Category Archives: Economics/Class Relations

What Steps Thy Feudal Lords Are Taking to Keep Thee Safe Whilst This Plague of Buboes Ravages the Fiefdoms Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine

Feudalism, then and now.

By Keith Rubin

McSweeney’s

To our loyal vassals,

We remain grateful to thee for thy continued fealty amidst these uneasy and ever-changing times. Whilst there has been only a SINGLE reported case of Bubonic Plague within our fiefdom (that of Simon the Tinker), we wished to take this opportunity to share with thee several precautionary steps we have taken to mitigate the further spread of this divine pestilence:

Increasing personal sanitation and hygiene procedures amongst all serfs
Beginning this past Lord’s Day, we have decreed that all serfs working in the fields must bathe in the town well at LEAST once per month. In addition, all those serfs handling crops directly must spit upon their hands to rinse away dirt BEFORE touching any of our foodstuffs.

Additional leeching stations at the midwife’s house
To pre-empt the possibility of a large-scale outbreak, we have doubled the number of leeches available to our community at any hour of the day, from six swarms to twelve. The increased capacity for leechings shall doubtless prove indispensable should any additional cases of the Plague arise.

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Italian Anarchist Federation : #Coronavirus and emergency – We do not forget which side of the barricade we are on Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine

Communique by the Correspondence Commission of the Italian Anarchist Federation about the coronavirus and the state of emergency.

Originally published by the Italian Anarchist Federation. Translated by Enough 14.

In the face of this crisis, state and capital are showing, with unprecedented evidence, their immense limitations and their structural inability to take account of people’s needs and health.

In Italy, the political choices of governments have constantly cut public health (more than public, state). Some of the few resources have been diverted to private healthcare, even during the current emergency. The contemporary “regionalization”, according to a corporate-capitalist model, has then made this service, which in theory should be universal, strongly differentiated between regions and regions, between rich and poor regions.

Patients have become customers and care services monetized in a general framework of competition and profit.

This approach to the health service reveals its real face in this dramatic moment, leaving us all at the mercy of its philosophy, which is certainly not that of human compassion and recognition of the other as our fellow human beings, but that of calculating the minimum material requirements for maximum profit, which is now translated into the lack of equipped facilities, hired staff and consumption material in warehouses.

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The Ruling Class Stakes Out Its Position During the Crisis Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Police State/Civil Liberties

“Most people assume that what we are presently witnessing in the towns and cities of Europe is a moment of great weakness for the globalist establishment, but this is clearly not the case and the enemies of free-thought and territorial sovereignty are carefully manouvering themselves into an even stronger position. The fact that our respective military units are carrying weapons and driving armoured vehicles should be enough for most people to conclude that they have not come to help your dear old granny with the groceries. Typically, it has become common to read thousands of posts in which mainstream people are expressing their gratitude for being asked to withdraw into their houses and insisting that the presence of the army is making them feel much safer. Try saying that in the event that you have to run the gauntlet of martial law just to get Hungry Horace some more sliced bread for his egg soldiers. The same soldiers, presumably, that will make him grow up with a similar brainwashed mentality. It was William Cobbett who observed “I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach,” so whilst there seems little reason to break the law when everything is going your way and there is enough food to go round, let’s see how you get on if things start deteriorating. I guarantee that you’ll become one of the best molotov cocktail waiters in town.” -Troy Southgate

Britney Spears calls for wealth redistribution, general strike on Instagram Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations

I’ve often thought that one of the best things that could happen for pan-anarchism would be for prominent celebrities to come out and endorse the ATS philosophy. Have we found our leader? Celebrities are the closest thing to royalty we have in the US. Celebrity endorsements are consequently a means to “revolution from the top,” at least metaphorically.  A general strike in favor of debt stoppage is something that all radicals ought to be able to agree on: socialists, anarchists, libertarians (fuck the banksters, right?), Tucker Carlson conservatives, Sanders/AOC progressives, etc.

The Week

Brittney Spears.

Britney Spears seemingly called for the redistribution of wealth and a general strike on Monday, “regramming” a post written by Instagram user Mimi Zhu. “During this time of isolation, we need connection now more than ever,” the text shared by Spears said, going on to describe how “we will learn to kiss and hold each other through the waves of the web. We will feed each other, redistribute wealth, strike. We will understand our own importance from the places we must stay.”

The “Work B—h” singer captioned the post by quoting the text’s penultimate line — “communion [moves] beyond walls” — and adding three emoji roses, a symbol commonly used by the Democratic Socialists of America.

“Queen of [the] proletariat,” cheered on one fan in the comments. Jeva Lange

 

From mutual aid to dual power in the state of emergency Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Health and Medicine • Tags:

Rest assured, governments around the world will use/are using the current public health crisis as a pretext for a permanent power grab. Because that’s what governments do. We need to be prepared with a bottom-up response to ruling class shenanigans that are intended to strengthen class subjugation.

By Woodbine

ROARMag

With the shutdown of businesses, schools and countless other institutions, millions of people are facing loss of income, housing and access to basic survival resources, including food. Confronted by popular pressure and the specter of civil unrest, states have begun to undertake a “disaster socialism” of uneven and often contradictory aid measures. Still, conditions of emergency are intensifying by the hour and the current biopolitical regime faces an existential crisis.

Under such circumstances, the need for self-organized infrastructures of mutual aid, care and resilience could not be clearer. In the coming weeks and months, rent strikes and other acts of collective refusal are on the horizon. How could these works of mutual aid flow into the construction of a dual power situation? As the system collapses, can physical bases of autonomy and solidarity transform our relationship to the state?

