I have been listening to interviews with Benjamin lately, and am really liking him. He answers succinctly, with a wide breadth of sources, and with clearly deep personal thought on the matters. Great questions too from the interviewer! I hope I can get to Benjamins books soon.
I like the idea of extra-market consciousness building but just to throw a materialist wrench into things, people's physical health plays a huge role in generating effective thinkers. It's become more clear that it's not blue blood genetics and that nurture plays a huge role in bodily health, and I hate to sound like the phrenologist in the room, but conditions today for not only workers but professional types as well are forming unhealthy bodies with unhealthy brains that struggle to think intensely or endure stress. Some things like postural improvements could be taught by a charitable counter culture but good diet is expensive, just 2 examples. Also worth noting is how much easier it is to effect changes to health the younger one is, it's possible to rehabilitate very worn out people but it becomes more difficult and potentially more reliant on expensive market commodities and expertise, e.g. dentistry.
This book is a thoroughly enjoyable read. I read it about six months & I still am thinking about it while I’m at work during the day. It’s very quick and easy to read, but it leaves you thinking about it for months.
Ok hear me out. So we know that a big issue is capital flight. But we also know that money is a link that is used combine labor and raw materials, machinery etc, that MMT and chartalist theory is about that very idea that money isnt a factor, labor acting on things is in reality. . The idea of a "peoples bank" that can be utilized to stop the bleeding of capital during class antagonisms means at the least, thats one less punitive way of capital disciplining labor. But then again that would entail a extra legal banking system that doesnt use the national currency in any way. But its an idea from the french left that i think does have alot of value. Because it means that, and we know that, you dont need investing classes money to live or produce. You just need to have a currency to flush the system from one node to another.
Enjoyable conversation. Having settings/institutions free of the market is going to be tough. Scholarship is instructive. Before 19th century scholars did not get time off for research: they taught full time. Galileo used his telescope fame to get a better position: more money, title of philosopher and no teaching responsibilities. If you weren't rich, in a monastery (Mendel) or in some public job it was hard to do scholarship. That would change with the rise of research universities. It is difficult to even conceive of discursive spaces (for education, organizing) free of market taint. Perhaps our thinking has been affected by long exposure to market forces and it is not easy to think our way out of the rabbit hole.
Excellent conversation but I'm curious when this was recorded… the IDF is currently blowing a hole into the Sinai border of Zone C territory controlled by the Egyptian & US military & other MFO. The issue in Egypt will be related to its military seizing control of the state -- not popular upheaval. Also, the struggle got Palestinian liberation aside -- the US's complete destruction of deliberative multi-lateral institutions & courts like the UN & Hague ought to be of serious concern to every American. I'd prefer not to have WW3 thank you very much.
Let us remember that Karl Marx himself was an aspiring academic who, because of the effective blacklisting of his then mentor and champion Bruno Bauer, and his inability financially to support himself and his fiancée (and, hopefully for him, soon to become his spouse) as a Privatdozent in Philosophy somewhere other than the University of Bonn, become an alternative small newspaper editor and journalist, then a serial, mostly failed, journal publisher, etc.. Karl Marx was an OG failed "professional" but not of wotking class or peasant origin.
@@stavroskarageorgis4804 But this amounts to telling investors "you can't invest in Africa or China for higher returns." Is crypto the ultimate workaround for capital controls?
I feel so called out. So when we starting the revolution? Digressing from the cause: Concerning campus protests, while you might be right that the "professionals" protesting in the way they are is _offputting_ , couldn't you also argue that type of protesting is helping _ground_ the professionals? In current times, many Students are the _liminal_ _state_ between the working class and the so called professionals.
Great insight. The comment about Sufism, by the end however, is utterly wrong about the nature of mysticism (Islamic or other). There is absolutely nothing in that sort of religious obscurantism that’s amenable in the least to a progressive politics whatsoever
I have to disagree. Apophaticism acknowledges the inability of any individual to have absolute political authority. This points to the necessity for collaboration and democratic respect for others.
@@Barklord On paper, may be. Very different in RL. They will rather actively discourage political participation. Also Sufi leaders in western countries have discourses in public that can be very PC, but on the whole they don't believe in notions of progress, or science, whatsoever, and still encourage strict traditionalism and can get very anti-science, very fast. In the ME and South Asia, sufis are even more conservative than wahhabis. The difference is they're QUIETISTS, for the most part, which ever since 9/11 has too often been confused (in Muslim believers) for being progressive.
@simonlatendresse2229 I wonder if this perceived conservatism is coming from a lack of faith in classical and (neo)liberal economics. Science and technology (thus also modernity) have been driven primarily by market logic. This market based society was warned against as a source of social distrust and tyranny. So maybe a touch of conservatism is really stemming from that scepticism toward our peculiar way of applying knowledge for the sake of private power. [Edit]: Maybe de-politicization comes from preferring a Plotinian way of life versus more engaged Proclean style. When I look at early Christian church political leaders who were primarily Platonic philosophers (Synesius, for instance), there is an anti-authoritarian and even subversive tendency. Synesius' On Dreams describes a way of achieving Henosis or Theosis privately, such that no political or religious tyrant could prevent its practice. It's worth noting that he sent that work in a letter to Hypatia, who was later murdered by Christian zealots.
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I have been listening to interviews with Benjamin lately, and am really liking him. He answers succinctly, with a wide breadth of sources, and with clearly deep personal thought on the matters. Great questions too from the interviewer! I hope I can get to Benjamins books soon.
I like the idea of extra-market consciousness building but just to throw a materialist wrench into things, people's physical health plays a huge role in generating effective thinkers. It's become more clear that it's not blue blood genetics and that nurture plays a huge role in bodily health, and I hate to sound like the phrenologist in the room, but conditions today for not only workers but professional types as well are forming unhealthy bodies with unhealthy brains that struggle to think intensely or endure stress. Some things like postural improvements could be taught by a charitable counter culture but good diet is expensive, just 2 examples. Also worth noting is how much easier it is to effect changes to health the younger one is, it's possible to rehabilitate very worn out people but it becomes more difficult and potentially more reliant on expensive market commodities and expertise, e.g. dentistry.
This book is a thoroughly enjoyable read. I read it about six months & I still am thinking about it while I’m at work during the day. It’s very quick and easy to read, but it leaves you thinking about it for months.
Yo, did you pay like $130 for it? I feel like I’m getting price gouged but that’s how much it is on Amazon and on Springer
Ok hear me out. So we know that a big issue is capital flight. But we also know that money is a link that is used combine labor and raw materials, machinery etc, that MMT and chartalist theory is about that very idea that money isnt a factor, labor acting on things is in reality. . The idea of a "peoples bank" that can be utilized to stop the bleeding of capital during class antagonisms means at the least, thats one less punitive way of capital disciplining labor. But then again that would entail a extra legal banking system that doesnt use the national currency in any way.
But its an idea from the french left that i think does have alot of value. Because it means that, and we know that, you dont need investing classes money to live or produce. You just need to have a currency to flush the system from one node
to another.
I would love to read the book, but it is frigging expensive!
Enjoyable conversation. Having settings/institutions free of the market is going to be tough. Scholarship is instructive. Before 19th century scholars did not get time off for research: they taught full time. Galileo used his telescope fame to get a better position: more money, title of philosopher and no teaching responsibilities. If you weren't rich, in a monastery (Mendel) or in some public job it was hard to do scholarship. That would change with the rise of research universities. It is difficult to even conceive of discursive spaces (for education, organizing) free of market taint. Perhaps our thinking has been affected by long exposure to market forces and it is not easy to think our way out of the rabbit hole.
Excellent conversation but I'm curious when this was recorded… the IDF is currently blowing a hole into the Sinai border of Zone C territory controlled by the Egyptian & US military & other MFO. The issue in Egypt will be related to its military seizing control of the state -- not popular upheaval. Also, the struggle got Palestinian liberation aside -- the US's complete destruction of deliberative multi-lateral institutions & courts like the UN & Hague ought to be of serious concern to every American. I'd prefer not to have WW3 thank you very much.
protest action is bad because the MSM is going to have a poor discussion of it, that's terrible ben, omg.
Lol
Let us remember that Karl Marx himself was an aspiring academic who, because of the effective blacklisting of his then mentor and champion Bruno Bauer, and his inability financially to support himself and his fiancée (and, hopefully for him, soon to become his spouse) as a Privatdozent in Philosophy somewhere other than the University of Bonn, become an alternative small newspaper editor and journalist, then a serial, mostly failed, journal publisher, etc.. Karl Marx was an OG failed "professional" but not of wotking class or peasant origin.
Is Gramsci going to be mentioned as useful and relevant, I wonder.
The way must be forced back open imo
Very interesting
Capital mobility is another way of thinking about protectionism. Or rather it is the opposite.
Capital controls is the antidote to capital mobility.
@@stavroskarageorgis4804 But this amounts to telling investors "you can't invest in Africa or China for higher returns." Is crypto the ultimate workaround for capital controls?
What does this have to do with Moria??
I feel so called out. So when we starting the revolution?
Digressing from the cause:
Concerning campus protests, while you might be right that the "professionals" protesting in the way they are is _offputting_ , couldn't you also argue that type of protesting is helping _ground_ the professionals? In current times, many Students are the _liminal_ _state_ between the working class and the so called professionals.
Feeling like Vivek Chibber would be a good follow up to this interview.
Great insight. The comment about Sufism, by the end however, is utterly wrong about the nature of mysticism (Islamic or other). There is absolutely nothing in that sort of religious obscurantism that’s amenable in the least to a progressive politics whatsoever
I have to disagree. Apophaticism acknowledges the inability of any individual to have absolute political authority. This points to the necessity for collaboration and democratic respect for others.
this is islamophobia
@@Barklord On paper, may be. Very different in RL. They will rather actively discourage political participation. Also Sufi leaders in western countries have discourses in public that can be very PC, but on the whole they don't believe in notions of progress, or science, whatsoever, and still encourage strict traditionalism and can get very anti-science, very fast. In the ME and South Asia, sufis are even more conservative than wahhabis. The difference is they're QUIETISTS, for the most part, which ever since 9/11 has too often been confused (in Muslim believers) for being progressive.
@@ancapistan Sure. Exciting times.
@simonlatendresse2229 I wonder if this perceived conservatism is coming from a lack of faith in classical and (neo)liberal economics. Science and technology (thus also modernity) have been driven primarily by market logic. This market based society was warned against as a source of social distrust and tyranny. So maybe a touch of conservatism is really stemming from that scepticism toward our peculiar way of applying knowledge for the sake of private power.
[Edit]: Maybe de-politicization comes from preferring a Plotinian way of life versus more engaged Proclean style. When I look at early Christian church political leaders who were primarily Platonic philosophers (Synesius, for instance), there is an anti-authoritarian and even subversive tendency. Synesius' On Dreams describes a way of achieving Henosis or Theosis privately, such that no political or religious tyrant could prevent its practice. It's worth noting that he sent that work in a letter to Hypatia, who was later murdered by Christian zealots.