511–520 of 634 posts
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> Steinbeck has a dynamite line about this. I'd appreciate you quoting it.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” It's often attributed to Steinbeck but in my understanding, it's not entirely clear if that's true or not.
Since I have you for a moment, let me just say I admire the work you do for Rust.
A cogent and well-written article. My only possible contributions are the following: 1. The author perhaps underestimates the bottom 90%, who are written off as politically irrelevant (in terms of real power) near the start of the article. I do think there's a good reason for this, but we are only one true crisis away from that changing. For example, suppose India and Pakistan only were to have a nuclear engagement a…
Yeah, that disregards that they vote and could vote in a considerably different government which they did to an extent with Trump and could flip the other way to a Sanders or similar.
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>that there is some amount of labour that is unpaid What is unpaid labor? If I employ a carpenter, and pay him $10 for a chair I later sell for $15, is this labor paid?
The question is incomplete without knowing how the $15 and the $10 breaks down - if you paid, say $3 for the materials (C) and $10 for the labour (V), you'd sell at a $2 profit, Marx would say that assuming equivalent exchange of values on the market, neglecting the role of advertising and such, and assuming the chair is freely reproducible (i.e unencumbered by patents and trademarks, and not a one-of-a-kind item lik…
What about risks and decision making, investing in the future products and potential failures? How much is "paid risk" and "unpaid labor", how to objectively evaluate that?
I would argue that $2 is paid risk, not unpaid labor, how to prove that that's not the case?
Also, if I paid you a salary, and than the product failed in the market, is it just according to marxists to ask your salary back, or, if the product was net loss, to ask you to pay for it as an employee?
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I used to diss protests that accomplish nothing but then I realized what their real use was: to connect people into doing actual stuff. To open a place for discussion on a specific issue, sometimes in the media, but at least in the street, for few hours, with like-minded people. If you are rich serious people concerned over an issue, you create a forum or gather a summit. If you are poor, or rather, let's be realisti…
Are there many examples of that happening? The biggest counter example I can think of was Occupy Wall Street. AFAIK nothing ever came out of it, not even a small organised group. Most protests I've seen have actually been the other way around. They were organised by pressure groups or unions and the protesters were already members of those groups. They existed primarily as a chest-beating exercise to show politicians…
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Isn't there something patronizing, even patrician, about saying "the propaganda machine has so effectively manipulated the working class"? Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? There seems to me a great assumption in saying that they are "manipulated". Who isn't? This is the idea of false consciousness ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness ), and it has always seemed questionable to me. Who…
> Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? Could it not be argued that the legitimacy of views depends on how much information the person has access to? The average working-class person, due to lack of free time and interest may be unable to acquire more information than is conveniently delivered to them through a handful of sources, and if those sources are controlled by certain actors and not balanced by o…
George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949): > The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of any…
So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth. To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "hi…
For some reason my mental image of the messenger behind the article was that of a well studied and neutral academic throwing out firehouse citations.
his points are thought provoking, but it reduces everything to purely economic competition by a delusional population with only the author to cut through the illusions.
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This is a very elitist and condescending ran. Assuming everyone who disagrees with you is being manipulated is not going to bring anyone to your side and will further distance people who disagree.
It's not "everyone who disagrees with me", it's one very specific point: public intervention - be it healthcare, infrastructure, job training for people in dying industries, workers' rights, etc. - is the only way to stave off the natural gravity of economic stratification. But I've seen more Fox News than most people here probably have, I listened to hours of conservative talk radio in the car with my mom over the y…
This is influencing 101 :)
I found it informative to research the author and his background: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein For some reason my mental image of the messenger behind the article was that of a well studied and neutral academic throwing out firehouse citations. his points are thought provoking, but it reduces everything to purely economic competition by a delusional population with only the author to cut through the i…
George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949): > The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of any…
And who on earth would seriously think that this would be any other than total nightmare?