Listen now | Evgenia and I talk to our friend Anthony Galluzzo about his views on the politics of technology, degrowth, and the left’s inability to imagine a way of life decoupled from industrial capitalism and consumerism.
Great Interview. Alternative hedonism=Kate Soper=green consumerism. Radical hedonism=abolishment of the work ethic=all activity based on pleasurable intent to the fullest extent possible. Climate chaos+civilizational collapse (CC2)=the demise of capitalism=the end of bullshit jobs=convivial survival with friends.The utopian spirit+enchantment with the marvel of life-in-nature=a future to fight for.
Not gonna lie, I was into this for a bit until the guest gets into covid denialism. Zero covid is a political solution and has nothing to do living life through screens. Selective quarantine has kept literally a billion lives saved. Life is absolutely normal for millions. Oh no some petit bourg pricks can't go wherever they want for two weeks.
"What is a life worth living" one without covid disability. CCP was a giveaway, the soft denialism of covid is part of US foreign policy not just to destabilize china but it's about the dead. They want Chinese deaths.
I'm guessing he doesn't actually listen to chapo because he claimed they were post left and then segued to talking about some dude I've never heard of. Matt definitely doesn't sound like a post-leftist or whatever libertarians call themselves now, but for all I know maybe felix decided to be a self hating jew after all, I'm not in his head so I wouldn't know.
That probably sounds more sarcastic than I meant, every other day people were calling them nazis for using the word "bitch" or making fun of hillary.
When you use the term "left", you're talking about liberals and social democrats, right? Because I have a hard time reconciling people like Doug Henwood, Richard Seymour, Yves Engler, and Jodi Dean as being unable to imagine a way of life decoupled from industrial capitalism and consumerism.
we were not talking about my grandparents. but that's an interesting, complicated question.
i'd say the ussr was consumerist in its own way and evgenia have touched on the subject in a few early episodes. my grandparents always lived with little-to-no material comforts and died with few of them. but the ussr was definitely was techno-utopian and hyper-industrial, saw nature as something to exploit and dominate and overcome. it also took a lot of its development cues from western capitalist states. i was a kid when i left but my dad told me about how hyper-consumerist many people in the soviet union were. they were constantly thinking about stuff and how they could acquire it, salivating and desirous of the consumerism that existed in western capitalist states.
i'd say the ussr falls into the promethean enlightenment/industrial ideological strain of thought that anthony critiques — a strain of though that is a big, if not dominant, part of the left today. fully automated luxury communism and all that.
Given the time in which the USSR was created and built up, the people who were "in charge" (broadly speaking), and what needed to be done to bring up living standards (generally speaking) and defend against its bourgeois enemies, techo-utopianism and hyper-industrialism at the time weren't all that surprising. But that's not communism.
Neither was an elite-driven consumerism terribly surprising given what the Soviet elites (certainly from the late 40s onward) did, where they went, and who they had contact with (not to mention the usual meddling from the bourgeois countries [or even just being on the same planet as them]). And consumerism for all isn't communism, either.
Painting the entire left, from liberals to anarchists, with this ridiculously broad brush isn't helping (especially when this whole notion of FALC isn't exactly on the left's radar [if anything, just the opposite ie "degrowth" might be occupying it more]).
Great Interview. Alternative hedonism=Kate Soper=green consumerism. Radical hedonism=abolishment of the work ethic=all activity based on pleasurable intent to the fullest extent possible. Climate chaos+civilizational collapse (CC2)=the demise of capitalism=the end of bullshit jobs=convivial survival with friends.The utopian spirit+enchantment with the marvel of life-in-nature=a future to fight for.
Not gonna lie, I was into this for a bit until the guest gets into covid denialism. Zero covid is a political solution and has nothing to do living life through screens. Selective quarantine has kept literally a billion lives saved. Life is absolutely normal for millions. Oh no some petit bourg pricks can't go wherever they want for two weeks.
"What is a life worth living" one without covid disability. CCP was a giveaway, the soft denialism of covid is part of US foreign policy not just to destabilize china but it's about the dead. They want Chinese deaths.
I'm guessing he doesn't actually listen to chapo because he claimed they were post left and then segued to talking about some dude I've never heard of. Matt definitely doesn't sound like a post-leftist or whatever libertarians call themselves now, but for all I know maybe felix decided to be a self hating jew after all, I'm not in his head so I wouldn't know.
That probably sounds more sarcastic than I meant, every other day people were calling them nazis for using the word "bitch" or making fun of hillary.
They're Biometricrats
will re-listen when not on marijuana
When you use the term "left", you're talking about liberals and social democrats, right? Because I have a hard time reconciling people like Doug Henwood, Richard Seymour, Yves Engler, and Jodi Dean as being unable to imagine a way of life decoupled from industrial capitalism and consumerism.
no. when we say left we mean people who identify themselves as left.
??
So communists, like your grandparents, are categorically unable to imagine a way of life decoupled from industrial capitalism and consumerism?
we were not talking about my grandparents. but that's an interesting, complicated question.
i'd say the ussr was consumerist in its own way and evgenia have touched on the subject in a few early episodes. my grandparents always lived with little-to-no material comforts and died with few of them. but the ussr was definitely was techno-utopian and hyper-industrial, saw nature as something to exploit and dominate and overcome. it also took a lot of its development cues from western capitalist states. i was a kid when i left but my dad told me about how hyper-consumerist many people in the soviet union were. they were constantly thinking about stuff and how they could acquire it, salivating and desirous of the consumerism that existed in western capitalist states.
i'd say the ussr falls into the promethean enlightenment/industrial ideological strain of thought that anthony critiques — a strain of though that is a big, if not dominant, part of the left today. fully automated luxury communism and all that.
Given the time in which the USSR was created and built up, the people who were "in charge" (broadly speaking), and what needed to be done to bring up living standards (generally speaking) and defend against its bourgeois enemies, techo-utopianism and hyper-industrialism at the time weren't all that surprising. But that's not communism.
Neither was an elite-driven consumerism terribly surprising given what the Soviet elites (certainly from the late 40s onward) did, where they went, and who they had contact with (not to mention the usual meddling from the bourgeois countries [or even just being on the same planet as them]). And consumerism for all isn't communism, either.
Painting the entire left, from liberals to anarchists, with this ridiculously broad brush isn't helping (especially when this whole notion of FALC isn't exactly on the left's radar [if anything, just the opposite ie "degrowth" might be occupying it more]).