great. send the families to the sticks, it'll decrease rent in the cities and open up more space for artists to exist.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7062983/coronavirus-canadians-leaving-city/

and, yes, you would expect the union movement to be conservative and reactionary about this, because it always is.

stated tersely and bluntly, just about everything i've read from the union movement on this topic demonstrates a staggering level of ignorance about actual marxist economics - because these are people that organize on the ground, and have no doubt never read any marxist theory.

so, they'll say things like "we should resist a ubi in the face of automation because higher wages and good jobs are preferable", which is both total delusion and a literal negation of the entire concept of communism, which is supposed to be about the emancipation of the proletariat from menial labour. no, communists should not choose "good jobs" over freedom from capitalist expropriation! i used to call them brainwashed, but the truth is that it's worse than that; they're just ignorant, and disinterested in the theory they're supposed to represent. they don't know what they're even talking about, anymore.

so, they will no doubt resist ubi in the face of encroaching automation, just like they resisted cross-border unions and labour reforms during globalization - to their extreme detriment.

i tend to cite malatesta as having the insight that these groups will always operate in the interests of capital, because they don't know any better. they don't want communism; they want to protect their privileged positions in capitalism, and, like their capitalist masters, they don't have the foresight to see that their arguments are self-defeating - that they're just going to end up with nothing, as their boss automates their jobs.

the left is supposed to embrace technology, not move against it in reactionary or conservative ways, and detroit has a history of leading the way on embracing changes brought on by technology, in that manner.

this is the future, and we have an opportunity to push it forward right now, as we are assembled, in a time of crisis.

is a ubi actually communism?

most advocates want to tell you it's not communist, because they don't want to scare you. yet, here i am, using explicitly marxist terms in describing it. i have different motives, clearly.

the answer is that it depends how you frame it; i'm explicitly framing it as a communist idea because i'm in favour of moving to communism, but that's not exactly necessary...

the idea, as it exists in the contemporary discourse, actually comes largely from milton friedman, a right-wing liberal economist known for doing horrible things in chile, amongst other things. the way he formulated the idea was as a negative income tax, so that you'd have a minimum level of income, no matter what. under friedman's scheme, if you made $15,000 last year and the minimum income was set at $40,000 then the government would send you a $25,000 check to make up the difference, whereas if you made $80,000 then you wouldn't receive the gai, you'd just pay taxes. while i think the minimum income idea is a more implementable concept than just sending everybody a check (and would probably help stave off friedman's fear of inflationary policies, which are probably legit in context), i don't really want to frame this in terms of marginal tax rates, or progressive taxation. it is worth being clear, though, that, in friedman's formulation of the concept, capitalism can carry on as it likes - it's just an unusually generous form of welfare designed to ensure that nobody gets left behind.

rather, i want to think about it as a step towards common ownership of the means of production, in what is almost more of a fordist concept. yes, detroit - that ford. he has an ism. really. you can look up the debate between fordism and taylorism, but the shift was essentially a starkly liberalizing approach to workers' economic rights, for the end net benefit of the capitalist class. capital is always selfish, but sometimes it can be enlightened in it's selfishness - marx' claims of short-sightedness do have counterexamples, and fordism is perhaps the major one. so, what ford did was realize that his workers were also his most likely customers, and he therefore boosted their wages high enough to ensure that they could buy the products they made.

why is that important? because what's being lost in this move towards automation is that nobody is going to circulate money in an economy that doesn't have any jobs, and capital is going to end up the big loser, in the end. there's the short-sightedness; capital will automate to save costs, and then lose all of it's customers in the process, because it is too driven by greed to work it out. so, we'll end up with computers everywhere, 70% unemployment and a large underclass of people that can't afford to interact with the computers that took their jobs. the insight that keynes developed from ford was that a functioning capitalist economy requires that you give workers enough money to buy the things being made, which led to these ideas of keynesian stimulus spending, namely that to get the economy running again in bad economic times, the government increases the money supply to get people to buy things by sending it to them directly. and, it has to be the government that does it.

but, if all of the jobs are being lost permanently, we're not talking about short term stimulus spending anymore. we're no longer kickstarting the economy. instead, we're now talking about structural spending programs designed to give consumers money to spend to keep businesses running - and citizens healthy and happy.

