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/348/ Aufhebonus Bonus: June 2023 (Patreon)

Published:
2023-06-27 06:00:03
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

On your questions and criticisms.

Bumper edition of Aufhebonus Bonus where we discuss whether we're technologically determinist with regard to artificial intelligence; whether the left should be bulding stuff; why criticising wokeness is boring; work, retirement and time; more on family abolition; and everyone's favourite topic – the PMC/new elite, etc. 

Event: The Professional-Managerial Class and their Politics, London, Wednesday 28 June, 7pm

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Comments

dshamz_

I’m having a hard time understanding why you guys seem to have settled on the conclusion that the PMC have entirely different and opposing interests to the bourgeoisie. It seems to me that their interests dovetail very well - and in fact the former are in so many ways dependent on the latter. It also seems to me (as Alex points out) that we still live in capitalism, and that capital is still running wild. (Okay I just listened to the subsequent comments and now you guys have to do an episode on the difference between ‘elite’ and ‘ruling class’)

Carson H

I'm not sure about this idea of the middle class only interacting with capitalism from the moment of circulation or at a distance from the market. When a propertyless adjunct professor teaches classes for a wage, he's selling his labour-power and, in Martin Hagglund's terms, the time of his life. The adjunct professor's wages are exchanged for the value he produces through his labour. Even though the work he performs doesn't result in the production of a physical object, the adjunct professor's labour is bought and sold as a commodity on a labour market where other professors compete for scarce contracts. The adjunct professor's cultural habitus is different from the worker who comes in to sweep the floor after class, and for all sorts of reasons his interests might differ as well. But the custodian doesn't "produce" anything either, strictly speaking, and he also sells his labour for a wage. I don't think we should give up on trying to map out where the adjunct professor and the custodian stand in relation to a social totality and to each other by virtue of the different kinds of work they perform, but this way of distinguishing them as "productive" and "unproductive" workers doesn't cut it for me. They're both "productive" in the sense that they both exchange their labour-power for a wage that expresses its value in a capitalist social order.

jkjkjkj

Phil is exactly right about how common and how morphed from its older form anti Semitism is not just on the British left, but the left generally. To be more specific, the single minded and unique obsession that the Israel/Palestine conflict and the accompanying mass exageration that has come out of its scale has drilled into the mind of much of the left a low grade distrust/dislike of Jews and their intentions/character on an interpersonal level, compounded by conspiratorial thinking and the recent migration of certain immigrant populations that come from societies that are more pro Palestinian. That jews are now socially metabolized as white and western gives the left less reservation in acting this way and in certain cases provides a sense of testing boundaries and being subversive and in many cases implicitly sees them as being deserving or unnoteworthy victims (that much of anti Semitic violence is targeted at Hasids makes it particularly hard for them to believe it is a problem) or outright lying in reporting anti Semitic violence or rhetoric (which they intentionally conflate with anti zionist rhetoric, when in reality anti zionist rhetoric is around 7% of anti Semitic incidents even according to the ADL, which does conflate anti zionism and anti semitism)

Richard R

I ought to go back to the bit on the cleresy. It was maybe the most convincing account for me. This is also the same account of neoreactionaries wrt the PMC basically being the contemporary version of the catholic church (moldbug's Cathedral). But for me, convincing for one central reason: It's boring, awful, and sort of stupid to be a "cleric". A lot of power in a quotidian (or foucauldian) sense, yes, maybe. But it's an insane work week, and yields very few luxuries beyond contemplative self-satisfaction.

Elias B

I'm not sure Heartfield's point that green capitalism is the ideology of capitalism in retreat from production is correct anymore. Maybe in the EU, but there the continuing retreat from production is mainly due to their stubbornness in sticking to neoliberalism. Meanwhile China is using the green transition to become the largest car, solar panel, etc producer and the IRA, it seems, has led to the first real big increase in industrial investment in the US for a long time.

