Understanding the New Left
The fundamental premise of all Marxism - that is, of Marxism taken in all the variety of its styles and versions - is that all the essential problems are already solved, and that, in the end, only what remains are questions of strategy and tactics, if not rhetoric and propaganda. This premise is stupifying in itself, but the fact that it remains almost unconscious or at least undeclared increases “ad infinitum” its power to stupefy.
The open persecution that big media and internet companies move towards Christian and conservative publications is the integral and definitive proof that the left has already lost all legitimacy as a spokesman for the poor and oppressed and has become the instrument of psychosocial control with which the elite enslaves the herd mentality.
Premeditated or unpremeditated, this was, in essence, the result of the reform of Marxism by the "Frankfurt School". Georg Lukacs' late return to the Stalinist hardline was useless. The “negative dialectic” had already corroded, equally, the “trust society” and the “proletarian solidarity”. Instead of building socialism, it had just turned capitalism into hell. Either the frankfurtians suffered from that radical unpredictability that Eric Voegelin called “criminal stupidity”, or they were perfidious reactionaries committed to transform the left into an instrument of capitalist domination, or they were just trust fund babys who were playing negative dialectic while from the roof of a five-star hotel, they watched the world burn. The first hypothesis is the most human.
Emptied of the symbols that give a moral sense to work, commerce, savings, social order, law and even personal relationships, to what capitalism is reduced but to that terminal “raw capitalism” which, according to Marx, should immediately announce and precede the advent of socialism? But, since the socialist economy is impossible in its integral form and viable only in the hybrid form of the fascist economy (with that or another name), what is that it prevents raw capitalism from eternalizing, and that it does so precisely by replacing the old cultural symbols by the new simulacrum industry? Who doesn't realize that this is precisely the world we live in today, both in Beijing and in New York?
Take for instance the sporadic concessions to the demands of the “politically correct” - as in the past to those of the Party's “fair line”, which is exactly the same thing - are not enough to completely ruin a novel, a film, a play; but when these demands become mandatory and ubiquitous, they end up violating the most elementary laws of verisimilitude and thus destroy the very possibility of narrative art.
That is why today's cinema mainly seeks an audience of teenagers, in which the demand for verisimilitude yields easily to the urge for strong sensations. The verisimilitude judgment depends essentially on maturity, on the “experience of life”.
The open persecution that big media and internet companies move towards Christian and conservative publications is the integral and definitive proof that the left has already lost all legitimacy as a spokesman for the poor and oppressed and has become the instrument of psychosocial control with which the elite enslaves the herd mentality.
Premeditated or unpremeditated, this was, in essence, the result of the reform of Marxism by the "Frankfurt School". Georg Lukacs' late return to the Stalinist hardline was useless. The “negative dialectic” had already corroded, equally, the “trust society” and the “proletarian solidarity”. Instead of building socialism, it had just turned capitalism into hell. Either the frankfurtians suffered from that radical unpredictability that Eric Voegelin called “criminal stupidity”, or they were perfidious reactionaries committed to transform the left into an instrument of capitalist domination, or they were just trust fund babys who were playing negative dialectic while from the roof of a five-star hotel, they watched the world burn. The first hypothesis is the most human.
Emptied of the symbols that give a moral sense to work, commerce, savings, social order, law and even personal relationships, to what capitalism is reduced but to that terminal “raw capitalism” which, according to Marx, should immediately announce and precede the advent of socialism? But, since the socialist economy is impossible in its integral form and viable only in the hybrid form of the fascist economy (with that or another name), what is that it prevents raw capitalism from eternalizing, and that it does so precisely by replacing the old cultural symbols by the new simulacrum industry? Who doesn't realize that this is precisely the world we live in today, both in Beijing and in New York?
Take for instance the sporadic concessions to the demands of the “politically correct” - as in the past to those of the Party's “fair line”, which is exactly the same thing - are not enough to completely ruin a novel, a film, a play; but when these demands become mandatory and ubiquitous, they end up violating the most elementary laws of verisimilitude and thus destroy the very possibility of narrative art.
That is why today's cinema mainly seeks an audience of teenagers, in which the demand for verisimilitude yields easily to the urge for strong sensations. The verisimilitude judgment depends essentially on maturity, on the “experience of life”.
