#1641
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dimashq posted:





#1642
UNUSUALY COOL
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marlax78 posted:

cars posted:

LOLing ITT at the idea that the bourgeoisie get their updates on their portfolios from reading a finance news site

the bourgeoisie consists of millions of people



lol at the idea that the bourgeoisie get their updates on their portfolios from reading a finance news site

#1643
UNUSUALY COOL
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this is going to be good.
#1644
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dimashq posted:




you just posted cringe bro you are gonna lose another election

#1645
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amerikkkan loses it when told about the #BEB, pepper sprays own allies and later gets arrested

#1646
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#1647
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#1649
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#1650
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one of these dudes understands the british working class, the other is a doddering old fool who only has a following because zizek got popular in 2011

not sure which is which though

#1651
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#1652
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cars posted:

folks you don’t need to confess and try to justify why you read finance news... I’m just saying that it’s even more made-up bullshit than State-Department-ghostwritten CNN stories on U.S. wars, and it’s even more laughably obvious how and why it’s intended to delude the reader into thinking they know more for having read it, because it’s designed to make chumps bet big against the house without realizing it, that’s all
#1653
lies half the time
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oh no. he really has gotten fiscaled
#1654
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edit: nvm i found the thread!

Edited by ghostpinballer ()

#1655
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marlax78 posted:

I think Marxists can exercise a little critical thinking and not take stock advice from strangers in getting financial news. I mean, I don't know about other people here, but if I pull up financial news it's because I want to read about the latest quarterly earnings reports (of companies I don't own or plan to own stock in), PMI and consumer spending data, IMF world economic outlook reports, Fed decisions and so on. The bourgeoisie do need this stuff accurately reported as a class even where certain individuals have an interest in suppressing it. How that data is subsequently interpreted is another matter


Considering the financial press as "data" is as misleading as considering bourg economics a science. Theres no reason to believe that the financial times doesnt fill its pages by the same logic as the nyt, by publishing things that will engage their readership. The idea that financial reporting must be providing Accurate and Reliable Market Analysis in order for the bourg to valorize its capital is unfounded imo, surplus value is produced by extraction of labor from workers, not by clever market manipulations, and the magazines are aimed at people who think its the reverse and pander to their interests and passing trends.

Edited by c_man ()

#1656
[account deactivated]
#1657
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c_man posted:

marlax78 posted:

I think Marxists can exercise a little critical thinking and not take stock advice from strangers in getting financial news. I mean, I don't know about other people here, but if I pull up financial news it's because I want to read about the latest quarterly earnings reports (of companies I don't own or plan to own stock in), PMI and consumer spending data, IMF world economic outlook reports, Fed decisions and so on. The bourgeoisie do need this stuff accurately reported as a class even where certain individuals have an interest in suppressing it. How that data is subsequently interpreted is another matter

Considering the financial press as "data" is as misleading as considering bourg economics a science. Theres no reason to believe that the financial times doesnt fill its pages by the same logic as the nyt, by publishing things that will engage their readership. The idea that financial reporting must be providing Accurate and Reliable Market Analysis in order for the bourg to valorize its capital is unfounded imo, surplus value is produced by extraction of labor from workers, not by clever market manipulations, and the magazines are aimed at people who think its the reverse and pander to their interests and passing trends.



The surplus value produced by workers gets redistributed after it's produced, and money capital gets its cut because the breaking up of the circuit of capital between different capitalists is necessitated by an increase in production. We all know this. If finance served no purpose and there's only 'manipulation', it would have ceased as soon as mercantilism produced industrial capital because no one wants to share their profits with a parasite. If financial journalism likewise served no purpose other than to deceive capital it would be illegal

#1658
UNUSUALY COOL
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ialdabaoth posted:

oh no. he really has gotten fiscaled



uhh

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dimashq posted:



thanks for posting this... always happy to share my Ws.

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c_man posted:

Considering the financial press as "data" is as misleading as considering bourg economics a science. Theres no reason to believe that the financial times doesnt fill its pages by the same logic as the nyt, by publishing things that will engage their readership. The idea that financial reporting must be providing Accurate and Reliable Market Analysis in order for the bourg to valorize its capital is unfounded imo, surplus value is produced by extraction of labor from workers, not by clever market manipulations, and the magazines are aimed at people who think its the reverse and pander to their interests and passing trends.


#1661
UNUSUALY COOL
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marlax78 posted:

If financial journalism likewise served no purpose other than to deceive capital it would be illegal



at least argue against something someone's actually saying. obviously e.g. CNN world news reporting serves a purpose beyond purely deceiving the reader, that doesn't mean it's chock full of the secrets the ruling class doesn't want you to know about Syria. it's just another banal example of propaganda as news.

the best reason I can find for the rise of "finance news is where they hide all the bare honest super-truths" is 1) a lot of DSA-style left-liberals have never read about finance from any source whatsoever and find it uncomfortable and frightening, which their neurotic psyches convert into something they should be doing, albeit without putting much effort into it, and 2) a smaller amount of DSA-style liberals realize that with a smattering of cargo-cult invocation of the stuff their peers fear, they can command respect they haven't earned for being "serious" types who know all the secret ways that scary-workers-own-means-of-production socialism is bad and won't "work".

tbh though i'm still LOL at the idea that because the bourgeoisie are a lot of people, they therefore find out how their portfolios are doing from CNBC.

#1662
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marlax78 posted:

If finance served no purpose and there's only 'manipulation', it would have ceased as soon as mercantilism produced industrial capital because no one wants to share their profits with a parasite. If financial journalism likewise served no purpose other than to deceive capital it would be illegal


Finance serves a crucial purpose under capitalism but the financial press doesnt express financial news in those terms (allocating capital to improve extraction of surplus value), instead it very explicitly presents its content as necessary advice for investors to make money by following or anticipating trends, with the implication that the canniest of the readers will stand to enhance their fortunes. The reasons given for this never have anything to do with increading exploitation of workers and are almost always attributed to personal qualities of the leaders, market vicissitudes or at most some details of the organizational habits of the company or their supply chains (where any information about global wage arbitrage is hidden). Companies like uber, tesla, etc are obvious scams to anyone with eyes to see but they appear constantly in the financial press. Is this because the financial press is providing Unbiased, Accurate Data to People Who Need It? Or does it have more to do with the marketing the idea that what makes money is being Very Smart to the people who control how that money is applied?

#1663
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they don't have to present developments in the terms of marx's critique of the categories of political economy because it's precisely the very act of exchange which gives birth to the ideological fetishism of the market; it is not a distortion of reality, it is a part of reality. this fetishism and vulgar political economy isn't untrue as such because it can be subject to a symptomatic reading which can bring out a deeper truth. even the unscientific apology of a bastiat tells you something about capitalism. lenin liked it when dietzgen said something like "it's precisely because philosophy is the most false of false paths that we must begin here." i don't want to be conflated with this DSA type and i also don't think any data one gets in financial journals (or which comes from the CIA, IMF/world bank or the UN conference on trade or whatever) can be unproblematically made use of, but until we get some socialist agency which is in charge of this we have to critically collate this from bourgeois sources. there's a constant debate on how to measure the rate of profit for precisely this reason, because bourgeois data is inherently flawed (for us, not for them), and while some people retreat in the face of this difficulty i'd rather reject the view that marxism can't be empirically verified.

again, the financial press can be used as a means for scamming the petty-bourgeoisie, but so can the stock exchange. marx has lots of comments about that, but it does not mean that the structural purpose of the stock exchange is to scam the petty-bourgeoisie. is uber a scam? i don't think so, but i do know that Michael Roberts has noted that all the profits right now are being made in tech even if there's very little surplus-value being produced there. financial news reflects this. also cars, the upper rungs of the bourgeoisie don't actually check their portfolios. they hire people who manage their money. anecdotally, the only time a certain bourgeois family member of mine ever actually looked at their portfolio was during the aftermath of the recession.

Edited by marlax78 ()

#1664
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marlax78 posted:

we have to critically collate this from bourgeois sources. there's a constant debate on how to measure the rate of profit for precisely this reason, because bourgeois data is inherently flawed (for us, not for them), and while some people retreat in the face of this difficulty i'd rather reject the view that marxism can't be empirically verified.


This is very different from "the financial press is ideologically neutral and presents bare facts that are crucial for marxists to absorb". The financial press is first and foremost an ideological institution which carefully tailors its "journalism" to its audience, just like every other press sector. You can watch cnn or oprah or read Us Weekly or the nation with a critical eye and scrape out some marxish insights if you work at it. All of these and more are lobbying the bourgeoisie to accept their insights as necessary for success, just as the financial press do. To single the financial press out as uniquely positioned to dispense crucial, unadulterated information because otherwise the bourg would not be able to make Optimal decisions is not only to fall victim to the financial press's own marketing but also to forget that the people they're marketing at are also the aspirational targets for every fad diet and techno-mysticism. Theres useful information there but there's no less ideology and misdirection than any other press sector.

#1665
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what's this interesting and nuanced discussion doing in the twitter thread?!?!
#1666
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Belphegor posted:

what's this interesting and nuanced discussion doing in the twitter thread?!?!



its disgusting. here's an embedded hyperlink with a lot less effort.

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#1669
UNUSUALY COOL
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#1670
lies half the time
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they're several years behind the private sector there. my coworker's son has been cleaning hotel rooms unpaid for two years
#1671
lies half the time
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starting when the kid was in high school. they'd pull him out of classes for half the day for this special job training program just for non-verbal folks, where they go clean toilets and strip beds for no pay. after graduation they kept him on with the promise of a minimum wage after a year-long probationary period. sounds like what this usgs program was modeled on
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UNUSUALY COOL
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i'm reminded of that part in Capital where it asks, what was the benefit to factory owners to get them to promote primary education for children
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UNUSUALY COOL
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#1674
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c_man posted:

marlax78 posted:

we have to critically collate this from bourgeois sources. there's a constant debate on how to measure the rate of profit for precisely this reason, because bourgeois data is inherently flawed (for us, not for them), and while some people retreat in the face of this difficulty i'd rather reject the view that marxism can't be empirically verified.

This is very different from "the financial press is ideologically neutral and presents bare facts that are crucial for marxists to absorb". The financial press is first and foremost an ideological institution which carefully tailors its "journalism" to its audience, just like every other press sector. You can watch cnn or oprah or read Us Weekly or the nation with a critical eye and scrape out some marxish insights if you work at it. All of these and more are lobbying the bourgeoisie to accept their insights as necessary for success, just as the financial press do. To single the financial press out as uniquely positioned to dispense crucial, unadulterated information because otherwise the bourg would not be able to make Optimal decisions is not only to fall victim to the financial press's own marketing but also to forget that the people they're marketing at are also the aspirational targets for every fad diet and techno-mysticism. Theres useful information there but there's no less ideology and misdirection than any other press sector.



you know, i completely agree with you so i retract any arguing i've done in this thread. i worry getting balls deep into classical political economy is going to turn me into a tool

#1675
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Red salute for pleasant forums discussions
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UNUSUALY COOL
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#1678
UNUSUALY COOL
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To be honest I just find everything that must have led up to that depressing to consider. But I've seen worse here on Decon Squad.......... a lot worse. *wind whistles, slow zoom out from behind, fade to black & anime end credits theme*
#1679
lies half the time
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tempest in a teacup
#1680
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