I wasn’t referring to the article so much as I was to the comments socialismartnature added when they posted it. They committed the same error that the SW article accuses the corporate media of :focusing on the relatively small demonstrations that involved property damage and confrontations with police as opposed to the larger ones the unions, student groups, immigrant rights groups, etc. were a part of. This brings up two things: media representation and organizational tactics.

On the topic of media representation, I think it’s clear that we should drop any notion that the mainstream media will fairly and accurately present the activities of any leftist movement simply because they have a bias to maintain. Therefore, it’s really important that we have alternative media like SW, which I think handled this story really well. The writers covered all the demonstrations, mentioned the black bloc marches and voiced their opposition to them, and moved on to covering activities they thought were more productive.

Organizational tactics is, of course, the area where anarchists and left communists differ from Leninists. Personally, I like the semi-autonomous working group structure Occupy has been using because it allows different associations of people to move forward in different ways according to whatever actions they find meaningful. There’s a good quote from a communique about the ‘09-‘10 California movement that fits closely with my views. It’s about the concept of general assemblies, but i’d say it’s applicable here as well:

 …we need a political form based upon collaboration and affiliation, whose basic communicational unit takes the form of “This is what we want to do. Will you help?” Those who worry that this will mean a fragmenting disunity should realize that there are different forms of acting-together; there is a spectrum of consensus and dissensus, and not all forms of unity must resemble liberal-democratic parliaments.

Source

Thanks for the question, comrade. I probably should’ve added those comments when I reblogged that post.

I think they already have been applied to physical goods, and that software codes like DRM are an extension of things that already exist in the physical world. A mortgage is a license that allows you to live in a house for as long as you can maintain the payments, just like the rent for an apartment or the lease on a car. None of these things belong to us until the amount owed is paid off.

The logic of ownership has very real consequences for people, as you know. As someone who wants to study to become a pharmacist, it sickens me (no pun intented) that some people have to choose between getting the medications they need and being able to afford a roof over their heads. Patents granted by the state allow corporations to charge whatever they want for their drugs,  contributing to the rising costs of health care, and leading to worsening physical conditions of people with easily manageable conditions. It disgusts me how destructive capitalism is sometimes; our economic system should be geared towards meeting the physical needs of human beings (and the other living creatures that inhabit this planet.)

This is the most interesting ask i’ve ever gotten thus far, so thanks for that.

Corporatism and feudalism are similar, but not identical, i’d say. The similarity is obvious: both wage laborers and serfs don’t own any land, and hence have to work for another person to earn a living. With modern day wage earners, we sell our labor for a wage; with serfs, they worked the land and gave a portion of their earnings to the lords in exchange for protection and continued access to the land they used to feed themselves.

Brand loyalty is in my opinion a brilliant yet deceptive way of describing how our society works. It’s easy to say, for example, that Microsoft makes the X-Box 360, but they don’t. Corporate personhood humanized legal fictions to the detriment of living, breathing human beings. That game system is not made by Microsoft, but by workers in China who just threatened mass suicide because they weren’t being paid enough to meet their financial needs.

We are just dependent upon corporations as serfs were upon their lords. Our food comes from supermarkets; many of us depend upon cars to get to and from work; most people can’t afford a house or  college education without taking out a mortgage or loan; we get our news from national cable networks; the vast majority of music is controlled by 4 record labels.

The strange thing about our situation is that, just like the serfs, our condition is the way it is only because we accept it. We have been domesticated by economic, and religious systems that function to tell us that this is the natural order of things. The preacher tells you we’re sinners, that we’ll be handsomely rewarded in the afterlife for suffering through our current miseries; economists argue that life as we know it would come to an abrupt halt without capitalism, that property and wage labor are the inevitable result of human nature. We aren’t serfs in the strictest sense of the term, and corporations definitely aren’t lords, but on many levels it definitely seems that way.