I enjoyed this article, and thought it was very thought-provoking. I have two questions, though if you only respond to one, I'm more curious about the first.
My first question is about what workers siding with big capitalists over the gentry, the sort of exurban/small city bourgeoisie, actually looks like. I came into Marxism and thoughts about politically and economically building socialism via being engaged with community organizing. Saying "side with Amazon" is a tough sell. What, in vague terms, would that look like, policy-wise or programmatically?
My second question surrounds your saying that Marx's immiseration thesis has been disproven. Doesn't it hold on an international scale? Looking just at US workers, it may not completely hold, but when looking at working-class (or, class-less, "toiling peoples") as an international group, would it not be accurate to say that immiseration has continued if not increased, via imperialism and colonialism, the first of which you do mention? Furthermore, I'd argue that there are many non-economic, humanistic factors which would attest to immiseration even in the imperial core. For example, the poverty of our social, mental, and cultural lives. This humanistic element /is/ recognized by Marx, as he distinguishes his materialism from Feuerbach. But I recognize that this perspective is not one that you often argue from.
This coalition of big business and the working class is essentially what defined the "social democratic" compromise of the 40s through 60s, with big business and unions putting their interests aside in favor of capital as an abstract force, leading to intense investment in fixed capital.
As for the immiseration thesis, I would definitely say things used to be a lot worse. We can see how economic development in China and around the world has decreased poverty. As much as I dislike Piketty his work is actually relevant here and the famous elephant graph shows how much income on the low side of the distribution has grown. As for humanistic factors I'd agree that atomization is one consistent trend in capitalism which makes us more miserable, but unlike immiseration that actually makes revolution less likely. I talk about these tendencies here: https://palladiummag.com/2020/03/09/do-you-feel-lonely/
He's very wrong when he dismisses the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and does not have anything more than the most shallow understanding of Marx despite naming his book after Capital.
I enjoyed this article, and thought it was very thought-provoking. I have two questions, though if you only respond to one, I'm more curious about the first.
My first question is about what workers siding with big capitalists over the gentry, the sort of exurban/small city bourgeoisie, actually looks like. I came into Marxism and thoughts about politically and economically building socialism via being engaged with community organizing. Saying "side with Amazon" is a tough sell. What, in vague terms, would that look like, policy-wise or programmatically?
My second question surrounds your saying that Marx's immiseration thesis has been disproven. Doesn't it hold on an international scale? Looking just at US workers, it may not completely hold, but when looking at working-class (or, class-less, "toiling peoples") as an international group, would it not be accurate to say that immiseration has continued if not increased, via imperialism and colonialism, the first of which you do mention? Furthermore, I'd argue that there are many non-economic, humanistic factors which would attest to immiseration even in the imperial core. For example, the poverty of our social, mental, and cultural lives. This humanistic element /is/ recognized by Marx, as he distinguishes his materialism from Feuerbach. But I recognize that this perspective is not one that you often argue from.
This coalition of big business and the working class is essentially what defined the "social democratic" compromise of the 40s through 60s, with big business and unions putting their interests aside in favor of capital as an abstract force, leading to intense investment in fixed capital.
I talk about that a bit more here: https://palladiummag.com/2020/12/21/small-business-class-war-could-finish-off-american-dynamism/
As for the immiseration thesis, I would definitely say things used to be a lot worse. We can see how economic development in China and around the world has decreased poverty. As much as I dislike Piketty his work is actually relevant here and the famous elephant graph shows how much income on the low side of the distribution has grown. As for humanistic factors I'd agree that atomization is one consistent trend in capitalism which makes us more miserable, but unlike immiseration that actually makes revolution less likely. I talk about these tendencies here: https://palladiummag.com/2020/03/09/do-you-feel-lonely/
Thank you for the further reading! I'm curious: why don't you like Picketty? Capital in the 21st Century has been on my reading list.
He's very wrong when he dismisses the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and does not have anything more than the most shallow understanding of Marx despite naming his book after Capital.
Interesting. Thanks for your patience and explanation! I'm really enjoying getting into your stuff, as well as Cockshott's!