Comments (104)
I suppose it would then be necessary to create a category called "Pronouncements on Pronouncements." There can never be too many, though.
:yawn:
And it’s the liberals who are supposed to be snowflakes.
Take your pontification and sell it to people who care.
Extra points for writing “verisimilitude” several times. You sound wicked smart.
Women in soviet communism:
Women in social-democracy:
In the long run, social democracy does more damage to society and souls than autocratic communism. Since the extreme left has left economic discourse for "diversity" - gayzism, abortion, feminism, etc. - it has become dominant and mandatory in virtually all Western nations. Soon there will not be a single media body that dares to oppose it. And there are still con artists who deny there is a leftist hegemony of the media.
There is no left hegemony. Conservative media dominates talk radio, cable news, has the most read newspaper in the country, etc. Hollywood is no doubt liberal.
Stop whining and grow up.
Communism doesn't solve the problem.. You are still the stooge of the state rather than coordinated capital networks. It is the problem of life itself being a social animal. Try out antinatalism.. it's a much more comprehensive solution ;).
Good, because social democracy and left-wing politics are better than the alternative.
I would go so far to argue that it is no longer leftist. It is raw, naked authoritarianism, and it affects leftists too. It is more reactionary than liberal or communist.
I'm shake'n in my little commi boots!
It's fantastic, the stuff that gets ascribed to the "Left" ...
I don't recognise this at all. What country are you talking about?
I admit I'm not sure just what is being condemned so adamantly in the OP. But by some of its content and tone, I can't help but be reminded of General Ripper's eloquent comment, in this clip. I confess to nostalgia.
And the name dropping about the Frankfurt school. Superb. It's very avant-garde to blame the Frankfurt school instead of the Jews, the Illuminati or the Bilderbergers.
I mean everyone can run the world if you have control over a whole religion, a secret society or just a lot of money. But to rule the world with just philosophical works most people have never heard about - that takes some skill.
Also, how are these PC people "extreme left" in any significant sense? Do they talk about issues of financial inequality, war, global warming and so on? I rarely see them do so. It's a distraction to focus on them too much from much more pressing issues: climate change, global warming, increasing inequality, etc., etc. How is being super-PC "leftist"?
As for people who rule the world, or at least have power, Putin, Biden, Xi, Merkel and so on, I'm pretty confident that do not think about the world in terms of "negative dialectics". I don't think Zuckerberg or Bezos, et al. engage much with the Frankfurt School. These terms may be helpful for some people, but they'll certainly alienate the average person, and rightly so.
How?
Why is Norway worse than North Korea?
I have to point out what social democratic women look like. These are female social-democrats. Note the attire. Usually not very angry.
(...just pointing out that the OP doesn't actually say anything...)
Why aren't they twerking???
As to the OP: Marxism stands in its own way half true. It got the concept of overproduction crisis bang dead on. It got the end of the political dialectic materialism wrong bang dead on. It got the idea that capitalism socks, dead bang on. It got it wrong that communism is better, dead bang on.
A .500 batting average is superb, in my books, in those of my books that keep statistics on prophets and their predictions vis-a-vis reality.
The Frankfurt School messed up with the idea of the proletarian revolution and passed the leadership of the revolutionary process to big capital. Those who do not realize this are blind or functionally illiterate.
The nearest thing to that in American culture are the radical right - Trumpism, which actual democratic institutions are in a desparate struggle with. They're the ones marching around declaring that opponents ought to be shot. This 'cultural marxism' straw man is part of their disinformation campaign to demonise their opponents.
I lived in a country where the proletarian revolution was the order of the day, every day. There was one big, huge flaw in the proletar revolution. After the old overlords were chased away or killed, the factory productions resumed. People manned the same machines as before. They WERE CONSTANTLY TOLD AFTER THE REVOLUTION, JUST LIKE BEFORE IT, what to do and how.
This is a fundamental function of society: hierarchical chain of command. Without it we just can't function.
This ended the 60 yearsof communist rule. People were dying of hunger before the revolution started. They literally worked themselves to death. After the revolution there was enough to eat, clothes to wear, gadgets to buy. But people are never satisfied with their collections of material possessions. So, the full stomach was taken for granted, and the workers still were pissed off about somebody breathing down their necks and adjusting their behaviour constantly.
