Doubledee

Just a little plug for the c/theory reading group, you might be able to find some helpful pointers there. We've talked about this quite a bit in the last couple weeks.

Really feels like we're at the heart of Marx's disagreement with liberal economics here in these chapters. He's just listing things I learned in economics classes as examples of stupid things people say.

I took it to be more abstract, like a crisis could be anything that disrupts the continuous circulation of commodities. Could be on the front end, if capitalists turn to misers because market conditions worry them, or could be a sudden change in the socially necessary labor needed to produce something destroying the price etc. Once the continuous circulation is necessary to distribute the things society requires to reproduce itself any shock to the system could cause the cycle to break down.

But that could be unwarranted. He just kinda hints that we have the ingredients for a crisis now if I remember right.

Yeah breezed through it in one sitting, which has not been the case thus far. Grateful for the reprieve honestly.

I don't think Trump's need for loyal minions could stomach Nikki after all she's said about him.

And I suppose Ron also doesn't help Don in Florida, it'd be a waste of a pick.

Maybe he can get transportation secretary.

Man if Meatball pulls this out enough to stall Haley and he might get a VP nomination on that alone. I would love nothing more than for the neocon old establishment to blow all their resources on alternatives to Trump with no legs.

Yeah even if he has a point he's expressing it in absolutely the worst terms. At core I agree, these metaphors are bad because when you have to explain them to people you end up also making racism rational, when it fundamentally isn't. I think maybe Jack Saint talked about this in the context of Zootopia, where the racism directed at predators is based on a history of violence and actual concrete biological distinctions that make one group objectively more capable of hurting people than another.

But to express that criticism as "I hope we can do a genocide on these people" is the most way to say it.

I think there's a couple things worth keeping in mind:

At this point every economy he was aware of worked this way, it would be difficult to anticipate the kinds of insane financial developments that have happened since. So it's possible that we won't get there because the conditions of the time weren't sufficient to get to an analysis of a phenomenon like this.

I don't have the book in front of me so I'm not sure if it's part of this week's reading but he gets into credit money in this chapter, which I think more superficially resembles fiat currency, although I think the discussion of silver and copper already hints at the possibility that a government's fiat can force the market to separate money from embodied value in gold. I think this might suggest that it's possible through enough force to enforce a symbolic currency, although that might break the theory in a way I don't understand so I stand ready to be corrected.

I'm taking this from snippets of the Capital w/ Comrades pod and Graeber's Debt book so grain of salt with my syncretism, but I have this half finished idea in my head that the dollar could be like, a commodity made out of state violence and its capacity to extort labor value by force. The money supply, as I understand it, is controlled by credit in the government that is given to banks, and backed by the guarantee that violence will be employed to return the money by extracting taxes, global south resources, and forcing the world to let us change the value of our obligations to them when we change the value of our currency. It's the promise of labor value to be extorted essentially.

Or maybe that's silly, but it's the idea I've had bumping around this week while I read.

Edit: sorry for the screed, feel free to ignore, but working ideas out like this is really helpful for me to learn so I appreciate your indulging me.

To be fair to them that is basically what worked out in 2020. Now can your reliably recapture that bloc once they forget to be embarrassed by Don? I guess 2024 will decide that, since they seem determined to rerun their last play.

Are there updates on the Ukraine situation beyond the 'continuing stalemate' narrative I see on MSNBC and other major sources? I see Zelensky is getting more creative with who he's asking for help, and rumblings about Russian gains but nothing substantial.