@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

HeavenlyPossum

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social

Anarchist, communist, opossum. But then, I repeat myself.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Ideologies that have failed and are collapsing tend to produce radical and extreme reactions as they die.

Industrial capitalism produced the Nazis. Authoritarian communism produced the Khmer Rouge. Political Islam produced ISIS.

Super excited to see what further horrors neoliberal capitalism has in store for us as it, too, fails.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

For some reason, “left unity” in practice always means anarchists aligning with and subordinating themselves to authoritarians, and never authoritarians adopting the practice of anarchism.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Praising a state like China or the Soviet Union for its “development” is like praising Israel for “turning the desert green” or the US for putting a tv in every person’s home.

It misses the immense violence and unfreedom involved and the inequality of results.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

  • Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens”

“Before her eleventh-hour decision to reverse course and ‘indefinitely pause’ a landmark plan to charge drivers higher prices for clogging up Manhattan streets, Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul received $36,000 from lobbyists for state automobile dealers. Half of that money came from a lobbying group that opposed congestion pricing, citing ‘consequences for dealers and the thousands of people they employ.’”

https://jacobin.com/2024/06/kathy-hochul-congestion-pricing-nyc

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Investment is something of a myth.

I don’t mean that people can’t or don’t work to expand economic production. I do mean the idea that people frugally and virtuously defer consumption, forgoing now to create stockpiles they can use to greater use in the future, doesn’t actually reflect material reality.

In reality, all of this work is both social and current. If I decide to work to expand production—build a factory, plow and manure a field, whatever—I can’t also be producing the food I need to eat or the clothes I need to wear. Someone else has to be doing that work while I do mine, in addition to anyone supplying me with the tools and raw materials I might need to do my work.

And they’re almost certainly not doing it from stockpiles reflecting past work. They’re doing it from current production. No one first stockpiles all the food a team of workers needs to eat for a month or a year before those workers start to build a factory. They feed them as food becomes available, out of constant current production, just like anyone else.

So when that field or factory is done and can start producing more stuff than was possible before, those new products will in turn go to those original workers who supplied me while I was doing my work, or to yet some other worker making something entirely different, who will in turn supply my original benefactor.

That’s all the economy is—a giant network of workers constantly doing useful work, making things of value for each other, advancing their product to each other with the understanding that others’ products will be advanced to them.

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

I owe this understanding of the economy to the brilliant @KevinCarson1 who, in the essay below, argued compellingly that credit was and should be a commons. Anyone can supply anyone else, with the expectation that they will be supplied in turn—a giant network of constantly-turning over credit.

Financial investment is, then, a reflection of the state’s enclosure of credit. The state monopolizes the production of money with its capitalist partners, banks and other financial institutions. If you want to access the money you need to invest—to access that network of workers advancing product to each other—you have to first agree to pay interest to banks on loans, ie, rents on their control of credit.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kevin-carson-credit-as-an-enclosed-commons

rat , to palestine group
@rat@ni.hil.ist avatar

@palestine @israel

התנגדות resistance

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@SallyStrange @faab64 @rat

Pretty wild how anarchists are responsible for all these bad things they didn’t do

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@faab64 @rat @SallyStrange

Pretty sure the only people who made all those bad things worse were the actual fascists involved and not people fighting against those fascists

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Anyone who believes that the US-Mexico border will ever somehow return to “normal” is deluding themself.

The flow of people fleeing from certain death will not end in your lifetime.

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/reeling-one-heat-wave-mexico-awaits-highest-temperatures-ever-recorded-2024-05-23/

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

“Decorum” is when it’s beyond the pale to throw a milk shake at a politician when that same politician is campaigning to direct state violence against some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Capitalism is a system of rule by capital owners.

Capital is an abstracted, commodified, tradable right to command the labor of other people.

That’s it.

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Capitalism is not “trade,” in the sense of voluntary exchange. People have done that for hundreds of thousands of years.

