WEBVTT - Class and the Culture War Part 2: Abstract Value, Concrete Genocide 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:04.800 Hi, everyone, It's me James, and I'm coming at you today, sweaty, smelly, 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:08.520 and exhausted from my pickup truck out in the desert 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:13.480 where I have been spending the weekend trying my best 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:17.000 to help, along with lots of other dedicated mutual aid workers, 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:21.160 to mitigate the damage done by an entirely preventable humanitarian 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:25.160 crisis at the United States Southern border. People are being 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.800 held in the open desert in Hakomba, where it gets 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.640 hot in the day gets very cold at night, and 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:34.120 there are children, there are old people, there are young people. 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:37.360 All the support they're getting it's from mutual aid workers, 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.760 then maybe get some water from border patrol, from federal government, 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:45.080 and not much else. And I'm here before your podcast 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:47.920 to ask you if you can to help. We've all 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:50.640 spent all of our time and most of our money 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.440 the last few days week trying to help, and we're 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.320 all pretty broke, and we're all pretty tired. But I 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:00.160 could really do with your support, and I'm going they 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:02.480 give the venmos and cash apps and PayPal information for 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:05.880 two organizations who ideally love and whose work I have 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:10.440 seen is extremely effective and is the only thing keeping 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.119 this situation from being a lot worse. And please don't 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:15.360 think that if you don't have much money that you 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:19.040 shouldn't give. We can do a lot with a little. 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:20.920 So if you only have five bucks, that is great. 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:22.839 And five bucks is are top for someone to sleep 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:24.880 under or a few hot meals. And what we're going 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:29.000 to buy is food, blankets, tarps, water, the things that 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:32.200 stop people dying in the desert. Those two organizations, Border 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.880 Kindness and Free Shit Collective can be found online at 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.959 border Kindness and at free ship pb on Twitter. For Borderkindness, 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:43.520 the venmo is at border hyphen Kindness. The cash app 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.840 is dollar sign border Kindness cash and the xell and 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:51.120 PayPal information is info at Borderkindness dot org. Free Ship 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.760 Collective are at free Ship Collective on cash app and 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:57.640 PayPal and at free shippbe on Twitter. Thank you very much, guys. 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:05.600 Welcome to tag it Appened Here, a podcast about why 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.080 everything absolutely sucks. I'm your host, Nia Long. I'm back 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:14.760 again and last episode we talked about the problems with 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:19.040 conceiving of all of labor as production from a sort 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.640 of macro feminist perspective of you know, thinking about how 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:26.200 you know, thinking of all labor, as production doesn't actually 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.040 capture what most labor is. And you know, we looked 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.560 at how this allowed patriarchy to become a wedge to 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:36.080 private workers movement apart. But there's another sort of more 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:41.800 micro problem with thinking about productive labor, and that micro 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:45.680 problem is that people are just absolutely unable to think 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:52.120 about productivity in anything other than moral terms. As to 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:54.000 you know, why this is the case, I'm not going 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.840 to go forward an answer. I've seen every theory from 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.359 like it's Christianity, to like it's ductual feature of capitalism 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.880 to its human nature or whatever. I'm I don't know, 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.560 pick pick your theory about why everyone is incapable of 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.680 being normal about productivity. But this turns out to be 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.840 a real problem for anyone who is trying to use 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:21.160 productive versus unproductive labor in a purely technical sense. Now, 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.160 the most famous person to do this is, as some 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:28.560 of you probably know, one, Karl Marx. And you know 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:33.680 I was hard on Mark's last episode, but this one 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:37.800 and the stuff that's going to follow isn't really his fault. 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.240 Marx here is actually doing one of the times where 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:43.960 he's being very reasonable and he's being very specific about 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:49.240 what productive labor is and everyone else is being extremely unreasonable. 