Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Month: September 2021 (Page 1 of 2)

trick millennials

9 Ways to Trick Your Millennial Workers

September 30, 2021 /

So, many of us already know that the concept of ‘generations’ is just something marketing agencies cooked up to better sell products and services. Companies needed to understand broad trends. Trends tend to vary by age. Then, toss in some science and buzzwords. Stir. Out comes ‘Baby Boomers,’ ‘Millennials,’ and so on.

But companies also use this wicked troll to sell business ideology. And they do it through creating those fun little listicles. Here’s a link to one that I’ll use as my starting point for this one.

Let’s suppose you’re a manager of Millennial workers, and they’re catching on to your bullshit. What can you do about it?

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left electorate

The Left’s Vision of the Electorate

September 27, 2021 /

In a review of the 2020 Thomas Frank book, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, Erik Baker lays out a basic progressive theory of the electorate. I’ll set aside, for the moment, the tension between that and the title of this post. Many leftists, after all, still identify as progressives.

It so happens I recently wrote a post that touched on this idea, in part. Here I’ll briefly sketch out Baker’s critique of Frank and why it’s so important for leftist electoral projects.

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Philosophy, Bloomington, and J.L. Austin

September 23, 2021 /

philosophy bloomington sycamore

So, before I lived in Iowa City, I lived in Bloomington, Indiana. I wandered that way from rural southern Indiana, and it became a very important six years of my life (from age 18 to 24). It’s where I, in some sense, grew up, decided on philosophy as a major and life focus, and first learned how to be an adult. It’s where I did all sorts of new things.

In college, when I took philosophy as a major, I also got very interested in the work of ordinary language philosophy, especially that of J.L. Austin. I recently had the chance to return to some of these topics.

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faq

FAQ #7: What’s With Your Blog’s Name?

September 16, 2021 /

So, occasionally people ask me about the blog’s name (Base and Superstructure). Sometimes they’re just curious. At other times, they know a bit about Marxism and think the name might indicate that I’m some kind of ‘class reductionist‘ (by which they might mean any number of things).

I’ve written about this topic a number of times. Including the very first post back in 2018. In fact, it’s a frequent topic I return to from a variety of angles. But I’d also like to write a short version of a more complicated set of ideas.

Here’s the short version: The term ‘class‘ refers to relationships among different groups of people. These relationships concern which groups own and control economic resources. When trying to best explain society, class relations form the most fundamental explanatory unit. Other things, like religion, culture, identity, and so on, are an important part of our lives and an important social force. They’re also important to our efforts to create and maintain socialist movements. But class is typically where the buck stops.

That’s what the blog name means to me. And while it might make me a ‘class reductionist’ in some narrow explanatory sense, I certainly think there are things other than class that are very important to politics and movements.

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