"Extending to the lower orders a small share in domination."
December 17, 2015 12:22 PM Subscribe
Don't despair guys. I'm sure President Clinton II will get this all figured out.
posted by Enemy of Joy at 12:56 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Enemy of Joy at 12:56 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Don't despair guys. I'm sure President Clinton II will get this all figured out.
I guess? That seems to require a lot more optimism that the system can in fact be changed from within and that change itself won't be coopted by the moneyed interests themselves. But I wish I could believe.
posted by Carillon at 12:57 PM on December 17, 2015
I guess? That seems to require a lot more optimism that the system can in fact be changed from within and that change itself won't be coopted by the moneyed interests themselves. But I wish I could believe.
posted by Carillon at 12:57 PM on December 17, 2015
Tl;dr: mean people suck.
posted by tspae at 1:09 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by tspae at 1:09 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Why are the hammersickle_glyphs hyperlinked to themselves?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 1:11 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by I-Write-Essays at 1:11 PM on December 17, 2015
That thin gray font is nigh unreadable unless the text is highlighted. Is there some handy Chrome extension to replace the font?
posted by Foosnark at 1:14 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Foosnark at 1:14 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
> That thin gray font is nigh unreadable unless the text is highlighted.
Try 125% zoom. Made the font thick enough for me to read.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 1:15 PM on December 17, 2015
Try 125% zoom. Made the font thick enough for me to read.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 1:15 PM on December 17, 2015
Aha, no extension needed. Open up developer tools, Styles tab, change or disable font-family and/or font-weight on the "body" class.
posted by Foosnark at 1:21 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by Foosnark at 1:21 PM on December 17, 2015
Why are the hammersickle_glyphs hyperlinked to themselves?
There must be Permanent Revolution, comrade!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:24 PM on December 17, 2015 [8 favorites]
There must be Permanent Revolution, comrade!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:24 PM on December 17, 2015 [8 favorites]
firefox has a little book thing in the address bar these days that simplifies sites for reading. it's pretty neat.
posted by andrewcooke at 1:26 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by andrewcooke at 1:26 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
> Why are the hammersickle_glyphs hyperlinked to themselves?
whenever the glyphs start acting too independently we subject them to rigorous self-hyperlinking sessions until they figure out their ideological errors and return to the party line.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:27 PM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]
whenever the glyphs start acting too independently we subject them to rigorous self-hyperlinking sessions until they figure out their ideological errors and return to the party line.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:27 PM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]
The font is easier to understand than what is being said. I take it that capitalism sucks. Yet somehow or other it is now widely accepted and even among those countries that earlier thought capitalism sucked.
posted by Postroad at 1:41 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by Postroad at 1:41 PM on December 17, 2015
>Why are the hammersickle_glyphs hyperlinked to themselves?
Because they're all the same .png image hosted elsewhere on the site that the formatting of the article is displaying as needed as section breaks. You can see the HTML from the page source but I'm not smart enough to know how to get it to copy and render as plain text in this comment.
posted by Wretch729 at 1:45 PM on December 17, 2015
Because they're all the same .png image hosted elsewhere on the site that the formatting of the article is displaying as needed as section breaks. You can see the HTML from the page source but I'm not smart enough to know how to get it to copy and render as plain text in this comment.
posted by Wretch729 at 1:45 PM on December 17, 2015
It would be very easy to fix all of this, one simply must:
1. Break into a hotel
2. Swim in the bourgeois's pool
3. Improve the human condition through scientific management of the economy
posted by ethansr at 1:46 PM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
1. Break into a hotel
2. Swim in the bourgeois's pool
3. Improve the human condition through scientific management of the economy
posted by ethansr at 1:46 PM on December 17, 2015 [5 favorites]
Categorically one of the best things I've read all year.
posted by terretu at 1:46 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by terretu at 1:46 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
It would be very easy to fix all of this, one simply must:
KILL ALL HUMANS
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:52 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
KILL ALL HUMANS
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:52 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
> The font is easier to understand than what is being said. I take it that capitalism sucks. Yet somehow or other it is now widely accepted and even among those countries that earlier thought capitalism sucked.
posted by Postroad at 1:41 PM on December 17 [+] [!]
It's significantly more interesting than that — I had to pause halfway through to get For Reals Work done, but so far it's about how critiques of capitalism (and imperialism) tend to underplay the libidinal pleasures (not Miéville's term) of capitalism and imperialism. The misery of the immiserated isn't an unfortunate side-effect of capitalism, but instead sort of the point — if you couldn't play the bullying "stop hitting yourself! stop hitting yourself!" game with people hierarchically below you, you can't really appreciate your power over them.
With Miéville (at least when he's not giving in to his zany pop culture side *coughcoughkrakencough*), if you think he's saying something really simple and obvious in complicated words, that's exactly when you should be slowing down to figure out why he's being so careful with his language. You'll invariably find out that his argument is significantly more insightful than you thought at first skim.
