CLASS ANALYSIS

BRUCE LERRO—Among the earliest thinkers considered to be postmodern are the individualist anarchist Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom championed the individual against the pressures of science and capitalist. They were also connected to other movements in literary criticism like the symbolists. The values of post-modernist are relativity, diversity, subjectivity and the freedom of the individual “agency”. It criticizes most leftism but still genuflects before Marx while not showing the slightest interest in political economy or organizing the working class.

MATT EHRET—The rampant anti-Chinese (and Russian) bias pervasive in today’s society has a lot to do with the fact that people have been conditioned by a very messy world outlook known as “cultural relativism”. While attractive on the surface due to its promotion of “respect and toleration” for other cultures on the one hand and its condemnation of imperialism on the other, an ugly paradox sits below the surface of such ideology which ironically facilitates modern imperialism’s grip on the world.

CHRIS KANTHAN—Since 2007, U.S. corporations have spent trillions of dollars on stock buybacks. In 2018 alone, they will spend $800 billion on this financial engineering tool (which has also led to a massive stock market bubble). They won’t use the billions to hire Americans, boost wages or innovate new products. Instead, the CEOs will buy yachts and tell you that Chinese or Mexicans stole your jobs.

Do the low-wage employees of Disneyland get any shares or stock options? A silly question, indeed.

Thus we have a situation where American employers ruthlessly exploit American workers. This isn’t a good model for a country. China and Mexico don’t make us poor. Corporate greed does.

CALEB MAUPIN—At this point it’s worth recaling that all these calamities were created by the elites’ obstinate allegiance to incurably irrational predatory capitalism, which, devious rhetoric aside, continues to this day.  The legitimacy /representational problem is serious, and they know it. Heck, even Americans, world famous for their political cluelessness are now ferociously alienated from their own media and political establishment (not yet from capitalism itself, though, as they have been heavily indoctrinated to believe it is “the American way”). These crises, of which the massive and incurable unemployment, caused by capitalism’s periodic”overproduction”, now aggravated by the digital revolution, constitute a perennial challenge to the elites’ governance, can be overcome only through two paths: socialism or barbarism. (The latter by definition only a temporary fix). 

NILES NIEMUTH—The stimulus check will not even come close to covering one month’s rent for millions. The median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the US is more than $1,000 per month. In cities like New York and San Francisco the average monthly rent is well over $3,000.

The national moratorium on evictions—which has not stopped tens of thousands of evictions from being filed and thousands tossed from their homes—has been extended by Congress by a month, meaning that millions have the cold comfort of being thrown to the curb in February rather than January.