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Did We Miss the Window?

Is it too late for socialism? I've already alluded to this , but the first industrial revolution (approx. from the 1760s to the 1840s) and second industrial revolution (from the 1870s to the 1920s) were characterized by imperialism, exploitation, enclosure, violent "primitive accumulation," child labor, etc., but they also introduced the factory system, which created conditions of economic interdependence that resulted in opportunities for cooperation and solidarity among workers, giving rise to a labor movement with real political power and the potential for the struggle for serious, impressive gains. But it could be argued that the third industrial revolution, which began, according to some, in the 1950s, and reached a decisive, transformative step in the 1970s, and the fourth industrial revolution, which many say is underway right now, have tended in the opposite direction.  Rather than tending towards larger and larger factory enterprises, with more and more people, w...
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Questions for Communists

First let me say: even though I have identified as an anarchist in the past, I want to make it clear that I'm not the type of person who says, "Theory is stupid!  We don't need theory, we need action!"  No - what we need is theory.  Lots of theory.  That's what we need more than anything else.  We need more theory.  Not just "more" theory - better theory. The main question I want to ask every communist is a very simple question.  It can be asked in few words - in fact, it can be asked in one word: How? How would communism work?  How would a classless society function?  How do you abolish the value form?  How do you abolish the general formula for capital, M-C-M'?  How do you abolish commodities?  How? I want granular details.  I want logistics.  How does sewage work?  How does garbage disposal work?  How does the energy sector work?  How does AI fit into this?  Because I've observed that the best ...
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Postmodernism = Heidegger - Being

Many of the most celebrated postmodern theorists - the liquefactionists, essentially - are influenced by Heidegger, in a way, but they missed the entire point of Heidegger's philosophy.  Heidegger insisted, again and again, that what he writing was not epistemology, or existentialism, or the study of consciousness, or religion, or ethics, or least of all, politics - but rather ontology - the study of being.  The question he concerned himself with was the question of being.  We can think of several related questions, like "What is being?" or "What is nothing?" or "Why is there something rather than nothing?"  For Heidegger, none of these were the question of being.  That was a question that he did not even know how to pose, let alone answer.   Is there any practical purpose or use to working on the question of being or any of these related questions?  I would say no.  You certainly cannot simply jump from one level to the other and assume that...
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  Romanticism need not be about humans.  But it is always about persons.
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The Argument from Evil

  I think there are several impressive arguments against belief in traditional forms of theism, but the famous "argument from evil" isn't one of them. One version of this "argument from evil" has been attributed to Epicurus and is often known as the "Epicurean paradox" or "Epicurus's trilemma".  It goes something like this (I've seen it phrased a few different ways, but they are variations on a theme): "Why does God permit evil to exist?  First leg: If God is all-powerful and all-good, and he permits evil to exist, then he must not know that it's happening, so he must not be all-knowing. Second leg: If God is all-knowing and all-good, then he must be powerless to prevent evil or it wouldn't happen, so he can't be all-powerful. Third leg: If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, and he permits evil to occur, then he must not be all-good." Sometimes, when this argument is presented, it is followed by something like,...
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So we're all stupid, no one knows anything, NOKHAW.   But especially, no one knows how economics works, no one knows how politics works, no one knows how history works. "We know that socialism doesn't work."  No, you don't know that. "We know that tariffs don't work."  No, you don't know that. "We know that anarchy doesn't work."  No, you don't know that. 
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NOKHAW and the New Magic

  According to legend, in the 15th century, maybe even the 16th, it was possible for a single person to know everything - to be up to date on every development in math, science, art, literature, etc..  We are sometimes given the figure of Leonardo da Vinci as such a "renaissance man".   But since then, each discipline has grown to such an extent that no one can be an expert in everything.  You can be a specialist in one field, and understand it in all of its detail, but you will necessarily have a shallower understanding of other fields. Don't forget the "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" - namely, a scientist reading an article of science journalism in the news will generally recognize a large amount of vagueness, over-generalizations, inaccuracies, and sensationalism when the article pertains to the scientist's own field, but will tend to forget this when she reads an article about a field other than her own.  Moral: in matters of science, never trust wri...
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