When I hit my 90s with wonky organs -- I'll be lucky to live as long as you! --- that's how I wanna go out, killed in a revolution. Unless we get one before, then I want to try to live to 120.
Huh. Well, it's a carbon bomb whose lethal potency heightens every single day. We fail to dismantle nucler weapons each day but still avoid WWIII and we're lucky but I'm not sure the likelihood of WWIII necessarily rises (though maybe some probability theorist can correct me on that). Every single day we continues to spew massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere we dig the hole of potential capitalogenic extinction deeper.
Nuclear war would make those environmental concerns irrelevant. The Biden administration has remained focused on provoking war with Russia via Ukraine and with China via Taiwan. Biden is double daring two of the three world nuclear superpowers to stop US effort to control the world. Sheer insanity.
Yeah kind of bizarre to call a half millennium historical-material social formation/mode of production + superstructure a "weapon of choice of our ruling class." You have elevated the rulng class over the system that produces the ruling class and that will produce new ruling classes if it is not overthrown.
Is “capitalism” a “weapon of choice” or is it an “organizing principle”? I guess it comes down to whether we make choices and control our destinies or whether we are fated by the “powers that be” to act against our own best interests.
Paul Street, your command of rhetoric is superb, even endearing. I must take exception however. The existential question you manage to avoid is “if not this, then what”. I live in France and am six years past the “legal” U.S. retirement age. The Frech have a saying « le travail c’est la santé » and I wonder if that is not just another social construct. . .
What would you do if you did not work, or use your gift for language and culture to raise consciousness?
For my part, I live in an inhabitable exception to the universal void. I am governed by the laws of physics and thermodynamics and consciously seek to avoid any ideological inflation of my self-worth.
Sorry.
Your essay was an especially good read, and I fully share your view that we are “stuck in the ditch with an archaic slaveowner’s’ constitution”.
As it used to be said, I hope you will keep on trucking.
Do we "preach revolution" because it gives our lives meaning.
Surely there must be more to life than revolution for revolution's sake.
As I watch my fellow countrymen do battle, I find myself asking whether the expression "le travail c'est la santé" is not itself a social construction inherited from a time when the failure to work (to struggle?) was a sure way to not survive.
Revolution for revolution's sake? Who advocates that? Revolution to end class rule and indeed all oppression...no small or short process. Of course there is more to life than revolution and no revolutionary who thinks otherwise can be very effective.
The present period is one where it's hard for people to imagine getting rid of capitalism. This derives from the low levels of action and organization of resistance. I'm not saying it doesn't exist.
This tends to lead those with socialist leanings towards electoral politics. Though disruption occurs in Europe, as with the recent strikes in Britain and France, the revolutionary left in its various anarchist and Marxist forms seems to barely exist.
Here in the USA this situation is reflected in the dominance of Democratic Socialists of America on the left. This leads to questions about the way small numbers of radicals can help to change the situation and change the debate.
Yes. BTW DSA in Iowa City couldn't even condemn Biden's railroad strikebreaking. Pretty hard to take it seriously. A DSA feminist group in Chicago joined an insane neo-COINTELPRO attack on the remarable groups Rise up 4 Abortion Rights because one of RU4AR's three founders is in the RCP. I just can't with them.
As far as I can determine, this is just a middle class protest to protect middle class advantages -- not a "People's uprising." Such protests periodically come and go. We've been watching Western capitalism slowly collapsing for some years now, and protecting the more fortunate is not a top concern among the masses.
it's pretty damn proletarian along with middle class. I'm not hung up on its class composition. Socialist revolutions require middle class participation. Hell, I'll take class defectors from the ruling class; movements need money. No, the main problem is that for all its miltancy it sems reformist and not revolutionary...thought revolutionaries are out there in the mix.
At 87 with a wonky heart I would make a piss poor revolutionary, but I can at least share the gospel according to Street with others. 🙏
When I hit my 90s with wonky organs -- I'll be lucky to live as long as you! --- that's how I wanna go out, killed in a revolution. Unless we get one before, then I want to try to live to 120.
