Friday, December 27, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
GUILD SOCIALISM by G.D.H. Cole (Hosted Media).
Guild Socialism is a short essay about a kind of social organization that is run not just for the sake of the well being of the laborer, like many other forms of collectivist political philosophies, but also for the sake of the creative actualization of the laborers imagination. Like many Leftist political thinkers G.D.H. Cole takes the issue of alienation very seriously, but for G.D.H. Cole the solution to this problem isn't more bureaucracy or representational political action but a form of direct decision making. G.D.H. Cole does not see conflict between the labor of the mind and that of the body, these two sides of labor are equally important and can't exist with out eachother, this is way he calls for a politics of collaboration between the division of labor instead of one of conflict. G.D.H. Cole differs from many Marxists in his belief that there is no one size fits all solution that can cross all national and cultural boundaries, instead each social organization must adapt and effect the unique cultural and natural environment in which it arises.
If the world where to adopt this model of production (it
needn't be the whole world), we would get a radically varied travel experience. Instead
of seeing the same McDonalds everywhere you go, each town and city would have a
drastically differentiated look and feel, because the very tools the infrastructure
was built out of would be trailered for the particular needs of the locals.
Think over the marvels of ancient architecture, the reason archaeologists and
modern engineers are so awe stuck by those structures, is because they think of
construction in terms of the limitations of our current tools, and technologies.
It makes sense for a the technology of the global network to have spread a kind of regularity around the world,
but that will continue its current trend in acourdence with the nature of that technology, but localized technologies that work more trailered
to local cultural/environmental conditions should be trailered to localities.
As environmental information becomes more available through digital/electronic technologies
we will want to trailer our tools to our particular cultural/environmental circumstances, thus generalizing technology could lead to particularizing technologies.
Perhaps we will be able to use emerging 3d printing technologies to do this,
and perhaps the small Socialist Guild will prove the best social organizational
structure to do this.
GUILD SOCIALISM an essay by George Douglas Howard Cole.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Jim Pojar talks about a new climate for conservation (Hosted Media).
Dr. Jim Pojar is the author of
Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Monday, November 4, 2013
Don't forget: Occupy the FED.
Why is banking such an important issue? Because monetery distribution is one of the major sorses of power in our world. Why should one take time to learn about banking? Because Modern Money Mechanics are not strait foreword and if you don't spend some time to understand it then you won't know how it is used to concentrate power.
You thought 2011 was along time ago, let us tern back the clock to march 2009. 'Socialist' senator of Vermont Bernie Sanders drills FED Chairmen Ben Bernanke over the FED's double standards interest rates. Libertarians should take note, this is how you speak truth to Power. We should not let side issues like taxes to distract us from the real issues.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Toward a New Philosophy of Life! #6&7
6. Life forges a path through space, and that path brakes the boundaries of the infinite.
7. Life expands the infinite from the inside out.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Random order: the Keiser Report+Tame Impala
Because powerful economic critique deserves powerful Rock -n- Roll.
This is one of Stacy Herbert and Max Keiser 's best episodes.
Tame Impala - Lonerism
Friday, October 18, 2013
The personal Copy Machine: a more progressive health care program.
It be hard to avoid all the talk about the government shut down, it has been all over the news for almost, what 3 weeks now. It seems that for most people, at least around me, the narrative goes something like this: Obama want to heal the sick like Jesus, but the evil greedy republicans would rather let people die then allow "free loaders" to "drain the system." Every once in a while something about something called a debt sealing is mentioned, and how if this debt sealing isn't raised then the U.S. Government will default, and lots of good people wont get played and will probably miss rent payments and the like. Then there's the whole insurance company coloration thing that has gotten' a conspicuous lack of attention from the anti-carpet movement. A fellow blogger named Jim H. wrote a most sophisticated article entitled a dangerous game he presented a picture in which default would lead to a decline in international trust in the U.S. bond market which he said would lead to high interest rates and lower paybacks for our government. This would be the exact outcome that the republicans are trying to avoid. I thought this article was pretty good you should check it out. Strangly I come across very little in defense of the government shut down from any the sites political sites I frequent, even from free market types. Mark Thornton of the Van Mises Institute called both parties irresponsible, and pointed out that with out real structural change the shut down will actually do very little for the national debt and the inflation problem. What I haven't heard from any mainstream media sources is just how strange it is that we should have to go into debt to print money in the first place. So long as we continue to print money on loan we will always have to raise the debt sealing and inflation will continue to swallow your bank account.
