© IMDB
There is something truly exasperating about digesting the steady flow of horror stories relating to Hollywood producer
Harvey Weinstein. In part, of course, it is because the reports that Weinstein allegedly raped and sexually assaulted women over decades are deeply disturbing. In part, it is because one can be certain that there are still young aspiring actresses desperate for a big break who are being exploited by the Hollywood system - both in "casting" sessions and in the movies they must make to get noticed.
But most of all, these stories are exasperating because the women who are speaking out - and one senses they are still just the tip of the iceberg - and the journalists who are feeding off their revelations are drawing precisely no political conclusions from these incidents.In fact, the Weinstein story perfectly illustrates how politically disempowering identity politics can be. Certainly, there can be no doubt that Weinstein, who has admitted that he abused his position with many women, while denying many of the actual reports of sexual misconduct, exploited his power. It should hardly surprise us that a rich man who had the ability to give desperate young women a shot at stardom preyed on them. The Hollywood employment system is capitalism in microcosm, at its rawest and most naked.
The Weinstein revelations tell us much less about relations between men and women than they do about the nature of power and the ability of the strong to exploit the weak.
Under capitalism, the weak - the working class - eventually gained the consciousness and discovered the tools to assert their own form of power. As individuals they were vulnerable and exploitable. As a collective, they gained the power to bargain. That led to the trade union movements, and gradual improvements in wages and conditions.
The capitalist class has been trying to reverse those gains ever since. The new turbo-charged form we call neoliberalism has been atomising western societies since the 1970s to return us to new forms of economic dependency, culminating in zero-hours contracts and an Uber culture.
Comment: Could this signal bad times coming for Hillary Clinton? Tom Luongo thinks so: We'll have to wait and see about that.
Update (Oct. 18): The Senate Judiciary has opened a probe into the case, demanding to know whether or not several federal agencies know of the FBI corruption investigation before the 2010 uranium deal: The FBI informant in the case was reportedly threatened by the Obama admin for speaking out about the corruption he witnessed. Circa News interviewed his lawyer: