Constitutional Human Rights and the Rule of Law Without protected human rights, it is impossible to know the will of the people. Any system of democratic production requires, as a precondition, constitutional protections for speech, assembly, and political participation. The rule of law must be upheld. Legal challenges must meet reasonable evidential standards, and accusationsContinue reading “Materialist Economics, Part 3: Accountable Planning”
Tag Archives: philosophy
Materialist Economics, Part 2: The Problem
Consider a recurring pattern in international affairs. A major power backs an armed faction abroad. When that faction takes power, its human rights record becomes a pretext for military contracts and arms sales. The crisis generates jobs in the defense industry while destroying livelihoods elsewhere. This is job creation through destruction. A simple alternative wouldContinue reading “Materialist Economics, Part 2: The Problem”
Materialist Economics, Part 1: Mechanical Materialism
The theoretical framework behind this proposal is mechanical materialism, a philosophical system argued for by the economist Paul Cockshott and the philosopher Katerina Kolozova. It seeks to extend the Newtonian approach to science to sociology, unifying both under a combined framework that employs conservation laws, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Researchers associated with this programContinue reading “Materialist Economics, Part 1: Mechanical Materialism”
Philosophies of Contradiction: Marx contra Buddha
Buddhism begins with impermanence: everything changes, clinging to what changes produces suffering, and no fixed self persists through the flux. Marxist dialectics begins with contradiction: every system generates internal tensions that undermine it, and development arises from the working-out of those tensions. Both reject static substances. Both insist on process. Both claim that understanding changeContinue reading “Philosophies of Contradiction: Marx contra Buddha”
Genius Is Retarded
It is important to argue that humans don’t have transcendent intelligence. Fascist discourse thrives on praising human brilliance, and by proxy, the so-called brilliance of the world’s leaders. Rather than there being a general skill called “intelligence”, humans can do 3 things: 1. Observe objects, 2. track their movements in memory, whether internal or external,Continue reading “Genius Is Retarded”
Free Rider Problem vs. the goal of socialism
Leftists shouldn’t try to ban competition altogether. The problem with capitalism is that the profit motive leads to dynamics like the business cycles: Businesses are profitable when they succeed in lowering how much employees are paid. If companies succeed in systematically lowering pay, they will have difficulty selling their products back to the general population.Continue reading “Free Rider Problem vs. the goal of socialism”
What is to be done?
Update: An incomplete elaboration of this system: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.blog/2026/03/21/materialist-economics-part-3-accountable-planning/ https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.blog/2026/03/21/materialist-economics-part-4-objections-and-responses/ The removal mechanics are misleading as written. First America backs the Islamists. When the Islamists come to power, America says they’re violating human rights. Then America use that as a justification to buy weapons. This is how they create jobs. Why can’t we create jobs byContinue reading “What is to be done?”
An Outline of Slavoj Zizek’s Theory on the Structure of Subjectivity as the Foundation of Leftism
Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues against mystical attempts to alter states of consciousness. Instead, he says we should “censor our dreams” and engage in emancipatory struggle as the only road to salvation. These comments might seem perplexing, but they are based on an underlying theory of what a subject is. This post is an attemptContinue reading “An Outline of Slavoj Zizek’s Theory on the Structure of Subjectivity as the Foundation of Leftism”