Finished Berwick Saga recently. Definitely one of the best and most unique turn-based strategy games I’ve ever played. Will probably take forever to play it again because the level of long-term strategy is draining at some points, but I absolutely loved it.

Not sure if I am just too busy or if it’s an industry thing, but I honestly didn’t get excited for anything out of TGA. Don’t even know much about the nominated games. None of them run on my PC either way.

Depending on my level of energy I might play Möbius Front or Xenonauts 1, or just sit back and enjoy some random couch co-op games with my holiday visitor.

Are you running it or participating in one? If you’re actually running it and having trouble understanding the source material, that’s trouble.

You could try preparing a presentation about what’s being studied, and try to make it understandable to even somebody who never looked at the source material. Another tip would be to send the reading material well in advance and have everybody pitch in about what they understood. Just remember that there really are wrong opinions and interpretations, and it’s your job to at least guide them away from those.

If you’re just participating, don’t worry too much. Maybe try to ground what’s being read on your own reality or of those you know.

Others have already explained the meaning of those terms and I suggest also reading the sections of Capital that deal with those terms, which would be Volume 1 Chapter 8 for variable and constant capital and Volume 3 Part 3 for the TRPF, though the latter one is much more confusing and even somewhat controversial.

I guess I’ll give a shot at explaining it in broad strokes: Suppose you have labourers (variable capital) and machines/tools/property necessary for production (constant capital) in order to produce commodities with a certain value attributed to it by both the labour used to make it and the labour necessary for the construction and maintenance of the constant capital. Labour is the key component because workers already exist prior to the production and seek to continue existing, requiring things like food and shelter in order to survive. They rent out their labour-time in exchange for money which is in turn exchanged for socially produced goods, meaning that this labour-time is the non-capital portion of the value of a product.

The capitalist will extract surplus value from that process, which needs to be reinvested. Both constant and variable capital grow. Broadly speaking, given growth in both variable and constant capital with a constant rate of exploitation (value minus wages) the proportion of surplus value extracted from value produced will decrease.

What your colleague seems to be pointing at is the reduction of the labour-time required for production of goods. An increase in production through better means (machinery, technology, techniques) that enable workers to produce more with the same amount of labour time will, in fact, lower the relative value of the given product (which in capitalist terms actually “increases” the value of that labour). The value itself is given both by the labour-time and capital upkeep (which can also be measured in labour-time i.e. Integrated Labour Cost). This is close to the TPRF but not necessarily the same thing.

I wrote a whole thing, but I think I can sum most of my argument up with a philosophical question. “If nobody made something, who are you paying for it?”

The hypothetical scenario where machine “labour” is cheaper to produce and maintain, and equivalent if not better than human labour crashes against the premise of labour theory of value.

At some point of the production process, either a living, breathing and eating human produced the machine or produced some part of the process for the construction of that machine. Those proletarians need to continue existing in order to work, which has a cost associated with it. Supposing a sector of the economy can be handled autonomously with those machines, their cost will have been the necessary cost of the (human) labour necessary to produce that automation or that provide the inputs for it.

This will mean that that industry will produce little-to-no relative “value” in a Marxist sense, and the cost-price will be determined mainly by external factors such as scarcity or abundance of the production for other areas of the economy, as well as political decisions (i.e refusing to lower prices). Prices can be kept arbitrarily high and wages arbitrarily low, the relative difference of which creating more surplus for the capitalist.

Supposing that the entire economy is maintained solely by machines, and that this automation is so total that not a single part of the process has human input, including maintenance, electricity and all sorts of other “externalities” handled by workers, then whatever is produced has no labour value.

This presents a problem for Marxist analysis, as this presupposes a completely unprecedented world where production no longer necessitates labour. In such a world, the exploiting class would have no need for an exploited class. Whether either class would be liquidated through violence or abolition of class distinctions depends on the specifics of this hypothetical. The answers for this aren’t in the TPRF, but in the historical process of the formation of such a world.

Although I don’t believe such a level of automation will exist in our lifetimes, I predict that the trajectory will remain the same as now, ignoring the possibility of revolution.

Current lucrative sectors of the economy will face desperate pushes for automation (entertainment and services in general with chatGPT and MidJourney, warfare with autonomous drones, etc) and as professions are turned obsolete by machines, workers will be laid off and redirected to more peripheral regions of the economy (food delivery). As those peripheral markets become more consolidated and lucrative, there’ll be a push to automate those too.