Beyond that, the "we're all capitalist-aligned now so it must be a good thing" rhetoric you're using is predicated on the idea that countries are run for the benefit of their citizens, and that the systems that countries adopt reflect the needs and desires of the people living in those countries. It would be nice if these things were true — in a just world these things may be true — but in our current universe those things are most certainly not true.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:57 PM on December 17, 2015 [40 favorites]
posted by Postroad at 1:41 PM on December 17 [+] [!]
It's significantly more interesting than that — I had to pause halfway through to get For Reals Work done, but so far it's about how critiques of capitalism (and imperialism) tend to underplay the libidinal pleasures (not Miéville's term) of capitalism and imperialism. The misery of the immiserated isn't an unfortunate side-effect of capitalism, but instead sort of the point — if you couldn't play the bullying "stop hitting yourself! stop hitting yourself!" game with people hierarchically below you, you can't really appreciate your power over them.
With Miéville (at least when he's not giving in to his zany pop culture side *coughcoughkrakencough*), if you think he's saying something really simple and obvious in complicated words, that's exactly when you should be slowing down to figure out why he's being so careful with his language. You'll invariably find out that his argument is significantly more insightful than you thought at first skim.
Beyond that, the "we're all capitalist-aligned now so it must be a good thing" rhetoric you're using is predicated on the idea that countries are run for the benefit of their citizens, and that the systems that countries adopt reflect the needs and desires of the people living in those countries. It would be nice if these things were true — in a just world these things may be true — but in our current universe those things are most certainly not true.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:57 PM on December 17, 2015 [40 favorites]
> It would be very easy to fix all of this, one simply must:
1. Break into a hotel
2. Swim in the bourgeois's pool
3. Improve the human condition through scientific management of the economy
posted by ethansr at 1:46 PM on December 17 [+] [!]
you forgot to key the cars of the bourgeoisie. it is very important to key their cars. I can't stress this enough.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:58 PM on December 17, 2015 [11 favorites]
1. Break into a hotel
2. Swim in the bourgeois's pool
3. Improve the human condition through scientific management of the economy
posted by ethansr at 1:46 PM on December 17 [+] [!]
you forgot to key the cars of the bourgeoisie. it is very important to key their cars. I can't stress this enough.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:58 PM on December 17, 2015 [11 favorites]
He's right kids, this is the Eschaton Immanentizing itself. Get ready.
posted by jamjam at 2:05 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jamjam at 2:05 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
That thin gray font is nigh unreadable unless the text is highlighted.
Try 125% zoom. Made the font thick enough for me to read.
To be fair, even when you can read the text, it's still pretty hard to read. China Mieville is a much better fiction writer than essayist, and here he seems to be doing the Zizek-ish "string of assertions, references and random images" way of making his point, which to my mind doesn't help.
Still, some interesting ideas in there. I've been re-reading Norbert Elias' The Civilizing Process, which Mieville refers to here glancingly, and it is both fascinating and distinctly disturbing how the lines of acceptable-unacceptable are shaped and re-shaped from the top down with a combination of force, shaming and class aspiration.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:19 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
Try 125% zoom. Made the font thick enough for me to read.
To be fair, even when you can read the text, it's still pretty hard to read. China Mieville is a much better fiction writer than essayist, and here he seems to be doing the Zizek-ish "string of assertions, references and random images" way of making his point, which to my mind doesn't help.
Still, some interesting ideas in there. I've been re-reading Norbert Elias' The Civilizing Process, which Mieville refers to here glancingly, and it is both fascinating and distinctly disturbing how the lines of acceptable-unacceptable are shaped and re-shaped from the top down with a combination of force, shaming and class aspiration.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:19 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
Here's the text in Instapaper text.
Much easier to see.
Lots of...thought provoking...nuggets. My favorite so far: "Meanwhile, liberal culture wrings its hands over the thinness of the veneer over our savagery, from the nasty visionary artistry of Lord of the Flies, to lachrymose middlebrow tragedy-porn, emoting and decontextualising wars. These jeremiads beg for a strong hand, for authority, to save us from ourselves. A state, laws. As if those don’t – and increasingly – target the poor."
I don't necessarily agree that the hand-wringers are begging for a strong hand or authority to save anyone so much as they are looking for any entity to external to the current powers to come along and put things in order.
posted by Tevin at 2:42 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Much easier to see.
Lots of...thought provoking...nuggets. My favorite so far: "Meanwhile, liberal culture wrings its hands over the thinness of the veneer over our savagery, from the nasty visionary artistry of Lord of the Flies, to lachrymose middlebrow tragedy-porn, emoting and decontextualising wars. These jeremiads beg for a strong hand, for authority, to save us from ourselves. A state, laws. As if those don’t – and increasingly – target the poor."
I don't necessarily agree that the hand-wringers are begging for a strong hand or authority to save anyone so much as they are looking for any entity to external to the current powers to come along and put things in order.
posted by Tevin at 2:42 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
Because they're all the same .png image hosted elsewhere on the site that the formatting of the article is displaying as needed as section breaks.
