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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3464 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Can anyone recommend a left-wing analysis of how economic Marxism* seemingly got supplanted by "woke" or "bioleninist" Marxism in the U.S.? I'm interested in learning (1) what caused the shift, (2) a history of the shift itself, and (3) how economic Marxists view this change (i.e. how would they describe the phenomenon in Marxist language).

  • There's probably a better term for this, but I don't know it. I'm referring to labor union/working class Marxism that seemed to dominate for most of the 20th century.

The most interesting explanation along those lines is that it dates from the PMC increasing investment in the stock market. Mutual funds, 401ks, etc. All of that really started getting emphasized in the 90s. This investment aligned the PMC with capital, rather than labour. So the political beliefs shifted to something which capital could support, could pretend to be the good guys. Also labour could be weakened and outsourced, and this would be morally okay because of the their newly questionable beliefs.

401ks are a massively underappreciated piece of social engineering. They were a genius move on the part of capital to defend their interests.

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