Tachanka [comrade/them] @ Tachanka @hexbear.net

The Tervell of Emoji-posting

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The purposeful destruction of commodities for economic reasons is in itself nothing new in capitalism, but an integral part of its daily working from the beginning. It was in 1799 that Fourier first became convinced of the necessity of a new form of social Organisation when be found himself entrusted with the task at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of a quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. Nevertheless, this rice had at any rate been held back in the hope of sale, and was only destroyed because it had become unfit for use. This was not yet the modern principle of the wholesale destruction of good rice, good wheat, good cotton, good coffee and good meat.

In the same way the endeavour by combination to limit stocks, restrict production, and maintain or raise prices is inherent, not merely in capitalism, but in commodity economy from the beginning. As Adam Smith wrote in his Wealth of Nations:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 10, Part ii.)

But such a policy appeared to Adam Smith, the original voice of classic capitalism, as an offence against the principles of capitalist production, as “a conspiracy against the public.” It has remained for our day that all the capitalist governments of the world should meet together in the World Economic Conference to proclaim, with the combined voice of all the most enlightened, progressive statesmen and all the economists, the supreme aim to restrict production and to raise prices.

Rajani Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, Chapter 3, section titled The Destruction of the Productive Forces

As we can see, even early on, Capitalists would do anything, including destroy commodity capital (the fruit of labor), in order to raise profits and increase prices. Some early capitalists moralized about this and saw this as somehow an affront to capitalism as a mode of production. But over 200 years of experience has shown us that this is not an anomaly, but something built into the system itself. It is similar to how the petty bourgeois detest monopoly and fetishize competition, even though monopoly is the direct result of competition resulting in "winners" and "losers." Ben Shapiro is doing the same thing here, trying to distinguish between some kind of idealized noble "capitalism" of gentlemen in fair economic competition, and the actually existing ruthless system of exploitation we live under. But such a distinction is fundamentally illusory, and is a form of priestly apologetics for a decaying and unsustainable mode of production.

I've been trying everything and I don't understand why it's extremely difficult to land a no-skill minimum-wage job.

unemployment is built into capitalism. if all able-bodied adults were employed, it would be hard to fire people and instantly replace them. Capitalists need there to be a permanent body of unemployed people who are so desperate that they will accept below-subsistence wages. That way, when a work force tries to unionize or strike, the capitalist can simply contrive a reason to fire everyone one by one, and replace them gradually with desperate unemployed people. This is called the "reserve army of labor." The capitalist class frequently deny that they want there to be unemployment, since that would contradict their claim that they are "job creators" (rather than job gatekeepers) but sometimes they'll admit it if they think wages are getting too high.

For example, real estate CEO Tim Gurner openly advocated for a reserve army of labour during an onstage appearance at the Australian Financial Review’s Property Summit:

I think the problem that we’ve had is that people have decided they really didn’t want to work so much anymore through COVID, and that has had a massive issue on productivity. . . . They have been paid a lot to do not too much, and we need to see that change. We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment needs to jump 40-50 percent, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurt in the economy.

The Economist published a thinkpiece on November 24th, 2022, titled "Why American unemployment needs to rise," openly advocating for an increase in the size of the reserve army of labour:

As the tightest corner of the ultra-taut American labour market, Minnesota bears watching. Its unemployment rate has started to tick up, rising from 1.8% in June to 2.1% last month. It might seem perverse to call that good news, but one lesson from the past year is that excessively low unemployment really does hurt: it constrains and corrodes the services offered by hospitals, schools, restaurants and more. In Northfield there is at least one tiny hint that relief might be at hand. After a difficult dry spell, the HideAway, a downtown café, received four job applications over the past two weeks. From those it hired two sorely needed baristas. “We just got lucky,” reckons Joan Spaulding, its owner.

The Wall Street Journal published a thinkpiece on July 31, 2022, titled "Lower Inflation Likely Requires Higher Unemployment; How High Is the Question," also openly advocating for an increase in the size of the reserve army of labour.

In order to lower inflation] we need two years of 7.5% unemployment, or five years of 6% unemployment, or…one year of 10% unemployment

CNN published a thinkpiece on September 2, 2022, titled "Yes, the unemployment rate rose. Here’s why that’s good news." In that piece, United States Secretary of labour Marty Walsh was quoted as saying:

increasing the supply of available workers is positive for the economy, even if it does increase the official jobless rate

CBS published an article on September 30, 2022, titled "Buckle up, America: The Fed plans to sharply boost unemployment." In that piece, it is suggested that wage increases cause inflation, because wage increases cause the bourgeoisie to hike prices. In short, it is suggested that the prices of commodities are determined or regulated by wages.

Here's the idea behind why boosting the nation's unemployment could cool inflation. With an additional million or two people out of work, the newly unemployed and their families would sharply cut back on spending, while for most people who are still working, wage growth would flatline. When companies assume their labour costs are unlikely to rise, the theory goes, they will stop hiking prices. That, in turn, slows inflation.

