The disease of “late-stage capitalism”
AOC isn’t cute, despite her youth and looks. And although she’s widely considered by the right to be stupid, I beg to differ. She’s an dedicated ideologue with an attractive demeanor, and to many people on the left (and not just the far left, either), she’s a heroine and an oracle.
Here’s one of her most recent tweets:
When late stage capitalism takes a selfie: pic.twitter.com/2OMI8JRz95
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 10, 2020
Look how much AOC packs in there. The implication is that the job losses are somehow capitalism’s fault, not the coronvirus’s fault. Would she have preferred no closings? I am positive she would have criticized that approach, too. And notice how she combines it with her casual and au courant “takes a selfie” to leaven the message and make it especially appealing to the young people who admire and follow her.
But I think the most interesting part of that tweet is the phrase “late stage capitalism,” which for me conjures up the idea that capitalism is a disease in its final moribund days.
AOC didn’t make the term “late capitalism” up; it’s been in vogue for about three years, but it certainly predated that. You guessed right if you guessed “Marxism”:
it was Marxist thinkers that came up with it to describe the industrialized economies they saw around them. A German economist named Werner Sombart seems to have been the first to use it around the turn of the 20th century, with a Marxist theorist and activist named Ernest Mandel popularizing it a half-century later. For Mandel, “late capitalism” denoted the economic period that started with the end of World War II and ended in the early 1970s, a time that saw the rise of multinational corporations, mass communication, and international finance. Roberts said that the term’s current usage departs somewhat from its original meaning. “It’s not this sense that things are getting so bad that the revolution is going to come,” he told me, “but rather that we see the ligaments of the international system that socialists will be able to seize and use.”…
“Late capitalism” took on a darker connotation in the works of the 20th-century critical theorists, who borrowed from and critiqued and built on Marx and the Marxists. Members of the Frankfurt School, reeling from the horrors of World War II, saw in it excessive social control on the part of big government and big business. Theodor Adorno argued that “late capitalism” might lead not to socialism, but away from it, by blunting the proletariat’s potential for revolution. “The economic process continues to perpetuate domination over human beings,” he said in a speech on late capitalism in 1968.
Much more at the link.
One thing I can say about AOC: she’s not really trying to hide who she is, unlike many other American leftists.
This photo is also making the rounds on the dissident right and it is an excellent meme. It shows the contrast between “16 million Americans lose jobs” in the foreground and “Dow’s Best Week Since 1938” in the background. The point is the complete isolation between Wall St. and Main St. Capitalism now is just the financialization and corporatization of everything, totally divorced from the country and its people.
Nope:
Capitalism and corparatism or crony capitalism are not the same things. I’m not sure what the “dissident right” is.
Her mis-education at BU cost somewhere near $300,000, and her degree was in economics, no doubt paid for mostly by scholarship and loans. It is unfortunate that one can no longer discuss the truly pernicious influence of the Frankfurt School (“Cultural Marxism”) without being accused of peddling a baseless “conspiracy theory”, a term increasingly used by leftists to demonize any idea which dissents from progressive dogma.
For east-coasters and other more knowledgeable people, is AOC a lock to keep her seat?
On the one hand
1) she’s a national joke
2) she ruined the chance for her district to receive a mega-job event from Amazon and have incomes and property values soar
3) back when she first ran, it was clear that she was using a parent’s address not her own address. presumably she did not then live in-district though no doubt she’s obtained a residence address since then
4) a large percentage of her campaign contribs came from outside the district
OTOH:
1) she’s an incumbent
2) it is a Dem-heavy area
3) she obviously has a core support group that is dedicated to her
Yes, this picture has gone around a lot. It is quite a contrast but the story is never that simple. The market had gone down over 30% prior to any of the job losses even being officially reported and the stock market is a forward indicator. It prices in (or attempts to anyway) good and bad news ahead and so when the job losses actually are reported for the market it is often old news. Happened again today with mildly up day after 5 million more job losses. Plus, what led the rise last week was a lot of Fed promises of support which always gets the market excited.
The real test for the economy and the market will be how many and how fast will these people get back to work. If it’s not fast enough the lows will be retested.
Also what has led the market bounce has been the big cap stocks and the one thing that seems very likely to come from this is even further consolidation to big brand companies that have great balance sheets and can survive this. The small guys are going to be the losers and that is the way it almost always goes.
