roachboy

thanks for shifting gears, ustwo.

the problem that runs through post 15 is basically a refusal to think in either historical or social-system terms. instead, the arguments are moralistic, erasing anything analytic (at all if you read the post carefully) and replacing analysis with a series of adjectives attached to the noun "socialist"--the definition of which i have never been sure that ustwo actually knows--what is clear is that "socialist" means functionally "empty space onto which i project whatever i want."

the adjective pile-up starts with the first sentence of the post:

x is defined by the predicate "they have no idea where wealth comes from."
and proceeds to heap other such attribute up one after the other.

by the third paragraph, it is clear that we are not talking about socialist at all, but we are in fact talking about who ustwo imagines host to be--first negatively---"I'm sure I"m part of hosts little hit group" then by way of inversion--"president for life host..."

and so on.

so a cynical fellow might say that given there is no content to the category
socialist in ustwo's post above, that it is negative space he fills with projections, and that most of those projections one way or another are about projections concerning host, whom he apparently sees as some kind of inflatable stalin doll (even that seems to grant too much content to the term "socialist" as it functions above) that the "analysis" is mostly a hysterical ad hominem--ad hominem in that it is a personal attack on host, hysterical in that the post manages to collapse make-believe host into a bigger make-believe category "socialist".

hedging this nonsense round, you have a very simple and simplistic claim repeated lots of times: a "socialist" is someone who wants to take ustwo's money. because ustwo defines himself as the embodiment of all things virtuous and holy--the last term because it is pretty obvious that money is sacred---then it follows that a "socialist"--as an abstraction the only content of which that is not based in ad hominem is "someone who wants to take my money"--is simply Evil.

on what planet is this coherent?
on what planet does it address the question of redistribution of wealth, its political functions, and the problems that might be raised by an ideology that---myopically so far as i am concerned--refuses to even acknowledge that there are political functions to the resdistribution of wealth----that is in ameliorating the social consequences of tendencies to concentration in actually existing capitalism--tendencies that are self-evident if you actually bother to look at the actual history of actual capitalist systems over the past 200 years and don't replace them with empty nonsense based entirely on a simple state of affairs:

i benefit materially from the existing order--i am the embodiment of virtue--therefore an order that enables an embodiment of virtue such as myself to benefit must be in itself virtuous.

so it seems that we are not even talking about capitalism--we are not talking about an empirical system at all---we are talking the private language of conservatives for whom capitalism is a sum of projections--no different in kind from "socialists" except with the signs reversed.


try again.

most neoliberal "remedies" for problems political and ethical generated by the *radically* uneven distribution of wealth are of three types:

a. arguments for the reduction of the political effects of these consequences by rolling the state out of wealth redistribution functions. this one makes a certain degree of sense, given that "globalizing capitalism" has posed and continues to pose signficant political problems for nation-states---it reduces their purview in terms of making the rules of the game, greatly increases uncertainty as a result, and so opens the state up for deep and potentially unresolvable political crisis IF the state is exposed in the wrong way at the wrong time---the wrong way means here that the state is involved in attempting to manage social inequities in a situation that it cannot control or even make accurate predictions about; but the fact that the state is involved means that these management efforts are POLITICAL and so the consequences of failure are POLITICAL.

seen from this viewpoint, neoliberalism can be taken to acknowledge that the radically uneven distribution of wealth is, in fact, a problem--but neoliberals see a choice: either reduce political risk for the state, or continue trying to buy political consent for capitalism through redistribution of wealth--and they opt for the former.

so they deal with the problem of a *radically* uneven distribution of wealth by running away.

the argument for doing so is utilitarian--the greatest good for neoliberals is in the continuation of the existing order--the way to continue the existing order is to reduce the risk to its main institutions.

b. the problem is that this will not sell.
so there's a second mode of activity: marketing.
here there is a distinction between neoliberalism and the populist conservatism that you find in the states--the former can be seen as understanding something about the actual, empirical situation generated by globalizing capitalism and making a choice--a bad choice, but an expedient one from a certain viewpoint---while the latter is a kind of test market for the flip of neoliberalism--the ideology that collapses capitalism into a natural phenomenon.
you cant oppose a natural phenomenon.
populist conservatives and libertarians share an affection for this general viewpoint, and so share another feature as well, that of being chumps.

c. when political crisis ensues, deal with it with violence/repression.
if you believe (b) then you will have no problem with (c).
to take ustwo's post above as an index, because it is worth nothing else, the language in it reminds me, paradoxically, of that you find in the short course of the history of the soviet communist party on the topic of the "hitlero-trotskyite wrecker, the saboteur, the Insect.." the Enemy Which Must Be Exterminated so that the otherwise Perfect Order can resume its Perfection.

so neoliberalism does not pretend that the radically uneven distribution of wealth is not a problem. neoliberals see it. they just dont know what to do about it in the present context. they apply a political calculation to the matter and decide that reducing the risk to which the state is exposed will enable them to survive as holders of some degree of political power longer, so they go that way.

to sell this choice, they market a different ideology, which we all know and love because we get to see it trotted out in all its simple-minded grandeur here every fucking day.

this makes populist conservatives the simple lackies of an ideology they do not understand. they will function to legitimate state violence as a response political crisis CREATED BY the neoliberal gamble with respect to state functions.

there is more, there is always more, but i'm stopping now.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite