Political Philosophy

McKenzie Wark argues that capitalists are no longer at the top of the economic food chain, and that this is not good news. It turns out vectoralists can make more money by outsourcing risk and depreciation to manufacturers and contractors and moving the capitalist pieces around on the global chessboard. That makes them, as Cardi B says, “the boss.” In this video I reflect on some of the key insights from Chapter 4 of Wark’s Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?For more from me:https://lauriemjohnson.com/https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/

Ch. 3 of McKenzie Wark’s Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? explains why Wark advocates for “vulgar Marxism.” This chapter traces the historical emergence of the scientific class and how its potential via the development of thoroughly socialized labor of all kinds has gotten side-tracked by the vectoralists’ “enclosure” via intellectual property law.

I pause to try to pick apart and better understand some key but often bedeviling Marxist terms that can get in the way of understanding McKenzie Wark and other authors who borrow from Marx’s toolkit. Dead labor, capital, surplus value, commodity fetishization, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (and what capitalists tend to do about that) are all touched on in this program.

We move into Chapter 2 of McKenzie Wark’s Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse. Wark thinks that people on the left as well as the right need to end their love affair with capitalism and summon their inner punk rock goddess and try something new. The something new entails detournement of old ideas–an irreverant use of parts and neglect of other parts in order to account for an economy that Marx would not recognize. There’s a hint that the hacker class should somehow organize by first seeing what they have in common–they do not control the information they manipulate in order to monetize it for the vectoralist class. Wark very clearly explains the connection between the current state of property law and the power of this new class of people, a class responsible for the “disintegrating spectacle” of our world, information, entertainment, commerce and therapy become so intertwined that we are constantly confused, suspicious and mentally exhausted. I comment on that phenomenon and the relative lack of reference to government institutions in this part of the book, but there is the political implication that the hacker class is potentially powerful. Should they take aim at property law? It’s too early to tell, but that’s one possibility.

This is first in a series of videos on McKenzie Wark’s book Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? I introduce Wark and some of the main ideas in the introduction, setting the stage for the rest of the book. Wark argues that we should break free from our love affair with capitalism, carried on by both the right and left, that thinks of capital as eternal. Further we should break free of old narratives such as a worshipful loyalty to political theories of the past. We learn a little about how we are both consumer and product, and how the ruling class, in Wark’s view, is no longer land-owning or even factory owning, but information owning. And how is information successfully owned and wielded in a world in which it is so prevalent and seemingly hard to control? Wark promises to show us how.For more from me:https://lauriemjohnson.com/https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/

The cat makes an appearance in this last video on Walter Brueggeman’s The Prophetic Imagination. I speculate on what a church would look like, and what it could do,if it re-imagined what it was for. I argue that churches and other religious institutions could be half-way houses between liberalism/capitalism and the dreaded and outdated hippie commune.I’ll be moving on to McKenzie Wark’s book https://www.versobooks.com/books/3056-capital-is-deadin the next video.For more from me:https://lauriemjohnson.com/https://politicalphilosophy.video.blog/

In this penultimate video on Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination, I talk about Brueggemann’s view of death as the reality the “royal consciousness” does not want us to notice so that we can live comfortably in the imagination of the powerful. Consumerism and spectacle numb us to the reality of the precariousness and limited nature of our lives. The prophet has a hard time cutting through our dreams to remind us of this. Brueggemann’s view of Jesus is of one who was born an opponent of power and continued to oppose it at every turn throughout his life. In his life and death he shows solidarity with the poor, the low in status, the unpopular and the powerless. Here’s links to things discussed in this video: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/strange-gods https://www.versobooks.com/books/3056-capital-is-dead For more from me: lauriemjohnson.com politicalphilosophy.video.blog

In chapters 3 and 4 of Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination, we are cautioned to not place faith in the false eternity of the royal imagination. Those in power will say all is well and will seek the backing of religious leaders to do so. In this episode, I examine the tendency of Americans to worship political parties and presidents from Brueggemann’s point of view, but I also offer a word of caution about Brueggemann’s approach. Is it possible to make God a public actor without what Brueggemann most fears–making God the right hand of earthly power rather than the other way around. I’ll have more to say about what’s in both chapters next week. Here’s a link to the full event on Jan. 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44AiTIFRgfw For more from me visit lauriemjohnson.com, politicalphilosophy.video.blog

In this second part of a discussion of Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination, I discuss how left and right-wing churches alike are likely to be sucked into “royal consciousness,” and that is equivalent to the sin of idolatry. Brueggemann’s alternative, inspired by the story of Moses and the escape from the Egyptians, is to claim a foothold in the freedom on God, literally an other-worldly vantage point from which to gain perspective on the world and strength to oppose the Pharoahs of the world. Brueggemann thus begins his provocative critique of the contemporary Christian church within the framework of a studied reading of Old Testament scripture. He argues that then, and now, the satiation and subsequent numbness of the haves in society makes way for treating the lower ranks as things to be used, bought and sold. Community is broken by this disregard for others within it Note: There’s a part that is cut out that transitions between the discussion of Solomon’s reign and again discussing the founding of Israel in Moses’ cooperation with God. Solomon comes well after Moses and represents the decay of the Mosaic vision. For more from me visit lauriemjohnson.com politicalphilosophy.video.blog

I introduce some of theologian Walter Brueggemann’s themes in his classic “The Prophetic Imagination,” discussing some of the ways we can avail ourselves of a common narrative to try to gain some freedom against oppression, whether of the old-style Pharoah or the new version of less visible but very powerful economic and political forces that keep people working for an agenda they wouldn’t naturally choose. Through Brueggemann’s eyes, we are living in the imagination of “Royal consciousness” but we could be living in the imagination of God. What does this mean, not just for Christians, but generally for people who are trying to find some way to push back and gain some freedom?