Now this is nothing new, the draft version of the famous Communist Manifesto was called Confession of Faith.
Also I think that Marxism can actually be saved if viewed under the lenses of earlier works by Marx, especially The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. For instance this passage:
The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.
This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor’s realization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.
and later
It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him.
See, the ultimate product of labor is not a commodity or service, it is the worker itself and through him the whole society. The proletariat embarks on the project of producing The New Soviet man, that is the true valuable product. This is something that machines or animals or slaves or even wage laborers cannot do, because animals and machines are ontologically incapable of such a thing while slaves and workers are alienated from their labor by capitalists. In fact capitalists themselves are alienated from their own labor, working on communist project would help them. You see, seizing the means of production and creating socialist society is only intermediary step before free proletariat finishes the project and abolishes private property by recreating and transforming the man itself into a new social species-being (so called socialist "humanizing"), it is only then that the communism will finally be successfully tried. In the meantime we have to prepare grounds for attempt number 49.
See, the Marxist faith restored all it takes is just a little bit of New Age sounding quackery, welcome to 19th century German philosophy. You can forward this to the OP, they can thank me later.
georgioz
1yr ago
Yep, the first one seems to be the official explanation so far. It seems implausible but it is the one that may be pushed, so we will hear about it.
As with most tyrannies - where we sometimes literally have to read from the tea leaves - this thing with Prigozhin is also quite an opaque situation. So far I gathered multiple possible explanations related to the crash, each depending on different assumptions and each opening more questions than it answers:
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Shooting down of the airplane was indeed a mistake, which feeds into the narrative that Russians are incompetent and all that.
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The plane was shot down by Prigozhin's enemy without Putin's approval. There are plenty of people in the army who can do this including low ranking soldiers. This escalates power struggle in Putin's orbit.
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The plane was shot down as a gift to Putin, a gift Putin did not want to recieve.
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The plane was shot down on Putin's direct order and with his full knowledge, but even then there are multiple possibilities related to the fact that it happened two months after the "coup"
- 4a) Putin needed two months to try some alternative nonviolent path, it did not pan out so he took Prigozhin down. What did he try to do and why?
- 4b) Putin needed two months to do something to Prigozhin's power base before he dared such an open move as shooting the plane down. Is Putin so weak that he could not do what he wanted sooner?
These are just a few possibilities and assumptions, you will of course see more including theories that the plane was shot down by Ukrainians or CIA or Prigozhin's enemies inside Wagner and who knows what else. The whole situation is a mess and nobody knows the truth. Which is a reason why we will see all sorts of people fitting the story to their already preexisting narrative. Beware.
georgioz
1yr ago
This is so underrated comment, it really is an unspoken bubble. The demographic change is huge, especially in Southeast Asia where people born in 50s or 60s are often from large families of 5 to 6 while their children have one child or are childless. I have a friend who is single child of single children on both parents side. He has a wife who is also single child although she herself has an aunt. But in general their combined family is incredibly small, if my friend's parents die he will have no living family in this world. This is the family of the future.
I have many uncles and aunts and number of cousins that I being me would probably mix some names. It is such a vast difference in social experience. My experience is just blip in history, it is a rare transition towards inevitable modernity.
georgioz
1yr ago
As far as I understand this trend is not only about some vague ideological warfare and language games. The words like diversity or hate crime or even conflating words female/woman/transwoman serves specific legal purpose, like for instance specifically naming "diversity" as an exception when it comes to preferential hiring practices. In a sense it is genius, it may be easier to redefine the word woman so that it includes transwomen so then one can automatically apply all the legislature and judicial history in one's favor as opposed to defining it as a separate category and lobbying for brand new legislature covering this topic.
georgioz
1yr ago
For what is worth, I saw nothing extraordinary about that exchange. Thinking about this I maybe do have one obese friend (with BMI slightly over 30) who I really like and who is funny and very good company to be around. But he does not share my interests with other friends in my circle for things like hiking, skiing or even long walks around the city if we go somewhere on roadtrip or whatever. So from my personal experience you exaggerate a bit, but then maybe you live in a slightly different social bubble.
Contrary to your position, I find the discussion in former Culture War as well as here in The Motte quite valuable, it not only serves as an aggregator of things happening, but many of the phenomena described here helped me navigating real world situations regarding the Culture War like for instance those in my workplace that to my amazement started to ramp up in last year or two. Compared to that, many of my colleagues are like megafauna waiting to go extinct one way or another by stepping on some mine unknown to them. I do not share neither the loathing for denizens of this place, nor self-loathing you display here. And I definitely do not share your view on moral superiority of Scott Alexander and his "niceness" field.
