A market is, first and foremost, a site of what might be called impersonal exchange. It is ‘impersonal’ insofar that those who participate do not, for the most part, have any pre-existing obligations, bonds, or relations to one another. This ‘impersonal’ aspect of markets is what makes it different to say, gift economies, where gifts might be exchanged in order to keep up good relations between tribes. Or else different to relations of patronage or villeange, in which labour or goods are exchanged for protection or use of land.
One might say that what defines the ideal market is the ‘spot exchange’. The exchange ‘on the spot’, of goods, money, or labour, after which the participants no longer have any social relation to one another at all..
if a market is defined by impersonal exchanges, what defines capitalism? Well, a few things. First, capitalism implies a generalization of impersonal exchange to all spheres of the economy. That is, impersonal exchange must begin to replace all kinds of regimes of personalised and social exchange...
the generalization of impersonal exchange involves an increase in commodification: making things commodities for the market. — Streetlight
It is at this point, where the general mode of production becomes geared towards the market, that capitalism proper can be said to come into being. And this, ultimately is the difference in kind between markets and capitalism. Markets bear upon issues of exchange: how goods move from one set of hands to another. Capitalism on the other hand, cannot be understood apart from issues of production: of who and what is it that stuff is produced for. — Streetlight
To not lose the original-Marxist critical anti-capitalist perspective, it is worth to combine an expanded socio-economic approach with the notions of various surplus-values, apparatuses of capture, relations of power, and individuazation. As a result of the conjunction of these dimensions, on the personal level, articulating theoretical or historical perspectives on capitalism is also a matter of enacting a particular subjectivity, agency, or identity.
— Number2018
I think such discussions have their place, but are they ultimately consequences of capitalism. Yet people cannot even get their head around basic principles, and so confuse markets, interest, finance, and profit with the existence of capitalism. There is interest in talking about individuation and so on, but at some point this stuff is mystifying rather than clarifying if our basic concepts are not fixed. — Streetlight
The birth of 'the individual' follows quite nicely from the birth of generalized market-society. It is no surprise that liberalism - whose unit of analysis is precisely the individual, upon whom rights and obligation accrue (and property rights above all!) - is born exactly at the end of feudalism at the point at which markets become ascendant. — Streetlight
The guiding light I follow in thinking about this is the exchange/production distinction. To the degree that capitalism ultimately makes a change at the level of production so that production becomes production-for-market, so long as this remains in place, I think what we have is still capitalism. A key notion here is that of market-dependency. If our social (and thus life) arrangements are dependent on markets to reproduce themselves, then, to put it bluntly, we're in trouble. — Streetlight
there has been the ongoing activity of creating and animating private life and personal interests.
The omnipresent deterritorization has been compensated, balanced, and concealed by the all-embracing territorization.
— Number2018
Examples? — Tom Storm
Capitalism: Impersonal Production — Streetlight
It is the reproduction of the conditions of impersonal exchange that begins to make instances of ‘capital’ into capital-ism: a systematization of ‘capital’ in society. — Streetlight
once impersonal exchange becomes wide-spread enough, it brings with it a change in the ‘who’ or ‘what’ production is geared towards: no longer lords and family, but markets.
It is at this point, where the general mode of production becomes geared towards the market, that capitalism proper can be said to come into being.
Capitalism on the other hand, cannot be understood apart from issues of production: of who and what is it that stuff is produced for. — Streetlight
Let's go back to the original quote: "the unconscious libidinal investment is what causes us to look for our interest in one place rather than another, to fix our aims on a given path, convinced that this is where our chances lie." A desiring machine is described here as "the unconscious libidinal investment." And, in principle, it cannot have "an aim and path." A machine cannot have an origin, identity, telos, or a concrete path; it is in the process of continuous becoming other than itself. So, it is internally differentiated. Yet, in the quote,Would you agree that a desiring machine , with its aim and path , is already internally differentiated, so that this flow is never a matter of the repetition of the identical aim and path? — Joshs
Likely, what is implied here is the improper identification of drives and desire.As an ethics , intensive difference is also irreducibly violent, the basis of blame. — Joshs
"It is doubtless true that interests predispose us to a given libidinal investment, but they are not identical with this investment. Moreover, the unconscious libidinal investment is what causes us to look for our interest in one place rather than another, to fix our aims on a given path, convinced that this is where our chances lie." AO345 — Streetlight
I'm sure Putin's got to be thinking about how the USSR's demise was related to its protracted war in Afghanistan.
