Nagarjuna

joined 4 years ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

IME, he's solid on the anthropology, so he can be your guy on ancient baking. Just don't let him be your guy on revolution.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

can i get a Mao sandwich hold the Deng, with some of those Graeber fries

Throw in the Situationist International and Midnight Notes and this is just my politics

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

I agree, they are, but Graeber's the type of dude to prioritize making a playful argument over making a rigorous one. Debt has a whole chapter arguing that Muslim banking is better than European Banking because it obeys Abrahamic usury laws. He then included a footnote basically saying "I know it's still capitalist, I mostly wrote this chapter to troll evangelicals."

Like, he has brilliant insights, but not necessarily brilliant analysis. Take him as a supplement to your theory, not your main meal.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (8 children)

He is, read Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value.

This analysis isn't wrong, it's just partial. There's stuff like labor exploitation, gendered hyperexploitation, etc. But there's also something where desirable jobs have less bargaining power because the labor pool is flooded (Firefighters are an example of this). Graeber's argument is a non-structural articulation of the same phenomena. In the case of teachers, the amount we pay them is very much a decision made fairly arbitrarily. It's mostly a matter of public investment, the decisions around which are massively over-determined to the point where you do have to talk about things like subconscious decision-making and cultural values.

If your issue is with taking the subconscious into account in your analysis, then you're putting yourself in opposition to incredibly influential Marxists like Adorno.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

So, when you see these kinds of articles, they're usually the result of some really savvy organizing.

Union staff will develop relationships with reporters, and then when they need a story like this, they'll media train a few workers or consumers, put together a fact sheet so that a reporter can pump out an article quickly, and then turn this over to a journalist who turns it into an article rather than do their own research.

It's a way of leveraging journalists' position as workers with quotas and limited time.

The reason unions go after companies like Starbucks or REI is because of their progressive image. They tend to attract union-friendly employees, and have a brand that's very vulnerable to these kinds of media attacks. When they do what every single company does and union bust, it ends up biting them in the ass. I

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago

Yeah, you're only allowed to care about important things. All media is banned except for post war italian cinema reflecting on fascism and revolution

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

The moral here is that you should steal the plagiarist's videos and pass them off as your own.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

I don't believe in cops, bosses, or politicians. Some call that Anarchism, I call it having a heart that fucking beats.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It could have been a 30 minute expose, but instead, he pulled out a folder full of receipts and just started reading them verbatim into the camera.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Small timers who own a bunch of houses. Failsons who got daddy's apartment but never put any work into it since it's basically a free money machine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

IMO, this is why the IWW has victories at notoriously un-organizable shops like Starbucks, Target, Whole Foods, and Fast Food. It's the approach of showing what a union is before making it legally official, and prioritizing direct action over a legal contract.

SEIU took a lot of notes from the Burgerville campaign (and in fact, some of the IWW external organizers were also SEIU staff) when they started their Starbucks drive, and it's one of the most successful drives into fast food in recent history.

I would really love to see what would happen if an org like the Portland IWW had the dues base and ambition of a union like SEIU. Unfortunately, we're pathologically afraid of closed shops and staff organizers so that will never happen.

 

I've seen a lot of posts on this site that are leaning into anti semetic tropes while criticizing Israel. I want to point it out so that folks can recognize it.

First, because I have to say it:

Israel is a colonial outpost of the United States. It was created by Britain and inherited by the US. The US gives Israel ~3,000,000,000 USD in aid every year. As a colony, it should be the goal of every socialist to destroy it, just as we seek the destruction of the US, Northern Ireland, South Korea, Canada, the Phillipine state, etc.

But! Israel is also a safe haven for Jews. This is seperable from the colonial nature of the state. Israel could have been created in Germany or Siberia or frankly Florida for that matter (in fact, annexing Florida to create a new state of Israel is what I mean when i refer to "the one state solution"). In many ways, the US with its civil rights act serves the same purpose, and in fact, most Jews live in the US.

