Liberal Capitalism’s Long Authoritarian StreakWe’re coming up, in two years, on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Albert Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Some of you may know of Hirschman as one of the main characters in that not-so-good, pulpy Netflix series Transatlantic, which depicts the efforts of Hirschman and others to rescue European Jewish intellectuals from the Nazis in France. If you’re a political scientist or sociologist, you may know of Hirschman for his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. If you’re a theorist, you may know his Rhetoric of Reaction. If you’re an economist or a Latin Americanist, you might know of his work in development economics. But, for me, Hirschman will always be the author of The Passions and the Interests. Its main thesis is that early-modern writers, from Machiavelli to David Hume, saw in the idea of interests — initially understood as a reasoned form of passion, later as a strictly economic pursuit of money and material well-being — as a counter to dangerous forms of political passion: glory, heroism, virtue, excessive civic-mindedness. It’s a wonderful little book, which in many ways has inspired some of the counterarguments that I am making in my book King Capital. But there’s a little-noticed element in Hirschman’s book, which I only just stumbled upon in a recent rereading. Given when the book was written, in 1977, and given Hirschman’s extensive involvement in Latin American politics and economics and his many efforts to save Latin American Marxists and leftists who were being threatened by right-wing goons and governments in the 1970s, that subplot seems worth mentioning.
https://jacobin.com/2025/10/liberal-capitalism-authoritarianism-neoliberalism-hirschman Amazon Web Services crash: who owns the internet? In the early hours of 20 October, a simple error disrupted the operations of a data centre hub for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Northern Virginia. The ripple effect over the next few hours caused global outages to services as diverse as banking and real-time trading, tools for office management, social media, and even advanced manufacturing. In all, a total of 2,000 large companies were impacted, including a number of British banks, such as Lloyds, Halifax, and the Bank of Scotland; government software such as the US Federal Web Services and the British tax service, HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs); as well as a plethora of highly-used apps, websites, and services, such as Amazon itself. Europe’s car industry was also impacted by the outage. Advanced manufacturing utilises automation dependent on these web services. For example, Volkswagen’s Digital Production Platform is built on AWS and connects 43 facilities across three continents. It uses real time analysis to inspect quality and optimise energy usage using machine learning. BMW and Mercedes-Benz are other examples. Whilst the factory floor was not immediately shut down by these outages, the effects in terms of slips in quality control, maintenance alerts, and supply chain coordination remain to be seen. The impact will likely have been dampened, as the outage occurred outside of peak production hours. CyberCube, a risk analytics firm, estimates that, should all affected parties decide to file claims against AWS, the total loss will be around $581 million, although the final figure may well be higher, as medium and long-term impacts become apparent.
https://marxist.com/amazon-web-services-crash-who-owns-the-internet.htmThe Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) Chapter 3: The Point of View of Historical Materialism THE theory of historical materialism has brought to light some most important truths. Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis – in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action. Thus woman could not be considered simply as a sexual organism, for among the biological traits, only those have importance that take on concrete value in action. Woman’s awareness of herself is not defined exclusively by her sexuality: it reflects a situation that depends upon the economic organisation of society, which in turn indicates what stage of technical evolution mankind has attained. As we have seen, the two essential traits that characterise woman, biologically speaking, are the following: her grasp upon the world is less extended than man’s, and she is more closely enslaved to the species. But these facts take on quite different values according to the economic and social context. In human history grasp upon the world has never been defined by the naked body: the hand, with its opposable thumb, already anticipates the instrument that multiplies its power; from the most ancient records of prehistory, we see man always as armed. In times when heavy clubs were brandished and wild beasts held at bay, woman’s physical weakness did constitute a glaring inferiority: if the instrument required strength slightly beyond that at woman’s disposal, it was enough to make her appear utterly powerless. But, on the contrary, technique may annul the muscular inequality of man and woman: abundance makes for superiority only in the perspective of a need, and to have too much is no better than to have enough. Thus the control of many modern machines requires only a part of the masculine resources, and if the minimum demanded is not above the female’s capacity, she becomes, as far as this work is concerned, man’s equal. Today, of course, vast displays of energy can be controlled by pressing a button. As for the burdens of maternity, they assume widely varying importance according to the customs of the country: they are crushing if the woman is obliged to undergo frequent pregnancies and if she is compelled to nurse and raise the children without assistance; but if she procreates voluntarily and if society comes to her aid during pregnancy and is concerned with child welfare, the burdens of maternity are light and can be easily offset by suitable adjustments in working conditions.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/2nd-sex/ch03.htm