Nevertheless this would probably only "devolve" into another discussion with a loser hater witch that you are no longer interested in. So I wish for you to enjoy whatever comes next. Take care.
georgioz
1yr ago
That's insane. By law in my country the passport has to be expedited within 30 days for EUR 33, there is an option to pay EUR 100 and get it in two days. I recently renewed my passport (post COVID), it was very quick with SMS notification when and where to pick it up. All my interaction was basically with people behind plexiglass, COVID is just a stupid excuse.
I have my own peeve with said comment, this supposed "rationalist Cross-Examination" makes people even more stupid and in the end everybody retreats into their own aesthetics of the situation. It is more stupid discussion the more basic the moral intuition is - like for instance "why murder is bad". I can put you on the spot here and it will be up to you to come to defense of your view that murder is bad ranging from defining murder to exceptions like war and whatnot. It almost always degenerates into sophistry (AKA dark arts) as the situation is of course nuanced and complex and you can spend lifetime cross-examining, unless of course you have certain end in mind. So in the end, it all comes down to normalcy, murder is murder and nepotism is nepotism.
So I guess intuition is very powerful and it is not always easily accessible to rational discussion which quite often leads to wrong conclusions depending on what path you take. Which is kind of a point even here in this discussion - you already see how people invent all kinds of defense to this, including this call of yours. To me, if I see a person pushing to hire somebody he fucks, this is nepotism. I do not understand what does temote work do with any of this, laid out your argument.
georgioz
1yr ago
I do not have interest going into technicalities. Leveraging my position and asking my employer to hire somebody I fuck is nepotism, period end of story. Arguments involving softening the language by euphemisms like "spousal hiring", defending it on the grounds of values of family formation like somebody above or digging up these other examples like remote work are unnecessary sophistry.
If he tries to secure larger paycheck, then I see nothing wrong. If he tries to secure hot assistant that will give him a blowjob whenever he feels like it or he requires that university signs contract with his brother's firm for security services or that the university hires his nephew for new research vacancy - then yes, I think those concessions are wrong. I hope I will not have to go into the weeds of why I see it as wrong.
What is stopping me is overall morality and being judged by peers, sometimes even written ethical rules. But what amazes me is that simple renaming of a thing gets so far: it is not bad nepotism what we are doing, we are only doing "spousal hiring". Renaming things seems like a really powerful social technology of how to render written rules moot, and judging by reactions here it also works on people. Awesome.
Never ask a white nationalist or a social justice warrior the race of their partner, as they say.
I think this can be genuine source of anxiety and cognitive dissonance. Imagine that you are somebody that fully believes in CRT - white privilege, oppression and all that. You want to have a kid - are you willing to have black spouse and thus knowingly sentence your child to lifetime of racism and oppression? Or will you go for white spouse so that at least your child can benefit from that juicy colorist privilege and potentially your grandchildren even passing white like this pretty little quadroon?
There is no "reverse racism" of anti-racism, there is only racism. This also works in other areas, James Lindsay calls it as "iron law of woke projection". The idea being that if you believe something let's say that the most important thing in society is power and how it manifests in oppression/oppressed dynamics, then of course you will be obsessed by obtaining said oppressive power and use it to do good presumably. In your eyes you improved the situation, in eyes of somebody who does not share your worldview, the situation changed from normal to open oppression in the name of ideology. So similarly as you can use antiracism to fight real [AKA systemic] racism, you can use fact checking using proper context to fight against misinformation, our side does not engage in censorship, we only deplatform racists who hold all the power and so forth. In the end it all degenerates, it basically conjures all the boogiemen as soon as narcissists and sociopaths get their hand on levers of power riding the wave of current culture - not unlike cult leaders riding the wave of whatever spiritual fad pervading the society.
You are literally describing the same situation. Manager/Superstar researcher is using his superstar influence in order to secure job for somebody he fucks is the same as saying:
Manager negotiating a spousal hire as part of a compensation package is attempting to secure a business relationship that is in the best interest of the university and utilizing the various tools at their disposal to do so, including potentially that spousal hire.
Yeah, that is the point. Manager is negotiating with the company (hiring manager) to secure new business relationship (for his mistress and for himself to the extent of getting potentially a good fuck as a result) and it is in best interest of the company (or else he leaves in the middle of the most important project to competitor or whatever) and he is utilizing various tools at his disposal (e.g. a lunch with hiring manager and his manager etc.) to secure that relationship.
I understand corporatespeak, no need to remind me that "spousal hiring" and "best interest of the company" means "hire somebody I fuck" and "do as I say or else something bad happens". Nobody with IQ more than 80 falls for this shit.
georgioz
1yr ago
It is almost exactly the same scenario. There are three people: hiring manager, then there is the superstar fucker and then there is candidate that is being fucked. Superstar is pressuring hiring manager to hire his mistress "or else"- he leaves along with grants on his research or whatever. I can even construct it a such: superstar researcher with millions in grants comes to the hiring office that he fucks this student and she may be leaving for a job in other city. If they do not hire his mistress as an adjunct then he is going with her along with grants because he loves her. Now the same happens with my example of corporate manager: he fucks this young intern and she tells him that she has a good job lined up in another city. Manager sees this as a threat so he pressures his colleague in other department to hire his mistress, he even gets tacit approval from his own superiors because he is now responsible for crucial project and nobody wants to rock the boat for such a silly thing. How exactly is this different: except the fact that university has this as a written policy?
A good state of affairs can be that "everyone kinda knows, nobody makes a big fuss about it, it isn't officially condoned or supported or acknowledged, but people slightly judge the people involved in the deal and don't see it exactly aligned with the principles of a university." Plausible deniability is maintained, disbelief is suspended and a "quantum tunneling" has taken place. It's not necessarily good to separate everything into the black-and-white categories of legal (and therefore supported, and documented, and regulated and defined and socially accepted and considered moral) vs illegal (and beyond the pale and morally corrupt and unacceptable and you're an unperson for it).
Yes, this is called good old fashioned nepotism. When this manager in the team fucked his subordinate and then promoted her, everybody knew about it and many thought it was kind of piece of shit move. It also did not endear the newly promoted person in eyes of many of her colleagues. It was tolerated as lesser evil for many reasons by his superiors unfortunately. Little did I know that what he should have done was telling it transparently by saying that he was not promoting somebody for fucking his brains out, it was just normal HR benefit of "sex partner hiring" he was awarded during standard salary increase negotiations, no big deal. You see, he is really working hard and he works harder with hard-on that he needs to be motivated, his situation is special because he has no time to look for partners as he is working so much. Reading apologetics here in this thread I'd guess he would probably have much more defenders, silly him.
The principal-agent problem here is that hiring manager as well as the candidate are both employees. You already have conflict of interest where hiring manager may have interest in having this new non-standard perk available for his spouse as well. Also your definition of principal as "institution" is very strange, principal should be some person be it taxpayer or donor etc. You just dodge the question - there was some other agent in HR department who created benefit of "spousal hire", so this other agent (the hiring manager) is supposedly representing the best interest of "institution" in form of official benefits policy created by this other agent (HR benefit specialist)? What is next - that department of education as another agent in chain from taxpayer agrees with this policy as well? I am sure government bureaucrats would love to have the same policy for themselves. This just obfuscates what is going on here.
Maybe the confusion lies in the naming? Because it is official benefit and not some underhanded secret thing then it stops being nepotism and becomes "spousal hiring" instead? So if a new management of some University that governs endowment of tens of billons of dollars creates a new transparent policy that select superstar researchers and top university leadership will have free and unlimited access to room full of booze and hookers on campus, then this does not mean drinking and whoring on the job, it is just "award negotiated during hiring process"? I think it is in fact much worse if you take some morally shady practice and make it legal and official, it means you are trying to remove stigma from it.
OPs referenced. The primary effect is benefiting the university, which is why they offer them.
I think it is primarily benefiting the university and most importantly their existing employees as a class. You know, university is special so we all have to vote to get ourselves tenures, spousal hiring, sabbaticals and all those other perks necessary to keep our demanding jobs of getting state to keep the grants flowing and all that.
georgioz
1yr ago
I can't imagine a more sympathetic to human realities to this concept, and am really baffled by the person who would put 'liberal fairness' on such a pedestal that they would get remotely worked up at the idea of supporting marriages / families, the fundamental social unit of society.
