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Verify your ID to protect the kids (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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[–] 7 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I agree with the logic you present for why the capitalist class wants policies like this, but the specific timing does come from coordinated efforts here. It’s class warfare and they have intense organization amongst themselves. The charge is being led by big tech firms and their lobbying groups making a unified push right now to consolidate their control over online speech, communication, and surveillance. But the reasoning you present is absolutely sound

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    I don't know how contrived the mechanisms have to be before people just accept that these ideological forces do not need specific mechanisms to exist. Tech firms did not produce liberalism and capitalism, as they did not exist when these ways of organizing emerged. Everything you described here are consequences of this system and the means by which it reproduces itself, they are not the system itself. Yeah, they organize, they do so because they have a common interest which is capital, and the imperatives of profit and infinite growth historically manifest consistently in formal and informal mechanisms of control like this.

    Class warfare doesn't apply here any better than it does to the informal consequences of neoliberal individualism which is both intentionally reinforced in media and culturally through its subscription by middle-class property owners. It may look coordinated, but that term distorts how these systems of power function and reproduce by creating the narrative that there is a select group of people responsible for this outcome, even while individual actions are taken to realise it.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    Yes, their class interests push them into class solidarity and coordinated actions to suppress the working class. It doesn’t have to be a conscious individual alignment for it to be class warfare, all that matters is they do align themselves and collectively wield their power for their shared goals, which the capitalists do. I don’t see how you can recognize their shared material interests and the ways in which that manifests in them as a class coordinating for those interests along common lines, and still look at it as random individual actions just being stumbled into. I don’t know what argument you think you’re making, I don’t think the current crop of capitalists created capitalism nor consciously devised its mechanisms. They are part of this socioeconomic system though, it doesn’t just happen to them, regardless of the fact it existed before this generation of its ruling class. There absolutely is a group of people responsible for this outcome: the bourgeoisie and the state that serves them. It is a feature of capitalism.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    If had a nickel for every time I had a person with a passing interest in Marxism mansplain the world to me. This is a starting point, materialism is not exclusively how socialists and anarchists criticize or understand capitalism.

    You seem to think this is contradictory, which should spur you to question something more fundamental instead of assuming others are just dumber than you. "Coordination" would require a conspiratorial level of organizing between groups that, while maintaining common interests, distorts the reality of this system to the point of incomprehensibility. If your way of thinking finds it impossible to analyze the interaction between people -- individual actors -- and the system they are positioned in -- as in their class interests -- then you will find this system incomprehensible. This is so because, guess what, there are individual actors who are not powerlessly making decisions in accordance with their positionality.

    In order to do that, you must start understanding these things as relational. There are class interests motivating these policies, those class interests are not the sole mover of these actions. To suggest as much would do what you are trying to do right now, which is universalise human action. I wonder if you've thought about power dynamics in indigenous nations under settler-colonialism, and what it would mean to only interpret their navigation of this system with the frameworks that originate from Europe with the goal of understanding European ways of organizing. How do you understand conflicting interests within shared classes even under the same material conditions?

    Getting fuckin tired of people on here presuming they're all-knowing; many of these interactions happen to occur in discussions on Europe, go figure. Won't be responding to anything else from you unless it is actually serious.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago*

    Is it really conspiratorial when the people who own all of the capital create political parties, lobbying groups, think tanks, newspapers, etc to collectively push their ideas of how the world should work into action? It’s a conspiracy for sure, one that is in the open and well documented. And my analysis literally does discuss the dialectic of individual actions with their corresponding class and broader class organizations, it’s my main point even. Furthermore, I’m not mansplaining a passing interest in Marxism; I’m not a man, I’m presenting my analysis while trying to acknowledge shared aspects with yours, and I’ve been active in organizing for Marxist, decolonial, and social justice struggles for over a decade. I think it does us no favors to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the structure of the system in front of us for individualized analysis. And stripping the nuance from the argument I present to make it out as class reductionist does nothing for either of us. I’m talking about acknowledging class at all when your argument seems to be to ignore it entirely. Yes individuals within a class can have conflicting desires or interests, the point is that they primarily share their core interests and rally behind them, and we have endless examples of this.

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