergency Declaration.

March 17: "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

Sanders on GOP stimulus cruelty (permalink)

This Bernie Sanders floor speech in the Senate on the GOP's relentless attempts to punish poor people in the covid relief package is a must-watch

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/fp3my0/bernie_goes_full_sanders_on_the_republicans_for/

tldr: GOP Senators are freaking out because some people in line to get the pittances they're doling out actually earn EVEN LESS than $1k-2k/month, and so they might get a raise in the form of covid relief.

That is, rather than taking the fact that this bare-minimum subsidy package exceeds "normal" income as a wakeup call to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 2009, the GOP is calling for cuts to aid to the most vulnerable Americans.

As Sanders points out, these same Senators had no problem with the Tax Scam, which poured trillions into the accounts of the richest Americans, directly and indirectly through stock-buybacks, which also left US business vulnerable and in need of trillions more today.

Now those bailed-out plutes want workers to risk death to "restart the economy," and the GOP will ensure they'll starve if they don't.

As ever, The Onion nails it:

https://politics.theonion.com/gop-urges-end-of-quarantine-for-lifeless-bipedal-automa-1842461351

"GOP Urges End Of Quarantine For Lifeless Bipedal Automatons That Make Economy Go"

Record wind-power growth (permalink)

As the world's wind-generation capacity increases, you'd expect annual growth to fall proportionately (it's easier to double a very small number than a very big one!), but this year should see the largest proportional growth ever, a 20% increase!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/25/worlds-wind-power-capacity-up-by-fifth-after-record-year

That number is uncertain (hello, coronavirus), but on the other hand, there's a massive stimulus package in the offing that could be used to restart the economy by saving the planet with renewable energy.

The non-adjusted, pre-virus projection for this year's total growth in wind power was an additional 76GW (to meet climate projections, that number has to rise to 100GW/year, and then to 200GW/year).

Social distancing and other diseases (permalink)

Though the evidence is a little shaky, it appears that social distancing has dramatically reduced the spread of other infectious diseases, like flu.

https://qz.com/1824020/social-distancing-slowing-not-only-covid-19-but-other-diseases-too/

The data comes from an Internet of Shit "connected thermometer" company that (allegedly) anonymizes its data and uses it for health surveillance; they report a massive drop-off in high temps relative to other years and pre-distancing levels.

The claims are plausible, but they're also an ad for an IoT company that sells a product no one needs, so take them with a grain of salt.

I'd be interested in STI transmission after weeks/months of government-recommended masturbation-over-hookups:

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-sex-guidance.pdf

Badger Masks (permalink)

A local hospital asked researchers at the UW Madison Engineering Design Innovation Lab to design them a field-expedient face-shield that could be mass-manufactured to protect its staff from coming cases.

https://www.wired.com/story/tinkerers-created-face-shield-being-used-hospitals/

Using hardware-store parts, the UW makerspace, and teleconferencing with self-isolating collaborators, the team designed an excellent mask, the Badger Shield:

https://making.engr.wisc.edu/shield/

They've manufactured and delivered 1,000 Badger Masks to the hospital and a Ford plant in MI is making 75,000 more this week for Detroit-area hospitals. Here's a technical spec you can follow if you have access to equipment and parts:

https://www.delve.com/assets/documents/OPEN-SOURCE-FACE-SHIELD-DRAWING-v1.PDF

It involves just 3 pieces: polyethylene sheets (laser- or die-cut), an elastic headband, and a 1" thick strip of self-adhesive polyurethane foam. For initial production, Midwest Prototyping used office-supply-store electric staplers for assembly.

The design process started with a teardown of an existing, approved mask, and the project lead, Lennon Rodgers, worked with collaborators to replicate it, sanity-checking successive designs with his wife, an anaesthesiologist.

They started hand-delivering prototypes to the hospital, who refined the design further, swapping in latex-free elastic and lengthening the shield. Tim Osswald from UW used his polymer engineering expertise to find a supplier who could create a custom die.

Now, more than 1M Badger Masks have been sought, with manufacturers like St Paul's Summit Medical tooling up to meet demand.

Other designs are popping up across America. San Francisco's Exploratorium is making 200+ shields/day using its own makerspace.

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago If the Constitution was a EULA https://web.archive.org/web/20050330012000/http://slate.msn.com/id/2115254/

#10yrsgo Discarded photocopier hard drives stuffed full of corporate secrets https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/03/18/hightech_copy_machines_a_gold_mine_for_data_thieves.html

#5yrsago TPP leak: states give companies the right to repeal nations' laws https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/press.html

#5yrsago Woman medicated in a psychiatric ward until she said Obama didn't follow her on Twitter https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/woman-held-in-psychiatric-ward-after-correctly-saying-obama-follows-her-on-twitter-10132662.html

#5yrsago Sandwars: the mafias whose illegal sand mines make whole islands vanish https://www.wired.com/2015/03/illegal-sand-mining/

#5yrsago Australia outlaws warrant canaries https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/australian-government-minister-dodge-new-data-retention-law-like-this/

#5yrsago As crypto wars begin, FBI silently removes sensible advice to encrypt your devices https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150325/17430330432/fbi-quietly-removes-recommendation-to-encrypt-your-phone-as-fbi-director-warns-how-encryption-will-lead-to-tears.shtml

#1yrago Article 13 will wreck the internet because Swedish MEPs accidentally pushed the wrong voting button https://medium.com/@emanuelkarlsten/sweden-democrats-swedish-social-democrats-defeat-motion-to-amend-articles-11-13-731d3c0fbf30

#1yrago EU's Parliament Signs Off on Disastrous Internet Law: What Happens Next? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/eus-parliament-signs-disastrous-internet-law-what-happens-next

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), Late Stage Capitalism (https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/).

Currently writing: I'm getting geared up to start work my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Data – the new oil, or potential for a toxic oil spill? https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/23/data-the-new-oil-or-potential-for-a-toxic-oil-spill/

Upcoming appearances:

Quarantine Book Club, April 1, 3PM Pacific https://www.eventbrite.com/e/quarantine-book-club-cory-doctorow-tickets-100931360416

Museums and the Web, April 2, 12PM-3PM Pacific https://mw20.museweb.net/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

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zorilleerrant · 4 years

Text

There’s all kinds of advice out there for writing villains and antagonists, and they’re generally pretty good. I think there’s a big topic missing in that conversation, though, and it’s the background characters that do bad but very small things. Someone who says a petty insult to your main character, maybe, or embodies the political position they’re fighting against, or attacks someone to drive the scene forward. Someone you’re never going to see again.

There’s one way to go about this that a lot of people advise, which is to give them elaborate backstories and motivations, and let them be the hero of their own narrative. That’s fine if you’re into that, but it’s a lot more complicated than what you need them for, and I don’t think it’s necessary.

What you want to do is go through the characters you’ve represented being these tiny nuisances, and figure out if they have anything in common. Are they all being represented in a certain, or written as if they’re the same person? Mix it up a little. Then you want to see whether you’re representing them as predominantly part of some class or another.

Is everyone complaining about your protagonists a woman? Either lean into it and have your protagonists discover that they’ve been being sexist all along, or dial it down - especially since more of your positive characters are men than women. If 75% of good guy background characters are men and only 25% women, then the fifty-fifty split in the antagonists is already troubling. You’re likely to accidentally write these minor antagonists as poor, nonwhite, disabled, and immigrant-coded as well.

Another thing to look out for is how you describe them. Common descriptors that come up are things like associating fat with greed - you might describe someone as pudgy, chunky, or overweight and then add that they’re selfish or opportunistic. Other negative physical descriptors are common as well: beady eyes, huge or misshapen noses, scars, pinched lips, crooked or yellowed teeth, jowls, saggy or ‘stretched’ necks, boniness, varicose veins, redness/yellowness/other ‘discoloration’, ‘let themselves go’, ‘didn’t look after themselves’, ‘clearly unhealthy’, etc.

All kinds of people are assholes, and the vast majority of people look unobtrusive and not particularly like anything. Pretty people are generally assholes too, and especially if you’re talking about the rich and/or socio-politically powerful, they’re much more likely (statistically) to be beautiful or at least conventionally attractive. When you associate physical ugliness and inability to match beauty standards with moral failings, you’re reinforcing a prominent Western social myth that you can ‘just tell’ who good and bad people are by looking at them. (This ties into eugenics and racial profiling as well, and is they key behind gender essentialism/transphobia.)

