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The ABCs of Jacobin

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Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#31

Post by Jotra7 »

rauhl wrote: post #20
orhmeh09 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to attack that presumption, given that the magazine sells posters of guillotines. They definitely play on it. https://jacobinmag.com/store/product/1

> … the magazine sells posters of guillotines. Sounds like glorifying political mass-murder to me. That seems in profoundly poor taste. Every person who died under the blade of one of those guillotines was a human being, with hopes & fears, good & evil in his soul. The great number of them weren’t murderers, rapists or thieves: they were just people who had the unfortunate bad luck to be born into the wrong caste.

What's the matter? You afraid of the same thing?

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#32

Post by thanatropism »

zozbot123 wrote: post #23
abvdasker wrote: post #9

The quality and depth of the writing in Jacobin's stories is what keeps me coming back. They go very in-depth in each story and aren't afraid to use a diction that's probably a bit more academic than the average American is comfortable with. Each piece is exactly as long as it needs to be, and they don't dumb down the content or try to soften their ideological views the way most mainstream publications do. I especial…

> I especially love that the subject matter is political but not reactionary And for those who do like reactionary subject matter, there is a nice alternative publication - which is of course named Jacobite https://jacobitemag.com/

I don't know why you got downvoted. Jacobite is more like a collective blog in the style of Quilette, but it's medium-to-frequently-high quality.

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#33

Post by ahartmetz »

zozbot123 wrote: post #23
abvdasker wrote: post #9

The quality and depth of the writing in Jacobin's stories is what keeps me coming back. They go very in-depth in each story and aren't afraid to use a diction that's probably a bit more academic than the average American is comfortable with. Each piece is exactly as long as it needs to be, and they don't dumb down the content or try to soften their ideological views the way most mainstream publications do. I especial…

> I especially love that the subject matter is political but not reactionary And for those who do like reactionary subject matter, there is a nice alternative publication - which is of course named Jacobite https://jacobitemag.com/

You don't deserve the downvotes. There is too little intellectual conservatism - it's good to read about it even if you don't agree. Progressive vs. stupid is not a productive discussion for society.

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#34

Post by uxp100 »

randallsquared wrote: post #21
shanghaiaway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a leftist publication, of course it's not reactionary. It's Marxist, of course it uses obscure language.

They meant "reactive". (I also thought that "Reacting to the past rather than anticipating the future, not predictive." was one definition of reactionary, but not according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/reactive and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/reactionary ).

I thought so too, but at the very least it is confusing in this context.

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#35

Post by ahartmetz »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #3

This article gives me the feeling that the folks who run Jacobin have a "holier-than-thou" attitude towards the rest of the left. I get the feeling that they look down upon more idealistic leftists, and think of themselves as pragmatic and grounded, a quality they deem that the rest of the left lacks. Might be the way the article is written (it seems to try hard to portray Jacobson's success as a demonstration of cap…

IMO, more ethics of responsibility instead of ethics of conviction is exactly what is needed. Because "right-think" does not improve people's lives, but results do. They have every right to feel superior over lazy thinkers who just subscribe to some currently fashionable belief system including the crazy parts.

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#36

Post by uxp100 »

peisistratos wrote: post #24
Dowwie wrote: post #14

While I think it is important to consider arguments across the entire political spectrum, reading Jacobin takes effort. It promotes a fictional world view where a command and control society makes purely altruistic, utilitarian decisions to maximize economic and social equality. Good and evil are too quickly ascribed to actors without consideration of attribution error. There is too much black and white thinking..

> a command and control society If peacetime USA 2018 is not an industrialized command and control society, I don't know what is. The difference is all is geared towards the heirs who expropriate surplus labor time, instead of those of us who work and create wealth.

> If peacetime USA 2018 is not an industrialized command and control society, I don't know what is.

I don't know if you're developing some difference between command economy and command society, but since you're talking about surplus labor I don't think so. The term command economy was developed to refer to soviet style socialist economy in the early days. Public ownership plus government allocation and production quotas.

It seems like a weird self own for a presumed leftist to say, "Oh yeah, capitalism is so bad we basically already have communism."

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#37

Post by adwhit »

wazoox wrote: post #7
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #3

This article gives me the feeling that the folks who run Jacobin have a "holier-than-thou" attitude towards the rest of the left. I get the feeling that they look down upon more idealistic leftists, and think of themselves as pragmatic and grounded, a quality they deem that the rest of the left lacks. Might be the way the article is written (it seems to try hard to portray Jacobson's success as a demonstration of cap…

Jacobin is really good and Catalyst, its long form companion publication, is even better. They're certainly surprisingly radical for the US; they're "leftists" in the European sense (not in the US sense, where a light-pink centrist such as Bernie Sanders is seen as some sort of rabid Bolshevik by many).

I had to do a double-take here, I was thinking "I don't think Bernie is all that radical, but I wouldn't describe him as center-right". But of course the US gets the colors backwards.

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#38

Post by adwhit »

barking wrote: post #27

I googled Jacobin and on the results noticed a tweet from the Jacobin account Angela Merkel has resigned as CDU leader. Her failed promises of "prosperity for all" are leading to the disintegration of the traditional mass parties. Reads bit sacred scripturey to me, as in Marx tells us in chapter X verse XX I wonder if they address one another as comrade?

The left regularly address each other as "comrade", albeit sometimes a little tongue-in-cheek. Solidarity is an important and necessary part of the culture, given the odds are heavily stacked against them.

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#39

Post by icebraining »

zozbot123 wrote: post #23
abvdasker wrote: post #9

The quality and depth of the writing in Jacobin's stories is what keeps me coming back. They go very in-depth in each story and aren't afraid to use a diction that's probably a bit more academic than the average American is comfortable with. Each piece is exactly as long as it needs to be, and they don't dumb down the content or try to soften their ideological views the way most mainstream publications do. I especial…

> I especially love that the subject matter is political but not reactionary And for those who do like reactionary subject matter, there is a nice alternative publication - which is of course named Jacobite https://jacobitemag.com/

I don't think that's the kind of "reactionary" that abvdasker was talking about. A better word might be "reactive" (rather than proactive).

Re: The ABCs of Jacobin

#40

Post by icebraining »

uxp100 wrote: post #36
peisistratos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a command and control society If peacetime USA 2018 is not an industrialized command and control society, I don't know what is. The difference is all is geared towards the heirs who expropriate surplus labor time, instead of those of us who work and create wealth.

> If peacetime USA 2018 is not an industrialized command and control society, I don't know what is. I don't know if you're developing some difference between command economy and command society, but since you're talking about surplus labor I don't think so. The term command economy was developed to refer to soviet style socialist economy in the early days. Public ownership plus government allocation and production qu…

Some on the left consider both the US and the USSR to be capitalist (the term used for the latter is often "state capitalism"), not communist.
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