Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread!
P.S. Update on those stability improvements/enhancements I mentioned in my previous weekly thread: they’re finished. The matrix server uptime is now better. Suspiciously better, some might say. Anyway, enjoy the reliability >:3
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☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
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Thoughts on this phrasing? “Capitalism is a system where society exists to serve commerce rather than commerce existing to serve society.”
As introductory rhetoric for criticizing capitalism in a somewhat less jargon heavy way, especially when talking to people who have pre-existing embedded anti-communism and so may be more reactive to obvious marxist critiques.
Then connecting it to examples: “In the capitalist US, society exists to serve commerce. In socialist China, commerce exists to serve society.”
still feels jarogny. Maybe: Capitalism is a system in which society exists to further the growth of hoarded fortunes instead of fortunes being used to further the growth of society.
Fair. I probably underestimate the extent to which I’m using jargon sometimes…
I’ve made an effort to be more, idk, colloquial over the years in order to better communicate ML stuff. But I grew up around people who are (non-commie) nerdy and I pretty much embraced it. It doesn’t help that when I do read theory, some of it is academia language to the max and then it causes me to want to reuse that kind of language when talking about ML stuff.
I do think it is an important thing to improve on though. As Maeve pointed out:
Being able to meet people where they are at without also losing the core of something is a real pedagogical challenge. I appreciate your effort toward it. Makes me think of a dragon’s hoard.
Saying stuff in less technical terms while retaining the meaning is something LLMs are perfect for. Practicing on liberals on social media is a good way to hone your rhetoric.
Both good points!
This phrasing feels a bit cultural, I think? Like, couldn’t you also argue that Rome’s society existed mostly to generate slaves who worked to make products which were then sold on the market?
Fair. The phrase could probably be applied to exploitative systems predating capitalism and still make sense from a certain point of view. For that reason, it may be weaker as rhetoric than it could be.
Focusing on what makes capitalism unique may make it sharper, provided it doesn’t get lost in jargon. To that end, what does make capitalism unique even if in jargon form? On reflection, I’m not sure I could explain it simply, in a few words from recall. Something to do with private property and accumulation of capital, but that’s a bit vague. I think my internalized understanding of it is actually better than my verbalized one, if that makes sense; lived experience with it vs. theory language I guess.
Lenin defines Capitalism succinctly as
The most important aspect of Capitalism is that the individual bourgeois exploits the entire proletariat class, rather than a group of people. This doesn’t happen in any other economic system.
Think of a slave-owner. They can exploit only the slaves they own. However, this means that they have the interest to take care of them since a loss of a slave means the loss of labor.
Meanwhile, a landlord doesn’t care who their tenants are or whether they have money for food after paying rent. There is always someone outside waiting for one apartment to get vacant.
The individual bourgeois has leverage over an entire class, so you have no leverage against them. The only leverage against the bourgeoisie is when the proletariat class gets organized. One individual is hopeless.
So, I think I would summarize it without jargon as “Capitalism is the system which you have to auction your precious time in the market to the lowest available wage to people who don’t care whether you eat well because there is an entire line of people ready to take your spot.”
It’s a bit wordy, but I think it does the job. Every worker has some fear of getting replaced.
so i can hopefully explain it to people as: “at its most basic, there is a self-feeding and self-causing loop. a person who owns the means of production can buy the labour power [which you can understand as working hours] of another person. anyone can sell their labor, and under capitalism, everyone must, to make the money they can exchange for the basic necessities of life. if they do not want to participate in this system, it’s death. since it becomes an existential need to sell your labor, the reserve army of laborers is created, where the capitalists, who own the means of production and in essence monopolize money amidst themselves in their firms, [especially since we must buy from them the necessities in the firts place] can simply set the buying price of labor power, there is in effect a very abundant supply of ready workers, because the ultimatum is work or death.” i think…
and then the contradiction also of capitalist firms must always maximize profit and sequently surplus value pocketed, to survive in face of competition , and at a certain point you can pay your workers no less before they start dying or being unable to work (also they can’t buy your commodities that they need for life anymore?)
Not exactly. The individuals of the bourgeoisie aren’t concerned about their workers dying. They are concerned about the proletariat class dying (or being unable to self-reproduce).
You can see this in Occupied Korea or Japan for example. The population is increasingly elder and there is less and less workers having children.
The bourgeois can make a significant percentage of workers be unable to have time to have children, or overwork themselves to death, but they can’t do that for every single worker.
Interesting, thanks for the breakdown.
So with that in mind, here’s an attempt to simplify it a bit more in a way similar to the phrase I started with: “In the capitalist US, the capitalists force you to sell your labor power to the market in exchange for temporary relief from starving. In socialist China, organized labor power allows the market to exist in exchange for its consistent contribution to thriving.”
