tags: Neomarxism
2006
April
- 2006 Apr 28
- crisis energy and the continued expansion of the universe
One of the concepts in Perdido Street Station is “crisis energy.” From what I understand, it is a magical energy created from crisis situations that ends up acting in opposition to what seems inevitable. For example, one of the possible applications discussed in the book is the act of flying. Let’s say you cast yourself aloft by throwing yourself off a balcony. If you have a crisis energy engine, the impending catastrophe of splattering on the street below ends up propelling you upward instead. The higher you go, the more catastrophic your plunge downward would be, the more crisis energy is generated.
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2007
November
- 2007 Nov 4
- revisiting crisis theory
I was actually first introduced to Marxist crisis theory while reading a fantasy novel, Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville. My simplistic one-liner about crisis theory is that it predicts that increasing prosperity actually diminishes the ability of labor to produce the same amount of profit, inevitably leading to a clash between capital and labor. But mathematically speaking, what this means is that the normal progression of a capitalist economy starts off high, but steadily declines, eventually approaching 0 asymptotically (although never actually reaching zero). There is probably a critical point where crisis occurs, and wealth becomes redistributed in some manner (usually violently.) This restarts the engine of capital expansion, which again inevitably declines.
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2008
January
- 2008 Jan 6
- markets
I stumbled upon this debate about the future of markets. Part of the problem is that “market” is so poorly defined. Instead of digging through centuries of capitalist tracts or recycling paleomarxism, my understanding of markets is that they are simply the mechanism by which transactions of resources, manufactured goods, or financial instruments take place. Anywhere there is supply and demand for a particular thing, that creates a market.
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2015
October
- 2015 Oct 26
- Warning to the Rich
Just remembering the beginning of the second reading from September 27, when ﾐA彡 and I starting going back to church.
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2016
February
- 2016 Feb 22
- American Populism and White Privilege
Full disclosure: I intend to vote for Bernie Sanders in the California Democratic primary, although it's likely the nomination will be locked down by then and it won't really matter.
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