The bourgeoisie justify all this with the idea that wages determine prices. This was firmly argued against by Marx in Chapter 5 of Value, Price and Profit (1865):

The dogma that “wages determine the price of commodities,” expressed in its most abstract terms, comes to this, that “value is determined by value,” and this tautology means that, in fact, we know nothing at all about value. Accepting this premise, all reasoning about the general laws of political economy turns into mere twaddle. It was, therefore, the great merit of Ricardo that in his work on the principles of political economy, published in 1817, he fundamentally destroyed the old popular, and worn-out fallacy that “wages determine prices,” a fallacy which Adam Smith and his French predecessors had spurned in the really scientific parts of their researches, but which they reproduced in their more exoterical and vulgarizing chapters.

Absolutely (I'll edit that previous post)

"The [ruling class] calls its own violence: law, but that of the [underclass]: crime." (modified stirner quote)

the working class in the imperial core is definitely going to suffer, but that was a given. revolts and revolutions historically have happened when the underclasses become so miserable that violence is undeniably the only remaining option. Until then, a lot of people are just tired, and have to go to work tomorrow, and are afraid to go die fighting cops and troops, and are still holding out false hope for reformism. Revolution is a bus that departs when full. Independent of imperialism, the rich in the imperial core are getting richer, and poor in the imperial core are getting poorer. Inflation in all its forms is eating away at what little purchasing power our wages give us. Things are going to get worse whether or not there is a "clash of civilizations" between the core and periphery. In a way, I think the fantasy of some kind of JDPON occupation of the imperial core is a reproduction of the ideology of the ruling class: As in "we" can't imagine ourselves having our own revolution any more than "we" can imagine the manufacturing jobs coming back. If the jobs got outsourced to the periphery, then the revolution got outsourced too, the logic goes. The revolution "used to be our job" but then it got outsourced to the people who are more oppressed. So now they have to "do our job for us".

oh hey, you're back. [redacted]

How does a global north third worldist stay sane in the face of what might happen, what we've done to others

1st worlders often go into this premature panic where they think the day of reckoning is coming for them, and that some prole living in a trailer in Appalachia is going to be executed by firing squad alongside the stockbroker in Manhattan, or the silicon valley exec, or the 4 star general, or the EU official with a nazi grandpa, and they imagine that some kind of mass Revolutionary Tribunal is going to happen against the entire 1st world and everyone living in it, regardless of class, regardless of inner colonization, when what's far more likely to happen is a slow realignment, a slow decline of the core, a slow rise of the periphery. England still exists. Germany still exists. When the British Empire declined, when the 3rd reich collapsed, there was no "day of reckoning" against the common people there. Hell, even a lot of the explicitly guilty got away with everything they did. So I think it's overly optimistic/pessimistic (depending on your class interests) to imagine some kind of gigachad revolutionary tribunal where every last NATO citizen is executed for their complicity or whatever. This isn't to say that "nothing ever happens" or that everyone in the 1st world is innocent, mind you. I don't think the average American is going to suffer 1/10th of what the average person in Gaza has suffered, even in the most optimistic third worldist outcome.

fear of a JDPON planet

yeah, it's bonkers. part of me understands why conspiracy heads go full "they were killed and replaced with clone"

"you either die based or you live long enough to see yourself become cringe" - mr. coin toss man

part of me wants to believe that AITA posts are mostly creative writing exercises deliberately farmed for upvotes so that "content creators" on youtube can "react" to them by reading them out loud on a live stream and making many faces

Democrat wine moms are famously married to republicans so it checks out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUD-sCvtDE0&t=24m34s

(also check the top comment lol)

dialectical

not that i give a fuck about this dead CEO (lol) but were these things really her unilateral decision? or was it the inevitable consequence of the pursuit of profit in a privately owned company which would have happened regardless of which bourgeois cretin happened to be CEO?

I think the interest in Rome is not only a product of Christianity, but that the widespread adoption of Christianity was also product of Rome in the first place, since Rome was a tri-continental pan-Mediterranean empire that spanned Europe, north Africa, and west Asia, and Christianity picked up speed after their destruction of the 2nd temple and Jerusalem by Titus Flavius. Jewish-Roman historian Josephus (who was in Titus's court) and Roman historian Tacitus provide some of the earliest non-Christian accounts of Christianity, and Christianity spread so far because it was the religion of slaves, poor people, and women, especially former Jews (since Christianity started essentially as a Jewish sect of which there were many during the 2nd temple period), scattered throughout the Roman empire due to Roman conquest in Judea. Christianity became a prominent religion because of its elevation to the status of a state religion by a Roman emperor. If it weren't for Rome, Christianity would not have come into existence (both from a theological and a totally secular perspective Rome is essential to Christianity), would not have had a convenient political landscape to spread through, full of people (slaves) who were keen on its message of salvation in the afterlife for even the most persecuted people, etc.

the strategy is to keep going until the last two men in ukraine, both of them recruiters, kill each other while attempting to press gang each other into battle

trans internet personality gets blockbuster role

ah yes, Abigail "Game of" Thorn was in Gambo 2: Dragon Boogaloo as a Tyroshi pirate captain

there's no need for muslims to bomb anything. america will just do that to itself and then blame them.