"Meet the new boss!!
Same as the old boss!!"
These two lines sum it up best for me what it was that caused the failure of the glorious proletarian revolution.
:lol:
Because they belong to a social democratic party's women's wing, to one regional section of it. Members who belong to a political party usually share the ideology of that party. OK, there's the Grand Old Party in the US, so there's that exception as it's unclear what ideology that party now stands for (or it's members).
Of course I could a picture of AOC, the democratic socialist, or this young woman social democrat from here, but the ordinary members of a political party are a better example of what the movement is really like.
Who wouldn't prefer to be a young lady over a middle-aged neckbeard? I know I would.
I think the reason why socialism has such a poor reputation in America, is that it requires too much a sense of social responsibility and commitment to basic social justice to be tolerable to them. And it takes smarts to implement. Americans much prefer a individualist ideology where to the winner goes the spoils, and you have to win by whatever means necessary.
Incidentally, as far as the 'new left' is concerned, I think there is a great deal of value in their 'critique of the Enlightenment'. However I'm extremely dubious about Adorno's 'negative dialectic', although will confess to never having studied it closely.
I've argued along these lines, too. The Myth of the Individual prevents, for example, a decent response to Covid; and often prevents common decency. It's the flaw that prevents folk understanding the advantages of a well constructed social support mechanism.
Speaking of the left, I'm watching videos about China on curiosity stream. One the commentators said that Chinese allow a certain amount of protesting to allow people to blow off stream, but administrators are told to throw them a bone from time to time without truly changing anything. However, people at the top of the Chinese government know they're eventually going to have to become more responsive to the people's demands, much of which has to do with access to healthcare and opportunity.
Sound familiar?
Do you think? I can't make heads nor tails of it.
Quoting Rafaella Leon
This is an accusation without examination, and could likely be a topic on its own. You can see others here are not really taking your topic seriously, because it isn't an invitation to discuss, but a rant. And its ok to make that mistake. See if you can salvage it into a topic worth discussing?
Very good point. It's not as if there's an equivalent between say BLM and White Supremacists. Yeah, they are two wings on different spectrums, but it's very different.
Then you get this total lunacy of Super PC BS, that only serves to hurt the left, and give the room to the far right to come in and complain about "socialism" or whatever. It's the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot. Not that high brow theorizing will help much ordinary people.
But aren't you a metaphysician? I mean, what's not to get about the supreme principle of negative theoretical connotations in which sings don't stand in in for ideological objects, which of course implies that China will now go through neo-Confucian dialectics to unearth the negative ethos underlying consumerist simulacra. Of course, the left will protest as an ontological sign against the ruling bourgeoise.
It's pretty obvious.
No instance of "political correctness", whatever that's supposed to refer to here, justifies the encroachment of fascism
@Rafaella Leon is your second account alter-ego!?
Fringe people who are assigned as being to the "left", mostly on the internet, focusing far more on whether a person should be referred to as a LatinX or a they or a sapiosexual, than talking about climate change, war, gross inequality and so on. These people tend to be language police and are disproportionately loud, who get offended at everything, and this gives the right a good excuse to say that the entire left is crazy and that all this will lead to Stalinist Socialism and the like.
100% Agree, there's is zero justification for fascism. The only way out, as far as I can see, is to attempt to decrease inequality and provide people the means and security to lead a decent, comfortable life. If no corrective comes about, I don't the extreme right going away any time soon. On the contrary, they'll likely keep growing.
I wasn't attempting to be hostile towards anybody, I was clarifying a comment made by me that was taken as giving excuses for fascism. I was pointing out how right wingers caricature the left, which is all the time.
I agree with what you say about "garbage sites" and how only followed like 2 or 3 out of curiosity, but it's not very serious. And yes, of course the right will use any opportunity it can to make outlandish claims about anything left of center-right, essentially. As for social justice in itself, yeah, who's against it? Who doesn't want less racism, more rights for women and respect for the marginalized? Only those who stand to lose something or think they'll lose something, will be against it.
The point, as I see it, is much less about arguing with other leftists, it's to try to fix urgent issues, specifically climate change, nuclear weapons and extreme inequality. The more bickering there is about who is more left than who, or who has read Marx the best or who hates Bezos the most, is a detriment to the left, as the right tends to be highly organized when it comes to passing neoliberal policy. Now, in the US, they're having issues, we'll see how that goes.
But they've done quite well all over the world these last 4 decades organizing and passing legislation that takes power away from ordinary people into the hand of those who already have power.
I think that real problem is that Americans don't understand that Western Social Democrat parties aren't against capitalism, aren't such a revolutionary force and already is basically present in the US system.
Basically with the Democratic Party ruling, be it the Clinton or the Obama administration, you have similar policies that in Europe a coalition of a social democratic party and centrist/conservative party would make.
In a way, social democracy has already been in US politics:
Quoting Wayfarer
Before the pandemic her "lipstick-administration", as someone in the opposition dubbed it, was taking a beating with her foreign minister (a male from the Green party) getting into a political debacle with Finnish ISIS moms in Syria, but that all changed when the pandemic hit. Then it was the Conservatives and the True Finns that demanded tougher Covid-measures and she quickly did exactly what the opposition wanted. That simply silenced the opposition and meant that the Covid-policy was a true consensus policy, which meant the policy itself hasn't been a subject of bickering that erodes people's trust. This actually meant that she gained the initiative, the political clout and the popularity of her party increased. Excellent example of how bi-partisan politics can lead to political success.
(At first it didn't look great, with all those young women leading the administration (and the political parties)..., but then came the pandemic. Translation: Rumours of disagreements in the administration are rubbish. The administration appears still as totally uniform.)
Her example actually shows just how incredibly fatuous, stupid and inept Donald Trump was.
Donald Trump was totally incapable of understanding that Covid-19 was his 9/11, his WW2, his stake to be a credible President that would lead the country through a major crisis. Because let's face it. Assume if Trump would not have listened to Rush Limbaugh and not feared for his hotels and golf courses, but gone with tough measures and put his lackeys (those that reurgitate his every line) to say how dangerous the pandemic is and how the country has to go through a dark time, but it will endure. Think the Democratic Party would have been against that? Think the DNC would have started courting libertarians? No. And with that backing, or simple silence from the opposition, suddenly Trump would have been a leader and very likely would have waltzed into his second term.
I largely agree with you that the prevalence of bad liberal progressive politics (especially in popular media) dissuades people, I just wanted to express the other side of it which is that the Right calls anything and everything political correctness and most of them to my experience are not open to an alternative superior left-wing opinion when shown. They're offended by anything to the Left of them because they want to be, it feeds their sensibilities. The priority target for political organizing (in terms of effective use of our energy & time) are really people who agree with you but are politically timid, or apolitical folks who can be convinced to new political opinions. Of course you should try to convince some Right-Wingers, like even 1% (I know some leftists who were former Right-Wingers after all, it changed their lives) but that's not where we're likely to be successful.
As for who doesn't want more social justice? A lot of people. Not everyone is on the fascism spectrum, but plenty of people are moral cowards and don't want to change their preconceptions. I have a hard time understanding why you don't see if this if you actually tried talking to Right-Wingers.
Sure. No need to discuss. Agree with most of it.
This is the best post ever.
Or some sort of surrealist manifesto
Quoting eduardo
Primacy of the self, no expression of empathy, joined a few hours ago; I suspect another refugee...
“Leftism” is not a form of statism. Both left and right have abused the state, but the original left-right divide had the state on the side of the right.
The original left were liberals, classical liberals, in the sense that in the modern US gets called "libertarians". The original group to actually call themselves "libertarians" were libertarian socialists. Who were also the original socialists, well before Stalin or Lenin or even Marx.
US-style "libertarian" capitalists and Soviet-style state "socialists" are both aberrations from the natural association of the left with liberty and equality, and the right with authority and hierarchy.
I'd argue it is.
Or does it not use the state as a means to pursue social and economic equality?
Quoting Pfhorrest
So has the left moved to the right, or the right moved to the left?
I should specify I use the term 'left' and 'right' in somewhat of a modern sense, though I am not convinced of their usefulness. Any system that puts liberty and equality in the same box is bound to be contradictory.
Old definitions have given way to new realities.
Some political movements considered left-leaning have. Some political movements considered right-leaning have used the state toward their ends as well.