Could Ukraine be his Afghanistan? — frank
But sure, it absolutely is the case that Putin should take into account any response to his action; but no one is arguing - at least I hope no one is arguing - that he hasn't. That he innocently waltzed into war like a woopsie. By most accounts the speed and depth of the response have been a surprise, but I'd be happy to wager he didn't think he'd get a slap on the wrist either. — StreetlightX
Incredible how quickly cultural chauvinism immediately gets translated from geopolitical action: as if the actions of the American or European states have anything to do with any any sense of cultural identification. I guess this is how fascism takes root: when people look at state actions and think: that's 'us' — StreetlightX
Third, Putin will stay, and there will be a profound transformation of his regime and the world’s geopolitical order.
— Number2018
This is the most likely outcome. Putin is too stubborn and Kreml has spent years creating an image of him as a tough guy. So he will try and spin the narrative so that a loss is still a win in Ukraine and then because of the broken trade and probably some sanctions left as a punishment for his actions, he will isolate Russia more, going in the direction of North Korea's relation to the world.
Fourth: He will never surrender, never ever, ever. He will not go out without a bang and he orders nukes on big capitals in the west. Either people just accept his order and do it, or they refuse, as has happened during the cold war. He will then spin the narrative in some way, or shoot some of his staff to blow off steam. — Christoffer
I would like to hear some practical solutions to Ukraine, how to deal with the nuclear threat, how to deal with Belarus getting nukes, how to deal with the fallout of economic sanctions, how to deal with China's relation to Russia, how to deal with Putin himself. — Christoffer
Good video. This article in Foreign Policy from a few days ago makes the same points:
Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis
It seems the most reasonable assessment, and this is from American academics. It goes back to what I was saying over a year ago here, that there's a basic disconnect between the (ostensibly, at least) ideologically-driven American foreign policy and the Russian realpolitik. — jamalrob
On the contrary, there are substantial differences: in climate change and the energy sector (Trump’s withdrawal from Paris agreement), in foreign policies (termination of Iran Nuclear Deal, relations with allies), open vs. closed border policies (Trump’s construction of the wall, remain in Mexico programs), trade policies, and so on. Yet, likely, the discord between Trump and the elites is not entirely based on concrete policies. He has been met as a wholly alien and disastrous factor from the beginning. Thus, his presidency and popularity have been explained and displayed primarily through negative and affectively charged schemes. Trump’s populist strategies have been mirrored and used to accelerate the affective economy of resentment and rage, enacted with varying degrees of emotional and discursive brutality and violence. It has placed a bipolar ultimate distinction of superiority and inferiority, of true and false, good and evil, granting no space or legitimacy to the other side. In principle, both Trump and his enemiesthe democrats fundamentally share the same policy positions as Trump with minor rhetorical changes. — StreetlightX
There are plenty of reasons that Trump should hang from his neck until dead: — StreetlightX
Jan 6 anniversary entirely enacts the dispositions of the current politics of affect. But to what extent your (supposedly critical) discourse here is different from the current dominant rhetoric? It also presupposes the existence of the ultimate truth behind the spectacle; it also aims at “the enemy” and appears as a decisive action.an 6 is an effort to draw a pseudo-bright line in the sand because if anyone looks too closely, they'd recognize that there is little too distinguish these power hungry fucks whose existence is harmful no matter what stupid colors they wear. The reason for the disproportionate hysteria over a three-hour nothingburger is because without this shit there is nothing to distinguish them and Americans might be in danger of actually recognizing that fact. — StreetlightX
It's apolitical politics with exactly zero stakes, — StreetlightX
Indeed, when it comes to melodrama, histrionics, and exploitation of fear levels from the 1/6 riot, there has never been any apparent limit. And today — the one-year anniversary of that three-hour riot — there is no apparent end in sight. Too many political and media elites are far too vested in this maximalist narrative for them to relinquish it voluntarily.
The orgy of psychodrama today was so much worse and more pathetic than I expected — and I expected it to be extremely bad and pathetic — StreetlightX
And from there onwards it has been an absolute disaster. American foreign policy deciders came punch drunk of the easiness of doing whatever and absolute idiots full of hubris as the neocons erased away everything what was left of a rational and cautious foreign policy. Nothing did matter anymore. What were the actual political situation on the ground in these countries? How would other nations react? That was totally meaningless. The US could do whatever it wanted and it went on into this crazy binge of being a bully. — ssu
Moronic stupidity overwhelmed everything. Because, why not? Nobody cared. There were no backlashes. War on Terror, war against a method. And once Bush the younger made it so, no President couldn't escape the trap as everything was already FUBAR. — ssu
About 12 years ago, The International Institute for Strategic StudiesThe fall of Afghanistan would have serious consequences. It could be well the end of the US as a Superpower and the beginning of it being just the Largest Great Power. — ssu
in truth I don't think there is a highly controlled and organized fighting force as "The Taliban". How many of them are local militias, smugglers, groups controlled by some warlord that has been deemed to part of the Taliban? — ssu
No, you do not need to read the essay. Matthew Karp means that we deal now with a new, extremely politicized function of history.Yet, he asserts that “Leaving behind the End of History, we have arrived at something like History as End.”
— Number2018
I wonder what that's supposed to mean. Must I read the damn essay to understand? — Ciceronianus the White
You are right, the event of 1619 has no importance. Karp, a historian, knows it well. However, his essay is not historical; it is about the politics of the past. It is a protest against the newest role of history.I think it's more likely other factors played a part, and that it's as certain as it can be American institutional slavery would have come into being even if instead of the 20 enslaved persons, Jesus Christ himself, his mother, the apostles and all the saints had been brought to the shores of British colonial America in 1619. — Ciceronianus the White
And the interesting thing is that regardless of what the film maker shows, all of it will be factual, but the myth that is advanced would be purposeful and subject to the intention of the historian. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do disagree with those who claim that really Thomas Jefferson was not all he's been said to be. Those people aren't correcting history and myth busting. They're just replacing the old myth with their new one. If they are able to do that, that signals only a shift in politics, not an evolution toward more accurate truth. — Hanover
Like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Castro, totalitarian governments abide by the dictum: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
This is exactly what the Biden Administration, using the cover of the issue of Covid vaccination, is seeking to accomplish right now in the USA in intimate cooperation with the leadership and censorship activities of Facebook, Twitter, etc. — charles ferraro
What is history? Lacking an answer to that, teaching it is the blind leading the eyeless. That is, what is it? What is its purpose and goal as history? How is it done? And to what end? — tim wood
‘The Task of the Translator' central theme is the relation between the original and a copy, or the origin and its outcome. Benjamin asserts that the connection between any two languages is primarily based on 'the ideal pre-language' (the origin). Later, he reconsidered this approach. In 'The Work of aAt in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, there is no origin anymore. Since 'the aura as the unique phenomenon of a distance' has been completely lost, the origin appears deceptive and illusory. Therefore, Benjamin started rethinking the relation between seeable and sayable (meaning and words).For Benjamin, the differences between languages are, at base, differences between how words mean — StreetlightX
In principle, our perception of the social and political realities, and the facts used in acute political debates are not directly related to our first-handed communal experience. We identify ourselves with images that in-form our reality and that simulate what is true or right. The images (in Bergson’s sense) are not primarily representative or informative. They exist in-themselves and for-themselves in the digital medium and generate what we perceive as politics. They contract, integrate, and simulate ‘all what we ever believed, valued, or fought for’; their semantic and semiotic levels are enacted and amplified by the redundancies of our affective involvements. The evolving event of the images self - regeneration and enactment is the system that continuously actualizes the construction of our social reality. As Gerden noted, identity politics contains opposite forms and dichotomy figures: incorporation and repulsion (marginalization), a victim and a persecutor, and so on. They are coexisting and working together through the synthesizing image of a savior, rescuer, expressing the primary Western ( Christian) archetype. In fact, before appearing as an anger, an act of outrage, or rhetoric of blame and moralism, the incivility is the system of images, operating the core regime of construction and re-construction of our social reality. We affectively invest images that simulate outrage based on the ethical fundamentalism. That is why identity politics is so effective and successful: it fits perfectly to the digital medium of social control.Therefore, I do not think that Ken Gerden's critique is effective. One can throughly reject the ethical foundationalism on which rightness and justice are grounded, and simultaneously and unconsciously enact identity politics on a micro-level..In the article, incivility is firstly defined as anger, as an act of outrage. https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/
"Incivility is anger directed at unjust civil ordering.
— Number2018
Where do you think blame and moralism fit into this act of ‘outrage’ against ‘ injustice’?
Specifically , do you think it is what Ken Gergen is critiquing as the moralistic blamefulness and indignation of identity politics? Would anger, outrage and condemnation apply if one throughly rejects the ethical foundationalism on which rightness and justice are grounded? — Joshs
Why can’t we follow Gergen’s lead and jettison the outrage in favor of a throughly relativistic approach to societal transformation? — Joshs
In the article, incivility is firstly defined as anger, as an act of outrage. https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/The way I read the op, the incivility that is in contention is a product of the discourse being advocated , which takes subjectivity to be a product of sociallly constituted dynamics — Joshs
Your answer shows that you misunderstand my question and my apprehension of the concept of desire. I do not care about your mental health; it is none of my business. So, when I ask: "what is your deepest desire?" I mean, what are you doing while posting here.But what is your deepest desire? Is it identical to what was behind your previous the most intensive debates?
— Number2018
Who gives a damn?
Although it's notable that this is like the 3rd or 5th time someone's tried to 'personalize' this and make this about who "I" am (is he happy? is he mentally OK? What's your deepest desire?). I love these questions. They're an an admission of utter substancelessness. They're a sign that one is one the exact right track. It gives me life, right before I ignore this kind of shit entirely. — StreetlightX
iIn principle, we need to determine if Zizek's line of thought still could be relevant. Zizek offered a particular model of a political unconscious. Do we deal here, in this thread, with a kind of ideological system, implying the implicit dimensions and mechanisms? A keen anti-Israeli debater contends that Israel bears full responsibility for the existence and escalations of the Arab Israeli conflict. Her (or his) vision of the conflict and its resolution presupposes exhaustive knowledge of facts and the ultimate rightness of her ethical and moral believes. She possesses clear distinctions and dichotomies between good and evil, light and darkness, victims and aggressors. These positions are backed and reinforced by intensive affective and emotional commitments and responses. Strikingly, these cognitive and affective patterns are not necessarily may be evoked by the atrocity and inhumanity of the current conflict in the Middle East. Three years ago, she demonstrated almost identical attitudes during Justice Kavanaugh's nomination.And some vapid shit like Number2018 will say that all this isn't about Israel, employing philosophy in the most cynical, self-serving manner - or should I say copy-pasting, considering that is the only thing he or she knows how to do . — StreetlightX
Israel has become a flashpoint for the left not just because of its subjugation of palestinians
but because its form of nationalistic democracy exemplifies the Enlightenment era liberal political self-identity that the West is trying to distance itself from via brutal self-critique. There is nothing quite so threatening to a person than witnessing a way of thinking in an other that they have themselves only recently struggled to free themselves from. This is a thread common to the intensity of. BLM, #Metoo and anti-Israel sentiment. Israel is us Westerners, the way we used to be, the way many of us still are ( Trump , Brexit supporters) . — Joshs
When I say that the Isreali state should stop murdering children and engaging in settler colonialism, it really does have everything to do with the Isreali state, which is murdering children and engaging in settler colonialism. — StreetlightX
It is worth clarifying how the debate in this thread is unfolding. There is onelet's get back to how Isreali apartheid is finally being shown for what it is. — StreetlightX
Despite saying some of the stupidest possible shit one could say about potential treatments for the pandemic, he almost fucking won anyway.
How?
Because people believed him and nothing - evidently - could be done to stop him from dominating the discourse by defrauding the American public. — creativesoul
One of the widespread approaches to the freedom of speech has a few premises. First, there is a set of apparent, obvious basic facts. Second, one can possess a reliable access to what constitutesI've a little different take on the notion of unfettered free speech. — creativesoul
The government has announced plans for a "free speech champion" to ensure universities in England do not stifle freedom of speech and expression.
The champion will regulate matters such as "no-platforming" of speakers by universities or student unions.
But groups representing the sector are cautious, saying universities need to keep their "institutional autonomy".
The National Union of Students says there is "no evidence" of a freedom of speech crisis on campus. — counterpunch