thirdplace posted:"you're not really poor if you don't move from a particular city I think is expensive" is the gooniest thing I've seen go unchallenged on this forum for months. (besides my posting)
lmao seriously. that shit was White Ass Fuk
there are very few people these days, even in the bourgie wasteland of the USA, who can choose where they live now.
Edited by tsinava ()
Keven posted:I realized this place was being LFafied by cars but I was hoping you weren't all un self aware whine lifers who are in to leftist politics strictly to justify your dumb lives and selves.
we aren't. you're being a narcissist who thinks your position is somehow unique. maybe you're projecting?
maybe you should be more honest about your feelings instead of codifying them into ideological language
Keven posted:I realized this place was being LFafied by cars but I was hoping you weren't all un self aware whine lifers who are in to leftist politics strictly to justify your dumb lives and selves.
feel free to make a thread about changing mods if you feel strongly about it, if another mod gets the mandate of heaven as measured through posts and upvotes I will follow it
Keven posted:Pls understand I was a literally destitute alcoholic not too many years ago & I came back to Alaska, moved in with my middle class parents for a little while, got a good job through my contacts, and now I'm completely fine and secure.'that's a significantly different experience than an actual prole in a America would ever have. You guys know this. This is extremely basic stuff.
I realized this place was being LFafied by cars but I was hoping you weren't all un self aware whine lifers who are in to leftist politics strictly to justify your dumb lives and selves.
your problem is that you think anyone on this forum is comparing themselves to a prole in the first place.
i was put into a position by some other asshole in the other thread to explain why i lived where i lived, and then another asshole comes along, (this asshole being you) takes my statements explaining why i'm living with my parents and treats it like i'm pretending im part of the proletariat.
i assume this is what you are responding to and it's completely fucking dumb and unfair to me and anyone else who gets picked on for happening to live with their parents in a city with high real estate values.
all you're doing is pretending that people who already know a thing, don't know this thing, and you're acting like a giant asshole over it. just lording over the fact that all these idiots who live with their moms and dads aren't aware of how horrible they are but you are.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=United+States
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Syria
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Venezuela
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Uganda
Things vary country to country, but imagine making $138 monthly and a pound of beef is still 80% of the cost as beef in America. Or sure, rent is 60% lower than in the US, but you make 5.8% of what the average American does monthly, so does it really even out?
Which isn't to say people should give into third worldist economism and stop aiming for revolution in the first world, but people should think honestly about the trade-offs people will have to make and the corresponding class alliances. Like under socialism you wouldn't be able to make much more than 10 an hour, but you won't get ripped off for healthcare and housing, you'll always have a job, society will actually be working towards protecting the ecology that all life is dependent on, etc. Actually this is something that really disappoints me about the PSL is they don't talk concretely about this. Like when people call for a 15 min wage, they say 20 just to brand themselves as the more radical option without a concrete analysis. Though I don't doubt they do good organizing, there's a lack of strategy that actually aims towards revolution.
Keven posted:1. You personally being a poor permacollege forever teen with depression and shingles has got nothing to do with your class status. See homeboy in the pictures thread complaining that he can "only" afford to live in one of the most expensive and desirable cities in the US because that's where his parents live. I bet there are a lot of people who wish their parents lived in a place like that as they mooched off of them instead of living in say, a cardboard hut with their entire extended family.
2. On a personal level the state of the U.S. worker has been trending downwards for 45 years or whatever but it's not like the status of people in the developing world has been rising as a result. In fact, that has also been going down!
3. If there was an earth quake in your town tomorrow, 100,000 people would not die. You do not have to bribe people in your everyday life. You probably aren't living directly on a big pile of toxic chemicals. You can buy pork for a dollar a pound. You have a shower. Crime isn't very high and even when it was high it wasn't really all that high. You use an insane amount of energy in your everyday life. Even if you aren't making much money or have a pension or whatever, you're currently reaping a shitload of systemic benefits.
4. There's people in the us for whom these kind of things aren't true. When I was 16 I worked at burger king and there was a guy there who worked full shifts and on the weekends had another job. I saw him this year, working at taco bell. I don't want to say how old I am but that's a decade minimum with no improvement or change what so ever. That guy is not a labor aristocrat. If you, personally, have to work right now to pay your bills that just makes you a normal American. If you've worked the same entry level shit labor job for your entire adult life with no improvement or path of advancement or educational change or really anything at all just the same thing over and over till eventually you're dead, maybe you're not a Labor Aristocrats. If gorsh you got student loans and apartments are expensive ;_; then you probably are. That's my feeling.
5. That's ok. It doesn't make you Hitler. But you should probably understand where you're at and what impacts you and people like you have, on the world, and the ways you're propagating the system just by existing.
6. The buzz feed cracked dot com list format makes it easier to write even if it adds nothing to the writing and in fact makes the flow worse.
ehhhh
icecrystal posted:hey aren't you calling that guy a trotskyite?
Yes, and
marimite posted:Zak Cope argues that legal exploitation doesn't exist at all in the US, and then iirc Nikolai Brown, (one of the anti-imperialism.com guys I guess?), estimated the value of socially necessary labor time to be 10 an hour. I think that's likely correct, but there's a lot of things that should be kept in mind. Like exploitation is only a technical word in Marxism, and there's plenty of people who, while not necessarily being exploited, are still oppressed and fucked with by capital. And there are those who are just totally excluded from the system and live at the edge of death. Personally I wouldn't really consider someone a part of the labor aristocracy unless they receive a significant sum of surplus value compared to what they work for, so I guess someone that makes at least 30 or 40k a year maybe? But obviously we need a larger range of words than the one's Lenin used, as imperialism has become even more entrenched and complex.
Which isn't to say people should give into third worldist economism and stop aiming for revolution in the first world, but people should think honestly about the trade-offs people will have to make and the corresponding class alliances. Like under socialism you wouldn't be able to make much more than 10 an hour, but you won't get ripped off for healthcare and housing, you'll always have a job, society will actually be working towards protecting the ecology that all life is dependent on, etc. Actually this is something that really disappoints me about the PSL is they don't talk concretely about this. Like when people call for a 15 min wage, they say 20 just to brand themselves as the more radical option without a concrete analysis. Though I don't doubt they do good organizing, there's a lack of strategy that actually aims towards revolution.
As much as Cope's work was groundbreaking, it wasn't super deep in that his analysis left a lot of unanswered questions. I think that's a good think though because people like Bromma were able to rely on his really thorough data and turn it towards a more nuanced marxist understanding.There's also like you said other types of oppression, like national oppression and or lumpenization, that could turn people into revolutionary subjects. I think this is where MIM Prisons is distinct in that they're still looking for revolutionary subjects in the US, they just don't think its the typical proletariat.
The agent says, "Sorry, I don't do union work. It's a little too petty-bourgeois."
The steward says, "Sir, if you just hear our line, we know you would want to represent us."
The agent says, "OK. OK. I'll take a look."
The skilled workers form a semicircle around the amerikan flag and begin to sing the national anthem except every word is replaced with hitler. while continuing to sing, each in turn disrobes, grabs the flag, applies a liberal dose of lubricant from a barrel labeled OIL-DEATH, and rams up it up their own anus. This happens for a solid 15 minutes (they know all the verses, even the ones they don't teach you in school) until one worker expresses hesitation before the flagpole. He's immediately and brutally beaten to death and everyone takes turns urinating on the corpse.
After a brief squabble the body is stripped, cut, and portioned out into Crunchwrap Supreme™s. everyone lines up to pay the price at the surprisingly sophisticated counter. an automated kiosk tells each customer that it doesn't really matter what they do because they were too stupid and ugly to accomplish anything to begin with, and then asks for the skull of an east asian child to complete checkout.
after all the cannibalism and anal play, suddenly the workers begin to shit uncontrollably on the floor. first just a few, but then pretty soon all of them join in. this goes on for what seems for an impossibly long time until the shit is deep enough to be a real hazard. a sign goes up but still they start slipping and falling down all over, until each one is covered in shit. after awhile though it becomes clear that they're pratfalling on purpose, gleefully thrusting face first into the freshest shit they can find.
from around a corner, a procession of child slaves appears and begins shoveling away the shit (which is still piling up) as rapidly as they can. just as it appears that the level is starting the equalize, the workers begin to call the children racial slurs as a prelude to murdering them on a facebook live video that gets over 15k likes.
the shit now piles up unabated until it begins crushing and suffocating most of the people to death. the survivors drape a giant american flag over the still steaming shitruins and hold a conference on Design in the Digital Age.
For the longest time, the agent just sits in silence. Finally, he manages, "That's a hell of a perspective. What do you call it?"
And the foreman says, "The Labor Aristocrats!"
Edited by postposting ()