This is a rant plus analysis so please excuse the flowery language that might pop up.
There’s this weird celebration from left Lib/mildly lefty figures, mostly online mind you this isn’t that present in real life, about supposed end of “woke”, these supposed champions of working class politics love that labour rights of queer people are being stripped away and smashed into the ground. They talk about labour rights but when it comes to racism in those same rights? They get squirmy. I literally hate these people, they think just because queer people are receiving backlash that means they went too far and I hate these people with my life. They have done nothing but write jacobin articles while sitting on the money they received for shilling DNC.
Not quite where I thought that was going, but I definitely get it. I’ve finally decided to write something on Yanis Varoufakis’s so called “technofeudalism” because I’m so tired of seeing it, and being told about it by white guys with short beards who run youtube channels. Capitalism isn’t dead, it’s just more capitalism that you don’t like
Can I get a link to your write up? I have some sympathies for technofeudalism as a super structural phenomenon in Marxist terms where capitalism has morphed into this thing which just seeks rent from people who degrade their own stuff to work. Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb all just take rent from allowing spaces so it is something I’m interested in reading about.
It’s not done yet, but when it is ill send it to you
Perhaps you should post it on lemmygrad? I would also like to see this work and discussions of people about it. No pressure
I was already going to do that, but thanks for letting me know you’re interested
Thanks!
Anyone who doesn’t think we should string up the landlords and financial rent seekers and fill abandoned coal mines with fascists isn’t “Left”
Western exceptionalism + discovering new political views is a hell of a drug (side effects may include arrogance, smug demeanor, and believing you’ve invented views no one ever thought of before).
The most humbling for me was the first time I read theory. Because it was this eye-opening moment of like “oh, there are people who have already been over this stuff to an incredibly detailed degree and put it into practice too”.
The straight up erasure of scientific socialism in the consciousness of the capitalist west is real. Even among people who are supposedly on that side, you can tell that some of them are just kind of stating the views they think are the correct ones without understanding why communists arrived at those views, historically. And it’s not that I think everybody should be prepared to write a dissertation in defense of communism (in other words, my mind is not in the realm of some kind of “true communist” elitist gatekeeping). But it’s sort of like the difference between cooking a meal from a recipe and knowing why the ingredients pair well together. If you have the second, you can make your own variations on the meal confidently. If all you have is the first, you’ll have a hard time adapting to changing conditions. Mind you, this is not something you just “learn” as a single thing and now you’re an expert. I think it is something that tends to come from prolonged combination of theory and practice, and many of us are in varying stages of working on it over time. But here is where a major problem is for the pundit style of “leftist”; if they never do the practice, they become mired in spinning their wheels on theory only.
Some of the pundit types I’m sure are just opportunists though and it’s not even that complex as to how they arrive where they do. They arrive at it because it’s convenient and it secures them a living in the capitalist world; they can exist on the edges as a reformist, without drawing the violence of the state upon them.
I fully agree and I personally don’t try to step out of line but I get humbled daily trying to learn about the practice of leftist politics and theory. We already have tried a lot and know for the most part why something failed. A lot of leftists in the imperial core just work on vibes instead of actual principles and theory
Basically, Ezra Klein.
