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I'm always a little skeptical of arguments made in the American Interest, since they bill themselves as a magazine devoted to the idea of the nation-state. Wha

I'm always a little skeptical of arguments made in the American Interest, since they bill themselves as a magazine devoted to the idea of the nation-state. Whatever I read as the reasoning, I know their bottom-line commitment was pre-written. If there was a powerful but positive movement against the nation-state (say... some form of Bookchinist libertarian municipalism), would the American Interest admit its virtues? Well no, and so it makes sense that a search for "Rojava" turns up nothing, despite it being an extent, present-day experiment in politics without the state. Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely, and initially to uplift the proletariat, the working class.

throwawayjava 9y ago
> they bill themselves as a magazine devoted to the idea of the nation-state And, moreover, one particular nation-state. But still, the scholarship you find in American Interest tends to be high quality. I can respect a sincere concern with quality argumentation, even if the reasoning is motivated and even if I don't entirely sympathize with that motivation. > Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely The second sentence is entirely accurate. However, the article doesn't claim that communists (or capitalists) of the 20th century were trying to nurture "the middle class". Rather, the article (carefully) claims: "virtually all states—whether capitalist or communist, industrialized or developmental, great power or post-colonial—aimed to legitimate themselves by serving the interests of middle classes whose size they sought to expand... Both capitalist and communist accumulation strategies were based on the nurturing of industrial laborers". I think the article's characterization is fair, in-so-far as you can say anything at all about such a broad group of political projects as "all capitalists and also all communists"! WRT your first sentence specifically, the communist project did aim to "nurture" industrial laborers; the purported means was abolishing class, of course, but all the same.
nyolfen 9y ago
looking for laudatory articles about rojava in a magazine called 'the american interest' is a bizarre proposition to begin with
crankylinuxuser 9y ago
> Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely, and initially to uplift the proletariat, the working class. Precisely. And the Communists did one thing grossly wrong - they substituted the Capitalist class with the Communist "Elite". It was from an older owner to a newer owner. The people saw little difference in who they were required to work for. A new Communist thought is that of worker collectives. The idea is that they are better than unions, with the capitalist class continually picking and clawing at any reforms. With a worker cooperative, the owners and managers are the very workers which eliminates that avenue of strife. And it is one step closer to the proletariat owning the means to production.
- Wohlf 9y ago
  The problem there of course is you end up with a defacto ruling class made up of the most motivated workers, which will often end up being just as undemocratic with fewer means of non-political (in the office politics sense) intervention. You run the risk of everyone having to become a middle manager. Not to say it wouldn't be a better system, but we fallible humans are far from being ready for the enlightened fully automated communism some predict.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    True, but we're already seeing the ugly side of the capitalist choice already - machines making decisions that we proles can't argue with. Look at Google, Amazon, Microsoft. If their automated systems say X, it doesn't matter if X is true, neutral or false. X is a fact and that's that. Oh and if you quit using their services and then try to later, they will collect. But yeah, this is the "bad" side of capitalism - you not only will be automated out of a job, but will have decisions automated. And seriously - of course they will be decided against your favor. The capitalists didn't get in their place by loosing money. And yet, I get downmodded for talking communism. It's about time someone talks of different economic theory. We've gone down long enough of "trickle down", and it doesn't work - or it works beyond the elite's dreams.
Wohlf 9y ago
When you try to abolish class, you're really trying to make everyone middle class. No one wants to make everyone working class, and upper class can only exist if there's at least one lower class to subjugate.
- ericd 9y ago
  The upper class wants the fruits of being wealthy, they're generally not in it for the "subjugation" aspect. With sufficient automation and efficiency/recycling, everyone could be what we call "upper class".
  - bencollier49 9y ago
    That is, by definition, impossible: """the social group that has the highest status in society, especially the aristocracy. "it is important that the children of the upper class attend the ‘right’ school" """ I could have the same goods as you, but we'll find a way of distinguishing ourselves based on accent, assuredly. Speaking as a Brit.
    - dmix 9y ago
      This is under the fallacious basis that one only becomes wealthy by appeasing the wealthy... by getting into their social group. Which is hardly how modern economies work (although politicians has made great strides in shifting economies back towards that under the guise of a well-intentioned 'helping hand'). If anything we should be striving to limit the power of artisotricacy type groups (whether in dynastical political families, special interest group form, oligopolistic industry cartels with political pull, etc, etc).
      - bencollier49 9y ago
        No it's not. It's on the basis that wealth has little to do with social class, especially if you make everyone equally wealthy. People will find new ways to distinguish between one another. It's intrinsic to humanity.
vkou 9y ago
As people understand it today, the middle class is the working class. The middle class, circa 1900 was not.
adrianratnapala 9y ago
I know nothing of the American Interest in particular. But there is nothing wrong with particular publications having particular philosphical starting points. First, an author's analysis is usually more incisive if she has a clear personal thesis. Secondly, the reader is better prepared if she knows the biases of the writer. We can't expect to read articles as if they are the neutral truth (which doesn't exist anyway). That's why we need a free press expressing a diverse bunch of ideas.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  Oh absolutely! I guess I'm just saying that I take articles about The Nation-State in the American Interest with about as much salt as I take articles about Socialism in Jacobin. I know, going in, what point of view the magazine pushes, and the interesting part is whether I had really understood that point of view in the first place.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Well, look at it in the sense of offering an incomplete set of truths. It sounds like we have a rather similar political outlook, but I read a lot of statist and right-wing opinion because you often learn more from your antagonists than your allies. A weak point in left thought to my mind is its widespread spontanaeism - the notion that once people just see how well other approaches work they'll naturally adopt them. While true to some extent I think it also rests on a sort of utilitarian rationalism and skates over the problem of incumbent actors operating in bad faith. So people either tend to avoid that question altogether (utopianism) or posit extreme solutions that take no account of tactical/strategic factors (ultras). If you delve into the work of statists like Bill Lind, in contrast, you don't have to look too far before coming on discussions of the practicalities of repression and how to implement it while maintaining strategic superiority. The AI analysis is OK from that perspective - kinda like classical mechanics does a decent job of predicting local astronomical phenomena despite its explanatory limitations. Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely, and initially to uplift the proletariat, the working class. Well, you could say lift them up into what? The middle class is in the middle between (stereotype warning) powerful idle elites and downtrodden industrial wage slaves/serfs. The Communist Manifesto sketches the idea of the future society out quite loosely, but it boils down to 'hey, we could actually provide a middle class lifestyle for everyone by rethinking property relations' - Marx talks about everyone putting in some work but also having meaningful amounts of leisure time . Presumably the heroes of a future communist society would be those who maximized consumer rather than producer surplus after externalities had been accounted for. The goal wasn't to drag everyone down to the lowest pits of the working class, but to afford everyone the freedom from day-to-day economic insecurity and the dignity middle class people have historically enjoyed, without allowing new elites to coalesce. Think of post Kruschev Soviet media where there's a sort of technological and economic self-confidence on display.
- pavlov 9y ago
  Red Plenty by Francis Spufford is an extremely interesting — and entertaining — book that paints a broad picture of that short moment in Soviet history where the horrors of revolution, Stalin and war were behind the nation and they tried to seriously embark on the project of providing “better than American” middle class living to everyone.
ocschwar 9y ago
I would say their wording is pretty sympathetic here, when the context we're talking about is new militias operating checkpoints in Mexico.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nickbauman 9y ago
But it's the correct commitment. Mexico is a Mafia State. A country that has a government that is deeply intertwined with organized crime: the government IS essentially the drug cartels. You can criticize the United States, but you'll have a tough time convincing any rational person that obtaining autonomous control over a region in the US (via Bookchinist route or not) is somehow equivalent to what's going on in a Mafia State with regions obtaining autonomy to escape it.

throwawayjava 9y ago

> they bill themselves as a magazine devoted to the idea of the nation-state And, moreover, one particular nation-state. But still, the scholarship you find in American Interest tends to be high quality. I can respect a sincere concern with quality argumentation, even if the reasoning is motivated and even if I don't entirely sympathize with that motivation. > Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely The second sentence is entirely accurate. However, the article doesn't claim that communists (or capitalists) of the 20th century were trying to nurture "the middle class". Rather, the article (carefully) claims: "virtually all states—whether capitalist or communist, industrialized or developmental, great power or post-colonial—aimed to legitimate themselves by serving the interests of middle classes whose size they sought to expand... Both capitalist and communist accumulation strategies were based on the nurturing of industrial laborers". I think the article's characterization is fair, in-so-far as you can say anything at all about such a broad group of political projects as "all capitalists and also all communists"! WRT your first sentence specifically, the communist project did aim to "nurture" industrial laborers; the purported means was abolishing class, of course, but all the same.

nyolfen 9y ago

looking for laudatory articles about rojava in a magazine called 'the american interest' is a bizarre proposition to begin with

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

> Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely, and initially to uplift the proletariat, the working class. Precisely. And the Communists did one thing grossly wrong - they substituted the Capitalist class with the Communist "Elite". It was from an older owner to a newer owner. The people saw little difference in who they were required to work for. A new Communist thought is that of worker collectives. The idea is that they are better than unions, with the capitalist class continually picking and clawing at any reforms. With a worker cooperative, the owners and managers are the very workers which eliminates that avenue of strife. And it is one step closer to the proletariat owning the means to production.

Wohlf 9y ago
The problem there of course is you end up with a defacto ruling class made up of the most motivated workers, which will often end up being just as undemocratic with fewer means of non-political (in the office politics sense) intervention. You run the risk of everyone having to become a middle manager. Not to say it wouldn't be a better system, but we fallible humans are far from being ready for the enlightened fully automated communism some predict.
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  True, but we're already seeing the ugly side of the capitalist choice already - machines making decisions that we proles can't argue with. Look at Google, Amazon, Microsoft. If their automated systems say X, it doesn't matter if X is true, neutral or false. X is a fact and that's that. Oh and if you quit using their services and then try to later, they will collect. But yeah, this is the "bad" side of capitalism - you not only will be automated out of a job, but will have decisions automated. And seriously - of course they will be decided against your favor. The capitalists didn't get in their place by loosing money. And yet, I get downmodded for talking communism. It's about time someone talks of different economic theory. We've gone down long enough of "trickle down", and it doesn't work - or it works beyond the elite's dreams.

