Thinking of you

[sabotabby]

Watch on YouTube

I wish I were in New York.

Related: We are the 99%

Whenever I think about capitalist economics—really think about it, at its most basic—it blows me away. To think that we (collective we, not this particular corner of the internet) can't possibly conceive of an alternative. To think that angry mobs with torches and pitchforks are the exception rather than the rule. If one thinks about wealth distribution and is not immediately enraged (and I say this as a person who benefits far more than I suffer from the system), one isn't thinking hard enough.

Comments

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

We'd love to have you here; join the occupation!

Check this one out, though:



It's getting pretty bad.

[sabotabby]

Alas, gainful employment in Toronto is not exactly conducive to getting arrested in New York.

Still, I imagine there will be solidarity protests here eventually.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

October 15

http://www.occupyto.ca/

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

That We are the 99% website is awesome.

That Capitalism continues is an extraordinary achievement of propaganda.

We have a huge information problem for one. Have you seen this set of graphics from MoJo on inequality in the US? Most Americans believe that the distribution of income is far more equal than it is in reality - but think it should be more equal still! They're raging socialists (or at least social democrats), they just don't realize it.

Then there's a huge co-oridnation problem. For those who have employment , anything more than low-level activism (except e.g. union activism directly connected to ones own conditions) is costly.

Then there's the actual matter of uniting behind an alternative. Most western leftists may not have been at all fond of the Soviet Union, but we still haven't recovered from the political consequences of its failure.

All that said, I can't believe that the natural instincts of the majority for some sort of basic fairness will not at some point reassert itself in an effective collective manner. Who knows, maybe OWS is the beginning...

I'd question that you benefit more than suffer from the system? You might have more than the average income, I suspect not much more, but

a) Probably below average wealth, because that is even more skewed towards the top.
b) Pretty low down a hierarchical work organization system that places enormous burdens on people and offers very limited flexibility to actually live a balanced life.
c) Deleterious effects of screwed-up economy, society, lack of public services, etc.

[sabotabby]

I saw the MoJo thing, yeah. It's pretty mindboggling. I can't see how anyone in their right mind can look at that distribution and justify it.

I'd question that you benefit more than suffer from the system? You might have more than the average income, I suspect not much more, but

True. I'm more thinking globally, because much of what makes my life so secure is exploitation elsewhere. It's pretty direct, too. The Ontario Teachers Pension Fund invests in some spectacularly awful shit.

But it's also working class activism that's let me be more secure. Our unions are stronger, and thus I'm paid more and have far more security than teachers in the US. We have substantially more public services, though the Cons are doing their best to fuck that up.

This said, it's also my lifestyle choices that contribute to both a lack of work-life balance and a relatively large amount of disposable income. If I bought a house near where I work and bought a car, I'd have more free time but I'd have less money to toss around. Most of my co-workers are in debt. I'm not, but I also have three hours of commuting a day.

Still, I don't want to cast myself as unduly oppressed when I'm actually not, and I'm in the shrinking minority of working people with a stable, secure, well-paying job.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Whenever I think about capitalist economics—really think about it, at its most basic—it blows me away. To think that we (collective we, not this particular corner of the internet) can't possibly conceive of an alternative. To think that angry mobs with torches and pitchforks are the exception rather than the rule. If one thinks about wealth distribution and is not immediately enraged (and I say this as a person who benefits far more than I suffer from the system), one isn't thinking hard enough.

Me too; I have "wtf" moments a couple of times a week with the thought that people are somehow "voluntarily"* participating in this, and that we put up with it?

*Though little in capitalism is voluntary when viewed through the basic principles of free will. The "market" is a coercive instrument manipulated by those with the resources.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

*And as much as I'm excited by these protests, like most anti-capitalist protests in America they are again dominated by white, well-educated people in their 20s. When will the American left* learn that you need a broader base to effect truly historic change.**


*Or the rotting carcass of what it was.

**And I shouldn't talk smack, since I've done very little past being in despair over the whole situation over the last couple of years.

[sadwizardscrypt.livejournal.com]

I agree, the protests are exciting, but it's hard to be optimistic.

Also, the composition of the movement is entirely irrelevant as long as its content is basically against some of the worst excess of the financial sector, not capitalism as a whole (and it doesn't even make the link that the finance sector's perfidy, and the crisis of the last few years, are tied very much to a broader, deeper crisis of capitalism -- one that can't be solved by taxing bankers, or even doing away with them). Adding the more oppressed to the mix isn't going to matter so long as those people don't come to some more radical conclusions.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Also, the composition of the movement is entirely irrelevant as long as its content is basically against some of the worst excess of the financial sector, not capitalism as a whole (and it doesn't even make the link that the finance sector's perfidy, and the crisis of the last few years, are tied very much to a broader, deeper crisis of capitalism -- one that can't be solved by taxing bankers, or even doing away with them). Adding the more oppressed to the mix isn't going to matter so long as those people don't come to some more radical conclusions.

Totally agree.

I guess that I've lost faith that people, at least in North America, can draw radical conclusions anymore, I think that at least for my lifetime, radicals (a group I would identify with) will remain outside the pale of effective daily politics, partly through their own lack a dynamism when it comes down to strategy and tactics, but also because Randian fairytales of capitalist superman appeal much better to a atomonized populace in North American because I think that we're fighting culture as much as we are an economic structure, at least in some regards.

I think the more oppressed are more easily radicalized since they are much more closer linked to the perpetual class crisis that capitalism creates in society in daily life and I 'm skeptical of trusting elites with a radical consciousness (if these protests had any) because even if a group of white, college educated kids were able to draw radical conclusions, like many of them did in the 1960s, it wouldn't mean that they would bring upon radical results as the '60s radicals were only able to transform their radicalism into reformism under the guise of the New Left.

I guess that's more a of tactical discussion at best, if the inclusion of more oppressed groups can aid in more in radicalization or vis-a-versa, but still if there's going to be at best a milquetoast reform movement, I'd still advocate a broad base so at least most oppressed have an opportunity to have a say within it, however little it may be in the big picture of epochal change.

[sabotabby]

It was a huge revelation in second-year uni when my prof told us all that systems that claim consent are far more difficult to overthrow than coercive systems.

In this case, I'm not so sure it's a question of free will as a question of simply not understanding economics.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Economics just isn't on the national curriculum here. Some schools teach it at A Level.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I think too large a chunk of it is free will, albeit uneducated free will: too many people have been persuaded by consumer opportunism or whatever the term is for when people think they will get lots of money and screw everyone else, and start off thinking that being a "hardworking family" (New Labour speak) will get them their semi and their cars or whatever these people go in for, then realize they are fucked, but assume winning the lottery will get them there anyway, and then are just too old and tired to think about it any more and so just moan about how actually their lack of a slice of the high life is the fault of people who didn't work hard enough and are "benefit scroungers" taking all their tax money that would otherwise gone on their new cars.

Or they just go crazy and collapse like Willy whatsisname. Er, Death of a Salesman twat, can't remember his name.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

It just confuses, or rather confounds me.

What gets me most confused is that if I say anything remotely negative about capitalist ways, people sneer and tell me I am supremely stupid and undereducated.

We have constant evil, scary shite pouring out of the sneering mouths of Tory ex-Etonians at the moment over here. It is horrible. The latest to make me scream and froth at the mouth in fury is the announcement that they are going to try to sell 2 million council houses (to council house residents) and use the money to build 200,000 council houses (on lovely green land, a lot of it). Maths? Aaargh!

[mendaciloquent.livejournal.com]

There's definitely a magic trick / house of cards quality to the absurdity of capitalism. In a way there is actually nothing holding it together, in the sense that the people who operate most of the key institutions that make it work are usually the ones who are just as screwed as everyone else, if not disproportionately screwed, by the system they defend, in contrast to regimes who are protected by a central core of segregated loyalists who are bound to them by other means -- family, tribal, or ethnic ties, long traditions of special patronage, etc. The United States certainly has people like that in a few key institutions, but none of them would continue to function with them alone. The coercive force of capitalism is completely dependent on people threatening others of the same class. It's sort of like having a slave plantation where fellow slaves are the overseers, or a prison where the prisoners are the guards. The sad thing is that both of those things are perversely imaginable.

The first thing I always think about when considering this is a passage from a book called The War of the Flea by Robert Taber -- a pretty nuts-and-bolts but very insightfully written (so insightful that the CIA lifted most of it for its Counterinsurgency Field Manual during the Vietnam War) study of guerrilla warfare. What he alludes to is a kind of turning-point broken societies go through (he was mostly talking about Cuba) where it kind of collectively dawns on people that the conditions they live under are mutable, to the extent that going back to the old system, even before it is gone, is no longer conceivable, and the imperative to act, rather than being the exception, becomes a kind of obvious necessity. I wish he had talked more about what the conditions were that lead to these moments, because I suspect that they are concrete and specific.