Capitalists can choose to give up their property and become workers like the rest of us, or they can get the wall and then their property is redistributed. The capitalist class has colonized our society, and their enforcers are the police. And according to Franz Fanon’s books on anticolonial struggle in Algeria, colonial relations never go away unless fought with anticolonial violence to oppose the violence of the colonizers. Ultimately, violence is what is needed to force those in power to give up their wealth, and if they gave up their wealth willingly then violence would not be necessary.

Did someone say “One Big Union”? Sounds like the IWW would be right up your alley. It’s coming back to life again - definitely check if you have a local branch!

https://www.iww.org/

The IWW is an explicitly radical militant union devoted to overthrowing the tyranny of the wage system and settling the class war through full worker control of all enterprises. It’s an entirely different animal than the bloated business unions who settle for a “fair share” of the profits. The IWW asserts that all of the value produced by the labor of workers should go to workers, and the bosses can just become workers like the rest of us.

Kind of, I meant it as a jab at people who just invert the aesthetics and morality of the Catholic Church and other faiths as a means of “rebellion” without doing anything of substance to challenge the structures of society and power around them.

Most people, and especially most techies at places like Google have lived lives where systems appeared to play by the rules, where their legal rights are respected. So, it hits you out of nowhere the first time a company does something blatantly illegal to suppress dissent or union organizing. It’s hard to internalize that it’ll happen until it happens to you or someone you care about.

It’s why a classic mistake union organizers make is to not understand just how harshly a corporation will crack down on you, and that you have to be organizing in secret until you’re ready to win the power struggle that’ll ensue once you tip your hand to your bosses.

A similar shitty Gadsden flag parody was in a protest flyer I saw recently -

Check out Communications Workers of America - they’ve been pushing into the tech world

I’ve seen that reinforcement of workers who toe the line first-hand, people are scared and brainwashed into not acting up or demanding better. It’s why I have a hard time maintaining a job - not because I’m not good at what I do, but because I’m bad at pretending to buy into the capitalist ideology in the workplace.

Agreed, not all managers are bastards but the system they are working within creates horrible results.

I believe I’m one of those knowledge workers. I do cybersecurity and I’m actively working on trying to unionize the sector. I’m not management, and I don’t have hiring or firing power, and I’m reliant on wages to survive.

Actually, I can see the comparison. Many cybersecurity people don’t challenge the power relations in their workplace and instead act as enforcers of corporate policy. That always disappoints me, and I can see the pattern of how even our relative privilege is being actively reduced. I just hope more cybersecurity people will recognize the class struggle we have to wage and organize in solidarity with the rest of the working class.

I get where you’re going with this, and yeah, the PMC helps hold the current system in place. I was thinking about the cybersecurity/engineers/architects/other better paid workers who are still subject to class exploitation even though they’re better off than a line cook.

Also, I like your bit about the professional managerial class being an ideological shield - I see that happening in the workplace all the time where people won’t consider rocking the boat because they want to be management one day.

There is no middle class - there is the working class and the exploiter class. People have misidentified a chunk of the relatively better off working class as somehow not part of the working class. Over time the systems of capitalism and the power imbalances at the heart of the non-unionized workplace will eventually reduce better off workers to the lowest common denominator as the exploiter class demands perpetually growing profit that must come at the cost of the working class.

Both Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are great, and protests should be disruptive, otherwise they’re just ignored. Maybe they’re not doing enough disruption and damage to force governments to listen. Or, maybe someone should go after energy/oil companies directly via sabotage or other means and cause enough economic damage that the cost of polluting and resource extraction becomes too high for them to profit from.

Well, I think that there’s actually something to this. I’ve been involved in a lot of organizing spaces, and there’s this “our backs are all up against a wall so we have to work towards a common goal of achieving a workers state and not dying due to climate change” vibe going around lately.

Yes, exactly. The IDF intentionally attacks civilians in Palestine by shelling houses, for the purpose of demoralizing the population into surrendering to extermination. Sounds like terrorism to me!

There’s also a significant percentage of people there for the patriarchy and misogyny, and just think they’re “one of the good ones so the leopards won’t eat MY face”, so they ignore the parts of the MAGA platform that target them. For example, women who vote for Trump usually aren’t doing it because they’re misogynistic, the racism and transphobia might be bigger draws but they believe the misogyny won’t be applied to them. Same with Black and Latino men who are there for the patriarchy, misogyny, transphobia, but think the old white guys will accept them. Same again with the “Gays for Trump” folks, and the TERFS who support him.

For those of y’all who say that we don’t have an antisemitism problem on the left - this seems to be another example showing that we do, and we need to deal with it. Similarly to how movements in the past have been sabotaged by excluding groups (like white-only unions excluding nonwhite people), this could similarly fracture us along identity lines.

Yeah, someone who lives in an empty home. And nope, I don’t think you’re for these spikes, I meant “yes, removing these would be good, and we should also address the underlying causes of homelessness”. My apologies, I’ve just been dealing with city meetings where officials are trying to do anything but address the core causes, and I’ve been frustrated with that and it spilled over.

Agreed - ideally we’d cut right to the source of the problem and ban investment ownership of housing, or at least put a massive progressive tax on owning any dwellings that you don’t personally live in. Then use that tax to fund public/social housing developments (like Vienna?)

Do you want squatters? This is how you get squatters. Make it uncomfortable and unsafe to be outside, and it becomes less risky in comparison to breaking in somewhere and just living there. Plus, we should be addressing the root causes of homelessness (such as landlords) rather than trying to just push homeless people somewhere else.

Yup! In a lot of ways having ASPD is analogous to not having guardrails or safety interlocks on your brain. It won’t warn you via automatic empathy if you’re about to do something messed up, so you have to check your actions and analyze yourself much more. Interestingly, most people with ASPD who are relatively “successful” (not in prison, etc) heavily use our prefrontal cortexes much more as a compensatory mechanism similar to how blind people can get really good at hearing.

Idk, I don’t really agree with the “ASPD = apolitical” argument. I’ve been diagnosed with ASPD, and I think that it actually makes me more politically involved because I don’t inherently have the same respect for laws and conventional morality, which allows me to more easily visualize changing the societal systems we live under. Also, the lack of remorse means it’s easier for me to continually break rules I consider unjust, such as societal rules on gender expression. Lack of automatic empathy means it’s also harder for me to be manipulated by a boss, IMO.

Obviously I can’t speak for the entire ASPD population but for me, being “apolitical” would just be endorsing the status quo of society, which is unacceptable.

Overall it was an interesting and thought-provoking read, thanks for sharing!