posted on December 24, 2022 08:01 PM by
u/Myrdradek
34
u/pusillanimouslist71 pointsat 1671912609.000000
Jacobin is very frustrating in that they’ll alternate between
prescient criticisms of the material reality of American politics, and
absolutely brain dead credulity about far right nonsense. IIRC they were
trying to claim that the trucker convoy was working class, presumably
because trucks were involved. Stupid.
I'd suggest listening to It Could Happen Here's episodes on the paper that *Jacobin* board member Adaner Usmani coauthored about how we should hire 500,000 more cops using the most bugfuck pseudo-blackpiller reasoning to come to that conclusion. It really puts that magazine's whole deal into perspective in a frankly unnerving way. If you're really a turbo nerd, I'd also suggest looking into Ralph Milliband and his debates with Nicos Poulantzas; the origins of the *Jacobin* crowd's hostility to critiques of the state itself and various idiosyncrasies more generally make a bit more sense when you become aware of the influence Milliband's instrumentalism and rejection of structural analysis had on them, although their particular interpretation of his ideas is… decidedly less revolutionary than the original article, let's say.
I have always found Jacobin reminiscent of the socialist newspapers of the '80s. it has that insincere evangelist vibe. even when I agree with it, there's something suspect about the tone.
The owner clearly being a fuckwit who gleefully union busted his own left wing news paper is a relevant point here. Of course it feels insincere, we have real world evidence that the owner doesn’t actually hold any of these principles himself.
> IIRC they were trying to claim that the trucker convoy was working class, presumably because trucks were involved. Stupid.
Didn't Richard Wolff defend it as a working class movement too, or am I mixing up my popular media lefties?
They were largely not actual truckers, but guys who own trucking companies. It's a whole thing. On top of that, it was organised by dudes with ties to BC and Alberta separatist organisations as well as neo-Nazi groups, which is particularly rich when an inordinate number of Canadian truckers are South Asian immigrants.
A bit like the farmers protests in .nl then. (Some of the protests were actually being organized by pelt farmers, a way of farming which were made illegal in either 2021 (and most of their farms were killed due to covid infections already (odd how that kept happening to all the pelt farmers who already knew their business was coming at an end, wonder how much gov money they got for the covid 'measures' (It was a lot))).
E: research apparantly says the most likely subject which caused the infections is not the cats or antifa, but polish migrant workers working part time during the stressful periods in the various fur farms. (Fun fact, this took place during the heaviest "lockdown" period). Petite bourgeoisie
I see you’re falling into the same trap of vibes based analysis. Working with a truck doesn’t automatically make you working class, especially if you **own the fucking truck**, as was largely the case here. As is mentioned this makes them petite bourgeoise, in roughly the same class as a car dealership owner.
This class has been the vanguard of reactionary politics for a century, genuinely not sure why people are still surprised by this.
If they’d just been employees who drove trucks, they’d undoubtedly be working class. But then again employees aren’t allowed to just take their trucks and go awol for a few days and a few hundred miles, now are they?
Yeah, this basically. I'm not a fan of the hardline Marxist framing that sees everyone who owns a small business as inherently "bourgeois" in the classical sense—there is a reason that even Marx and Engels acknowledged that independent artisans are functionally in their own category in the same way that the traditional rural peasantry isn't quite the same thing as the urban industrial proletariat—but in this case you have the people who own these companies and make what one could comfortably describe as an upper-middle-class living, generally off of the labour of a small crew of employees in far more tenuous circumstances, essentially cosplaying as those employees for clout. And traditionally, that lower echelon of the bourgeoisie and management classes has been the engine of reactionary movements, particularly those which take an economic "third position" which frames itself as at once "anti-élite" (even anti-capitalist) and anti-communist. Y'know, the Fash Zone.
> The working class is pretty reactionary if you bother to take a look
It’s important to me that you understand that I’m not banning you because I’m an unreconstructed walking stereotype from the 19th century who thinks the working class is inherently revolutionary and only needs to have their consciousness raised by me, the light of communism itself
I’m not even banning you for saying that’s a good or bad thing, because I don’t know which way you fall on that
I’m banning you because “the working class [all of it], is pretty reactionary [whatever that means], [trust me I’ve looked at them]” is an unutterably stupid take
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/truck-drivers-companies-ottawa-convoy-protest-1.6343705
>"Many of the transport trucks that started coming into Ottawa's core are owner-operated"
>"The truck that was found in Ottawa had Sharp's logo, but does not belong to Sharp. That is an independently owned truck"
>"the drivers were subcontractors, not employees"
> "The trucks that are in Ottawa, they're owner-operators"
Most (not all) of the truckers are self-employed contractors, not employees. "Petite bourgeoisie" does not mean rich, it means you're not proletariat - not an employee working for a wage.
I guess you can claim they're "working class" because they need to work to pay their bills, but the term is not well-defined and arguably not useful for economic and political analysis.