Oh, so then let's make it a society wide practice - if you get a job in local Amazon warehouse you are entitled to have your spouse or close family member employed as well. Let's make it a law. Yeah, I don't think so.
Oh, I am perfectly with you on this. Corruption, tribalism, nepotism and all that is very natural way of things, it even fits with what I meant around excuses driven Moloch - you exactly nailed it. So yes, if you can have advantages accrued to you by sucking out the system - be it academia or taking advantage of diffuse corporate governance structure, people will take it. I think what is new is that we may not even have to pretend to large extent, to have any kind of noblesse oblige. People will not only take advantage of the situation, they will even develop a new moral system why what they do is okay and possibly even their duty. And thus a new caste system is born with different rules for each strata of society.
At face value this is obviously corrupt and nepotistic behaviour, especially if the University gets government money. But even with private institutions, it is yet another crack in form of principal-agent problem when it comes to corporate governance. In practice, this is almost nothingburger - one can point out to many other similar cases as other people already pointed out such as affirmative action or other arbitrary criteria for hiring.
What I find interesting is how this proves a lot about how the PMC class is run and that it really is matter of aesthetics. For some reason spousal hiring of two people for let's say 150k cost each is better than paying 300k to one researcher and leaving it to them to sort things out. Spouse will not be happy even with cash on hand, they need to have credentials and job history and they need to be able to suspend their disbelief in their own abilities, so they can keep their position inside PMC class tooth-and-nail. Being stay-at-home spouse is death sentence in this regard. I recently had similar discussion regarding referrals in hiring, and it really surprised me how much the rules could be bent, when literally the same happened and people even collected money for referring their own relatives. You see, it is not bad nepotism, it is result of exceptional and valuable "networking", you should thank me that I populate your local branch of large faceless corporation with my family and close friends. And if you disagree by "anonymous" complaint to HR, then maybe you mysteriously get bad reviews in next 360 and maybe your twitter will get scrutinized a little bit more. So beware.
So my opinion is that this is immoral practice that will bring problems in the future in all the forms you mentioned - including further dilution of trust and expanding polarization. But at this point this is Moloch-like problem, it is almost inevitable especially if one looks how people make excuses for it. So just go ahead and do it, you will be stupid if you won't participate.
If you adopt sibling's child or even accept brother as a sperm donor, it may for sure create some awkward family gatherings with your brother literally being biological father of your child and possibly deciding to act on that role. Modern IVF especially combined with surrogacy serves as an endless source of philosophical questions/scenarios in real life - like this controversy where grieving mother paid surrogate to carry child of her dead son. So yes, if "single" mother can select a child from catalougue of sperm donors and we should be fine with that, why cannot let's say rich 70 years old man pay 20 Ukrainian surrogate mothers to deliver large family of children who will inhabit his remote compound in Nebraska?
But back to the topic again, there are no good options for infertile men who want to build relationship with younger and fertile childless woman or any woman who may decide she wants another child in the future.
georgioz
1yr ago
Sure, it is something between adoption and marrying a woman with her own child. I think there are no good options for infertile men even if they do not want to have children themselves.
The real step father is the government who protects, provides and parents the child. This isn't stable, as the people paying the taxes aren't getting the benefits. She wants men to pay taxes but not have any obligations as a wife. The state is a terrible husband. Children to single mothers (mothers married to the state) preform worse on all most all metrics. I find it mindblowing that there are people who have such faith in the system that they believe that the state will provide for them for decades to come. The welfare state is a ponzi scheme funded by debt that clearly isn't meeting its expectations already.
I think you underestimate this point. Even single mothers have baby fathers and even widows have their in-laws who may want to invest in their grandchild. What the OP is describing is even worse, these children are basically born without half of the family with everything that comes with that. Even on material side they will not inherit anything. Additionally, my spidey senses are tingling here, there something dark about a mother making her child as if they were a pet. She wants it, so she purchases it from catalogue.
This is another social experiment that kind of goes under the lid for some time already, and that society did not broadly agreed upon. It has similar vibes to surrogacy. We will deal with the fallout in decades.
I as European welcome this. Different example is that for instance to call something butter in EU, it has to have between 82 and 90% butterfat and maximum of 16% water. So what happens in practice is that you have brand name of your local diary producer with Butter name on it and you know what you get. If you see something else, then it is some fake product. I consider this as very valuable for the sake of informing the customer about the quality and content of the product.
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