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.760 And you know, given the incredibly dark places this is 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.120 going to go, maybe this is one of those things 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:00.000 where like, I don't know, you need to pick differ 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:03.320 words that aren't as emotionally charged as like productive and 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:08.240 unproductive labor. But all in all, like this, the catastrophe 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.360 that's about to unfold is not Marx's fault. There was 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.160 really no way that he could have known how nuts 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.920 everyone was going to go over this. So what actually 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:23.039 is the distinction between productive and unproductive labor? From Marx? So, 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:27.560 first off, and this is very important, productive versus unproductive 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:31.760 labor is a technical term. It has no moral content 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:36.120 at all. All it means is that some labor produces 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.120 capital for the capital owning class and some labor doesn't. 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:44.360 That that's literally it. Here's Marx. The commodities the capitalists 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.280 buys for his own private consumption are not consumed productively. 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.960 They do not become factors of capital. Just as little 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:56.200 to the service as he buys for his consumption voluntarily 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.120 or through compulsion from the state, et cetera, for the 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:01.919 sake of their useful value, They do not become a 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:06.080 factor of capital. They are not therefore productive kinds of labor, 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:09.880 and those who perform them are not productive workers. As 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:13.000 you can see, this has literally nothing to do with 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:17.640 the contents of the labor itself or morality whatsoever. If 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.680 a dancer works for production company and gives a performance 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.160 you know, working for the company, that's productive labor because 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.040 the company has turned their capital into more capital by 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.360 using the dancer to produce a commodity, which is to performance, 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.440 and then selling it. Right if that same dancer puts 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.159 on the same performance in the same place for a 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:39.839 crowd of you know, just like their friends or even 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.760 the same people, but who aren't paying a production company 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:45.520 for it, Suddenly the dancer, who again is doing the 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:48.000 same thing in the same place like even could be 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.440 on the same day, is doing non productive labor because 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:54.400 no capital is being created from it. Or, as you know, 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:57.719 here's how Marx puts it, labor with the same content 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:02.200 can therefore be both productive and unproductive. Milton, for example, 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:06.279 who did Paradise Loss, was an unproductive worker. In contrast 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:08.640 to this, the writer who delivers hack work for his 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.880 publisher is a productive worker. Later on, Milton sold the 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.440 product for five dollars, and to that extent became a 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:19.760 dealer in a commodity. But the Leipzig literary proletarian who 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:24.800 produces books e g. Compendium Political Economy at the instruction 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:28.560 of his publisher is roughly speaking, a productive worker insofar 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.640 as his production is subsumed under capital and only takes 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:35.200 place for the purpose of the latter's valorization. This is 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.160 a valorization of capital, which is like having capital make 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:42.680 more capital. A singer who sings like a bird is 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.000 an unproductive worker. If she sells her singing for money, 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:48.880 she is to that extent a wage laborer or a 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.960 commodity dealer. But the same singer when she is engaged 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.839 by an entrepreneur who has her sing in order to 0:06:55.880 --> 0:07:00.159 make money, is a productive worker, for she directly produces capital. 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:04.240 A school master who educates others is not a productive worker, 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.599 but a schoolmaster who was engaged as a wage laborer 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:11.200 and an institution alongside along with others, in order to 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.440 make in order through his labor to valorize the money 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:17.400 of the entrepreneur of the knowledge mongering institution is a 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:21.400 productive worker. Now, okay, reading a lot of Marx here, 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.880 I'm focusing on Marx, you know, because whether or not 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.520 someone in you know, the eighteen hundreds is a Marxist 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:30.560 or not. And if you picked this like a random 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:32.920 worker in the period when this is being written, the 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.960 odds are really bad that they're going to be a Marxist. 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.880 Marx was enormously influential, particularly in Europe as sort of 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:43.400 social democracy swept through the Germany's and then communism sort 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.480 of swept back through Europe. In the US, and Marx 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.520 is also and this is something that Marx himself like 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.120 takes great pains to conceal a lot of the time. 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:56.640 Marx is a kind of medium through which the broad 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:01.000 cultural consensus on labor was transformed into capital T theory. 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:05.880 And in this capital T theory, productive versus unproductive labor 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:08.040 is not a moral claim at all. It's a measure 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:12.480 of whether any given labor produces capital for the bourgeoisie. Now, 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:14.960 part of what Marx is trying to do here is 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.559 to intervene in existing discourse about productive and unproductive labor, 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:20.760 to turn it into useful theory instead of people just 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:25.080 yelling stuff at each other and Marks, I feel you, buddy, 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:29.760 oh boy. Taking this as a validation of what I'm doing. God, 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:31.880 here's an example I'm just going to put in here 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:35.920 of Marx being very mad about this. The self employed laborer, 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.400 for example, is his own wage laborer, and his own 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:43.079 means of production confront him in his own mind as capital. 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.720 As his own capitalist, he employs himself as a wage laborer. 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.520 Anomalies of this type then offer a favorable field for 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:56.480 outpourings of drivel about productive and unproductive labor. So, you know, 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:01.000 even in the eighteen hundreds, people are sit being incredibly 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:04.959 normal about this. They're saying things that are great and good, 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:10.600 and only only that they're being exceptionally good. Marx isn't 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:14.760 slowly being driven mad by reading at all. But you know, 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:20.480 when when it's being used as a technical category, the 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:25.080 sort of productive versus unproductive distinction, you know, it can 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.840 tell you a lot of stuff about how a capitalist 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:34.120 economy functions. But when it inevitably becomes a moral category, 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.560 things get very bad, very quickly. And so we're going 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.840 to go into two times that this has gone very badly, 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:47.079 the Nazis and Ronald Reagan. Now, the Nazis and Reagan 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.560 aren't quite doing the same thing, although there's a lot 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.199 of similarities, which is, you know, to be expected from 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:54.600 a band who went to a Nazi cemetery that included 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:57.640 a bunch of SS dudes and then gave a speech 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:00.600 defending his actions where he said, and I quote they, 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.359 which is referring to Nazi soldiers, quote they were victims 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:07.240 just as surely as the victims and the concentration camps, 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.679 which I I, I. 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:15.000 What the fuck, what are you even supposed to do 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.920 with that? Like, I just this guy was a president 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:20.000 of the United States. I mean, I like, I don't 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.880 know it makes sense, but like it never even crossed 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.320 my mind that it was like it would even be 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:29.400 possible to have a take that is, people in the 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.000 Nazi army are actually just as much victims as the 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:36.079 people in the concentration camps. Like I, I don't know, 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:39.440 baffling stuff by Reagan, I mean, I guess not baffling, 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.439 considering how closely his administration is tied to a. 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:46.320 Bunch of sort of Nazis who became like anti communists 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.240 while here were always anti coomicist, but who became part 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.120 of sort of like institutional anti communism and like the 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:56.199 post war era. But god, what a terrible thing I'm 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.000 getting my shots in at Reagan now because this is 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:08.280 about to get so incredibly bleak. So yay, so okay. 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.480 So the Right is able to sort of, you know, 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:17.600 very successful in fact, in transforming this distinction between productive 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:22.000 and non productive labor into a moral category, and then 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:27.120 they infuse it with anti Semitism, and through this sort 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:30.720 of I don't know, the horror of anti Semitism, productive 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:34.960 labor is transformed into you know, productive and unproductive members 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.840 of society. And this is one of the origins of 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:40.240 sort of Nazi race science and race craft. You know, 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:44.160 they have their attempt to quote unquote purify their race, 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.800 which relies on a distinction between sort of productive and 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:50.439 non productive members of society who's like quote unquote value 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:53.360 and productive capacity you know, come to be seen as 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:57.520 like genetically heritable, which you know, from the Nazi perspective, 0:11:58.120 --> 0:11:59.920 they are like, oh, this is stuff, this is heritable. 