« What in the hell … :: … is(n’t) the capitalist subject? :: September :: 2009 | Main | Plutonomy (part 2) »

October 04, 2009

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

D. Smith (Traverse City, MI)

It's truly frightening to read this analysis and how we, "the 99" are viewed by them, "the 1%". Like we are something of value only for the sake of taking or keeping something from us...like we are nothing more than a host to a parasite sucking the lifeblood out of us. The "Plutomomists" should heed the lesson in nature, for a necrotrophic parasite in its quest for survival and acquisition, ends up not only killing the host, but itself as well. Without the 99%, the 1% cannot exist. The 1% NEEDS the 99% in order to remain in power. WE, the 99%, don't need the 1%!
The 99% have 99% of the VOTE!! Let's use it!!!

"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I’m not leaving." (Michael Moore)

Jodi

Thanks for your comment--the memos are pretty extreme, kinda like the Dead Peasants policies. What's particularly interesting: no attempt to hide class conflict, oppression, exploitation.

asfasfasdf

It just goes to show how demented these people are and why we need a socialist revolution in this country. These people have no concept of moral right or wrong. They live in a fantasy world of analysis that's based on nothing but their own wishful thinking. It's as if analysis were a form of creative writing.

BTW, did anyone else notice what poor sentence construction, word choice and what a lousy sense of composition were on display? Simply put, the person who wrote that is stupid, as in low IQ. It sounds like a business major who drank his way through b-school and has learned to insert the buzzwords of his peers in cookie-cutter sentences he gleaned off of the mindless, fact-free drivel his industry churns out.


tm

There are two parts to the memo. I believe Moore alludes to the second part. Here's a bit on both:

http://interimtom.blogspot.com/2009/10/humping-dumpty-plutonomics-by-ajay.html

Levi

Great find, Jodi. In response to another poster, I don't know that I would call the person/people who wrote this memo "stupid" or captivated by wishful thinking. What strikes me as "wishful thinking" is the naive belief that somehow normative concerns like right and wrong can have any impact whatsoever on this sort of reasoning. I don't know what's more demoralizing here: the fact that there are those in this 1% that are, in a sophisticated fashion, *clear-sightedly* theorizing strategies to maximize their interests in such a cynical fashion (the author of this document is like a mad scientist or a wicked Marxist that understands everything Marx said and recognizes it to be true yet uses all of that to *intensify* these inequalities) or that we have naive "radical leftist activists"(tm) that think the appropriate or viable response is a normative denunciation that points out how they're "wrong" or "stupid" or "wicked". Sure, this response is natural and it's gratifying to situate oneself in the position of being "right", but the whole "logic" of this response is that of the knavish slave that thinks he's accomplishing something by gossiping behind his master's back by talking about how tacky his master's taste is while nonetheless remaining a slave. Point out bad grammar all you like (how many poorly written articles are there out there in social and political philosophy?), it doesn't change the fact that folks like this are winning with these strategies. The question then is that of how to adequately and realistically respond to strategies like this. Somehow I don't think the Habermasian and Adornonian normophiliacs get what they're up against... And this goes doubly for those who have thoroughly missed the point of Zizek and Badiou that continue to think a truth-procedure consists in pointing out "they're bad, baaad!" Yes, they're bad, but that doesn't change the fact that they're shooting the moon or dominating the field. Certainly we can come up with better strategies.

The comments to this entry are closed.

My Photo