Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

"What we owe to rabbits"

Anglophone moral philosophy again at the cutting edge of what matters.  Someone wrote about this, as I recall.  But you don't have to be sympathetic to Marx to wonder whether how we treat rabbits is really an important moral issue of our time, or to wonder why highly renumerated professors at institutions whose purposes include reproduction of the ruling class spend their time writing about this.

"Marx and Marxism" and relativism

A new essay, co-authored with an excellent PhD student here, Lawrence ("Dusty") Dallman (he is the lead author), which will eventually appear in The Routledge Handbook of Relativism, that the great Martin Kusch (Vienna) is putting together.

Pseudo-science watch, neoclassical economics edition

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FRIDAY--FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT

Indeed.   The Marxian theory of ideology, especially as being developed by Jaime Edwards, helps explain how such an academic industry can sustain itself for so long.

Industrial and economic growth in the Soviet Union

A revisionist view from economic historian Robert Allen, which is at odds with what an orthodox Marxist view would have predicted about state-directed industrialization.

(Thanks to Roger Albin for pointing me towards Allen's work.)

The inescapable logic of capital makes the NYT

No kidding!

They’ll never admit it in public, but many of your bosses want machines to replace you as soon as possible....

[I]n private settings, including meetings with the leaders of the many consulting and technology firms whose pop-up storefronts line the Davos Promenade, these executives tell a different story: They are racing to automate their own work forces to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers.

All over the world, executives are spending billions of dollars to transform their businesses into lean, digitized, highly automated operations. They crave the fat profit margins automation can deliver, and they see A.I. as a golden ticket to savings, perhaps by letting them whittle departments with thousands of workers down to just a few dozen....

In Davos, executives tend to speak about automation as a natural phenomenon over which they have no control, like hurricanes or heat waves. They claim that if they don’t automate jobs as quickly as possible, their competitors will.

As to who will buy the products of their operations once all the workers are gone...well, that doesn't seem to occur to any of them.

If only there had been a philosopher and economist who had examined this phenomenon.

UPDATE:  Reader Jeff Rice (Northwestern) shares this funny anecdote:

Charles Wilson, president of GM was walking through an auto plant with Walter Reuther proudly showing off the first robotic arm working the assembly line.  Wilson says to Reuther, “try organizing robots” to which Walter replies, “try selling cars to robots”.

The revolt of the working class in France

This is an interesting interview; an excerpt:

spiked: How have the working-classes come to be excluded?

Guilluy: All the growth and dynamism is in the major cities, but people cannot just move there. The cities are inaccessible, particularly thanks to mounting housing costs. The big cities today are like medieval citadels. It is like we are going back to the city-states of the Middle Ages. Funnily enough, Paris is going to start charging people for entry, just like the excise duties you used to have to pay to enter a town in the Middle Ages.

The cities themselves have become very unequal, too. The Parisian economy needs executives and qualified professionals. It also needs workers, predominantly immigrants, for the construction industry and catering et cetera. Business relies on this very specific demographic mix. The problem is that ‘the people’ outside of this still exist. In fact, ‘Peripheral France’ actually encompasses the majority of French people.

spiked: What role has the liberal metropolitan elite played in this?

Guilluy: We have a new bourgeoisie, but because they are very cool and progressive, it creates the impression that there is no class conflict anymore. It is really difficult to oppose the hipsters when they say they care about the poor and about minorities.

But actually, they are very much complicit in relegating the working classes to the sidelines. Not only do they benefit enormously from the globalised economy, but they have also produced a dominant cultural discourse which ostracises working-class people. Think of the ‘deplorables’ evoked by Hillary Clinton. There is a similar view of the working class in France and Britain. They are looked upon as if they are some kind of Amazonian tribe. The problem for the elites is that it is a very big tribe.

The middle-class reaction to the yellow vests has been telling. Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.

Erik Olin Wright

A sociologist and social theorist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison for many years, he has also been an important contributor to "analytical Marxism," and makes available much excellent material on his webpage.  But what prompts this particular post is that, as I've learned from many friends and colleagues, he is dying of leukemia, and writing about it here.  It is quite remarkable. "The truth is terrible."

Don't wish Antonio Gramsci a "happy new year"

This is delightful.  An excerpt:

Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s Day.

That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.

(Thanks to Rob Tempio for the pointer.)

Diary of capitalist decline: Paris edition December 2018

Their President isn't a monster-child, but the underlying facts are the same.

Michael Bloomberg gives about 3% of his net worth to guarantee need-blind admissions at Johns Hopkins

That's great for Johns Hopkins, and for those students who will benefit from this gift.  Now if the state could seize the remaining 96.9% of Bloomberg's wealth extracted from the labor of others, we could offer need-blind admissions at dozens of other universities.  He'd still have enough to live well in Manhattan!

The ruling class vs. the rest

No surprises here, but good to have it set out plainly:

Most of the wealthiest US billionaires – who are much less visible and less reported on – more closely resemble Charles Koch. They are extremely conservative on economic issues. Obsessed with cutting taxes, especially estate taxes – which apply only to the wealthiest Americans. Opposed to government regulation of the environment or big banks. Unenthusiastic about government programs to help with jobs, incomes, healthcare, or retirement pensions – programs supported by large majorities of Americans. Tempted to cut deficits and shrink government by cutting or privatizing guaranteed social security benefits.

The obvious solution to this problem is massive state confiscation of wealth from these pernicious characters (I'm a nice guy, let them each keep $10 million).

 

Bolsonaro, the Brazilian fascist

The stuff that comes out of this piece of garbage's mouth would make Trump blush (or at least feel a bit embarrassed in front of Javanka).  He is certainly on a continuum representative of the futile efforts of capitalist democracies to cope with the pathologies of economic life under capitalism, but he is not simply a rhetorical fascist.  Good wishes to the people of Brazil!  And for Americans, the key lesson is this:  if the Democratic Party were actually to become a party representing the vast majority, and not simply the prudent wing of the ruling class, we can expect a similar phenomenon.

Poseur du jour: Moira Weigel edition

When I came across Weigel's sneering review of The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, I thought it a bit thin on substance and a bit thick on rhetorical tricks:  here was another standard-issue comp lit PhD invested in identity politics and pissing all over the enemy.  (I confess to having little patience for Haidt, who did some clever psychology experiments early in his career--although he consistently misinterpreted their philosophical import--before becoming a public pontificator who apparently believes the main issue in academia these days is not enough Republican faculty:  go figure?)  Now someone has gone to the trouble to eviscerate the review, rather amusingly so.  But let's not knock ad hominem attacks, at least when not strictly fallacious.  Dr. Weigel's father, it turns out, is a retired tax partner at a "white shoe" New York law firm; I'd bet she even has a trust fund.  Any reader of Adolph Reed would hardly be surprised that an elite female child of ruling class privilege would turn out to be deeply invested in identity politics, to the point that its opponents are unintelligible to her.

Brett Kavanaugh, psychoanalyzed

This is brilliant, from Robert Paul Wolff.

Race, Class and 'uplift' films

A trenchant analysis by Adolph Reed; some excerpts, but one really does need to read the whole thing to appreciate the points noted here:

What sets the contemporary genre of inspirational black hero films [like Black Panther] apart is the way the fantasies they enact connect with the race-first sensibilities prominent among black and other professional-managerial strata. These race commentators share a body of ideological assumptions and material interests, deeply invested in parsing, interpreting, and administering inequality in terms of racial disparities. Specifically, this genre of critique typically looks to measure and remediate the exclusion of black professionals from traditionally white power elites....

The striking hostility to...[class-based] politics within the higher reaches of antiracist activism illustrates the extent to which what bills itself as black politics today is in fact a class politics: it is not interested in the concerns of working people of whatever race or gender. Indeed, a spate of recent media reports have retailed evidence that upper-class black Americans may be experiencing stagnant-to-declining social mobility—which is taken as prima facie evidence of the stubbornly racist cast of the American social order: Even rich professionals like us, elite commentators suggest, are denied the right to secure our own class standing. It is also telling that the study that provoked the media reports – Raj Chetty, et al., “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective” – rehearses the hoary recommendation that “reducing the intergenerational persistence of the black-white income gap will require policies whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men.” These include “mentoring programs for black boys, efforts to reduce racial bias among whites, or efforts to facilitate social interaction across racial groups within a given area.” That’s pretty thin gruel, warmed over bromides and all too familiar paternalism and no actually redistributive policies at all....

The black leadership role was always at best an accommodation to disfranchisement, going back to its first modern incarnation with Booker T. Washington and his cohort of racial advocates. It is a politics of elite transaction. That is not in itself necessarily a bad thing—President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “black cabinet,” or Federal Council of Negro Affairs, advised him on matters related to black Americans. But unlike today’s freelance racial voices, they were administration functionaries, and most had standing in racial advocacy, education, labor, and government institutions prior to joining the “cabinet.” The backdoor dealings between King and Johnson during the Selma campaign that DuVernay found too messy to include in her portrait of King’s heroic persona were also part of mundane political maneuvering, the inside-outside game of institutional politics. King and the SCLC, like FDR’s black cabinet, had constituencies that underwrote their standing as representatives of racial interest—which in turn gave them leverage to make political demands and pursue policy agendas. A. Philip Randolph used the March on Washington Movement to pressure President Roosevelt in 1941 to issue “Executive Order 8802,” prohibiting racial discrimination in the national defense industry. Randolph, Bayard Rustin, the Negro American Labor Council, and others organized the 1963 March on Washington as part of an inside-outside strategy to build support for a jobs program and passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

All this painstaking political effort could not be farther from the careerist pursuits of contemporary racial voices, whose standing depends entirely on the favor of powerful opinion-shaping elites in corporate media and elsewhere. Thus, for example, Touré Neblett and others in MSNBC’s stable were unceremoniously expunged from the lineup of talking heads when the network reconfigured its marketing priorities. More dramatically, Melissa Harris-Perry, apparently believing that her viewing audience gave her leverage, openly rebuffed the network’s demand to reorient her program to fit in with its election coverage. In short order, she and her program vanished without a trace from its schedule. Such incidents, and scores of others like them, make it indelibly clear where the lines of authority run when it comes to winning elite-media recognition as a black voice....

The race voices I’ve discussed express a particular class perspective among black Americans, one that harmonizes with left-neoliberal notions of justice and equality. That harmony may help explain why those racial voices—like the black political class in general—are so intent on disparaging the social-democratic politics associated with Bernie Sanders, even though a 2017 Harvard-Harris survey found that Sanders was far more popular with African Americans than with any other demographic category except declared Democrats. He boasted a 73 percent favorable rating among black voters—higher than his approval numbers among Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and considerably higher than those for whites or even 18-34 year-olds....

Marx, 'cultural' Marxism, identity politics, our capitalist future

Dan Kaufman (Missouri State) and I discuss these issues at "Meaning of Life TV."  The first 45 minutes or so is like an introduction to Marx's theory of history (and its Hegelian background) and the genius (albeit self-destructive genius) of capitalism.  Dan asked exactly the right questions I thought, so hopefully it will be informative for those new to these topics.  After that, we discussed so-called "cultural" Marxism and identity politics.  Hope some readers find this enjoyable!

Streeck, 'How Will Capitalism End?'

This is a brilliant and illuminating essay,  I don't agree with all of it by any means, but it has real insight and a synoptic vision of the "big picture." He doesn't miss the forest for the trees (or the trees for the twigs, the specialty of the New York Times).

Right-wing members of the super legislature known as the Supreme Court vote against public labor unions

The decision is not inconsistent with the long string of cases that treats money as speech (which it isn't, but this case didn't create that rule), but in the process it has to overrule a 1977 decision by a non-reactionary Supreme Court super-legislature.  When I find a good analysis, I'll add a link.

ADDENDUM:  With Justice Kennedy having announced his retirement, it's clear the super-legislature will now veer even further to the right for the next twenty-five years; that means all the real action moves to the legislative branches, where it needs to be to really matter anyway.  Note that Justice Kennedy was, among other things, the key vote on all the gay rights cases over the last fifteen or so years.

"Effective altruism": old wine in a new flask

Philosopher Phil Gasper (Madison Technical College) calls my attention to this critique adding, aptly:  "I think the biggest problem with 'effective altruism' is that it focuses on a very limited kind of individual action, and ignores the question of collective action aimed at making much bigger political changes and/or addressing structural problems, but this article makes an interesting point too."

Another classic psychology "result" bites the dust

Class, not willpower, predicts the ability to delay gratification and do well in school.

Your neoliberal future...

...right here now in Britain.  I was not aware of the severity of these cuts--as one person in the linked article observes, Thatcher could only have "dreamed" of such cuts.

Pyramid of the capitalist system

This is classic (attention most philosophers:  your'e in the second row from the top):

Wage slavery watch: cow manure edition

When the chains are broken, the ex-slave has his revenge.

ADDENDUM:  This is a joke, but a joke with a point!

Yesterday was Marx's 200th birthday...

...and my brief comment on twitter brought some cave dwellers on twitter out of the woodwork to prove the point of my remark!

Robert Rubin: Philosophy prepared me for a career in finance and government...

...in which I enriched myself and then, through government policy, other members of my class, while laying the seeds for the 2008 economic collapse, which destroyed the lives of tens of millions of people, at least.  (Actually he neglected to mention this other stuff.  But clear proof that philosophy matters!)  

(Thanks to the many readers who sent this along.)

UPDATE:  Several readers have sent along this link to a column by economist Dean Baker on Mr. Rubin's "career":

First, Robert Rubin was a main architect of the high dollar policy that led to the explosion of the trade deficit in the last decade. This led to the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and decimating communities across the Midwest. Second, Rubin was a major advocate of financial deregulation during his years in the Clinton administration. Finally, Rubin was a direct beneficiary of deregulation, since he left the administration to take a top job at Citigroup. He made over $100 million in this position before he resigned in the financial crisis when bad loans had essentially put Citigroup into bankruptcy. (It was saved by government bailouts.)

An interview in 'Il Manifesto' about identity politics, Trump, Marx and more

Just in time for May Day, Il Manifesto, Italy's leading communist newspaper (though it is not affiliated with the communist party), published an interview with me conducted by the Marxist economist Roberto Veneziani (Queen Mary University of London) about issues related to identity politics, Marxism, and the American political scene.   I am grateful to Professor Veneziani for the opportunity and for raising these issues.  The Italian version:  Download Il-manifesto-del-28-aprile-2018 Leiter.  And the English version:  Download Brian Leiter - interview il manifesto - questions (an * marks those questions and answers that did not make it into the Italian edition).

Peter Singer's understanding of Marx is incompetent but certainly reveals him to be a right-wing apologist for capitalism

This is a follow-up to an earlier post, which I had hoped to provide sooner, but real life obligations intervened.  Still, it is worth documenting that the quintessential moral philosopher of late capitalism--whose moralistic scolding may be the ultimate gift to the capitalist ruling class--has no business writing an "introduction" to Marx.  A few examples from the interview follow; I could say more, but I want to focus on just the most idiotic statements.

Singer says:  "The materialist theory of history is essentially a story of alienation. Marx talks about various kinds of alienation, but the common element is that we – that is, humans collectively – have lost control of our lives. Our means of production determine our ideas and the nature of our society."  

Marx, in his moralizing youth (this seems to have gripped Singer's attention), offered a theory of human alienation under capitalism, one that presupposed a view of human nature and the conditions under which it could be realized.  Marx never published these ideas (from 1844), and they played no role in his later work, though some of what he says there can be made to fit.  But the idea that the materialist theory of history--the theory that historical transformations can be explained by reference to developments in productive power--is just "a story of alienation" is something out of a bad sophomore paper.  It appears Peter Singer never read G.A. Cohen's 1977 book or, if he did, he didn't understand it.

Singer says:  "The crucial mistake was that Marx had a fatally flawed view of human nature. Bakunin, Marx’s anarchist rival, saw that if you appoint workers to governing or administrative bodies, they cease to be workers, and start to represent the governing class. Marx rejected that criticism. He thought that if you change the economic structure of society, you change human nature. The Soviet Union proved that Bakunin was right. The abolition of private ownership of the means of production did not turn communist functionaries into selfless proponents of the good of all."

I happen to think that Marx had a mistaken view of human nature, but not for these reasons, which are silly.   Marx thought that if we eliminated the conditions under which people compete for economic survival--which are the conditions under which we continue to live--then much of the avaricious human behavior we observe under capitalism would recede or disappear.  Perhaps that prediction is false, but the idea that the Soviet Union showed Marx to be wrong is the kind of stuff one expects on Breitbart, not from an alleged scholar and philosopher.  Marx himself was always explicit (in The German Ideology) that the "development of productive forces...is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced," which is obviously what happened in the Soviet Union and other professed "communist" states.  That Singer could repeat such right-wing trash allegations against Marx is really shocking.

Peter Singer doesn't understand very much about Marx

He is interviewed at 3AM, though, unfortunately, the first part of the interview is on a subject on which Singer is really quite feeble, namely, Marx--apparently OUP has issued a new edition of his Marx:  A Very Short Introduction and pressed him to do the interview for promotional purposes.  Alas, like Michael Tanner's Nietzsche:  A Very Short Introduction in the same series, Singer's book is not very good as an introduction to the thinker in question (I am referring to the first edition, which I had thought had vanished for good down a black hole of obscurity [at least among Marx scholars]--but nothing in the interview suggests Singer has learned much about Marx in the interim).  For anyone wanting a reliable introduction to Marx, Jonathan Wolff's Why Read Marx Today is still the best bet.   (For Nietzsche, Peter Kail's forthcoming book will quickly dominate the market as the best short, readable and actually reliable introduction.)  The interview does give a flavor of Singer's level of understanding of Marx.   I'll discuss a few examples either later this evening or tomorrow, but since I see the interview circulating on social media, I wanted to issue a caveat emptor!  Although I'm critical of much of Singer's philosophical work, much of it is clearly worth reading, even for skeptics; the Marx stuff is not.

More soon....

Someone who actually understands Marx, better than most professional philosophers and "analytical" Marxists

The former Greek finance minister Varoufakis, of course (thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer); an excerpt:

As it turned out, the [Communist] manifesto was right, albeit belatedly. It would take the collapse of the Soviet Union and the insertion of two billion Chinese and Indian workers into the capitalist labour market for its prediction to be vindicated. Indeed, for capital to globalise fully, the regimes that pledged allegiance to the manifesto had first to be torn asunder. Has history ever procured a more delicious irony?

...

“Society as a whole,” it argues, “is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other.” As production is mechanised, and the profit margin of the machine-owners becomes our civilisation’s driving motive, society splits between non-working shareholders and non-owner wage-workers. As for the middle class, it is the dinosaur in the room, set for extinction.

At the same time, the ultra-rich become guilt-ridden and stressed as they watch everyone else’s lives sink into the precariousness of insecure wage-slavery. Marx and Engels foresaw that this supremely powerful minority would eventually prove “unfit to rule” over such polarised societies, because they would not be in a position to guarantee the wage-slaves a reliable existence. Barricaded in their gated communities, they find themselves consumed by anxiety and incapable of enjoying their riches. Some of them, those smart enough to realise their true long-term self-interest, recognise the welfare state as the best available insurance policy. But alas, explains the manifesto, as a social class, it will be in their nature to skimp on the insurance premium, and they will work tirelessly to avoid paying the requisite taxes....

Do-gooders, establishment politicians and recovering academic economists all respond to this predicament in the same way, issuing fiery condemnations of the symptoms (income inequality) while ignoring the causes (exploitation resulting from the unequal property rights over machines, land, resources). Is it any wonder we are at an impasse, wallowing in hopelessness that only serves the populists seeking to court the worst instincts of the masses?

What we don’t need at this juncture are sermons on the injustice of it all, denunciations of rising inequality or vigils for our vanishing democratic sovereignty. Nor should we stomach desperate acts of regressive escapism: the cry to return to some pre-modern, pre-technological state where we can cling to the bosom of nationalism. What the manifesto promotes in moments of doubt and submission is a clear-headed, objective assessment of capitalism and its ills, seen through the cold, hard light of rationality.

Reaction formation watch: virtulent anti-gay bigot pastor...

...found guilty of child molestation.

Ideological delusion watch: the case of rural America

An excerpt:

Q:  In the book, you argue that the anger we’re seeing in rural America is less about economic concerns and more about the perception that Washington is threatening the way of life in small towns. How, specifically, is Washington doing this?

A:  I’m not sure that Washington is doing anything to harm these communities. To be honest, a lot of it is just scapegoating. And that’s why you see more xenophobia and racism in these communities. There’s a sense that things are going badly, and the impulse is to blame “others.”

 

Adolph Reed, Jr. on "Marx, Race and Neoliberalism"

We've noted Reed's work previously, and I've been reading more lately, since he is far and away the most penetrating writer on issues related to race currently in America.  This piece is particularly interesting.  An excerpt:

Race is a taxonomy of ascriptive difference, that is, an ideology that constructs populations as groups and sorts them into hierarchies of capacity, civic worth, and desert based on “natural” or essential characteristics attributed to them. Ideologies of ascriptive difference help to stabilize a social order by legitimizing its hierarchies of wealth, power, and privilege, including its social division of labor, as the natural order of things...Ascriptive ideologies are just-so stories with the potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies. They emerge from self-interested common sense as folk knowledge: they are “known” to be true unreflectively because they seem to comport with the evidence of quotidian experience. They are likely to become generally assumed as self-evident truth, and imposed as such by law and custom, when they converge with and reinforce the interests of powerful strata in the society....

 

Regarding race in particular, classificatory schemes have varied substantially, as have the narratives elaborating them. That is, which populations count as races, the criteria determining them, and the stakes attached to counting as one, or as one or another at any given time, have been much more fluid matters than our discussions of the notion would suggest. And that is as it must be because race, like all ideologies of ascriptive hierarchy, is fundamentally pragmatic. After all, these belief systems emerge as legitimations of concrete patterns of social relations in particular contexts. 

This, of course, explains why, for example, at various points in U.S. history, Jews were not "white," nor immigrants from Italy, and so on.  Reed's historical details on "races" and the work for which they were suited is fascinating. 

 

Given that ours is the age of mindless "diversity blather," these observations of Reed's are particularly striking for those on the actual left:

 

In Memoriam: Moishe Postone (1942-2018)

The distinguished Marxist historian and social theorist, whose work is of great significance for philosophers interested in Marx as well, has died.  I will add links to other memorial notices as they appear.

A pretty good one paragraph summary of my 50-minute podcast on Marx

Here.  It's nice to see how much attention this has gotten in cyberspace.

"The Young Karl Marx": the trailer

It's finally getting released in the U.S., it appears; I saw it on a Lufthansa flight a year or so ago, and highly recommend it:

 

Adorno against popular culture

A sympathetic essay.  Probably Adorno is right, though I can't shake my plebian affection for rock 'n' roll Rausch and The Professional.  But he was objectively wrong about Schoenberg, who is an offense to aesthetic decency (of course, Adorno criticized Schoenberg, but not harshly enough!).

Light posting...

I am hosting a conference on "New Directions in Marxist Philosophy" ( Download Public NEW DIRECTIONS IN MARXIST PHILOSOPHY_Revised 2.2.18) today and tomorrow, and even though the capitalist gods have been trying to disrupt it by dumping 8 inches of heavy snow on Chicago, I believe we will go forward!  In any case, there won't be much from me for a bit.

Robert Paul Wolff's lectures on Marx

The first two are now on-line.  This will be a treat!

Is Trump a racist? And does it matter?

Robert Paul Wolff comments.

Why think about Marx?

I discuss the topic with Matt Teichman and Lawrence ("Dusty") Dallman at the Elucidations podcast.

Thus spoke Adorno

From 1963:

Human dependence and servitude, the vanishing point of the culture industry, could scarcely be more faithfully described than by the American interviewee who was of the opinion that the dilemmas of the contemporary epoch would end if people would simply follow the lead of prominent personalities.

(Thanks to Brian O'Connor for this one.)

The pseudo-science of neoclassical economics, part 123

They didn't get anything right in 2017.  But since they talk the language of capitalism, we will no doubt continue to hear from them in 2018.

Plutocracy watch: inherited fortunes should be confiscated to maximize utlity

A case study.

Happy Xmas to Xmas-celebrators.  And to the non-Xmas celebrators, God bless you!

What tax "reform" in a plutocracy looks like

This sums it up quite well and methodically.  And, one of the real goals, namely, to justify cuts to social welfare programs, is already rearing its head.   Although Trump hasn't killed us all (yet anyway), he has emboldened the imprudent wing of the ruling class in ways that promise either the ruin of the country or secession by the remaining civilized states.

There are hardworking people who clean toilets, thank goodness

Another gem from Robert Paul Wolff, a true man of the old left.   The list of "liberal" academics who treat people doing manual labor as invisible is long.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, neoliberal

This seems right to me.  To his credit, Cornel West has become more not less radical with age and correctly sees that the race issue is inseparable from the capitalism issue.

Nepotism, a glorious tradition at the New York Times

It continues.

Plutocracy watch: richest 1% now owns 40% of the nation's wealth...

...the most in the last 50 years.  And the government is currently run by billionaires looting the country under the guise of tax reform.  Go figure?

Plutocracy watch: tax "reform" edition

Somehow there were no last-minute tax breaks for working-class or poor people.  Go figure.

Philippa Foot's journey away from emotivism

This is a nicely done, "popular" essay on Philippa Foot and bits of 20th-century moral philosophy.  It caricatures emotivism in the usual ways that have become fashionable, and because of its British focus, it says nothing at all about  Charles Stevenson.  The author notes that,

Moral judgments, according to the then-dominant view [when Foot's career began], weren’t the sort of thing to be true or false, because they didn’t describe the world. They were trying to do something else – express emotion, prescribe actions, or something else of the kind. They were matters of choice, and to think otherwise was to deny that most basic of truths: that human beings construct their values.

Of course, this remains the correct view, but the author is right to position Foot (and others, like Anscombe) as reacting against it.  Why did Foot and others abandon this way of looking at thing.  The author's explanation is striking: