Political Philosophy

McKenzie Wark argues that capitalists are no longer at the top of the economic food chain, and that this is not good news. It turns out vectoralists can make more money by outsourcing risk and depreciation to manufacturers and contractors and moving the capitalist pieces around on the global chessboard. That makes them, as Cardi B says, "the boss." In this video I reflect on some of the key insigh...

Ch. 3 of McKenzie Wark's Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? explains why Wark advocates for "vulgar Marxism." This chapter traces the historical emergence of the scientific class and how its potential via the development of thoroughly socialized labor of all kinds has gotten side-tracked by the vectoralists' "enclosure" via intellectual property law. … More Vulgar vs. Genteel Marxists...

I pause to try to pick apart and better understand some key but often bedeviling Marxist terms that can get in the way of understanding McKenzie Wark and other authors who borrow from Marx's toolkit. Dead labor, capital, surplus value, commodity fetishization, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (and what capitalists tend to do about that) are all touched on in this program. … Mor...

We move into Chapter 2 of McKenzie Wark's Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse. Wark thinks that people on the left as well as the right need to end their love affair with capitalism and summon their inner punk rock goddess and try something new. The something new entails detournement of old ideas--an irreverant use of parts and neglect of other parts in order to account for an economy that Ma...

This is first in a series of videos on McKenzie Wark's book Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? I introduce Wark and some of the main ideas in the introduction, setting the stage for the rest of the book. Wark argues that we should break free from our love affair with capitalism, carried on by both the right and left, that thinks of capital as eternal. Further we should break free of old nar...

The cat makes an appearance in this last video on Walter Brueggeman's The Prophetic Imagination. I speculate on what a church would look like, and what it could do,if it re-imagined what it was for. I argue that churches and other religious institutions could be half-way houses between liberalism/capitalism and the dreaded and outdated hippie commune. … More Bridging Neoliberal Loneliness an...

In this penultimate video on Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination, I talk about Brueggemann's view of death as the reality the "royal consciousness" does not want us to notice so that we can live comfortably in the imagination of the powerful. Consumerism and spectacle numb us to the reality of the precariousness and limited nature of our lives. The prophet has a hard time cutting throug...

In chapters 3 and 4 of Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination, we are cautioned to not place faith in the false eternity of the royal imagination. Those in power will say all is well and will seek the backing of religious leaders to do so. In this episode, I examine the tendency of Americans to worship political parties and presidents from Brueggemann's point of view, but I also offer a word of c...

In this second part of a discussion of Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination, I discuss how left and right-wing churches alike are likely to be sucked into "royal consciousness," and that is equivalent to the sin of idolatry. Brueggemann's alternative, inspired by the story of Moses and the escape from the Egyptians, is to claim a foothold in the freedom on God, literally an other-worldly...

I introduce some of theologian Walter Brueggemann's themes in his classic "The Prophetic Imagination," discussing some of the ways we can avail ourselves of a common narrative to try to gain some freedom against oppression, whether of the old-style Pharoah or the new version of less visible but very powerful economic and political forces that keep people working for an agenda they wouldn't natural...

This is a segment of a longer article I wrote for Harbinger: Journal of Social Ecology that was published in October 2019. It's entitled "Jordan Peterson, Carl Jung, and the Challenge for Social Ecology." The first part of the article is a critique of the limitations of Peterson's political stands, which will take about 10 minutes to read, but much of the article explores a comparison of the ideas...

In this conclusion to the series on Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue I think about the significance of MacIntyr'e's views on modern liberalism/capitalism (neoliberalism) and his ideas for the elements of stronger community. MacIntyre argues that we have entered a new Dark Ages without recognizing it, and that we need new, and probably very different, St. Benedicts to create ways of life to rebuil...

I'm setting aside After Virtue for this week to deal with the problem of "fake news." It appears to be a real threat to democracy. Is fake news the threat we should focus on, or is fake news the result of a larger problem--our excessive gullibility. And, what causes the excessive gullibility of ideological ciphers, fan-boys, shills, tools and zealots? … More Fake News is Not the Problem&#160...