My solution to all this is simple, if it's alright for them to print money, (supposedly with no threat of inflation, or any other such consequents) then it should be alright for me too. They should raise my debt sealing, and let me print legal tender in my garage. That way I can pay my acupuncturist. Now that's what I call a progressive health care program. (I don't actually recommend any of you do this, "counterfeiting" is very dangers sport).
All in all, if we have to have a national debt and subsequent inflation we might as well have good health care while we're at it. I hope as this all continues to unfold more states will consider a public option like the one in Vermont. This would prevent insurance companies from doing the same thing the banks are doing, controling rates through the elicitation of state force, and draining our system to fill their own pockets.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Sunday, September 29, 2013
How I'm doing? + Oneohtrix Point Never.
Emerging habits I've noticed in myself: I have been more socially involved. I've been drawn to old friends, some I hadn't seen sense high school, and my social circles are diversifying, each day I hang out with a different group of friends. I often feel quietness in my nasal cavity, stillness that indicates to me that my resolve is strengthening. I'm talking more. I've been acting as a passive instigator in group projects. I'm learning welding with some friends, some new and some old. I've been taking night shifts again and finding enjoyment in the solitude. I've been on the hunt for new music to listen to, and have been finding myself enjoying things I previously wouldn't have, as well as reconnecting with long abandoned aesthetic preferences. I’ve been experimenting with dance rhythms on my guitar. I've been painting portraits of imagined faces, and potting my more ambitious metaphysically inspired projects on the back burner, this has proven to be a success each painting is better than the last. I’ve had a cooler approach to people with whom I disagree, it doesn't matter as much to me what they think. I find myself making friendly jokes when I see someone behaving rudely, rather than reprehend them and getting in a petty fight. I find it increasingly easy to state my opinion without care if others share it. I still have a hard time keeping my surroundings, my room and my car, in order. I’ve been more focused on improving the things I do, like music and art. I'm becoming more interested in psychology.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Friday, September 27, 2013
Gilles Deleuze in the Mirror of Nature
My genes come from Finland. I don't really know what that means for my identity. This or that identity is often invisible to the one that embodies it. I see people from other places with their unfamiliar ways and find my self floored, filled with wonder, and jealousy for that something spatial which they possess, whatever it may be; an accent, a sense of poise, a style of thinking, a sentiment, I notices these things are distributed differently in different peoples, and I delite in it. It's so clear to me people carry their terrains with them. Gilles Deleuze wrote a lot about something he called deterritorialization, which is for him the way that travel, (in addition to changing the traveler), also changes the places where the pilgrim arrives. This is because we like any plant or animal or rock formation or cityscape are ourselves environments and part and parcel of the environment. We are environments and when we move we move oneterrain to another--and we put its sentiments into a new context. When I meet someone with a strong connection to their place of origin I find myself deeply attracted to them, (not necessarily in a sexual way) maybe they’re from Tokyo or the Caribbean, Tel Aviv or Bagdad, Ireland or France, the British Isles or the Northern Lights, when I talk to people from other places I feel a new possibility, another land is landing on my shore.We must remember though that it is often a terrorizing thing to have another land port on your shore unexpectedly. There is pain when boundaries are crossed. We must respect eachother. We have to learn from each other our unique modes of patience. Each others sense of signicher and style.
