Moishe Postone, author of Time, Labor, and Social Domination, discusses the possibility of a revolution without a working class movement. patreon.com/dietsoap
The first time I listened to this, it changed the way I understood Marx and peaked my interest in political economy proper. I read Time, Labour and Social Domination and never looked back. Hope all goes well Doug.
Hey, Damn, I say this only because I would want someone to tell me: what you likely wanted to say was "piqued". It's my first time listening to this so I'm pumped
I wish Moishe would've denied it, because it is the truth: the US white working class, aside from the current trending influence of the right wing on them that he describes, are not racist, sexist and homophobic. The progress made on these fronts is incredible, not just compared to the US's long apartheid past, but even compared to 30 years ago. If Moishe couldn't see that, I wonder if it had simply been too long since he had been overseas. The scandinavian working class might be the only less racist one.
Fascinating interview. The stuff with Moshe was some of my favourite from the old channel. Would love to hear more on his ideas, either elaborations or critiques.
I think one of the most confusing things about Smith, is that he ascribes the LTV to a "rude and early state", rather than his own time. In this sense the rule that actually determines the present describes the past for Smith, and we have already moved beyond this stage.
There's no blueprint, no reconception of a new organization for our collective work, because we don't believe that humanity has a future. Minus any future, we tend to get by, to take the path of least resistance, to make impotent gestures toward change, out of a lack of willingness to confront our own belief in approaching human extinction. Marx conceived of ever increasing economic production - as a good materialist the purpose of the economy, the purpose of work and a good amount of the purpose of existence itself was to create more and more stuff, better stuff, to improve our lives. The obstacle to this was the capitalists, who hoarded resources to themselves and monopolized important decision making. Not long after Marx we proved that industrial processes were killing the world, and in 1967, popularized in 1968, the Manabe/Wetherald atmospheric model initiated our new belief that human extinction would precede human escape from Earth, the purpose of Modernity, thus ending capitalism's purpose and reason for being. Subsequently video games, born out of this new culture, became fixated on killing, monsters, and apocalypses - the Manabe/Wetherald atmospheric model continued it's unacknowledged effects. Postone is correct that we are disoriented, but he and the Marxist left in general have not accepted the basis for this disorientation. It's a "mystery" to them, which is another way of saying that they wish to remain deluded, that delusion is a preferred choice to reality. Mark Fisher plays into this delusion with "Capitalist Realism", as if capitalism has hypnotized us (through the "End of History") into acquiescence, but it's our own beliefs in the lack of a human future that are producing our political impotence. Terrible reality can have seemingly contradictory effects, like the emotions of rage and fear which seem very dissimilar until connections are noted. The increased political activity of the human population today is occurring within a context of a far deeper belief in approaching human extinction than was true in 1968, as efforts to reduce environmental destruction have failed again and again. The human population expresses ever more desperation, and this is both an indication of our desperation and a marker of our vulnerability to even greater domination and exploitation, as the popularity of media about the domination of the poor, like Hunger Games and Squid Game, illustrates. In our dying world, economic inequality is no longer a problem. It takes the belief in a human future to make economic inequality a moral outrage. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher understood this while leftist academics did not. It's a small piteous thing to complain about one's own family's economic straits - it's vastly more powerful to be able to claim that economic inequality is harming the future of humanity. To Marx, Socialism was powerful because it would last for centuries, maybe millennia, and would lead to even greater political systems subsequently. To us, Socialism is anemic, pathetic, barely worth any struggle, because it will last for a few decades and increase human well being merely in the 21st century.
Ok, my arguments against the Boomers: 1. Historically we have made progress on sexism/racism issues by protesting them and bringing them to the forefront of public conversation, because those issues are largely cultural and culture can change comparatively quickly and easily. 2. Systemic change to large-scale systems like our method of resource acquisition and distribution is largely driven by technology, not ideology. Whenever people try to drive things with ideology first, they usually fail. I would argue that is inevitable, because ideology tends to ignore the complex minutia of reality. It is the difference between idea guys and developers. In videogame development an idea for a game (no matter how good it seems) is worthless. The only thing that matters is whether people that do the development have the ability, desire and opportunity to do it and whether they manage to pull through. And every good game developer knows, that the idea will have to be adjusted along the way. This so called iterative process always leads to a better result than just executing a predetermined design, because it is driven by human experience. Along all stages a game is tested by developers and designated testers, to ensure that the outcome is actually engaging. 2. b) Yes, I call out (political) philosophy to be mostly an exercise in mental masturbation. It's not entirely useless, because we need to think long and hard about where we want to arrive at and how we get there, but at the end of the day, if you do not action your ideas, they might as well not exist at all. So I conclude the modern leftist project for a less sexist/racist society is a worthwhile one, because we can expect that this goal is (somewhat) achievable. Fighting the goal makes no sense. And the only people fighting the goal are those that do not feel like they would benefit (mostly straight white males over 40 and people over 50 in general - Boomers, really). If you want political change, you need to not just theorize, but actually do political work. At the very least, that experience would improve your theories.
Seems quite technologically determinist. Allowing you find political philosophy a waste of time can i recommend Soren Mau’s Mute Compulsion (he did a summary recently on HM too),. He elaborates the 3 vectors of power in the world: force, ideology, and the ‘mute compulsion of capital’ (capitalist economics in reductive terms). All three are always at play. E.G. apartheid in S.A. wasn’t defeated by Ideology alone. The Cuban army defeated the S.A. Military forces, the Boycott had its economic impact, and the rise of neoliberal ideology adapted to allow for a small black economic elite to supplement the existing white one, and for the vast majority of people life being exploited by capital along mostly racial lines went on as normal. I give the S.A. Example to piss on your party that ideology alone changes much at all. Even when all three are in play, social changes in S.A. Were severely limited because neoliberal economic, ideological and military (US empire) institutions prevented it.
Of course leftists should want a less sexist and racist society but that alone doesn't get us beyond capitalism. What it gets us is putting members of oppressed groups into positions of of corporate or state power where they will then continue previous policies with small changes (if any). This is still capitalism. It's Kamala Harris locking up people like her predecessors or Obama continuing wars like his predecessors. Moishe is correct on this. A focus on only the cultural elements is bound to end in a right wing direction because these issues are just absorbed back into capitalism.