Capitalist, eh?
Just another dishonest, humorless Sandersesque apparatchik. Sigh…
(Unless she hasn’t yet noticed that the virus has afflicted most countries around the world, capitalist, communist, socialist and in-between, poor and rich, Black and White, Islamic, Christian and Jewish, those with socialized medicine for all and those without, vegans, vegetarians and omnivores. Yes, and even that bright, shining light—Scandinavia!)
But then, maybe she really hasn’t noticed. (Doesn’t quite fit the agenda, does it?)
So that even if she has noticed, well….as they say, NEVER let a crisis go to waste.
So she’ll say what she wants.
And she’ll get away with what she can.
Occasionally (gasp!) she says things that aren’t unreasonable.
But invariably she reverts to form.
Yes, you can count on her.
‘Late stage capitalism’ is a trendy phrase for young progressives. Below is a link to a subreddit with the same name. It has half a million members.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/
So if you don’t like Amazon, Walmart, Costco, Microsoft, J & J, P & G, Nike, etc. get ready to be unhappy because they are the kinds of companies that will come out the strongest from this and people will moan and complain about them but the economic bad times always come for the little guys first.
“It shows the contrast between “16 million Americans lose jobs” in the foreground and “Dow’s Best Week Since 1938” in the background.” — Scomo
There is the above dichotomy and the financial host Jim Cramer’s frequent use of the phrase “late-stage capitalism” on the show. I used to watch frequently, and got both frustrated and burned-out on the show.
Cramer got an ivy league education in the 70’s and was exposed to much of the Marxist dogma of that era, and of course, the transition to “third-way” thinking after the failures of communism. For example, there was the frequent blather about how Marx may have been wrong about some things, but he was so correct about the ultimate implosion of capitalism.
While Cramer never really explained his usage of “late-stage capitalism” (unless I missed it) I believe it was half tongue-in-cheek, and half an admission that by the end of the 20th century, U.S. capitalism had become a little more feeble and tired compared to say the 50’s or 80’s.
_____
While I don’t agree with Scomo’s overall point, his sentence at the top here is perplexing, unless you understand how moderately screwed up our markets are.
Look at a 3 month chart of the S&P500. You will see a very sharp V-shaped decline and rebound. So that rebound is part of the “Dow’s Best Week Since 1938” in spite of huge losses in employment.
Nowadays hedge funds and others are big scale short sellers in the market and are always looking for opportunities. So these guys keep selling short in a market decline, worsening it, and hopefully they will cause the longs (holders of shares) to capitulate and sell. If the decline is big enough, those who bought on borrowed money are forced to sell by their lenders.
At some point (March 23, 2020) the decline is overdone and some very good news comes out, and the short sellers start deciding, almost in unison, to cover. Covering generates a massive buying surge and share prices surge. Bottom fishers start buying too, know that many great buying opportunities will mostly disappear in a matter of a few hours.
_____
Griffin makes an excellent point. Markets are forward looking, and can turn on good news, even if that news won’t have an immediate effect.
I might suggest to Scomo that his assertions are spurious. The fact is that the Dow’s “best week since 1938” was simply a partial recovery from the precipitous free-fall that was a direct result of government actions. Juxtaposing that with the loss of sixteen million jobs is phony. Government policy is the sole point of connectivity. (I am not judging whether the actions were prudent or not.) In part it is because corporate America was so strong, that we are not worse off now. Then again, the assertion that Wall St is divorced from most Americans is simply untrue. Most of us have a stake in it, even if indirectly, through the likes of 401Ks, IRAs, or union, corporate, and public pension plans. Even the folks associated with the more Leftist colleges are more closely tied to Wall St than they care to acknowledge. Those enormous endowments are not sitting idle, buried in their CFO’s back garden.
Neo, while I think that most progressive politicians are content to hide their true nature, and let the likes of AOC and Bernie Sanders carry their water for now, others are preaching their gospel outside of the public eye. I think of “educators”, of course. I don’t know how smart AOC actually is; she says some things that certainly raise doubts. Regardless she is a convenient tool, and her core message is received favorably among many who were indoctrinated in our high schools and colleges. Unfortunately, many of those will gravitate to leadership positions with the passage of time. The critical questions is; will their perspective mature as well?
AOC is an example of Lily Tomlin’s dictum that ‘Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is for you to get what you want’. She and Riley should be building an ordinary life together, something she has repeatedly postponed over the last nine years. F/t elected officials should usually have one thing in common: more than 55 years worth of living.
Doc Zero points out the real culprit – it is not true capitalism, early or late, but the capture of (some) capitalists and the control over market operations by Communist China.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1250771665874833411.html
“Late stage capitalism” is a telling phrase, indeed.
It tells me that the dialectical theory had collided with an annoyingly persistent fact, and was taking on water at an alarming rate.
When I was a child in the ’70s, I heard the phrase “late term capitalism” thousands of times. In Italy it was a period of great inflation, instability and austerity; terrorism was raging, and everything was discussed according to Marxist and psychoanalytic mantras.
Communists are still faithfully waiting for their “scientific theory” to come true; as usual, they thrive in times of crisis when, like shamans, they successfully exploit people’s sorrows: “If you had worshiped me, this wouldn’t have happened”.
Even if Communism presents itself as an intellectually compelling theory, it always plays on superficial contrasts which enrage people because they seem to reveal an injustice. “What? Dow Jones up when people are down!?!”
But, would you prefer a system where the whole economy crashes when people are down? Of course not, it’s much better to have a system which can restart, otherwise you’d have a collapse like that in Soviet Union and Venezuela.
The evident, and malevolent, insinuation is that people are down because the Dow Jones goes up: “the rich are stealing money from the poor!” Marxists depict the situation as if there was actual money (dangling from the branches of the Wealth Tree ) which is taken away from poor people and diverted to the rich’s pockets.
The political fantasy is that a Socialist system would not let you down in times of crisis. I am not a capitalist purist, but – anecdotally speaking – after a week I’m still waiting for the public health system to visit (or even call by phone) my family in quarantine; one of my best friends told me yesterday that his father-in-law caught pneumonia and the doctor measured 90 of saturation, but the hospital sent him away because “there is no place here for you, you’re not hill enough” – and he had to pay 150€ for the ambulance to bring him back home. There will be a legal cause, which will be dragging for years.
AOC (how it annoys me that I know those initials and can expect you all to know them) is definitely not stupid. But she’s shallow and foolish. I’m afraid there are all too many people for whom things like this tweet–snappy but superficial little bits of snark–are definitive statements.
What used to be scorned as bumper-sticker-level debate is now all there is for people who consider themselves informed and actually vote. From the few times I saw him I think Jon Stewart had a lot to do with that.
I’ve thought about this topic a fair amount. I don’t want to think about AOC, but she sure seems to want to dictate and control a lot of things about my life, so I have spent some time trying to discern if she is a real threat, or someone who will orchestrate her own fall from national power quickly. For example, one would assume Ilhan Omar is such an obvious snake that she cannot be re elected, even in very liberal Minnesota, but even someone as provably dishonest and mendacious as Omar may retain her seat. As JimNorCal points out, it’s hard to vote incumbents out.
Is AOC smart? (Technically, neo said she’s “not stupid.”) First, as others have pointed out, the photo has made the rounds. It’s almost certainly a retweet on her part, not something she had the wherewithal to create. But she did have the sense to tweet it and use it to further her cause.
There is one thing I am sure of: AOC is not smart enough to know what she does not know. That’s not uncommon and it doesn’t necessarily correlate with “stupid,” but it is the definition of ignorance. It also seems more common today than when my generation was her age. As many have speculated, I think it has something to do with the push for self-esteem in the ’70s. We’ve raised a few generations of young adults with very high self-esteem, and she has it in spades. I think even Nancy Pelosi was shocked by this. Nancy naturally assumed there would be some deference. Any reasonable new Congresscritter would surely know a seasoned and very successful Pol like Pelosi must have knowledge and experience that she (AOC) could benefit from. Spend a few terms learning from one’s elders. Nope. If Pelosi is out of step with AOC, AOC is unabashedly convinced it must be Pelosi who is wrong. Or Biden or anyone else who isn’t in lockstep with her, and her opinions.
There are myriad examples I could give that prove she does not know what she does not know. She “steps in it” often by engaging with folks brighter than she is on topics she has insufficient knowledge of. The Amazon project in her district was an amazing display of ignorance. She did not have a clue how tax abatements worked, but was too dumb to know she did not know and made some extremely damaging public utterances. This example of her attack on Mike Pence as leader of Trump’s Coronavirus task force is a common example: https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/02/28/aoc-responds-to-ted-cruzs-science-jab-and-its-maximum-cringe/ This happens to her often. A clever person wouldn’t set traps for herself that she continually falls into.
I have read that she is bilingual and was raised with at least some Spanish spoken at home. Because of that I give her a little slack on verbal skills; vocabulary, grammar. She does not sound exceedingly intelligent when she speaks and often uses simple word choices “tippy top” and incorrect grammar. I guess we’re supposed to assume she is most knowledgeable about Economics based on her education, yet when she speaks or writes on the topic she almost never exhibits more than perfunctory information and often makes mistakes. However, even if we assume she was raised in a Spanish speaking home and English was her second language, she’s not especially verbally adroit. She doesn’t seem like the type of person who thought much about language, or linguistic concepts. Not an indication that one is “stupid,” I know a lot of bright people not particularly interested in linguistics or the structure of human speech, but it’s yet one other subject where she exhibits no particular mental acuity.
She also makes some absurdly dumb political mis-steps. The Amazon protest and follow up was exceedingly poorly orchestrated and handled. And it is not an exception. She is a politician who doesn’t seem very clever at politics, an economist who is not well-versed in economics and a public speaker who is not very good at speaking publicly (watch any of her live interrogations in hearings). She is good at social media, as are most all Western females over the age of 12. I think that makes her look savvy at times, but that’s more an indication of deficiencies in other politicians (mainly due to age) than an indication of a staggering intellect.
The disease of any-stage capitalism still beats the disease of every-stage socialism.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/05/04/want-toilet-paper-in-an-epidemic/#slide-1
AesopFan,
i don’t remember the precise details, but NPR did a story on a disaster that befell southern california, around San Bernardino. I think it was a rail disaster that rendered some routes unusable for a period of time (earthquake?).
Folks noticed that their grocery stores quickly ran out of fresh produce, which they found odd since they live near so many farms. When they asked the stores what was going on they were told, “Oh, we get our lettuce from Mexico. The apples you buy come from New Zealand, etc…” Folks were furious. What waste! Why don’t you buy your lettuce from the farmer up the road? Grocer: “My supplier gets it cheaper from Mexico.”
Word got down to an Economics professor at UCLA or USC (I think?) and he thought it was a great research project for his students. So they spent a year or two detailing all the produce sold in the area, where it came from, what it cost, how it was transported… There was a big emphasis on global warming and reducing fossil fuels wasted on transport.
Turns out they couldn’t come up with anything more efficient than the market had come up with on its own. They were astounded! The brokers, grocers, farmers, trucking companies, railroads, overseas shippers and consumers had already designed the best system. Their unplanned system of each looking out for their own self interest had produced the most efficient use of all available resources. It actually was optimal that they bought apples from an orchard in New Zealand while their farmers grew avocados and shipped them to Ireland.
“Waffle House is famous for its ability to get its restaurants open in natural disasters faster than FEMA can get set up on the ground.”
Not only that, but they make a pretty good breakfast!
AOC (how it annoys me that I know those initials and can expect you all to know them) is definitely not stupid.
I think you mean she is not unintelligent. She actually is stupid. Stupid people manifest poor judgment in applying the intelligence they have. Every major decision she’s made in her life over a period of 15 years is by all appearances off, though I suppose if you had some more granular information, some would make sense. This girl from a supposedly impecunious exurban family (father a professional man who died young) elected to (1) attend college (2) out of state (3) at a private research university. She then followed an academic program wherein she studied…international relations. (IR commonly requires some credits in economics, so she took a couple of extra courses and was permitted to declare a minor in that). Over a period of seven years, she flitted from one employment to another; presumably the bf (who she met in college and who appears to be an IT tech) was paying most of the balances on their bills. She’s never closed the deal with Riley or borne any children for him. The one non-foolish thing she’s done is hold on to him; a great many of her contemporaries would have put him out on the curb for random reasons.
