>>8 OK I went too far with that claim of "rejected this capitalist subjectivity", although I did couch it with "at least in some part". I broadly agree with your claims in the second paragraph, but I'm then confused by the whiplash of you then returning to the frameworks of "political economy" in the next paragraph. I think I should be clear that I never claimed NEETs are somehow rebelling against the system, or anything even close to that. I'm not even sure what it could possibly mean to "rebel against the system". Rather than "rebelling" I'm speaking more of negotiating, evading, refusing, dealing with. I can't agree with your sentiment in the last paragraph, I'm not sure what "it's ideology" is in this context, I won't even go so far as to disagree with this "damaged life" claim, but I am just asking you to consider rotting as active strategy rather than passive submission.
I'm working through this in reverse, but I would like to now come back to your first paragraph, which I have the most problems with. I hardly think that Marx hates labor, his theory of gattungswesen (it's not human nature, we promise! It's totally a different thing!) is predicated on labor, that humans use their "powers" to meet their "needs", which must be done through labor. He hated labor under capitalism, but because he thought it was corrupting a core part of what it means to be human, he wanted to liberate labor, not liberate people from labor, because to him that would be alienating us from our powers. I don't agree with your assessment of this "embracing consumerist values", you are still thinking in a dialectical Marxist framework where "consumerist values" must be directly opposed by their dialectical opposite and then subsumed, I just do not put faith in this notion, these dialectical structures only serve to reinforce one another (something something che guevara t-shirts). Don't take me as proposing a program here, but pushing a system into hyperlogic until it implodes seems to me a more interesting strategy. You can consider my stance neutral on this consumerism subject.
On the subject of labor, I think we're just going to fundamentally disagree here. I don't know what "social-psychological dysfunction" means in this context, and I'm skeptical of this notion to begin with, it's buying into too much psychiatry. Well I think your assessment of this neoliberal promised wall e world is compelling, but I also think you have bought into the ideology you were opposing (the one which links marx and neoliberals and so on) , that is the productivist, utilitarian, rationalist worldview. You see all of this as buying into consumerism, but I wonder if you could (i'm sorry for doing this) read some bataille, and see what this useless expenditure means on a grander scale. The one who consumes without producing, a useless one, like the sovereign. Pure squandering. Refusal to participate in the rationalized economy, by consuming without producing, and squandering whatever excess they have completely uselessly. Whatever questionable merit this has, it undeniably runs counter to the quantitative rational political economy. The reaction against this sovereign life is nothing but ressentiment. Fuck labor.
OK I went too far with that claim of "rejected this capitalist subjectivity", although I did couch it with "at least in some part". I broadly agree with your claims in the second paragraph, but I'm then confused by the whiplash of you then returning to the frameworks of "political economy" in the next paragraph. I think I should be clear that I never claimed NEETs are somehow rebelling against the system, or anything even close to that. I'm not even sure what it could possibly mean to "rebel against the system". Rather than "rebelling" I'm speaking more of negotiating, evading, refusing, dealing with. I can't agree with your sentiment in the last paragraph, I'm not sure what "it's ideology" is in this context, I won't even go so far as to disagree with this "damaged life" claim, but I am just asking you to consider rotting as active strategy rather than passive submission.
I'm working through this in reverse, but I would like to now come back to your first paragraph, which I have the most problems with. I hardly think that Marx hates labor, his theory of gattungswesen (it's not human nature, we promise! It's totally a different thing!) is predicated on labor, that humans use their "powers" to meet their "needs", which must be done through labor. He hated labor under capitalism, but because he thought it was corrupting a core part of what it means to be human, he wanted to liberate labor, not liberate people from labor, because to him that would be alienating us from our powers. I don't agree with your assessment of this "embracing consumerist values", you are still thinking in a dialectical Marxist framework where "consumerist values" must be directly opposed by their dialectical opposite and then subsumed, I just do not put faith in this notion, these dialectical structures only serve to reinforce one another (something something che guevara t-shirts). Don't take me as proposing a program here, but pushing a system into hyperlogic until it implodes seems to me a more interesting strategy. You can consider my stance neutral on this consumerism subject.
On the subject of labor, I think we're just going to fundamentally disagree here. I don't know what "social-psychological dysfunction" means in this context, and I'm skeptical of this notion to begin with, it's buying into too much psychiatry. Well I think your assessment of this neoliberal promised wall e world is compelling, but I also think you have bought into the ideology you were opposing (the one which links marx and neoliberals and so on) , that is the productivist, utilitarian, rationalist worldview. You see all of this as buying into consumerism, but I wonder if you could (i'm sorry for doing this) read some bataille, and see what this useless expenditure means on a grander scale. The one who consumes without producing, a useless one, like the sovereign. Pure squandering. Refusal to participate in the rationalized economy, by consuming without producing, and squandering whatever excess they have completely uselessly. Whatever questionable merit this has, it undeniably runs counter to the quantitative rational political economy. The reaction against this sovereign life is nothing but ressentiment. Fuck labor.