The Wolff Got Domesticated

Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work ([email protected]/* */) has signed with YouTube to turn the Economic Update into over-produced shit and absolutely is going to involve meddling from Google/YouTube. Press F to pay respects.

youtube.com/watch?v=c7ILHc26xYw
patreon.com/economicupdate

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=SB2-4F758Yo
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Nah, if anything it will put him in direct conflict with Alphabet.

What a surprise

Who knows what's in the contract though. He might be on the hook for legal action now if he says the wrong things.

Happy for him

Socialism IS democratic ownership over the means of production though. Communism comes later. But have fun with another failure of central planning, Stalin-lite. Meanwhile I'll enjoy markets, competition and innovation.

and it will cause a fucking shitstorm if that happens.

Out

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Fuck all the way off. When communism comes, there may be a transition phase that's not a real socialist mode of production, but that phase is only socialist in the sense that it's part of a movement to bring about socialism as an economic system..

tbh i've been accused of killing rosa so often that i get the strong impression if given the historical opportunity to go back to berlin and save her life, i'd go look for a prostitute or something instead.

What is with this constant drive for 'production values'? All you need for a political YT video is a decent camera and microphone, and maybe a lightbox. What else is there?

…..fellow proles
Have fun perpetuating capitalist exploitation under a new banner
Geez, even Clintonites don't worship markets that much. You are a red ancap.

Communism is a stateless classless societal state operated under a socialist gift-economy. Socialism is an economic system itself. Communism is socialist, but socialism isn't necessarily communism.

Where is the proof they're signing with Youtube tho? I don't see that in either of the links.

They're producing Economic Update in YouTube Studios now. They have studios in various major cities.

fucking marksocs

wew
WEW

Yes, gift-economy. Marx and Engels only considered labor vouchers as a short-term transitional thing at best. Literally fucking read Marx you stupid Trot.

idiots, read Morrison.
Socialism is what a Labour government does.

I'm ok with this. Even if he does try to diseminate a watered down form of socialism, this will be good for opening up a wider group of people to anti-capitalist thought, and also will get them examining altrenatives to capitalism. We need to get our shit together and start getting our alternative out there too. If you have a problem with Wolff's overall message, don't let him dominate the conversation then.

you can only hope anti-capitalist sentiment doesn't turn into a recuperation like punk rock.

Wait, is that guy on the right who I think he is? The name escapes me, but I know his current role.

Forget Marx, even Plato would be disgusted by this post.

What's so bad about this line guys?

I think this is because punk rock didn't offer any alternative to capitalism, or anyway of actually organizing to resist capitalism. We need to rev up our propaganda and organizing game comrades.

Plato couldn't tell his head from his ass.

I was about to ask the same with that and

meant to reply to

I think it's Jack Cunningham.

Socialism isn't democratic ownership over the means of production

Punk rock did have a large amount of people dedicated to various anarchist forms of socialism within it, but as with anything capital saw a way to profit.

Is this the part you tell me we abolish the present state of things?

Oh, I thought it was the guy on the NEC who is a massive faggot nulabbot.

Yes

The only problem is that when you water down anti-capitalist thought, you get a shitty internally inconsistent system which is not difficult to expose as such. This means you get young slightly radical socdems who gradually get worn down by arguments against social democracy and finally become conservatives or milquetoast liberals

Socialism is more than worker-managed capitalism. The underlying relations of production must change as well. Structural change is necessary, not just a change of management.

I don't get it. I see socialists talk to capitalist telling them they have the wrong idea about socialism and to look up what socialism actually means. Then on here people get mad that people say the definition of socialism. If socialism isn't the workers ownership of the means of production then what the hell is it?

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What does this mean, practically? How does one change the underlying mode of production?
Do you mean the abolition of capital?

it basically implies that worker capitalism is fine because the bourgeois is gone, despite the cycle of capital still permeating.

No profit, no production for exchange.
Practically it means establishing the infrastructure necessary for production for use and distribution, through planning and organic worker organisation.

Marx and Engels did not think communism would be delayed commodity exchange (gift economy).

I suspected as much when they started adding government ads.

Way more than just that. Socialism is the abolishment of the entire capitalist system. That means the abolishment of the cycle of capital, commodities, and the entire class system. A society like this requires social ownership of the means of production (everyone owns everything), but you can't just create socialism by having the workers own the firm, you need to destroy the firm as well.

Socialism IS democratic ownership over the means of production
Most people using or hearing this phrase are going to think of bourgeois democracy, which is a farce of the people being in control. This is part of why this pic says Communism = M-C-M' + voting. The meme ideology is that you can change the nature of the economy from outside the economy (politics) which is a system that is dependent upon the underlying economic system. This can be taken even further with the concept of democracy being excellent and not well-suited to socialism in general. The point isn't for the majority to rule, but for nobody to rule.

>Socialism IS democratic ownership over the means of production
Focusing on the relations of production or class is missing half the equation. Like the pic I pointed to before says, the cycle of capital is a crucial element of capitalism. This would be in place still in a market economy where everything is a co-op. Even though most co-ops wouldn't want to expand all that much and none would be driven to expand like a private business, the ones that do expand are going to enter a positive feedback loop and result in the accumulation of wealth. This is inevitable in any market economy.

>Socialism IS democratic ownership over the means of production
Thirdly, you have an issue with the concept of ownership? Who owns the MoP? Who is "democracy" in this context? In socialism productive resources are collectively or publicly owned, meaning people have free access to them. According to the definition in question, who is supposed to own the MoP? A government? The people who are on the winning side of a majority vote? It implies a situation where any given scenario will see people lacking control of the MoP. Maybe the majority only "own" in the sense that the government "represents" them. Maybe a significant minority only "owns" in the sense that if they won a vote they would be able to control production but they didn't so they don't.

Or its for everybody to rule. Just as a directly democratic system. Society requires cooperation, which requires decision making as a society.

Everything else I think you are on point about though.

These are in contradiction. Not even on paper does everybody rule in direct democracy, just the majority. The point is to be voluntary, so if you want to go produce something nobody will stop you unless it's going to hurt them somehow.

Is that where these annoying fucking commercial breaks have come from lately?

Honestly I just hope we get better audio mixing out of this. Wolff has had this annoying habit of not speaking with his mics close enough for a long time. I like to listen to this stuff when I'm exercising and I always have to apply a huge amplification to actually be able to hear shit on my crappy audio player.

is not capitalism, plain and simple.

bump

This is a great thing even if it is watered down a bit.

Eh, maybe

As long as it doesn't turn out like bill nye's new steaming pile of show

Is there an incentive for greater efficiency under such a system?

I don't find this bad at all, the principle point of the show is to get MORE viewers. That is the nature of media for propaganda.

And for those specifically harping on him for his hard-on of co-ops, is he only shilling for that? His operation is to advance unions and co-ops. He admits the need for other political and economic bodies to be built. He has never stated explicitly "Muh co-ops are totally the end all be all" structure of socialism. You all are strawmanning the fuck out of him.

As long as Wolff doesn't water down his content I don't mind much

Just dick her down so the Freikorps can't find her.

that's a pretty low bar fam

There's no such thing as just "efficiency" in a system. Efficiency has to be applied to something. Capitalism is efficient at accumulating wealth but not efficient at meeting people's needs. In socialism there is no profit, and wealth accumulation is not a goal. To answer your question properly I need to rephrase it to "Is there an incentive for greater efficiency at meeting people's needs under such a system?" The answer is yes. The more efficiently the system meets people's needs, the less time has to be spent on socially necessary labor, and the more time can be spent on enriching things that make life interesting and enjoyable.

Why not just meet people's needs less well, and spend less time on labour, from an individual perspective

youtube.com/watch?v=SB2-4F758Yo

The left is fucked fam

There's no incentive for greater efficiency under capitalism. "Efficiency" is a euphemism for profitability.

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okay lets flesh this out this senario,
the vote doesn't go through, and he has to go a long with the rest of the workplace
therefore he doesn't own the means of production

According to Economic Update's latest video, Wolff says communism is a subset of socialism.

Socialists are statists. Nothing new here.

Not what I said. That you think voting is the only possible conflict resolution mechanism says something about you, not me.


Or bill just changes his workspace because he has actual freedom and not merely a portion of control over collective rule.
Or his co-workers don't like the change or stop him from doing it, at which point the issue is up to them to resolve among themselves like adults. They all share the space and ownership, so they have equal stakes and can negotiate a situation that's agreeable enough to everyone or one or more parties can leave to work somewhere more suited to their needs. This is a lot better than submitting yourself to a binary choice that people push off onto an alienated system where nobody works through the disagreement and somebody is guaranteed to lose out (because there would be no reason to vote if there wasn't a disagreement).

Bullshit. This sounds just like the 'but you can just work somewhere else' ancap argument. People can't always come to a satisfactory resolution, and pretending like they can is absurd. Also, say, as is inevitable, group A in a widget factory disagrees with group B, and they can't come to a resolution.
Which group leaves?

didn't he already make his career off of trying to domesticate marx?

worst comment of the year. calling it right now

If you talk about ideologies, that's absolutely true.