josef k

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poetix

we murder to dissect
The seed for Josef seems to me to be this notion that antifa are state actors, which broadens out into the whiole “woke capital” schtick about how all ostensibly progressive politics is a corporate ruse, BLM are state-sponsored chaos agents, the pandemic is a giant hoax…it’s a grudge inflated into a worldview.
 
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wild greens

Well-known member
I agree that it derives from the same psychological motivations but 10/15 years ago a lot of these fringe aspects of belief were very disparate depending on political leanings. Thats not the case now.

Fwiw this isnt necessarily much to do with this thread, sorry, i have barely read any of it and probably won't
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
It is fascinating how Gates prompts so much angst. Personally, I hate him for a shitty OS and annual updates to software that only make it worse.
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poetix

we murder to dissect
I went to a Microsoft developer conference in London back in the early 2000s. Gates was in town, on his way to have talks with Gordon Brown or someone like that; something about education, the future of computers in schools, that sort of thing. He dropped by to tell us all how awesome Windows Vista (then codenamed "Longhorn") was going to be. If I'd thrown my laptop really hard from where I was sitting I could perhaps have brained him.

Vista of course has a lasting reputation as the worst release of MS Windows ever. Many of the things they were going to put into it, like a filesystem that was also sort of a database, never saw the light of day.

The other thing that was going to be a really big deal, according to that conference, was laptops with invertable screens that converted into kind of clunky tablets, with strictly pen-based input. I spent a couple of weeks modifying the software my employer was developing so that it would work with one of these devices, giving users the ability to scribble notes on documents they were viewing. None of it came to anything.

The idea that the "tech elite" have this godlike ability to shape our reality remains a fanciful one in my view. Occasionally someone gets lucky and hits on something in the wider design space that really lights people up, and something like Twitter pops into being, sustained by some kind of perverse yet enormously potent collective desire to participate in a never-ending discursive battle royale. They still haven't really figured out how to monetise it. It just goes in existing because it sort of has to.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
poetix said:
I don't think he's someone of whom that type of question can meaningfully be asked.
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Of course it can. the UK has the most abject left wing culture in the world, shaped by the abvsurdity that is localistic anarchism (not even anarchocommunism) without any theoretical rigor. This is why you get people thinking that communism will be decentralised, a patent absurdity that Marx put to bed in capital Vol. II - have you read it ol' Joe, mr. exalted political theologian? Not nearly as smart as the prophet Daniel who you tastelessly affect are you now.

"Let us look at this matter for a moment from the point of view of society. Let the wages of one labourer be £1 per week, the working-day 10 hours. In case of A as well as B 100 labourers are employed during a year (£100 for 100 labourers per week, or £500 for 5 weeks, or £5,000 for 50 weeks), and each one of them works 60 hours per week of 6 days. So 100 labourers work 6,000 hours per week and 300,000 hours in 50 weeks. This labour-power is taken hold of by A and B and therefore cannot be expended by society for anything else. To this extent the matter is the same socially with both A and B. Furthermore: In the cases of both A and B the 100 labourers employed by either side receive a yearly wage of £5,000 (or, together for the 200 labourers, £10,000) and withdraw from society means of subsistence to that amount. So far the matter is therefore socially the same in the case of both A and B. Since the labourers in either case are paid by the week, they weekly withdraw their means of subsistence from society and, in either case, throw a weekly equivalent in money into circulation. But here the difference begins.

First. The money which the A labourer throws into circulation is not only, as it is for the B labourer, the money-form of the value of his labour-power (in fact a means of payment for labour already performed); it is, counting from the second turnover period after the opening of the business, the money-form of his own value (equal to the price of the labour-power plus the surplus-value) created during the first period of turnover, by which his labour is paid during the second period of turnover. This is not the case with the B labourer. As far as the latter is concerned, the money is here, true enough, a medium of payment for work already done by him, but this work done is not paid for with the value which it itself produced and which was turned into money (not with the money-form of the value of the labour itself has produced). This cannot be done until the beginning of the second year, when the B labourer is paid with the value produced by him in the preceding year and turned into money.

The shorter the period of turnover of capital — the shorter therefore the intervals at which it is reproduced throughout the year — the quicker is the variable portion of the capital, originally advanced by the capitalist in the form of money, transformed into the money-form of the value (including, besides, surplus-value) created by the labourer to replace this variable capital; the shorter is the time for which the capitalist must advance money out of his own funds, and the smaller is the capital advanced by him in general in proportion to the given scale of production; and the greater comparatively is the quantity of surplus-value which he extracts during the year with a given rate of surplus-value, because he can buy the labourer so much more frequently with the money-form of the value created by that labourer and can so much more frequently set his labour into motion again.

If the scale of production is given, the absolute magnitude of the advanced variable money-capital (and of the circulating capital in general) decreased proportionately to the decrease of the turnover period, while the annual rate of surplus-value increases. If the magnitude of the advanced capital is given, the scale of production grows; hence, if the rate of surplus-value is given, the absolute quantity of surplus-value created in one period of turnover likewise grows, simultaneously with the rise in the annual rate of surplus-value effected by the shortening of the periods of reproduction. It generally follows from the foregoing investigation that the different lengths of the turnover periods make it necessary for money-capital to be advanced in very different amounts in order to set in motion the same quantity of productive circulating capital and the same quantity of labour with the same degree of exploitation of labour.

Second — and this is interlinked with the first difference — the B and A labourers pay for the means of subsistence which they buy with the variable capital that has been transformed in their hands into a medium of circulation. For instance they not only withdraw wheat from the market, but they also replace it with an equivalent in money. But since the money wherewith the B labourer pays for his means of subsistence, which he withdraws from the market, is not the money-form of a value produced and thrown by him on the market during the year, as it is in the case of the A labourer, he supplies the seller of the means of subsistence with money, but not with commodities — be they means of production or means of subsistence — which this seller could buy with the proceeds of the sale, as he can in the case of A. The market is therefore stripped of labour-power, means of subsistence for this labour-power, fixed capital in the form of instruments of labour used in the case of B, and of materials of production, and to replace them an equivalent in money is thrown on the market; but during the year no product is thrown on the market with which to replace the material elements of productive capital withdrawn from it. If we conceive society as being not capitalistic but communistic, there will be no money-capital at all in the first place, not the disguises cloaking the transactions arising on account of it. The question then comes down to the need of society to calculate beforehand how much labour, means of production, and means of subsistence it can invest, without detriment, in such lines of business as for instance the building of railways, which do not furnish any means of production or subsistence, nor produce any useful effect for a long time, a year or more, while they extract labour, means of production and means of subsistence from the total annual production. In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur. On the one hand pressure is brought to bear on the money-market, while on the other, an easy money-market calls such enterprises into being en masse, thus creating the very circumstances which later give rise to pressure on the money-market. Pressure is brought to bear on the money-market, since large advances of money-capital are constantly needed here for long periods of time. And this regardless of the fact that industrialists and merchants throw the money-capital necessary to carry on their business into speculative railway schemes; etc., and make it good by borrowing in the money-market."
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Vol II. Chapter 16 - Turnover of variable capital, part 3.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
A complete dunderhead lacking intellect and sense, as it were. But then that is typical of the English middle classes. It's why we still have the abomination which is public schools.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
wild greens said:
I agree that it derives from the same psychological motivations but 10/15 years ago a lot of these fringe aspects of belief were very disparate depending on political leanings. Thats not the case now.
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what are the physchological 'motivations' do you think?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
i think of it more in terms of modes of operation. this is why it is so very vital young people smoke skunk heavily.
becasue once you have that experience of paranoia and Everything Connects you can understand all this territory clearly and without judgement.
 
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catalog

Well-known member
Do you think some of the writing you like and josekf's "take" are now actually a bit similar? Like, he's arrived there a different route, but when I looked at this article, it feels quite close to some of the conspiracy theorising you sometimes post.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
depends what yuou mean really. i am interested partly in what can be imagined and what is imagined. im not committed to this or that interpretative framework. this is something i think you misunderstand about me
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
there is an Event. we are in the middle of the Event. we didn't arrive at the beginning. and no one knows anything. we don't know how we got here or where we are going.
 
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