wall

It’s true, we fan’t beat them

I didn’t know who Alfred E Neuman was until the Buttigieg thing. Not sure i knew what Mad Magazine was either. Am 25

Heartbreaking, &c.

Pretty much feel the same looking back on that show as I do looking back on my anarchist phase in general. Cringe, with some real problematic blind spots, but nevertheless kinda good at heart with some cool ideas.

I work in manufacturing as well, and what strikes me is about this is that Marx seems to have talked to actual, real business owners about how they think about and account of the running costs of doing business. Marx is of course presenting as a model built from first principles, but it’s clear that it does actually fit with the way capitalists actually do capitalism.

Yeah, it really struck me in volume 1 that the notion of socially necessary labor time maps really well onto the Lean manufacturing notions of value-added and non-value added labor (Marx’s explanation is of course more flexible and has more explanatory power, thus clearing up some of the misconceptions that are likely to arise, but there is clearly a common idea-seed.) Similarly many of the principles of the social productive powers of labor arising from co-operation. Here in the beginning of Volume II we even begin to understand the Lean obsession with inventory minimization and just-in-time manufacturing, which initially appears to many of us on the left as ridiculous if not outright delusional, as stemming from capital’s drive towards constant, unimpeded progress of its various forms through the circuit as the means of generating as much return on investment as quickly as possible.

me too

I mean it kinda is under their bed, if they look down at a bit of an angle

Finished vol 1 last night

all caught up just in time for vol 2

3-4

Big Chunus

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple chapters about how some of the ideas we’ve learned could help explain just how things got so out of hand with the neoliberal turn of the backend of the last century. Here’s a couple thoughts I had as maybe contributing factors:

World War II put a serious dent in the world population - google seems to be saying about 3% of the population was killed. In addition, it caused huge infrastructural destruction that needed to be addressed. And finally, the Allied victory represented a major peak of liberal world order - but this means a geographical limitation on areas you can turn to for cheap labor and raw materials, and indeed much of the history of the immediate postwar era is defined by struggles with decolonization movements (India, Algeria, the Suez…) and with the Red menace - in short, barriers to any further expansion of the hegemony of Western capital. So you then have a situation where right after the war, capital has to do a lot of reinvestment just to rebuild itself, and at the same time, there’s not a lot of able-bodied dudes around to do that work (especially Europe, where the Trente Glorieuses particularly strongly felt), nor are there many good opportunities to send capital outside the imperial core. So now capital has to address the labour market imbalance by raising wages, and this is maybe even a bit of a virtuous cycle because raising wages in real terms means also investing in industries to provide the goods those wages get spent on. But these labor market dynamics are a special period rather than a new norm, because eventually the boomers start entering the workforce, China opens up to capital investment, and the Eastern bloc liberalizes after the Soviet Union collapses.

Karl Marx is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself

It is getting genuinely scary, I am pretty sure that if a politician was attacked or killed

Oh no, not the politicians!

[A]t the same time, constant changes take place in the sex […] of the industrial conscripts. [Fowkes p. 583]

Damn, industrialized forced femming confirmed?

In keeping with the benevolent scientist theme, we could have an academic institution tasked with translating constituent opinions into selections of philosopher kings. Maybe it could be called something like “Election College”

What? So you’re telling me that if I’m not focusing MY ENTIRE MENTAL ENERGY into thinking about the fact that I am currently eating or drinking something, I’m gonna choke and probably die or something?

It’s just like this: Me drinking water: “Yes this is a nice cup of water and I am relaxed hmmmm I think I will let my mind wander a bit while I relax drinking this water. Maybe I can think abou-” CHOKES AND FUCKING DIES

Like come the fuck on why is the human body like this. You should be able to fucking tell if something’s going down my throat. You do so many other things automatically WHY DO YOU NEED ME TO DEDICATE MY THOUGHTS TO DRINKING/EATING TO MAKE THINGS GO DOWN THROAT WITHOUT KILLING ME GOD DAMMIT

Yeah, it’s real tough for us out there these days. The nice thing about being white though is it provides great camouflage during the winter. You just gotta strip nekkid for 3 months a year and the PC Police will never find you. You’re on your own the other 9 mos., but that’s a 1/4 of your life figured out right there.