There are intersections of both the left and right with statism, but neither is subsumed entirely within it.
Quoting Tzeentch
Neither. The original left-right axis, which recognized that you can't get rid of authority without getting rid of hierarchy, that you can't attain liberty without equality, fractured into a two-dimensional spectrum: first when capitalists appropriated liberty as an excuse for hierarchy, and then when some socialists turned to state authority as a weapon against them.
The world was polarized between the US and USSR along those lines for half a century, and seemingly forgot what the original axis was by the time that was through. But those of us who study history, politics, and philosophy remember.
Both the state-socialists and libertarian-capitalists later turned back to state capitalism, as is inevitable, because you can't have authority without creating hierarchy or vice versa. Meanwhile, the original opposition to that, the libertarian socialists, are lost to history or else dismissed as an impossible contradiction nowadays.
Excluding perhaps a few fringes, I'd say they all have, and are.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Then you cannot attain liberty at all, and we should stop with all the false advertising!
To clarify, the question was tongue-in-cheek, and like I said I am unconvinced of the left-right division in general.
You are very incorrect in your political philosophy. The range from left to right of the political spectrum goes like this: [Left] Communism, Socialism, Market Economy, Fascist Economy [Right]. Communism involves the whole populace being part of the government. No money is available. Socialism is Communist-lite, with government doing most things and allowing private businesses to operate with money. Those two are the left side of the political/economic spectrum. What we call the political spectrum has to do with economy rather than political governing or rulership. There's no left/right to do with monarchy, republic, empire, shogunate, or what have you.
On the right, there is market economy, with very little interference from government in private economic affairs. Libertarians are on the right (Conservative), meaning rulership doing little on their own besides the private sector. Quality and value is very high in a market economy.
Fascist economy is further right, needing only a head of economy to provide order. The benefit of fascist economy is equal to that of market economy, the difference being market economies can trade with each other [while fascist economies can provide for themselves internally everything they would need to import otherwise]. Nazi Germany was fascist (called National Socialism by Germans in those days), the United States were fascist under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Holy Roman Empire was fascist under High King Charlemagne, and the Incan Empire in South America was fascist under their emperors.
Political equality is different from economic equality. Political equality is never refuted besides not being equal to certain rulers (a governor of a state in the United States being an example of a ruler who is politically equal), The left, Communism and Socialism, is the side seeking equality of action. Most countries on the planet are individually oriented (oriented to freedom and the individual). The right of the economic spectrum (Market economy and Fascist economy) allows you the freedom to support yourself being self-sufficient and self-contained, and having fun while doing so.
Says who?
Quoting eduardo
Not true either in theory or in practice.
Quoting eduardo
The original left-right distinction was precisely between republicans and monarchists.
Quoting eduardo
Not according to the definition you provided. The market wasn't somehow completely independent of the state, nor was it self-sufficient.
Quoting eduardo
Except to those that don't have the means to support themselves. They don't get any of that "freedom".
My sarcasm detector is screwed. Genuinely took this as sarcasm. Read on, apparently not.
Can you reconcile the proposed historical absence of racism with apparently fundamentally racist historical events like the Holocaust?
I guess we have either a full-on lunatic or a troll on our hands here.
Do you have any examples of people or businesses which exemplify this leadership role "big capital" plays? Who is big capital?
Is there also another form of capital? What's the relationship between these two forms, if so?
Why?
Right wing ideas are very intellectual and serious
I see.
I presume you have in mind people like von Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter, Ropke and the like, right?
Otherwise who is left? Ayn Rand? Ben Shapiro? These people aren't serious.
The thing is these right wing economists are left-wing on many aspects of social life, so they're not "right" all the way through. At the moment, I don't see who could be considered an intellectual of much note in the right.
I was wondering who else you might have in mind.
Ah. Sorry mixed the context. :p
Still, I'd like to know just who in the heck do people have in mind when they speak of "right wing intellectuals", I'm actually curious. I can only come up with the "classic liberal economists". I'm guessing there might be someone else.
Jordan Petersen, for example.
Damn. I got a pang in my head as I read your answer. Psychobabble, hierarchy chaos and the dragons. And lobsters too.
Makes even Ron Paul look far more sophisticated.
Really?