Roman

Re. the left’s seeming inability to sell the public and voters on the merits of left political positions…well if we’re talking about ‘old school’ left ideas around labour, working conditions and a fair deal for working people in terms of wages etc. there really is no left selling these ideas, at least in western countries. The old social democratic parties (e.g. Labour in the UK, the SPD in Germany, the American Democratic Party) abandoned the working class, embraced neoliberal economics and went full steam ahead on identity/grievance politics. Corbyn and Sanders tried to revive some of the “old” left issues but shot themselves in the foot by appeasing the idpol crowd/Remainers. But even so the mass media in both the UK and USA went out of their way to portray them as dangerous antisemites, Putin puppets, racists and so forth. The foaming at the mouth Guardian vendetta against Corbyn for example was quite something to behold. Explaining the left’s failure in the EU/UK-USA simply in terms of democracy doesn’t make much sense considering how anemic democracy is in these places and the Information warfare that’s deployed against even mildly worker friendly policies and the politicians that promote them. If a party with clout existed that could sell pro-worker policies without the (new) leftist baggage of hysterical gender/race nonsense these would be very popular with the working class. The Swiss example one listener mentioned of left policies there being repeatedly rejected is a bit of a category error because Switzerland is a very prosperous country with a tiny population. I think the massive popularity Corbyn and Sanders achieved with their ‘old left’ socdem policy proposals shows that there is support for them among working people. (What they don’t like is the woke scolding and oppression Olympics.) It’s also not a coincidence that conservative parties are capitalizing on the left’s failures and increasingly selling themselves as “worker’s parties”. The ‘old’ left is fighting an uphill battle against the wokes and the establishment, including the mass media, and centrist liberal parties will of course do anything they can to keep a genuine pro working class left party or movement from gaining any traction. So it’s very much _not_ just a matter of voters on a level playing field rejecting left policy proposals.

Roman

Largely agree with Philip on left antisemitism though I do think his definition of the ‘new’ antisemitism is a bit broad. For sure there are anti-Zionists who are also antisemites but not every critic of Zionism is an antisemite. By his definition even Finkelstein and his strong criticism of the Israeli state comes close to being a Jew hater. The idiots one finds in pro-Palestine circles, particularly BDS types, who write “Israel” in scare quotes and basically advocate for the destruction of the Jewish state, but without saying so directly, personify the "socialism of fools", no argument there. Some of these people really are fools in the truest sense of the word and have never thought through what their position actually advocates. Israel, the Jewish state, isn’t going anywhere and that’s just something they will have to accept. That said there is no shortage of people who conflate any and all criticism of how Israel deals with the occupied territories as antisemitism and they will often cast Jews who aren’t sufficiently pro-Israel as self-hating or even antisemitic even though Jewish criticism, secular and religious, of Zionism is as old as Zionism itself. To complicate things even further there are elements within Israel, particularly among the Likudniks and far-right, who will tolerate “classic” antisemites so long as these are ok with Israel existing as the Jewish state. E.g. Followers of American evangelicalism are valued as tourists and as vocal defenders of the Israeli state even though their religious texts are seriously antisemitic. Agree that the although the media campaign against Corbyn was seriously absurd and ott and surely contributed to Labour’s downfall, the Corbyn movement was sunk primarily due to its own ineptitude re. Brexit and internal Blairite mutinies. We live in an era of information warfare, quite literally, with hyperbolic accusations and loaded terms with multiple meanings thrown around that attempt to divide the world between the good and the saintly (my people) and the evil and demonic (the other guys) so defining terms, calling out sophistry, avoiding blanket generalizations and keeping a clear head when parsing this stuff are extremely important if one doesn't want to become just another slogan shouter, someone's useful idiot or an unwitting contributor to the confusion.

jkjkjkj

I think the big distinction between Matt Goodwin and Michael Lind in terms of their reception by the fans is twofold: 1. Goodwin comes off as trollishly provocative in the language he uses around immigration and more motivated by personal grievance in his professional life whereas Lind comes off as straightforward and without any personal agenda in what he's saying (that goodwin spent so long talking mostly about the ways to improve the lives of historically middle/upper middle class white collar professionals isn't a coincidence in contrast to Linds general focus on blue collar/non knowledge economy workers). 2. Lind seems ti understand the immigration issue in a way that is fundamentally more sound and more honest. Linds perspective is essentially bringing in high value, low social risk immigrants (IE: PHDs and doctors) and keeping out foreign competition for domestic blue collar labor and high social risk individuals. It's a simple formula, but a very reasonable one and one where he has answers for how it will affect supply chains in the short and long term. Goodwins plan for relocalizing labor supply chains ultimately comes off as poorly thought out to a borderline delusional level and possibly self destructive in the short term. He repeats "short term labor solutions" several times but never actually provides a plan to deal with the short term labor and supply chain issues that would come from his vision or how ti even localize the labor force (particularly with a relatively low tax/low regulation environment as he hinted at). At one point he says the answer to how ti relocalize the British labor force is "reiventing and reshaping our political economy and giving people a sense of meaning and purpose with their lives". That's nonsense hippy babble and everybody knows it. A sense of meaning and purpose doesn't address labor facing supply chain issues, nice as it sounds