You also want to look for other cultural myths you might be perpetuating. Given the puritanical origins of a lot of Western thought and especially literature, you most likely don’t notice it when it comes up, but it comes up a lot. Associating drunkenness/intoxication, lust/sexuality, and physical comfort/relaxation with moral corruption is pretty common, and not great. Yes, sometimes people get drunk and do inappropriate things, or sexually harass someone, or hoard resources. Outside of the specific causal contexts, using ‘debauchery’ and ‘appetite’ is showing its origins a little too blatantly. Even with a proximal cause, if that’s the only reason you have behind characters behaving badly, you should question that.

Capitalist myths come through a lot, too. Your background characters are often going to be ‘lazy’, to not have jobs, education, or (realistic) goals. Maybe they’re ‘criminals’ or involved in ‘gangs’ or drug dealing. Maybe they’re sex workers. Generally they’re ‘loitering’ or ‘causing trouble’ with no real explanation of either what they’re doing or what the negative consequences of that would be. For some reason, teenagers and young adults are especially likely to be depicted this way. Unless you’re trying to create a character perspective that really buys into capitalism, you probably want to avoid these things.

Minor characters add a lot of depth to your work and the world and characters within it. You can use them to establish a pattern if you want, and illustrate a type of underclass or kinds of stereotypes and prejudice that exist within your work. Be careful, though; if you write them without considering who they are and what they represent, you’re likely to imply things you don’t agree with.

#writing advice

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theliteraryanalistist · 4 years

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Ch. 04 - 06 Dune Analysis

For Chapter 4 let’s pay special attention to the epigraph. The book passes over the fact that Pual had no playmates of his own age, in favor of his father’s closest compatriots and partisans. In truth this would socially stunt a person and has many and myriad impacts, but the book glosses over it, and it’s not really relevant to us and our analysis so so will we.

The epigraph gives us not so much the truth of the characters it describes, but the core trait by which we will know them. Thufir his assassin-knowledge, Gurney his bardic skills, Duncan his honor and swordsmanship, Yueh his traitorship, and Duke Leto his status as a father. These traits do not a whole person make, and yet we will know each of them first and foremost by these marks. The longer each of them lives the better we will know them, the more complex and complete a person will be shown to us, but by and large these are not people, these are silhouettes. Shadows who will stand tall in Paul’s memories and ours.

And so the scene opens with Thufir’s point of view. The Dune film seems to be decentering Thufir for some reason. Perhaps to play up a mystery of who the real traitor is? Perhaps because the film producers don’t consider him as important to the narrative and the themes? In either case, in my professional opinion, they are making a mistake. Thufir presents the paradox of a would-be conscientious ruling house. The love and wisdom of a kind teacher, the cold logic and ruthlessness of a hardened killer. He also serves as an excellent foil to the Harkonnen’s own mentat assassin. One kind and direct. One manipulative and cruel.

Hawat and Paul banter a bit, building both of their characters and being endearing. Meanwhile we are faced with the realities of a family which considers assassination and threat to their life a matter of course. Thufir goes to leave, but not before leaving us with a gem, “Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.” As readers we’re left to measure the many sayings and wisdoms offered us from the characters time and again. I find this one particularly compelling.

Out goes Thufir and in comes Gurney. Gurney is as ugly as he is funny. A jokester, a singer, a weaponsmaster, he banters with Paul as well. Paul is lost in the melancholy of leaving and says he is not in the mood for fighting. Gurney is ired by this and commits to a duel with Paul, frightening Paul, knocking away his ill mood, and teaching Paul (and us) a valuable lesson that conflict comes not when we’re ready for it, but when it comes. Along the way, valuable worldbuilding is done, specifically on the part of explaining the function of shields (which enable so many of the anachronisms we see in Dune. Ironically the prevalence of shields now helps lay the seeds for a discomfort when they are gone some way down the line.