Many of us had ancestors in Germany or Poland during the holocaust who did not stick around after the war. They saw Israel as their best shot at safety in the wake of the holocaust. Many Israelis are liberals, hoping to vote out Likud, stop supporting settlements, and negotiate palestinian statehood. These people are advocating half measures, sure, but they are not our enemies.

So I wanted to point out some anti-semetic tropes I've seen on this website and call them out so you can recognize them.

Conflating Jews in Israel with Zionists.

This can be done through omission. If you aren't clear whether you're talking about jews or a specific institution (for example, the I"D"F or the settlements or Likud), many people will read your statement as being about Jews. Be careful with the word "they"

erasing the ambivalent position of jews within colonialism / conflating jewishness with whiteness

The zionist entity is not a Jewish colonial project, but an Anglo colonial project. It was created by the British and now is funded by the US Americans. Jews are an oppressed minority whose oppression is leveraged against other oppressed peoples. Similarly to how the US uses Kurds to Balkanize Iraq or The Hmong to wage counterinsurgency in Laos, it's uses Jews to destabilize the Levant.

Outside of the US, jews are largely understood as a racial group and oppressed on that basis. Especially in the Arab world where the Islamic hyper nationalism has gained ground in response to colonialism and been funded further by colonialists to their own ends (google "the safari club" or "Israel funds Hamas")

Blood Libel

This one is the assertion that Jews are uniquely bloodthirsty / murder non Jewish children. The classic example of this myth that people are familiar with is Runplestiltskin.

It is true that the IDF under the direction of Likud and the US state is murdering many Gazans, the majority of whom are children. but! be careful to specify. When people talk about "jews" or "israelis" generally as perpetuating the murder of children, they are engaging in the blood libel trope. Again, be careful with the word "they" and specify which entities you're talking about.

calling for ethnic cleansing

Okay, wtf ya'll. It's not jews as an ethnicity that are oppressing Palestinians, it is US imperial power. Jews have always lived in Palestine and the occupation only began in the 40s as part of a British initiative.

Jews will always be part of a palestinian state, and frankly need protections as ethnic and religious minorities. We do not seek the expulsion of Jews from Palestine, but their integration into it as citizens.

Jews are safe in the US not because its a colonial state but because of civil rights protections and generational wealth. If we can create civil rights protections in Palestine and a social safety net (ideally communism but I'll settle for social democracy), then jews will be safe in Palestine.

Jewish control of America / protocols of the elders of zion

America controls Israel and not vice versa. APEC is not a cabal brainwashing otherwise Nobel Christian politicians. US politicians support Israel because they're colonial politicians and Israel is our colony. APEC exists because lobbying is how power is exercised in the US, but if we had patronage instead, APEC' functions would be carried our by a governor or an ambassador or whatever.

conclusion

Recognize the role of the US empire in Palestinian oppression. Recognize that jews are in an ambivalent racial category and are an oppressed people. Be specific when criticizing Israeli colonialism. Name who you're criticizing, is it the settlements? The IDF? Likud? The US military Industrial Complex? Stop calling for ethnic cleansing of jews if you've been doing that. Don't equate jewishness with whiteness / the Nazis. White people are white people, the US is the Nazis.

 

Yo what the fuck.

 

The strike escalates further! Looks like Ford didn't want to bring their battery production under the master contract.

 
 

This is getting very big very fast doomer

 

They elected a guy who wanted to do things like

--not allow cops with multiple disciplines to bring charges

--bring charges for fewer nonviolent and low level offenses.

The cops responded by refusing to testify in murder cases in order to jeopardize the prosecutor's career.

acab-2

 

Jacobin keeps writing anti inperialist articles. Proud of them.

 

Join a nassive convergence. Be part of history. Be part of a winning struggle.

 
 

Glad to see Jacobin, the magazine that was soooo stoked on SYRIZA and class-essentialism in 2016 coming around on labor issues and imperialism.

We're seeing an important deepening of analysis by the mainstream left and its a good thing.

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