Some thoughts this morning from now that academics are threating the job prospects of grad students who asked for a PDF: The annoying thing about protecting profitability by policing twitter sharing is a fundamental problem of the societal misrecognotion of capitalist function.

It is about upholding the ability for individual people, involved in the extraction of profit from the labour of others and withholding goods from those who need them to achieve the maximum sustainable profit, to feel good about themselves.

And what this requires is not just a veneer, but a basic non-admission of the predatory nature of capitalism and economic exchange and a deliberate misrecognition, of monetary transactions as mixed moral/gift/monetary transaction.

Pierre Bourdieu wrote extensively about this deliberate misrecognition which is at play in the realm of gift exchange.
What people like require is to be able to say, ‘I am in business/rentier exploitation, but I am a GOOD person because I COULD be more exploitative’.

It is great when academic publishers do charge less! But really if they could charge more and still have a business model that works, they would. It's not about being good academic citizens, it is because otherwise the subsidised university presses would blown them away.

But the system of misrecognition relies on them framing it as a moral leniency. The same thing is behind ‘I am a good landlord - "I got the Second Cheapest bed frame from Ikea, when I *could*get the worst.’

In other words, when we consider benefits to moral reputation as a kind of good, then it participates in a totalising economy, rather than sits outside it. Moral benefits are a kind of pay here and we are being asked not to question those.

Anyway, I think that people pointing out the flaws in an industry don't deserve to be told they aren't allowed to respond to direct insults because they must be deferent in order to get a job.

I also think that if you insult someone or threaten your career prospects you don't get to be the good guy. And that is what is actually at stake here people desperately want to believe they are good and taking that illusion from them is considered abuse.

*their.
Anyway, back to writing.