So as many of you are probably aware the author of Capitalist Realism offed himself...

I have never looked at that channel but I did just start watching Black Mirror and suddenly that episode started getting talked about in /leftytrash/. Really hit me in the feels tbh.

That actually sounds like a decent idea if you have literature and do not show up in some retarded costume.

Semi-Relevant Adam Curtis: bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/08/madison_avenue.html

It's a tangent, but there's an interesting thought here that's mostly just me sperging about British politics as usual, but also offers a possible ray of sunshine.

I was reading a post by a member of Labour's shadow cabinet who resigned in the early 1990s (Before Blair took over), and they basically noted that the political aim of New Labour - indeed, the key emphasis of the "New" was to displace the Conservatives by targeting a very specific segment of the voter-base. A relatively small one, but one overrepresented in media, etc as the "middle class"

The sort of people who would vote Labour or Liberal when the going was good - Harold Wilson in the 1960s for example - but would guiltily vote Conservative the rest of the time, especially if their local candidate put up a "liberal" sort of appearance. (i.e. Liberalism, not Liberal Party.), or as was perhaps more clearly exemplifying their social status - the kind of people who were very happy to sing the praises of public (local authority, not our weird euphamism for private) schools, but when they had kids of their own would begrudgingly note that their darling was just too shy or sensitive - so, with a heavy heart they would have to be sent to private (in british euphemisms "public") fee paying school…

The "New" in "New Labour" existed essentially as a substitute for "Not Labour", this could be a party with a pretence of governing for everyone - the vestigial Labour allowing liberals to feel good about themselves, while the "New/Not" reassured them that actually, none of those nasty things like trade unionists, higher taxes, etc would burden them. You see where I'm going with this? New Labour was a commodity. Now, Labour had been essentially trying to commodify itself for much longer than that - The move from the red flag to the rose as the logo, for example, and the big focus on branding was essentially one big attempt to slip Social Democracy with Neil Kinnock's face into power by selling the brand. But New Labour's purpose was distinct: It was to become the natural party of government by being the best commodity of the lot, selling Labour's brand name for conscience alongside the knowledge that they'd disavowed any meaningful moves to help the poor. One has to wonder if this hasn't been recreated more widely, in part explaining the boredom of post-politics.

Now here's that hope I promised you: What happened to New Labour? It imploded. It's a joke now. Near nobody would dare use that brand name anymore, if they could even dig it out of the pools of Iraqi blood that it drowned in. The Conservatives utterly failed to sell themselves as a similar party - returning us perhaps to the older voting habits of those populations: Guilty-Tory. So perhaps, just perhaps the attempt to turn something as contentious as politics into a bland commodity is bound to collapse in on itself sooner rather than later.

And if not, at least Trump shows we've moved to hiring loud clowns instead of faintly creepy men with octobarreled names.

bump

F

Damn man, I haven't been reading much lately, I'd saved Capitalist Realism a while ago and hadn't touched it, I just went over the first chapter and it brought a tear to my eye, I really need to read more damn books.