Chapter 5 largely continues the work of Chapter 4, introducing Yueh to us in a new day. The leap to Yueh’s POV is a sharp one because we are constantly faced with the reality of Yueh’s betrayal. It tortures him like no other. Speaking again of the upcoming film, I hope they capture this conflict in Yueh’s heart. The histories of Arrakis may remember Yueh as a traitor, let us as readers remember the hurt done to him, and how it all spiraled back to the Harkonnens and their desire for blood. Certainly the Harkonnens are violent and detestable capitalists who’d rape worlds and peoples for their wealth and labor, enslaving all until they lived in perfect gluttonous luxury. But in my experience people don’t match that description. Those who are violent and conquering are often coded that way by the societies that formed them, pressed on by cultural and social forces, and ciphered into the mold of conquerors by the vision we have paved of history. So does violence become a self-replicating cycle. The machine of conquest to satiate some small original desire always consuming and self-replicating until the empire has spread its webs too wide and it collapses in upon itself, burning all in its ouroboric consumption.

But I’m getting off the beaten path here. Suffice it to say, vengeance bad, capitalism bad, Harkonnen bad. Chapter 5 ends as Yueh leaves.

Chapter 6, the final of these oh-so-important introductions begins with the introduction of Paul’s father: The Duke Leto Atreides. We are given some physical and figurative descriptions of the man as he and his son dispense their pleasantries. They move on to discuss the dangers and gains that the planet Dune may bring. Amongst these gains are a CHOAM directorship. The discussions of the CHOAM company have always been fascinating to me. And as I grow in understanding of economics I reap more and more rewards with each rereading. As the CHOAM company loomed larger and larger with each rereading I came to understand it as more and more potent. Originally it washed beneath my notice, then it became a measure of the various Faufreluches factions’ power. Money is power afterall. But false platitudes aside, I’m struck by something new with this reading. There is an implication that the CHOAM company holds price lists for all the commodities of the Imperium and thus sets the prices and that’s... not how that works. Price is set by what traders will be willing to buy and sell the price for (and in this universe what tithes the Spacing Guild will charge for the transport of said goods). Perhaps the CHOAM company acts as the market through which goods are bought/sold? But it doesn’t seem to be structured that way. If it doesn’t imply set prices then the alternative is it implies that you can purchase stock in a commodity? From my understanding you’d want to own stock in the firm that produces a good so this doesn’t gel with my understanding of economics either? The last possibility, and the one I find most likely is that the CHOAM company itself acts as a single megafirm and the Houses (and other political/financial actors) are commissioned to produce certain goods and they get a return on the sale of said goods. There is some textual evidence to support this, as Harkonnen was said to previously act under a CHOAM contract to mine the spice, and control over Arrakis was said to grant the House Atreides a directorship in the CHOAM company. As a short aside Duke Leto refers to a directorship in the CHOAM company as a subtle advantage which??? It seems a pretty obvious and powerful advantage? My jokes aside, wealth is easily translatable into power, especially in this dual feudal/capitalist worldscape.

All of this is digression however. The scene continues and the two discuss knowing that the world of Arrakis is a trap. It occurs to me that this understanding of Arrakis is a trap is itself a trap for us the reader. A shadow of the shielded dueling style. The fast attack attracts the eyes whilst the slow blow penetrates the shield. So too are our senses addled as the great trap rears its ugly head and closes shut its jaws. But I’m digging too far into the future. For now, understand that this discussion of the trap helps enhance the suspense, and is a thematic parallel to worldbuilding elements.

In addition to the discussion of traps, we come to understand something of the ferocity of the Sardaukar, and with them as a lens, learn of the Fremen as even more fearsome. So the mythmaking continues, and we are inundated in a world of people both larger than and smaller than life.

The scene ends with a discussion of mentats, and an explanation of something of Paul’s hyperawareness and intuitive leaps he’s made so far. It ends with the discussion of how formidable a mentat duke would be. And truth be told I’m still entranced by the idea. A mentat Duke ruling his fief and making war against the Harkonnens. It would have been an fascinating story. But the implications for the story are far greater. Paul’s latent and trained mentat abilities will have a far greater impact for his latent geriatric abilities. And those, we’ll explore in time.

#Dune #analysis

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 4 years

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OK Bookchin

There is perhaps no modern thinker who has done more to damage the term “anarchism” than Murray Bookchin. Beyond all the physical repression over the centuries, by both capitalists and communists, the right and the left, Bookchin’s piece “Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm” stands as the most notable instance of ideological sabotage against anarchism.

