In July 2020, Lightfoot directed that a statue of Christopher Columbus be removed from Grant Park. After the murder of George Floyd, protesters had attempted to knock over the statue and had engaged in a violent confrontation with police.
In March 2022, attorney George Smyrniotis sued Lightfoot for defamation. The lawsuit claimed that Italian-Americans were unhappy with the removal of the Columbus statue, and that a tentative deal had been struck to assuage their concerns by allowing the statue to be displayed in an annual Columbus Day parade. According to Smyrniotis, Lightfoot—angry over the proposal regarding the display of the statue—suggested during a Zoom call that she would revoke the parade permit if the statue were to be displayed. Smyrniotis added that Lightfoot had questioned his competence, berated him and others with obscenities, and asserted that she had "'the biggest d*** in Chicago'". For her part, Lightfoot contended that the lawsuit's "'deeply offensive and ridiculous claims'" were "'wholly lacking in merit'".
I really recommend reading Capital, the theory comm has a book club on it and it's super helpful.
it's looking like I really should, not only to understand the world but also to understand the Marxist perspective on it more deeply, since I call myself one
and by increasing the degree of exploitation of labor- longer days, more intense work, etc. as well as lowering wages, but that can only go so far
makes me wonder what will happen when the repression of the global south begins to crack
It's hard to tell if this means that some of them escaped, or just that the information hasn't been released
*sounds like some got away?
A federal law enforcement source told CBS News Saturday that local police arrested eight people. The official said some of those apprehended were wearing body armor. The source told CBS News that early reports indicate that more than a dozen masked individuals dressed in black arrived at the Prairieland ICE detention facility late Friday night and vandalized vehicles and security cameras in the parking lot.
By the way, I always worry that I seem argumentative when I ask a lot of questions, but to be clear, that's not the intent! I'm just laying out my current mental picture so people can see where it's wrong and help me update it. I had some existing notions in my head, but they didn't all seem to add up.
That still falls under the overarching cost structure that firms need to lower
of course, but it'll always cost something, right? Which means that, if you have a region in which you're the only supplier, and your competitors are outside that region, everyone in your region basically has to pay a transport tariff if they want to buy from your competitors. That "tariff" gives you more wiggle room to charge above cost.
I don't know how important this is though. I assume it matters for unprocessed raw goods, like minerals or crops, where everyone's product is basically identical, and production is often constrained to certain locations where mines or farms can be developed. I assume it also matters somewhat for brick and mortar stores — a consumer isn't going to drive to the next town just to pay slightly less for bread. But I don't know how big a chunk of profit can be blamed on this. Is it more of a footnote or is it a big deal?
Capitalists stop investing, begin layoffs and a depression ensues, no room for profits and growth means no investments
Labor is unique in that a laborer can produce more value than it costs to reproduce (feed, clothe, shelter) them.
ahhhhh, okay.
Does "the cost of reproducing labor" strictly refer to the cost to keep workers alive, or is it more the cost to sustain their expected standard of living?
Although employers pay more than the bare minimum to keep us alive, because we have a little more leverage than that, it's true that they pay the bare minimum they can get away with, as determined by their leverage as employers and our leverage as workers who may or may not be organized. And that minimum is not related to the value produced by our labor — for example, if one low-skill worker operating a machine can spit out $1 million worth of goods in a day, that value does not give the worker any leverage to ask for more pay, because the worker is still replaceable and does not have very much leverage.
For your last point, I think most Marxists would avoid this type of interpretation as it accepts the bourgeoisie's own ideology of individual property rights.
When I say "bargain" I don't mean a civilized transaction. I get the systemic violence. But isn't it a kind of bargain? Isn't that the whole point of a union? The individual worker has little or no bargaining power, because we are easily replaced, which is why we band together and threaten to withhold labor as a group.
In the early days of industrial wage labor, we had no unions or legislation to protect us. Our wages were individual bargains — and yes, our main leverage was that that we needed to stay alive to work. Our main threat was, "If you pay me any less, or work me any harder, I may starve and be too weak to work." That continued until the labor movement had sufficiently demonstrated the power of organized labor, forcing capital to grant concessions to stop us from radicalizing and militarizing any further.
But capitalists also depend on bargaining power — they just have a lot more of it than we do. If tomorrow the cops and the feds suddenly stopped protecting private property, and announced, "workers, you now have the choice to commandeer your boss's business and run it however you want," profits would vanish. The owners would no longer have the leverage to pay themselves millions of dollars a year, because we would just take over the business and keep the profits ourselves.
My apologies for talking too much. I'm very long winded. Again, I can give some examples for your first question if still interested!
Not at all! Thanks for taking the time. And yeah, I am interested.
Yeah, I guess "perfect" and "imperfect" are probably not how I should talk about this lol
By "imperfect competition" I just meant that the lowest production cost doesn't always win among similar products, due to factors like
transport costs — either moving product to consumer, or consumer to product — which can give companies a local pricing advantage over more distant competition
consumer inability to compare products in a consistent way — whether comparing use-values of products at a given price, or comparing prices at a given use-value
marketing, branding, packaging, and other appeals to consumer psychology
Profits comes from firms picking the right combinations at the right time from these options: Lower costs, technical development, undercutting, patent hoarding, scalability, and government patronage but lower costs is typically the primary, go-to solution
So everyone's racing to automate, exploit, and cut corners ahead of the others. What happens when they run out of room? Do they just start buying each other?
This makes sense, but then what determines the profits of the regulating capitals?
Maybe I'm asking the wrong question, but: assuming every firm faces similar costs (within a short, representative time window, meaning no one has just come up with some huge cost-saving mechanism that has yet to propagate), and assuming profit is therefore a question of raising prices more than lowering costs, is profit mainly limited by the wiggle room of imperfect competition (e.g., with perfect competition there would be 0 profit), or by consumer willingness to pay within that window, or does it depend on the industry—or is my framing wrong, and/or I'm asking the wrong question entirely? Am I looking in the right direction or missing the point?
The dynamic aspect makes sense, but I'm confused by the static part. Naively, someone might interpret the phrase "prices that allow an economy to reproduce itself" to mean "prices that cover production cost plus owner spending habits," because then everyone in the economy breaks even in their expenses and earnings over time, and the economy remains static. But that naive interpretation must be wrong because, mathematically, the problem would have no unique solution—there are infinitely many ways to assign arbitrary wages and prices in an economy such that everyone breaks even—so we don't learn anything that way. But, I'm not sure how else to interpret the phrase.
Possibly a non sequitur: is it Marxist to view profit as a consequence of bargaining power? I.e., the capitalist owns the means of production, which the workers need access to, so they essentially pay the capitalist a toll to use the equipment? The capitalist can withhold access to the means of production, and the worker can in theory withhold labor.
My understanding is that, in the LTV, labor input determines the equilibrium about which prices fluctuate, while supply and demand dynamics drive the fluctuation.
But those fluctuations aren’t net-zero; companies profit on average. Why? I assume it’s some combination of 1) imperfect competition and 2) supply and demand, but I don’t know the details because I’m a huge ignoramus about economics. So I’m curious how Marxist theorists talk about this.
I can imagine Alligator Alcatraz offering to release prisoners, or offer them a less dangerous deportation destination, if they “volunteer” to test neuralink, with little or no informed consent about what that entails
What really fucks me up about the New York Times is their shining reputation and their public affect—as if they genuinely see themselves as good people.
For anyone wondering:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Lightfoot#Christopher_Columbus_statue