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New statement from Scott Alexander Siskind on the Slate Star Codex saga which exemplifies the ills of contemporary journalism, the NYT in particular.
New statement from Scott Alexander Siskind on the Slate Star Codex saga which exemplifies the ills of contemporary journalism, the NYT in particular.
It's my understanding that "it all" in Scott's quote refers to political and social power structures, not physical infrastructure. A while ago, Scott posted a review of a book by Peter Singer about Marx which attributed pretty much this view to Marx (which Singer argues was rooted in Hegelian ideology): [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/13/book-review-singer-on-marx/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/13/book-review-singer-on-marx/)
It's my understanding that "it all" in Scott's quote refers to political and social power structures, not physical infrastructure. A while ago, Scott posted a review of a book by Peter Singer about Marx which attributed pretty much this view to Marx (which Singer argues was rooted in Hegelian ideology): [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/13/book-review-singer-on-marx/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/13/book-review-singer-on-marx/)
As a Utopian Socialist I'm not really a fan of Marx, though I think he prefigured some interesting stuff (I agree with people who suggest that even if Keynes didn't read Marx, his ideas look like they were influenced by Marx being in he water supply, for example. Peter Singer also credits Marx with really popularizing the idea that we might refer to as Moloch.) But to be fair to Marx, he wasn't completely devoted to 'revolution' as we commonly think of it (in the way that might suggest 'burn it all down'), and suggested that that in some democratic societies transition away from capitalism could come about through democratic means, which we would hope to be less disruptive and Stalintastic. We could criticize Marx for declining to write recipes for the cookshops of the future and not having a clear idea of how that transition could work. You might argue that this wasn't Marx's goal, and that he wrote on capitalism, why he thought it was bad, and the ways he thought it would become unstable and undermine itself. Apologists will say that he was 'descriptive rather than prescriptive'. I don't think this holds up given the emphasis on philosophy as a tool to change the world. He is defnitely overly optimistic about the ability of violent revolutions to not be terrible. There are traditions that aren't exactly Marxist but were heavily influenced BY him, incorporating the idea that capitalism is inherently unstable and would ultimately cause its own collapse, that are MORE credible. Anarchist ideas of dual-power (building a new world within the shell of the old) address the biggest problem with revolution by building alternate social systems while the state and capital still exist to serve the interests of the currently marginalized, having them waiting in the wings to pick up the slack when capitalism starts to fall, letting people see an alternative exists so they don't feel pressured to enact capitalism, and making the conflict between the capitalist state and what hopes to be its successor more localized, lower stakes, and incremental. I am not an anarchist and am skeptical of dual power's effectiveness in a large economy given its inherent locality, but it at least gives an idea of what a Marx-adjacent idea that doesn't involve destabilizing everything at once and creating a violent, viciousness-optimizing environment might look like.
As a Utopian Socialist I'm not really a fan of Marx, though I think he prefigured some interesting stuff (I agree with people who suggest that even if Keynes didn't read Marx, his ideas look like they were influenced by Marx being in he water supply, for example. Peter Singer also credits Marx with really popularizing the idea that we might refer to as Moloch.) But to be fair to Marx, he wasn't completely devoted to 'revolution' as we commonly think of it (in the way that might suggest 'burn it all down'), and suggested that that in some democratic societies transition away from capitalism could come about through democratic means, which we would hope to be less disruptive and Stalintastic. We could criticize Marx for declining to write recipes for the cookshops of the future and not having a clear idea of how that transition could work. You might argue that this wasn't Marx's goal, and that he wrote on capitalism, why he thought it was bad, and the ways he thought it would become unstable and undermine itself. Apologists will say that he was 'descriptive rather than prescriptive'. I don't think this holds up given the emphasis on philosophy as a tool to change the world. He is defnitely overly optimistic about the ability of violent revolutions to not be terrible. There are traditions that aren't exactly Marxist but were heavily influenced BY him, incorporating the idea that capitalism is inherently unstable and would ultimately cause its own collapse, that are MORE credible. Anarchist ideas of dual-power (building a new world within the shell of the old) address the biggest problem with revolution by building alternate social systems while the state and capital still exist to serve the interests of the currently marginalized, having them waiting in the wings to pick up the slack when capitalism starts to fall, letting people see an alternative exists so they don't feel pressured to enact capitalism, and making the conflict between the capitalist state and what hopes to be its successor more localized, lower stakes, and incremental. I am not an anarchist and am skeptical of dual power's effectiveness in a large economy given its inherent locality, but it at least gives an idea of what a Marx-adjacent idea that doesn't involve destabilizing everything at once and creating a violent, viciousness-optimizing environment might look like.
For those who are already familiar with SSC, please continue to take this article as another piece of evidence that by default ALL articles are approximately this distorted/false and not to trust newspaper articles (nor TV news) in general without independent confirmations of the facts.
For those who are already familiar with SSC, please continue to take this article as another piece of evidence that by default ALL articles are approximately this distorted/false and not to trust newspaper articles (nor TV news) in general without independent confirmations of the facts.
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