Even the title of the piece is a lie. The only reason this “chasm” exists, is because Bookchin and his followers have been harping about it for the last 20 years. Additionally, individualist and social anarchism share a long history of tolerating each other, if not working together. Bookchin conveniently ignores that fact that many individualist anarchists were members of the First International, right alongside social anarchists, and even Marxists. There may have been tension between these groups, but there was no chasm, as there was no chasm until Bookchin created one.

Bookchin starts by going through the history of individualist anarchism, making sure to label them as terrorists pretty quickly out of the gates.

“individualistic anarchists committed acts of terrorism that gave anarchism its reputation as a violently sinister conspiracy.”

This is patently false, as shown in the work “The Anarchist Beast” by Nhat Hong. If Bookchin knew what he was talking about, he would have known that the drive to label anarchists as terrorists was going strong since likely before the 1880s. Yes, some individualist anarchists were terrorists, but anarchism had largely been stuck with that label already. The deeds of terrorists are not what established the label, it was the fear of those in power, and their need to discredit anarchism.

“Despite their avowals of an anarchocommunist ideology, Nietzscheans like Emma Goldman remained cheek to jowl in spirit with individualists. “

Here, we see Bookchin using Nietzsche like his name is some type of slur, in addition to using him to discredit Emma Goldman. Goldman did far more to advance anarchy in this world than Bookchin ever did, and often did it side by side with more social leaning anarchists. Where is the chasm then? Of course Bookchin wants to dismiss Goldman away, as her very life disproves his thesis here.

“The period hardly allowed individualists, in the name of their ‘uniqueness,’ to ignore the need for energetic revolutionary forms of organization with coherent and compelling programs.”

Moving past the 1800s and early 1900s, Bookchin moves on in time, suggesting that social anarchists in the period past that had “compelling programs.” What were these programs exactly? Allying with the Stalinist red fascism in Spain and getting murdered? While individualist anarchists may have been focused on smaller scale actions, the larger scale actions of the social anarchists of the 1930s ended quite literally, in fascism. I would hardly call that compelling or coherent.

“These trendy posturings, nearly all of which follow current yuppie fashions…”

It is at around this point in the piece that Bookchin abandons his delusional version of history, and moves on to mere ad hominem attacks and mere complaining. Bookchin is the last person who should be complaining about anything fashion related! Look at his hat! Bookchin constantly looks like how he thinks a worker should look like, and could absolutely deal with some sense of fashion other than his self-styled “assembly line chic”.

“the 1990s are awash in self-styled anarchists who — their flamboyant radical rhetoric aside — are cultivating a latter-day anarcho-individualism that I will call lifestyle anarchism. Its preoccupations with the ego and its uniqueness and its polymorphous concepts of resistance are steadily eroding the socialistic character of the libertarian tradition.”

Here, Bookchin attempts to coin individualist anarchism as something he created, a “lifestyle anarchism”, if you will. He claims lifestyle anarchism erodes the socialistic character of anarchism? So be it! The socialistic tradition in anarchism is what has led historically to anarchists buddying up to, and later being murdered by, socialists and communists. If erosion of this socialistic character is what it takes for anarchists to stop thinking that leftist traditions have their best interests at heart…Erode away!

“The ego — more precisely, its incarnation in various lifestyles — has become an idée fixe for many post-1960s anarchists, who are losing contact with the need for an organized, collectivistic, programmatic opposition to the existing social order.”

What Bookchin does not realize, is that this type of collectivist, programmatic “opposition” has become ingrained in the social order itself. Mass politics, with its programs for social change, has become part of the status quo. The system itself would much rather have people mimicking its structures and playing within its rules, as opposed to the infinitely diverse forms of resistance available to all individuals at any moment. The state understands how to deal with the same dogmatic resistance it has faced for centuries. It is not prepared for outbursts of individuality, fluid and innumerable in their scope.

“Lifestyle, like individualist, anarchism bears a disdain for theory,”

Yes! We do! We disdain those who fetishize thought, while cowering from action. Unlike Bookchin, who spent his life writing dozens of books, and many more pieces outside of them, the individualists see the world as their parchment upon which to write. Action is worth more than a million words, and also the most effective way to breed more action. People have been theorizing about the same things for centuries now, to little effect. It has been those who commit themselves to enacting theory, rather than steeping themselves in it, who have made the strongest stands against rulership.

