Anti-Capitalist Meet-Up - Put the precariat before the stick
“The United States is now at one of those historic forks in the road whose outcome will prove as fateful as those of the 1860s, the 1930s, and the 1960s,” writes Nancy MacLean. “To value liberty for the wealthy minority above all else and enshrine it in the nation’s governing rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for and the Koch network is achieving, play by play, is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the outer husk of representative form.”
These are precarious times and our cultural discourse sometimes obscures the contradictions embodied in our celebratory moments.
The meaning of financial value and collective uncertainty get muddled especially in employment and wage slavery, as “ life has become increasingly precarious for the many Americans who lack job security”.
“You Will Not Replace Us!” This slogan was coined from a statement by Nathan Damigo, founder of the white-nationalist campus group Identity Evropa, who retorted to an anti-Donald Trump “He will not divide us” campaign by actor Shia LeBeouf on social media: “Shia LeBeouf, you will not replace us with your globalism.” The chant is closely related to the white-nationalist “White Genocide”meme, reflective of their fears that white people and white culture are under attack from multiculturalism and nonwhite races. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the slogan began appearing on white-nationalist flyers and banners in May, and has spread widely since then. (At times during the first Charlottesville march, the chant morphed into “Jews Will Not Replace Us!”) www.splcenter.org/...
We’ve already looked at basic income issues in ACM, sometimes in the context of the BEIN (Basic Income Earth Network), but the current situation reminds us daily of the class differences that would prevent redressing inequality by enforcing inequity. It is as it’s always been for the many against the few.Even more precarious is an anti-immigrant fervor based on racism at the highest levels of government, and somehow tinged with a lie about racial/gender displacement that becomes even more bald-faced using social media. Your job is never really taken away as if it were a privileged gift, especially when some fundamental human rights to one’s labor should remain paramount.
An entire class of precariousness describes one social division that has been described beyond the notion of working poor in “the richest nation on earth”.
Can what Guy Standing describes as a precariat, move the general will toward reforming away that moment where it institutionalizes a permanent oligarchy. That oligarchy consists of “a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability”. Things run better with Koch.
The current regime exploits an nironic antisemitism and racial snowflakery as “ethno-nationalism”: RW “economic anxiety” seeking refuge in skin color, rationalizing oppression and contriving ways to make whatever police state power is available to enforce subjugation by criminalizing citizenship. In this scenario, a white ruling class is “the self-anointed vanguard imposing its vision on the masses.”
Stephen Miller was seen as sharing an "ideological kinship" with, and has had a "long collaboration" with, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.[5][34]
Darn these portmanteaus and neologisms...
The precariat contains features of a lumpenproletariat, and should not be confused with a pejorative Trumpen proletariat.
The precariat is a class subsisting within a “gig economy”, no different than the backward-shifted labor cost structures of post-fordist flexible production.
In the US context, the precariat is the exploited object of a “predominantly Caucasian financial elite and ruling class hegemony.”” that no amount of hip-hop can overthrow. It isn’t quite as bizarre as “You can’t always get what you want “ played at Trump rallies, OTOH we’ve become far too accustomed to the bizarre since 2016.
In many countries, the precariat has been swollen by the austerity era. It is growing in maturity too. In every Great Transformation (Karl Polanyi) there are three phases of struggle.
The sociologists Fred L. Block and Margaret Somers argue that Karl Polanyi's analysis could help explain why the resurgence of free market ideas have resulted in "such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years." en.wikipedia.org/...
The first is a primitive rebels phase in which the elements of the emerging class search for Recognition, a common identity. To a remarkable degree, this has happened since 2011. Millions more now have a sense of common identity, and know themselves as the precariat, without shame and with a sense of pride.
This provides a necessary potential unity for effective collective action. It is not a sufficient condition, but it is a necessary one.
The next phase is a struggle for Representation, having a collective and individual Voice in all agencies of the state, and having the ability to make a noise in the organs of the state, in the media and networks of public discourses. This is coming. The subjectivity of the precariat must be asserted, so that bureaucracies can no longer treat its members as failures to be reformed, made more ‘employable’ or punished.