Well, yes, many of the truck drivers (not all right) are contractors with their own trucks, kind of like uber drivers, right? Do you think the battles of gig-economy workers for fair treatment are qualitatively different from the battles of the traditional working class? I mean, we don't live in the 19th century anymore, so you can't demand exact Marxist correspondence from 19th century factory workers to 21st-century labour.
I mean, we're not. The guys attending these convoys and raising hell are financially in a very different category from Über drivers or for that matter from most other truckers working in Canada. Do reactionary working-class people exist? Of course, having shitty views isn't purely a question of material conditions and class interests. But a lot of the time they are heavily correlated in really stark ways, and this is a good example.
> kind of like uber drivers, right?
No, I think gig workers at Doordash and Uber are workers being abused by a misuse of contractor law, which is generally what the battles for fair treatment focus on.
I mean, I agree with your view of the term working classes utility but clearly when these arguments come up it's from people with some Marxist attachment to the term such that they find it hard to critique any working class reactionaries (of trucks specifically I know nothing, but it's only due to the above theres much cause to debate their technical class classification).
Well, it makes sense to me that these arguments come up most often about groups of worker-owners, since they have a mix of bougie and worker interests. They're a living edge case.
https://www.thaddeusrussell.com/podcast/30
Not much he got himself partially cancelled when he did a pod with a fellow philosopher who justified pedophilia
Reading more into Kershnar, it feels like his whole remit is being an aggressively contrarian irritant who uses what are essentially extreme right-libertarian talking points as a way to get people to "reflect on their core values" or whatever the fuck, although the degree to which this is a smokescreen for actually believing "sex with children and slave contracts are good, actually" is honestly a little more ambiguous than it is with, say, Walter Block. So of course a "marketplace of ideas" neoreactionary like Russell would love him.
Ahhh Jim, good old Jim, radicalised by prison sex,.
"Jim don't beat up your girlfriend."
"Well, why the hell not?"
"Well Jim, this little circle is your anal sphincter before gaol..."
Sorelian Leftism. They have a frothing, deeply personal contempt for
institutions of liberal democracy that ends up being barely any
different from Moldbugism so they’re naturally aligned. Freddie DeBoer
is basically doing the same schtick which is why he’s Scott Alexander’s
favorite “leftist.”
>Freddie DeBoer is basically doing the same schtick which is why he's Scott Alexander's favorite "leftist."
Freddie deBoer is also their token leftist because he advocates hereditarian IQ pseudoscience.
Burgis did a panel with Yarvin at a “freethinker” conference put on
by Thaddeus Russell in which he was in no way shape or form “friendly”
to Yarvin, he has been consistently opposed to Moldbug for many years
now. This is one of the things Burgis does, which is to reach out to
right wingers to debate them in their spaces, his attitude
being “I’m not platforming them, they’re platforming me”.
You’re certainly welcome to have whatever disagreements with Burgis that
you want to, but please don’t misrepresent his attitude towards and
dealings with scum like Curtis Yarvin.
He directly financially benefits from his participation in their spaces and seems to actively avoid acknowledging that Yarvin is not simply another right-wing pundit, but a pretty transparent white supremacist and essentially a neofascist, perhaps because he is buddy-buddy with Russell who is an avowed fan of Yarvin's work. This seems if nothing else like a massive conflict of interest verging on journalistic misconduct.
Jacobin is very frustrating in that they’ll alternate between prescient criticisms of the material reality of American politics, and absolutely brain dead credulity about far right nonsense. IIRC they were trying to claim that the trucker convoy was working class, presumably because trucks were involved. Stupid.
“VIP dinner and lounge with Curtis, Ben, Batya, and Thad” nightmare blunt rotation
Don’t threaten me with a terrible time.
Thaddeus has been palling with the new right since 2016, Stefan, James, Jordan, the works. He is the rights’ fav post modernist.
Yeah Ben Burgis is a bit weird.
Sorelian Leftism. They have a frothing, deeply personal contempt for institutions of liberal democracy that ends up being barely any different from Moldbugism so they’re naturally aligned. Freddie DeBoer is basically doing the same schtick which is why he’s Scott Alexander’s favorite “leftist.”
https://johnganz.substack.com/p/gramscians-vs-sorelians-c97857e67f35
Burgis did a panel with Yarvin at a “freethinker” conference put on by Thaddeus Russell in which he was in no way shape or form “friendly” to Yarvin, he has been consistently opposed to Moldbug for many years now. This is one of the things Burgis does, which is to reach out to right wingers to debate them in their spaces, his attitude being “I’m not platforming them, they’re platforming me”. You’re certainly welcome to have whatever disagreements with Burgis that you want to, but please don’t misrepresent his attitude towards and dealings with scum like Curtis Yarvin.
Didn’t they kiss on the mouth after that debate they did?
Nah Burgis is on the attack. He does treat the human being kindly while debating their reactionary philosophy.
But his insistence that Thaddeus Russel is “good faith” or somehow meaningfully different is stunning though, the dude has James Lindsay on.