bombard the headquarters

frozenwarnings: fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory (From Flickr user...

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:54:59 -0500

frozenwarnings:

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory (From Flickr user pdxjmorris):

Cuban Postage Stamps, 1962.

"You used to call me fatso. Now you call me Castro."

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:35:32 -0500

“You used to call me fatso. Now you call me Castro.”

- Notorious B.I.G.

also, me, after i dominate

"Cole exclaimed that the answer that most people would give to the question ‘what is the..."

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:20:09 -0500

“Cole exclaimed that the answer that most people would give to the question ‘what is the fundamental evil in our modern society?’ would be the wrong one: ‘they would answer POVERTY, when they out to answer SLAVERY.’”

- Carole Pateman quoting G.D.H. Cole

Random thoughts on Balso and Zizek

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 20:26:55 -0500

Judith Balso has an interesting contribution in “The Idea of Communism” that basically says the era of communism is closed and that new forms of politics at a distance from the state must emerge. This is hotly contested by Zizek, who claims that it is nonsense to distance yourself from the state if you have no alternative to the state. Zizek notes that the state-bureaucratic socialism was always twinned with participatory and anti-statal socialism - the two acted as a pair, and they (temporarily) die together. For Zizek, as I’ve written before, the state is to be forced into a new register of radical interaction with social movements. This process is largely ideological, so much that the rulers will have changed without recognizing it - they will operate like communists despite probably still decrying communism. One idea that Zizek stresses is that we must not be afraid to be “big” - like Mao said - in that we should not always try to become-minor and retreat to the interstices of power and so on.

The idea that the “socialism-from-above” of the 20th Century was bound up with the failure of socialism-from-below is a tough pill to swallow, since the latter was always posited as the redemptive future of a post-statist communism by various Left groupings. However, one could read Balso’s suggestion in a different way - that the Cultural Revolution was an attempt at creating a convergence between statal and anti-statal modes of organization, precisely as Zizek suggests, but that this failed, too. For Zizek, though, there is merit in things like the activation of large sections of the poor masses in places like Latin America (without glorifying their leaders as many do). These positions are opposed, but there might be points of conjuncture that I’d like to think about.

Photo

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:36:30 -0500

"Finally, it is to be recommended that some moderation should be kept in the declaration of war..."

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:07:05 -0500

“

Finally, it is to be recommended that some moderation should be kept in the declaration of war against “liberalism.” It is true that the great liberal movement of modern times arose for the advantage of the capitalist bourgeoisie first of all, and the parties which assumed the names of liberals were, or became in due course, simple guardians of capitalism. Naturally, only opposition can reign between these parties and social democracy. But with respect to liberalism as. a great historical movement, socialism is its legitimate heir, not only in chronological sequence, but also in its spiritual qualities, as is shown moreover in every question of principle in which social democracy has had to take up an attitude.

Wherever an economic advance of the socialist programme had to be carried out in a manner, or under circumstances, that appeared seriously to imperil the development of freedom, social democracy has never shunned taking up a position against it. The security of civil freedom has always seemed to it to stand higher than the fulfilment of some economic progress.

”

- Eduard Bernstein. Note that this argues for priority of liberty.

Democracy is for small groups

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 01:54:02 -0500

When I think about democracy I tend to see a system as meaningfully democratic in proportion to how much of a reasonable chance I have at significantly affecting the outcome in a normal situation. That is, democratic debates beyond a relatively small group of people lose almost all meaning. So I suppose there is a sense in which I see radical participation and deliberation as key to democracy, with the goal being to use consensus among small groups in as many situations as possible. From this perspective, then, it seems obvious that counting as one person in a pool of, say, ten million voters - as in a national election - is of little real meaning. Yet, in a contemporary system like Canada’s, almost all economic management is centralized in either somewhat unaccountable private organizations or are regulated by public systems that are determined by pools of millions of voters.

hydes: this is a beautiful riot

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:42:53 -0500

hydes:

this is a beautiful riot

"Communism exists where keeping count would be absurd because we are talking about eternity."

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:28:50 -0500

“Communism exists where keeping count would be absurd because we are talking about eternity.”

- David Graeber

Photo

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:20:37 -0500

peenworm showed me. what a guy.