Capitalism is not “private ownership of the economy.” People owned the means of production for, again, hundreds of thousands of years.

In reality, both voluntary exchange and individual ownership of economic resources and power are made impossible by capitalism, except for a tiny elite who command our society.

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan

Wage labor is not merely “payment for a service.” It’s an ongoing relationship of command in which one party, the laborer, is structurally subordinate to the other party, the owner, allowing the owner to extract a surplus from the worker.

When people are free to say no to wage labor, they generally do. Historically, we find mass wage labor in two broad periods—the slave economies of classical antiquity and modern capitalism.

If we take your scenario—you teach someone to throw pots—we have to ask, why doesn’t this young man use his new skill to sell his own pots and keep all the proceeds of his labor himself?

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan

We generally have this misconception that a capitalist boss pays wages to an employee.

In reality, the reverse is true. The worker generates revenue through productive labor. The owner then collects all that revenue and doles some back as wages. Wages are a bait-and-switch to mask the fact that capitalism is rentier. The worker, in essence, pays a ransom in exchange for permission to engage in productive labor.

If we start from the premise that no actor has any intrinsic right to own someone else’s labor, it’s a lot easier to see this process. Absent the coercive power of the state enforcing the owner’s property claims, we’d have two or more people who desire each other’s cooperation in order to produce more value than they could alone. They’d be free to agree to whatever arrangement they decided on.

Maybe this would be wage labor, but free people tend to avoid wage labor at all costs, so my bet is no.

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan

> “Sure, presumably maybe I have a decent sized kiln I built in my backyard and my brother has a considerable reserve of clay for some reason. The new laborer would need to acquire several tons of clay and also build a kiln to make his own pots.”

This remains a conceptual trap. If you have a kiln and tons of clay, you can still only produce as many pots as you could alone. If you want to expand production, you need someone else’s cooperation. Why should they make pots at your command, sell them, and then give you a share of their revenue? It sure sounds like what you’re looking at is a cooperative venture with a partner whose labor is essential to your goals, but which you’d rather transform into an unequal relationship of command.

(Setting aside questions about why you might unilaterally and exclusively own a kiln or tons of clay—why can’t someone else take and use some of the dirt lying around that you’re asserting exclusionary rights to?)

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@RD4Anarchy @dlakelan

Yeah, that’s all fair.

Something to keep in mind is that capitalism is a system of antagonistic classes, and those classes are defined by their relations to the means of production.

People don’t volunteer to perform wage labor for capitalists for funsies; they’re forced into it by capitalists who deny them access to resources unless they pay rents to those capitalists.

So not every payment for a service is wage labor. People who are free to say no might agree to all sorts of arrangements with each other, some of which might superficially resemble wage labor, but we can confidently distinguish them by investigating the relations to the means of production involved.

A person who claims exclusionary ownership over some resource and leverages that ownership to extract rents from subordinate wage employees is very much a capitalist, whether a lone individual or the Waltons, by virtue of their relationship to the means of production and not the scale of their exploitation.

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan @RD4Anarchy

If people have the freedom to say no, they invariably reject wage labor.

That doesn’t preclude you from reaching an agreement with someone else to use the kiln alongside you, but it wouldn’t be wage labor.

After all, how do you propose to guard the kiln while you’re watching your infant, such that no one else can use it? Would you rely on some guard force to police your property claims? Or would you perhaps instead be more likely to reach some sort of cooperative detente between equals?

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan @RD4Anarchy

This gets right at the illusion of “investment” as a discrete act that an individual might engage in.

In reality, what happens is that one or more workers will stop laboring to sustain themselves so they can labor instead to expand production. While they’re doing that, other workers advance to them the product of their own labor, so our “investors” can eat. When the project is complete, those workers can then use their newly-expanded capacity to advance their own surplus to yet more workers, in a giant network of people advancing product to each other.

