duck dynasty

Since it's all everyone seems to be talking about, my thoughts on the Duck Dynasty thing:

1. The First Amendment protects you from the government, not from the social consequences of what you say. From a purely legal standpoint, if you do something that can potentially hurt your employer financially, they generally have the right to suspend or fire you (especially if it's in your contract), and other people have the right to think you're a shithead. The Duckdude hasn't been arrested for it (like Eugene Debs was for speaking out against war during WWI), so his First Amendment rights haven't been violated.

I don't personally think people should be fired simply because they hold certain beliefs, even if they're stupid ones; but if a paid employee publicly says something that may damage their employer's brand or those of their sponsors, said employer has legal grounds for discipline or dismissal (my company has a similar policy as much as I disagree with it), and the public has a right to think you're a shithead. Neither is a violation of the First Amendment.

2. I think things like bigotry, racism, sexism, etc. should be confronted wherever they're found. For one, these ideas and attitudes have very real consequences for a lot of people who happen to be gay, female, transgendered, non-white, etc., and who often have to face harassment, discrimination, and worse simply because of who they are. People shouldn't get a pass for being bigoted, racist, sexist, etc. simply because of their age, where they grew up, or anything else for that matter. (Don't get upset, he's old/Baptist/southern/whatever after all. Hatin' on queers is just their thing.)

That said, I think these kinds of situations require more than just indignation and outrage; they require us to confront these realities and have a discussion about them in order to help shine a light onto their continued existence and help motivate us to actively challenge them wherever we find them hiding, especially within ourselves. We're all conditioned on some level by our surrounding and upbringing. We all have prejudices of some sort. The Duckdude shouldn't be persecuted for what he said, but used as another catalyst for further challenging and changing negative societal attitudes towards the LGBT community.

What is progress, really, if not our ability to transcend our conditionings and prejudices?

in defense of 'entitlements'

I think this article makes a good point re: the left embracing the term 'entitlement' in the sense that, "The discourse of entitlement is a discourse of rights, of human agents claiming what’s theirs instead of asking permission from the powerful":

In Defense of ‘Entitlements’

Certainly, from a socialist perspective, entitlement programs shouldn't be some sort of end goal, but like labour laws, rent control, single-payer healthcare, UBIs, etc., they're a useful tool in helping support the working class in the here and now (under the current mode of production) while at the same time chipping away at the idea that only people doing x for y amount of time and/or for z amount of money are worthy of eating, having shelter, having access to healthcare, enjoying free time, etc. Our society is indeed a twisted one if we truly hold that only those rare few with sufficient material means thereby earn access to "the rudiments of life" (i.e., food, healthcare, shelter, etc.) while the rest of humanity is SOL.

The neoliberal narrative is that you should distrust poor people, but we should not only question that narrative, we should question the very basis for it.

pythagoreanism 2.0?

An intriguing article about an intriguing discovery:

Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

The description of the newly discovered geometric object, the amplituhedron, its ability to simplify complex mathematical formulas, and its existence's suggestive consequences re: a possible new geometric approach to both particle interactions and the structure and evolution of the universe itself brings to mind some old Pythagorean ideas about math, nature, and harmony.

In particular, the description of a "'master amplituhedron' with an infinite number of facets" whose volume theoretically "represents the total amplitude of all physical processes" and its relationship to 'lower-dimensional amplituhedra' that "live on the faces of this master structure" and which "correspond to interactions between finite numbers of particles" is reminiscent of Pythagorean ideas re: the 'infinite' (apeiron) and its relationship to the 'limited' (peiron).

The former suggests that the laws of the universe are the way that they are because of the way the master geometry of the universe is shaped, while the latter suggests a harmonic and mathematical order to the way the limited takes shape or unfolds from the unlimited, emphasizing the role of numbers in understanding the universe, which in my opinion makes quantum physics sound almost like a type of neo-Pythagoreanism.

All they need to do at this point is to incorporate vegetarianism and a theory of rebirth into the mix and we'll have Pythagoreanism 2.0.

zarathustra, the unintentional capitalist

While Nietzsche's distaste for capitalism is relatively well-known, it struck me how easily the chapter "War and Warriors" in Thus Spake Zarathustra, which is essentially about the way once should approach the predominately internal process of struggle and self-overcoming needed in the quest to becoming a Superman (and possibly a stab at German militarism just for good measure), can be interpreted as expounding and extolling the underlying philosophy of the rational, self-interested capitalist (especially if one replaces the terms 'man' with 'labourer' and 'Superman' with 'capitalist'). To me, the imagery shouts 'competition!', 'accumulation for accumulation's sake!', and 'don't bemoan the success of fellow capitalists more profitable than you, their class interests are still your class interests!' as much as it does 'struggle for knowledge!', 'overcome yourself for overcoming's sake!', and 'be proud of your enemy and their success because their success is also yours!' I don't know. I'm sure that wasn't his intention, but that's my perception of it, at any rate.

revolutionary paramnesia

I was watching a video called "Myths of the Founding Fathers" the other day and it struck me as kind of ironic how many people, whether liberal, conservative, or otherwise, scoff at the mention of Marx or socialism while at the same time having nothing but praise and reverence for the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution. Don't they realize that the Founding Fathers are themselves guilty of that dreaded Marxist 'e' word, expropriation?

For example, in chapter 32 of Capital, Marx, writing about the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation, describes the logic process whereby the "the expropriators are expropriated" due to the "monopoly of capital" becoming a "fetter upon the mode of production" and leading to a point where the "centralization of the means of production and socialization of labour" becomes incompatible with their capitalist integument, sounding "the knell of capitalist private property." At the very mention of the expropriators being expropriated, however, such people tend to vociferously object and sing the praises of our fair republic, invoking the sanctity of private property rights and condemning expropriation as theft.

But if you think about it, the Founding Fathers and their selective respect for property rights did just that—they expropriated the private property of Britain despite the enormous amount of capital put into establishing, supporting, and managing colonial settlements by Britain and companies like the London and Bristol Company, Hudson's Bay Company, etc. The only real difference between the two is that the American Revolution was a relatively conservative, bourgeois revolution of wealthy, ruling-class elites that itself feared a revolution of the propertyless, labouring class, whereas what Marx was talking about is a revolution of labour over capital.

While many colonists remained loyal to Britain or else remained neutral during the conflict, it can't be denied that a large portion also supported declaring independence from Britain because they felt they had more interests in common with the American revolutionaries and the Enlightenment ideals that fueled, or at the very least justified, their fight for independence. "Sure, your property interests are our interests, plus we love liberty and hate taxation without representation too!" But this isn't all that surprising considering that the ruling class, owning to their control over the means of material and mental production, utilize these in such a way as to promote their own ideas and interests, or as Marx puts it in The German Ideology, "the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force."

So our country was founded up various forms of expropriation, from the expropriation of Native American land to that of the private property of Britain. And in the process, we merely exchanged one capitalist ruling class for another. One could argue, then, that the revolution itself is in a sense incomplete, which reminds me of an interesting article I read a while back connecting the political emancipation realized via the American Revolution, and the 'neo-Roman' republicanism associated with the Enlightenment ideals of the Founding Fathers underlying it, to the logically consistent extension of those emancipatory ideals and actions into the economic sphere, suggesting that true independence won't be won until we're liberated from the structural and personal forms of dependence that characterize wage-labour under capitalism.

At the very least, I think this look at how segments of the American working class extended these emancipatory ideals and actions into the economic sphere offers present-day socialists, etc. in the US an interesting rhetorical basis from which to argue that both the philosophical and political foundation of US republicanism, championed by conservatives and liberals, are actually more potentially revolutionary than they're willing to admit, limiting the concept of freedom to one small area of civil society. That "To demand that 'there is to be a people in industry, as in government' [is] simply to argue that the cooperative commonwealth [is] nothing more than the culmination and completion of the American Revolution's republican aspirations."

In other words, the revolution isn't won yet!

the 'noble lie' of the aca

From Jacobin Magazine, a look at the financial feasibility of enacting a single-payer healthcare system vs. the Affordable Care Act, which in my opinion further undermines the myth that the ACA was the best 'they' could do for 'us' under the circumstances:

 The Backroom Deal That Could've Given Us Single-Payer

Personally, I think part of the difficulty to getting something like a single-payer healthcare system enacted is the structure of our political-economic system itself, which was designed from its very inception to represent and protect the interests of wealthy, ruling elites while appealing to the notions of freedom and equality. Historically, things that look out for and protect the production and accumulation of wealth for those at the top of the economic food chain are systematically much easier to institute than things which tend to benefit the mass of working-class people, which often require a great deal of prolonged struggle and threat of rebellion.

Because the Affordable Care Act keeps the current structure basically intact while forcing more people into the insurance market, protecting the jobs and income of health insurance company execs, pharmaceutical company execs, industry lobbyists, etc., it appears as the best possible solution under the circumstances from the point of view of capital and the state, incurring less opposition by Congress and a myriad of interest groups "willing and able to spend millions lobbying, hiring former politicians, and donating to campaigns." The stated purpose of the ACA (and health insurance in general) is to help make healthcare more affordable, but what it really does is help further spread risk for insurers while they continue to accumulate a share of the aggregate surplus-value of society in their role as unnecessary middlemen.

The ACA doesn't rock the boat too much while attempting (or at least appearing) to deliver better/more affordable coverage to working-class Americans. To criticize the ACA from this point of view, then, is to criticize the very system that designed and enacted it, a system that's much less democratic and egalitarian than is popularly believed. The ACA isn't malicious, but it's not necessarily in our best interest, either; just as our current political-economic system isn't malicious, but not necessarily in our best interest.

What would more in our interest, for example, is a single-payer healthcare system, but they didn't even consider a single-payer model when crafting their healthcare reform. They worked this deal out with the insurance companies in closed-door negotiations. And it's a terrible deal, in my opinion. Yes, it helps some people get better coverage and prevents others from being dropped or not being accepted due to previous health issues, but it also jacks up the prices for others and puts people like me, one of the growing number of 'working poor,' into a bad financial situation. On top of that, the healthcare exchange system itself if relatively complicated and time-consuming to navigate.

I recently enrolled in a bronze plan through my employer, with its lower premiums but higher deductibles and out of pockets expenses, because it was the only thing I could afford (and by 'afford,' I mean it's the least costly option out of several I can't actually afford). And as I was looking at the selection of plans — bronze, silver, gold, platinum — I was reminded of 'the myth of the metals' in book III of Plato's Republic, where Socrates and Glaucon's hypothetical society is stratified into three social classes via a kind of "Phoenician tale" in order to make the citizens more inclined to accept their respective social positions and the rule of the state (i.e., a way to counter the factionalism or class struggle Founding Fathers like James Madison were so worried about).

The myth or noble lie, which some interpret to be Plato's programme for his ideal utopia, is that each citizen's soul is imbued with a certain kind of metal—gold for those fit to rule, silver for helpers/soldiers, and bronze for the class of productive labourers. As the tale goes, the city-state will prosper if these metals remain unmixed and in their proper place; but if the city-state is ruled by those whose souls are mixed with the wrong metal, the city will fall into ruin.

I wonder if maybe the ACA is just one of the many, tedious 'noble lies' told to us 'bronze' citizens to keep us pacified in Obama's modern, neoliberal utopia in which we're "forced to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping track of each and every facet of our economic lives."

higher taxes on the wealthy may help in the short term, but it's not a magic-bullet solution to the current slump

From Business Insider:

Sorry, Folks, Rich People Actually Don't 'Create The Jobs'

Superficially, I think this article makes a good point insofar as it acknowledges the role the working class plays as consumers, and as a consequence, job creators. In all the talk about spurring job creation and economic growth, particularly in relation to nurturing the present economic recovery, it's often argued that the wealthy (i.e., capital) are the real 'creators'; and those who do often propose that lowering taxes and lessening regulations for businesses and the wealthy will help make it easier for them to create more jobs despite the fact that the data doesn't seem to support this as an effective strategy.

As such, I think it's at least worth pointing out that the consumer side of the economic feedback loop is just as important as the business side of the equation; and as the article argues, any remotely successful plan to spur job growth can't afford to ignore working-class consumers in favour of businesses since demand is ultimately determined by the consumptive power of the working class itself. From this perspective, it's easy to argue that either a lack of supply or a lack of demand (underconsumption) is the cause of our current economic woes, which in turn prompt measures to either stimulate supply or consumption. The former through things like tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy that 'trickle down' into more supply and jobs, stimulating consumption, and the latter through things like tax breaks or higher wages for workers that help stimulate consumption, thereby increasing demand and jobs.

But that's only part of the story. What's missing from this analysis are deeper problems that are embedded within the economy itself, which not only induces economic crises and downturns, but also prevents solutions like simply lowering taxes or raising wages from working—the problems of overaccumulation and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

The basis of our economic system is relatively simple. On the one end, money is invested as capital (to purchase equipment, raw materials, labour, etc.) to produce commodities that are then sold for a profit. On the other, the majority of those commodities are purchased by the people employed to produce them, the working class. Jobs, then, are created in the flux of this symbiotic relationship between supply and demand. If investors don't have the money to invest as capital, then supply is reduced, the economy slows, and jobs can't be created. If consumers can't afford to purchase goods, then consumption is reduced, the economy slows, and jobs can't be created. Ideally, supply and demand should be in equilibrium.

Within this process of transforming money into commodities and then back into money plus a surplus (profit), however, there are a number of contradictions that give rise to imbalances and crises of overaccumulation. And when due to these, both the mass of superfluous (i.e., unproductive) capital and labour increase in conjunction with technological advances and efficiencies in production, they cause the rate of profit to fall and a shrinkage in the absolute mass of profit produced. Moreover, if the rate of profit in that process falls to a certain level, preventing money from being able to be transformed into money plus a surplus, then both supply and demand are reduced, and as a consequence, employment, which feeds back into the downturn.

In essence, when accumulation is too high and the market is flooded with devalued capital that prevents its reinvestment from producing sufficient returns and/or goods that can't be sold, the economy stalls. If profit can't be realized, then capital can't function as capital and it sits unutilized. To get things started back up, both employers and the state look for find ways to overcome this problem, whether through encouraging debt spending by consumers, the opening of new markets for export, the 'creative destruction' of superfluous capital (mostly through state consumption), or creating ways to increase the mass of profit via evolutions (i.e., innovations) in the means of production and finance that, in turn, set up the conditions for further overaccumulation and crises.

The post-WWII boom is a case in point. People (especially on the left) often like to point towards this snapshot in history as an ideal time, an economic golden age, noting the fact that taxes on the wealthy were high and so was employment, wages, and economic growth. What those same people may not realize, however, is that the massive destruction of superfluous capital (as well as the industrial centres of Europe and Asia) caused by the war paved the way for the US's growing prosperity following the Great Depression, which was arguably caused by a crisis of overaccumulation and the subsequent over-indebtedness and financial speculation utilized to bolster consumption and profits. In other words, it wasn't simply an issue of taxes and wages being just right, but Washington's consumption of unproductive capital and labour through the war economy and the increase in exports that resulted from the actual destruction of Europe and Asia's means of productions.

The inconvenient truth of capitalism is that crises arise naturally and are needed to help destroy unproductive capital, whether through businesses failing, the depreciation of existing value/wealth, wars, or whatever, clearing the way for the creation of future value/wealth. This, in turn, creates a decrease in the labour force (i.e., unemployment of productive labour) that helps drive down wages, allowing capital to temporarily increase nominal profits even if the tendency of the rate of profit falls in the long term. And since it appears on the surface that either a lack of supply or a lack of demand is the problem, the role that crises play in acting as what Marx calls a 'counteracting factor' is obscured.

The way I see it, this obscuration is one of the things that make capitalism appear like a perpetual growth/profit-making machine, as well as more stable than it truly is. This is somewhat similar to Chris Harman's take on the TRPF, i.e., that crises are the prime counteracting factors mentioned by Marx, with recoveries being limited in effectiveness over time due to a combination of things like units of capital become larger and more interlinked (the bigger they are, the harder they fall) and increases in the level of unproductive labour in both the private and public sector (the former due to capital attempting to defend and expand markets in unproductive ways, waves of speculative investments, top-heavy corporate hierarchies, etc.; the latter due to government spending via the military, stimulus measures, etc.).

The true limit to crises as a counteracting factor, however, may be labour itself, specifically labour time, which capital tries to increase in order to extract more profit from the labourer in order to compensate for a falling rate of profit and the fact that much of this labour is itself superfluous, i.e., labor time that "consists in the production of values that do not reenter the capitalist reproduction process" (Re: The People). But a person can only work so much, and if the labour itself is 'unproductive,' increasing it only serves to lower the rate of profit in the long term. This, as a consequence, creates the conditions for future (and potentially more severe) crises. One possible solution on the road to a post-capitalist society, then, may actually be an overall reduction in hours of labour.

The real question is how this society of minimal hours of labour and maximum hours of leisure can be achieved, which, under the logic of capitalism, it can't, since this is the point where surplus value is created and realized by capital, i.e., a reduction in labour hours under capitalism will ultimately serve to reduce the mass of surplus value (and with it profit), which, according to the labour theory of value, is itself intimately tied into the amount of labour time required for the production of commodities. Simply socializing aspects of capitalist production, such as finance, while ignoring the process of production itself won't get rid of the "coercive pressure of competition and accumulation" inherent within capitalism, and hence can't full transcend it or its limitations.

We're currently experiencing the effects of yet another economic slump, which in my opinion is almost certainly caused by a crisis of overaccumulation and the subsequent over-indebtedness and financial speculation utilized to bolster consumption and profits. And while from a progressive standpoint higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy may help to consume some of this unproductive capital, which in turn can be used to subsidized social safety nets for struggling workers, it's not enough to fix the problem. Employment may rise, and the economy may continue to grow; but the cycle of crises and the pain they cause will continue either way.