The growing awareness of collective Recognition, and the ongoing actions of primitive rebels and mass resistance, must now give way to political re-engagement. This is happening, albeit discordantly, in such entities as the Partido X in Spain, Syriza in Greece and the M5S in Italy. Ultimately, this should be about the re-politicisation of politics, in the agora, as the precariat demands to turn from being object to being a subject. To some extent, for example, the upheavals in Gezi Park in Istanbul and the uplifting upheavals in Brazilian cities in 2013 can be interpreted as a demand for more inclusionary participatory democracy, in which the precariat should gain effective collective and individual agency.
As gains are made in Recognition and Representation, the struggle for a new distribution system and for a redistribution of access to those key assets will begin to absorb the collective energies of the precariat and those allied to it. Capital funds, basic income for all,occupational communities, new forms of unions or associations, and more beckon.
The precariat is taking shape. As Shelley put it in a comparable period of social upheaval two hundred years ago, in the greatest political protest poem ever written in English, inspired by the vicious suppression of the emerging working class in a public square, the precariat is reaching the stage when it will realise its power, “Ye are many, they are few!”
Bikers for Trump, a prominent Trump support group that has met the president numerous times, is making its pro-Trump t-shirts in Haiti because the prices in the US are too expensive.
Chris Cox, the founder of Bikers for Trump, said in an interview with the New York Times that US manufacturers were too costly. "I looked far and wide to try to get a shirt made in America, it's just they get you, they gouge you," he said as he sold $20 Trump shirts from his RV.
"If I get a T-shirt made in the USA, it's going to cost about $8 more." www.businessinsider.com/...
But the “basket of deplorables” aside from a meme, is not the lumpenproletariat or the precariat, it is a personality cult pandering to bigotry based on race/class/gender differences.
Trump-followers are the rebranded “populist” victims of rent-seeking monopolies exploiting a class of labor that has become “casual”. Their false consciousness exhibits itself with every call to “buy/hire American” while US companies’ off-shore job-outsourcing continues.
The chief reason for the continuing interest in Marx, however, is that his ideas are more relevant than they have been for decades. The post-war consensus that shifted power from capital to labour and produced a “great compression” in living standards is fading. Globalisation and the rise of a virtual economy are producing a version of capitalism that once more seems to be out of control. The backwards flow of power from labour to capital is finally beginning to produce a popular—and often populist—reaction. No wonder the most successful economics book of recent years, Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, echoes the title of Marx’s most important work and his preoccupation with inequality.
[...]
Marx argued that capitalism is in essence a system of rent-seeking: rather than creating wealth from nothing, as they like to imagine, capitalists are in the business of expropriating the wealth of others. Marx was wrong about capitalism in the raw: great entrepreneurs do amass fortunes by dreaming up new products or new ways of organising production. But he had a point about capitalism in its bureaucratic form. A depressing number of today’s bosses are corporate bureaucrats rather than wealth-creators, who use convenient formulae to make sure their salaries go ever upwards. They work hand in glove with a growing crowd of other rent-seekers, such as management consultants (who dream up new excuses for rent-seeking), professional board members (who get where they are by not rocking the boat) and retired politicians (who spend their twilight years sponging off firms they once regulated).
He thought capitalism had a tendency towards monopoly, as successful capitalists drive their weaker rivals out of business in a prelude to extracting monopoly rents. Again this seems to be a reasonable description of the commercial world that is being shaped by globalisation and the internet. The world’s biggest companies are not only getting bigger in absolute terms but are also turning huge numbers of smaller companies into mere appendages.Capitalism, Marx maintained, is by its nature a global system: “It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” That is as true today as it was in the Victorian era. The two most striking developments of the past 30 years are the progressive dismantling of barriers to the free movement of the factors of production—goods, capital and to some extent people—and the rise of the emerging world. Global firms plant their flags wherever it is most convenient. Borderless CEOs shuttle from one country to another in pursuit of efficiencies. The World Economic Forum’s annual jamboree in Davos, Switzerland, might well be retitled “Marx was right”.[...]