Wohlf 9y ago

When you try to abolish class, you're really trying to make everyone middle class. No one wants to make everyone working class, and upper class can only exist if there's at least one lower class to subjugate.

ericd 9y ago
The upper class wants the fruits of being wealthy, they're generally not in it for the "subjugation" aspect. With sufficient automation and efficiency/recycling, everyone could be what we call "upper class".
- bencollier49 9y ago
  That is, by definition, impossible: """the social group that has the highest status in society, especially the aristocracy. "it is important that the children of the upper class attend the ‘right’ school" """ I could have the same goods as you, but we'll find a way of distinguishing ourselves based on accent, assuredly. Speaking as a Brit.
  - dmix 9y ago
    This is under the fallacious basis that one only becomes wealthy by appeasing the wealthy... by getting into their social group. Which is hardly how modern economies work (although politicians has made great strides in shifting economies back towards that under the guise of a well-intentioned 'helping hand'). If anything we should be striving to limit the power of artisotricacy type groups (whether in dynastical political families, special interest group form, oligopolistic industry cartels with political pull, etc, etc).
    - bencollier49 9y ago
      No it's not. It's on the basis that wealth has little to do with social class, especially if you make everyone equally wealthy. People will find new ways to distinguish between one another. It's intrinsic to humanity.

vkou 9y ago

As people understand it today, the middle class is the working class. The middle class, circa 1900 was not.

adrianratnapala 9y ago

I know nothing of the American Interest in particular. But there is nothing wrong with particular publications having particular philosphical starting points. First, an author's analysis is usually more incisive if she has a clear personal thesis. Secondly, the reader is better prepared if she knows the biases of the writer. We can't expect to read articles as if they are the neutral truth (which doesn't exist anyway). That's why we need a free press expressing a diverse bunch of ideas.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago
Oh absolutely! I guess I'm just saying that I take articles about The Nation-State in the American Interest with about as much salt as I take articles about Socialism in Jacobin. I know, going in, what point of view the magazine pushes, and the interesting part is whether I had really understood that point of view in the first place.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Well, look at it in the sense of offering an incomplete set of truths. It sounds like we have a rather similar political outlook, but I read a lot of statist and right-wing opinion because you often learn more from your antagonists than your allies. A weak point in left thought to my mind is its widespread spontanaeism - the notion that once people just see how well other approaches work they'll naturally adopt them. While true to some extent I think it also rests on a sort of utilitarian rationalism and skates over the problem of incumbent actors operating in bad faith. So people either tend to avoid that question altogether (utopianism) or posit extreme solutions that take no account of tactical/strategic factors (ultras). If you delve into the work of statists like Bill Lind, in contrast, you don't have to look too far before coming on discussions of the practicalities of repression and how to implement it while maintaining strategic superiority. The AI analysis is OK from that perspective - kinda like classical mechanics does a decent job of predicting local astronomical phenomena despite its explanatory limitations. Also, claiming that communists tried to nurture a middle class is just plain wrong. Communists were, at least according to Communists, trying to abolish class entirely, and initially to uplift the proletariat, the working class. Well, you could say lift them up into what? The middle class is in the middle between (stereotype warning) powerful idle elites and downtrodden industrial wage slaves/serfs. The Communist Manifesto sketches the idea of the future society out quite loosely, but it boils down to 'hey, we could actually provide a middle class lifestyle for everyone by rethinking property relations' - Marx talks about everyone putting in some work but also having meaningful amounts of leisure time . Presumably the heroes of a future communist society would be those who maximized consumer rather than producer surplus after externalities had been accounted for. The goal wasn't to drag everyone down to the lowest pits of the working class, but to afford everyone the freedom from day-to-day economic insecurity and the dignity middle class people have historically enjoyed, without allowing new elites to coalesce. Think of post Kruschev Soviet media where there's a sort of technological and economic self-confidence on display.

pavlov 9y ago
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford is an extremely interesting — and entertaining — book that paints a broad picture of that short moment in Soviet history where the horrors of revolution, Stalin and war were behind the nation and they tried to seriously embark on the project of providing “better than American” middle class living to everyone.

ocschwar 9y ago

I would say their wording is pretty sympathetic here, when the context we're talking about is new militias operating checkpoints in Mexico.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nickbauman 9y ago

But it's the correct commitment. Mexico is a Mafia State. A country that has a government that is deeply intertwined with organized crime: the government IS essentially the drug cartels. You can criticize the United States, but you'll have a tough time convincing any rational person that obtaining autonomous control over a region in the US (via Bookchinist route or not) is somehow equivalent to what's going on in a Mafia State with regions obtaining autonomy to escape it.