meganmonkey
04-27-2007, 02:03 PM

(on edit: I just had a weird deja vu moment, my apologies if this is already posted here)


Capital and Nature:
An Interview with Paul Burkett
by João Aguiar
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aguiar240407.html


1. The year 2007 marks the 140th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marx's Capital. In your perspective, what is the main contribution of that major work to the understanding of contemporary capitalism?

Marx's Capital establishes three essential contradictions of capitalism which grow in intensity as the system develops historically. These contradictions should be seen as interconnected. First, there is the contradiction between use value and exchange value. This should not be treated as merely a formal, abstract contradiction as is sometimes done in modern theoretical interpretations of Marx's work. Rather, it must be seen as the historical development of the tension between the requirements of money-making and monetary valuation on the one hand, and the needs of human beings, of sustainable human development, on the other. In Marx's view, capitalism worsens this tension precisely insofar as it develops and socializes productive forces (labor and nature) in line with the requirements of competitive production for profit.

The second contradiction established by Marx is the essentially class-exploitative nature of capitalism, its reliance on the extraction of surplus labor time from the direct producers. Marx shows how the wage-labor form both conceals and is shaped by the fact that workers perform surplus labor for the capitalist even insofar as they are paid the value of their labor power. He also shows that this exploitation is based on capitalism's specific social separation of workers from access to and control over necessary conditions of production. This separation is what forces workers to accept worktimes longer than those necessary to produce their own commodified means of subsistence, even though the extension of the length and intensity of worktime hinders their development as human beings. More specifically -- and this aspect has not been adequately appreciated -- Marx shows how this forced surplus labor time involves capital's appropriation of the labor power (potential work) that is produced during workers' non-worktime, not only through rest and recuperation but also through the domestic reproductive labors of workers and other members of worker-households.

From these first two contradictions emerges the third main contradiction established by Capital: capitalism's tendency to generate crises of economic and social reproduction. Marx outlined two basic kinds of capitalist crisis. The first, more specific type, which has been the subject of much debate among Marxists, involves what might be termed narrowly economic crises of accumulation due to falling profitability, or an inability to reinvest profits in a way that yields more profit. However, periodic accumulation crises should be seen as a specific outgrowth of the more general, secular, and ever worsening crisis of capitalism, namely, the inability of the system to create and maintain natural and social conditions required for the sustainable development of human beings. Marx himself focused on this second form of crisis in his discussion of the general law of capitalist accumulation in Chapter 25 of Capital, Volume I, which showed capitalism's tendency to create a growing reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers even apart from its periodic accumulation crises. But he also dealt with the contradiction between capital accumulation and the natural conditions of human development, especially in his discussion of "Modern Industry and Agriculture" in Chapter 15 of the same volume. In fact, Marx's analysis of the natural and social environmental crises generated by capitalism are the main focus of John Bellamy Foster's quite important work, Marx's Ecology (Monthly Review Press, 2000) and of my own book, Marx and Nature (St. Martin's Press, 1999).

It must be stressed that, for Marx, both of these two forms of crisis are inevitable historical outgrowths of the use value versus exchange value contradiction and of the class-exploitative nature of capitalism.

2. Contrary to many interpretations, Marx studied and included an ecological analysis in Capital as you have shown in Marx and Nature. How does Marx integrate ecological insights into the theoretical body of Capital?

Marx's Capital integrates ecological insights in two general ways. First, Marx emphasizes the separation of workers from the land, from the earth, as the foundation of capitalism. Like other necessary conditions of production which are appropriated by capital, the land (nature) appears to wage-laborers as an external condition of their existence, one which they can only gain access to by agreeing to sell their labor power to the capitalist. This specifically capitalistic separation of the producers from reproductive access to the land is of course an ongoing historical process. As David Harvey has recently emphasized in his work The New Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 2003), this kind of "accumulation by dispossession" has become one of the main sources of profit in capitalism's current, neoliberal phase. Its ecological significance is just as obvious. By first separating land and laborers and then combining them in production driven by competitive profit-making, capitalism develops their combined productive powers in ways that are more and more alienated from the requirements of ecological sustainability. Unlike earlier modes of production such as feudalism, in which workers were socially tied to the land, capitalist production is not reliant on particular natural conditions and ecosystems, and can therefore afford to violate the conditions of ecological sustainability and "move on" (both spatially and functionally) to the exploitation of new use values producible by labor and nature. Put differently, capitalism has an historically unprecedented ability to sustain itself through the production of ecologically unsustainable use values -- which is precisely why it has the potential to create ecological crises that are unprecedented in scope and depth, all the way up to the global, biospheric level.

Second, Marx incorporates ecological concerns through his analysis of capitalist market valuation. Although this claim may seem paradoxical, the fact is that ecological criticisms of Marx's "labor theory of value" wrongly interpret this theory as a normative assertion that, compared to nature, labor is a more important or primary condition of production. For Marx, however, production of use values always requires both nature and labor, and labor is itself a metabolic relationship between people (themselves natural, albeit socially developed, beings) and nature. Marx did not himself reduce value to abstract, socially necessary labor time; rather his claim is that capitalism, based on its separation of laborers from necessary conditions of production, values commodities in this way. Hence, the tension between labor values and the natural requirements of sustainable production should be seen as an immanent outgrowth of the more basic contradictions between use value and exchange value and between labor and capital. Capital accumulation relies on both nature and labor as material vehicles for the production and realization of surplus value; yet, in the aggregate, it values commodities only in line with the abstract labor they contain. Monetary rents are purely redistributive and suffer from their own ecological contradictions -- see below. In any case, the norm under capitalism is the free appropriation and abuse of the use values latent in nature for purposes of competitive production for profit.

It must be emphasized that, for Marx, the production of values (in the sense of exchange values) itself requires that these values be objectified in saleable use values. If a commodity (and the labor that produces it) does not serve a human need (however illusory, uncivilized, or ecologically damaging), then it will not count as value in the market. This is precisely how the "social necessity" of value as socially necessary labor time is anarchically enforced through the market. Hence capital accumulation, the production and reinvestment of surplus value, remains dependent upon use values produced by both labor and nature. Capital accumulation requires not only exploitable labor power but also material, natural, conditions that enable labor power to be exploited and surplus labor to be objectified in vendible commodities. This helps explain why capitalism has been so damaging to the environment throughout its history and why it is currently threatening the livability of our planet. In short, far from being anti-ecological, Marx's critical analysis of capitalist valuation is essential to an adequate understanding of environmental crises both historical and contemporary.


----snip----

6. About a year and a half ago you published an important article in Monthly Review on communism and sustainable development. How is a classless society capable of developing a new mode of appropriation of nature and how could it build a non-polluting economy?

In my Monthly Review article I tried to shift the debate over the viability and attractiveness of Marx's vision of communism from its prior focus on the allocative efficiency of planning versus the market, and toward Marx's original emphasis on communism as a system of human development. Marx saw communism as a logical outgrowth not only of the productive capabilities created under capitalism but also of worker-community struggles to transform capitalist productive forces into forms that are non-exploitative and non-alienated in terms of the metabolism of humanity with nature. Marx did not view communism as simply a planned utilization of the productive techniques inherited from capitalism, but as a revolutionary transformation of production itself -- an epochal, long-term process of qualitative changes in technology and socio-economic relationships. And he emphasized the centrality of struggles against all forms of privatization and profit-driven exploitation of nature ("the land") to this revolutionary process. This was the qualitative, human-developmental context in which he demonstrated the necessity of planning and non-market allocation of human and natural resources, as well as the need and potential for reductions in worktime. I would add that Michael Lebowitz has done a great service in helping to reconstruct this communism-as-human-development perspective not only theoretically but through his direct engagement with the revolutionary processes currently underway in Venezuela. (See his books, Beyond Capital [Second Edition, St. Martin's Press, 2003] and Build It Now [Monthly Review Press, 2006].)

Generally speaking, in a communist society production is cooperatively and democratically controlled by the direct producers and communities, unmediated by capitalism's alienated forms of economic socialization, that is, without markets, money, and the state. (Of course, during the revolutionary transition period to communism workers and communities will need to democratically reshape and utilize state institutions to disempower the capitalist class and as a weapon for the socialization of the conditions of production. This is what Marx meant by the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Hal Draper shows in his monumental multi-volume study Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution (Monthly Review Press).) In place of the competitive pursuit of private profit, communism makes use value, in the sense of human needs and capabilities, the main priority of production, distribution, and consumption. This prioritization of use value over exchange value is what creates the potential for communism to reduce society's reliance on a growing productive, but ecologically damaging, throughput of matter and energy. It enables, for example, less emphasis on mass production of differentiated material consumer goods and more emphasis on the intellectual development (theoretical and practical) of the producers and communities, especially given significant reductions in worktime. The use of planning and democratic deliberation instead of the market is not the end or goal here, but rather the means for achieving sustainable human development. The communal, or public, "good" can thereby be internalized into the whole system of economic calculation, labor, and production instead of being viewed as an "external" afterthought as it is under capitalism.

This vision does not provide a blueprint for a pro-ecological re-engineering of production. Nor is it a certainty that a post-capitalist society of associated producers and communities will transform and undertake production in ecologically sustainable directions. A communist restructuring of the productive metabolism is a necessary but not sufficient condition of ecologically sustainable human development. It all depends on the explicit integration of ecological and other communal concerns into the anti-capitalist revolutionary process itself. What we can say is that in order to be ecologically sustainable, an economy must: (1) acknowledge and internalize society's responsibility to sustainably manage our metabolism with nature, to protect the land as communal wealth for current and future generations; (2) diffuse scientific and technological knowledge among all producers and communities as required for this ecological responsibility to be fulfilled throughout the entire process of production and consumption; (3) recognize the uncertainty and incompleteness of our knowledge about ecological and biospheric systems and the corresponding need to follow the "precautionary principle" in all production decisions (no specific actions taken without a clear demonstration of the absence of significant ecological damages therefrom); (4) respect the need for diversity in human economic relations, due to the variegation of natural conditions and the need for diverse paths of human fulfillment through productive and reproductive activities.

It is hard to see how these four requirements can be fulfilled without a clear break from capitalism's monetary/profit calculus and anarchic competition, in favor of planning and cooperation in line with the imperatives of human development. The development of people as material and social beings is both means and end here. As Marx put it, "Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature" (Capital, Volume III [Vintage, 1981], p. 959).

This vision of communism, as a system dedicated to sustainable human development growing out of anti-capitalist struggles, has a prominent place for the efforts of indigenous peoples around the world to resist transnational capital's "accumulation by dispossession" by revivifying their communal property systems and culturally-embedded techniques for sustainable use of water, soil, plant varieties, and other common resources. Industrial workers and communities can learn much from these largely rural movements about the institutional and technological forms needed to develop autonomous, self-sufficient, diversified, and cooperative-democratic alternatives to capitalism's exploitative and ecologically disastrous production (see David Barkin's important work, Wealth, Poverty and Sustainable Development [Editorial Jus, 1998]

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aguiar240407.html

anaxarchos
04-27-2007, 03:25 PM

Marx's Capital establishes three essential contradictions of capitalism which grow in intensity as the system develops historically. These contradictions should be seen as interconnected. First, there is the contradiction between use value and exchange value. This should not be treated as merely a formal, abstract contradiction as is sometimes done in modern theoretical interpretations of Marx's work. Rather, it must be seen as the historical development of the tension between the requirements of money-making and monetary valuation on the one hand, and the needs of human beings, of sustainable human development, on the other. In Marx's view, capitalism worsens this tension precisely insofar as it develops and socializes productive forces (labor and nature) in line with the requirements of competitive production for profit.

