https://archive.org/details/CalibanAndTheWitchWomenTheBodyAndPrimitiveAccumulation

A history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction. She shows how the battle against the rebel body and the conflict between body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.

Fellow Workers! Our branch of the IWW will be hosting this year's Midwestern Organizing Assembly! If you're a dues-paying wobbly and anywhere near Milwaukee, rsvp and join us June 23rd - 25th! There will be presentations and discussions about union worker cooperatives, using the web to assist organizing, external organizing and more. Food, socializing, militantly anti-capitalist comradery!

Come and assemble with us! Madison, Chicago, Quad Cities, Twin Cities, Edmonton, Central Iowa and anywhere else in or near the Midwest!

The assembly will be split between the Milwaukee IWW union hall and the adjoining Shaky Hands screen printing shop.

Hope to see you there!

Within the sphere of circulation, valorization would only be possible if commodity C is purchased above or below its value. In this case, the sum of value advanced can be increased, but one capitalist’s gain is only possible if another capitalist takes a loss of the same amount. At the level of society as a whole, the sum of value has not changed; it has simply been redistributed, just as if a simple act of theft had occurred. Capitalist profit would therefore be explained as a violation of the laws of commodity production. If we assume the normal conditions of commodity production and circulation, then the “exchange of equivalents” applies: the commodities that are exchanged for one another have the same magnitude of value, the price paid is an adequate expression of the magnitude of the value of the commodity and does not express a coincidentally greater or lesser magnitude; the commodities are exchanged “at their true values”. If surplus value is a normal phenomenon of capitalist commodity production and not just an exception, then its existence must be explained under the presupposition of an “exchange of equivalents”, and this is exactly the question that Marx poses. Marx’s deliberations can be summarized as follows: if equivalent exchange is assumed, then surplus value cannot be constituted in circulation, not in the first act of circulation, M-C, nor in the second act, C-M’. A change must take place between both acts. But outside of the sphere of circulation, the use value of the commodity purchased is merely consumed. Thus the owner of money must find a commodity on the market whose use value possesses the quality of being a source of value, so that the use of this commodity creates value, and more value than the commodity itself costs.

Michael Heinrich, “An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital”, trans. Alexander Locascio, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012, pp. 90-91.

nothing makes me more insane than the phrase "selling your body" btw. like was i not also selling my body at every other job i've had where i had to be on my feet all day, lifting boxes, working in a warehouse, etc. why is it that sex work is uniquely labeled as "selling your body" while every other job is sorted into another category, no matter how much that job might have a physical impact on your body. lmao.

Heyyowhattup! Cub foods strike this weekend! All the cub foods in the Twin Cities metro area unionized with UFCW local 663 are striking and you should get out there and hold the line with them. heres a map of all the stores Do a cub crawl and see whos parking lot got the best snacks and chants. If there's a store that's open go in and ask for the manager and tellem Jonas says they're a rat, then shoplift as much as you can carry on your way out 🐀  I want my pals to not be exploited! But that's not the extent of what we need from a union. It's not enough to want a "fair share" of the wealth america extracts from the rest of the world. We cant be the exceptions to capitalism, we need to be it's destroyers. Lets learn our power and sharpen our claws and make bosses across Minnesota feel kinda weird!

i'm sorry but what are we doing what are we doing what are we doing??? 500 people in a hospital just slaughtered - pure act of genocide and what are we doing??? like, yes, just the fact that the numbers out on the streets are what they are is testament to unprecedented failure in the western propaganda murder machine, but at the same time what the fuck are we doing???

because this can't be another blm - record numbers of people out on the streets and what? what happened? what result but deepened reaction and further entrenched state violence? this is an acute genocide that is happening right now we're just gonna do the same shit we've been doing for a decade that we know does worse than doesn't work??

signs at protests shouldn't be begging biden to call for a ceasefire, they should be calling for unions to stand up and collectively refuse to handle genocidal war goods. unions representing newsroom crews and newspaper workers should collectively refuse to produce propaganda of genocide. the fucking politicians aren't gonna fucking stop this shit, it's only gonna be labor shutting it down that's gonna stop it. fuck letters to the senator we gotta stop the fucking death machine and labor is the ones with our hands on the levers.

Studio execs love plausible sentence generators because they have a workflow that looks exactly like a writer-exec dynamic, only without any eye-rolling at the stupid “notes” the exec gives the writer.

All an exec wants is to bark out “Hey, nerd, make me another E.T., except make the hero a dog, and set it on Mars.” After the writer faithfully produces this script, the exec can say, “OK, put put a love interest in the second act, and give me a big gunfight at the climax,” and the writer dutifully makes the changes.

This is exactly how prompting an LLM works.

A writer and a studio exec are lost in the desert, dying of thirst.

Just as they are about to perish, they come upon an oasis, with a cool sparkling pool of water.

The writer drops to their knees and thanks the fates for saving their lives.

But then, the studio exec unzips his pants, pulls out his cock and starts pissing in the water.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the writer demands.

“Don’t worry,” the exec says, “I’m making it better.”

- Everything Made By an AI Is In the Public Domain: The US Copyright Office offers creative workers a powerful labor protective

THIS IS THE LAST DAY FOR MY KICKSTARTER for the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

Why Do We Have Weekends?

Ladies and gentlemen…the weekend. Why do we have it? 

The short answer: unions!

In the late nineteenth century, many workers labored 7 days a week, sometimes up to a grueling 100 hours in poor conditions.