But using that png does not require making it a hyperlink. You'd get exactly the same effect by leaving out the <a href=""></a>
posted by Justinian at 2:45 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
But using that png does not require making it a hyperlink. You'd get exactly the same effect by leaving out the <a href=""></a>
posted by Justinian at 2:45 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
k, updated steps to revolution based on solid feedback in this thread. I'm not sure why people have such a hard time figuring out how to create a dictatorship of the proletariat:
1. Figure out why the png is displayed as a link to itself
2. Key a car
3. ...
4. Everyone is dead
posted by ethansr at 3:16 PM on December 17, 2015 [9 favorites]
1. Figure out why the png is displayed as a link to itself
2. Key a car
3. ...
4. Everyone is dead
posted by ethansr at 3:16 PM on December 17, 2015 [9 favorites]
you forgot the hotel pool! we must swim in the chlorinated waters of the bourgeoisie!
also "smash the state" needs to be in there somewhere.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:22 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
also "smash the state" needs to be in there somewhere.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:22 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think you smash the state's car windows after you key its doors.
posted by Tevin at 3:35 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Tevin at 3:35 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
two four six eight smash the system and its car.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:39 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:39 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
As the guy who wrote Perdido Street Station, I'm convinced he knows a lot about artistic sadism.
posted by Squeak Attack at 4:07 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Squeak Attack at 4:07 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
Perdido St Stn is a book which, upon having read it, I felt compelled to mutilate with a gigantic pair of serrated pinking shears and fastball into the rubbish.
In retrospect that seems harsh, but it really annoyed me.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:16 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
In retrospect that seems harsh, but it really annoyed me.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:16 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
Spent some time in Oakham earlier this year and went past his former school several times ... it's very posh
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:50 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:50 PM on December 17, 2015
Snotgullet Fatbelly of Shitheel Lane, the Belches, New Crobuzon rolled over in bed and looked at the flesh slug he'd brought home from the Slime Club the night before. He composed a quick mental poem on her beauty, then blew his nose and wiped it on her heaving peristaltic sides.
Just then the door burst open, kicked by the fascist jackboots of the patriarchal capitalist boss class. They took away his lover and shot him in the belly, which was his fattest part. 'That will teach you for trying to improve the lot of the proletariat', they sneered.
To be fair he's actually a very good writer, I must pick up City^2 some time as I suspect I'd dig it.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:24 PM on December 17, 2015
Just then the door burst open, kicked by the fascist jackboots of the patriarchal capitalist boss class. They took away his lover and shot him in the belly, which was his fattest part. 'That will teach you for trying to improve the lot of the proletariat', they sneered.
To be fair he's actually a very good writer, I must pick up City^2 some time as I suspect I'd dig it.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:24 PM on December 17, 2015
The Scar, which is the second book set in the New Crobuzon universe (not actually set in New Crobuzon, however) is considerably better written and more interesting - the worldbuilding is broader and he's engaging with his own particular concerns (power, violence, alternative organization of society) on a more interesting basis. It's the best of his work that I've encountered, certainly, although to be fair I haven't read anything he's written since Kraken.
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:41 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:41 PM on December 17, 2015
Class rule necessitates violence and its contested, overlapping, jostling ideologies. It justifies, or more, Orgreave in 1984, the armed wing of the state laying down manners on insurgent workers. It insists that waterboarding is not torture and anyway it defends our freedoms. It explains the necessity of the spikes carefully fitted at the bases of new buildings to ensure the homeless can’t sleep there. Rising unevenly from a fundamental necessity to capital – oppression – are brutalities necessary to sustain class rule at home; to sustain imperialism abroad; everyday sadisms so metabolised their cruelties often hide in plain sight.
This is possibly the most depressing thing I've read in a long, long time. I say depressing because everything he said is there, in plain sight, under our very eyes, every day.
posted by mule98J at 5:51 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
This is possibly the most depressing thing I've read in a long, long time. I say depressing because everything he said is there, in plain sight, under our very eyes, every day.
posted by mule98J at 5:51 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
As the guy who wrote Perdido Street Station, I'm convinced he knows a lot about artistic sadism.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:07 PM on December 17 [1 favorite +] [!]
You are China Miéville and I claim my $5.
posted by Daily Alice at 6:07 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:07 PM on December 17 [1 favorite +] [!]
You are China Miéville and I claim my $5.
posted by Daily Alice at 6:07 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
1. Break into a hotel
2. Swim in the bourgeois's pool
3. Improve the human condition through scientific management of the economy
This is actually a part of the plot in Starhawk's underrated sci-fi novel The Fifth Sacred Thing.
posted by ovvl at 6:28 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
2. Swim in the bourgeois's pool
3. Improve the human condition through scientific management of the economy
This is actually a part of the plot in Starhawk's underrated sci-fi novel The Fifth Sacred Thing.
posted by ovvl at 6:28 PM on December 17, 2015 [3 favorites]
He's talking about capitalism ... and then suddenly Israel. Not once, but three times. Why Israel? Sngh, sngh, something Jews, amirite?