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:02.720 We need to do eugenics and mass exterminations of you know, 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.360 increasing numbers of disabled, queer communists and especially Jewish and 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.640 Groma people to ensure that only the quote unquote like 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:12.640 productive members society remain and like pass down their traits. 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:18.600 And this is fucking horrible. But this is also too 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:36.160 simple for an explanation for what actually happens. In order 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:40.000 to actually fully grasp the depths of what's happening here 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:44.640 and how this stuff functions, we need to go deeper 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:50.480 into specifically looking at anti Semitism, And in order to 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:52.600 do this, I'm going to turn to the great sort 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:56.240 of the great social theorist moist pistone Dressed in Peace 0:12:56.320 --> 0:13:00.040 died a few years ago. Apparently a great guy. I 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:04.800 don't know, but yeah, postone and his essay Anti Semitism 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.199 and National Socialism. This is something I recommend people read 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:10.959 it in full. It's a bit theoretically intense. It's also 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:14.520 like one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:19.040 But I think it's important to understand what national socialism 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.920 actually was and what it's what it's sort of ideological 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:28.440 basis was, because it, oh boy, not only has it 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:32.079 not gone away, it you know, it's it's it's it's 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.640 it's doing. It's doing it's doing a lot of the 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:41.880 sort of work that we've we've been sort of discussing. Okay, 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.640 so what what what is what is pistone actually talking about? 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:49.240 So postone sees Nazi anti Semitism not just as you know, 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.560 the sort of socialism of fools where like Jewish people 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:55.560 get substituted for capitalists to see the worker and okay, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:57.680 like yeah, it's like it's it serves as function to 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:04.360 some extent, but for postone, like Nazi anti Semitism is 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:08.120 its own sort of horrific, incomplete anti capitalist system. It's 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:12.719 this sort of ghastly aryan mirror of like Marxism, and 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:15.280 you know, okay, so, so to to get an understanding 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.760 of what he means by this, because this is something 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:25.160 that is you know, like it's it's it's deeply it's 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:29.200 kind of theoretically intense, but it's worth it. So in Marxism, 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:32.040 this the central mystery of the commodity is that a 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:35.040 commodity is a well, I mean, central mystery isn't the 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:36.400 right word, but this is this is one of the 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.840 one of the opening things in capital is that, you know, 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:43.800 this is this is this thing called the commodity fetish. 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:47.280 You have a commodity. A commodity is simultaneously a concrete 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:53.680 physical object that nonetheless contains within it an abstract social relation. 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.160 It has at the same time a use value, which 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:58.760 is like, you know, the thing that makes it useful. Right, 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.520 Like take a pencil, right, pencil, it has a used value. 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.120 The use value is that you can like use it 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.240 to write things, right, and you can use it to 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.840 erase things. But the pencil also has an exchange value. 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:14.400 And the exchange value, you know, is the value quote 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:17.680 unquote that you use it to compare it to other commodities. Right, 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:19.200 it's like how much is this thing? How much is 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:21.600 this thing worth? How much is this compared to like 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:24.720 other commodities, And this is a that's simply an enormous 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:27.960 that's that's kind of a simplication of it. But what's 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:32.120 happening here is that the sort of the exchange value 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.120 that lets you compare how much a pencil is worth 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:36.760 and how much a bracelet is worth. Right, that's not 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.000 an actual characteristic of the pencil or the bracelet. That 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.720 is a serious you know that that's an embedded social relation, right, 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.200 is an embedded capitalist social relation that allows a commodity 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.200 to be compared to all other commodities by again like 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:55.640 embedding this capitalist social relation into it. The important part 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.480 for our purposes is that the commodity has at the 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:02.320 same time a concrete component, which is the physical object, 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:04.480 and an abstract component, which is the sort of capitalist 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:08.560 social relation embedded in the pencil that makes it appear 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:14.480 to have value. Here's pistone, as indicated above. On the 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:18.920 logical level of the analysis of the commodity, the quote 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:23.000 double character allows the commodity to appear as a purely 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:28.440 material entity rather than as an objectification of mediated social relations. 