According to the standard account, capitalism—whatever your criticisms of it—is synonymous with freedom. Other systems, we are told, necessitate central plan...
All respect comrade but most people completely shut down when you say “means of production” and other tropes. We are working against generational propaganda which tells people to reflexively dismiss traditional anticapitalist academic analysis. We have to hit the cracks that have formed. This is the point of the video.
You are upset because you inferred that the implied solution is capitalistic. It’s a 5 minute video. It’s an introduction and anti propaganda. It doesn’t need solutions and it certainly wasn’t explicitly capitalist.
In the end you are correct, Wolff’s videos are the perfect supplement to this starting point. Democracy in the workplace, debunking capitalism=freedom, etc. That was the point.
You don't have to say "means of production" to communicate marxist ideas. The whole point is to have a working-class movement, you're suggesting "well you can't talk to workers about marxism, you'll scare them off!" It's pretty easy to communicate ideas that promote class consciousness in plain language, which Teachout assidiously avoided doing. The "boss makes a dollar, I make a dime" stuff is an easier sell than the liberal, technocratic regulation stuff. But she does it becase her politics are anti-marxist. She thinks there can be a left-liberal coalition around an anti-corporate, anti-corruption agenda, which necessarily means a cross-class coalition -- so her avoidance of class struggle language is intentional. I think that's bad politics for the left. We should try to build the working-class movement, not compromise our agitprop to be inoffensive to bourgeois liberals.
And it's not merely inferred, she says it explicity at one point, "Without anti-monopoly regulations to restrict their size..." That's a pro-capitalist "solution" to keep capitalism on life support.
Wolff's video is not a "starting point", it's an explicit refutation. Teachout's methods are wrong and propogating them is counter-productive, because they convince people there are things you can to fix capitalism.
All respect comrade but most people completely shut down when you say “means of production” and other tropes. We are working against generational propaganda which tells people to reflexively dismiss traditional anticapitalist academic analysis. We have to hit the cracks that have formed. This is the point of the video.
You are upset because you inferred that the implied solution is capitalistic. It’s a 5 minute video. It’s an introduction and anti propaganda. It doesn’t need solutions and it certainly wasn’t explicitly capitalist.
In the end you are correct, Wolff’s videos are the perfect supplement to this starting point. Democracy in the workplace, debunking capitalism=freedom, etc. That was the point.
You don't have to say "means of production" to communicate marxist ideas. The whole point is to have a working-class movement, you're suggesting "well you can't talk to workers about marxism, you'll scare them off!" It's pretty easy to communicate ideas that promote class consciousness in plain language, which Teachout assidiously avoided doing. The "boss makes a dollar, I make a dime" stuff is an easier sell than the liberal, technocratic regulation stuff. But she does it becase her politics are anti-marxist. She thinks there can be a left-liberal coalition around an anti-corporate, anti-corruption agenda, which necessarily means a cross-class coalition -- so her avoidance of class struggle language is intentional. I think that's bad politics for the left. We should try to build the working-class movement, not compromise our agitprop to be inoffensive to bourgeois liberals.
And it's not merely inferred, she says it explicity at one point, "Without anti-monopoly regulations to restrict their size..." That's a pro-capitalist "solution" to keep capitalism on life support.
Wolff's video is not a "starting point", it's an explicit refutation. Teachout's methods are wrong and propogating them is counter-productive, because they convince people there are things you can to fix capitalism.