“The price that anarchism will pay if it permits this swill to displace the libertarian ideals of an earlier period could be enormous.”

And here is where we see that Bookchin is not interested so much in opposing rulership, as he is using anarchism as a method of control. As evidenced above, Bookchin cares more about anarchism as a static ideology, than as a fluid attempt by people to not be ruled. He is concerned with anarchism as a monolithic entity, because as a singular and dogmatic ideology, anarchism becomes another box in which to contain people’s ideas, and thereby control people’s actions.

“Thus, instead of disclosing the sources of present-day social and personal pathologies, antitechnologism allows us to speciously replace capitalism with technology, which basically facilitates capital accumulation and the exploitation of labor, as the underlying cause of growth and of ecological destruction. Civilization, embodied in the city as a cultural center, is divested of its rational dimensions, as if the city were an unabated cancer rather than the potential sphere for universalizing human intercourse…”

Bookchin also attempts to attack currents of thought like primitivism and anti-civilization, but really just proves that he does not understand the critique these strains are making. Anti-civilization ideas are generally not “anti” technology, so much as they are insisting on an honesty about technology. The technology that exists, exists because of a globalized system of coercion. As anarchists, we need to be critical of this system, and understand that without coercion modern technology would simply not exist. Those who critique technology often do not oppose technology itself, but the manner in which technology is produced. Bookchin’s claim of “antitechnologism” is either a misunderstanding, or a purposeful falsification.

It is also worth noting that Bookchin again vulgarizes primitivism and anti-civ ideas by equating civilization with cities. He dares not address something like Fredy Perlman’s idea of civilization as the roots of all hierarchy…as simply rulership. Instead, Bookchin shows his cowardice by addressing anti-civ ideas with a meme level understanding of it, avoiding those who have thought deeper on the subject.

“Lifestyle anarchism must be seen in the present social context not only of demoralized black ghettoes and reactionary white suburbs but even of Indian reservations, those ostensible centers of ‘primality,’ in which gangs of Indian youths now shoot at one another, drug dealing is rampant, and ‘gang graffiti greets visitors even at the sacred Window Rock monument,’ “

And, of course, no old white man rant would be complete without some statements that just end up sounding like a confused racism. Bookchin actually attempts to claim that lifestyle/individual anarchism is responsible or related to the severe marginalization of people of color?! I believe that responsibility lies with capitalism and the racist structures it has created, not some individualist spectre.

“Social anarchism, in my view, is made of fundamentally different stuff, heir to the Enlightenment tradition…”

Finally, Bookchin comes clean, after the thinly veiled racism, and comes forth with an admission of his true forebearers…the archetypical “old white dudes” of the Enlightenment. Bookchin’s anarchism is not rooted in a simple desire for “no rulers”, but tied up in the liberal white supremacism of Enlightenment ideas.

“it describes the democratic dimension of anarchism as a majoritarian administration of the public sphere.”

Bookchin cannot rid himself of statist ideas, as he goes on to talk about his notion of Communalism. Bookchin does not stop to think “What if the majority does not want to administrate anything?” To him, anarchism is just another system of rulership, albeit a “majoritarian” one. Anarchism to him, becomes less about “no rulers”, and more about “everyone rules”.

“The sovereign, self-sufficient ‘individual’ has always been a precarious basis upon which to anchor a left libertarian outlook.”

Clearly, Bookchin does not believe in any sort of “bottom up” egalitarianism, or else he would not be so quick to dismiss the individual. Free and empowered individuals make up free and empowered societies, and should absolutely be the basis of liberty. One cannot force a system onto people, and then call those people free, no matter how inclusive the system.

“Democracy is not antithetical to anarchism; nor are majority rule and nonconsensual decisions incommensurable with a libertarian society. “

Any sort of rule…Any sort of nonconsensual decision is antithetical to anarchism. Here, again, Bookchin shows his desire to control others in the name of freedom. He literally attempts to reconcile the very tools of the state with anarchism!

“That no society can exist without institutional structures is transparently clear to anyone who has not been stupefied by Stirner and his kind.”

