Honestly maybe I'm just dumb but Matt blows my fucking mind
like he's just some podcaster dweeb but the shit he says is always so poignant for well, a podcaster dweeb
Democratic and Republican parties, which represent two formations of middle-class nervous breakdown around the dying American dream
This part alone really gave me something to think about. And I really liked the part about the goo - sometimes I don't enjoy listening to Matt when he's in one of his defeatist moods (any more doomer shit in my brain is really just unhelpful), but he can be pretty good when he's delivering a call to action.
Edit: Also, turnout for the 2020 election was like a record high and still, a third of the people who could vote didn't; and I'm certain that one-third skews younger and working class. And in non-presidential election years turnout is way lower. Something like 45% of workers pre-pandemic were making like $10.50 an hour or less. A majority of Americans do not have as much as $1,000 saved (also pre-pandemic). I'm not saying that all these circles here are perfectly concentric, but I do believe there is a very large segment of US society that operates entirely outside of the two-party electoral system. And since electoralism is seen as the only valid form of social expression not just political expression, this segment is ignored by everyone. A working class segment, even if they don't quite see it that way yet. It's my hope, my longshot hope, that this segment of society is what can be activated with class consciousness.
That's good stuff, thanks for sharing. The one thing I might push back on Matt with is how he's seemingly making these statements global. I think he's spot on as this applies to the US; and it still certainly applies to non-US societies to an extent. But I don't think the situation is quite as dire in the global south. I have to hope one day the global south will break the current relationship with the imperial powers, which would necessarily force change on the imperial countries. That, or all out global war...
Your brain can do the advanced calculus needed to know where a ball in flight will land so you can catch it even if you failed high school algebra. Our conscious minds are far weaker than our subconscious when it comes to collecting and responding to external stimuli
you can’t control or effect any change
"We've tried nothing and nothing works" go outside and organize workers
until material conditions shift
yes and how does that happen? Do you even use Sci-Hub to learn actual science lmao
major theme in the post is that the workers are gone because they all think of themselves as consumers
The spontaneism is the Luxembourg stance or the De Leonist stance and spontaneous workers revolution just doesn't happen, even in eras of much higher class consciousness and higher contradictions of the 1910s to 30s. It just didn't work, maybe now with new tech, but the workers just kept getting their asses handed to them because they didn't have a coordinating body so the Freikorps could put down an uprising in Munich and then a month later, the workers had a spontaneous uprising in Dusseldorf but they couldn't link up and coordinate and so were defeated. I, personally, think they would've been better off with a strong demcent communist party but even with that we see the little sparks get snuffed out (like in France in 1968, where the ostensible communist party told the Mai 68 people to back down and accept some concessions and I guess they figured they'd be able to abolish capitalism with a bill in 20 years).
I don't know what is to be done, I wish we had a modern Lenin to make sense of the world but we seem to be woefully leader-less. For now, yeah, try your best to organize and mutual aid and hope things change because as much as it's still important to work and organize, we really depend on the tide of history and chance to make revolution possible.
leftism becoming a hobby horse of academics and PMC types makes it difficult for any of them to organize workers imo
I've been organizing my workers by height, is there a better way to do it? And I don't need Sci-Hub because I was gifted a Curiosity Stream subscription after sending Elon Musk a Tweet that he was impressed by
hehe I haven't watched for a while but this seemed very familiar and then I realized it was from August
has Matt Christman ever discussed Frantz Fanon or Wretched of the Earth? I wonder how garbage his takes are on that
Thank you for transcribing this. It's great and I never would have come across it otherwise.
