the latter part of that, phrased as a “crisis of freedom”, might accurately describe how hustle culture works, but how on EARTH can you SERIOUSLY CLAIM that the dialectic is ENTIRELY internal when people ABSOLUTELY still have to sell their fucking labour-power to make a living???
anyway remembering how the first chapter of Byung-Chol Han’s Psychopolitics makes the utterly preposterous claim that neoliberism has developed to a point where class conflict does not exist at all but instead has entirely shifted into a dialectic within the self, manifesting as depression and such
it’s frustrating because postmodern academia IS a thing (there is a “graphic novel” summary of Marxism that spends much of its last pages arguing that there are too many identities for class conflict between proletarians and bourgeoisie to be Real) but like… it’s literally even presented very readably lol…
the most sus stuff in this book is the author’s contempt for what they call “Anything But Class” academics; what he has to say about them feels really uncomfortably close to the incurious, especially given that they say the same shit about the supposed unreadability and dismissal of logic that people throw at like, Butler
lmao literally the next paragraph after i stopped to post that: “While the Chinese government continues under a nominally communist leadership, the process of private capital penetration goes on more or less unhindered”
what i understand is that (until recently) China has had a considerably more peaceful relationship to capitalism after opening up to foreign investment and adopting markets internally (leading to the understandable analysis that its Communist party was/is a misnomer, which frankly i don’t think i know well enough to comment on), and given in 2020 that its trajectory is toward that of a global power, i do wonder if that complicates Parenti’s point a bit
then again the US wants war now so
reading Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts & Reds; it makes the pretty straightforward but evergreen point i’ve definitely seen elsewhere, that socialist countries always face non-peaceful relationships with global capitalism and the US in particular; i do note the book does not discuss the (at the time (1997), contemporary!) political strategies of China after Mao
any of ny’all ever just https://twitter.com/CatChangelog/status/1466048476505120771
re: the editor of current affairs continues to build ever more deluxe mansions inside my head
every now and then we remember there’s a short book that we remembered being good about how bill clinton absolutely fucking sucked and well. then we remember who wrote it lol
it’s pronounced “ashling”. canonically a black housecat or any of the grass cat pokémon, but currently experiencing daily TFs. Commewnist. she/it
GlitchCat syscatmin and meowstodev; @ me about techincal problems with the instance, or fur feature requests. i got a job due to some extent to my work on this instance
i have very strong opinions about the sonic furanchise. pokémon has me in a chokehold when it comes to merchandise
available via email and matrix with the same username and domain. DM/message/email for other protocols
workplace policy is to clarify that all of my opinions expressed here are my own, and not those of my employer
“all this shit is still incomprehensible but im glad u accomplished something” ―@wallhackio
“i feel mildly relieved that the obscure and esoteric code that i use to build the site will always be definitely outclassed by the obscure and esoteric code that you use to serve it” ―@Lady