Rad Geek People's Daily

Today’s postulate:

One genius of the system we live under is that the strategies it requires to survive it from day to day are exactly the opposite of what is required to change it.

— Catharine MacKinnon (1987), The Art of the Impossible, in Feminism Unmodified, p. 16

(MacKinnon is talking about the survival strategies women have to adopt under patriarchy. The point generalizes, or analogizes, for many other forms of domination.^[1])

Today’s corollary:

The point of practical counter-economics, as a strategy for social transformation, is to reverse the polarity. You do some grassroots organizing, and when you do it right you open up new social spaces, within the shell of the old, where the best strategies that help you flourish from day to day — the ways you make yourself a living — become precisely those that weaken the system’s supports, and drive its mechanism towards collapse.

Today’s epigram:

Establishment (military-industrial) economic life processes us all into the oil for the gears of the machine. Grassroots organizing has to free us up to become the sand.

See also:

• GT 2008-01-26: In which I fail to be reassured
• GT 2009-02-07: Counter-economic optimism
• GT 2009-05-19: on agorism, counter-economics, and Black-and-Red markets

• Tinkerer's Sunset. Mark, dive into mark (2010-01-29). When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with "unauthorized computer trespassing." That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, "On whose computer did he trespass?" The prosecutor's answer: "his own." If that doesn't make your heart skip a beat, you can stop… (Linked Friday 2010-01-29.)
• Who's a Populist? LeftLibertarian2 at Yahoo! Groups (2010-01-31). Jesse Walker makes the Wall Street Journal, of all places: “Working from his two categories, we can see the outlines of two populist traditions in the U.S. The first is the populism of grass-roots groups–some on the left, some on the right, some hard to classify–that are dominated by unpaid, part-time activists rather than professional political operatives. The second is the populism of the people’s tribune, a fiery figure who acts, or claims to act, as a champion of the masses. …” (Linked Sunday 2010-01-31.)
• Which to Choose? Fafblog (2010-02-01). Points for honesty, I suppose. (Linked Monday 2010-02-01.)

It’s Sunday Sunday Sunday. Time to get Shameless Shameless Shameless.

What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

• Why Didn’t Nixon Think of This Argument During the Pentagon Papers Case? Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-01-22). An intriguing statement in today's New York Times: The majority [in Citizens United v. FEC] is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are… (Linked Thursday 2010-01-28.)
• (One of the many) Ebook Dilemmas. Kellan, Laughing Meme (2010-01-25). How do I support and reward the excellent curation of the local bookstore if I want the ebook version of something I find? – Kellan I am not a unsophisticated consumer of science fiction. And finding new material to feed the book addiction is something I spend a not inconsiderable… (Linked Thursday 2010-01-28.)

• Walking While Black in America Today… Brad DeLong, Grasping Reality with a Ten-Foot-Long Flexible Trunk (2010-01-25). Ta-Nehisi Coates: Ta-Nehisi Coates: Fear, Parenting, and the Police: We talked some, last week, about how fear drives black parents. I think this is the sort of case that I was thinking about: The photos taken by Jordan Miles’ mother show his face covered with raw, red bruises, his cheek… (Linked Wednesday 2010-01-27.)

• Populism. Ezra Klein (2010-01-27). Stopped clocks and all that, I guess. The rest of Brooks’s column is, in fact, nonsense; but this is spot-on: “Populism is popular with the ruling class. Ever since I started covering politics, the Democratic ruling class has been driven by one fantasy: that voters will get so furious at people with M.B.A.'s that they will hand power to people with Ph.D.'s. The Republican ruling class has been driven by the fantasy that voters will get so furious at people with Ph.D.'s that they will hand power to people with M.B.A.'s. Members of the ruling class love populism because they think it will help their section of the elite gain power.”

  Of course, the reason that the rest of Brooks’s column is nonsense is because Brooks identifies this as a problem with “populism.” It’s not. It’s a problem with populism as filtered through electoral politics. Or, to get to the heart of it, it’s a problem with electoral politics. Which is always based around zero-sum power plays and consists more or less entirely in only nominally opposed power-elite factions playing off fear of one another in order to secure support from a captive voter base. (Linked Wednesday 2010-01-27.)