Nuclear weapons are chemical weapons. Is capitalism a weapon?
Huh. Well, it's a carbon bomb whose lethal potency heightens every single day. We fail to dismantle nucler weapons each day but still avoid WWIII and we're lucky but I'm not sure the likelihood of WWIII necessarily rises (though maybe some probability theorist can correct me on that). Every single day we continues to spew massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere we dig the hole of potential capitalogenic extinction deeper.
Nuclear war would make those environmental concerns irrelevant. The Biden administration has remained focused on provoking war with Russia via Ukraine and with China via Taiwan. Biden is double daring two of the three world nuclear superpowers to stop US effort to control the world. Sheer insanity.
Here it should be added that the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine is an ecological catasrrophe in ways that I discuss in my April 3, 2023 Substack.
agreed.
Capitalism has been a leading weapon of choice of our ruling class, used both here and abroad.
Yeah kind of bizarre to call a half millennium historical-material social formation/mode of production + superstructure a "weapon of choice of our ruling class." You have elevated the rulng class over the system that produces the ruling class and that will produce new ruling classes if it is not overthrown.
Not so sure. . .
Is “capitalism” a “weapon of choice” or is it an “organizing principle”? I guess it comes down to whether we make choices and control our destinies or whether we are fated by the “powers that be” to act against our own best interests.
Paul Street, your command of rhetoric is superb, even endearing. I must take exception however. The existential question you manage to avoid is “if not this, then what”. I live in France and am six years past the “legal” U.S. retirement age. The Frech have a saying « le travail c’est la santé » and I wonder if that is not just another social construct. . .
What would you do if you did not work, or use your gift for language and culture to raise consciousness?
For my part, I live in an inhabitable exception to the universal void. I am governed by the laws of physics and thermodynamics and consciously seek to avoid any ideological inflation of my self-worth.
Sorry.
Your essay was an especially good read, and I fully share your view that we are “stuck in the ditch with an archaic slaveowner’s’ constitution”.
As it used to be said, I hope you will keep on trucking.
I'm not sure I understand the critique part of this comment....for me there is no retirement. I stop advocating revolution at death. :)
Do we "preach revolution" because it gives our lives meaning.
Surely there must be more to life than revolution for revolution's sake.
As I watch my fellow countrymen do battle, I find myself asking whether the expression "le travail c'est la santé" is not itself a social construction inherited from a time when the failure to work (to struggle?) was a sure way to not survive.
Revolution for revolution's sake? Who advocates that? Revolution to end class rule and indeed all oppression...no small or short process. Of course there is more to life than revolution and no revolutionary who thinks otherwise can be very effective.
The present period is one where it's hard for people to imagine getting rid of capitalism. This derives from the low levels of action and organization of resistance. I'm not saying it doesn't exist.
This tends to lead those with socialist leanings towards electoral politics. Though disruption occurs in Europe, as with the recent strikes in Britain and France, the revolutionary left in its various anarchist and Marxist forms seems to barely exist.
Here in the USA this situation is reflected in the dominance of Democratic Socialists of America on the left. This leads to questions about the way small numbers of radicals can help to change the situation and change the debate.
Yes. BTW DSA in Iowa City couldn't even condemn Biden's railroad strikebreaking. Pretty hard to take it seriously. A DSA feminist group in Chicago joined an insane neo-COINTELPRO attack on the remarable groups Rise up 4 Abortion Rights because one of RU4AR's three founders is in the RCP. I just can't with them.
As far as I can determine, this is just a middle class protest to protect middle class advantages -- not a "People's uprising." Such protests periodically come and go. We've been watching Western capitalism slowly collapsing for some years now, and protecting the more fortunate is not a top concern among the masses.
it's pretty damn proletarian along with middle class. I'm not hung up on its class composition. Socialist revolutions require middle class participation. Hell, I'll take class defectors from the ruling class; movements need money. No, the main problem is that for all its miltancy it sems reformist and not revolutionary...thought revolutionaries are out there in the mix.
How abour one year. Would that resolve the issue.
Liberty egalite fraternite
If it were only so