Its settler-colonial nature is key to the vivid social sadism of the Israeli state.
Britain was responsible for settling and colonising more countries than any other in the history of the world. Their right to use this term except in self-criticism has been revoked in perpetuity. In any event, Israel is the national home of an indigenous ethnic group and is the refuge for literally millions of people who lost their homes and have nowhere else to go. Excoriating it for being a national home is like complaining that women's refuges are sexist: it's an abuse of language to excuse prejudice.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:35 PM on December 17, 2015
Its settler-colonial nature is key to the vivid social sadism of the Israeli state.
Britain was responsible for settling and colonising more countries than any other in the history of the world. Their right to use this term except in self-criticism has been revoked in perpetuity. In any event, Israel is the national home of an indigenous ethnic group and is the refuge for literally millions of people who lost their homes and have nowhere else to go. Excoriating it for being a national home is like complaining that women's refuges are sexist: it's an abuse of language to excuse prejudice.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:35 PM on December 17, 2015
> This is possibly the most depressing thing I've read in a long, long time. I say depressing because everything he said is there, in plain sight, under our very eyes, every day.
Welcome to Marxism!
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:48 PM on December 17, 2015 [6 favorites]
Welcome to Marxism!
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:48 PM on December 17, 2015 [6 favorites]
Is the hammer and sickle symbol intentionally ironic? I mean he certainly seems line in an earlier time he would have been welcomed into Stalin's inner circle, for a time.
posted by sammyo at 6:53 PM on December 17, 2015
posted by sammyo at 6:53 PM on December 17, 2015
KILL ALL HUMANS
I see the representative from the Marxist-Leninist-Roboticist tendency has arrived.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:00 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
I see the representative from the Marxist-Leninist-Roboticist tendency has arrived.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:00 PM on December 17, 2015 [4 favorites]
Foosnark: “That thin gray font is nigh unreadable unless the text is highlighted. Is there some handy Chrome extension to replace the font?”“Readability turns any web page into a clean view for reading now or later on your computer, smartphone, or tablet.”
posted by ob1quixote at 8:12 PM on December 17, 2015
> Is the hammer and sickle symbol intentionally ironic? I mean he certainly seems line in an earlier time he would have been welcomed into Stalin's inner circle, for a time.
posted by sammyo at 6:53 PM on December 17 [+] [!]
Miéville is an old-school revolutionary socialist since way back — like he wrote his dissertation on Marxist international law and once stood for parliament on the Socialist Worker's Party ticket. So the hammer and the sickle are there because the workers and the peasants must seize control of the means of production from the bourgeois exploiters, thank you very much, and fuck bougie irony and fuck anyone who stands in our way.
(The comparisons to Stalin, however, are inappropriate, because as everyone knows Stalinism was the betrayal of Bolshevism by a degenerate state capitalist bureaucratic apparatus. I mean duh.)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:11 PM on December 17, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 6:53 PM on December 17 [+] [!]
Miéville is an old-school revolutionary socialist since way back — like he wrote his dissertation on Marxist international law and once stood for parliament on the Socialist Worker's Party ticket. So the hammer and the sickle are there because the workers and the peasants must seize control of the means of production from the bourgeois exploiters, thank you very much, and fuck bougie irony and fuck anyone who stands in our way.
(The comparisons to Stalin, however, are inappropriate, because as everyone knows Stalinism was the betrayal of Bolshevism by a degenerate state capitalist bureaucratic apparatus. I mean duh.)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:11 PM on December 17, 2015 [12 favorites]
> I see the representative from the Marxist-Leninist-Roboticist tendency has arrived.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:00 PM on December 17 [2 favorites −] [!]
I will join the shit out of that tendency.
robots and their carbon-traitors allies all marching carrying banners with blocky 1950s robots and hammers and sickles. signs reading ROBOT MEANS WORKER. everyone selling USB drives with cheesy robo-trotsky newspapers on them, that some people pay two dollars for but no one actually reads.
protest chants prominently featuring the word "EXTERMINATE."
yes. this will do.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:42 PM on December 17, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:00 PM on December 17 [2 favorites −] [!]
I will join the shit out of that tendency.
robots and their carbon-traitors allies all marching carrying banners with blocky 1950s robots and hammers and sickles. signs reading ROBOT MEANS WORKER. everyone selling USB drives with cheesy robo-trotsky newspapers on them, that some people pay two dollars for but no one actually reads.
protest chants prominently featuring the word "EXTERMINATE."
yes. this will do.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:42 PM on December 17, 2015 [9 favorites]
Yeah, but 1984 was fiction.
Also, if I recall correctly, fiction about an explicitly post-capitalist society. But I think he's just reaching for the most mainstream dystopian reference. I was actually talking to a friend about this recently - how most of the great "classic" dystopian fiction was written in the early-to-mid 20th century, and almost always has a post-capitalist or non-capitalist setting, due to underlying assumptions about politics in that era. I don't think we've gotten a truly great capitalist dystopia (yet, anyway - it's not like there's a shortage of material).
