Would he though? If the new justice isn’t as liberal-leaning, even if they are bit younger I imagine he would take that deal. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a liberal. If you could replace Clarence Thomas with a slightly more moderate republican, you would probably do that.
This is another point in favor of “yes China is actually socialist right now” to me. Honestly one of the things that drew me to socialism early on was precisely what you are describing: a dream of a society where concerns for the essentials in life are minimal, people have spaces (and time) to socialize, and overall you just have a more socially healthy society. Would love to have this in the US but it’s pretty great that the largest country in the world (and ascendant) has it.
I was there at the time (the 90s). It was a very common “joke” and no one ever made the connection that hey, that’s weird how we just destroyed the Soviet economy and now all these women from the former USSR are available to be purchased…
I was finally able to get a keffiyeh from Hirbawi the other day! I was hoping for a standard black and white one but that was sold out. But they did have one that was basically the same except some of the designs were red and green instead of black (like the Palestinian flag) which was pretty cool
Sure thing. Regarding the rate of profit, it’s something Roberts talks about a lot, so if you go to his website and search for “rate of profit”, you’ll find many articles (and graphs).
Regarding the extraction of surplus value, that one’s a little trickier. It’s a key part of what’s in volume 2 of Capital, specifically in chapter 6 (but the chapters before are important to comprehend as they build up to ch. 6). Long story short, it is only in the sphere of production (i.e. making things) where surplus value is created. So any costs that are not directly a part of production are “unproductive” and thus must be covered by surplus value. At the individual firm level this is often called “overhead” or “indirect costs”.
But at the economy level… what about the US? We don’t make anything anymore, so where is our surplus value coming from? Production in the global south! The value is created there but it is “imported” into the US. This is plainly obvious when you consider how much it costs to make a t-shirt in Bangladesh and what it ultimately sell for in the US. (I am admittedly mixing surplus value and profit a bit here but I think it’s appropriate).
How that surplus value makes it to workers indirectly is a bit abstract. But it can be done politically or through action. Meaning, you can pass a law that grants universal health care to pacify workers. Or the workers themselves can go on strike and earn more. Or even just through market forces this can happen. It’s a hard thing to empirically “prove” but it’s something you can see historically: when capital faces pressure, they have mechanisms to redistribute surplus value. In England, there was an increasingly militant labor movement that was eventually bought off by England ramping up imperialist plunder in the second half of the 19th century. In the US, up until the early 20th century you could always just steal more indigenous land and give it to workers (stealing capital and distributing it to workers isn’t the same and sharing surplus value per se but the effect is the same).
It’s, uh… the 300 year anniversary of Marx’s *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”.
And California has only counted like half the votes, that probably another 30-40k there at least.
This is it. Peace & Freedom Party has been around for a long time and has ballot access in CA.
The narratives are starting to congeal. Black men, Latino men, and young men let down not only their queen, but all women in the country. They’re gonna break out Obama for even more scolding.
Edit: I should add that so far I haven’t seen any compelling data that these demographic groups lost the election for Harris in any way.
fr though, all I want is for Claudia and Karina to beat Chase Oliver (the Libertarian Party candidate) in California 
I mean, the Libertarian Party is fairly popular for a third party. For a principled, Marxist-Leninist party who only uses electoralism as a way to build a movement to beat them in CA is definitely something.
The tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
I mean, yeah, it looks like Kamala didn’t get the dem base out to vote for her because no one wants “more of the same” when following an incredibly unpopular president. Kamala was very openly telling the base to fuck off, and made her race singularly about attracting white, upper middle class suburban women at the cost of everyone else.
But that’s the micro view. In the macro view, Michael Roberts’ analysis of rates of profit shows it’s been falling for a while now. Capitalism was in crisis during the Great Depression, only to be “saved” by WW2. The reconstruction of the industrial world led to good times for a couple decades until there was a profitability crisis in the 1970s. Capital’s response starting the 80s was offshoring, privatization, and financialization - neoliberalism in other words. But the gains from that was only able to keep things going until 2009 or so. Since then profitability has been shit. Capital has no answers beyond just tightening the screws (austerity at home and imperialism abroad). Just increasing misery in order to slow the decline of the rate of profit.
The US needs that surplus value extracted primarily from the global south to keep running. That surplus value is how capital is able to buy off the domestic working class. But that slice of the pie keeps shrinking, i.e. material conditions keep worsening. Things are getting worse as every year goes by and everyone knows it, even if they don’t understand it. That’s why we keep bouncing between parties every four years instead of the steady 2 term presidents we had in the era of neoliberalism. Most people are not doing in depth political analysis. They are just seeing their situation get worse and blaming whoever is in charge.
Of course the economy won’t recover under Trump. It will almost certainly get worse, and I happen to think the odds of a major economic crisis are pretty high. I would bet everything we get a dem president in 2028. Things just get worse and people are fumbling around for a solution.
And that’s where we come in. WE HAVE THE ANSWERS. It’s our job to bring the light of Marxism to the world. I’m not even gonna pretend we can make much of a dent in 4 years but this is a multi-generational project.
Until tonight, based on what happened in the 2022 elections I thought the GOP was way overplaying their hand on the anti-trans stuff. I thought most Americans are way more ambivalent than the GOP thinks they are. I still think that’s basically true, but the Democrats now can look at these results and completely back off from supporting trans rights (I mean, even less than their pathetic efforts before).
The media just assumes Americans are too lazy to bother to listen to what was actually said. Trump is 1,000% correct here and in no way is this some sort of “threat” to Liz Cheney. War hawks like her and John Bolton love to bray for war but it’s not them who are taking bullets.
Just to add, the idea that western countries do not subsidize their exports is laughable. I don’t doubt that in many sectors, western governments - both now and in the past - have subsidized their industries to far greater degree than China ever has with theirs.
Right I mean, I am a westerner who “supports” Hamas. I put an Al-Qassam Brigades wallpaper on my computer. Recognizing that our support can’t do anything isn’t a criticism, it’s just a factual statement of the situation we are in at the moment. I think the fact that some governments are coming down hard on this “support” shows how nervous they are about these sentiments “breaching containment”.
“Supporting” Hamas / Al-Qassam Brigades (or Hezbollah, or the PFLP, etc) is functionally meaningless in Europe and North America. You can’t send them weapons or money (god I wish). You can’t go there and fight with them. You can’t send them food. Your words of “support” can’t actually do anything (saying this as someone who is 110% supportive of those groups mentioned above). We have no way of affecting the outcome. Saying you support Hamas right now is like saying you support the Jacobites at Culloden. It doesn’t actually do anything.
The fact that governments are taking actions like this shows they really do see not just the words but the thoughts and sentiments of the people (especially young people, not because they are young but because of their general opinions) as a threat. Controlling the narrative is critical. It used to be they could control the news media easily, but social media is so much harder for them to keep a lid on. Of course they’re mostly successful at it, but even if they do have functional control over Facebook, Twitter et al it’s not as tight as the control they have over traditional media. Actions like the one here are how they plan on controlling the narrative, along with banning platforms that don’t hand over censorship control to western governments.
She’ll distance herself from a single comment from Biden about Trump supporters but not distance herself from Biden’s genocide in Gaza, got it.
My back went out just thinking about lifting that TV to move it around.
The writers admitted they added that line in hopes of getting a free Tesla.