Seth Godin: It’s not what you deserve, but it is what it is

Seth Godin discusses It’s not what you deserve, but it is what it is

When your client or your boss turns down a great idea, it’s tempting to focus on the idea and how right you were. It might make more sense to try to find empathy for the fear and status issues that the client has instead. Because those issues probably got in the way of them ever seeing what you had to say.

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When we do agitation and propaganda work, we often encounter the fears of the working class:

• Homelessness
• Poverty
• Hunger
• Illness
• Prison

All the things that are reasons for overthrowing the system are also the props that hold up the system. As Machiavelli wrote (The Prince (1513), Ch 17):

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or disposed to its duties.

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The Capitalists have to maintain this semblance of fear without engendering widespread hatred of the system.

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Waging Nonviolence: Why the Fight over defining Antisemitism is Key to the Future of BDS

Waging Nonviolence discusses Why the Fight over defining Antisemitism is Key to the Future of BDS

As Israel continues military actions directed at Gaza — and the 2022 elections reveal far-right “Kahanist” candidates like Itamar Ben-Gvir building a far-right coalition in the Knesset — these questions are becoming even more salient. If the [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)] is an effective weapon to marginalize [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)] activism, to make criticism of Israel so untenable that it is nearly illegal in some contexts, then activists are going to have to address that foundational tool to make any other gains. The recent [Independent Jewish Voices (IJV)] report reveals exactly what IHRA’s defenders say is untrue — that IHRA is being used specifically to marginalize non-antisemitic criticism of Israel.

On Nov. 10, the Anti-Defamation League held it’s annual “Never Again is Now” summit, where they discussed the status of racist threats, including antisemitism. Speakers urged the mass adoption of the IHRA as a useful tool to fight antisemitism, something that mainstream Jewish and civic organizations have largely agreed with. This creates an uphill fight for groups like IJV who acknowledge the IHRA as a fundamental obstacle to maintaining an effective strategy to pressure for change in Israel-Palestine. This is part of what has created a rift between Jewish pro-Palestinian activists and the mainstream Jewish community. But these activists are committed to winning this fight because they see it as necessary to unlock further gains in the movement for Palestinian liberation.

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So, in effect, an on-going genocide against Palestinians is being masked by another genocide (the Holocaust). Unfortunately, the State of Israel (and its supporters) is emulating Nazi Germany by justifying the genocide by protecting its people from an internal enemy who are not human. And it is the same reason that the Ottoman Empire did a genocide against the Armenians.

When you deny the humanity of others, you open yourself to exploitation by those who are intent on mass-murder and extinguishment of a people from the pages of history.

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Chris Dillow: Why economists need history

Chris Dillow argues Why economists need history

Reigning in monopoly power requires governments to overcome these forces. And that in turn requires the growth of either a threat to capitalism itself or at least a countervailing power to capital. It's no accident that capitalism was more equal (and productive) when there were strong trades unions and a threat of communism.

So yes, I think we do need intellectual (and social and economic) history - because it teaches us that meaningful improvements in economic policy must be a collective effort and not merely clever people proposing technocratic tweaks.

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This really requires a significant portion of the proletariat to raise its class consciousness enough to confront the forces of Capitalism. Using the ERA (experience, reflection, action) model, workers should:

1.		Experience what is happening. This means articulating what is happening to them. Articulation brings the experience to the foreground. It can be simple as saying "This is sucks!". It is a realisation that things are right somehow. It may be something simple as a feeling of unease.
2.		Reflect upon this experience. This is when theory and a knowledge of history comes in. The current state of things has arisen from the decisions made in the past. It is vital that people understand that society is a human construct that is reproduced daily. Rules and customs exist to solve problems. We need to understand what those problems were, and why those choices were made. Theory helps us to clarify our thinking by focusing on what is important.
3.		Act upon this reflection and experience. What happens next depends on what you perceive your capabilities to be and what reaction you can survive. Be very aware that any action you take will incur a reaction from those whose believe that they benefit from the current system. The intensity of this reaction will be proportional to the fear that they feel.
4.		Repeat

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Ted Rall: Elon Musk, Gender and the War over Pronouns

Ted Rall discusses Elon Musk, Gender and the War over Pronouns

The pronoun thing also feels irrelevant to people who live in communities where they not only don’t know anyone who is transgender or nonbinary, no one they know knows someone who is. Politics fail when they don’t connect to perceived reality.

Can transgender Americans achieve full equality and eliminate discrimination without a radical grammatical transformation? If not, there is only one way to get there absent the kind of wholesale cultural transformation that took place in revolutionary Russia and its attendant social pressures. Stop preaching and wage a patient, persistent educational campaign that convinces most citizens that a more complicated world is a better one.

I’m not optimistic.

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The pronoun issue is a microcosm of a social revolution. Individual changes in behaviour eventually becomes a societal one. Because the order of society is changed, those who consider themselves to be beneficiaries of the current order, will wage a vicious campaign to maintain their current status in the current order. The benefits of a new social order must exceed the cost of overcoming the resistance to change, and that benefit must be seen by enough people to be good enough to pay the cost, in order for the societal change to be implemented.