Again, his blatant statism is laid bare. Is “institutional structures” not simply another name for “rulership”? Of course, given the many societal blueprints that Bookchin created in his lifetime, it is clear that Bookchin saw himself at the helm of, or at least a theoretician of these “institutional structures”. Bookchin is incapable of rejecting these structures, because he views them as instruments to be used in ruling over others.

“Certainly, it is already no longer possible, in my view, to call oneself an anarchist without adding a qualifying adjective to distinguish oneself from lifestyle anarchists.”

And again, Bookchin shows that he is the one attempting to dilute anarchism, by attempting to add qualifiers and appendages to it. If anarchism can be obscured by adjectives, then its true meaning of “no rulers” can be watered down and even changed into something else.

“Mere opposition to the state may well unite fascistic lumpens with Stirnerite lumpens, a phenomenon that is not without its historical precedents. “

Bookchin finishes with a bit of classist flair, using the same terms that Marx used with disdain when talking about the underclasses of people. Bookchin, the “good worker”, must berate and chastise others. In a fit of workerism, Bookchin then plays the card common to leftists, and sinks to claims of fascism, putting to rest the notion that he ever had any real argument to begin with.

This final cry of “fascism!” truly shows Bookchin’s true designs here. He is willing to use the threat of fascism to scare those who might not be convinced by the piece’s end into complying. This final statement perfectly illustrates the authoritarianism masking itself as anarchism that Bookchin exemplifies.

“Follow my ‘organized’ and ‘coherent’ plans, or you are a fascist!” he cries.

OK Bookchin…

#no wing anarchy #google murray bookchin #murray bookchin #left wing #anarchy #anarchism #social anarchism

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hogtown-socialist-alternative · 4 years

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Can the Working Class Change Society? Socialists Say Yes

By Tom Crean -September 10, 2018

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution and 50 years after the revolutionary general strike in France in 1968, many on the left question whether the working class has a central role in changing society. This is understandable given the enormous retreat of the labor movement in recent decades. Working people in the U.S. [see the companion piece “The American Working Class“] no longer look to the unions as the leading force in the struggle for a better life as they did in the 1930s and 1940s and to a degree after World War II. Also the U.S. is virtually alone among Western countries in having no historical experience of a mass working-class political party which challenges for control of the government.

For a Self-Aware Working Class

Karl Marx, the pioneer of scientific socialism, in describing the modern working-class, differentiated between it being a “class in itself” as opposed to a “class for itself.” The working class, defined as those who have to sell their ability to work to the employer class to survive, has enormous potential social power because of its ability to stop the wheels of the economy. As the accompanying piece explains, contrary to those who say that globalization or automation have eliminated the American working class, it remains without doubt the majority of society. While the capitalist media is at pains to obscure this, just-in-time production, logistics hubs, and other large concentrations of workers, like in airports, show that the big corporations are vulnerable to collective action.

But the key issue is whether the working class moves from being an objective reality, a “class in itself” to being a force that sees its interests as counterposed to those of the capitalists and organizes to challenge their power. Since the Great Recession, working people in the U.S. have become keenly aware that the top 1% and even the top .01% have gained disproportionately while the bottom 99% and especially the bottom 50% are sliding backwards.

Progressives often point to how the tax system has increasingly favored the rich. This is absolutely true but there is a deeper reality: Massive gains in productivity have been made by American workers, yet their wages have barely risen while profits have skyrocketed. The bosses have been winning a one-sided class war. It has recently been reported that even with virtual “full employment” wages in the U.S. are not keeping pace with inflation. This reflects the lack of an organized challenge to the bosses’ power in the workplace.

A Grim Future

There is massive anger at social inequality and the social crisis which faces large sections of the working class. There is a loss of faith in institutions and especially in the political establishment. There is a growing awareness that the future under capitalism promises endless inequality, automation replacing good jobs, and a developing climate catastrophe. In poor countries, wars, famines, and massive displacement of people are likely to intensify. Capitalism no longer pretends to offer a vision of a more abundant future for ordinary people.

