RedWizard

You don't understand you fucking ultra, he's not steering people back into the Democratic Party he's telling you to build a progressive insurgency WITHIN the Democrat Party. It's ENTIRELY different!! /s

unfairly hostile view of his work

This is defiantly not true. I'm very well aware of his activities in that time frame I watched him nearly weekly. I am a highly critical supporter of his work. One pattern that is clear is that while Hasan dogs on Democrats regularly his only recourse for you the viewer is to put pressure on the Democrats.

This video, which I can't tell if you've watched or not is him explaining his position with the party and his goals with engaging with the party. He's explained this before like in his GQ article. He is self aware that his efforts here are fruitless or are so far fruitless. Yet he makes it very clear that "if there was a 3rd party worth engaging with" he would do that instead. This is a total fallacy however, stuck in this chicken or egg situation where Hasan isn't interested in 3rd parties until just the right one comes along, or until someone else builds it. That's the implication here by his own words.

His advocacy remains untouched by this critique I have. In this space he is by far the leader and the flag bearer for Palestine advocacy. Though the reaction to his advocacy I would have hoped would clue him in to this idea that he's spinning his wheels. Do people like AOC or Sanders or the squad really bring him a platform? Wouldn't he be mostly talking to like minded liberals in those circles? What is the delta between a Sanders supporter and Hasan in terms of their ideas really? Palestine obviously. On all other issues though, roughly the same. Again, I can't say enough about the things I love about Hasan's work. His willingness to put his body out there is heroic. His commitment to interviewing the marginalized and exploited is commendable. His willingness to put his money where his mouth is and fund labor movements, excellent.

His last big push electorally was for Zohran Mamdani. One of the things that he continues to point to regarding Zohran is that his ideas won. Yet he hasn't replaced the billionaire head of police Jessica S. Tisch and likely won't, he's hired a liberal zionist as the Office to Combat Antisemitism, and is endorsing Brad Lander over Alexa Aviles. Now that last point is pragmatic I'll say, but you can't help but look at it and think it must sting for Aviles.

We have to let Zohran cook a little still. But these feel like bad omens. How long until he's been made into origami like the rest? Has anyone asked him about Maduro? And listen, I'll be the first to tell you I was supporting Zohran to win. I would again. The thing is however, these developments are not surprising. Universal Child Care is still a great step forward.

We are still left with the question of what happens with the 100,000 people Zohran mobilized. How many of them did Hasan steer there? This isn't the worst place to start you political life, however, you are now hitched to a Democratic mayor. What I'm saying is that I don't expect Zohran to continue to agitate against the system of capitalism like he once did. That's 100,000 people who didn't get funneled into a working class party that would continue their political education and activities beyond the campaign. Sure, that group formed their own entity in an attempt to try and hold his feet to the fire but, I don't have high hopes for that.

Some gains will be made for NYC but just like sewer socialist before him, the policies of Mamdani will be vulnerable to the next candidate who takes his place. Considering how much Mamdani is shaped by the mayoral role, as opposed to how much HE can shape the mayoral role, its hard to say what his legacy will really be.

This leads me back to my central issue. Why spend our time and energy on a party that is so capable of imposing itself on those who dare enter its ranks? What good does it do if we drip feed in these progressives?

There won't be a working class party worth engaging with if we don't engage with working class parties. The Democrats are not a working class party. You can not reform them into one. They have to much inertia to allow that to happen.

It sounds like to me you're equating building a working class party with accelerationism. Accelerationism is a term I don't fully agree with as a cohesive framework or ideology. Are the Greens accelerationists in the American context? Are Green voters Accelerationists by extension?

I know that's not what you're saying. It just sounds that way. Accelerationism is the fools gold of ideological perspectives. It ignores the interconnected realities of monopoly capital and imperialism. You can only sharpen the contradictions so far before forces outside your sphere of influence make corrective measures. For example, the Chinese economy can't collapse for the same reason why the American economy can't. They are deeply interconnected. The worst you get is a slow controlled descent, a managed decline. Look at how often Trump dipped the stock market with rhetoric and tariffs only to back off and now effectively "stabilize" with much effort from China and our own capitalists.

