thirdform

pass the sick bucket
if she was funny i would woo her with my sonic dialectics. she has a nice voice if she doesn't use it in a university way. at least her favourite thing isn't kate bush. that's very bad.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Ash Sarkar proudly proclaims herself a communist in the interview linked above. I assume she has some kind of disconnect with the massive historical failures of communism. "Autonomist" is a more attractive formulation to me but who cares what I think, I'm old like dirt.

well, the successes of soviet communism and british capitalism are roughly the same. aka. not very successful at all.

british capitalism has had over 350 years to be far more deadly, though.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Real capitalism has never been tried

I appreciate the joke, of course, but isn't China the closest any state has yet got to 'pure' capitalism, unencumbered by distractions such as democracy?

I see that Teen Vogue article listed modern China among "socialist, non-capitalist states", which made me laugh.
 
I appreciate the joke, of course, but isn't China the closest any state has yet got to 'pure' capitalism, unencumbered by distractions such as democracy?

I see that Teen Vogue article listed modern China among "socialist, non-capitalist states", which made me laugh.

If you take economic freedom as the measure, Singapore is closest, but even Singapore is behind Hong Kong (if you separate it from China).
Two other entirely and unarguably unrelated facts about Hong Kong: highest meat consumption per capita in the world, longest life expectancy in the world.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yes I saw you post that on twitter a while ago when you were on some meat-crusade

Obviously China is a somewhat different model from free-market capitalism. Their Gini inequality coefficient is way higher than any developed country, Western or otherwise (although this is mainly a function of, on average, how poor a country is - the highest coefficients are found in sub-Saharan Africa) and they overtook the USA as the country with the most billionaires a couple of years ago.
 
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Sectionfive

bandwagon house
NM is certainly a different beast now to the beginnings of a couple of students enamoured with Italian anarchism. I don't really keep up with much of their output now, some things were well thought out while others have definitely not been. They had some good guests when it was just the resonance show and were always interesting on policing, media and a couple of issues.

Nothing comparable really existed at the time and Corbyn was the game changer really, wasn't it? They were best place to ride that wave. It's still been surprising though to see them become fixtures on Question Times, Sky News, etc, as I would have thought certain people and views remained outside the pale. They still owe me for an unpaid invoice though!
 

glasshand

dj panic attack
interesting to read all this because I basically like the NM project but Bastani does my fuckin head in and something doesn't sit right about the following around Ash (thirsty left blokes) and the dissonance surrounding all the things she comes out with
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
If - actually a massive, improbable if - Labour gets behind a second referendum, will be interesting to watch all these tossers pivot.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
This bad tempered old man piece seems aimed at likes of Novara. Some fascinating and horrific details re. Kenya in there. Though he's wrong about Brexit in the sense that it seems to have been driven by baby boomers, not the young. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/30/brexit-britain-crisis-uk

I think that the differences between "centrists" and "populists" in this country at least in large part come from the experience of being in power. The former hanker back to the Blair years and the general "good management" of domestic affairs, and all the compromises and mistakes that this entailed are acknowledged to some degree but perhaps not the full legacy. The latter - quite rightly, in some instances - focus on the inequalities left by this legacy, the mistakes and compromises but don't see or wish to acknowledge the good. Reform or revolution, to go back to the piece above.
 

glasshand

dj panic attack
coming back here to say I will still take Novara Media over the fuckin awful #FBPE crowd who obsessively kick off about them on twitter.

I usually like what James B has to say about stuff and he isn't annoying on social media.

I also like Richard Seymour's writing and I think he must kinda move in the same world and with the same ideas as most of the NM lot.

The luxury gay communism in space type stuff gets me down because I've only ever heard the most poser-ish left 'activist' types talk about it, and in a kind of ironic, people who get the joke way. But then I do like Nick Srnicek's writing about platform capitalism and while I haven't got round to reading Inventing the Future I do think some sort of big ideas and hope is totally necessary for people to get onboard even with less radical change (good reform).

Talking about "reform or revolution"... part of what I meant by Ash's dissonance is her on telly saying "I'm literally a communist" and then her more out of the public eye handing JC a mic to feed him some despicably cringey lines he doesn't understand

- "my g, my g" skin crawling

to try make fairly reformist, still pro-capitalist social democracy a bit more cool or something.

It makes the "I'm literally a communist" and the more radical stuff seem like posturing
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
she doesn't talk like that on her podcast she talks like one of those wankers with an intern at verso or something.

forget srnicek, read ultra-left stuff.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
The description above was so sphincter-tightening I still haven't watched it. Maybe I'll save myself from the pain.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Bastani's apparently about to be sued.

Verified account @MaajidNawaz
Replying to @AaronBastani

I’ve instructed @mlewislawyer to sue @aaronbastani of @novaramedia for his defamatory allegation about me being a “former terrorist”. Two other Corbynist media pundits will also be sent letters today. Anyone who supported this tweet, your tweets are printed out. You are on notice



Wow - have you watched the short clip someone has posted further down the thread?

Interviewer: Would you fabricate racism or homophobia against the Tories?

Bastani: Yep.
 
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