At every step, labour will be marginalised and fractured by automation, only to be consolidated in whatever future equivalent of call centres are created, and then automated out of work again. Labour-time will become individually more productive and therefore relatively less valuable. There’s no reason why capitalists of specific sectors would avoid automating it, as they’d get increases in surplus (assuming constant pay for infinitely more productive workers). And workers would be correct in demanding lower prices as automation decreases value, though monopoly capital would exercise its desire to maintain arbitrabily high prices.

So class society would become increasingly unstable as the economy gets automated in its totality, exacerbating the already existing tensions over the disparity of prices and wages and value and labour-time. On the capitalist side this could develop into pushes for diminishingly meaningful jobs on the periphery or even into violent “population control”, and on the proletarian side this could develop into demand for higher pay and lower prices or the redirection the new surplus into public services, or the good old revolution.

I personally don’t think heated arguments or edgyness are good excuses for statements such as this one. I’m not well versed in Syrian or Middle-Eastern modern history myself, but I’m at least well aware that AANES as a state(-ish) entity was formed for the precise reason of combating genocidal forces in both ISIS and Turkey.

To advocate for the destruction of that in the current state of things can (and will, by the broader public) be read, not as ultra-leftism or idealistic anti-imperialism, but as cover for the very likely genocidal acts of the current victors of the war. Specially considering that a majority of the users here are from the Global North or otherwise very distant from the topics of discussion.

IMO we should hold ourselves to higher standards than that, or else we start looking like Reddit Trotskyists and raddle anarchists wishing death and destruction on any third world statelet because they don’t align with our own much broader geopolitical interests.

Would be cool to have other independent or even corporate journalists corroborate this. Anybody can make a manifesto on chatGPT nowadays.

Heck, if anybody with a substack can claim to have the actual manifesto, I’m going to have to come out.

Here’s the actual manifesto.

Failure to do this will mean that the Americans have effectively ceded the South China Sea, parts of the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and even the Yellow Sea to the People’s Republic of China.

Once that happens, the Chinese then move with great speed to push their power beyond that First Island Chain all the way to the Third Island Chain (which includes Hawaii), and it’s a whole new ballgame.

It’s interesting how they never properly analyse how a war with China would play out outside of Chinese waters. It’s almost as if China (or any other country, really) would never bother waging war against the USA outside its own territory.

All redbubble merchandise will need to be rebranded now.

deleted by creator

Like most American executives - especially CFOs - he most likely viewed his business through the abstract lenses of Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. And like most American executives, he increasingly expected his success to come from data scientists who view the business through their own abstractions - data warehouses, notebooks, python, and scikit.

Great article, thank you for sharing.

Damn, that was quick. Greece also had a General Strike the other day.

Yoon trying a coup. Scholz cabinet collapsed. Almost 3 million signatures for a new election against Starmer. Trump elected and won the popular vote. And now this crisis.

I’m trying to keep an account of the dwindling legitimacy of NATO (or NATO+) regimes and it’s happening so fast I can’t keep track.

The proposals by three key advisers, including Trump’s incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, share some elements, including taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table.

Trump’s advisers would try forcing Moscow and Kyiv into negotiations with carrots and sticks, including halting military aid to Kyiv unless it agrees to talk but boosting assistance if Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses.

So, doing exactly what Russian officials have been calling for since 2022? Don’t see why they’d refuse now, unless you go for the “Russian Infinite Landgrab” conspiracy theory like it’s a Paradox game.

The Russian leader, [Eugene Rumer] said, shows no readiness to drop his conditions for a truce and talks, including Ukraine abandoning its NATO quest and surrendering the four provinces Putin claims as part of Russia but does not fully control, a demand rejected by Kyiv.

Those two “red lines” are already part of the peace proposal.

Gorka, reached by phone, called Reuters “fake news garbage” and declined to elaborate.

Lol.

VW’s response to these tough times has been to propose a 10 percent pay cut, thousands of layoffs, and the closure of three German factories—the first time such a thing will have happened in the company’s 87-year history.

Not only is their first thought laying off and reducing worker pay, but this is damning evidence of the shrinking German economy.

Sorry for taking too long to reply, the questions were good but I was too busy irl to sit down and answer them appropriately.

how was that a cause for soviet instability? i don’t get it. is there not other factors at play here too? ^^; /genq

The policy of exporting revolution goes as far back as the Brest-Litovsk treaty negotiation to withdraw from WW1, with Trotsky as commissar of foreign affairs leading the peace delegation by trying to stall all negotiations while agitating for revolutions in Central Europe. This belligerence (from a position of weakness) meant not only harsher terms being imposed on Russia but also justifications for the foreign powers to invest in the badly named “Russian Civil War”.

After that the brand of “foreign agitators” always came along breaking of diplomatic relations whenever leftist movements became relevant, like the Spartacist uprising in Germany, the Spanish Civil War, Vietnam and so many others, whether they participated or not. The Brazilian Communist Party, for instance, was temporarily banned under the justification of being “a foreign party”.

They also constantly had to be running the arms race, not because there was any actual Soviet interest in beating the US (their only significant “first” was the ICBM), but because every hiccup around the world could be the trigger for Nuclear War.

There are many other factors at play, of course. Left-Communism up to the 40s, WW2 and subsequent aggression from NATO. But opening too many battle fronts was a mistake, and Afghanistan is when the US wised up to that mistake.

The Afghan war was specifically propped up by the US as an entrapment against the USSR, with many in the US Department of “Defense” calling it the “Soviet Vietnam”.

okay, but what about cuba and the revolutions in africa? they seem to have succeeded without the USSR becoming unstable.

Cuba was only supported after the Bay of Pigs battle, and at that point the Revolution was already successful. They were supported economically rather than militarily for the most part, due to the US embargo, and Cuban-Soviet relations accidentally ended up in history books as “The Cuban Missile Crisis” any way. It wasn’t a mistake, but there were great risks involved.

I’m not well read on Africa, but I’m not aware of any revolution that was materially supported by the Soviets before their success either. Vietnam and Korea were costly, but those two countries already had their own strong and militant parties and armies.

or hell, help out the commie parties in other countries if they ask for help.

AFAIK they are not really opposed to that. I’ve seen CPC officers in some CPUSA events for instance. But it’s a hard dilemma to balance, both for the CPC (as a party on one hand but a state actor on another) and for the local parties (requiring support but also needing to build their own autonomous structure). Integrated as they are into the global economy and geopolitical landscape, they prefer to not be seen as “meddlers”. And local parties are often very sectarian against the CPC.

I won’t pretend to be in love with the CPC or that I would be unhappy with them giving material support to my personal favourite parties, but I would be very surprised. And in the end, I don’t think it would be that effective without a heavy dose of self-organising.

But at least they are not wavering in their support for Korea or Vietnam.

this is the same country whose people wanted the USSR to stay back in the late 80s/early 90s, but pizza hut man still decided to kill it anyway for the lols.

Killing the USSR was only possible due to very real stagnation in the living conditions, mostly caused by the liberalisation reforms, but partly also due to geopolitical realities.

Although I agree that it would be seen as an escalation, it would fit the bill of Putin’s and Lavrov’s comments over it being a valid reaction, without necessarily striking into actual NATO territory.

They can also send multiple clear warnings like they did last time so that the embassies can evacuate personnel again, in order to prevent foreign (civilian) citizen deaths falling solely on their hands. But then NATO chains of command need to also act responsibly and allow personnel to evacuate, which is much more likely than it seems, as they did evacuate a cease functions temporarily just last week.

I think it’s fair to understand G9 and Viv Ansanm, as well as BSAP/FREN (though I haven’t read much about them in recent months) and the general conflict in Haiti since 2021 as a form of Protracted People’s War.

G9 has sought alliances with other armed groups, even those who were previously “regressive”, on the ideal of a defence of the nation from foreign intervention. Segments of institutional army forces defect to support popular projects such as the water canal at the border. The “transitional” government has collapsed completely. Viv Ansanm controls most of the capital.

So long as the UN never allows an escalation of the deployment of “security” forces on Haitian territory (which both Russian and Chinese delegates harshly criticized on a recent session), I believe an independent Haiti is on the horizon.

“relevantes”? Talvez, mas não muito, considerando que o alcance desse por exemplo é muito menor do que de qualquer grande canal marxista.

Úteis? Creio que não. Aos 30 minutos começa um discurso gigante absurdo sobre ser “censurado” por insistir em linguagem machista (na minha opinião também homofóbica), tendo como único argumento “esquerdistas são chatos, não vou mudar”. O que é irônico, considerando que este se coloca como um filósofo avançado.

Tem mais cara de peixe-piloto, canais de react que não adicionam nada de valor ao debate, apenas desvios. Nos EUA tem muitos “canais de drama” que fazem a mesma coisa. Não valem a pena o tempo.

Seems there’s ceasefire on the Lebanon front, still waiting confirmation from Lebanese sources.

That’s great to hear, comrade! Don’t let up until victory is achieved!