germaphobian

Well-known member
what you fail to understand (and I absolutely do mean this in an offensive way) is that the bourgeoisie had entrusted production and exchange to the state as early as the 19th century and made the private capitalist surplus to requirements. It is the impersonal domination of capital, bitch! There was no need to lucubrate weird and wonderful classes without that for reading anti-dühring, presumably only due to a lack of lube. Capitalism was never a new form of private property, or private initiative, this is idiotic bourgeois leftism, but precisely associated labour and the suppression of the freedom of the producer. Property is not a simple act of theft a la proudhon but force sanctified by legal right, and thus a relationship. The bureaucracy or if you will, the élite is just an apparatus for holding class power, bourgeois power that is, the same capitalism and the same state, and what else would this managerial élite do if it only represented itself? spend its hard earned cash at the brothel? It must be such a useless élite that keeps constituting itself as a new class in all the successive stages of development of the tributary mode of production, and then in capitalism, likewise, only to be a class that is defunct from the beginning and a floating metaphysical signifier!
No one who actually has engaged with those works of elite thinkers (most of them ex-marxists themselves) fails to understand these truisms. But it dosen't change aything as far as their conclusions regardig managerial elites go.

(I promise I won't quote Sam Francis gain, but this is just too perfect)

Although the bourgeois elite made use of state power on occasion to secure its economic advantage, its principal political interest was in the use of the state to control criminals and to suppress challenges to its dominance from prescriptive reactionaries on the right and from radicals, revolutionaries, and lower-class insurgents on the left. In the 19th century, both of these political challenges from the right and left sought to use the executive sectors of the state to limit or overthrow the bourgeois order, and it was with the dynastic monarchies of the prescriptive order that the established aristocracies, churches, and privileged guilds, which the bourgeoisie regarded as mortal enemies, had been associated. In practical terms, therefore, the bourgeois elites of the 19th century sought to consolidate their own power and circumscribe the power of their challengers through the control and supremacy of legislative assemblies and through the formulation of laws and constitutions that effectively locked these assemblies and the bourgeois elites that controlled them into power. This process constituted what R.R. Palmer called “The Age of the Democratic Revolution,” by which what would become bourgeois forces delivered themselves from the power of established monarchs, churches, aristocracies, guilds, and other privileged institutions. “In Europe,” writes Palmer, the revolutionary movement, though it carried aristocratic liberalism and Babouvist communism at its fringes, was most especially a middleclass or “bourgeois” affair, aimed at the reconstruction of an old order, and at the overthrow of aristocracies, nobilities, patriciates, and other privileged classes
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
No one who actually has engaged with those works of elite thinkers (most of them ex-marxists themselves) fails to understand these truisms. But it dosen't change aything as far as their conclusions regardig managerial elites go.

(I promise I won't quote Sam Francis gain, but this is just too perfect)

Although the bourgeois elite made use of state power on occasion to secure its economic advantage, its principal political interest was in the use of the state to control criminals and to suppress challenges to its dominance from prescriptive reactionaries on the right and from radicals, revolutionaries, and lower-class insurgents on the left. In the 19th century, both of these political challenges from the right and left sought to use the executive sectors of the state to limit or overthrow the bourgeois order, and it was with the dynastic monarchies of the prescriptive order that the established aristocracies, churches, and privileged guilds, which the bourgeoisie regarded as mortal enemies, had been associated. In practical terms, therefore, the bourgeois elites of the 19th century sought to consolidate their own power and circumscribe the power of their challengers through the control and supremacy of legislative assemblies and through the formulation of laws and constitutions that effectively locked these assemblies and the bourgeois elites that controlled them into power. This process constituted what R.R. Palmer called “The Age of the Democratic Revolution,” by which what would become bourgeois forces delivered themselves from the power of established monarchs, churches, aristocracies, guilds, and other privileged institutions. “In Europe,” writes Palmer, the revolutionary movement, though it carried aristocratic liberalism and Babouvist communism at its fringes, was most especially a middleclass or “bourgeois” affair, aimed at the reconstruction of an old order, and at the overthrow of aristocracies, nobilities, patriciates, and other privileged classes

the elite is just an apparatus of the capitalist class. It is the same class, same mode of production, same state, same everything. nothing is particularly new here.
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
the elite is just an apparatus of the capitalist class. It is the same class, same mode of production, same state, same everything. nothing is particularly new here.

