Should we make a community for fixing bad memes like antifastonetoss?
yes
“The secret ingredient is corruption. Not too much, not too little.”
Centroid moment
You joke (and rightly so), but… Ha-Joon Chang gives a good analysis of corruption in Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.
He highlights Western hypocrisy about about bribes, etc, in the global south. But there’s not necessarily anything wrong with bribery. From an economic standpoint. Regardless, Chang shows that the same thing happens in the West but under different labels. Lobbying, tenders, getting out of contracts legally, etc.
I don’t think he’s a Marxist, but he is worth reading (critically). But he presents the data that, as you say, enlightened centrists do agree:
“The secret ingredient is corruption. Not too much, not too little.”
What a world.
About Ha-Joon Chang, I am going to (critically, I think) read his “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism”. Even he’s not Marxist, his works may be useful for curing libs from their delusions about free market.
That’s a good plan, comrade. He’s a decent writer, too, so you should find his book enjoyable, on the whole. I’ve not read that one yet. Will you let me know what you think of it?
So far, I’ve read the first chapter “There’s no free market” of the Polish translation and it was good. Short and convincing, maybe there could be more arguments but it is fine for a popular book. It still may be too difficult for libs 😁 I will read it rather slowly, because I have time for this only when I go to sleep and not every day. So far, it looks promising. When I will read significantly more, I will let you know 👍🏻
Thanks, Lemat. Sounds like a promising start.
The book is so pleasurable that I am already after half of it 😁
This is why capitalism is absolutely degenerate by right-wing standards.
No, specifically because communists already do too much shit-posting.
Memes simplify things too much.
And when they’re all you think of, the way we narrate and “story-tell” the events of, say, the Communist Party USA or the Black Panthers in the early 70s become nothing more than “story beats” without the actual history and who did what and why and how and where.
Reasonable.
Indeed.