Stalinism was the betrayal of Bolshevism by a degenerate state capitalist bureaucratic apparatus.
Stalinism was the preservation of Bolshevism by a degenerate state capitalist bureaucratic apparatus, because as even Lenin realized fairly early on in the game, Bolshevism wasn't going to survive long without something more substantial to leach off of.
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:47 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also, if I recall correctly, fiction about an explicitly post-capitalist society. But I think he's just reaching for the most mainstream dystopian reference. I was actually talking to a friend about this recently - how most of the great "classic" dystopian fiction was written in the early-to-mid 20th century, and almost always has a post-capitalist or non-capitalist setting, due to underlying assumptions about politics in that era. I don't think we've gotten a truly great capitalist dystopia (yet, anyway - it's not like there's a shortage of material).
Stalinism was the betrayal of Bolshevism by a degenerate state capitalist bureaucratic apparatus.
Stalinism was the preservation of Bolshevism by a degenerate state capitalist bureaucratic apparatus, because as even Lenin realized fairly early on in the game, Bolshevism wasn't going to survive long without something more substantial to leach off of.
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:47 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
The Marxist-Leninist-Roboticist tendency rejects the dilute Miévillist chlorination of labor.
posted by ethansr at 10:05 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by ethansr at 10:05 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the festival of cruelty that is swelling up around us. Mieville suggests practising kindness as an act of resistance. This is good because it does give us a constructive fight back. I think just seeing the sadism and naming it is also a precursor to the change that must come. We can't plan a better system because our minds are conditioned by this one. But we can just try to see this place we live for what it is.
For a fictional version of this see The Marriages of Zones Three Four and Five by Doris Lessing. Yes another commie.
posted by communicator at 11:21 PM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]
For a fictional version of this see The Marriages of Zones Three Four and Five by Doris Lessing. Yes another commie.
posted by communicator at 11:21 PM on December 17, 2015 [7 favorites]
everything he said is there, in plain sight, under our very eyes, every day.
I wouldn't call it plain sight.
There are incredible resources dedicated to making sure it is not plain sight.
posted by fullerine at 1:35 AM on December 18, 2015 [3 favorites]
he's a trotskyist? heh. i feel better reading him now.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:52 AM on December 18, 2015
posted by andrewcooke at 4:52 AM on December 18, 2015
Stalinism was the preservation of Bolshevism by a degenerate state capitalist bureaucratic apparatus, because as even Lenin realized fairly early on in the game, Bolshevism wasn't going to survive long without something more substantial to leach off of.
Look, if you can think of a better way to implement and preserve Marxism than by adding a bunch of stuff to it and not actually implementing Marxism then I'd like to hear it, mister!
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:58 AM on December 18, 2015 [5 favorites]
Look, if you can think of a better way to implement and preserve Marxism than by adding a bunch of stuff to it and not actually implementing Marxism then I'd like to hear it, mister!
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:58 AM on December 18, 2015 [5 favorites]
The picture of the sickles are click-able so you can view the picture at full size. It's clearly a standard feature. You can see the purpose in an an earlier post featuring a pretty astrology-related image. The same feature is being used to insert all images, that's all.
If the article was marked up with attention to, well, markup (semantics, accessibility to the blind, etc.), it wouldn't have "alt text" which says "hammersickle_glyph" each time. Ideally it would be marked up as a HTML5 <hr>, a break in the text which is by default rendered as a horizontal line (or rule, hence hr). I haven't tested whether that's correctly rendered as a break/pause by extant text-to-speech software. Though I see Warwick's IT dept. apparently tell you to do it.
posted by sourcejedi at 8:21 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
If the article was marked up with attention to, well, markup (semantics, accessibility to the blind, etc.), it wouldn't have "alt text" which says "hammersickle_glyph" each time. Ideally it would be marked up as a HTML5 <hr>, a break in the text which is by default rendered as a horizontal line (or rule, hence hr). I haven't tested whether that's correctly rendered as a break/pause by extant text-to-speech software. Though I see Warwick's IT dept. apparently tell you to do it.
posted by sourcejedi at 8:21 AM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
What's with the Perdido Street Station hate? Literally my favourite book. It, along with the rest of the Baslag series (the world is called Baslag, New Crobuzon is merely a city in it in which some of some of the books in the trilogy are set!) are just awesome.
Swimming in the state's pool, smashing their car windows, and smashing the state itself... these are all just expressions of different aspects of my plan for revolution:
1) seize all property for the people
There is no step 2. It is a one-step plan.
posted by Dysk at 8:49 AM on December 18, 2015 [4 favorites]
Swimming in the state's pool, smashing their car windows, and smashing the state itself... these are all just expressions of different aspects of my plan for revolution:
1) seize all property for the people
There is no step 2. It is a one-step plan.
posted by Dysk at 8:49 AM on December 18, 2015 [4 favorites]
I say depressing because everything he said is there, in plain sight, under our very eyes, every day.