Yet once again Marx’s argument is gaining urgency. The gig economy is assembling a reserve force of atomised labourers who wait to be summoned, via electronic foremen, to deliver people’s food, clean their houses or act as their chauffeurs. In Britain house prices are so high that people under 45 have little hope of buying them. Most American workers say they have just a few hundred dollars in the bank. Marx’s proletariat is being reborn as the precariat.
The precariat is subject to more of the "unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings" that now finds itself disintegrated in a social media economy.
In sociology and economics, the precariat (/prɪˈkɛəriət/) is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term is a portmanteau obtained by merging precarious with proletariat.[1]Trumpen Proletariat, coined by Jonah Goldberg in 2015, to describe Donald Trump's "biggest fans", who he believed "are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause" in the same way the lumpen proletariat was not to be relied upon for a socialist revolution.[94] Daniel Henninger used the term as well in The Wall Street Journal.[95]
Unlike the proletariat class of industrial workers in the 20th century who lacked their own means of production and hence sold their labour to live, members of the precariat are only partially involved in labour and must undertake extensive "unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings".
Specifically, it is the condition of lack of job security, including intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence.[2] The emergence of this class has been ascribed to the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.[3][4]
en.wikipedia.org/…Guy Standing's best-known book is The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, published in 2011.[10] In it, he blames globalisation for having plunged more and more people into the precariat, which he analyses as a new emerging social class.[11] According to Standing, the precariat is not only suffering from job insecurity but also identity insecurity and lack of time control, not least due to workfare social policies.
Standing describes the precariat as an agglomerate of several different social groups, notably immigrants, young educated people, and those who have fallen out of the old-style industrial working class.[12]
The ruling class exercises hegemony over the precariat and continues to legitimate a historically institutionalized domination supported by some common cultural economies.
Some cultural products reinforce those social relations, beyond their ability to viscerally entertain. Expropriation remains when the high subsides.
The real question is whether in resisting the oppression of a ruling class, there will be sent a “fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!”
Hamilton: An American Musical is a sung- and rapped-through musical about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, with music, lyrics, and book by Lin-Manuel Miranda,[1][2] inspired by the 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton by historian Ron Chernow. Incorporating hip hop, R&B, pop, soul, traditional-style show tunes, and color-conscious casting of non-white actors as the Founding Fathers and other historical figures,[3][4][5]the musical achieved both critical acclaim and box office success. en.wikipedia.org/...
The problem with Miranda’s reading of history is that he assumes the liberal notion of a united nation, devoted to the common goals of freedom and equality, was any more real 225 years ago than it is today. Post-revolutionary America was never a utopia where everyone shared financially in the spoils of independence. It was a political association organized along the lines of feudal societies and their stark divisions between creditors and debtors.A wealthy, colonial elite had managed through a massive propaganda campaign to enlist the poor to fight to overthrow British rule. The masses slogged through years battling horrid conditions in the woods and back country to survive combat, hunger, and the elements. They were paid in worthless paper they would later sell to speculators for a fraction of its face value after returning to their farms and their families upon gaining their “freedom.”
The fiction that Puerto Rico is anything other than a colony was put to rest recently when the Supreme Court’s Sanchez Valle ruling acknowledged Puerto Rico does not have sovereignty and the U.S. Congress holds all political authority over the island. As a colony ruled by outsiders for their own benefit, the population of Puerto Rico is powerless to change the socioeconomic system imposed on them through the political process. This is exactly how Hamilton would have wanted it.
For Miranda, who talks eloquently of the problems facing his family and the people of Puerto Rico, there should be no greater symbol of the dispossession and social destruction that appear to be reaching a breaking point in Puerto Rico than Alexander Hamilton and his feudal politics that stripped people of their livelihoods and turned them into little more than commodities whose station in life was to produce wealth for others. www.counterpunch.org/...
[...]
The concentration of economic power into the hands of the few was the desired outcome, and the reason for Hamilton’s dedication to the federalist political system. As the political battles raged between the federalists (Hamilton, James Madison and others) and the Republicans (Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, who would later kill Hamilton in a duel), Hamilton sought to consolidate power into a centralized state that could enforce the feudal relationship between those who would pay and those who would collect.
[...]
Naturally, this history is absent from Miranda’s sanitized version of Hamilton. Instead, there is a feel-good, liberal version of Hamilton that fits the propaganda needs of the present-day American empire.
As Paul Street wrote recently in his CounterPunch article “Miranda, Obama, and Hamilton: an Orwellian Menage a Trois for the Neoliberal Age“, Miranda’s Broadway spectacle is a “brilliant ahistorical monument to Orwellian, fake-progressive bourgeois identity politics in service to the very predominantly Caucasian financial elite and ruling class hegemony.”
[...](Since 1917, when Puerto Rico was made an unincorporated U.S. territory, its citizens have been American citizens, but they do not have congressional voting rights, nor can they vote for President.)
While Miranda advocates for more flexibility for Puerto Rico to restructure its debt and help stabilize social life on the island, he doesn’t seem able to recognize that Puerto Rico’s problems are rooted in its political status as a colony conquered by the U.S. empire.
“Your debts are paid cuz you don’t pay for labor, “We plant seeds in the South. We create.” Yeah, keep ranting. We know who’s really doing the planting”- Alexander Hamilton, Cabinet Battle #1
Neoliberal economic policies continue that hegemony. The class interests legitimating assaults on the Constitution are designed to move the US into a pre-modern dominionist theocracy rather than a social democracy.Trumpism, embodied in its leader’s venal self-interest, reminds us that the American Revolution “... was a political association organized along the lines of feudal societies and their stark divisions between creditors and debtors.”
Buchanan’s view of human nature was distinctly dismal. Adam Smith saw human beings as self-interested and hungry for personal power and material comfort, but he also acknowledged social instincts like compassion and fairness. Buchanan, in contrast, insisted that people were primarily driven by venal self-interest. Crediting people with altruism or a desire to serve others was “romantic” fantasy: politicians and government workers were out for themselves, and so, for that matter, were teachers, doctors, and civil rights activists. They wanted to control others and wrest away their resources: “Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves,” he wrote in his 1975 book, The Limits of Liberty.
[...]
The people who needed protection were property owners, and their rights could only be secured though constitutional limits to prevent the majority of voters from encroaching on them, an idea Buchanan lays out in works like Property as a Guarantor of Liberty (1993).MacLean observes that Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was often more stark, warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and “predators” out to fleece them.
[...]
MacLean observes that both focused on how democracy constrains property owners and aimed for ways to restrict the latitude of voters. She argues that unlike even the most property-friendly founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability.Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so that a normal majority could no longer prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions— all these were tactics toward the goal. But the Holy Grail was the Constitution: alter it and you could increase and secure the power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge.
“I’m past patiently waitin’. I’m passionately smashin’ every expectation. Every action’s an act of creation! I’m laughin’ in the face of casualties and sorrow. For the first time, I’m thinkin’ past tomorrow”- Alexander Hamilton, My Shot
Comments
There's a labor shortage!
A shortage of American labor unwilling to work for
low wages and/or in unsafe conditions, perhaps.
The sixth most productive work force in the world, folks. (Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the happiest countries in the world have more productive work forces than does the US: https://collectivehub.com/2018/02/15-of-the-worlds-most-productive-count... https://www.forbes.com/sites/duncanmadden/2018/03/27/ranked-the-10-happi.... THE most productive work force in the world, though, is Luxemborg's, with a 29-hour average work week, as compared with the US's 47 hours.) BTW, same subject, different story with different info: http://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/ )
Trump: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/23/588469561/trump-admin..., but https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/20/16003254/trump-h2b-vis...
Hillary: https://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/08/hillary-clin... ; http://blog.cyrusmehta.com/2016/05/is-hillary-clintons-silence-on-h-1b-v... ;https://www.prideimmigration.com/hillary-clintons-position-on-increasing...
Sanders https://berniesanders.com/issues/a-fair-and-humane-immigration-policy/
The tension between being pro jobs for Americans and xenophobia caused Hillbots to accuse Sanders of the latter during the primary.
I don't suppose Hamilton, the musical, bothers to mention
that Hamilton, the person, was the beneficiary of a humongous stroke of good luck at exactly the right time. His home island was bullseyed by a hurricane, and he wrote a vividly memorable article about it for the local paper, which so impressed the citizens that they took up a collection to get him a good mainland education in New York City.
Were it not for that hurricane, he wouldn't have been in position to ride the currents of the Revolution.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
You always post such interesting historical info. Thank you.
On research, the musical does mention it
but doesn't reflect on the sheer amount of good luck involved. Not so much "How lucky I was" as "how much I deserved it".
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Great read. anieli. Thank you.
I am always puzzled when people speak or write as though nations catering to the wealthy is a new thing. Koch brothers? Calhoun and Buchanan? We started as a colony under King George III and Parliament, at a time when monarchs/dictators of one kind or other ruled every nation and colony on the planet.
As for us, a good number of early colonists struggled to meet the demand of the East India Company and Governors chosen by the King became the power in each colony. Massachusetts "sold" the idea of the revolution to the rest of the colonies and John Hancock was instrumental in that effort. Most of the Framers were very well off at the time they conceived the Constitution of the United States. A number of them owned slaves, the largest source of wealth in the colonies and the early US. Hence, the Constitution did not prohibit slavery, despite the efforts of abolitionists.
The Constitution itself, as it read presented for ratification (meaning without the Bill of Rights) was written to ensure that power remained in wealthy white males. Even for purposes of census/representation in the House, blacks and members of First Nations were not counted as whole human beings.
As for women, fuhgeddaboudit. Even John Adams, who doted on his wife and fought unsuccessful to forbid slavery, dismissed out of hand the importuning of Abigail to not "forget" about women, who were considered the property of, first their fathers and then their husbands. Only unmarried adult females could even sign binding contracts or incur debts without the permission of a father or husband.
The House, whose members were to be elected by what the Framers considered potentially dangerous rabble, was very purposefully given less power than the Senate, whose members were to be elected by state legislators (which, only recently, had been colonial legislatures, under the King's colonial Governors). At the time of ratification, only about 6% of the total population of the US was entitled to vote--and the Framers still feared giving them power! Buchanan, Calhoun? Amateurs.
Of course, slaves finally got the right to vote after ratification of the Civil War amendments to the Constitution and women in 1920. However, the Constitutional amendment to eliminate poll taxes was not ratified until--wait for it--1964. (Of course, states had been free to eliminate poll taxes and, by 1964, most, but not all of them, had done so by then.)
We're told Neanderthals were a kinder, gentler species than we are, so I won't risk libeling them. However, I'm guessing that the rulers of earliest homo sapiens got first dibs on the results of any successful animal kills (and any homegrown side dishes) and the spoils of any victories of their respective clans in conflicts. Of course, I'm only imagining that. But, I do think some people have always been more equal than others, with power leading to wealth and wealth leading to power. As to the American colonies and the US, however, imagining is unnecessary.
Hi aneili,
Thank you for this good read and posting some of your prolific work on c99, i enjoy it.
May the tide turn in time and Americans choose a better path.
Good to see you, cheers.
Anti-Capitalist? Hmmm...
Anti-Capitalist? No offense, but how so very 1920’s of you. But seriously, why are you are parroting simplistic rhetoric that is ignorant of the cornerstone of capitalism, which is entrepreneurship and innovation, both of which are suppressed by communism.
Capitalism's entrepreneurship and innovation have fostered the single greatest rise in human prosperity humanity has ever known.
And conversely, it has been socialists/communists, being inherently an autocratic authoritarian militant totalitarianism, (i.e., police-state), ruling by the Communist Party Elite, who have committed the greatest human rights abuses in human history renowned for their violent suppression of the rights of the individual. From USSR, to China, to Cuba, to Venezuela, and now, we are seeing this in our own nation, with the tell-tale actions of the terrorist AntiFa (funded by George Soros and the Globalist Communist Cabal) who have one and only one goal, to silence voices which they do not approve by violent suppression, just like communists have always done. Communists have to suppress opposing voices in order to get away with denying the rights of the individual.
Hmmm, I wonder, is there an ANTI-COMMUNIST MEETUP as well, because that is more kindred to my spirit?
Well, for what it's worth, here are some Q drops to expose those Antifa communist terrorist (modern day nazi-brown-shirt) thugs, if any are interested...
I believed all that horse manure once upon a time
when I was young and foolish (e.g. in sophomore class in college - there's a reason "sophomoric" means "shallow and arrogant", you know).
The real world doesn't work the way they try to spin it for us - no matter who "they" is. (No, not even Q.)
Edit: the equation of "communist" and "fascist" is MAJOR obfuscation. Beware anyone, or any source, that does that kind of casual and illogical lumping. They're trying to make you NOT THINK - just react with a Pavlovian knee-jerk.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
i've never dipped into the whole Q thing
before, but if this is a representative sample -- spew after spew of random, incoherent, and self-contradictory caps-locked bullet-pointed blather, familiar to anyone on the email list of a libertariany RW loony relative -- it has quite immediately any/all interest for me.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@TheOtherMaven
“Horse manure?” Hmm, lets keep this respectful.
Facts...
And yet, it is the liberal communist teachers in colleges today who are brainwashing students with these simple-minded 1900’s era communist slogans that do not promote critical thinking.
It is the liberal communist teachers in colleges today who are brainwashing these Antifa terrorist kids, or who are the Antifa terrorists themselves.
USSR, China, Cuba were/are communist regimes and they did commit the greatest human rights abuses ever, and let’s not forget Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, also communist, no surprise.
And regarding Venezuela, their military has been arresting bakers for not baking their quota of bread. What does that tell you? With all their oil they are still going broke? Their people are still starving. How does that happen? I doubt the soldiers and the communist party elite are starving.
Those are the facts, (nothing spin in there). And those are facts communists like to ignore.
Communists rule by majority vote, (which is also called “mob rule”) which is why they must always violently control the media narrative to ensure they always secure the majority vote, which by definition must deny the rights of the individual.
Communists believe they have the moral right because they have the majority vote.
The founders of the USofA knew the dangers of mob rule, which is why they created this nation as a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy, in order to protect the rights of the individual.
Communists believe they can legislate the production of goods and services, but the real world doesn’t work that way.
Communists believe they can legislate innovation, but when you violently deny the rights of the individual, you suppress the very geniuses who innovate and invent.
Those are the facts.
I think it was Margaret Thatcher who once said that "The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." and if we review history, the truth of this speaks for itself.
The rhetoric, slogans, ideology, actions, violent methods, and symbolism (as Q’s drop revealed) of fascism and communism are the same in substantive ways; it is the denial of this fact that is obfuscation.
And you obviously haven’t followed Q’s drops or the QAnon movement, because all Q does is ask questions, it is up to the anons/autists to do the research themselves and connect the dots using critical thinking and thus figure out for themselves what is the truth and what is propaganda.
It appears to me that you are guilty of the very things you claim others are, which is a classic brainwashing tactic of the communists... and rather Orwellian. Hillary Clinton and the DNC most certainly have been using this same brainwashing tactic that you are. And the Communist Antifa is a fascist terrorist hate group in every way shape and form, yet they claim to be anti-fascism and anti-hate. If that’s not the epitome of Pavlovian brainwashing, I don’t know what is.
And as Q often says, “Symbolism will be their downfall.”
TO WIT:
You can’t make this stuff up.
And I have no words for how disgusted I feel about their effort to normalize pedophilia:
And let's be clear, there were only 30 White Supremacists who showed up at the Globalists manufactured rally a few weeks ago, compared to the thousands of fascist AntiFa thugs. The fact that communists/fascists always resort to violence tells you everything you need to know about them.
TL:DR
Not disrespecting you, just the idea of the glorification of capitalism. It's just as bogus as the glorification of any other ideology - and quite possibly the most dangerous one ever.
Infinite expansion and infinite extraction of resources on a finite planet is impossible and leads to a DEAD planet.
Wonder how many other intelligent life-forms in the universe got caught in the same trap and extincted themselves like the traditional yeast in a jar. Maybe that's why we haven't heard from any aliens...?
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I thought you were respectful
No Q Anon / autist would ever say TL:DR
No Q Anon / autist would ever say TL:DR.
Serially, there is a reason followers of Q are called autists, which we take as a compliment.
Look, with all due respect, if you don’t have the mental capacity to fully engage in this discussion then you shouldn’t be commenting at all. No offense, but but were never able to read even a high school level text book because TL:DR? Yes, I know you can. You just don’t want to.
And no, I did not read your comment after the TL:DR. If you don’t respectfully read what I respectfully patiently take the time to write, then I won’t read what you write.
Respect works both ways.
And for the record, your TL:DR comment is 10x more disrespectful than your “horse manure” comment. Please don’t be surprised if I ignore your comments from now on.
Enough please, we are friends searching, here, not adversaries.
I am not being adversarial.
If someone doesn't take the time to read what I write, why should I take the time to read what they write? To an QAnon/autist to not read what we have taken the time to research and share is the height of disrespect. That's just the way it is. This TL:DR trend doesn't fly with the QAnon/Autist community and is anathema to our ethos. You wouldn't last with that sort of a disrespectful attitude.
Troll-Be-Gone...
Can't say he/she didn't get a chance though. It's sole purpose was to disrupt the comment threads and to catapult its propaganda.
I saw it from the first day it was here:
We'll probably see more of this as the Nov. election nears.
Facts?
All due respect, please support your work as your fact list, all of it, is at best conjecture.
Many of the world's greatest thinkers, artists and writers produced works in the twenties and one other thing, if there has been a movement in college professor's political persuasions of late, i suggest it derives from corporations which universities have turned to since Reagan to replace diminished state and federal funds. Think that would make the larger campus conversation more conservative than liberal, don't you?
Thanks.
@smiley7
You are attributing abuses, (like slavery, or mining, or abuses to the environment) on to capitalism that are not inherent to Capitalism itself. Capitalism vs respect for workers or respect for the environment, are not mutually exclusive. There are foolish shortsighted business owners who are corrupt and abusive, and who poison the environment, and in the long run, they pay or should pay for those abuses. But Capitalism does not inherently necessitate any of those abuses you’ve delineated. And, it’s not a zero sum world. With each generation of innovations, the potential for growth increases exponentially, and if there is a limited resource, then there needs to be a new innovation to avoid exploiting that resource too much that it destroys the planet. And yes there should be regulatory oversight to prevent abuses, just like there needs to be laws, legislation, industry standards, and regulatory oversight to prevent theft and to prevent all manner of crimes and provide for safety. This and these are in no way mutually exclusive of Capitalism. And, the innovations of the early 1900’s pale compared to the innovations over the last 5 to 10 to 20 or even 40 years. No comparison.
Whereas, Communism, on the other hand, requires the violent suppression of opposing voices in order to impose its autocratic rule by the Party elite. In order for Communism to exist, it must, by its very definition, exert a unilateral totalitarian militant rule over the entire population, without exemption, which means it must deny individual rights and freedom. Communism is authoritarian, sanctioned by mob rule. If 51% of the population says “A”, then 100% of the population must do “A”, which means that 49% of the population are oppressed, but it’s much worse than that as we saw in Nazi Germany, because Hitler’s Socialist Party took control with less than 33% of the vote... due to there being 6 candidates that were running. And once in power, that was that. The same thing happened in every instance of communism in history. As soon as the Communist Party came to power, they ruthlessly suppressed dissent through violent military control.
And last but not least, you cannot legislate innovation. Innovation is fostered by entrepreneurship, but there is none of that in the totalitarian communist regime. If there is a problem that is damaging the planet, Capitalism has a far greater chance of developing innovations and inventions that address and correct that problem. Again, communism suppresses innovation and this trumps all other factors that affects humanity’s ability to survive.
In this day and age, I assumed everyone knows this stuff. It’s not like they can hide the truth.
You want me to provide evidence? Really? Please take the time to research this yourself. The facts really are self evident. Antifa are almost entirely students or teachers from colleges who started out by violently attacking in black dressed mobs bashing heads and throwing Molotov cocktails. This is well documented in numerous videos ... you can start by going to YouTube and searching “Berkeley Antifa” and go from there.
And btw, they even arrested an Antifa teacher who smashed some random conservative in the head at a rally with a metal lock on the end of a metal bicycle chain.
And ...
The tens of millions killed by the Nazis is no secret.... millions of their own people killed. And the Nazi Party was, yes, Socialist.
The tens of millions killed by Stalin of his own people is no secret, and how many did he torture and maim, and how many since he died?
The tens of millions killed by China of their own people is no secret, and how many more did they torture and maim?
How many of his own people did Pol Pot kill, and how many more did he torture and maim?
How many did Fidel Castro kill, and torture and maim?
How many people need to be killed, tortured and maimed by the direct actions of totalitarian communist regimes for people to realize that communism is the single greatest abuser of human rights ever?
They abuse their own people for heavens sake.
And if the violent militant terrorist actions of Communist Antifa hate-filled group is not an indication of their fascist ideals, then I don’t know what is.
And regarding those large corporations who are funding universities, if you’ve been following Q, you would have already realized that those companies are monopolies in nature and doing the bidding of the Globalist Communist Cabal, suppressing opposing viewpoints... with shadow banning and throttling tending hashtags and censorship.... or firing employees who express the wrong political opinion. There are numerous examples of Colleges around this nation who either fire or don’t hire conservative teachers. The are numerous examples, if you follow conservative news or just listen to walk away movement testimonials. If you haven’t seen overwhelming evidence of this, then I would respectfully suggest that this is due to either willful ignorance or willful deceit. If nothing else, I think I’ve given ample Q crumbs for any autist to connect the dots and see the truth.
Hmm, is there really no anti-communism meetups here? Or is this community really just a one sided group of communists intent on surreptitiously promoting communism? Is that what the Democratic Party has secretly become? I used to think that the Republicans’ claim that Democrats are secretly communists was just fear mongering, maybe I was mistaken.
Let's review capitalism/neoliberalism
and give it to the few, you're living it
in real time, not fake news.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Scary
Guilty?
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
tee hee
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
OMG, our first full-blown pro capitalism run amok poster.
JtC are you writing this down?
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
well, the community asserts itself to be open
to expression of all political opinion, so we'll see how this goes.
for myself, i certainly can't be bothered to construct a refutation or rebuttal of anything sdm posted. where/how would one even begin?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Yes...
we are a nonpartisan open expression site so sdm gets to play as long as he/she is polite -OR- he/she proves to be here only to catapult the propaganda.
Thanks for letting us keep him, dad. :-)
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
The outcomes and history of capitalism is death and genocide.
Modern capitalism is based on the Industrial Revolution which scholars which would never have happened with Souther slaves and the cotton crop.
Also this co-mingling of fascists with communists is to hide the fact that fascist regimes are essentially capitalist regimes.
There were winners and losers. Even Marx called capitalism a revolutionary movement, but which in the end has itself killed millions and millions.
Yo, bozo
*being inherently an autocratic authoritarian militant totalitarianism, (i.e., police-state)*
or just look up fascism. Cause this is where we are at. Sheesh.
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
70% of us make less
than $50,000 /yr. today.
70%. Let that sink in. I made $50K /yr. back in 1995.
23 frickin' years ago! It was about what school teachers with 10 years experience earned, "about average" wages back then. About half earned more, half earned less.
Today 70% of us don't earn that much. 70 frickin' percent!
$50 K today will "get by" a family of four, but that's about all it will do. Get 'em by. Make ends (barely) meet. There are damn few savings, if any, and maybe a one week trip to Disneyville as the yearly vacation. The other 51 weeks spent "getting by."
The rest of us 70 percenters?
About half of us make less than $30 K /yr.
Hope you don't have any kids! And don't get sick!
There's no room in the budget for those excesses.
And that 'Fight For 15!' nonsense? Please. Be thankful you have a stinkin' job!
Oh, and... your rent just went up. Again.
Embrace the suck.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.