Bukku_Man posted:nope, got that wrong, still ongoing
the humping?
No totalising relationship between spectacle and reality is acceptable other than condemning capitalism as an abstract evil system making "us" do evil things, which is yet another spectacle. Adam Smith said those who clothe the world are themselves in rags and till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth and to defend the rich from the poor - while straightforwardly defending the natural and perfect "system" to which he attributed those blatant antagonistic contradictions. So of course the same people who were upset about a specific instance of mass suffering and death which they decided was important, are now happy that a ceasefire happened, even though it is a pointless meaningless concept applied to a wasteland deprived of the barest minimum of what they'd expect for themselves. Consequently, no wonder "support" for Palestine liberation even in the conventionally progressive sense that also rejects antisemitism has been embraced by certain kinds of populism presumably directed at the lower-middle-class/"precariat" instead of the wealthiest 20-40%. The Indian counterparts for both of the above excluding the left/Congress would be pro-Israel but again it doesn't matter, not even to Muslims.
The way out of pointlessness is not trying harder or a more "correct" position (the online version of the former) but the direct application of fundamental concepts to reality and then working out the contradictions. Like this one from the Manuscripts of 1844:
It stems from the very nature of alienation that each sphere applies to me a different and opposite yardstick-ethics one and political economy another; for each is a specific alienation of man and focuses attention on a particular round of alienated essential activity, and each stands in an alienated relation to the other.... Besides, the opposition between political economy and ethics is only a sham opposition and just as much no opposition as it is an opposition. All that happens is that political economy expresses moral laws in its own way.
vimingok posted:The lefty discourse around the Gaza war (and everything else) is pointless despite the war itself demonstrating principled international military coordination between non-state entities is possible, which is by far the most important political development of the last thirty years. And I'm not only talking about internet leftism which ironically is a first world problem referring to people not attached to an "irl" party, as an insult coming from people who believe they are... and this somehow persists despite every one of those parties evidently being organised around social media. The idea that America/NATO is enabling monstrous Israel for example - Israel is the irredeemable villain of the piece, rationalising the process of the sympathetic villain eventually becoming the good guy. Both the Israel-as-proxy and Israel-as-manipulator lines end up there because regardless of "acknowledging" imperialism and settler-colonialism beyond it the real significance of Israel vs Palestine is that "people" are upset about it. Israelis partying kilometres away from suffering Palestinians is obscene but the life-activity of the non-Israeli personification of capital denouncing that, is not.
No totalising relationship between spectacle and reality is acceptable other than condemning capitalism as an abstract evil system making "us" do evil things, which is yet another spectacle. Adam Smith said those who clothe the world are themselves in rags and till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth and to defend the rich from the poor - while straightforwardly defending the natural and perfect "system" to which he attributed those blatant antagonistic contradictions. So of course the same people who were upset about a specific instance of mass suffering and death which they decided was important, are now happy that a ceasefire happened, even though it is a pointless meaningless concept applied to a wasteland deprived of the barest minimum of what they'd expect for themselves. Consequently, no wonder "support" for Palestine liberation even in the conventionally progressive sense that also rejects antisemitism has been embraced by certain kinds of populism presumably directed at the lower-middle-class/"precariat" instead of the wealthiest 20-40%. The Indian counterparts for both of the above excluding the left/Congress would be pro-Israel but again it doesn't matter, not even to Muslims.
The way out of pointlessness is not trying harder or a more "correct" position (the online version of the former) but the direct application of fundamental concepts to reality and then working out the contradictions. Like this one from the Manuscripts of 1844:
It stems from the very nature of alienation that each sphere applies to me a different and opposite yardstick-ethics one and political economy another; for each is a specific alienation of man and focuses attention on a particular round of alienated essential activity, and each stands in an alienated relation to the other.... Besides, the opposition between political economy and ethics is only a sham opposition and just as much no opposition as it is an opposition. All that happens is that political economy expresses moral laws in its own way.
The ideological struggles over one or two state solution and Zionism or Jews are a pseudo-dialectical proxy for the real ideological belief in the irrevocability of America itself and therefore Israel, which will be created anew if necessary with the implicit and explicit consent of ordinary, hard-working, protesting, tiktoking Americans. Contrary to popular belief even among "lefties" the USA is not even remotely close to being oil independent. Fracking - representing the entirety of American oil production growth since the 2008 crisis - is uneconomical almost everywhere else. Its "amazing" natural gas infrastructure build up would have been likewise uneconomical anywhere else. The causal link between the US exporting 2/3 of oil and being the largest merchandise importer is patently obvious. De-growth fantasies assume an easily regulated demarcation between excess/waste and necessity mediated by a combination of voluntaristic "buy local grow local" and decolonising technocracy that really cares. It is the proxies not the core that need to be defended, not because they are extensions of the core's interests, because they are those interests. The core doesn't have any interests other than its proxies. Israel's settler-colonialism is and will remain in its offensive phase until the end but America's has been defensive for a long time. It is not built on stolen land anymore because the Native Indians are a relic and the Foreign Indians are running the country. History has determined that the land belongs to everyone, and America is the attempt to deny that reality unto death.
Political economy necessarily abstracts from ethics so as to be able to express the postulated moral laws in its own way, according to its tenets. Equally, and perhaps more importantly, ethics must abstract from the "empirical" so as to be able to legitimate the laws of political economy in its own way. But what happens when the reality they distort begins to distort them?
vimingok posted:The core doesn't have any interests other than its proxies.
an interesting concept with the apparent attempts at an internal demolition of USAID and CIA sending out emails asking for everyone to immediately resign.
solidar posted:vimingok posted:The core doesn't have any interests other than its proxies.
an interesting concept with the apparent attempts at an internal demolition of USAID and CIA sending out emails asking for everyone to immediately resign.
In India recently private philanthropy to RSS-linked charities, ad hoc government schemes etc has skyrocketed even as western nonprofits got their funding cut. The equivalent of suburbanite middle class has almost doubled since 2018. $100b annual inward remittance. So the money laundering industry has dropped the post-colonial self-criticism. It's the same kind of thing. Analysing the self-serving partiality of western social-fascism is interesting to me because I don't fully understand how it works. Even though not my skillset obviously.
E- I mentioned 100b inward remittance wrt skyrocketing "charity" because there are ways to link that to NRO accounts and even translate benefits to tax on outward remittance: send dollars home and back to US with minimal taxation on both ends. Everyone's wants to hold some dollars, including me. USAID's function is "corrupting" the middle/wealthy classes, although that's like saying a CEO's salary is corrupting him into seeking profit instead of well-being. In any case that function is obsolete due to what I've said.
EE - None of the above should be taken to mean Indians are "cynical" about charity. That is racist projection which seems to have settled on everything to do with India. I'll have to insist on that. Everyone I know who donates believes they are helping, while also believing they should get something in return because it's not coming at the expense of the poor. This charity is just as much or little virtuous or effective as any other charity, fundamentally for the same reasons. The Jewish national liberation movement figured it out 2000 years ago - for all they did cast in of their abundance.
Edited by vimingok ()