So I'm not willing to accept this idea that you engage with the Democrats or you don't and accept your fate as an "accelerationist". The PSL is right there, the run candidates, they're running more this year then I've seen. Why pretend you can move a mountain? When instead you could be helping build one? By his own admission he's been doing this for 12 years. He's seen Sanders betrayed. AOC become the AOCapitulator running cover for Zionists and the rule of law. The Democrats aid a genocide and turn to the right, fail to do anything while aiding fascists in terrorizing and killing people within it's own borders. All this and he still thinks entryism is the right path?

If that's not delusion I guess I don't know what is.

I don't know that he has ever admitted to being an ML. He quotes Lenin's What Is To Be Done selectively, and I feel deceptively, to support this tactic of entryism which has clearly not born fruit. Democrat support is dropping along side Trump support. It's clear, and has been clear, by his own analysis, for years, that the Dems are not the opposition party. Because of the way the DNC is structured party loyalists and legacy Democrats have outsized power. If there was ever a time to challenge their position now seems like the moment leading into midterms. Not hitching your wagon for another ride, but actually building a working class party. The pressure can't come from within, that's their home turf, they control all the forces in that space. The pressure has to come from outside. They have to be forced to respond to actual political pressure. I don't think he's going to get what he wants out of this. Preserving capitalism is more important then winning elections.

I mean, he has a Political Science degree. He's clearly well-read. I think his perspective is warped by his proximity to the Democrats, and I think that's intentional on their part. When you look at how often they embrace progressives and then smother them into the fold, dull their teeth, and blunt their edges, while retaining their radical language, it's a clear pattern and tactic they adhere to. The entire western-leftist project is predicated on stifling revolutionary sentiment, building frameworks of critique that are unactionable, or whose actions steer you back into the neoliberal system. The Democrats, to me, appear to be doing exactly that. They are the final dam holding back leftist progress in this country. They are the revolutionary lightning rod, grounding revolutionary sentiment into the earth and preventing it from doing any actual damage. The Democrats need someone like Hasan as an unwitting Shepherd, leading the flock back into the fence. If they stopped allowing him to engage with candidates, what would be left for Hasan to do? If the Democrats purged current and former DSA members from their ranks, and bared future DSA members from their ranks, what would be left for the DSA to do?

I was so proud of our large son for signing up for the Flotilla, and he goes and says this.

you are welcome to use this as the icon:

this rules!

I appreciate it! It's the kind of thing that of you don't use it you'll forget it.

Damn we doing forum sigs now like its 2005 or something?

What's your relationship to the child?

Wait this is about that feature that cuts the ICE engine when you come to a complete stop and starts it again when you push the gas?

They'll move to redbook out of spite and to flex how Chinamaxxed they are.

One could make the argument that this post is merely a ripple off the larger splash that was made when it popped off on Twitter and Reddit. Given the climate, mood, and solidarity being shown in that video, I'd wonder if the kid who recorded and posted the video might have more to worry about.

Hank: It feels like the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was tying everything to the stock market. Let's have everyone's retirements and the entire economy be based on 10% of wealthy people feeling like they can spend. If asset prices drop substantially, people get conservative, and that becomes a reinforcing loop.

"The antithesis, use-value and value; the contradictions that private labour is bound to manifest itself as direct social labour... all these antitheses and contradictions, which are immanent in commodities, assert themselves, and develop their modes of motion, in the antithetical phases of the metamorphosis of a commodity. These modes therefore imply the possibility, and no more than the possibility, of crises. The conversion of this mere possibility into a reality is the result of a long series of relations, that, from our present standpoint of simple circulation, have as yet no existence." (Capital, Vol. I, p. 77)

Kyla: That's a big worry. A lot of people's wealth doesn't come from labor income anymore; it comes from owning stocks or a home. The Federal Reserve's wealth breakdown shows that for the top 10%, most of their wealth is from things they own, not from a job. The "wealth effect" is important for maintaining the economy. If the stock market corrects, there's a concern people would stop spending, causing a big contraction.