The second contradiction established by Marx is the essentially class-exploitative nature of capitalism, its reliance on the extraction of surplus labor time from the direct producers. Marx shows how the wage-labor form both conceals and is shaped by the fact that workers perform surplus labor for the capitalist even insofar as they are paid the value of their labor power. He also shows that this exploitation is based on capitalism's specific social separation of workers from access to and control over necessary conditions of production. This separation is what forces workers to accept worktimes longer than those necessary to produce their own commodified means of subsistence, even though the extension of the length and intensity of worktime hinders their development as human beings. More specifically -- and this aspect has not been adequately appreciated -- Marx shows how this forced surplus labor time involves capital's appropriation of the labor power (potential work) that is produced during workers' non-worktime, not only through rest and recuperation but also through the domestic reproductive labors of workers and other members of worker-households.

From these first two contradictions emerges the third main contradiction established by Capital: capitalism's tendency to generate crises of economic and social reproduction. Marx outlined two basic kinds of capitalist crisis. The first, more specific type, which has been the subject of much debate among Marxists, involves what might be termed narrowly economic crises of accumulation due to falling profitability, or an inability to reinvest profits in a way that yields more profit. However, periodic accumulation crises should be seen as a specific outgrowth of the more general, secular, and ever worsening crisis of capitalism, namely, the inability of the system to create and maintain natural and social conditions required for the sustainable development of human beings. Marx himself focused on this second form of crisis in his discussion of the general law of capitalist accumulation in Chapter 25 of Capital, Volume I, which showed capitalism's tendency to create a growing reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers even apart from its periodic accumulation crises. But he also dealt with the contradiction between capital accumulation and the natural conditions of human development, especially in his discussion of "Modern Industry and Agriculture" in Chapter 15 of the same volume. In fact, Marx's analysis of the natural and social environmental crises generated by capitalism are the main focus of John Bellamy Foster's quite important work, Marx's Ecology (Monthly Review Press, 2000) and of my own book, Marx and Nature (St. Martin's Press, 1999).

It must be stressed that, for Marx, both of these two forms of crisis are inevitable historical outgrowths of the use value versus exchange value contradiction and of the class-exploitative nature of capitalism.

I wouldn't bring this up but you said you came here for "theory"... I'm not always sure what that means but it certainly has got to be more rigorous than normal conversation.

Paul Burkett is not quoting Marx, or more properly, he is layering on what Paul Burkett thinks on top of Marx and claiming the combination to be Mr. Karl. 'Snot true. The result is a satisfying combination of Marx plus Burkett's modern "theory" but it don't hold water.

To satisfy yourself, just start with the initial point on which all of Burkett's other points rest, which is his point 1. You can satisfy yourself that Burkett is playing "fast and loose", just by reading the first 50 pages or so of Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1: Commodities. The bad news is that it is a world-class slog; the good news is that most of Marx's theory and that of most subsequent Marxists (and quasi-Marxists like Burkett) stems from that dry beginning chapter. It is as logically "tight" as anything I have ever seen, before or since.

The issue is not whether Burkett is right or wrong about his theory (as distinct from Marx's theory). I think he is right about some things and wrong about most others. The issue is why he (among many others) feels the need to wrap the ancient battleflag of the Old Man around his mostly contemporary views. Is it an issue of the weakness of his own theory or is it a more generic weakness of "The Left Theory of Ecology" treated as "a separate subject"?

You have already guessed that I am thinking the latter...

meganmonkey
04-27-2007, 04:44 PM

I wouldn't bring this up but you said you came here for "theory"... I'm not always sure what that means but it certainly has got to be more rigorous than normal conversation.

I am glad you brought it up, this is what I am looking for.



