Will Shetterly's Blog
September 4, 2023
Anti-slavery is older than Jesus and Paul
Some fans of Christianity argue that anti-slavery began with the writings of Paul. What follows is an edited and expanded version of my…
August 31, 2023
Barbie and the Feminist Gaze
Erasing Men, Class, and Intellectual Property Theft in an Entertaining Gender Reductionist Fantasy
August 27, 2023
Why Right Wingers Say Plymouth Colony was a Failed Communist Experiment
The Plymouth Colony’s History is an Argument for Worker Co-ops, Not Capitalism
August 25, 2023
Five Notes about Whiteness and Class in the 19th Century
Social and economic class were always more complicated than we’re told
August 23, 2023
April 6, 2023
“write a story about batman versus karl marx” — my first ChatGPT experiment
“Karl Marx fighting Batman” Bing Image CreatorI have to admit this is better than a lot of fanfic, and its conclusion is a fair summation of the current state of capitalism versus socialism in the US today.
Once upon a time, in a world far different from our own, there was a clash of ideologies that shook the very foundation of society. On one side, there was Batman, the Dark Knight of Gotham, the symbol of justice and order. On the other side was Karl Marx, the father of communism, the champion of the oppressed and the downtrodden.
The two men, despite their vastly different beliefs, shared a common goal: to make the world a better place. However, they each had their own way of achieving that goal. Batman believed in using his wealth and physical prowess to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Marx, on the other hand, believed in overthrowing the capitalist system and redistributing wealth to create a more equal society.
Their paths crossed one fateful night when Batman was investigating a series of robberies that had been taking place across Gotham. As he followed the clues, he stumbled upon a group of men discussing their latest heist. It was then that he saw Marx among them, his piercing gaze fixed on Batman.
“Who are you?” Batman demanded.
“I am Karl Marx,” came the reply. “And I am here to put an end to the capitalist system that breeds inequality and oppression.”
Batman was taken aback by the man’s boldness, but he knew that he couldn’t let him get away. A fierce battle ensued as the two men clashed over their beliefs. Batman relied on his combat skills and gadgets, while Marx used his intelligence and the power of his ideas.
The fight lasted for hours, each man gaining and losing ground, but neither willing to give up. As dawn broke over Gotham, Batman finally gained the upper hand, pinning Marx to the ground.
“I may not agree with your methods, Marx,” Batman said, “but I respect your conviction. But I cannot allow you to break the law.”
Marx looked up at Batman, his eyes blazing with defiance. “You may have won this battle, Batman, but the fight for equality and justice will continue.”
With that, Marx disappeared into the shadows, leaving Batman to ponder the ideas and ideals that had brought them together in the first place. For a moment, he wondered if there was a way to bridge the gap between his beliefs and Marx’s. But as he looked out over the city he had sworn to protect, he knew that the battle between capitalism and communism would rage on, even as he continued to fight for justice in his own way.
PS. I really need to spend some time with the AI art generators.
[image error]“write a story about batman versus karl marx” — my first ChatGPT experiment was originally published in Comrade Morlock’s Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
March 26, 2023
The Zacchaeus Option (for Christians Who Don’t Want to be Perfect)
The Middle Way for Good Christians Looks like Socialism
March 12, 2023
Barbara J. Fields Comments on the Racecraft of the 1619 Project
Barbara J. FieldsBarbara J. Fields, celebrated historian, co-author of Racecraft, and the only historian with a doctorate to appear in Ken Burns’ The Civil War, has only made a few public comments about The 1619 Project, but those comments are damning. In a recent interview, she said,
When I talk to my students about 1619 — and I did even before the 1619 Project, but I had to do it more pointedly after the 1619 Project because of all the nonsense that that engendered, I start with how can you begin in 1619 and ignore 1607? Because starting in 1607 when white people were indentured servants in Virginia who could be bought — they were chattels who could be bought and sold, who could be won and lost in card games and so on — starting there lets you see that the decision to use Africans as slaves came in that context. It didn’t become racial, wasn’t even defined that way in the laws of Virginia until much later on. When do you first even have a slave code in Virginia? Not till the 1660s.
This is a misconception that I think has become very widespread. It’s likely to become more widespread because the New York Times has made such a mascot of [the 1619 Project]. Historicizing that process means that you have to understand everybody who was part of it. It wasn’t just people from Africa, it wasn’t just people from Europe, it wasn’t just indigenous Americans. You have to understand all of those, and you have to understand why it was necessary to have people forced to work for somebody else.
Why do you need to do that? If you have a place where anybody who wants land can get land, anybody who wants to grow whatever the crop is can grow it, why do you end up having indentured servitude and slavery? And I put this question to my students, and they flounder around about it because they have all sorts of notions of what comes naturally to human beings. I tell them ultimately there are only three ways you can get somebody else to work for you for your benefit: You can persuade them to do it, you can pay them to do it, or you can force them to do it. It is very difficult to pay people enough to want to do that if what they want is to farm their own land and there’s nothing to stop them from doing that and nothing to stop them from appropriating the proceeds. As soon as you historicize it that way, slavery becomes part of a historical process that doesn’t have anything to do with race as Americans like to understand it. I tell my students people from Africa didn’t become black people until they came here, but for that matter Europeans were not Europeans until they came here.
At A reply to the American Historical Review’s defense of the 1619 Project, she said,
I could hardly miss the hype of The 1619 Project, particularly since I am a print subscriber to the NYT. Although I have saved the issue (knowing that some of my students will have seen it, most likely online, and will have been seduced by its tendentious and ignorant history), I’m afraid I have not troubled to read the issue all the way through. The pre-launch publicity warned me of racecraft in the offing. And once I had the issue in hand, the first few bars disinclined me to waste my time on the rest of the operetta. Not that I would have expected anything more of the Times. Ask their writers to take the time to read Edmund Morgan or David Brion Davis or Eugene Genovese or Eric Williams or any of the explosion of rich literature about slavery in the United States and the hemisphere published over the past century? What an idea! And the packaged history they have assembled fits well with neo-liberal politics.https://medium.com/media/91be6633c37713b65c6cd7f18c06af8c/href[image error]
Barbara J. Fields Comments on the Racecraft of the 1619 Project was originally published in Comrade Morlock’s Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
March 8, 2023
From Institutional Racism to Institutional Anti-Racism
When the cartoonist Scott Adams made a statement that was deemed racist, he was not only denounced thoroughly in the media, but nearly…
March 3, 2023
Four Problems with the Anti-Racist Notion that All White People are Racist
Many race reductionists believe as an article of faith that all white people are racist because they were raised in a racist society. It’s…