Heavier than the original in terms of “big words”, but maybe a better halfway point between jargon and “losing important distinctions”. What do you think? Better? Worse? Both?
Yeah, that’s great. The only issue I would have is that if you are mentioning the US, then your audience is probably Amerikans, who are very Sinophobic.
But considering that China is getting a lot of good rep, then I think it’s fine to use it as an example.
If you want to drive the point home, why not ask a concrete question like “how did China go from a nation of starving farmers to a global powerhouse in a couple of generations if it wasn’t socialism?” after your definition of Capitalism.
i think what’s interesting is that the thick veil of misinfo was super strong in internet/west in 2010s simply because… whatever interactions westerners had with mainlanders was very limited, esp thru internet, and it was really extraordinarily easy to think of them as faceless and unreal if there god forbid were any users on western internet (great firewall is such a benefit to PRC it’s not even funny anymore).
but because of how xhs and rednote became actual things you could use if not the very small flux of people being exposed thru brief tiktok ban, people actually saw chinese as real people and not just imagined suffering drones (before that i really legit think everyone thought that a chinese that was happy in mainland was bot or drone or spy, it doesn’t sound absurd to them, and even now that persists, and i’d say it’s still a majority now). now i feel you see a lot of anglosphere/diaspora chinese (and i suspect a lot are. CIA asset adjacent) making big fusses about social things there so that people never really think it’s too goodl… it feels as if a corrective measure or propaganda, especially since we know how controlled and astroturfed the net is in the west
i think the phase of chinamaxxing had a peak but is now going to dip or plateau if we return to the normal state esp of little exposure or organic interest in PRC, and i’m rather sad the mainstream opinion will revert into the programming we used to have once more. fingers crossed the bigger push and continued huge growth of PRC continues to make containing the china good narrative impossible, even in spite of whatever mediastorm they conjure
Fair point, I’ll try to keep that in mind. Could probably apply to imperial core audiences in general, asking a rhetorical question like that. Or elsewhere if somebody is being Sinophobic.
I think the phrasing is also general enough about the principles we went over concerning capitalism that “In the capitalist US” could be replaced with “In capitalist Canada” or EU or whatever and still be accurate. It might not land as hard if someone is in an area where unions are stronger, but my impression is that although organized labor is stronger in some parts of the imperial core than others, it’s also been in decline for a while, owed largely to it only having achieved buffer status rather than controlling the state.
That’s a good point.
Adding to your point, in a place with strong unions, maybe it’s good to question why things keep getting worse even with union protection. Unions in Capitalism is just delaying the inevitable (the tendency for the rate of profit to fall).
The Nordic countries are seeing this happen in real time.
I’ve been thinking about verbosity/garroulessness for several months, since I tend to swing from that to being terse to the point it seems rude. With declining literacy and reading comprehension rates in Western societies, it would behoove us to find a middle ground, since attention spans are also in serious decline, for many varied reasons, not the least of which is physical exhaustion and mental/emotional overwhelm.
I’m struggling with how to find a way towards tercity and unintended rudeness. I need to also work on patience, since impatience fuels intentional rudeness.
Most people are capable of reading long texts as long as they are interested in them. Maybe we can focus on “stepping stones” in order to build this interest.
Informative memes and pamphlets can be used to agitate workers with false consciousness. If they become advanced workers, then they will be able to read The Capital or something.
At the end of the day though, most workers won’t reach advanced levels.
deadass attaching the esoteric meme you did to that post about capital as a true god (or basically the essay just restating WHY capitalism dictates US rather than us being able to delude ourselves that we control its whims was very effective to getting me to read.
i think here you’re also mostly making reference to memes which in effect are like slogans or other heuristics or rhetoric like that that still simplify things in ways that might be erroneous, but are at least effective in capturing people’s attentions and somewhat transmitting the ‘right’ idea (however vulgar or rudimentary it may be at the end compared to the actual full logic/theory)
but at least for me memes about history (not the mainstream whitewashed ones but actual documentation and broadcast of imperial crimes) attached to elementary observations/diamat were able to push me out of the simplistic idealist worldviews i had before (anarcho communist adjacent) and make me desire to Read theory. and i also think that it helped me be able to transmit otherwise very extremely out there ideas to friends who wouldn’t have received the idea of reading lenin or stalin or mao well (even if sometimes i worry at the start my own mistakes might have poisoned their understanding.) i think it’s a good starting point, especially with the most casual or simplistic events like the gazan genocide or even explaining how things like epstein’s island can be an unequivocal bipartisan horror (if usa centric discussion/peers)