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:11:50 -0500

peenworm showed me. what a guy.

from inicijativa.org

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:39:53 -0500

from inicijativa.org

Video

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:17:16 -0500

Ontario NDP 2011 platform

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:57:24 -0500

I’ve been thinking what the Ontario NDP platform will look like. The 2007 platform projected a lot of new spending but most of it came out of growth of existing revenues. One billion of new money was projected for a higher tobacco tax and an end to “year-end spending and slush funds.” I wouldn’t really depend too much on that sort of thing but it is typical in platforms. Another billion came from raising the top income tax rate by 2%, and I could see that being in the 2011 platform. Then they took a billion and a half in corporate and payroll taxes and used it to fund a tax cut on the health premium for moderate income workers. In other words, the only core tax hike for new program spending was the small increase on top earners.

This time around they could promise to repeal the recent corporate tax cuts and raise about $1.8 billion. Then they could keep the 2% tax on high incomes for another $1 billion. Given that revenues will be $108 billion or so next year with a $15 billion or so deficit, a few billion on top of that is not much.

As for automatic sorts of spending commitments, the NDP will have to commit more to regulatory agencies, probably a freeze in tuition, dental care for children in low-income families, and so on. That’s a few hundred million together right there. An end to the public sector pay freeze will probably be essential to please the unions and could cost a fair bit right there, and I doubt the NDP could run without outspending Liberal estimates on health and education. All that added up will easily run into a few billion, to which you’d have to add some money for basic commitments to transit and cities (uploading programs).

The question I have then is where the heavy lifting comes into play. The main/basic combined rate of income tax in Ontario in 1995 was 27%. Now it is 20% (The health care premium affects this a bit but the GST is lower so it probably washes). How can the NDP promise any significant changes while accepting all of the Harris and McGuinty income tax cuts? I mean, if the NDP budget is going to be 98% the same as the Liberals, I don’t see why anyone would care too much about defeating them except maybe workplace safety or other fairly minor benefits.

If the Ontario NDP did something like over time raise the bottom rate to 24%, the top rate to 55%, and the middle rate in-between, it would probably raise something on the order of $10 billion a year. I don’t really think it is wildly radical to say that taxes should be somewhat closer to 1995 levels, and that particular mix still represents a less than 10% increase in total provincial revenues. With that level of tax increase you could fund a wide range of changes to social services, such as the groundwork for a guaranteed income. Even just pushing existing systems a bit would be useful - raising the Ontario child credit from $1,310 to $2,400 and then raising welfare and disability incomes by $200 a month would probably cost like $3 billion.

"The Imaginarium is a very modern movie. Yes, you know, Heath Ledger dies. Then they put all these..."

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:22:58 -0500

“The Imaginarium is a very modern movie. Yes, you know, Heath Ledger dies. Then they put all these other big actors in to play him. But something very interesting happens here: They only play Ledger’s part in the fantasy world. Is this not the exact position of the human being in a modern capitalist economy? We go about our lives and then in our fantasies we are not who we are but someone else. We don’t even own our fantasies, it is impossible to be in them. But I go further than this, I say that it is impossible even to be ourselves, even if we wanted to. Fantasy is simply where this is most evident. But it is the boring, you know, push the paper job, all that is fantasy, too. So here we have the superego bombarding us with impossible demands, just like it is impossible for Heath Ledger to be in all the scenes, and we have to sit and watch and take it. Life is horrible.”

- Fake Zizek

"I watched a movie with my granddaughter the other day. It was called Scott Pilgrim. Very violent...."

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 04:21:38 -0500

“I watched a movie with my granddaughter the other day. It was called Scott Pilgrim. Very violent. That’s not new. What’s changed is the forms in which this violence is taking. During the First Gulf War they used t…o say that war was now a video game. You’d see pictures on the news of a missile going down a chimney and blowing up a building. Nowadays we don’t like that. Wikileaks, which puts out very interesting stuff, is the only source of videos of Americans blowing up Iraqis and Afghans nowadays. But the message is the same - now any geek can fight. All you need is a joystick. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott Pilgrim received Pentagon funding - someone should look into this, I almost expect there to be a literature on the matter soon enough. That wouldn’t be new, state funding of pro-war messaging - or what was called in the past “propaganda” - is a well-researched topic. Of course, nobody knows about it, you don’t talk about these things, but the facts are there.”

- Fake Chomsky

"When we watch Scott Pilgrim we are supposed to laugh because things are unrealistic and like a video..."

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 03:43:46 -0500

“

When we watch Scott Pilgrim we are supposed to laugh because things are unrealistic and like a video game. But are they really that unrealistic? I say, no, not at all, life in, you know, modern economies is more and more like a video game. …You know you log onto facebook and you choose all the little I like this and I support that and you really turn your whole life into a little computer program. They used to say, well okay it’s a rat race. Now it is precisely a video game.