An “investor” in the capitalist sense is someone able to interpose themself into that process, acting as a gatekeeper, mediating access to the credit that workers were already extending to each other. The idea that investment is a discrete, individual act that confers discrete, individual property rights, easily traceable to some individual act of “investment,” is a construct of capitalism, not intrinsic to production.

If I stop working to sustain myself in order to build a kiln instead, someone else is feeding me and clothing me. When my kiln is done, I can make pots that I then deliver to the people who fed and clothed me, or perhaps to yet another worker who, in turn, supplied my original supporters with yet another good. A giant web of credit that doesn’t require some heroic Randian “investor” who can point to a specific act that morally confers ownership of the kiln. Why don’t the workers who fed me deserve ownership? What about the person who taught me to build a kiln? What about my parents, whose caring labor kept me alive until I could labor for myself? What seems self-evident—“I built the kiln so I naturally and obviously should own it”—falls apart under interrogation.

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan @RD4Anarchy

Even if you engage in productive labor to build a useful tool like a kiln, you have no intrinsic right to own someone else’s productive labor or a collaborative effort between many people. Why do you own the resulting enterprise? Why don’t you also draw a wage for your labor, like the guy making the pots? Why is your labor special ownership-conferring labor but your employee’s labor isn’t?

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan @RD4Anarchy

Mmm, primitive societies. Let’s set that aside for a moment.

In societies that lack coercive hierarchies, people do often still make use of “property” as a social category, though rarely in the sort of exclusionary ways that capitalists do. They might make use of personal property, or common property, or assign usufruct rights, or some combination of these, and sometimes entirely different modes. In demand-sharing societies, you can indeed ask for anything you see someone else possessing and expect to receive it as a matter of courtesy as routinely as you might expect someone to politely hold a door open for you.

But the most important point here is that these property modes are the product of consensual agreement, not imposed by violence. So when you make these assertions—this is my clay, my land, my kiln, my property, my right to rent—you are question-begging a coercive property regime in which those claims are a given, rather than produced through debate and agreement between free equals.

Why does your act of labor confer ownership but his doesn’t?

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@dlakelan @RD4Anarchy

No, what you’re describing is the medieval guild system, in which young people apprenticed for master craftsmen for a wage, with the eventual goal of becoming independent master craftsmen themselves.

Wage labor is, if not actual slavery, at the least perpetual economic childhood.

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@RD4Anarchy @dlakelan

Is there a reason you won’t answer my questions?

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

If you’re worried that getting rid of capitalism would be too disruptive to people’s lives, just wait until you hear about capitalism and how disruptive it is to people’s lives.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-sharp-sudden-decline-of-americas-middle-class-234917/

breadandcircuses , to random
@breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social avatar

The "Enlightenment" of Western culture makes for a nice story, but that's really all it is — a story.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@RD4Anarchy @p @breadandcircuses @jamesgbradbury @ariadne

“Minimize the work they have to do” is efficiency.

“Minimize the work they have to do by coercing other people to do it for them” is capitalism.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@p

Yes, capitalism entails parasitism by capitalist property owners

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I have a soft spot for Libertarians even though I shouldn't and they don't deserve it. When I was a kid I had a weird neighbor who was always giving me Libertarian books... I wish I still had some of them they were WILD. He was a thorn in the side of the local, school board as well insisting that if they had an event at the school that involved politics Libertarians had to be included.

And in defense of the guy, he was about as likable and earnest as a Libertarian could be.

1/

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@futurebird @jonquass @richpuchalsky @ehproque @glyph @moira

Voting does not meaningfully constitute a mechanism for exercising control over the state.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@futurebird @richpuchalsky @jonquass @ehproque @moira @glyph

No; we know empirically that politicians do not implement the policies that voters prefer.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@moira @futurebird @jonquass @ehproque @glyph @richpuchalsky

> “There’s a great deal to be said about a disinterested and uninvolved electorate there that the No Voting crowd encourages”

I’m actually super curious about this. Can you elaborate on what you mean?

