I don't even remember the context, I just found the clip going through old shit.
Ok, I found it and because I am bored transcribed it.
The Maoism comment doesn't make much more sense with the full context, though his overall response is mildly interesting.
BJG: [I think she is going through a list of myths about socialism Nathan published] I want to ask you, um, that's a good one. "Let's elevate the collective and forget the individual."
NJR: This is really an interesting one because the idea that socialism is collectivist because we talk about society and Margaret Thatcher says, "there's no such thing as society, there are just individuals."
Well, it's interesting because what actually happens is the people who talk about capitalism talk about the collective, the aggregate, they say "oh look on the aggregate, you know the statistics, you know, we got, you know, more innovation or whatever."
But you got to think, like, people don't live in the aggregate and there are lots of people. Inequality means that this arrow can conceal that for a group of people, it's going the other way and that's -- you know, life expectancy can be going up while life expectancy for the poor people is going down. So what socialists do is, we disaggregate and look at the individual people.
You know the funny thing of course, is that there is no more collectivist institution than a corporation. A corporation is a place designed to serve the single-minded interest of shareholder value, right? And Walmart is Maoism. Right? Tell people, you've got to wear uniforms, you've got to devote yourself to the good of . . . -- yeah, well, but, but that's the thing right, you gotta -- if we really care about collectivism vs individualism, you've got to look at what people's lives are like, and there's no individualism in the Amazon Fulfillment warehouse. None.
There's literally, like, you turned into a piece of machinery. This is the socialist critique of capitalism -- is that, we don't think individuals should be pieces of machinery where they can be discarded when they're no longer useful, when their value is in proportion to how much output they can put out. We care about people as human beings, and that has historically been the socialist critique.
So if you don't like collectivism, you know, come and join the left.
I thought it was going to be akin to whatever that book was that talked about how big corporations basically centrally plan. People’s Republic of Walmart I think it was called?
I can maybe agree with "Walmart is central planning" or something, but "Walmart is Maoism" because everyone wears a uniform and is a midless drone (according to NJR) is an insane take.
That must be what he is meaning, but he doesn't really elucidate it very well. Also kindof the exact opposite of his point about socialism. Revealing as to what NJR thinks about Maoism vs "socialism"
That's a really clunky point kinda ridiculous to call Walmart maoism, but at the same time I get the disdain towards tendencies that have a history of in practice forgetting the emancipatory individualism that is in Marx. However NJR doesn't read Marx so he wouldn't even know that lol.