At Woodbine, an autonomous space and organizing framework maintained in New York City since 2014, this is what we have been preparing for — to mobilize our networks, skills, knowledges and energy to coordinate and provide for each other, while simultaneously building the longer-term capacity to face an uncertain future.

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Why are Millennials and Zoomers going socialist? Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right

I have long argued that in the future the domestic politics of the US will increasingly resemble those of the European Union, with neoliberals solidly representing the right, social democrats representing the left, and a comparatively small but loud right-wing populist tendency. Every cultural, demographic, generational, and partisan trend indicates this. It’s an exaggeration (a big one) to claim Millennials are “going socialist.” They’re going progressive liberal/social democratic (which probably puts them slightly to the left of Eisenhower on economics). We’re seeing that emerge now with the social democrats vs neoliberals rivalry in the Democrapic Party, and the Repugnicans embracing faux populism for the sake of their own survival. Some of the widest class divisions in the US are in the deep red zones, which is why Tom Cotton (Zionist Stooge-Arkansas), Mitch McConnell (All Purposes Scumbag-Kentucky), and Mitt Romney (Plutocratic Corporatist-Utah) are now suddenly joining the Yang Gang during a time of economic crisis.

Image result for electoral map if only millennials voted

Who is behind Joe Biden? Divisions in the ruling class 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations • Tags:

Some interesting analysis from a Marxist-Leninist perspective which argues that the primary division within the US ruling class is between the 19th-century model entrepreneurial bourgeoisie and the 20th-century managerial bourgeoisie. This is fairly in line with the “managerial revolution” thesis of James Burnham/Samuel Francis and even the critique of global finance offered by Antony Sutton to some degree.

The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World 3

by • Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right • Tags:

For who are not familiar with James Burham’s 1941 classic, it is a must read if you want to understand modern institutions.

The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World by [Burnham, James]

‘Burnham has real intellectual courage, and writes about real issues.’ – George Orwell

Burnham’s claim was that capitalism was dead, but that it was being replaced not by socialism, but a new economic system he called “managerialism”; rule by managers.

Written in 1941, this is the book that theorised how the world was moving into the hands of the ‘managers’. Burnham explains how Capitalism had virtually lost its control, and would be displaced not by labour, nor by socialism, but by the rule of administartors in business and in government.

This revolution, he posited, is as broad as the world and as comprehensive as human society, asking “Why is ‘totalitarianism’ not the issue?” “Can civilization be destroyed?” And “Why is the New Deal something bigger than Roosevelt can handle?”

In a volume extraordinary for its dispassionate handling of those and other fundamental questions, James Burnham explores fully the implications of the managerial revolution.

Praise for James Burnham:

‘The stoic, detached, empirical, hard-boiled, penetrating, realist mind of James Burnham is something to behold, to admire, to emulate.’ – National Review

‘James Burnham was an astonishing writer. Subtle, passionate, and irritatingly well-read.’ – New Criterion

‘The immense significance of Burnham’s approach is potential. We can ignore it only at the risk of being disarmed by the future course of events.’ – Irving Kristol

James Burnham was an American popular political theorist. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years, as his thinking developed, he left Marxism and turned to conservatism, serving as a public intellectual of the conservative movement. He also wrote regularly for the conservative publication National Review on a variety of topics.

Leviathan and Its Enemies: Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right • Tags: ,

For those looking for an interesting book to read during the shutdown, I would suggest Sam Francis’ “Leviathan and Its Enemies.” It’s long (around 750 pages) but it’s the best modern work that I know of explaining how the modern American political and economic system actually works. Francis was a staunch paleoconservative (who flirted with white nationalism), and so plenty of leftists, libertarians, and anarchists will probably want to dismiss his ideas, much to their loss. But this work, written in the 1990s, and posthumously published only a few years ago, is a must-read for someone who wants to understand the dynamics of class conflict within the framework of American institutional structures. This book is basically right-wing Marxism, and Francis explains why both the 1960s New Left and the 1980s New Right failed to overturn the rule of the managerial elite that came to power in the US in the 20th century, replacing the classical 19th-century bourgeoisie in the process. His own preference was for Buchananite right-wing populism of the kind we’re seeing implicitly rising today with figures like Trump and Tucker Carlson (which I am sure will fail as well due to the shrinking demographics of its constituency). You don’t have to agree with Francis’ underlying philosophy or ideological preferences to benefit from the historical and institutional analysis he provides. The book is available from Amazon. The only other scholarly writer I know of who discusses these topics in-depth is Joel Kotkin.

Leviathan and Its Enemies: Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America by [Francis, Samuel T]

Leviathan and Its Enemies* is Samuel T. Francis’s magnum opus on political theory and the history of the modern world, which had been lost to the world after his untimely death in 2005 and is published here for the first time. This edition includes new introductory and critical essays by Jerry Woodruff, Fran Griffin, and Paul E. Gottfried. In his Introduction, Jerry Woodruff writes, “Following [James] Burnham, Sam believed a new ruling elite emerged in 20th-century. . . . the growth of giant corporations, the expansion of government power and bureaucracy, and the widespread emergence of mass organizations gave birth to a powerful class of skilled professionals to guide and manage the vast operations of the means of economic production, which, on a smaller scale, were once in the hands of private entrepreneurs and their families. As a result, the old ruling bourgeois elite, along with its political and social institutions and its view of society and politics, were replaced by a new “managerial elite,” with a world outlook that set out to remake society according to its own interests, and which was hostile to any bourgeois remnants in conflict with that project.