GTAA Season 3 Episode 41: Richard Wolff Debates Branko Marcetic on Vaccine Mandates

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1. Sam Seder got Covid and does not know how he could have gotten it. The mysterious quality makes the mandate obvious. Shocked to see a guy as smart as Wolff make these Fox news/Dore views.

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2. Chomsky supported mandates. He wins.

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3. Imperialism bubble? Ben, Destiny took a shot at Jacobin.

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4. I still don't really like Wolff's argument because much of the reason we didn't do lockdowns was people protesting about lockdowns and masks exactly the way they're protesting about vaccines now. You could come out with this argument back then and get everybody to rally against lockdowns, so how are the vaccine companies then the thing at fault for us getting to the current situation?

   Quite simply covid is a crisis of people feeling not responsible for other people and every time somebody tells other people "be responsible for not passing disease to me" those people rejecting it.
   Currently we may be at a stage where a lot of workers support vaccine mandates for their own safety, if those statistics are correct. But if so, we were previously at a stage where a lot of workers supported people being responsible enough to accept masks or lockdowns, and they didn't stand with and support this big chunk of workers then and they don't now. Although we have made concessions to them to try to make it easier, by lowering how much responsibility we even want to hold people to by not making them think about covid masks every single day.

   If you want to "struggle against" all the vaccine sceptics and see if you can get some leftists out of that, be my guest.
   But I don't really think you can succeed.
   Covid outbreaks are a disease we get when nobody has solidarity for anyone else and everyone is focused on their own survival. If you push people further in the direction they've already been going I don't see how you can get people organised together for each other's interests at all.

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5. What does Ben Burgis not like about Derrida and Richard Rorty? I personally love both of their work.

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6. Dan is such a good sport.

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7. David Deutsch might be a good debate against Wolff on this topic

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8. Dr. Peterson was NOT exported from Canada (if only we could have), he was imported into the US by the corporate state, who have being paying him very well to be one of their status quo defenders.

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9. Thanks for this discussion. It is so hard to find good debates on this topic.

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10. what wolf doesnt understand is that the failure in and of itself for american capitalism to deal with this pandemic has left us in a position with a million deaths, only 67% of the country fully vaccinated and no end in sight. plus the workers he wants to elevate to have a "seat at the table" aren't allowed to have that seat. so what else is there? i agree with marcetic, we are in a unique situation that requires a rapid expansion of government power

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11. I am relieved by the exclusion of maple syrup from the set of deplorable Canadian exports. This was a near cancellation averted masterfully by McManus – I was this close to summoning the ghost of Stalin to threaten you both with gulag holidays.

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12. The great Max Blumenthal exposing the vaccine mandate as simply yet another strategy to subjugate the working class on the part of a ruthless, tyrannical, crony capitalist ruling class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLhyAxfN4-A

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13. It's getting bad in my neighborhood. Just the other day I'm walking to the haberdashery and what do I spot growing in the street corner? A terrorism bubble.

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14. The sad disturbing fate of Daniel Muessig dramatizes all that is wrong with the institution of law being brought under the politico-governmental power of the state. Now the origins of both law and language are outside political authority. Just as no one designed language deliberately, and perhaps more importantly did not design the details of how it would operate, neither was law the product of deliberate design. Rather by trial and error law spontaneously emerged to become that least set of rules best serving to prevent and when necessary peacefully resolve disputes. Now because there is no conscious process by which such law comes into being, the ancients attributed its origins to supernatural authority as in the case of the Ten Commandments. Now for the longest time, political authority did no more than adjudicate over this so called natural body of law. It had the obligation to rule on infractions of this natural law only when instances of such infractions were brought by private individuals. There was no such figure as the public prosecutor. Foucault quite rightly called the day when political authority invented the public prosecutor the 'most diabolical moment in history'. Once the public prosecutor emerges, so called positivist law, law not received from tradition but deployed by political authority soon followed. Now it is soon after the public prosecutor and positivist law appears that the rights based discourse of the West appears. The public prosecutor first emerges in the 12th century. By 1215 King John is obliged to accede to the demands of Magna Carta which set forth trial by jury and law as a power unto itself among other things. Now the courts and positivist law have been the 'superstructure' by which the nation state has exercised power over its subjects, the bureaucratic 'armature' through which state power is transmitted. Up until the time of Marx, rights bases discourse contested positivist law which infringed 'negative' rights – the rights of the individual to live free, to remain unmolested by government and its armed agents. With Marx, positivist law is inverted. Where the bourgeoise could use positivist law to force the 'proletariat' off the commons and into the industrial barracks by way of the Inclosure Acts, Marx seeks to rework positivist law into a weapon the proletariat can wield to seize the property of bourgeoise. The criminalization of alcohol, and the follow on War on Drugs, come in reaction to this Marxist challenge to bourgeoise. Prohibition and the War on Drugs serve to fracture the working class, to create in their midst a dangerous delinquent class leaving them no choice but to turn to monopoly government security aka public law enforcement. The crucial point is that where 'natural law' exists separate from political authority and functions to prevent disputes, positivist law is the very essence of political authority and functions to ceaselessly incite conflict whether it be of bourgeoise or Marxist order. As well it is the very existence of positivist law which incites a ceaseless struggle over its control, for the moment being fought between the crony capitalist bourgeoise and the Marxist-light bourgeoise.

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15. Babe wake up new Ben Burgis and Dr. Wolff content

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16. Brainwashed Branko. The vaccinated still spread Covid and those who have already had Covid have natural immunity, which is the best immunity.

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