Paul Burkett is not quoting Marx, or more properly, he is layering on what Paul Burkett thinks on top of Marx and claiming the combination to be Mr. Karl. 'Snot true. The result is a satisfying combination of Marx plus Burkett's modern "theory" but it don't hold water.


To satisfy yourself, just start with the initial point on which all of Burkett's other points rest, which is his point 1. You can satisfy yourself that Burkett is playing "fast and loose", just by reading the first 50 pages or so of Capital, Volume I, Chapter 1: Commodities. The bad news is that it is a world-class slog; the good news is that most of Marx's theory and that of most subsequent Marxists (and quasi-Marxists like Burkett) stems from that dry beginning chapter. It is as logically "tight" as anything I have ever seen, before or since.

Couple of things. I haven't read Capital - maybe parts of it in college but I don't remember. I can't stand reading Marx. I am relying on google and you guys to avoid having to do so. This is my weakness, I own it, and I need to get over it. I plan on starting with the Communist Manifesto because I have it on my bookshelf and it is really short. I guess I'll go for Capital next if it is that fundamental.

For the time being, can you clue me into the specific discrepancy here, or are you going to make me do my own homework?


The issue is not whether Burkett is right or wrong about his theory (as distinct from Marx's theory). I think he is right about some things and wrong about most others. The issue is why he (among many others) feels the need to wrap the ancient battleflag of the Old Man around his mostly contemporary views. Is it an issue of the weakness of his own theory or is it a more generic weakness of "The Left Theory of Ecology" treated as "a seperate subject"?

You have already guessed that I am thinking the latter...

Assuming it is the latter...I have a couple thoughts. And for the record, I don't know anything about Mr. Burkett.

This may be a 'generic weakness', the need to address this as a separate issue, I can see your point there. But I would argue that we are trained in this culture to treat everything as a separate issue and become blind to the big picture. It's really damn hard to get over that - even once one is conscious of it. Practically have to re-wire the brain to stop doing it. Not trying to make excuses here or anything, just pointing that out.

That said, I am still not convinced that this is all irrelevant or that it doesn't need some resolution. imo it isn't about an 'environmental issue', it is about practicality. I'm not talking about gay marriage or abortion or flag burning here, ya know? If Marxism isn't just a theory that exists only in books then it must be applied to our contemporary situation. Some of what I read in that earlier huge thread (re: Russell Means' reaction to Marxism) put many of my concerns to rest. But I gotta tell you, I can't just turn things off in my head. I gotta work them through. So that's what I am doing.

I am pretty well convinced that many of our current means of production and distribution (which have developed as a result of capitalism) are detrimental to people on many levels, including our ability to live on this planet with its finite resources (note - I am NOT talking about population control here, nor technology as a whole). These systems would not necessarily exist as they do if capitalism hadn't not developed when it did. Now, I understand a little about the 'inevitability' of capitalism as a step toward a socialist revolution, but maybe not enough, and maybe that is where I get lost.

I imagine that when the socialist revolution occurs and capitalism falls that a lot of the logistics of things will change because as they are now, they are not in the best interest of the people. That seems to be part of what what Burkett is positing in the interview/book. It actually makes some sense to me. Am I looking at this totally wrong?

So much for trying to keep my questions simple and ask them one at a time...

wolfgang von skeptik
04-28-2007, 12:15 AM

Meaganmonkey wrote (emphasis added):

...I would argue that we are trained in this culture to treat everything as a separate issue and become blind to the big picture. It's really damn hard to get over that - even once one is conscious of it. Practically have to re-wire the brain to stop doing it. Not trying to make excuses here or anything, just pointing that out...

...Imo it isn't about an 'environmental issue', it is about practicality…If Marxism isn't just a theory that exists only in books then it must be applied to our contemporary situation...

I am pretty well convinced that many of our current means of production and distribution (which have developed as a result of capitalism) are detrimental to people on many levels, including our ability to live on this planet with its finite resources (note - I am NOT talking about population control here, nor technology as a whole). These systems would not necessarily exist as they do if capitalism hadn't not developed when it did. Now, I understand a little about the 'inevitability' of capitalism as a step toward a socialist revolution, but maybe not enough, and maybe that is where I get lost.

I imagine that when the socialist revolution occurs and capitalism falls that a lot of the logistics of things will change because as they are now, they are not in the best interest of the people. That seems to be part of what Burkett is positing in the interview/book. It actually makes some sense to me. Am I looking at this totally wrong?

In the interest of a response that is "more rigorous than normal conversation," let me start with two personal disclosures:

First, I believe that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the working people of the world have already been so hopelessly disempowered by capitalism that "socialist revolution" (in any conventional sense) is impossible -- that the only possible opportunity for genuine revolution (and thus its only semblance) can now come about only one way: through the apocalyptic collapse of all human structure and infrastructure, a collapse that, due to the continuing depredations of capitalism, is now unavoidable. Indeed it will be, literally, a double apocalypse: petroleum exhaustion combined with terminal climate change. Exhaustion of the petroleum supply will simultaneously destroy economy, political system, technology and culture itself, a debacle without precedent because all previous human collapses have afflicted no more than three of these realms simultaneously; the collapse has either been econo-political (as with Rome or the Mayans) or econo-political and cultural (as in the sack of Knossos and the extermination of matriarchy), but never before has technology failed as well, and never before has our species been so abjectly reduced to utter helplessness in the broadest possible sense of the term -- the true and ultimate legacy of our suicidal dependence on petroleum. Meanwhile -- as if to prey upon that very helplessness -- terminal climate change will harshen the environment to the point the survival of our species is questionable at best. Optimists believe Homo sapiens sapiens will be reduced to a few hundred breeding pairs at the South Pole and a few hundred more in the far north: at either end of the globe, we will be abject, filthy, brutish creatures who have somehow managed to fumblingly begin rediscovering the lost pre-Paleolithic technologies of chipped stone and sharp sticks that were perfected by our pre-human ancestors millions of years before the era of H. sapiens Neanderthalensis. Pessimists believe our species will go the way of the tyrannosaur, an irony since the engine of our impending extinction is the rabid tyrannosaur of capitalism, which is twice ironic since the double apocalypse is the self-fulfilling end-of-the-world prophecy at the core of all Abrahamic religion (which declared total war against Nature and thus spawned capitalism as its main weapon), and thrice ironic in that, whether our species becomes extinct or not, the double apocalypse will at the very least accomplish the withering away of the state foreseen by Marx et al.

Secondly, despite the fact every credible scientist on the planet agrees with this infinitely grim prognosis (the only substantial disagreement is over the timetable), I believe the onus is on us to proceed as if -- at the very worst (and just as was predicted by the eco-optimists of a decade ago) -- human society will be reduced only to the mid-19th Century, horse-and-buggy level and not to the basement of a new Lower Stone Age. Never mind the fact that the Disciples of Abraham, whether they call themselves Jews, Christians, Muslims or capitalists, have finally succeeded in bringing down on all our heads -- undeniably and with no possibility of escape -- some variant of the end-of-time pornographies to which they have compulsively masturbated for at least 3500 years. Never mind the fact that in my heart of hearts I believe our cause is truly hopeless -- that the capitalists will literally destroy the world rather than surrender their power: remember the slogan "better dead than Red"; remember that ruined town in Vietnam of which it was said "we had to destroy the place to save it (from Communism)." Despite all these negative indications, I believe our individual and collective dignity -- and ultimately, especially in the sense meant by Sartre, our freedom -- mandates that we carry on as if victory of the people were assured: hence my participation in discussions such as these.

With those provisos, let me make two more points:

That I see no difference in legitimacy between earlier commentaries on Marx (Lenin, Trotsky etc.) and the commentaries on Marx authored by Burkett, Foster (Marx's Ecology) and James O'Connor (Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism), particularly since these modern works address, either directly or indirectly, the valid judgment that the Soviet Union was a more savage enemy of Nature than the worst of the capitalist states;

That -- just as Meaganmonkey implies -- if Marxism is to be something other than dead words in mouldering books, it must again become a living ethos, which means not just the thorough exploration of its eco-socialist implications, but deliberate avoidance of its paralysis or nullification, whether by capitalist subversion or by fundamentalist entrapment.

If I were teaching a course on this sort of thing or leading a discussion on it, I'd probably start the reading list with a book that gives a good overview of the fact that, in precise fulfillment of its Abrahamic mandate, capitalism is death to Nature and therefore ultimately the extinction of life itself: Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology, edited by Martin O'Connor. The case for the entire work is stated in the opening paragraph of "Codependency and Indeterminacy," O'Connor's contribution to the anthology: "A fresh conceptualization is needed because both bourgeois and Marxist analyses of the ecological crisis are hampered by a concept of production and technology inadequate to present historical circumstances."

Which circumstances necessarily include the fact that (for the very reasons I outlined above) the double apocalypse we are facing has no precedent in human experience.

Two Americas
04-28-2007, 01:21 AM

This may be a 'generic weakness', the need to address this as a separate issue, I can see your point there. But I would argue that we are trained in this culture to treat everything as a separate issue and become blind to the big picture. It's really damn hard to get over that - even once one is conscious of it. Practically have to re-wire the brain to stop doing it. Not trying to make excuses here or anything, just pointing that out.

Idea: sometimes it occurs to me that it is much more difficult to separate things than not. In other words, the challenge is not so much to attempt to do something new that takes much effort, but rather to stop putting so much effort into something we are already doing - obsessively and compulsively separating things.


I'm not talking about gay marriage or abortion or flag burning here, ya know? If Marxism isn't just a theory that exists only in books then it must be applied to our contemporary situation.

Very good.

Imagine the difference between giving a live musical performance, as opposed to teaching a course about the theory of live performance. If no one signed up for that course anymore, and it was dropped from the curriculum, would there be no more musical performances? At the same time, if there were no more musical performances, of what value would the course be?

I think the academic course is dead, for a variety of reasons. But I also think that the opportunities for "live performance" are greater than ever, and the potential audience larger than ever.


I am pretty well convinced that many of our current means of production and distribution (which have developed as a result of capitalism) are detrimental to people on many levels, including our ability to live on this planet with its finite resources (note - I am NOT talking about population control here, nor technology as a whole). These systems would not necessarily exist as they do if capitalism hadn't not developed when it did. Now, I understand a little about the 'inevitability' of capitalism as a step toward a socialist revolution, but maybe not enough, and maybe that is where I get lost.

Not sure that it is that complex. The degree to which we value Labor over Capital is the degree to which we have socialism, and there are an unlimited number of opportunities for small wins, and small wins create momentum. That momentum, building from small wins, creates an expanding movement. It is self-generating with the right impetus. Since most people represent Labor, and very few represent Capital, we always have the advantage of numbers. Since giving Labor the higher consideration than Capital always brings the most benefit to the most people, it is self-reinforcing.

Capitalism is the problem, not production and distribution. We encounter things everyday that are organized around the needs of Capital rather than of Labor. We shouldn't see capitalism as some powerful monolith, difficult to bring down, and requiring a massive sweeping revolution to overthrow. It is very weak, very inefficient, very tenuous. To survive it needs to be rebuilt every hour of every day by all of us. Nobody wants to do this, we all feel that we have no choice, and all people need is a little example, a little encouragement. Socialism comes easily. capitalism takes a lot of work and stress and compliance and submission. Everyone is experiencing those things, and are fed up, but there is no one telling them what the source of all of that misery and frustration is.

If it seems difficult or impossible to overthrow capitalism, think for a minute about a couple of things: first, no one is trying to overthrow it; secondly, look at all of the effort capitalists make to keep it in place.

wolfgang von skeptik
04-28-2007, 11:23 AM
A friend, reading over my shoulder, asked me why I am so pessimistic about the prospects for human survival. First I pointed to the true indicators of human nature: the rape of the cosmos by the flying phallus of rocketry the ultimate human fantasy; biological warfare and thermonuclear weaponry the ultimate human inventions; savagery the ultimate human condition, whether at Dachau, in the Balkans, in Iraq, in Palestine, in Darfur, in the post-Katrina Superdome or at Virginia Tech.

Next I asked my friend to imagine one of the ultimate role-models of modern civilization -- say Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or Tom Cruse -- actually trying to master the intricate skill of making fire with flint and steel or to learn the infinitely patient woodcraft essential to hunting with a spear, atlatl or bow and arrows or to comprehend and absorb the consciousness essential to all such modes of living.

Lastly I asked my friend to try to imagine any sort of functional society that (A) could evolve from such archetypes as Paris, Tom or Britney and (B) could accommodate the snarling self-obsessed sociopathic drug-addled moron who is the average U.S. teenage male.

The look of sudden horror on my friend's face told me I did not need to explain that such previsualization transcends ideology and gives us a breathtakingly clear portrait of the inevitable future, especially if we have learned to see with Marshall McLuhan eyes: not Ecotopia or some other cooperatively socialist society; not the New Knossos beloved of ecofeminists and the people of Gaia; but instead the most murderously violent Dystopia imaginable: ruined cities prowled by reflexively vicious gangs turning ever more unspeakably sadistic as the ever more ravaged countryside supports ever more dwindling resources: Iraq and Superdome and Virginia Tech combined, but on a global scale: humans with less humanity than enraged scorpions -- the future made unavoidable by global capitalism, the future into which we are methodically being forced in fulfillment of today's greed and idiocy, already (just as the environmental biologists are beginning to acknowledge) the only future possible.

Perhaps, on distant islands and in remote sanctuaries of once and future Shining Mountains, there may be more hopeful alternatives -- though surely few and far between.

Kid of the Black Hole
04-28-2007, 04:14 PM

Next I asked my friend to imagine one of the ultimate role-models of modern civilization -- say Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or Tom Cruse -- actually trying to master the intricate skill of making fire with flint and steel..

Even after years of trying Ted Kacyznski couldn't master it (he used matches


Lastly I asked my friend to try to imagine any sort of functional society that (A) could evolve from such archetypes as Paris, Tom or Britney and (B) could accommodate the snarling self-obsessed sociopathic drug-addled moron who is the average U.S. teenage male.

A bit hyperbolic and overstated IMO

anaxarchos
04-28-2007, 04:41 PM

A bit hyperbolic and overstated IMO

A bit?

As in drill bit?

Kid of the Black Hole
04-28-2007, 04:55 PM

A bit hyperbolic and overstated IMO

A bit?

As in drill bit?

.

Hey, its "Wolf I give him a lot of latitude

And my idea of a drill bit is more like this one

wolfgang von skeptik
04-28-2007, 08:35 PM

One of the mysteries of archaeology is the curious practice of trepanation -- drilling holes in the skulls of living humans -- by ancient peoples. (We know they were living because the holes later healed.) The most common hypothesis is that the trepaned folk suffered from extreme migraines -- that the trepanation was intended to ease the pain by giving the Migraine Monsters opportunity to escape the head in much the same way the Bean Bogies escape via the anus. (No wonder the eating of beans was taboo in ancient Ireland!) But now it comes to me that it is just as likely trepanation was punishment for letting the fire go out, as in...

Hey stupid, how are you going to get it through your head that when you let the fire go out, it's a huge pain with the bow and drill to get the fire started again?



("fire drill" herein restored to its original meaning)