first off it’s bandcamp friday (and it will be for the next 20 hours or so) when they waive their fees so that starving artists in their garrets, such as musicians of bremen, can get the money they need in order to survive). coming soon the single but until then there’s a single, two EPs and an album to be had over at bandcamp,
the CD is here too (as soon as horsemouth sorts out some production difficulties).
david graeber of occupy has died (the coiner/populariser of the term the 99% - and once you have the term the 99% you also have the term the 1%). horsemouth never met him (as far as he can remember), he has only read his the democracy project (which he enjoyed). graeber does the great thing of linking the start of occupy in NY with the early revolutionary meetings of the american colonists of NY two hundred plus years earlier, where the american bourgeoisie rapidly realised they would have to do something to prevent democracy or they would be over run by people of no standing. graeber is smart enough to look beyond the bien-pensant middle classes to the people who really need democracy in america the poor.
occupy itself started some interesting innovations in how activist meetings were handled and how political decisions were made. there was an attempt to bring the crowd to consciousness, to enable it to express and discuss and then act in a radical egalitarian fashion (continuations of work in non-violent direct action groups perhaps, innovations horsemouth was too cynical and jaded to appreciate).
graeber's last/ latest book bullshit jobs: a theory horsemouth hasn’t read. vast chunks of our work under capitalism are just senseless wastes of time. look at the commute (destroyed by the coronavirus in less than a month). the jobs still being done are the ones we need. the bad news is that capitalism now knows it can liquidate those bullshit jobs and still make profits at a lower level of activity, the good news is that the workers in the non-bullshit jobs have a lot more power (and that capitalism will be actively working to concentrate that power in their hands in pursuit of a faster buck).
horsemouth is not predicting the demise of the bullshit job in its entirety (capitalism needs human activity for the value created by real work to be siphoned off) but he is predicting the demise/ reduction/ casualisation of numerous bullshit jobs. (one day soon we will look up to uber drivers as models of stable employment). of course the balance point between real work/bullshit work is flexible - capitalism has declared it one way, it can declare it another, should the people ever achieve real political agency they could declare it another.
----------------
yesterday horsemouth went to trade some books with carl (in particular a duplicate copy of carl’s of richard jefferies’ nature near london). carl advised horsemouth to bring a bag and horsemouth participated enthusiastically in the potlatch (that’s his reading for the next month sorted).
they then went for a pint and a half at carl’s local (the first bar horsemouth has been in in 180 plus days). soon horsemouth was over enthusiastic and swinging from the rafters. but carl (wisely) called a halt early.
on his way back horsemouth bumped into shireen (who (sad to relate) had also been drinking) and they walked and talked their way back along up by downs park. they alternated between the ode to joy and some grim freudian version of the universe.
later horsemouth probably goes down to howard’s to gather more information as part of a mission to resolve the CD thing/ plot strategy.
No comments:
Post a Comment