In chapters 13-15 of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, we get to contemplate the idea that we are much more affected by our personal story and and our history than we want to admit. Are we capable of making ourselves into just anything we want to be, regardless of the cards we were dealt? Are we free of responsibility for what we've done in our personal past or what our ancestors have done? MacIn...

This video covers ideas in chapters 10-12 in Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. In pursuit of an alternative to value neutrality and the fragmented responsibility characterized by modern bureaucracy, Alasdair MacIntyre attempts to reconstruct a history of Western moral development. His aim is to help society re-learn Aristotelian teleology and virtue ethics. But to locate what he's advocating he g...

In Chapters 8 and 9 of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that social science cannot approximate the physical sciences in predictability and that the bureaucratic manager, king of "customer service" technique is therefore full of, well, something other than expertise. It turns out that freedom entails a lack of predictability, that Machiavellian "Fortuna" is better than being oppressively man...

MacIntyre's argument in chapters 6 and 7 of After Virtue moves further into the problems caused by the fact/value distinction, the development of social science, and the managerial/bureaucratic approach to dealing with people. The threat to democracy posed by the social engineering mode of thinking begins to take center stage. Along the way, unicorns and witches are unmasked so that we can see tha...

In Chapters 4 and 5 MacIntyre begins his critique of modern political thought, going backwards from existentialism to the early modern period, tracing the steps that led to the disconnect with the older Aristotelian/Christian tradition. After finding that no modern political thought has been able to adequately ground its preferences for certain moral principles in anything solid, he argues that mo...

In Chapters 2 and 3 of MacIntyre's After Virtue, we learn what "emotivism" is and why MacIntyre dislikes it. In particular, he identifies emotivism as the primary way people now think about moral arguments, and he blames emotivism for our inability to reach any moral agreement. Even more interestingly, he sees in the modern bureacratic/managerial organization an expression of emotivism that leads...

Alasdair MacIntyre developed a method that promised a third way, avoiding the problems of both moral absolutism and moral relativism. He makes clear in his Prologue to the third edition of After Virtue that he borrows from counter-Enlightenment philosopher Giambattista Vico in developing his methodology of empathetic imagination with the aim of creating a way to gain an understanding of the flaws...

We start with the fundamentals. In order to understand where Alisdair MacIntyre is coming from in After Virtue, we have to understand a few ideas inherited from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle concerning teleology, man as political, and the meaning of virtue from Aristotle's perspective. I take a first pass at contrasting Aristotelian thinking with the modern thought that MacIntyre thinks...

After Virtue was first published in 1981, but MacIntyre wrote a new preface in 2007 reasserting his full confidence in the arguments. After Virtue promises to take on emotivism and moral relativism generally and to help us navigate not toward moral absolutism but toward moral judgment through a renewal of Aristotelian virtue ethics. This video introduces key themes, including his disagreement with...

If you're going to succeed where others have failed you have to avoid the pitfalls and stay the course. I start with a brief introduction to the Greta Thunberg and the youth Climate Strike movement, then discuss the movement's underlying assumptions, the pitfalls associated with those assumptions, and some suggestions for how to avoid those pitfalls. … More To Greta Thunberg and All Climate...

Near the end of Dreaming Dangerously, Zizek mentions German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk's idea of encouraging the wealthy to give gifts in exchange for honor instead of forcing them to pay through taxation. This video explains Sloterdijk's position and how it fits and doesn't fit with Zizek's notions about what truly motivates people. … More Gifts Instead of Taxes? Peter Sloterdijk: Honor t...

Do protests and demonstrations accomplish anything? And, if they often don't, why? Answering that question should determine what we choose to do, and how, in any particular call for action. Zizek's Chapter 7 on Occupy Wall Street serves as a launching pad for some observations on political demonstrations, including the Climate Strike scheduled for September 20, 2019.\ … More Climate Strike v...