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Peter Boyle: The recent protests in China: An interview with PSM’s Choo Chon Kai

Peter Boyle discusses The recent protests in China: An interview with PSM’s Choo Chon Kai.

In the context of the escalating imperialist drive to contain China’s rise on economic, political and military fronts, some leftists in the West, and even in your country, are painting democracy activists in China as agents of imperialism. What do you say about this tendency?

This is really divisive for the left. The US feels threatened by China’s rise in economic power and is using every means to try and contain it and retain US supremacy. Of course the US is trying to use the recent protests as an excuse for its hostile policies against China, but the people in China also have a legitimate right to struggle for a better life and more democratic space. 

A lack of support from the left around the world will alienate them from the genuine democracy movement, and the real left, in China. This will also have the effect of pushing some democracy activists to the right-wing imperialist forces — not only in China but also in other countries whose governments are the targets of the imperialist powers in this period of growing geopolitical tensions.

It is challenging for the left to work out the correct policy in this situation, but this is a challenge it needs to take up.

Emphasis in original

This is also the case with the Kurds, Ukraine, BREXIT, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. There is a genuine progressive current that is being exploited by the Imperialist forces for their own needs. The progressive forces are glad to accept help from the Capitalist class because the Capitalists currently have the overwhelming force on their side.

The difficulty for progressive forces to maintain their identity and integrity while accepting help from a rival Imperialist power to counter another Imperialist power. Survival can make identity and integrity seem like luxuries to be enjoyed in better times.

Blank pieces of paper stuck on the 'Freedom' sign at Xidian University in China. Image: Wikimedia Commons

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Sonia Hickey: Thugs in uniform: NSW Police assault Danny Lim

Sonia Hickey discusses Thugs in uniform: NSW Police assault Danny Lim

He’s beloved around the Sydney CBD for his cheeky but peaceful protests. But Danny Lim was in a “poor state” in hospital after sustaining injuries during a violent arrest by New South Wales Police on November 22.

78-year old Lim is a Sydney icon. He was wearing his trademark sandwich board sign — “SMILE CVN’T! WHY CVN’T?” — when police confronted him.

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Daniel Little: Alexander Herzen's radical liberalism

Daniel Little discusses Alexander Herzen's radical liberalism.

Finally, Herzen has a healthy distrust of "ideology", or purely philosophical theories of an ideal future for which all present human wellbeing must be sacrificed. Against Trotsky, Lenin, and Mao, Herzen mistrusted grand ideological goals and favored a process of social change that permitted ordinary human beings to exercise their freedoms as society changed. Berlin emphasizes this point in his introduction.

It is, in the main, a frontal attack upon the doctrine at that time preached by almost every left-wing orator in Europe (with the notable exception of Proudhon and a handful of anarchists to whom no one listened), about the sacred human duty of offering up oneself—or others—upon the altar of some great moral or political cause—some absolute principle or ‘collective noun’ capable of stirring strong emotion, like Nationality, or Democracy, or Equality, or Humanity, or Progress. For Herzen these are merely modern versions of ancient religions which demanded human sacrifice, faiths which spring from some irrational belief (rooted in theology or metaphysics) in the existence of vast and menacing powers, once the objects of blind religious worship, then, with the decay of primitive faith, degraded to becoming terms of political rhetoric. The dogmas of such religions declare that mere invocation of certain formulae, certain symbols, render what would normally be regarded as crimes or lunacies—murder, torture, the humiliation of defenceless human bodies—not only permissible, but often laudable. (From the Other Shore, Berlin introduction, xv)

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I think that Little and Herzen consider philosophical systems such as Marxism to prescriptive rather than descriptive. My reading of the above quotes is that they see left-wing politics (with a few exceptions) as requiring a form of human sacrifice in order to realise the political objectives.

In other words, Little and Herzen do not see Marxism as a way to analyse the world, but rather as a goal to be achieved. The misconception of about Marxism being prescriptive appears to arise from the Manifesto of the Communist Party in which there is a prescriptive ten (10) point plan. That plan was a response to the existing conditions in Europe as of 1848. Since then several of these pints

Little and Herzen see this prescription as requiring some form of human sacrifice while ignoring the human sacrifice imposed by Capitalism through poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, etc. This is not "what-about-ism" as the implication of their quotes that the need for human sacrifice is inherent in left-wing politics.

Marxism is based on dialectical materialism in which the world is analysed (or described) through the contradictions between material (or real) forces. By examining these contradictions, one can devise a plan to remove them through synthesis.

Little concludes:

The new society, if it is to conform to these disparate values, must accomplish several different social goods:

• respect liberty and equal dignity of all individuals;
• secure the human needs of everyone — workers, engineers, poets, and owners of property;
• be democratic, not autocratic.

Was there any place on the planet in 1850 that satisfied these different structural features? There certainly was not — not Britain, not Switzerland, not the United States. Is there a society on the planet today that satisfies them? Perhaps there is; it is called Finland.

