Tag: industrialization

Why capitalism now needs ‘lockdowns’ (social enclosure/segregation) and ‘medical’ tyranny

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Because capitalism is working towards its own abolition by replacing commodity-producing labour with automated machines, capital’s profitability is increasingly dependent on low wages, high unemployment, public debt, state purchases, the centralisation of wealth, and — frankly — depopulation.

Why capitalism now needs ‘lockdowns’ (social enclosure/segregation) and ‘medical’ tyranny

China, the U.S., and the Idea of National Competition

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

China, the U.S., and the Idea of National Competition

What appears to be meant in the U.S. by ‘competing with China’ can be inferred by the rising Pentagon budget, by the failure to raise the minimum wage, by hiring private corporations to get around restrictions on domestic spying, and by appointing a high-level administrator to shut-down inconvenient political opinions on the internet. The political parties are now balkanized to the point where their adherents trust members of their own party, but not the other. What this likely means is an iterative process between ‘wealth of nations’ style economic nationalism and neoliberal internationalism where the only constant is the consolidation of political control by oligarchs and corporate executives. I believe that Italians in the 1920s and 1930s had a name for this type of governance.

Marx on technology

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The longest chapter in Capital is the fifteenth, on “Machinery and Large-Scale Industry.” At almost 150-pages, it’s really a book in itself, a staggeringly dense and expansive discussion that could easily standalone—not only as a brilliant exegesis of capitalist machinery, but also as a sweeping social history of technology. At its broadest reach, the chapter is a vivid demonstration of historical materialism in action, of Marx’s method put through its dialectical paces. As ever with Marx, his footnotes aren’t to be passed over glibly: they’re worth studying, pondering over for the nuggets of insight they contain.

Marx on technology