"This might at least help to pose the problem, which is not so much that workers as a whole are turning to the right as that the class is fundamentally fractured by the material interests deriving from the market position of its component parts as Weber noted long ago. Framed in this way, the necessary strategy would seem to be not to accommodate the rightward drift to little avail, but to find a basis on which to suture that divide, one that speaks both to highly specific, culturally inflected market interests as well as class-wide interests rooted in the common experience of wage labour.

This politics must start from the observation that the economic interests of wage earners under capitalism are highly differentiated and can point in different, even contradictory political directions. Class interests and economic interests are by no means identical. It is not a matter of appealing to ‘economic’ interests over ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ interests (misleadingly termed ‘identity’ politics). Rather, it is a matter of developing a materialist politics that is at once specific and general, and which addresses workers’ lives in the experientially accessible realm of market relations, and their potential in the experientially distant structure of ownership."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/first-principles

#Politics #Left #LeftWing #Capitalism #ClassWarfare #PoliticalEconomy #WageSlavery #IdentityPolitics

A quotation from Franklin Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933–1945)
Speech (1936-10-31), Madison Square Garden, New York City

More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-franklin-d…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #franklinroosevelt #franklindroosevelt #franklindelanoroosevelt #fdr #banking #bigbusiness #businessinterests #classwarfare #corporations #defenseindustry #militaryindustrialcomplex #monopoly #oligarchy #plutocracy #profiteering #regulation #stockmarket

Coitadinhos desses investidores e accionistas "pobrezinhos" vulgo capitalistas...

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Pity those "poor" investors and shareholders AKA capitalists...

"Gross domestic product measures all the value added in the economy. For example, the value added by a manufacturer is its sales minus inputs such as parts and raw materials. That value is then distributed either to labor as wages and benefits, or to capital as profits and interest. Some value added is also allocated to depreciation, the cost of replacing assets as they wear out or become obsolete.

The shift to capital from labor has actually been under way for more than 40 years. Labor received 58% of the total proceeds of economic output, as measured by gross domestic income (conceptually similar to GDP), in 1980. By the third quarter of last year that had plummeted to 51.4%. Profits’ share, meanwhile, rose from 7% to 11.7%.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the demise of unions and the spread of outsourcing sapped workers’ bargaining power. The nature of capital also changed: Businesses spent less on long-lived buildings and factories and more on computer equipment, software and intellectual property that must be replaced every few years.

And then there is automation. Its impact showed up first in manufacturing as machines, robots and computers took the place of workers. In 1980, 66% of value added in factories went to labor as wages and benefits, said Pascual Restrepo, a Yale University economist. By the 2000s, that was down to 45%.

This was great for manufacturing productivity and consumers who got cheaper products. But it meant that workers who might have landed good-paying factory jobs took lower-paid work elsewhere. This can explain about half the drop in labor’s share of output between 1987 and 2016, according to a study by Restrepo and Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/capital-labor-wealth-economy-2fcf6c2f

#Capitalism #USA #Labor #ClassWarfare #Inequality #WageSlavery #Capital

Pluralistic: The Epstein class and collapse porn (09 Feb 2026)

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/09/sloppy-steve/

Once again, we see the same playbook: when "fiscal responsibility" is needed, it's always education, healthcare, and social services on the chopping block. Never corporate subsidies. Never tax loopholes for the wealthy. Never the billions in concessions to mining companies.
Liberals talk about "tough choices" while protecting the comfortable and squeezing the vulnerable. The pattern is crystal clear—austerity for the many, prosperity for the few.

#Auspol #Austerity #ClassWarfare #EatTheRich #LnpFail

https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/pressure-chalmers-over-inflation-193631907.html

A quotation from George Orwell

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1941-02-19), “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius,” Part 2 “Shopkeepers at War,” sec. 3, The Searchlight Books [ed. Fyvel and Orwell]

More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/81894/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #orwell #georgeorwell #autocracy #classwarfare #economicinjustice #economicsystem #nationalsocialism #Nazi #plutocracy #rulingclass #socialism #upperclass

Epstein Emails Expose How America’s Elites Really See the Rest of Us

Anand Giridharadas explains how the Epstein emails expose elite contempt, inequality, and a culture that normalizes exploitation and moral indifference.

"Do we really live in the best and only possible economic reality? During the economic boom of the post–World War II period, a golden age of capitalism, this perspective might have seemed vaguely plausible, at least for those living in Europe and the United States. However, in the current moment, when the majority of the global population suffers from profound economic and social injustices and the planet is on the brink of ecological collapse, this pseudoscientific best-of-all-possible-worlds idea can’t be right. There is a more powerful, humane approach to understanding society.

We must redemocratize the economy so that citizens can reclaim the most important choices that regulate the very foundations of their lives. That is a better way forward than anything capitalism has or can offer. What is the first step in this direction? It is a radical change of perspective. There is nothing more political than the lens through which we view the world. Only if we learn to look at the world differently can we act differently.

My fundamental intuition is that there are no economic problems that are not inevitably also political problems; contrary to what technocrats typically suggest, our economy is neither a force of nature nor an external object that we can manipulate as if it were a machine. On the contrary, the economy is us: flesh-and-blood people. This means that “capital” as a “commodity,” as money to invest, as wealth expressed in gross domestic product, exists thanks to specific social relations, and in particular thanks to the fact that most people have no alternative but to sell their ability to work for a wage and inevitably be paid less than the value they produce. This is the capital order, the backbone to our society that we do not criticize or even discuss. It is only through the lens of class that we can escape this trap..."

https://jacobin.com/2026/01/economics-austerity-inflation-class-capitalism

#Economics #Austerity #PoliticalEconomy #Capitalism #Inflation #ClassWarfare