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This is not far from what The Communist Manifesto concludes with:

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

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Now on Mastodon

I have created an account on Mastodon

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Seth Godin: It's easy to do (if you know how to do it)

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Seth Godin discusses It’s easy to do (if you know how to do it)

The three elements of successful instructional design might be:

1. Acknowledge that communicating what you know is difficult.
2. Find empathy for people who don’t know what you know yet.
3. Test the work, often.

Humility in design dances with the arrogance of believing we can help other people move forward.

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This is particularly relevant as one organises for a social revolution. One has to convey a different ordering of society to people who think that the current society is the most natural thing in the world. They may consider some reforms are needed, but not a wholesale reordering of society.

However, revolutionaries need to believe that they can change society. This counts as an "arrogance of believing". We also need to "find empathy for people who don't know what [we] know yet". We should remember our own journey of discovery.

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Seth Godin: Reality isnt optimized

Seth Godin argues that Reality isn’t optimized

Falsehoods, spin and legends can be tweaked and tested and changed to exactly match the dreams and desires of the people they’re aimed at.

This is why manipulative stories are so much stickier than what really happened.

What reality has in its favor is that it’s generally resilient. Gravity doesn’t care who believes in it. It’s still here.

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This is why conspiracy theories are so successful—they offer satisfying explanations that do not require too much thinking as they rely on confirmation bias. Reality is far more messy and much more difficult to explain.

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Hyman P. Minsky: Finance and Stability: The Limits of Capitalism

Hyman P. Minsky discusses Finance and Stability: The Limits of Capitalism.

One reason capitalism won and the Soviet version of socialism lost was that the Lenin-Stalin version of socialism allowed for only one form, the highly centralized linear command model, whereas, as the call for this conference recognizes, capitalism comes in many forms. The successful capitalisms of the 1950's through the 1970's were not the same as the capitalisms that failed in the 1930's. In general a system which we can characterize as a small government gold standard constrained laissez-faire capitalism was replaced by a big government flexible central bank interventionist capitalism. As Kalecki and Jerome Levy pointed out, a government deficit is the equivalent of investment as far as the maintaining of the profits of enterprise is concerned. The big government capitalism put in place in the 1930's and after World War II were and still are protected from a severe fall in aggregate profits, such as occurred in the great contraction of 1929-33.

Emphasis Mine. pp.5-6

This was certainly the problem with Socialism after the 1917 revolution and the formation of the USSR. Given that a Socialist country had just survived a near-death experiences in the Russian Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. In both cases, the USSR was able to emerge stronger and defeat its enemies.

Unfortunately, the means that the USSR used to achieve their victories proved not to be appropriate in the post-war years. The USSR went through several phases:

• War Communism (1918-1921)
• New Economic Policy (1921-1928)
• Great Break (USSR) (1928-1929)
• Five-year plans of the Soviet Union (1928-1991)

Except for the period of the New Economic Policy, all of the other phases relied on centralised control of the economy. The great advantage of this was the rapid development of the productive forces which was necessary because Russia was primarily an agricultural country (indeed, a peasant-based economy).

Minksy did not realised that Capitalism has been Finance Capitalism since the early 20th century:

As a result of the security market reforms of the Roosevelt era the law caught up with the fact that modern capitalism is corporate capitalism.

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Minksy admits that Marx's thesis that the long-term trend of decreasing rates of profit without acknowledging the source:

Once current profits fall by enough, or the carrying costs of debts increases by enough, so that the cash flows earned by operations or from financial assets by highly indebted operations are insufficient to meet commitments on liabilities then the pressure of the need to validate debts (and to meet withdrawals by depository institutions) leads to a proliferation of attempts to make positions by selling out positions. The result can be a sharp fall in asset values. A downward spiral is a possibility in which investment ceases and profits evaporate: the end result of over indebtedness can be a great or a serious depression. Although the obvious flaw in capitalism centers around its inability to maintain a close approximation to full employment, its deeper flaw centers around the way the financial system affects the prices and demands of outputs and assets, so that from time to time debts and debt servicing rise relative to incomes so that conditions conducive to financial crises are endogenously generated. Such a crisis, if not contained by a combination of Central Bank lender of last resort interventions, which sustain asset prices, and government deficits, which sustain profits, leads first to a collapse of investment and then to a long lasting depression accompanied by mass unemployment. This financial flaw cannot be eradicated from the corporate form of market capitalism, in which liabilities exist that are prior commitments of the gross nominal profit flows of corporations. Reforms which constrain the possibility of using excessive debts for specified purposes were part of the new model capitalism of the 1930's. Many aspects of these constraints were relaxed by the 1980's, especially critical constraints upon the assets eligible for the portfolios of the Savings and Loan Associations were relaxed. The result was a series of crises of financial institutions and corporate indebtedness. A big depression did not happen in the early 1990's because the government validated the debts of the financial institutions that became insolvent and the huge government deficits sustained profits.

Emphasis Mine. pp.18-19

This is a succinct prescription of the current Capitalist crisis.

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