Ok, but if you would go on one of those apps and buy a 1 pound worth of shares in, dunno, "Tesla" would that make you a part of capitalist class? Musk, who is the richest man on the planet, owns roughly 20% of "Tesla" shares and he technically can be fired by majority shareholder decision, because CEO is essentially a manager, that's worth remembering. And why owning 0.1% of shares makes you less of a capitalist than owning 20% of shares?
And how much of the day to day Amazon operations do you think Jeff Bezos actually decides (8% of shares)? Oh, none, because he stepped down as a CEO.
And, after all, which entity decides what can be publicly traded? Who manages the logistics of these trades? Who has the know-how to make them happen?
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
It's not exactly like Henry Ford who surveyed the land where his factories are gonna be built and decided on the colour of the bricks, planned the manufacturing process from A to Z and ruled his business in a dictatorial manner reminiscent of a Roman emperor, isn't it?
So there's deffo a quantitative change that has morphed into a qualitative change to use your marxist lingo.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I told you, classes aren't statistical quantities where each individual is given their alotted place in society. this is crude anglo-american empiricism.

classes are defined by the defence of their interests (no longer the limit of the in-itself but the for-itself) consolidated in the centralised capitalist state and its political parties. What matters are the Republicans and democrats, not Musk, who could hypothetically go bankrupt one day and exit the capitalist class. Ensemble of social relations. The capitalists are mere personifications of the economic categories, and capital, as you well know, is an “animated monster that moves... "as if its body were by love possessed.'
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
A good way to think about this is not between the factory and machinery but between the worker and the *product* not the boss, but the product. the worker has no right to appropriate the company's product, if we entertained such an example for our own amusement, the law would step in to rectify it. This is the sine-qua-non of bourgeois right. hence whether the company is private or state-owned, the legal relationship of property is exactly the same.
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
Well, ok, but what machinery and products are we talking about here? 80% of UK's economy is service sector, in the rest of Europe and in the USA it's roughly 75%. And if you look at the tiny manufacturing sector that still exists, those proper blue collar jobs are usually well paid and no one working there has any great desire for revolution. But, as I said, that kind of thing hardly even exists anymore.
It's also worth paying attention how far and how fast robotization has accelerated in the actual manufacturing hub which is China. So we are approaching a situation where the human element could be completely and inevitably phased out. From the perspective of the system, there is already large surplus population who can only function as consumers, because they don't have any real structural value as workers anymore. That's also something worth remembering regarding mass immigration, those are not workers being imported, but firstly and foremostly consumers of goods and services.
For example, look at the ten most profitable industries in the USA - https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry-trends/most-profitable-industries/ It's all ASSET MANAGMENT and RENT EXTRACTION; the same in UK - https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/industry-trends/most-profitable-industries/
Also, where does endlessly profitable digital realm will fit in your scheme?
The nature of system has changed. It's actually your kind of revolution that would necessitate localism, centrality of hard property, rootedness and all those thing that are long gone.
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
Also, as I mentioned before, most of us are sort of capitalists in one way or another; or at least it's not very hard to become one these days.
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
Well, of course there is a theoretical way out, the maga communism shtick and all that. I cannot take it seriously since he's such a dishonest crank and America is probably too deep into idiocracy, but I see way many are able to see a potential there. Although I may be wrong about this one, and anyway - that wouldn't mean a communist revolution you are wanting, just a kind of return to mild centrism more like.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well, of course there is a theoretical way out, the maga communism shtick and all that. I cannot take it seriously since he's such a dishonest crank and America is probably too deep into idiocracy, but I see way many are able to see a potential there. Although I may be wrong about this one, and anyway - that wouldn't mean a communist revolution you are wanting, just a kind of return to mild centrism more like.
"MAGA communism" is just a daft meme, though. Anyone who does take it seriously has badly missed the point.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
"MAGA communism" is just a daft meme, though. Anyone who does take it seriously has badly missed the point.

no it's a bit more than that, it's an attempt to fuse marxism with the outmoded conception of the people, and hence a reversion back to Heidegger

in fact, Bordiga predicted maga communism in 1952 as @dilbert1 may be aware, precisely because it is nothing new, but utterly banal:

But the people, what the heck is that? A mishmash of different classes, an “integral” of expropriators and slaves, of political or business professionals and the starving, respectively the oppressed. The “people” we already left to the associations for freedom and democracy, freedom and progress, before 1848. With its notorious “majorities,” the people is not the subject of economic planning, but merely an object of expropriation and fraud.
And the nation? As a necessity and perquisite for the emergence of capitalism it expresses the same mixture of social classes, not like “people” in the stale, legal and philosophic sense, but on a geographical, ethnographical and linguistic level. The “nation” as well doesn’t seize anything: In famous passages Marx ridiculed the expressions “national wealth” and “national income” (which plays an important role in Stalin’s analysis of Russia) and showed, that the nation enriches itself precisely when the worker is screwed.
If the bourgeois revolutions and the assertion of modern industry, which extruded feudalism in Europe and various other systems in the rest of the world, didn’t carry out in the name of the bourgeoisie and capital, but precisely in the name of the people and nations, if this was in the Marxist conception a revolutionary and necessary transition, then we can deduce, how consistently the Muscovite coincide with that: the jettison of Marxist political economy and the renunciation of the proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist “category” society (a category that is used in classic texts), as well as an orientation towards the political categories immanent in bourgeois ideology and propaganda: people’s democracy and national independence.

 

shakahislop

Well-known member
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
no it's a bit more than that, it's an attempt to fuse marxism with the outmoded conception of the people, and hence a reversion back to Heidegger

in fact, Bordiga predicted maga communism in 1952 as @dilbert1 may be aware, precisely because it is nothing new, but utterly banal:




Oh yeah, the great defender of the working man - comrade Stalin. Western communism is one of the funniest meme subcultures ever, it's like teenage goths but red. Next to impossible to take any of it seriously.

I can only refer to the great Bulgakov who created the best possible portrayl of Stalin and comunism in general, all encapsulated in this great movie:
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
no it's a bit more than that, it's an attempt to fuse marxism with the outmoded conception of the people, and hence a reversion back to Heidegger

Yeah, so fusion on TWO outmoded conceptions. Because you don't have any real answer how marixsm could be applied to the present rentier, financial, dematerialized and thoroughly micro-managed mode of capitalism where there is no manufacturing base to be taken over anymore.
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
And as for organizing the dispossesed mass of immigrants and suchlike, which is partially your vision, worth remembering what Marx himself said about lumpenproles:

essentially parasitical group was largely the remains of older, obsolete stages of social development, and that it could not normally play a progressive role in history. Indeed, because it acted only out of socially ignorant self-interest, the lumpenproletariat was easily bribed by reactionary forces and could be used to combat the true proletariat in its efforts to bring about the end of bourgeois society. Without a clear class-consciousness, the lumpenproletariat could not play a positive role in society. Instead, it exploited society for its own ends, and was in turn exploited as a tool of destruction and reaction.
 

germaphobian

Well-known member
Since 1971, when manufacturing accounted for 17% of jobs in London (or 870,000), the sector has shrunk by 85%. While most of the damage was done before the 1990s, the hollowing out of the sector continued until recently. Meanwhile the knowledge economy, here defined as information and communication, finance and professional services, continued to grow.
 

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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
marxism may be outmoded (I won't argue that point with you because you're still fixated on trying to justify your irrelevant racism which i couldn't give a flying fuck about) but you need the fiction of the people (and thus Heidegger) to bring back your strong welfare state to reduce immigration and reassert the bonds of family and community. except, it isn't coming back. so all you can do is propose like trump, this hypothetical wall which will never be built. But the Euros don't have the wit and humour of the ceptic.

That's the issue with centrist conservatism, pragmatism, whatever. You don't want to take responsibility for unleashing prometheus and are still stuck in a nostalgia for the past (we can go back to a system where regional government exerts democratic influence on the centre.) Don't you realise that is finished? How can you have deregulated neoliberal economic models which uproot all social hierarchies whilst supporting caps on immigration? back to social democracy you go, and... for all intents and purposes analogous to the Spanish, Italian and French communist parties, a conformist Stalinism for the advanced capitalist countries. You want bourgeois society without its disintegrating elements, which is an even bigger cuck than the cuckservatives, I wonder if our sweet boy Corneliu @mixed_biscuits is listening?

You don't like it because you get the russian 'ick' as the kids say, but your policies follow on exactly from Stalinist rationality. strong protectionist state applying price and wage controls with a cap on immigration, which by nature needs heavy nationalisation.

this is boring now.
 
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