> “That’s why you vote based on their policies (actual) vs. what you want.”

That’s certainly an honest admission of the absence of actual democracy in electoral systems like that in the US, which I appreciate and find refreshing.

> “That study backs my position, not yours.”

If you insist.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@jonquass @moira @richpuchalsky @ehproque @glyph @futurebird

That “subset of voters” is wealthy elites. They don’t accrue their influence by virtue of their status as “voters.”

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@ehproque @jonquass @futurebird @moira @glyph @richpuchalsky

I would imagine that a political system that teases but consistently denies a meaningful role for voters is vastly more responsible for a disinterested and disengaged electorate than the anarchist left could ever hope to be.

I’m unsure of where you got the idea that anarchists desire passive disengagement.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@jonquass @ehproque @futurebird @moira @glyph @richpuchalsky

You believe that anarchists are out there convincing people to disengage from political work—mutual aid, direct action, etc—by persuading them not to vote?

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@jonquass @futurebird @ehproque @moira @richpuchalsky @glyph

Wild to discover that a disengaged and disinterested electorate is the fault of anarchists and not, you know, the state that routinely communicates the futility of voting as a mechanism for exercising control over the state.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@glyph @jonquass @futurebird @richpuchalsky @ehproque @moira

There’s a distinction between “not engaging in political action at all” and “not participating in electoral politics” that sounds like it’s getting blurred here.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@jonquass @futurebird @ehproque @richpuchalsky @glyph @moira

No, I’m just conveying my impression, but it’s fine, the point doesn’t need belaboring.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@jonquass @ehproque @glyph @jcape @moira @futurebird @richpuchalsky @StryderNotavi

> “The idea that voting doesn't change anything is total bullshit. Voting absolutely changes things. That's why there was a Muslim ban. That's why we assassinated that Iranian general.”

Donald Trump lost the 2016 election.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@StryderNotavi @futurebird @richpuchalsky @jcape @ehproque @jonquass @glyph @moira

No, he lost the 2016 election but became president anyway. “Voting matters!” and you started by citing the most salient example of when voting absolutely did not matter, when millions more people voted for Clinton and it didn’t matter at all.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@jonquass @glyph @StryderNotavi @ehproque @moira @jcape @futurebird @richpuchalsky

One of many anti-democratic elements of the US political system designed to limit the ability of the public to effect their preferences and goals.

Clinton won that election by millions of votes and didn’t becomes president, and you’re complaining about people not voting as if that was even remotely the problem.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@StryderNotavi @jonquass @ehproque @jcape @futurebird @glyph @richpuchalsky @moira

Yes, US presidents are elected via an anti-democratic mechanism, because the framers of the constitution were propertied elites who hated the idea of democracy and the threat of the poor majority voting against things like parasitic rents.

Clinton won that election by millions of votes. “Not enough people voted for her” is an ex post facto excuse for not confronting the anti-democratic structure of US elections. “It’s the fault of people who didn’t vote for her!” she literally won by millions of votes and the loser became president anyway. “Voting matters, look what happened when Trump became president” is the worst possible example you could offer for the importance of voting.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@richpuchalsky @moira @ehproque @futurebird @glyph @jcape @StryderNotavi @jonquass

“The US presidency is not secured by winning the most votes” yeah I understand that the US is not meaningfully or structurally a democracy. I get it. Trump became president despite losing the election because the US political system doesn’t care about voters. I get it.

“Voting absolutely does matter materially” and then you cite examples from a situation in which people did exactly what you’re demanding they should have done, by a margin of millions, and it wasn’t enough, it didn’t matter.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

The US supreme court is an unelected super-legislature and this simple fact seems to escape a lot of people who imagine law exists to “permit the good and forbid the bad” in some abstract sense.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Earlier this month, Charles Littlejohn began serving a five-year prison sentence for the crime of making public the tax returns of Donald Trump and thousands of other wealthy Americans.