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
You have quite a low threshold for entertainment.
Still...just for you...
I believe Freud's ideas are still relevant to psychology today.
(should be hilarious)
Yet a wartime economy isn't the basis of the economic structure of a country, especially when at peacetime those limitations and government control is eased. Yes, once the industry was geared to fighting the war, not one single car was built for the consumer market. After the war such regulation was obviously lifted.
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/01/benjamin-teitelbaum-war-for-eternity-steve-bannon
"They hold widely divergent views on a variety of issues — Bannon is staunchly pro-America and anti-China, while Dugin favors a new anti-Western Russo-Chinese alliance. The hypernationalists of Hungary’s Jobbik party are often rabidly Islamophobic and see themselves as waging a war in defense of Christendom, while many right-wing mystics find much to admire in the ultraconservative Islam of René Guénon, who rejects liberalism and embraces a totalizing vision of faith. Others on the far right, like Richard Spencer, have tried to rejuvenate concepts of race by emphasizing narratives of white deprivation and “ethnic replacement.” Still others see emphasizing race as too scientistic and insufficiently spiritual, a vulgar concession to modernity that — not coincidentally — helped bring down the Nazis.
What makes the clowns all part of the same circus is less their shared commitments than their mutual bêtes noires — namely, modernity. All believe that with the advent of modern liberalism — and its permissiveness, pluralism, and materialism — something fundamental was lost. More secular variants of traditionalism tend to emphasize a sense of community, belonging, and national purpose. More New Agey and mystical brands insist on abandoning materialism and returning to a more spiritually disciplined existence. ... More mainstream conservatives like the “Intellectual Dark Web” also push many regressive views, but concede enough to the power of modernity that they often try to give overtly mystical language about “order and chaos” a scientistic gloss. But as one mainlines deeper and deeper into the far right, such concessions to reason and modernity become less viable. Consequently, the appeals to affect seem to become ever shriller to compensate for their dissociation with anything tangible."
Hey, I believe that, and I think Steve Bannon’s a douche. (Terrible when you find you have something in common with douches.) I’ve read quite a few of the ‘perennialists’ - Rene Guenon included - and whilst I can see their faults, I don’t for one minute believe they’re all to be dismissed. (I went to Uni with a prominent perennialist scholar - well, insofar as anyone in that field can be ‘prominent’ - super nice person and extremely learned.)
On the other hand, upthread I mentioned Adorno and Horkheimer’s ‘Dialectics of the Enlightenment’. I see a great deal I agree with in that, too - somehow missed out on it when it was bleeding-edge in the 1960’s and 70’s. But they, along with Herbert Marcuse (One Dimensional Man) were founding members of cultural Marxism. (My brother in law is a staunch conservative, though not a conspiracy theorist, and he often fulminates about cultural Marxism in the Universities.)
So both leftist and conservative intellectuals both see a great deal to criticize in modern liberal consumerism. That ought not to be surprising.
I can recall how hard the media pushed figures like Bannon, Sohrab Ahmari, Michael Anton, recently Josh Hawley, and of course Jordan Peterson (or the "Intellectually Dark Web generally"), as right-wing intellectuals who require serious intellectual engagement until it becomes universally evident, even by liberal standards, that they are just batshit lunatics at best and subsequently dropped from discourse.
You have 2 cows (Wired Magazine's version, 2008)
SOCIALISM
The State takes one and gives it to your neighbour who doesn't have a field to put it in.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk. Then the cows die due to neglect.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk. Then the cows die in the war.
NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you. Then the cows are killed in the war.
SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
EUROPEAN UNION BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The EU takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away because the quota has been exceeded.
(((We'll know that the EU has come into its own when a tiresome term like "European Union Bureaucratism" is collapsed into simple "Eurocratism.")))
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.
ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves. (((I'd be guessing this is German humor because it's not not actually funny.)))
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch. (((Fantastico! Posso prendere in prestito un cavatappi?)))
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity. You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them. (((Buck up, India; twenty years ago you wouldn't have even been on this list.)))
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows. Both are mad.
AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the hell out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy.
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.
(I love the Enron model in particular, but it's pretty dated now.)
