Race, Gender , and Class
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Was waiting for you to respond to Zhao on that 
It's an interesting question, but it seems obvious that things like racism, sexism, etc., will exist after capitalism. They existed before it, after all.
But don't you think that class antagonism adds all sorts of dimensions to racism and sexism that wouldn't otherwise be there?
It's an interesting question, but it seems obvious that things like racism, sexism, etc., will exist after capitalism. They existed before it, after all.
But don't you think that class antagonism adds all sorts of dimensions to racism and sexism that wouldn't otherwise be there?
thanks for article but it does not refute the idea that class is the central expression of power and the underlying method of oppression. it actually goes to show how all other kinds of injustices will beome more or less impotent, and their grip on social reality much loosened, if class differences were to be abolished.
i tend to think all the other kinds of oppression listed are secondary, superficial "effects" stemming from, and added onto, the basic and primary structural backdrop of class inequity under which we all toil. and it is important to recognize them as such, because the role they play in the struggle, more than anything else, is that of befuddlement and confusion...
i love the part where Marx says that liberation has to come from the roots, and severing of ties to power must be fundamental; and is not possible without severance in all spheres of life.
so true.
which is why I'm so interested in the evolution of social organization since the dawn of agriculture and the rise of "civilization"... only by examining the very beginning of centralized power (before which human life was much different), only by studying the roots of heirarchy can we have hope of finding a way toward any meaningful abolition of injustice and inequality.
i tend to think all the other kinds of oppression listed are secondary, superficial "effects" stemming from, and added onto, the basic and primary structural backdrop of class inequity under which we all toil. and it is important to recognize them as such, because the role they play in the struggle, more than anything else, is that of befuddlement and confusion...
i love the part where Marx says that liberation has to come from the roots, and severing of ties to power must be fundamental; and is not possible without severance in all spheres of life.
so true.
which is why I'm so interested in the evolution of social organization since the dawn of agriculture and the rise of "civilization"... only by examining the very beginning of centralized power (before which human life was much different), only by studying the roots of heirarchy can we have hope of finding a way toward any meaningful abolition of injustice and inequality.
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john eden
male pale and stale
It is a good quote - I like the way it recognises that "everything will be peachy - after the revolution" is utopianism but does show how many obstacles will be removed if that situation comes about.
Turning this on its head it seems to me that another reason why class is primary is that capitalism can function effectively without sexism, racism etc but cannot function without class.
Indeed it seems an entirely plausible scenario that capitalism could reform itself to minimise these prejudices rather than a revolution taking place. (Which is pretty pesimistic of me, but there it is).
Turning this on its head it seems to me that another reason why class is primary is that capitalism can function effectively without sexism, racism etc but cannot function without class.
Indeed it seems an entirely plausible scenario that capitalism could reform itself to minimise these prejudices rather than a revolution taking place. (Which is pretty pesimistic of me, but there it is).
vimothy
yurp
Why do you think that? I'm guessing your answer is related to some kind of LTV-type analysis of profit -- but do such notions really have any validity nowadays?
Turning this upright again, capitalism's deterritorializing of traditional social and geographic (nationalism, religion, family) structures, including gender and racial divisions, along with the pomo obsession with identity/cultural politics, would indeed produce a 'pure capitalism', where all that would remain is the primary social antagonism - the real of class conflict, so increasing the likelihood of revolution. Identity politics, which is what mainly characterizes political discourse in the West, denies and deflects from the critique of political economy, seeking to re-territorialize against capital's obliteration of all social significations, often seeking out and inventing easy scapegoats (immigrants, the foreign Other, the poor, etc) and/or resorting to 'unifying' nationalisms (Obama certainly appealed repeatedly to the latter in his campaign, invoking everyone to 'come together' etc), or ultimately, (imperial) war. Many are currently arguing that Obama's success reflects a move from identity politics on to an emphasis on the economy; this may be so to a token extent, but the emphasis appears to be a continuation of neo-liberal policies via an appeal to nationalism ("We can make America Great Again" etc).
It has validity to the extent that capital's primary interest vis-a-vis labour is the reproduction of labour power via a wage adequate for that purpose (and to the extent that it can do so without discriminating on the basis of gender or race or some other prejudice). The problem arises with the LRPF (the long term tendency of the rate of profit to fall), which is always on-going in many industries (in desperation, finance capital attempts to deal with this profit erosion by creating enormous virtual capital bubbles via credit generation: property bubbles, derivitive bubbles, commodity bubbles, leveraged asset stripping bubbles, etc, prolonging the inevitable, so accentuating the collapse, as we've recently witnessed), which first gears up industry towards an export-led orientation (profits re-invested indigenously), but ultimately to foreign off-shoring, sub-contracting, down-sizing etc (with even 'egalitarian' Silicon Valley tech companies increasingly subcontracting out/offshoring production operations to Chinese/Indian sweatshop labour [is there such a thing as a laptop that isn't small-print "Made in China" anymore?] ie capital remains abroad, domestic skilled labour shrinks/is down-graded/casualized, identity politics, etc then filling out/covering over/displacing the underlying economic problem, the problem of capital itself.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
This has always baffled me about Obama, the insistence on unifying the U.S. in order to make it "great" again. I can't help but think that Obama's nationalism is purely hyperstitional--he knows that talking like this works, he knows how efficient nationalistic rhetoric is in circumventing peoples' concerns about his being too radical. I hope I'm right, but so far I have to admit it looks like we're in for a new Clinton Era, this time with an alternative tech sector boom rather than a Silicon Valley.