Littlejohn is the reason the public knows the effective tax rates of rich Americans, which is lower than the tax rate paid by everyone else.

Littlejohn is, in short, a hero.

Under sentencing guidelines, the maximum penalty for the crime of disclosing tax returns is 10 months. The federal judge who sentenced him—a Biden appointee—gave him six times the maximum sentence.

If you ever wonder why Biden has been so reluctant to address Trump’s many, many crimes, Littlejohn’s case serves as a clear answer: preserving the status quo, including the secrecy and prerogatives of the ultra-rich, is by far more important than addressing the crimes of one of those ultra-rich, even one who attempted a coup.

Our elites would rather take the risk of Donald Trump blowing up their system than knowingly help plebeians like Littlejohn threaten the whole edifice.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Why didn’t Biden, who was elected in part to address the coup attempted by Trump, not take any action to encourage the investigation of Trump’s many, heinous, public crimes? Why did he not replace the passive and milquetoast Merrick Garland as attorney general with someone who might actually do the job of attorney general? Why would Biden’s appointee crack down so unnecessarily hard on someone who leaked incriminating information about his rival Trump, whom Biden has identified as a serious threat?

Because the system is more devoted to its own survival against the hostility of the masses than it is worried about any one member of that system, as explicitly fascist as he is. They would rather take the risk that one of their own will bring down the entire system than make any concessions to the rest of us.

Their rivalry is one of elite vs elite. Voting matters to them because they care deeply about their intra-elite rivalry. But maintaining elite solidarity against the rest of us takes priority.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Paul Parkman died earlier this month. He was the first person to isolate the measles virus and helped develop the vaccine against it that’s still in use today.

He purposefully gave away his patent rights so the vaccine could be distributed as cheaply as possible. He saved countless lives. A tremendous hero.

The next time someone insists that capitalist greed is human nature, that no one will ever labor “for free,” remember Dr. Parkman and the countless other scientists and doctors who have saved so many of us.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/auburnpub/name/paul-parkman-obituary?id=55136675

HeavenlyPossum , to random
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

During apartheid, the South African government established “homelands” for Black South Africans that were ostensibly independent states—though no other country recognized them—so the regime could pretend Black South Africans were foreigners ineligible for rights in South Africa.

I used to think that this was purely for international consumption, a weak pretense to avoid sanctions and stay on the good side of allies.

But, having heard from Israelis who genuinely believe things like “there is no occupation” and “there is no apartheid” and “there is no ethnic cleansing” I now realize that white South Africans were the primary audience for the ruse and they probably ate that shit up.

gee8sh , to random
@gee8sh@mastodon.online avatar

Given 's unwavering support for and its genocidal apparatus, I am thinking of starting to transition out of its ecosystem.

It's gonna be challenging, primarily because I use an Android smartphone, and because I have been using a Gmail account for ages.

I welcome your tips!

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@israel @ThinkIsrael @hanscees @GregDance @tzafrir @DropBear @palestine @PeterLG @Alexandrad1 @Mary625

You’re attacking your own argument. Did you forget your own argument and then attack it because of how dumb it sounds?

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@PeterLG @Alexandrad1 @GregDance @faab64 @tzafrir @israel @palestine @Mary625 @hanscees @ThinkIsrael @argumento @DropBear

The de facto Israel-Syria border is not internationally recognized because the world adopted a norm after World War Two of not rewarding states for territorial conquest.

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@Alexandrad1 @GregDance @israel @Mary625 @PeterLG @ThinkIsrael @palestine @tzafrir @hanscees @DropBear

2003 called and wants its bigotry back

HeavenlyPossum ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

@DropBear @hanscees @GregDance @ThinkIsrael @israel @Mary625 @PeterLG @Alexandrad1 @tzafrir @palestine

Let me know when you’ve done either

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •