• 0 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
Cake day: September 29th, 2025
  • lemonwood@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•The line has been crossed
    15·
    10 days ago

    If you went on top of the empire State building and threw multiple hand grenades on the street below, where white people could be walking, would you call that malicious? Or a terror attack? Can you see how him shelling a neighborhood where brown people live is similar? I’m not trying to be mean, but anyone who struggles to see how bad this is, might just have their ability to emphasize impaired by racism. It might not be their fault, people often absorb racists believes unconsciously or have a hard time extending the same amount of empathy, they would to white people to racialized people, if they rarely interact with them. People reading this, who suspect this might apply to them even in a limited way, should really take this to heart and try to reflect on their racist biases and ability to empathize.

  • lemonwood@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•Your average capitalism enjoyer
    9·
    13 days ago

    I appreciate the critique, but no, money is not

    only worth anything because if you don’t pay the state then it will do Bad Things™ to you.

    That’s “modern” (from 1905) monetary theory (MMT), which ignores that money is a commodity and can and did historically exist before states.

    Michael Roberts writes:

    Modern states are clearly crucial to the reproduction of money and the system in which it circulates. But their power over money is quite limited — and as Schumpeter said (and Marx would have said), the limits are clearest in determining the value of money. The mint can print any numbers on its bills and coins, but it cannot decide what those numbers refer to. That is determined by countless price-setting decisions by mainly private firms, reacting strategically to the structure of costs and demand they face, in competition with other firms.

    Marx argued that money in capitalism has three main functions: as a measure of value; as a means of exchange; and “money as money” which includes debt payments. Marx’s theorisation of money as a measure of value derives from his labour theory of value; and this is the main difference between Marx and the Chartalists/MMT supporters, who have no theory of value whatsoever.

    Money only has value if there is value in production to back it. Government spending cannot create that value — indeed some government spending can destroy value (consider the case of armaments, for example). Productive value is what gives money credibility. A productive private sector generates the domestic product and income that gives government liabilities credibility in the first place. When that credibility is not there, then trust in the state’s currency can disappear fast, as we have seen in Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Argentina.

    MMT essentially boils down to good old keynesianism in the end. It’s still a thousand times better than neoliberalism of course, but merely reformist, not equipped to handle capitalism’s crisis and not willing to transcend it.

  • lemonwood@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml•VVoOtTee
    9·
    16 days ago

    Maybe, but no reason to get lazy though. It’s citizens are way more powerful and better armed than it’s victims. They have way more moral responsibility to do something and who will build up socialism inside North America after the revolution, if there’s no strong, organized left? The reasons to get out and organized are no where as strong as inside the empire and the excuses not to do it nowhere as weak.

    No one will bother to come and rescue US people from capitalism, if they don’t demonstrate the will to at least take responsibility and rule themselves after. There’s no way around preparing for revolution, even if you think it will rely on outside help.