"The circulation of the commodity-capital includes the circulation of surplus-value, hence also the purchases and sales by which the capitalist effect their individual consumption, the consumption of surplus-value." (Capital, Vol. II, p. 216)

If the "wealth" (the money-form of surplus-value) disappears, the capitalist's ability to consume, and thus the demand for articles of consumption, contracts.

The thing that they miss, for those playing along at home, is that they confuse "real wealth" with "Fictitious Capital". The "wealth" bound by the stock market is not real, material wealth (factories, food, machinery). It is what Marx would call "fictitious capital", claims on future surplus value.

"Of what is called accumulated wealth, by far the greater part is only nominal, consisting not of any real things, ships, houses, cottons, improvements on land, but of mere demands on the future annual productive powers of society..." (Capital, Vol. II, p. 198, quoting William Thompson)

For only a moment in his rant does Hank mention that maybe some things shouldn't be handled by a market, and that is almost an admission that markets are not a well functioning device for all things. Yet, even though he can acknowledge this reality, he can't seem to see the greater disorder within the mode of production. Production itself is not organized to meet social needs, but, it must be organized around something!

"The entire process of reproduction may be in a flourishing condition, and yet a large part of the commodities may have entered into consumption only apparently, while in reality they may still remain unsold in the hands of dealers... Now one stream of commodities follows another, and finally it is discovered that the previous streams had been absorbed only apparently by consumption... Then a crisis breaks out. It becomes visible not in the direct decrease of consumer demand, the demand for individual consumption, but in the decrease of exchanges of capital for capital, of the reproductive process of capital." (Capital, Vol. II, p. 43)

Like everything with Marx, things are standing on their head. It is not primarily a crisis of consumer demand, but a crisis of capital exchanging with capital. It begins when the reproduction process is interrupted, which then affects everything else, including the "feelings" of the wealthy.

Hank says the loop happens because "people get conservative." Kyla mentions the "concern people would stop spending." Marx would argue this is backwards. It is not collective psychology that drives the crisis, but the objective laws of capital that impose themselves on people's consciousness. The "conservative" feeling is the subjective reflection of the objective impossibility to sell. The capitalist doesn't feel like not spending; they cannot spend because the money has not returned. As Marx explains, the basic circuit:

"M-C ... P ... C'-M'... The realisation of the commodity's price, or of its ideal value-form, is therefore at the same time the realisation of the ideal use-value of money; the conversion of a commodity into money, is the simultaneous conversion of money into a commodity." (Capital, Vol. I, p. 74)

If the final sale (C'-M') fails, the capitalist cannot convert money into a new commodity (M-C) to continue production. The "feeling" of being conservative is just the surface manifestation of this objective rupture in the metabolic process of capital.

And we should remember here. AI is at the end of this process, not the beginning of this process. AI is the product, the commodity being sold. The data centers, racks, cooling systems, power plants, microchips, transistors, you name it, every little detail that goes into spinning up new data centers is where the M-C P C'-M' is. M-C is building the components for the Datacenters, P is the production process of building the data centers C'-M' is the production of the AI systems, the training, and the web services and tools provided to consumers, and the rents they charge for you to use it.

There is a second wave of this crisis though, which they have not even broached, which is, what happens when you finally build all these data centers? What happens when you've spent all this money and converted it in to fixed capital, displaced all this variable capital, and created nothing in return? We know that these models are not as useful as their makers claim they are, that they are not as useful or create the kind of productivity gains they say they do. This situation isn't like having a lot full of cars you didn't sell. Cars, at least, have some kind of function as they exist, even if they sit in the lot. Data centers though? These are highly specialized number crunching warehouses.

"A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is useless. In addition, it falls a prey to the destructive influence of natural forces. Iron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit, is cotton wasted." (Capital, Vol. I, p. 130)

So who can say. We might be able to pick their rotting bloated carcass clean of memory chips in the near future.

"As someone really involved in running a couple of small organizations I WISH I COULD JUST CALL UP MY REPRESENTATIVES AND EXPLOIT THE LEVERS OF THE STATE TO MY OWN BENEFIT"

DnD show

Um, Actually, It's a modified version of Kid's On Bikes.