"The difference between leftist and traditionalist appeals to the working class is that the Left’s is grounded in a rationalist examination of the ways that the world could be fairer for more people — a questioning of how our societal habits might be contributing to injustice, and how we could implement a more justifiable social order.
Traditionalists advance the opposite appeal: let’s not question the impact that our habits and traditions might have (to marginalize or persecute), because these habits and traditions are rooted in some deeper and more spiritual essence. As Teitelbaum observes, if anyone attempts to derive a logically coherent version of traditionalism, “all of the vagaries come to play a larger role. What exactly is this essence, and who gets to decide? If a people is defined by its history, what happens to citizens whose personal background diverges from the norm?”
Submitting traditionalism to any kind of rational scrutiny reveals it for what it is: an appeal to fantasy, the wrapping of oneself in the blanket of vaguely defined yet comforting categories. It presents a fundamentally hierarchical vision of the world, compensating followers for a lack of material improvement with a sense that they are superior to degenerate liberals and dangerous foreigners."
I think my preferred political philosophy would be a kind of de-centralised liberalism - not corporatism or Bureaucratism. Based on a sense of community, and small scale, while still being able to take advantage of economies of scale. There are actually many of the factors for such a culture present in the current world. But I agree that the overwhelming power of the big corporations has to be brought down. As someone pointed out after the 2008 crisis, ‘to big to fail’ ought to mean ‘to big to exist’.
We have the past we deserve and make for ourselves. The archive of history is filled with forgotten debris which never had the chance to become valorised as 'our' past. The worry that we'll ever not feel as part of a 'story' is largely a boogie-man; we'll make stories up staring at a blank wall if we have to. The question is not whether we'll have a relation to the past and to 'culture'; it's what kind of relation we'll have to it. Most efforts to say 'we're losing our relationship to the past' are reactionary covers for 'we're losing the relationship to the past I like'.
Is the story of an unplanned child abandoned in the wilderness who nevertheless somehow survives and goes on to become a great hero who reshapes the future for the better not a noble enough story? Does the child have to have been a planned birth of noble parentage to count?
So we weren't planned, weren't cared for, were left alone as infants in a harsh cruel world to fend for ourselves and probably die ignoble deaths to be remembered by nobody. But what if we defy that fate? What if despite that low birth we go on to become the saviors of the world anyway? I think that's a pretty great story.
What’s a ‘savior’ without ‘salvation’?
What is salvation but being saved? And who says we need some special predestined chosen one of divine birth to do the saving? That's a bit of a trite and uninspiring old story TBH. The nobody-turned-hero seems like it should be much more captivating to the many masses who were born as nobodies (as most people are), who might take away the moral that they could help save the world, and don't just have to wait on someone else to do it for them.
Since, collectively, there isn't anyone else to do it for us, that's really the kind of inspirational story we need if we want salvation, since it's going to have to be us all together who do the saving.
It's an interesting point, not one I've thought a lot about, although it's parallel to the outdatedness of 'if King, tragedy; if commoner, comedy' too.
I suppose if your culture perpetuates secret King narratives, that's what you'll find more compelling. I wonder what this has to do with the usual placement of believers on the right. Feels like a lot.
From what, and to what, is the question. What is salvation beyond a nice house in the suburbs?
Quoting Pfhorrest
Got any particular story in mind, there, or is it just a hypothetical?
Being friends with your neighbors, having no enemies, finding love, exploring the beauty of nature beyond the comforts of your nice house in the suburbs (knowing that home is always there to come back to), exploring more generally as in learning and experiencing all there is to learn, creating great works for others to explore, doing all there is to do, and making sure that you and everyone else get to keep doing all of that forever.
Don't need whoever manages to enable all of that to be preordained to do so. Just someone willing and able to do so. Which could be us, collectively, and in all likelihood has to be us, or else nobody.
Quoting Wayfarer
Just a story archetype. Romulus and Remus kinda came to mind as I wrote that but I didn't mean them specifically, and there is some divine intervention in their story too.
My point is just that we often like stories of underdogs defying the odds and rising to greatness. Even the Jesus story has elements of that, born into poverty, worked a humble job. Take away the "only son of God" part of it and is it less inspirational? Well okay the part where he dies tragically at the end is a downer. But imagine a variant on that story where some kid born to a poor family works hard to get by and in the process comes up with or just popularizes some idea that starts a movement that changes the world. I'm sure there are plenty of real-life examples of that that history buffs in the audience can supply.
Why can't the story of mankind be that kind of story -- we were "born nobody" and then made ourselves great and noble anyway -- and still be inspirational and satisfying? Why do we as a people need "noble birth" (chosen people of God, etc) to feel good about ourselves and our place in the world?
:facepalm:
Quoting Pfhorrest
But I think it needs a sustaining narrative to become meaningful. That is why there are such themes in literature, drama, and art, throughout the ages. That is what the epic poems of ancient cultures provide. It is also why the 20th Century was the story of existential angst and the death of meaning. It doesn't have to be 'theistic' in the literal sense.
While I was typing my earlier reply to you, out of the blue came a message from my son, saying, 'ever heard of the term 'Ikigai'? Hadn't, so googled it.
[quote=Wikipedia]Ikigai (????) (pronounced [iki?ai]) is a Japanese concept that means "a reason for being." The word refers to having a meaningful direction or purpose in life, constituting the sense of one's life being made worthwhile, with actions (spontaneous and willing) taken toward achieving one's ikigai resulting in satisfaction and a sense of meaning to life. The concept of this idea comes from a larger and more inclusive philosophy used within the Japanese traditional health system called the Wuxing that was introduced into Japan in the early 6th century from China and embraced by local folk religion and culture.[/quote]
The Aristotelian 'eudaimonia' also comes to mind
[quote=Wikipedia]Eudaimonia (Greek: ?????????? [eu?dai?monía?]; sometimes anglicized as eudaemonia or eudemonia, /ju?d??mo?ni?/) is a Greek word commonly translated as 'happiness' or 'welfare'; however, more accurate translations have been proposed to be 'human flourishing, prosperity'[1] and 'blessedness'.[2]
In the work of Aristotle, eudaimonia (based on older Greek tradition) was used as the term for the highest human good, and so it is the aim of practical philosophy, including ethics and political philosophy, to consider (and also experience) what it really is, and how it can be achieved. It is thus a central concept in Aristotelian ethics and subsequent Hellenistic philosophy, along with the terms aret? (most often translated as 'virtue' or 'excellence') and phronesis" ('practical or ethical wisdom').[3][/quote]
Maybe that's all that is needed, but where are the wellsprings of that, in modern technological culture? You can say, 'virtue ethics' - perfectly sound answer. Just point me to where in modern political theory this is esteemed.
re-education camps will have to outsource to China
someone should see how they feel about religious freedom and gender neutrality
Joe will have some splainin to do to the squad
cause he's good at splainin
Say what you will about people like Hayek or Schumpeter or anyone from the Austrian school. One could very much disagree with what they were saying and in fact provide evidence as to why such ideas (encasing markets- a Quinn Slobodian puts it) don't work out in practice. But such ideas like Hayek arguing that we have imperfect knowledge of most situations, and therefore markets unite all our knowledge and thus "knows best", has some sophistication.
Mises was at least consistent. He didn't want governments to do anything during The Great Depression, just let the markets find a solution -even if it includes massive suffering. Other neoliberals, like Röpke, saw the problems with laisse-faire and consciously attempted to create legislation (through the WTO, etc.) that would help insure power and privileges' to certain economic actors.
But today, talking about Bannon or Spencer and there ideas are so crude, so tribal and obviously deranged, you don't need to exercise a single neuron to reply to them.
Exactly. There's just no ideas one can engage with that may be of some interest. I'm forgetting who it was that said this, but the argument was along the lines of "Japan has one of the most homogenous societies in the world" and thus they have very little internal conflict. Yeah ok, they have plenty of other problems. They're out of substantive things to say.
Actually you'll find plenty of it in modern technological culture. Schools being forced to end subjects that aren't vocational, people encouraged into wage slavery, "the American consumer"... You're either an owner of the means of production, a worker, or your life is meaningless or, worse, cancerous.
The sinister side of telling people their lives must have meaning is that, when they fail to discover it for themselves, there's plenty of people ready to answer it for them, not for the benefit of the asker but for the answerer.
It seems like a wrong-headed question to me. Better: you are privileged to be alive this short while Inna fascinating universe. What will you do with your time?