Notices by Estelle Platini (estelle@techhub.social)

"The transition from the turmoil of 1918-1919 to the bourgeois recovery of 1920-1921 was not just an episode of socialist and left-wing defeat. It was also a crisis of transformation and redirection. […]

"The need for American intervention produced a general agreement among European political leaders that self-determination, international organization, German democratization, and the preservation of capitalism and entrepreneurship should remain the baselines of for international and domestic settlement. Those elements who did not consent were intended to remain outside the new comity: on one side, the unreconstructed right, represented, for instance by the Prussian-german ruling class, or the other side, the revolutionary left.

@politicalscience @histodons

#3Blocks #corporations #corporatism #capitalism #Europe #beliefs #bourgeoisie #corporations #Nazism #fascism #Germany #book #liberals #longThread #Weimar #extremeCentre #extremeCenter #CharlesMaier #politicalScience #history

Our corporations and administrations are dominated by a clique of people who, because they are symbolically interested, "give 100%" and expect others to do the same.

We can speak of a social class in charge of organizing work:
"Capital chooses a management team to represent it on the spot [in the corporations. Executives are meant] to supervise and organize the labors of the working population" (Harry Braverman USA, 1974, p. 405)

For Braverman, the people who really count in this team are those whose managerial positions offer them "a _share in the surplus_ produced in the corporation, and thus is intended to attach them to the success or failure of the corporation and give them a ‘management stake’, even if a small one." (pp.405–6, original emphasis)

@sociology

#participation #management #trickleDown #bourgeoisie #pay #wages #work #labor #labour #corporations #reputation #institutionsDeceive #motivation #team #subordination #managers #marxism #extraction #extractivism #capitalism

…

#Germany "Trade-union leaders, too, had a stake in the success of the ZAG and its related parity committees; they also wished to control the channels of labor grievances. This meant containing the potentially explosive factory-council movement, which threatened to displace the well-entrenched, nation-wide union hierarchies in favor of direct workers' representation in the plant." (p.63)

"The Stinnes-Legien collaboration and the [ZAG] had served as a critical moderation force through the revolutionary months. Jealous of their newly won privileges, legitimaly concerned about production and employment, the trade-union principals in the ZAG worked to forestall those social experiments that exceeded their own mild prescription as actively as did the industrial leaders." (p.65)

… wrote Charles S. Maier in "Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade After World War I", published in 1975

(to be followed) @bookstodon @histodons @politicalscience

@germany: How industry governance navigated the rise of council communism:
At the end of the war, "self regulation" of industry morphed into a joint partnership of corporate representatives and labour unions.

"Business leaders and union officials conferred in October 1917 about labor support for industry's annexationist projects as well as about limiting the potentially revolutionary effects of sudden demobilization. Nonetheless, industrialists resisted full recognition of the unions and the parleys remained inconclusive.
"Contacts were renewed more urgently during October 1918, as it became clear that virtual surrender was near and [that] the traditional middle class and the discredited Junkers were undependable bulwarks against the expected political upheaval.
[…]
"The Stinnes-Legien pact established a pyramid of labor-management arbitration committees. […] Its major organ, the ZAG, was officially recognized by the early decree of the revolutionary regime." (p.59)
Charles S. Maier
…

‘The resumption and failure of efforts to socialize the German coal industry [in 1919] marked the end of any fundamental attempt to alter the distribution of economic power in Germany. […] It illustrated how social democrats became constrained by their own commitments to productivity and the general welfare—ultimately to the detriment of the "community". […]
‘Public control of Europe's key industry faltered in France and Germany because in a time of critical #fuel shortage big inductry made economical survival appear to ride upon its own independence.’
– Charles S. Maier in "Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade After World War I", published in 1975, pp 194 & 195

@histodons @politicalscience

#BigTech #beliefs #growth #energy #SDP #participation #trickleDown #bourgeoisie #corporations #extraction #mines #extractivism #capitalism #fascism #Germany #France #Italy #ww1 #Europe #book #liberals #longThread #Weimar #energy

"How liberals, conservatives and reactionaries cooperated to neutralize progressives and rescue bourgeois Europe after WWI is this book’s story. A huge, fact-filled product of archival scholarship, it provides an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) examination of political processes in Italy, France and Germany between 1919 and 1929, focusing on elites, interest groups and classes. The conflicts and maneuverings among and within these sets of actors form one part of the drama.
What fascinated me, however, are the accounts of how they overcame their mutual antagonisms in pursuit of one overriding goal, namely containment of the Left—meaning not only communists, but also social democrats.
In doing so, politicians followed rules of parliamentary and electoral procedure. But the outcome for democracy was suicidal. Rescuing bourgeoisie sooner or later meant submitting to fascism, a force carried on widespread dissatisfaction with a corrupted, ineffective bourgeois elite."
– David Sogge

🧶…

#growth #Germany #SDP

[…] the condemnation of ‘extremists’ and the immediate clarification that some are more extreme than others, that those who defend the nation, values and property will always be preferable to the Left; a billionaire media mogul driven by a mission of national resurrection, who built a press and cinema empire to impose his framing, themes and agenda on a country that overwhelmingly supported peace and social justice […]; moral panics in -ism such as “cultural Bolshevism”, which is difficult to define but sums up all the fears associated with changing mores (feminism, homosexuality, urban lifestyles, etc.) and the general rise in education levels; a government overthrown in humiliating circumstances; another dissolution, another defeat and, once again, a refusal to take the result into account; a government in charge of day-to-day affairs that drags on; […]

"A dogmatic austerity policy that exacerbates the crisis and poverty; an executive branch that pushes through measures to destroy the social model by a 48-2 vote; a social-democratic Left that supports this policy in an attempt, it says, to avoid the worst; a political regime that (...) is becoming presidentialised and concentrating exorbitant powers in the fallible hands of a man who is not overly intelligent, but proud and stubborn; the reign of entourages which, through a logic of reverse Darwinism, that of courtierism, promotes the most incompetent and least worthy, those who are willing to debase themselves to become “advisers” and then give anything but real advice; a failed dissolution; a second dissolution, dangerous and inept given the rise of the far right, but requested by that same far right and granted as a gesture of goodwill; a crushing defeat in the general election; the refusal to take the election results into account; […]

[…] authoritarian liberals who, once in power, consider resorting to force because they know full well that their policies are unpopular; those same authoritarian liberals who want to form an alliance with the far right, who back down because it wants too much, and finally take a gamble on entrusting it with power…"

Johan Chapoutot wrote about Germany in 1932

#3Blocs #circleOfReason #liberals #liberalism #downgrading #order #presidentialism #constitution #government #farCentre #farCenter #Macron #Papen #vonPapen #Hindenburg #Hitler #Nazism #rise #ascension #fascism #elites #elite #history #centrism #Germany #book #Chapoutot #Mussolini #quote #quotes #centre #center #beliefs #squash #CDU #Weimar #AfD #normalisation #Thuringia #media #authoritarianLiberalism #budget #CarlSchmitt #Schmitt #stateOfEmergency

[…] the president's inability to appoint a new head of government; months of reflection at the highest levels of government to devise the best scenario for remaining in power, despite the elections and the absence of a majority; an openly pro-business supply-side policy consisting of subsidies to businesses and tax credits; self-justifying speeches defending this line by proclaiming ‘we are not the government of the rich’ and ‘the best social policy is employment policy’; employers who applaud and demand ever more; plans to reform the Constitution to strengthen executive power; constant backroom intrigues; commentators who gossip about the president's mood, his latest cold or his most recent grumble (sneeze? political brilliance? major decision?) in search of an oracle and interpretation; […]

'What distinguishes Wittig's theoretical, political and literary project, and makes it an unavoidable pole of intellectual attraction today, is its radical anti-essentialism. It's the radical anti-essentialism that Wittig applies to the most credible of beliefs, because of the strength of its naturalization: the idea that men and women are naturally complementary "natural groups".'

Sara Garbagnoli explained in 2023: https://www.moniquewittig.com/wp-content/uploads/Sara-in-AOC-english.pdf 🧶

#revolution #reciprocity #radicality #reversibility #materialistFeminism #materialism #beliefs #subjugation #naturalism #essentialism #sexism #heteroSexism #heteroNormativity #feminisms #MoniqueWittig #Wittig #literature #homosexuality #lesbianism #feminism #internationalism #patriarchy #minorityStudies #queer #nonBinary #culturalHistory #lesbians #otherness #linguistics

Heterosexuality is a regime of political oppression 🧶

"Just as racism produces race and not the other way round, sexism produces sex through the relationship of domination that reduces the dominated to things or natural objects."
… said Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz summarizing Monique Wittig

#materialism #beliefs #subjugation #radicality #EstelleSays #materialistFeminism #naturalism #appropriation #sexism #heteroSexuality #saphism #heteroNormativity #feminisms #history #MoniqueWittig #Wittig #literature #homosexuality #lesbianism #feminism #internationalism #patriarchy #linguistics #writing #minorityStudies #universalism #queer #constructivism #antagonism #culturalHistory #lesbians

"Placing the individual and his or her ability to free him or herself from a social world perceived as shameful is not particularly subversive; it is the most widespread mode of explanation today. Far from emancipation thinking with a more markedly collective character, which envisions classes in struggle against structural dominations, this ecology is a tool for social acceptance which is all the more effective in that it presents itself as an attainable and individually gratifying #alternative".

Aude Vidal in "Egologie : Ecologie, individualisme et course au bonheur" (Egology: ecology, individualism and the race for happiness) @anthropocene

#believe #faith #hope #ecology #sobriety #institutionsDeceive #Vidal #ecologism #politicalEcology #degrowth #consumerism #quotes #quote #economy #shopping #capitalism #climateChange #beliefs #hegemony

"The praise of the virtues and ethics of work in a context of growing unemployment and job insecurity is part of a strategy of domination: workers must be encouraged to compete for jobs that are too scarce, to accept them under any conditions, to consider them intrinsically desirable, and to prevent workers and the unemployed from uniting to demand a different sharing of work and socially produced wealth".

André Gorz in "Ecologica"

#employment #labor #capitalism #Gorz #consumerism #quotes #quote #economy #work

"My starting point was an article that appeared in an American weekly in 1954. It explained that the development of US production capacity required consumption to grow by at least 50% over the next eight years, but that people were unable to define what their additional 50% of #consumption would be made of. It was up to the #advertising and #marketing experts to arouse new needs, desires and fantasies in consumers, to load even the most trivial goods with symbols that would increase demand for them. #Capitalism needed people to have greater needs."
⸺
André #Gorz in "Ecologica" #consumerism #quotes #quote
⸺
in #French: https://infosec.exchange/@estelle/110555204348886313

News outlets didn’t make a mistake. They knowingly aired disinformation and peddled fake news. Admitting that requires a troubling recalibration of perspective

Jonathan Cook: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-medias-role-in-lying-about-amsterdam @ethics 🧶

#mainstreamMedia #massMedia #media #London #UKPol #Amsterdam #MaccabiTelAviv #football #soccer #JonathanCook #SkyNews #BBC #TheGuardian #DumpTheGuardian #Maccabi #TelAviv #Zionism #JewishSupremacy #conflation #antisemitism #NL #Netherlands #UEFA #EuropeIsrael #propaganda #manipulation #coOpting #coloniality #proZionism #StandWithIsrael #islamophobia #mediaCritique #disinformation #fakeNews #hooliganism #hooligans #OwenJones #UK #Britain

How the UK Security Services neutralised the country’s leading liberal newspaper:
(2019) https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-the-uk-security-services-neutralised-the-countrys-leading-liberal-newspaper/

#TheGuardian #Assange #Corbyn #MI5 #MI6 #LabourParty #Labour #England #Britain #UK #centreLeft #leftOfCentre #elections #UKPol #politics #SocialDemocracy #SocDem #media #security #manipulation #coOpting #conflation #confusion #antisemitism #Guardian #DumpTheGuardian #manufacturingConsent

"The bank was robbed yesterday with guns and knives."

‘ Such use of passive voice immerses the reader in details while neglecting the doer of the action’.

Study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364964200_The_Use_of_Passive_Voice_in_News_Reports_for_Political_Purposes

#fragility #media #press #passiveVoice #passiveForm #grammar #news #information #proZionism #OngoingNakba #GenocideJoe #manipulation #warCrimes #coloniality #propaganda #genocide #callToGenocide #reputation #whiteSupremacy #institutionsDeceive #DumpTheGuardian #NYT

"Rewriting a passive construction to be active almost always makes what you’re saying clearer."

Example: Millions of dollars were embezzled from the company.
Revision: Two executives embezzled millions of dollars from the company.

Eva Parish: https://evaparish.com/blog/how-i-edit#passive-voice
@patrascan @Nazani @technique @writing

#fragility #media #press #passiveVoice #passiveForm #grammar #news #information #selfCare #reputation #English #writing #editing #editingTips #impunity #litterature #books

"After six year-old Hind Rajab was killed by the Israeli army, Britain’s national media failed to unequivocally pinpoint Israel as responsible, refused to follow up the story and cover important new information, and then moved on."

Des Freedman: https://www.declassifieduk.org/found-dead-in-gaza-no-murdered-by-israel/

#BBC #TheGuardian #England #Britain #UK #UKPol #media #manipulation #Guardian #DumpTheGuardian #institutionsDeceive #truth #journalism #ethics