You know, it’s funny, the other day Google gave all of its employees a ten percent raise. Very egalitarian, very Soviet, everyone gets the same raise. But what this obscures is the simple fact that not every is paid the same to start with. So, yes, the mail clerk gets his ten percent on his little salary and the executive gets his raise on much more. This, I say, is the true dream of capitalism today: Everyone gets richer, together, but then comes to exception that reinforces the rule - no, you can’t get the same. So we have a society of people who are playing their little games and watching movies about video game lives and thinking that if they wait they will get richer like the people at Google. This is ideology at its purest.

”

- Fake Zizek

"What one is tempted to add here is that, in the very case of Nazism (and Fascism in general), the..."

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:10:15 -0500

“What one is tempted to add here is that, in the very case of Nazism (and Fascism in general), the constellation of violence is rather the opposite one: crazy, tasteless even, as it may sound, the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not “essential” enough. Nazism was not radical enough, it did not dare to disturb the basic structure of the modern capitalist social space (which is why it had to invent and focus on destroying an external enemy, Jews). This is why one should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions – but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted… This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not “have the balls” to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i.e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive. If one really wants to name an act which was truly daring, for which one truly had to “have the balls” to try the impossible, but which was simultaneously a horrible act, an act causing suffering beyond comprehension, it was Stalin’s forced collectivization at the end of 1920s in the Soviet Union – but even here, the same reproach holds: the paradox of the 1928 »Stalinist revolution« was rather that, in all its brutal radicality, it was not radical enough in effectively transforming the social substance. Its brutal destructiveness has to be read as an impotent passage a l’acte. Far from simply standing for a total forcing of the unnamable Real on behalf of the Truth, the Stalinist “totalitarianism“ rather designates the attitude of absolutely ruthless “pragmatism,” of manipulating and sacrificing all “principles” on behalf of maintaining power.”

- Slavoj Zizek

sealmaiden: Mary Alacoque Waters via darksilenceinsuburbia

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:01:27 -0500

sealmaiden:

Mary Alacoque Waters

via darksilenceinsuburbia

Jottings on Zizek

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:28:53 -0500

i like that he doesn’t ever let people get away with easy answers. he can take something that seems perfectly obvious and dismantle it and show that actually the opposite it true. there are countless times when i’ve been reading his books that i agree completely with the setup he gives as a reasonable view and i follow along and then agree with his demolition of that setup and the opposite conclusion. it terrifies me in some ways because i can imagine any given belief i hold as obvious may in fact be completely wrong, but feels empowering in some ways because i start to feel comfortable pointing out absurdities and reversals in others arguments and i’ve started tolerating ambiguities a bit better

i agree with a lot of stuff he says i guess
- the left needs to reconstitute itself without nostalgia for the 20th Century
- the left still needs to be aware at a deep level of the trauma and closed liberatory possibilities of the 20th century to move forward, though
- theory can be mined from all sorts of historical left experiments, it’s important to read both trotsky(ists) and stalin(ists)
- liberal-democracy presents a false choice, increasingly that has led to right-wing “capitalism with asian values”, but it’s up to the left to offer a new choice
- the left isn’t really offering a new choice yet, it’s all recycled 20th Century stuff.
- the state is a contingent historical apparatus but it needs to be engaged with critically by a new left that is willing to transform it from within until new forms of power are able to directly assert themselves within the shell of the old.
- ideological critique may end up transforming the state without some storming of the winter palace: the same people may end up in power, but they will be doing “left” things and using “left” logic. zizek doesn’t use gramsci because he associates it with eurocommunism and laclau, i think, but some sort of “cultural hegemony” argument makes sense here.
- however, retreat into cultural theory without reference to the principal contradiction (class/economics) is dangerous because it concedes ground (zizek would much rather be reading about hegel than talking about leftist politics, he only really talks about cultural stuff because it is symptomatic of ideological presuppositions)
- laclau’s post-marxist position is untenable because he can’t explain history. that is, if everything is shifting sands of cultural positioning, then why wasn’t that obvious throughout all of history? how do you explain the persistence of ideology without reference to some sort of distorting but determining fundamental base that projects a superstructure?

one thing i think i disagree with is i don’t think the rawlsian difference principle is horrifying like he does. zizek says that people would be trapped in rawls to never question their subordinate position because it is officially to their advantage. but you could easily then say that they will dislike being subordinate or being told that it is to their advantage when it is not and therefore be worse off and therefore equality would be a better alternative. but zizek can’t allow this because he thinks equality is based on envy anyway (he’s a leftist because he thinks there are objective historical problems that can only be resolved this way, he probably doesn’t support equality as some sort of categorical vallue)