That would sound amazing

Well there’s some things i agree with strongly, although I believe I still disagree with your definition of the word “fascist.” But it’s not an important difference since you’ve taken it up to actually try and learn history and make sense of it all. Very “class conscious worker” of you.

Do you do any organizing outside of your studies? You seem energetic, and class conscious workers have to get together and (imo) do political organizing, like how you discussed. I agree its a lousy time for consciousness but it think its changing. Time will tell. Thanks for the history lesson, appreciate you making time

So What’cha Want by the Beastie Boys

*more than

Idk about that, but there’s def similarities. I think its dangerous to mischaracterize things that aren’t fascist as fascist, as popular movements which have done so seem to actually accelerate the spread of fascism. One a them dialectical historic contradictions.

But I don’t say this to take the wind out of anyone’s militancy against the all but unchecked rise of the anti-democratic authoritarian right. By the time something that is almost fascism becomes fully formed it is too late.

But it is worthwhile to use care when applying the term.

Kind of ironic since Hitler based Germany’s immigration laws on USA’s.

Are you a capitalist or a communist? You’re certainly not a communist, I believe what you are hinting at is “socialized” vs “individual” labor, and it is a historically progressive development of capitalism. How a software developer fits into the means of production is they aid in the exchange of money from the sale of commodities, and make the transactions possible. But at the end of the day some product is being sold to some end user and you help to make that possible. Without the transaction there is no sale, which means no exchange of commodities for more money than they cost to produce and bring to market (profit or surplus value) which is the basis for the whole system, it is the point where the exploitation occurs.

Everyone is always “exploited” by the system, its part of what drives competition. But to be more specific, everyone is alienated from the system of production. we are all very individuated in our thinking, which bears out in our alienated experience. In more advanced or more advantaged countries, with a higher outlay of financial or investment capital, the class character of any individual is more specific and hard to suss out. In developing or economically repressed nations, where the factories of 1870s Germany still exist, alongside the factories of 1840s England, if not in capital than in conditions, the class character of any individual might be more clear and concise. Our “class character” is determined by our relationship to production, and it is not altogether straightforward. I’ve seen many fights like “are cops workers” and even “are baristas workers” that have sent me.

All that to say, capitalism promotes cooperation through competition, it socializes production, so that the product of your labor is just one part of a very complex whole. Even the painter has to pay for insurance on his van, probably has a couple loans for his business. The fact that your labor is socialized doesn’t make you a communist. Communism is the struggle for a classless, moneyless society. It too will presumably also have socialized production, but also socialized ownership of the means of production whereas under capitalism the MoP is privatized. This is the fundamental contradiction within capitalism and it is right that you found yourself wondering about it.

The “means of production” is a very abstract and fundamental concept. I think its right for you to question it, and how it relates directly to you. Its a very general concept, and everything you are asking of of applies to is very specific. The means of production has been well defined it seems elsewhere in the discussion, but its basically “everything that is used in human production” which is the driving force of history from a Marxist/sorta Hegelian perspective. So it is a big deal.

But what is also relevant, is how production is defined, and namely who owns its products. You work in IT (so do I) so in that example you own your work laptop? That laptop is MoP, same as the painter tools, and you sell your product to the company, who uses it to run how ever millions of transactions. Or making those transactions possible for that company, integrating some new feature. So more specifically, those tools are Capital, which is an essential mean of production under capitalism. But a ton of the infrastructure for those transactions was publicly funded, paid for with taxes. But now most if not all of that infrastructure is privately owned.

So in that way you are like the painter, in that you sell directly the product of your labor to the capitalist. Both you and the painter are workers in the same way, but youre an intellectual worker vs he is a physical laborer. but the paint and personal items in your personally owned house is for your personal use, whereas the software you sell to a company is for commercial use, in effect the software is capital, whereas the paint on your walls is not. But if the painter painted the walls at your company’s office, that would be capital. The painter “bought the paint with his own money”? But you are paying him, so you are buying the paint.

Decimation of the middle class is a natural tendency of capitalism, but politically its highly desirable to have a middle class. So the middle class in a highly capitalist society ends up being somewhat precarious. Billionaires aren’t attacking the middle classes more than laboring classes, but the “answer” to almost every problem caused by overproduction bubbles is to somehow suppress wages. The government, which needs a strong middle class for political stability, now has to find a way to lower wages or ,in the case of business owning/managing middle class, make new capital investment difficult. There are different kind of middle class, so there are different ways of accomplishing this. But as a result, middle class people are class conscious to the extent that they feel always threatened, but often aren’t able to link it to the economic system, or if so then they might not be able to link global economic problems to the actions that actually caused the problems.

“There is no middle class only virgin workers and chad lumpen proles” is an incredible bit

Trick is on you, I’m wearing “guy who hasn’t cum in 2 weeks” cologne

I’m still learning so I’m a student myself!

I did on another thread!

Hegelian phenomenology is dialectics but dialectics isn’t phenomenology.

Thanks for the article, It does a good job of describing Hegelian historical analysis, via Marx’s materialist dialectics, but isn’t more than a superficial understanding of either. I’m no Hegel scholar, but “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” isn’t Hegel, its Ficte’s description of Hegel’s dialectic, and its an over simplification. The author isnt an expert but superficially on Marx and Hegel. Read Karl Marx and Human Self Creation by Cyril Smith you can skip to the bit about Hegel and Marx, but the pre history is interesting.

Marxist historical materialism is scientific, but most importantly, and what the author doesn’t seem to get, probably due to my superficial reading of the article, is that in historical materialist analysis, the subject and object are united into a single system. His dualist presuppositions in the Implications section (and likely those of his readers) are exactly what prevent access to understanding dialectics.

the appearance of pairs of diametric opposites, united by their contradictions toward one another isn’t too difficult to grapple with as an abstract concept. But in order to apply this consistently we have to radically alter our perspective, we have to unite the subject and object, the ego and the other, the body and the mind. Uniting subject and object is actually extremely difficult within even an abstract conception of post enlightenment rationality. But its one of the only way to connect understanding to truth, humanity to justice and production.

Also a better quick primer on Marxist Hegelianism might be Thesis on Feuerbach by the man himself. Also Plekhanov’s the Materialist Conception of History but that’s way out of the scope of what we are discussing.

The “rational enlightenment” and its consequences

This is not the Hegelian Dialectic. This is Hegelian Phenomenology, which is dialectical, but condensing dialectics into this single paranoid conclusion is not educational.

Invalidating anything that might conflict with your favorite epistemology? Certainly there’s no problem here, as long as you avoid philosophy

You’re 100% right

Increased interest rates make it more expensive for businesses to borrow money. This causes them to tighten up expenses to remain profitable which means cutting hours and laying people off. The more people that are unemployed, the lower wages become.

Inflation is caused by companies raising prices in response to higher revenues. Forcing people into unemployment stops that by taking money out of circulation, it just sits in accounts as capital, rather than being used to pay wages

He’s a fucking Vanderbilt, he’ll be fine