A Marxist that hates sex-workers, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people. On his personal blog he has a category called “Gender” where he states his bigotry using Marxist terminology.
You say you’re against LGBTQ+ people, yet even your name says that cock’s hott. Curious.
His forefathers predicted this and gave us instructions
He ain’t even Marxist correct with his ideas about gender. However the answer isn’t to work through his flawed logic if you know what I mean.
One thing I like to add though:
CW
If sex is work, was the dancing a couple did before they got off with one another also work?
Marx said that reproduction of society is work and that there is more to reproduction than just the direct action, so yes, dancing to meet a person and then pair up is a type of work. Which is literally written in books from 1846.
Sorry, I’m just fucking pissed. Like, I can understand to a degree why people like V*ush have radlib views. But a supposed academic Marxist? It just baffles my mind. Like, you’re the one who’s supposed to know the science! Who’s supposed to care about the suffering of the people! Why are you so shit???
Yeah. Doesn’t Britain’s biggest ML party have terrible positions on LGBT stuff?
Some marxian economists in some countries don’t give much of a shit about the other parts, they only care about the framework of economic analysis (I am NOT necessarily talking about class reductionism, they may not care about class issues either, just the analysis) which is very wrong but whatever.
I don’t think Marx’s idea of reproductive labor would have included dancing, the idea mostly applies to things like cooking, cleaning, child rearing etc.
the idea mostly applies to things like cooking, cleaning, child rearing etc
Do you have a primary source or explanation so I can understand you better?
My conception stems partially from the German Ideology and the Grundrisse. It is some internal basis for historical materialism and opens up his conceptions and methods a bit. There is a differentiation and openness for activity/work which differentiates wage-labour in capital from activity and work that is done earlier and in different settings.
In it he describes how - for society (my term) to exist - there has to be reproduction of people. This demands physical existence, relations to the physical work, relations to the mode of production and determines a way of life (which is later explained influences humans as much or more than humans could influence it, being determines conscious).
Within that way of life and growing population naturally a Verkehr (something like interaction or intercourse) of the individuals has to develop and the way of it is determined by production (while Marx mentions a few needs which have to fulfill he makes, especially later clear that they are infinite and grow, to subsist you have to fulfill a necessary part though).
Within reproduction there happens a separation of work for those sexual acts which are necessary for reproduction (which is obvious as there are - at least - two persons involved), later with birthing, sheltering, feeding of children, and upbringing parents become involved.
During that the natural meaning of the only social relation (which is family in the reduced sense of a kid being born / being fed etc.) develops towards a situation in which family becomes a multi faceted relation. It goes even so far that families settings (which are common in capitalism, but aren’t ‘natural’ e.g. the cis-hetero-two person core family with children) seems to be a default, instead of a product of the modes of production and the other influences e.g. superstrucutre, regligion, moral etc.
Within families (of a bit late type) there is - so writes Marx - already a separation of work and a type of exploitation and consequently alienation there: the use of alien labour, that of the kids or that of the (cis-heteronormaitve now) wife.
For reproduction more is necessary than the sexual act, what is necessary as statistical average are the steps for social reproduction which are determined by the conditions. This means that the separation of work, that the way how people get together and how and if they reproduce and how and who raises children are open questions here. What follows though that the work necessary to reproduce varies by societal way of life - even though there is a natural materialist core in reproduction.
Consequently dancing to get together with someone is happening as activity which is work (Marx uses Tätigkeit/Arbeit pretty often nearly interchangeable in the German Ideology).
Besides that the easy solution to the debate why do kids do a “useless” thing as play is: Play is necessary work to reproduce as society. Dancing might be similar.
Of course there still are things that aren’t necessary for society to reproduce, but those I will ignore.
I remember checking out that Towards a New Socialism book when people were recommending it; the guy sounds like a lunatic, not least of which because he conceives of communist society as a technological problem rather than a class one. I don’t know why utopians waste their time writing these schemes instead of self-insert harem fanfic; both have the same pretension to reality but the latter, at least, provides pleasure, unless Cockshott always writes with his other hand. I’ve also heard he’s a Scottish nationalist – who knows if that’s true.
That being said, the original article itself is quite bad and liberal. I have no clue what the constant invoking of “the abstraction of the labor theory of value” is supposed to get at, nor of their “Left Wing Anarchist Think Tank” (which is a hilarious phrase, at least).
All of his horrible politics seem to flow quite smoothly from his idea of what I have called, here, ‘the abstraction’ — a sort of organism composed out of all of us, that owns all of us — and, flowing out of the abstraction’s perspective, the idea of any sort of objective theory of value. After all, an objective theory of value of any sort implies some sort of objective observer.
What is the point of inquiring about society if one is going to declare all of their results subjective regardless? A wise man once said “You can either work towards appropriating the truth or get the fuck out.”
Lmao anarchist think tank
Also the “but what if everything was subjective” thing is the most boring line of argumentation ever.
Yeah I skimmed the author’s criticisms of Cockshott’s more theoretical/economic work. It seems way too dense for me to understand. I mostly focused on their criticisms of his social views. It’s quite shocking just how open he is with his reactionary views and also just how fucking bad they are.
Edit - He wrote a terrible article for Solidarity Scotland.