Uck and possibly more Bobos and another Starbucks. Grunge II.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Isn't it funny or even a little ironic that communists are now the world's Industrial Giant?
I actually think Obama is a closet "America needs to be the center of low-wage production/manufacturing jobs" capitalist. He's nostalgic for a time when wars mattered (were fought between world powers) and America was the center of the world economy.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Capitalism isn't my favorite obsession. Drugs are.
But the sad fact of the matter is that, because capitalism is the system that exists NOW, the only way we can talk about political circumstances now is with regard to capitalism.
Many people but most notably Foucault I suppose talked about power and subjugation on a broader "time horizon" (as they say in the White House)...
But the sad fact of the matter is that, because capitalism is the system that exists NOW, the only way we can talk about political circumstances now is with regard to capitalism.
Many people but most notably Foucault I suppose talked about power and subjugation on a broader "time horizon" (as they say in the White House)...
by "yours" i meant not specifically anyone here... or rather a lot of people here, and in other places
yes. is why i like dood a lot
that and the fact he did acid in the desert and wrote eloquently about it
yes. is why i like dood a lot
that and the fact he did acid in the desert and wrote eloquently about it
vimothy
yurp
On the TRPF, three questions --
Is there any empirical proof of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall?
Doesn't Marx's explanation rely on his (dubious, classical) value theory?
And even if you were to accept both TRPF and Marxian labour theory of value, how would you demonstrate a causal relationship between the two?
Is there any empirical proof of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall?
Doesn't Marx's explanation rely on his (dubious, classical) value theory?
And even if you were to accept both TRPF and Marxian labour theory of value, how would you demonstrate a causal relationship between the two?
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I suppose I could instead confine it within the boundaries of the political economy of Ancient Egypt, as mysterious to us as it was, no doubt, to the Ancient Egyptians, and that too would therefore be a 'big glaring mistake', especially if I am an Ancient Egyptian.
Except that it isn't, unless you adopt an ahistorical view of history, that there is some unchanging (mysterious) Master Signifier magically outside of history dictating all of history. History is contingent (just as the emergence of modern capitalism was contingent, not pre-ordained). Indeed, efforts at ascertaining the "ahistorical" limit of historicization/resignification repeatedly demonstrate that we don't ever have to accept this ("end of history") limit in any kind of resigned way, but that every historical figuration of this limit is itself contingent and, as such, always subject to a radical questioning and replacement.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well, to the extent that China is a "communist" country...but would anyone but a few die-hard palaeocon Republicans and the Chinese Communist Party itself describe the country's politics and economics these days as communism, rather than totalitarian state-capitalism with a vestigial socialist veneer?
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
ha palaeocon!
I know they're not properly communist, but that in itself is another example of how corroded our political economic terminology is. We simply don't live in the world that most of our political discursive terms were coined to describe. We need new words and new thoughts and most of all a new utopia.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I dunno if it's really the right word, but I meant the sort of old-fashioned conservative who'd take Chinese 'communism' at face value and view them simply as Them in a cold-war Us and Them binary, rather than a more pragmatic neocon approach i.e. treating them as an uneasy-yet-hugely-important-trading-partner-slash-rival.
Sounds great, sign me up.
why would you confine discourse to any one system? as if any political economy is isolate and cut off from history?
LOL WUT.
capitalism as a social organizing principle is predicated on previous social models yes? certain conditions were present which gave rise to it yes? the previous social modes evolved from yet earlier ones yes?
history is contingent only in so far as the events which lead up to a new organizing principle allows.
or are you saying that capitalism represents a break from history and is somehow divorced from the evolution of human society?
that would not just be wrong, but moronic.
No, not at all. Capitalism and its agents/apologists propose that it is ahistorical, that it is the end-point of history, both post-history and the 'meaning' of history, that there is no alternative.
WUT?
No. It is alien to them, busy wiping then out. Successfully.
Not really. Because night chronologically follows day, it is 'caused' by day?
Your concept of history is ahistorical, that it is pre-determined, and not contingent.
"We make history, but not in circumstances of our choosing."
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