The growing anger of working people and young people was reflected in the 2016 campaign of Bernie Sanders who called for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” It is also reflected in the massive interest in socialism, especially among young people. This is continuing with the wave of “democratic socialist” candidates including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But in the absence of a political force that clearly represents the interests of the working class, the door was opened to the right populism of Donald Trump who also attacked “free trade” deals and proclaimed himself a champion of the working class. This has led to a dangerously reactionary regime which threatens to destroy any remaining gains made through past struggles by workers, women, and African Americans.

But until recently, working class revolt was only expressed in a partial way and largely on the electoral plane. The retreat of organized labor continued – less than 7% of private sector workers are now in a union and strikes at historically low levels. The recent Janus decision by the Supreme Court aims to drastically undermine organization in the public sector where union density remains higher.

This is why the revolt of teachers in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina is so important. Now there is the potential for a major fight by the key UPS workforce against a rotten contract. There are important organizing drives among airport workers. In Missouri, voters defeated an anti-labor “right-to-work” law brought in by the Republicans by a two-to-one margin. In Europe, Amazon warehouse workers in three countries went on strike in July which could inspire workers in logistics here. These are the signs of a desire to fight. What is desperately needed is leadership and a new direction away from the failed approach of labor leaders of the past 30 years – refusal to use militant tactics or to assert labor’s independent political interests.

Lessons of History

The American working class has a rich tradition of struggle over the past 150 years. In the 1930s and ‘40s, powerful multiracial industrial unions were built using bold tactics including local general strikes and workplace occupations (“sitdown” strikes). Black workers were the driving force of the civil rights movement which brought down Jim Crow in the South in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Working-class women were the driving force in changing chauvinist attitudes in the ‘60s and ‘70s as part of massive rank and file labor upsurge.

And yet working people in the U.S. never had a true mass political party that expressed their interests. The absence of this helps explain why our pension and heath care system is so much worse than most advanced capitalist countries where there were powerful social democratic and labor parties. Recent commentary in various mainstream publications asks why socialism was not stronger in the U.S. in the past although some have correctly pointed out that socialists have played a major role in the labor movement at all the key points when it has been moving forward.

There are many arguments for why the U.S. is allegedly “exceptional.” Seth Ackerman, an editor at the widely-read left magazine Jacobin, has argued that at the end of the 19th century the U.S. moved on a different course than other capitalist “democracies,” placing onerous restrictions on the development of third parties. The two main (corporate dominated) parties were institutionalized and Ackerman concludes that “the United States [like the Soviet Union] is also a party-state, except instead of being a single-party state, it’s a two-party state. That is just as much of a departure from the norm in the world as a one-party state,”(“A New Party of A New Type,” Jacobinmag.com).

There are elements of truth in Ackerman’s analysis but it is missing an underlying historical reality. Despite all the obstacles, it was hardly inevitable that a workers party would not be created in the U.S. This could have been achieved in the ‘30s and ‘40s for example but was blocked by key labor leaders – unfortunately with assistance from sections of the left, particularly the Communist Party.

The broader truth is that the obstacles to creating a workers party in the past were not primarily legal but lay in the strength of U.S. capitalism which was increasingly dominant in the 20th century on a world scale. The capitalists were able to concede a higher standard of living for a period but they also made relentless use of racism and nativism to keep the working class divided. But again the rise of the CIO industrial unions in the ‘30s proved that common struggle could begin to overcome profound divisions.

Compared to the postwar boom or even the neoliberal era which began in the late 1970s, the situation today is very different. It is very clear that U.S. capitalism is in decline on a global scale. Restoring the previous position through trade wars or other means is an illusion. The workforce is more diverse and integrated than ever before and, despite all the differences in lived experience, there is a burning need for collective struggle to push back the relentless regime of workplace exploitation and the immiseration of wider and wider sections. When 40% of adults don’t know how they would pay for a $400 emergency while the billionaires’ banks accounts grow ever fatter – it’s time to fight back.

Can a new party representing these common class interests be built? Bernie Sanders raised over $200 million with no corporate money – which all pundits said was impossible – and was only defeated because of a rigged primary. Most progressive workers and young people today continue to pursue the idea of reforming the Democratic Party. As working-class struggle reemerges in a more developed way, the need to for political independence will become clearer and the need for a program that challenges capitalism itself and points towards democratic socialism. This will truly be the emergence of a working class “for itself” in America.

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