Ben Burgis

My, @sunraysunray & @mikejbeggs's book "The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World" comes out this fall. I'd love to do a bunch of university events as part of promotion (philosophy or poli sci dept's, YDSAs, etc.). Hit me up if you're at one and want to set one up!

I'm just going to note here that Yglesias thinks my hometown (Lansing) is in Wisconsin.

@fiiiiishnezcic @harbingerofwoke No, she didn't. What got telephone-gamed into that on Left Twitter was her voting against an amendment that would have stripped out Iron Dome funding while leaving offensive weapons intact. When the amendment failed, she voted against the underlying bill (which included both).

@harbingerofwoke Her failures affect our lives you dishing. This is the same woman that voted yes on sending "defensive" weapons to Israel. Support your genocidaire, but don't spit in our faces with your self soothing lies

AOC 2028 abstention discourse often revolves around this idea of wagering whether or not she will mess up. Those who wish to abstain are desperately trying to warn us of the future, that she will mess up in office, and socialism’s reputation will be ruined. But what these people don’t understand is that WE KNOW she will mess up, that this is taken into account, and we STILL want to endorse her. Her failures, along with her successes, will provide a qualitatively higher floor for socialism than previously possible. DSA’s membership will skyrocket and her downfalls will serve as a new status quo which we can break from concretely in ways we could only hypothetically do before. But to have something to break from means to first build it.

This week's Philosophy for the People is up--it's a response to @jessespafford's argument for replacing the "democratic conception" of socialism with an "egalitarian conception":

@DSA_Watch You have some odd ideas about what Hitler was like.

Hasan Piker delivers Hitler-style rant in a Mao Zedong suit

@avatans @sunraysunray How, exactly? Why would collective ownership of the means of production be incompatible with freedom of speech, assembly, etc.?

@sunraysunray I have no reason to not trust you on Bill of Rights, Bhaskar. But the history is not on your side and that makes the DSA’s posturing on these matters extremely suspect. ‘Means of production’ rhetoric gives it away.

I do strongly believe in the bill of rights, and more broadly limits on the reach of the state. A real democracy to enable us to effectively embark on big projects, but protections for the voices & rights of minorities and civil society checks on the operation of government.

@jessespafford But I take Bhaskar's point to be that both kinds of power (neither of which the disabled person has) are highly objectionable from an egalitarian perspective.

@jessespafford That's compatible with the index funder lacking other capitalist powers, like the power to (individually) fire the worker--which is why I said that the question of whether the worker "works for" him lies in a bit of a gray area. He has some of the relevant powers, lacks others.

Strictly speaking egalitarianism seems to be compatible with an arrangement where the seriously disabled are legally entitled to a share of the social product without ever having to work for that share. x.com/sunraysunray/s…

@jessespafford It matters a great deal for equality of *power*, which to bring us back to where we started, is what I took to be at issue in Bhaskar's claim that egalitarianism is incompatible with private ownership of the means of production.

@JacobinBen That difference might plausibly matter with respect to exploitation (I actually don’t think it does, but bracket that), but does it matter for inequality? In both cases, one person has to work and another doesn’t. Seemingly that is what would matter as far as egalitarianism goes?

@jessespafford In a democracy, the payout to the disabled person happens through the collective consent of the governed. The profit extracted by the captialist is just *taken* through a kind of private-sector taxation without representation.

@jessespafford I'd say they stand in the same relationship in one sense but not in another (very important) one. They stand in the same relation in the sense of benefiting from work others do, but not in the sense of being able to do by exercising class power (their property rights).

@jessespafford Gray-area case, I think! (Since that guy is, in an extremely partial way, an owner of the company I work for.)

@JacobinBen Suppose I’m a capitalist who lives entirely off of a small income generated by index funds in which I’ve passively invested. And you work at one of the companies in which I own stock. Do you work for me in the relevant sense?

@jessespafford I don't think it would? I don't "work for" disabled people who benefit from my taxes, in either the overwhelmingly most common use of that phrase or the one that would be most immediately relevant to his point.

@JacobinBen But wouldn’t the same point apply? If you are seriously disabled and I’m taxed to fund your benefits, then I have to work for you but you don’t have to work for anyone. But that seems unobjectionable. So, basically, I’m making a welfarist “equality of what” argument here.

Out in September!

Absolutely right and important. And recognizing the enormity of what's been achieved in that sphere should ground hope about other kinds of progress going forward--that's what I was trying to get at a few years ago when I reviewed Adolph Reed's book "The South" for @curaffairs:

@MattPolProf In this household Jerry cohen is a hero! End of story.

I think this is a great point via @sunraysunray . We need the conscious admixture of celebrating wins & progress while concurrently pushing for better. It's a balance!

This is so important for people to hear. Live abroad for a while and you will see it clearly too. Great interview @sunraysunray My 2 cents: the U.S. is much less xenophobic and anti-immigrant than most places. The left should feel confident about this!

@bengrossbg @MattPolProf But the line you highlight in the lectures is bad! I will totally give you that.

@bengrossbg @MattPolProf Certainly nothing like the "this is all nonsense, no point to trying to figure it out" blow-off of post-Kantian continental philosophy you'd expect from Cohen if you accepted the caricature of analytical Marxism common on Marxist Twitter.