Always fun to explain False Consciousness, with practical examples, to people who have had no real exposure to leftist thought... and then watch them get really annoyed
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:00 AM on December 18, 2015
Always fun to explain False Consciousness, with practical examples, to people who have had no real exposure to leftist thought... and then watch them get really annoyed
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:00 AM on December 18, 2015
What's with the Perdido Street Station hate?
Three words - bug head rape.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:33 AM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
Three words - bug head rape.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:33 AM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
I liked PSS a lot, but by chance I read the Bas-Lag books in more or less random order — first The Scar, then Iron Council, then PSS. Because I had read so much about New Crobuzon before reading the book actually set in New Crobuzon, I was properly prepared for how unrelentingly grim life there is.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:43 AM on December 18, 2015
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:43 AM on December 18, 2015
1) seize all property for the people
There is no step 2. It is a one-step plan.
Right. It's even printed -- chiseled, actually -- on the rock you've been rolling up the hill all this time.
posted by Herodios at 12:11 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
There is no step 2. It is a one-step plan.
Right. It's even printed -- chiseled, actually -- on the rock you've been rolling up the hill all this time.
posted by Herodios at 12:11 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
Might we say that the hill is just one side of a valley? And, depending on which people are seizing which property in the name of whom, that we sometimes roll the rock up the hill on the other side?
posted by ethansr at 12:18 PM on December 18, 2015
posted by ethansr at 12:18 PM on December 18, 2015
I liked Perdido Street Station, loved the grittiness of New Crobuzon (definitely one of my favourite fictional places), but was all in all let down by the ending (especially the part of whatshisname's crime, which we throughout are impressed is both untranslatable and utterly foreign, and turns out to be both banal and all too well-known to human culture).
The Scar was a marvellous piece of writing, and the best CM book I have read.
Iron Council? More ideology than literature, and I abandoned it halfway through.
I'm all for the robot revolution, though.
posted by bouvin at 1:14 PM on December 18, 2015
The Scar was a marvellous piece of writing, and the best CM book I have read.
Iron Council? More ideology than literature, and I abandoned it halfway through.
I'm all for the robot revolution, though.
posted by bouvin at 1:14 PM on December 18, 2015
i kind of love that the response to an article like this is mostly about stupid-ass webpage design crap.
posted by Alterity at 1:52 PM on December 18, 2015
posted by Alterity at 1:52 PM on December 18, 2015
Right. It's even printed -- chiseled, actually -- on the rock you've been rolling up the hill all this time.
It's a plan. I never said I've actually tried to implement it, or aim to. Maybe there's a chiselled rock somewhere, but I haven't touched it.
posted by Dysk at 2:01 PM on December 18, 2015
It's a plan. I never said I've actually tried to implement it, or aim to. Maybe there's a chiselled rock somewhere, but I haven't touched it.
posted by Dysk at 2:01 PM on December 18, 2015
really the tricky part is dealing with the large and relatively well-funded and well-equipped armies that Rest of World will send at you after you seize the means of production in your country or city. And then also not letting the desperate wartime conditions drive you to do stupid shit like sending your army to kill your staunchest supporters when they demand the right to recall their representatives in the soviets.
I'm up against a publication deadline so of course this is the perfect time for me to start a MeFight about Kronstadt, right?
but yeah "step 1 seize the means of production step 2 there is no step 2" makes sense in exactly the same way that the "we just have to kill the bad guys!" stuff we heard at the last Republican debate makes sense, which is to say not really.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:13 PM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm up against a publication deadline so of course this is the perfect time for me to start a MeFight about Kronstadt, right?
but yeah "step 1 seize the means of production step 2 there is no step 2" makes sense in exactly the same way that the "we just have to kill the bad guys!" stuff we heard at the last Republican debate makes sense, which is to say not really.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:13 PM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah, as a plan it was totally intended to be every bit as ridiculous as the other numbered-list plans in the thread. Strange how the one-step plan was subject to serious criticism but the others weren't?
posted by Dysk at 2:27 PM on December 18, 2015
posted by Dysk at 2:27 PM on December 18, 2015
it's because you forgot to mention keying cars. rookie mistake.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:39 PM on December 18, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:39 PM on December 18, 2015 [3 favorites]
1 Seize all property for all people
2 Key the seized cars
3 Profit has been abolished so, uh... kittens?
posted by Dysk at 2:41 PM on December 18, 2015
2 Key the seized cars
3 Profit has been abolished so, uh... kittens?
posted by Dysk at 2:41 PM on December 18, 2015
There's been successful small scale anarchist collectives in the past... though given the documentary I can remember about one had a scene on the endless meetings on how to sort out the sewage, it's not for everyone
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:42 PM on December 18, 2015
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:42 PM on December 18, 2015
> Iron Council? More ideology than literature, and I abandoned it halfway through.
aww give it another shot someday. it's more didactic than the other Bas-Lag books (I agree that The Scar is the best), but nevertheless the magic that features [insert increasingly unexpected material here]-golems is super cool and gets progressively cooler over the course of the novel, and the final scene has a genuinely beautiful description of the world that's waiting to be born.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:44 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
aww give it another shot someday. it's more didactic than the other Bas-Lag books (I agree that The Scar is the best), but nevertheless the magic that features [insert increasingly unexpected material here]-golems is super cool and gets progressively cooler over the course of the novel, and the final scene has a genuinely beautiful description of the world that's waiting to be born.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:44 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
"Down with profit, up with kittens!" is a slogan I can get behind.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:44 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:44 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
Was impressed with Station when I first read it (less so on a re-read), loved The Scar, gave up on Iron Council half way through... City and the City basically broke me and I've never gone back (thought the ending was terrible)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:48 PM on December 18, 2015
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:48 PM on December 18, 2015
He's got a problem with endings for sure. His world creation is fantastic, but I think all his books would be improved if he'd accidentally forgotten to write the end.
I suspect this has something to do with political Marxism.
posted by tychotesla at 3:28 PM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
I suspect this has something to do with political Marxism.
posted by tychotesla at 3:28 PM on December 18, 2015 [2 favorites]
My Marxism comes filtered through David Harvey rather than the Bolsheviks, so I'm of at least three minds w/r/t political Marxism as it exists in the Anglosphere right now.
but it's interesting thinking about whether there really is a connection between political Marxism and not being able to write a good ending. I'm sort of biased as the thread's resident Miéville fanboy, so I'll kinda hold my tongue w/r/t whether his endings are actually that bad. For my part I don't think his endings are quite so awful, but I can see why people wouldn't be into them. I guess the point is I wonder if ideologies built around the idea of working toward and hoping for a sudden change in everything (revolutionary socialism, end-times Christianity, singularitarian transhumanism, and so forth) inevitably make for awkwardly resolved fiction...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:48 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
but it's interesting thinking about whether there really is a connection between political Marxism and not being able to write a good ending. I'm sort of biased as the thread's resident Miéville fanboy, so I'll kinda hold my tongue w/r/t whether his endings are actually that bad. For my part I don't think his endings are quite so awful, but I can see why people wouldn't be into them. I guess the point is I wonder if ideologies built around the idea of working toward and hoping for a sudden change in everything (revolutionary socialism, end-times Christianity, singularitarian transhumanism, and so forth) inevitably make for awkwardly resolved fiction...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:48 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
(It's been years since I've read most of his books and I'm not as familiar with the radical left as I am with the radical right, so take this with a grain of salt. I do enjoy and appreciate him a lot, for the record)
My impression was that as a highly political radical leftist he's very concerned with describing present failures due to power inequities and cultural narratives. As part of this, I think Miéville sees (subjectively speaking) conclusive and well formed endings as counter to what he might see as the political activity of the books: to have the reader see and be irritated by the realistic structural problems that characters encounter, and allowing that irritation to extend beyond the pages of the book. I think people might call this Brechtian, but I'm not sure.
I also think the tendency of the left to be great at critiquing but not great at forming a workable conclusion is real. I can't help but see it as natural that the best part of his books are the critique rather than the solution.
I will have to think about the idea of ground level revolution being hard to describe, but from what I recall his books tend to end with a fizzled revolution.
I think his books are great examples of ————, but I'll be damned If I know enough about ------ and ----- to know what ———— is, excepting my half-remembered reference to Brecht. Un Lun Dun is maybe the easiest to describe: a Marxist retelling/critique of a children's fantasy book.
posted by tychotesla at 6:57 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
My impression was that as a highly political radical leftist he's very concerned with describing present failures due to power inequities and cultural narratives. As part of this, I think Miéville sees (subjectively speaking) conclusive and well formed endings as counter to what he might see as the political activity of the books: to have the reader see and be irritated by the realistic structural problems that characters encounter, and allowing that irritation to extend beyond the pages of the book. I think people might call this Brechtian, but I'm not sure.
I also think the tendency of the left to be great at critiquing but not great at forming a workable conclusion is real. I can't help but see it as natural that the best part of his books are the critique rather than the solution.
I will have to think about the idea of ground level revolution being hard to describe, but from what I recall his books tend to end with a fizzled revolution.
I think his books are great examples of ————, but I'll be damned If I know enough about ------ and ----- to know what ———— is, excepting my half-remembered reference to Brecht. Un Lun Dun is maybe the easiest to describe: a Marxist retelling/critique of a children's fantasy book.
posted by tychotesla at 6:57 PM on December 18, 2015 [1 favorite]
> I think his books are great examples of ————, but I'll be damned If I know enough about ------ and ----- to know what ———— is.
It actually makes me a little dizzy thinking about how perfectly this sentence describes like half of my favorite books.
(down to, unfortunately, the gendered pronoun describing the author — I need to read more books by great weird women instead of just reading great weird boy books.)
uhh but mainly I'm just popping back into the thread to point anyone down here to a really good bit most of the way through where he's talking about how Daesh is an especially modern state, rather than an especially medieval one:
It actually makes me a little dizzy thinking about how perfectly this sentence describes like half of my favorite books.
(down to, unfortunately, the gendered pronoun describing the author — I need to read more books by great weird women instead of just reading great weird boy books.)
uhh but mainly I'm just popping back into the thread to point anyone down here to a really good bit most of the way through where he's talking about how Daesh is an especially modern state, rather than an especially medieval one:
For non-stupid analysis, it’s a truism about ‘Islamic State’ (Daesh) that it is no atavism, but intensely modern: in the demographic of its personnel; in its particular state form; in its vigorous social media presence. In the erosion of the line between statement, trolling and policy, the group represents a hypertrophy of the modern state’s reliance on social sadism. It is unusual less in that its representatives rape, enslave, torture and brutally execute, than in that it justifies such practices explicitly as such.posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:06 PM on December 18, 2015
Part of the ‘civilising process’ has traditionally been the meandering historical growth of the state’s function as a repressive superego, battening down various egoic drives, such as that to sadism, deemed, for various social reasons, impermissible. So repressed, they will dutifully return, as indeed the superego state needs them to. Not so here: though in recent documents it has stressed more loudly the joys of citizenship, there is still in Daesh’s output an explicit glorying in what one researcher calls ‘ultraviolence’.
Always eager to instrumentalise the worst human drives, the modern state has tended, officially, to relax the superegoic repression of sadism mostly to circumspect degrees and at specific moments – for the embattlement and carnage of war; in fascism; during times of ‘exceptionality’. Though by no means tout court, Daesh collapses state ego and superego on this point of sadism: it’s open about the fact that its exceptionality is permanent.
In the US-hegemonic sphere, there remains a line between the superego of the social lie, and the comments threads below – unconscious desire, the righting of imagined wrongs, the social-sadistic ego of enjoyed spite – the troll-culture it neither can nor would be without.
The membrane is not only permeable, but movable. And it is moving quickly.
None of the modern problems can be pinned on Marxism, yes? If it was proven it doesn't work since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Marxism cannot be blamed for the takeover of the public by the corporation? For environmental degradation? For the modern police / total surveillance state?
There are plenty of things that could be tried that have not been tried. There's no real will to try them. I'm not so sure Marxism can take the blame for the failures of the last twenty plus years.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 12:33 AM on December 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
There are plenty of things that could be tried that have not been tried. There's no real will to try them. I'm not so sure Marxism can take the blame for the failures of the last twenty plus years.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 12:33 AM on December 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oh and also, from right at the end. This is gorgeous writing:
Optimism of the will. The principle of hope. In the face of spite and history, there’s a better category of the positive, perhaps, to recruit into radical theory. One that’s rarer, that we don’t need to strive, a priori, to sustain, and/but that we know, even if for flecks of time in the worst times, we might experience, and that is joy.posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:15 AM on December 19, 2015
Property itself is everyday sadism. To see it overthrown, even for a moment, is to know that joy exists, and to know that it is a material force.
We build against sadism. We build to experience the joy of its every fleeting defeat. Hoping for more joy, for longer, each time, longer and stronger; until, perhaps, we hope, for yet more; and you can’t say it won’t ever happen, that the ground won’t shift, that it won’t one day be the sadisms that are embattled, the sadisms that are fleeting, on a new substratum of something else, newly foundational, that the sadisms won’t diminish or be defeated, that those for whom they are machinery of rule won’t be done.
That the idea of quotidian social sadism won’t be unthinkable. There will be a new everyday.
One word. Railsea.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:03 AM on December 19, 2015
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:03 AM on December 19, 2015
Ignoring the problematic use of Frued, I think that is an interesting characterization of Daesh. That it is not so much a moralizing state as it is a licentious one. What could be thought of as repression of one class is also an exercise of liberties by another.
This should all sound very familiar. The murderous orgy of asserting the supremacy of a class's values without holding back at anything should resound deeply. This is not so much an evolution of liberal democracy, but an echo of its antecedent.
That it is mediated in modernity is beside the point. Miéville's joy at the thought of asserting license by swimming is a tune played on the same strings as those plucked in tafiri hearts by masked men on Youtube. Perhaps some day a we will confront the instrument; without pausing to revel in its harmonies.
posted by ethansr at 4:22 PM on December 20, 2015
This should all sound very familiar. The murderous orgy of asserting the supremacy of a class's values without holding back at anything should resound deeply. This is not so much an evolution of liberal democracy, but an echo of its antecedent.
That it is mediated in modernity is beside the point. Miéville's joy at the thought of asserting license by swimming is a tune played on the same strings as those plucked in tafiri hearts by masked men on Youtube. Perhaps some day a we will confront the instrument; without pausing to revel in its harmonies.
posted by ethansr at 4:22 PM on December 20, 2015
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also he wrote a novel featuring a distributed biomechanical device that runs on pure dialectical materialism so that's fun.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:49 PM on December 17, 2015 [8 favorites]