Let’s not forget the first nations of the
It's these encounters with deterritorialization that has finally inspirited me to dig into my own ground, (place of origin), and see what I can unearth and bring to bare on our experence. Because I don't have the means to actually travel, instead I scour the internet through a kind virtual tourism. Along the way I happen upon this very nice collection of Finnish nature paintings, A Mirror of Nature, and I form a link with it. The thing I want ya'll to notice about this collection, beyond the paintings themselves, is the writing, exquisite writing on this site.
I don't know who wrote the descriptions to these paintings but truly, the writing on, A Mirror of Nature, does more than just give us a historical back drop for its paintings, it articulates the affections of the paint and its nature as it moves these beautiful Finnish landscapes through time and space, across the globe, and into our eyes. It makes of the beautiful (historical) Finnish terrain a new conception of ur-place of origin. It shows that writing is importent to painting.
In a sense our place of origin is each other, because we are remade each moment, but we are made of what we bring to each other.
A Mirror of Nature.
An Excerpt from A Mirror of Nature
Imatra in Winter, 1893Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Finnish, 1865-1931
Oil on canvas, 153 x 194 cm
Ateneum Art Museum, A I 576
The Imatra rapids were Finland's best-known tourist attraction in the 19th century. Russians in particular came in droves from St Petersburg to wonder at the untamed force of the waters. The rapids had already been harnessed for generating electricity at the time, and the power company invited Gallen-Kallela, Albert Edelfelt and Louis Sparre to photograph, draw and paint the rapids in the coldest month of the year, when the contrast between the freely flowing water and the frozen natural environment around it would be greatest. Gallen-Kallela created several images for publicity purposes. The large Imatra in Winter is full of drama and Romantic admiration for natural forces. The encounter of frost and thaw creates a rippling in the air that is conveyed skilfully and naturally, and there is a wealth of detail. The bridge spanning the rapids in the background is an almost inconspicuous reminder of how, here too, Man has tamed nature.
TOPS (Hosted Media)
TOPS is a band.
Love TOPS.
TOPS is Love.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Conceptual Personae: Francois Laruelle and creativity
Francois Laruelle says poverty is inspiration, not for prosperity but for creativity. Out of all the things
Poverty inspirers prosperity is the least interesting and the least useful. This is a weapon in his arsenal
which he welds agents Alein Badiou's usurpation of the vital resource of creativity.
Bourgeoisie bull shit or the bed rock of a new economy of the starving artist? You decide.
Aesthetics: Wabi-sabi.
Wabi-Sabi: the Japanese aesthetic principle which means, a perceiving of the sad/sweet beauty
of time passing.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Religions of the world: Shinto. (Hosted Media)
In my last post I presented the ideas of media analyst Marshall McLuhan. In that post I related his fames proclamation, "the medium is the message" to an animist world view. As a fallow up, I thought it be nice to present a documentary on an ancient Japanese animist religion, Shintoism.
Sonic Youth - Small Flowers Crack Concrete
Friday, September 20, 2013
Conceptual Personae: Exploring the Peculiar Style of Marshall McLuhan.
Eleven
years ago I watched a documentary on the IFC broadcasting network that absolutely
blew my mind.
fiction
utopia we had long been promised, that is that the technology that surrounds
daily life were returned to their original splendor, as relics of the future. I
remember reading passages like, "The instance of the electric light may
prove illuminating in this connection. The electric light is pure
information." And not knowing at all what it meant, but feeling like it
was some kind of sacred knowledge that if I could understand would open up new
worlds for me. I thought, what a wonderful couple of sentences! The bulb flickered
in my head, I was encountering a whole new world of ideas. But I didn't
understand them, it took years for me to begin to understand them, but I
enjoyed them. The effect of watching an interview with McLuhan or reading his
work is similar to watching a vintage sci-fi movie, all this weird jargon
flying at you at a million miles per second, and soon realizing that each word is
drenched with meaning, that the crew understands the orders. It's a fun
experience when you really get into it.
"Instead, it is more feasible to "present" TV as a
comples Gestalt of data gathered almost at random."