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:32.320 So this is a more complicated way of saying what 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:34.000 I've sort of been trying to get at, which is 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.200 that the commodity, you know, because it's a physical object, right. 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.440 The commodity fetish allows the commodity to appear as if 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:46.320 it's just a pure physical object instead of something that 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:50.000 is produced by capitalism and contains within it capitalist social 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:53.920 relations that give it value. So we'll back back back 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:59.000 to pistone. Relatedly, it allows concrete labor to appear as 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:03.840 a purely cial creative process separate from capitalist social relations. 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:09.320 On the logical level of capital, the double character labor 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.600 process and valorization process. And by valorization process he means 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:16.080 the process that turns, you know, capital into more capital. 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.000 So the fact that there's both a labor process, and 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:23.240 a valorization process allows industrial production to appear as a 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:28.720 purely material, creative process, separable from capital. The manifest form 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:32.600 of the concrete is now more organic. Industrial capital can 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:36.600 then appear as linear descendant of quote natural artismal labor 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:42.600 as quote organically rooted in opposition to rootless, quote parasitic 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.560 finance capital. You can see here where the whole sort 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:50.080 of productive versus unproductive labor distinction has ended up right. 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:55.480 It's been transformed into the sort of organic concrete rooted 0:17:55.600 --> 0:18:00.000 like productive national worker and like entrepreneur versus like rootless 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:08.000 parasitic finance capital. This is unbelievably dangerous because now having 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.159 set the concrete against the abstract, the fascist proceeds to 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.800 turn the abstract into a people, which is Jewish people. 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.399 The result of this is that in the fascist mind, 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.520 the sort of concrete productive worker and the entrepreneurs stand 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:25.679 against the abstract anti national finance capital personified in the 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.280 figure of the jew. Here's postona again of what happened next. 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.119 The extermination of European jeury is the indication that it 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:35.560 is far too simple to deal with Nazism as a 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:39.119 mass movement with anti capitalist overtones. Which shed that husk 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.440 in the nineteen thirty four Rome push. At the latest, 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.400 once dead served its purpose in state power have been seized. 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.639 In the first place, ideological forms of thought are not 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:55.080 simply conscious manipulations. In the second place, this view misunderstands 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:59.080 the nature of Nazi anti capitalism, the extent to which 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:03.280 it was intrinsically bound to the anti Semitic worldview. Auschwitz 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:07.000 indicates that connection. It is true that the somewhat too 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:10.800 concrete and Plebeian quote unquote anti capitalism of the essay 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.960 was dispensed with by nineteen thirty four, not, however, the 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:19.200 anti Semitic thrust the knowledge quote unquote that the source 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:23.639 of evil is abstract the Jew. A capitalist factory is 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:28.080 a place where value is produced, which unfortunately has to 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.080 take the form of the production of goods of use values. 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.040 The concrete is produced as the necessary carrier of the abstract. 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:41.080 The extermination camps were not a terrible version of the factory. 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.400 The extermination camps were not a terrible version of such 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:48.280 a factory, but rather should be seen as its grotesque 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:54.320 aryan quote anti capitalist and negation. Auschewist was a factory 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:57.960 to quote unquote destroy value, that is, to destroy the 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:02.399 personifications of the abstract. Its organization was that of a 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:06.200 fiendish industrial process, the aim of which was to liberate 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:10.440 the concrete from the abstract. The first step was a dehumanize, 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:13.600 that is, to rip away the quote unquote mask of humanity, 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:19.440 of qualitative specificity, and reveal the Jews for quote what 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:25.879 they really are shadows Cipher's numbered abstractions. The second step 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:31.919 was to then eradicate that abstractness, to transform it into smoke, 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.880 trying in the process to rest away the last remains 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:42.480 of the concrete material use value, clothes, gold hair, soap. Auschwitz, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:44.840 not the Nazi seizure of power in nineteen thirty three, 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:49.240 was the real German Revolution. The attempted to overthrow not 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.720 merely of a political order, but of the existing social formation. 