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88(P) - Think Tank: Socialist Realism & Better Uses For Bezos' Billions (Patreon)

Published:
2019-05-26 14:44:31
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Davic, Matt, and Michael are back for another Think Tank session. This time, we discuss meditation retreats and if they're CIA or not, Socialist Realism, and try to give Jeff Bezos suggestions for better things to do with his billions than moon colonies.

Comments

Deidre Adams

This was really interesting. I'm not sure how to get involved in politics while so much time is put into another field of work. How do working people do it? I know many people who have retreated into isolation who know the system is not working but are also trying to just get by or feel simply defeated or beaten down by debt, rising housing costs, etc... Or lean more towards a secluded type of life. Does anyone have any advice?

Cardboard

I enjoyed the ep, but I still don't have a clear idea what is socialist realism and capitalist realism are after listening to this

Shaun Ryan Smith
>>23101449

@Deidre in that scenario I'd say donate what you can to causes you support and keep on keeping on. I am also not above keyboard wars on Twitter. You can always go on organization websites and contact them to see who is in your area and ask what they need bodies for.

Oldest Matt

“...and Whitey’s going to the moon” Gil Scott-Heron

CIZLer

There is something wrong with one of the mics.

Thomas Butler

Thank you for giving the defense of meditation practice. Doug Lain and Zizek, among others, have a tendancy to overstate its complicity in maintaining Capitalist Idealogy and Counter-revolutionary bias. They tend to underestimate, for example, the deeply Anti-Reactionary, Compassion Cultivating tendencies which Buddist practice fosters. These tendancies are a salve against the toxic identitarian, essentialist forces we see emergent today as average people seek to vent their frustrations in highly destructive ways. Meditation wont get us Communism, but it helps to protect against Fascism.

Alan Ricks

Michael is referring to the utopian Oneida Community, which was established in Oneida, New York, in 1848. The Oneida Association (later Oneida Community) was founded by a small group of Christian Perfectionists led by John Humphrey Noyes, Jonathan Burt, George W. Cragin, Harriet A.Noyes, George W. Noyes, John L. Skinner and a few others. They were known for their crafts, silverware and tableware. In 1880, after more than 30 years operating as a commune, the Oneida Community voted to transfer much of the common property to a joint-stock company to be known as Oneida Community Ltd. effective January 1, 1881. Oneida Community Ltd. was one of the earliest joint-stock companies in the United States. Its founders' religious philosophy helped inform the early development of the company, in which members of the former Oneida Community became shareholders in the company. Its progressive nature also allowed for a woman, Harriet Joselyn, to sit on the board of directors — a departure from the norm for the time. It also still exists as Oneida Limited, a company famous for its cutlery and cookware. Go buy some at Target.

Bijou Smith
>>23121937

Mark Fisher wrote the book "Capitalist Realism", start with that. It just means the (false doctrine) that capitalism is the only natural way to order human economic system, and any other attempt (like communism or anarchy) will fail and revert to capitalism, in other words, it is Thatcher's "There is No Alternative" (TINA) but more nuanced. There are two ways to take this though: (1) one is the idea that Thatcher was correct (there is something natural and optimal about free market capitalism) - this is the naturalist neoliberal view of capitalist realism; (2) the other is more like Fisher's take, which is that once capitalist power becomes hegemonic it will be impossible to dislodge and eventually although there are plenty of better alternatives, people will en masse not be able to see any of these alternatives, and so capitalism will be what we psychologically get stuck with - this is the nihilist view of capitalist realism. I would argue that neither idea is correct, and we are already seeing the beginnings of the falsification of both types of capitalist realism. And that is more or less where "socialist realism" gets a start, which is the idea that human beings are a fundamentally social and spiritual species, full of way more altruism and cooperation than Hayek and von Mises and other misanthropic neoliberals would give us credit for (they were severely traumatised and therefore prejudiced by the madness of World War I & II, but that's not to forgive their madness and cynicism). The mild version of socialist realism would be that you can try making human society conform to competitive systems of organization and free market structures, but we will en masse eventually get miserable under such systems and revert to cooperation, which is the seed for socialism. It does not imply communism or communalism, nor central planning, nor social uniformity, nor any particular version of socialism, it merely implies a more harmonious and cooperative society, which in every culture is the core of socialism of any form.

Bijou Smith
>>23176408

Yes, maybe. Meditation without action is a lot like useless ascetism. Meditation can give you good ideas, but then you have to act on them in the outer world. If all meditation does is lull people to sleep or enable them to cope with the violence of capitalism, then Lain and Zizek are right.