If she knew what to do with that intelligence, she’d have enrolled at one of the practical cheap seats schools on Long Island (LIU, Hofstra, or Adelphi), enrolled at one of the SUNY schools, or enrolled at one of the CUNY schools. She’d have studied something like accounting or pharmacy and taken courses in IR or economics to fulfill distribution requirements if she took them. She’d have married Riley and popped a couple of babies by now. And she’d be living within ready commuting distance of an elderly empty-nester in his family or in hers, because that sort of relative is there to help and generally willing.
If anything, given the century of the comment, it really designates the resiliency of the economic model over Marxist or fascist (third way) models… China is a fascist state economically not a communist one technically. Capitalism is something they wish to harness for conflict reasons against their enemies, which is everyone given the goal is total control of everything (like all true paranoiacs).
the game has not changed just the belief in the game as played by the pawns has, which is why women who dont have babies think they are the future when their progeny wont exist. While they get their marching orders from other women who happen to have five children and are working to populate the future, while working on family dynasties who each child does not “do their own thing”.
Its right in front of you if you take the time to look at it..
the successful hated winners are dynastic while the poor huddled masses are independent of each other… following the advice of their frenemies to family destruction and soft slavery…
Art Deco, you’re describing what I mean by “foolish.” By “stupid” I mean precisely lacking in the sort of native mental capacity that’s measured by IQ tests. I suspect she does reasonably well on those.
She’s also arrogant.
She’s also arrogant.
Dunning-Kruger. Ordinary life generally causes that to dissipate. The problem with her current situation is that she’s in the odd set of circumstances wherein that natural process will (one can wager) not take place.
Turns out they couldn’t come up with anything more efficient than the market had come up with on its own.
If I’m not mistaken, groceries are the lowest of low margin business. I have a suspicion the professor in question had a satisfactory idea of what the conclusions would be. BTW, that doesn’t sound like an economics class assignment, more a business school assignment or (on the odd campus with a program) a geography class assignment.
Stupidity, bad judgement, foolishness. Arrogance. Idiocy.
OK, OK. She’s not the sharpest arrow in the quiver…. (But, but we do—all of us—have our moments. So shall we cast stones?? Well…in her case, probably yes…)
But how can one possibly explain this?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/16/coronavirus-china-africa-191444
H/T Instapundit
I mean, don’t those Africans KNOW that COVID-19 was CAUSED by the AMERICANS??
(Oh, the unfairness of it all….)
…and if that’s not enough, here’s something that almost had me feeling sorry for Adam Schiff.
(Well, almost…)
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/16/charles-hurt-the-terrifying-zealotry-of-adam-schiff-and-his-impeachment-fairies/
H/T/ Powerline blog
And…he strikes again!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/irony-defined-adam-schiff-blasts-grenell-politicizing-intelligence-community
He’s insatiable: a glutton for punishment!
Incomparable: the leading light of chutzpa in our generation—perhaps of all time!
Incoherent: well, he’s a contender, but Biden has his number. Tries his best, though.
Incontinent (well, morally): let’s just say he’s all over the place.
But what a guy!
She has benefited immensely from a favorable press. I doubt a week has gone by since her election when she hasn’t made a gaffe worse than anything Dan Quayle did in four years.
It will be interesting to see how folks in her district react when she is up for re-election this November. She is much bigger on the “national” stage than anyone would have imagined, but she does this at the expense of working locally. Will her constituents vote her out because of her lack of focus and attention to their district, or will they vote her in because of her celebrity?
You are all too smart to understand AOC’s wisdom. If anything bad happens in the Western Hemisphere or Europe, it is because of “Capitalism”. If anything bad happens in the Holy Land of China, it is because of “Capitalism”. The happy peasants had no need of such a complex thing.
Once you understand that essential truth, it is just a matter of stringing any bright and shiney, if unrelated, facts together to illustrate that truth. Your “logic” will not save you.
China has been producing novel and wonderful diseases for several millenia. In the last century or two, they have moved to craftsman viruses. It is all the fault of “Capitalism”. If the current version, SARS-Cov-2, “escaped “from a lab, it is the fault of the “Capitalists” who financed that institute.
It is such an easy concept that even a below average bartender could understand. That Amazon thing was just “Capitalism”, so she fought it to preserve the “community” from savage prosperity. Simple!