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:55.840 By this one deed, the world was to be made 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:59.120 safe from the tyranny of the abstract. In the process, 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:04.480 the Nazis quote unquote liberated themselves from humanity. The Nazis 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.800 lost the war against the Soviet Union, America and Britain. 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:12.959 They won their war, their revolution against the European Jews. 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:19.080 And this ideology, this pitting of the abstract against the 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:24.240 concrete is so powerful that it was never defeated. By 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:26.959 the time the Nazis were defeated militarily, they had, you know, 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.520 by the combined might of five of the largest empires 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:33.760 in human history, they had already won, and their ideology 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:37.640 never went away. If you look closely, you can still 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:40.840 see it moving throughout the world. You can see it 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:43.760 in the left making exactly the same mistakes it made before, 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:47.119 waging war against the abstract in the name of an 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.040 anti capitalism that can never end with the actual destruction 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:53.600 of capitalism in that specific form. You can see it 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:56.560 in a right that openly espouses these exact same ideas, 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:59.639 in the form of pitting their nationalists and patriots against 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:03.800 the glblists, in the way it pits national American or 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:09.439 Russian or Hungarian workers against George Soros. It is the 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:13.280 basis of all modern right wing thought. And when we 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:16.600 come back from ADS, we're going to talk about right 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:33.840 wing thoughts other basis Ronald Reagan's rampant racism. We've now 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:37.800 seen one way that the productive and unproductive working distinction 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:42.560 can be turned into unfathomable right wing violence. And now 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:46.560 we're going to take a look at another one, which 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.040 is the myth of the welfare queen. So one of 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:52.920 the ways that Reagan eventually took power was by I 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:55.520 mean literally he was doing this for like a decade. 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.560 He does it for like twenty fucking years. It's insufferable, 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:03.399 is screaming about the myth of the welfare queen. So 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:08.600 the welfare queen for people who like, I don't know, 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:11.080 we're too young to like remember what I mean. I 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:13.359 wasn't around for the original height of it, but like 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:16.480 I fucking remember from when I was a kid. It's 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.239 this sort of like mythical racist caricature of like a 0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:24.120 black woman who lives off of scamming the welfare system. 0:23:25.200 --> 0:23:27.840 And you can see what's happening here pretty clearly, right, 0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:32.080 This is not like a particularly subtle political maneuver. The 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:34.359 plan is to pit you know, sort of so called 0:23:34.400 --> 0:23:38.919 like productive workers and entrepreneurs versus people on welfare and 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:43.520 through through the sort of incredible power of racism and 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:47.320 specifically misogyn noir, which is, you know, through the power 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:50.480 of America. Is just like specific a bideen casured to 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:53.560 black woman, the identity of the worker is transformed into 0:23:53.640 --> 0:23:57.919 a racial category. So what you're actually dealing with is 0:23:58.000 --> 0:24:01.639 this opposition Reagan is trying to between quote unquote like 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:05.280 productive white people who like work for a living or whatever, 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:09.040 and you know black welfare queens quote unquote who are 0:24:09.080 --> 0:24:10.840 dependent on the state and don't work. And this is 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.240 this is this is sort of Reagan's framing of it. Now, 0:24:14.280 --> 0:24:17.000 if you go back to the sort of older Marxist 0:24:17.040 --> 0:24:20.600 conception of class, right, like unemployed black people are like 0:24:20.800 --> 0:24:24.760 unambiguously part of the working class. And this is something 0:24:24.760 --> 0:24:27.359 that Reagan understood. Now, part of what was going on 0:24:27.440 --> 0:24:30.400 here actually was Reagan attempting to sort of crack down 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:32.320 on black welfare activists who were doing a lot of 0:24:32.359 --> 0:24:35.719 you know, really incredible organizing, ranging from sort of like 0:24:36.480 --> 0:24:40.159 you know, organizing mass protests to like doing squats to 0:24:40.320 --> 0:24:44.360 doing like full it's full on building occupations and Reagan 0:24:44.600 --> 0:24:47.000 and more so the people sort of around Reagan by 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:50.560 the end because you know, by like by like term two, 0:24:50.640 --> 0:24:53.600 Reagan has like basically checked out. You know. But but 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:56.280 the people around Reagan can see which way the wind 0:24:56.359 --> 0:24:59.240 is blowing, and you know, they are busy sort of 0:24:59.280 --> 0:25:01.399 like lining up every fan they can find to make 0:25:01.440 --> 0:25:03.320 the wind blow a bit stronger, And the way that 0:25:03.320 --> 0:25:06.399 the winds are blowing is that a bunch of people 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:08.520 are about to be spat out of the capitalist system 0:25:08.560 --> 0:25:11.879 and too increasingly precarious service jobs or just no jobs 0:25:11.880 --> 0:25:15.800 at all. And as the sort of crisis dynamics emerged 0:25:15.840 --> 0:25:19.160