Workers were fed up. Many began to unionize and take to the streets in protest.

Violence against them at the hands of corporate union busters and law enforcement was common. Many lost their lives. But they didn’t relent. 

Organized labor kept up the pressure. Workers in the mining, printing, and railroad industries eventually won 8-hour-work days. Major corporations, most notably Ford Motor Company, began to heed calls to institute 5-day work weeks.

But most workers across the country were not guaranteed these benefits. 

Then came Frances Perkins — President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary and the first woman cabinet secretary.

Before agreeing to the position, Perkins met with FDR to secure a guarantee that he would support her pro-labor agenda.To her surprise, FDR backed her.

In 1938, thanks to her advocacy and the momentum built by organized labor, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act — which among many things ultimately established a 40-hour work week by forcing employers to pay time and a half for any hours worked beyond this limit.

And thus, created the weekend. 

 While many workers now enjoy weekends won by organized labor, the fight continues for those who don’t. 

A rising number of contract employees, sometimes known as “gig workers,” are putting in backbreaking hours without the protections afforded to full-time workers.

Now is the time to renew the historic call of unions to make sure ALL workers are afforded the dignity — and time off from work — they deserve. 

And who knows — maybe one day we’ll move to a three day weekend? 

I think the people complaining about AFOs back story have forgotten what his character represents.

He’s a manipulative rich old man that wants to own and monopolize every major resource in the world so that he can be considered a god.

His entire being is a metaphor for major corporations and every politician and billionaire ceo ever… so him being a narcissistic and greedy kid isn’t at all surprising. He doesn’t have a traumatizing backstory because he’s a manipulative power hungry chump like he has been the entire series.

Hiiihi hello is there an specific thing you like doing in your drawings? Like coloring, lineart, sketch, the reference, anything you want 💐💐

OH SKETCHES FOR SURE!!!! Sketching is so so relaxing to me. Its just me blotting down the image in my head as quickly as possible and it makes me so happy! The lining can be relaxing sometimes but oooo coloring my detested. I love SEEING it finished, but coloring takes oh so long. I fuss so much with the colors to make them look nice. It takes ages. Sketching, however, is nice and easy for me! Super fun! Here! Take some sketches of Wally I did recently!!!

Oh and here, have a WIP for a piece I'm still working on!!! On the lining phase, pray this doesn't take a million years to finish. But Wally....Wally catching frogs....

The qsmp being investigated by the French government for labour laws infringement was not on my 2024 bingo card

Currently I don't believe it's the French Government, currently it's the Solidaires french labor union, but shockingly they have actually apparently gone after minecraft servers before for poor labor practices and taken them to court, although my limited searching hasn't resulted in the outcome of that case. I don't want to talk too much about the qsmp because it's not my business, but legit there's a huge amount of exploitation in youtube spaces that is probably illegal but gets brushed over. Creators are so often removed from it to the point of plausible deniability so it never really gets addressed properly. You see it with merch companies delivering awful quality products, having huge wait times and massive delays, missing people, not staying in contact, mistreating employees, scamming fanartists and underpaying them (look into youtoonz for some of that stuff), etc.

It's part of why I respect Dream so much for building out his own merch company and not going with one of the crappy ones. I love ordering merch from his company because I know I'm going to get what I paid for, it's going to be comfortable as fuck, and if there's any issues the company goes out of it's way to make things right. That sort of company set up takes time and a lot of care and effort to build. When you just half ass it, and don't supervise or actually run your own company, that's how you end up breaking a shit ton of labor laws, exploiting a number of people (at least some of which may be teenagers), and potentially end up getting sued.

I honestly do hope Quackity gets taken to court over this not out of any malice, but because these sorts of creator practices can't be allowed to continue. Creators at his size and scale are getting millions and millions of dollars and they can't be operating like a twitch channel with 20 viewers. If cases get brought to court, even if they aren't won, it will scare a lot of creators off from doing labor exploitation and push them do things more like Dream, where people are paid properly and fans aren't end up getting shafted at every turn.

An addition to the debate on simple and capitalist commodity production — and a couple points to consider Marx’s theories on “value” and “surplus value”:

The argument forged by Marx suggests that relations of simple production of commodities (ie values/ exchange values) and the law of commodity exchange (ie the law of value) do not in themselves produce surplus value. Capitalism, as opposed to simple (ie, pre capitalist) commodity production, can only begin with production of surplus value. Conditions of production — and expansion — of surplus value defines capitalism. This constitutes its identifying feature.

As understood by Marx, accumulation of surplus value is a necessary function of capital; “necessary” in as much as representing its source of profit; and requires that workers produce more than the value equivalent of the daily average of commodities required for their subsistence — thus exploitation. Nevertheless, the initial laws of simple commodity exchange and relations associated with value obtain within capitalism — albeit, in a modified form — which Marx called the “average rate of profit” — such that production of commodities and exchange of equivalent values results in a greater sum of values — surplus value — profit — bestowed upon capital. Thus, as Marx indicates, equality of value form/ commodity owners coincides with exploiting workers and wage labor under capitalism.

As explained above, profits on capital in accordance with the law of value is one of the most glaring contradictions of capitalism. And the solution to the paradox lies in the unique capacity of labor power to produce more exchange value than its own. But still leaves us with, as we witness, the blind mechanisms of commodity production — which continue to interfere with satisfying human need.

The boys are dancing