in the very short term, this should function like a basic keynesian spending program, with multiplier effects and the whole shebang. in the long run, though, the whole thing should fizzle out, as deflation sets in - and the system of monetary exchange should end up abolished altogether, as we slowly take over actual collective ownership of production, and exchange commodities based on need, rather than due to a desire for accumulation.

so, while what i'd actually advocate today looks more like a minimum income tax, i'd rather talk about it like it's a jump to full communism, and bring in these explicitly communist terms. 'cause that's what i want, and how i want to frame the debate.

in a fully communist society, you'd have something that is more like a maximum income than a minimum income. there's this kind of misconception that everybody gets the same thing in communism, and i'm not exactly sure where it comes from; no leftist that i've ever read has ever argued for that. communism generally argues for distribution based on need. so, somebody with eight kids would get more of everything than a single person, because they need more of it. but, the general philosophy would flip over; you'd be restricting wealth, rather than eliminating poverty.

i don't want to step away from the debate, though - this is absolutely a step towards communism, and we should embrace it and be excited about doing it.

but, let me say this clearly before we start.

if i can't fucking dance...

let's get this party rolling.

i was just thinking outloud while doing dishes...

when the (next) revolution comes, what will it look like? and, the answer is that it will come in the mode of production, and in changes to the mode of production; the revolution will be the adoption of a universal basic income. all of these other revolts and protests are fun and everything, but it's the changes in the mode of production that lead to systemic changes and that's where the technology is taking us. that's the future...

and, it's the near future - the very near future. 

a large percentage of the jobs that have been recently lost aren't coming back, and they're not going to mexico (at least not all of them; some of them are, sure). this started decades ago, but seems to implement itself in phases, with the last phase being ushered in by the 2008 market crash, which mechanized large numbers of labour positions. is anybody tracking the mechanization of labour during this economic crisis?

but, something that's different about this technological shift is that it might hit the service sector harder than the manufacturing sector. retail has taken over such a large percentage of the labour market, so it's being targeted by capital, who will always seek to minimize labour costs.

so, all of these retail stores have been closed for months, with many of them moving to online operations. how many of them are going to reopen without staff? how many are going to reopen store fronts at all?

but, is this so terrible, really? do we really want these jobs? or, are we better off changing how we think about work, altogether?

we may be at a pretty vicious crossroads, where we have to make a very explicit choice between communism or barbarism. the sick, twisted fact is that if capital doesn't need all of these workers to turn a profit anymore, then they become useless eaters, and can essentially be thrown in the ovens. they came to european capitals from the countryside as peasants and to north american cities as poor immigrants (some, as the descendants of slaves) in the nineteenth century, with the purpose of running the factories; they were brought in, they were put to work and they were initially treated like expendable animals, before they revolted and won concessions via the labour movement, creating an ahistorically wealthy working class. but, they're no longer needed - and capital is generally very efficient in disposing with what it no longer needs, so long as there's a river near by.

in the long run, the only serious way out is the ubi. time may be catching up to the luddites, who were never debunked so much as delayed; i cannot believe that the number of jobs creating servicing self-serve kiosks will be comparable to the number of jobs creating by servicing customers. it just doesn't add up. that breaking point may finally be upon us, and what do we do?

so, i look at what's happening, while these changes in the mode of production are occurring, and i wonder. there's a lot of poor people dying, right now. and, there's a lot of people ready to burn the world down...

again: i can't go down there and make these arguments. the movement is designed to lynch me for it. i could seriously end up getting hurt.

but, i would call on the black left to take a serious look at the place we're in in history now, and ask whether this movement isn't an opportunity for a wider revolt.

because, the revolution is coming, and soon; the change in the mode of production necessitates it.

as expected, the nasty cold snap coming through here knocked me out this morning, and i'm feeling dehydrated and depressed over it. it should be gone in a few days...

i decided yesterday to do one page at a time rather than do it by month, so i got midway through july on the music journal before i crashed.

i think i'm alert, but it's too cold to think in here right now, so i'm going to do laundry & shower before i get back to this in the afternoon, when it's hopefully warmed up in here substantively.