McLuhan really is alien when being interviewed, the interviewer will ask him
a seemingly strait foreword question like... well... I'm thinking of one lady,
(not really an interviewer exactly) from a live studio audience asked him, (so
smartly), "I would like to ask him(McLuhan) if he would agree with that
nuclear energy represents; mass suicide, the ultimate expression of the death
wish, or more in line with his terminology the last ditch fight to the death of
the left hemisphere world of the military industrial complex(...)I'm curious to
know how he expects they are going to lose."(check out 7:39) McLuhan
responded in characteristic "coded" fashion, "...But
the...hu...main development in these electric media is the loss of privet
identity, mass man means man as related to all other men simultaneously, so
that the nuclear world is a kind of rip off as far as privet identity and
privet values and goals are concerned(...) and ha...just how that relates to
the atom bomb, and so on, would take a little while to develop." He went
on to say that the patterns can be discerned. McLuhan wasn't trying to evade
the question here. Basically he's revealing his method. McLuhan studied
mid-evil literature in grad school, part of his approach to analyses is to
examine the roots of the words that make up a concept, this is a very old
method, but McLuhan applies it to modern technology. It's kind of like he
answered, personal creativity is being hijacked for the ends of mass
destruction, and, well…I don’t know…we could go on a million tangents. The
point is that, part of what makes McLuhan so awesome is that he can deal with
real world social problems as if he's a technician of the Starship Enterprise.
In his chapter on radio in Understanding media he said that if TV where
invented before 1933 Hitler would have never come to power and WWII would have
never happened, because he would have been shown for the raving lunatic he was. If it seems like McLuhan didn't care about nuclear threat, this
wasn't the case, Marshall McLuhan’s stated scholarly interest was to prepare
people for the extreme effects of technology. It's just that the level of
awareness that this requires is far deeper then saying the left hemisphere of
the brain is going to destroy the world. McLuhan seeks to understand how
technology works in a larger context. Some times his context is so far out
that it seems like he's missed the whole point, but bar with him he eventually
ties it all together. McLuhan is cool because he is an alien. He's here to help
us.
One way to understand a thinker like Marshall McLuhan is to take some of his
concepts and explain them until they start to connect into a larger vision.
McLuhan's most fames concept is, the medium is the message, some of his other
concepts include, the global village, hot and cool media, Affect (something
that was later pick up by Gilles
Deleuze), and figure and a ground, put
all together these concepts make up a vision of the world in which technology
comes alive and begins to take an active and not just a passive role in our
lives.
In this sense McLuhan wasn't only a mystic but also an existentialist, the
media is the message, means the same as "existence
precedes essence," but as applied to a thing (in-itself) and not just
a people(for-itself). People always used to ask McLuhan, "The medium is
the message; does that mean the content isn't important, to what is be
conveyed?" To this McLuhan would usually say that each media will tend
toward a different content, but that's not the thing to focus on, it's what these
things do to us, that we should analyze. This begins to explain why he sounded
so alien, it's because he wasn't looking at these things like a person would,
he was looking at it the why we might look at an ant hill, or a bee hive, he
was looking at things from a distance. This is way when people would ask him
about his perspective he would say he had none, he would say he was being objective.
In a sense he must have known the difficulties of a claim to objectivity in
this regard, but he had a point in insisting on it. The point as McLuhan would
say is not to get hung up. He was engaged in observation, just like a
biologist. He certainly would have been familiar with the primacy of
subjectivity in the work of "other existentialist" like Jean-Paul
Sartre, he made reference to them quite often. He just wants to
stress a sense of dis-interestedness in observation.
One of his main concepts, Figure/ground, was lifted from the work of Gestalt Therapist like Fritz and
Laura
Perls. For McLuhan the way to understand the essence of a medium is to
analyze the effects it has on the wider environment. Perhaps this confused a
lot of people because we're used to hearing about the environment in a
different way. We usually use it to refer to plants and animals, but when McLuhan
uses it he means something more basic, he means our surroundings, but what he
wants to avoid is to think of the ground or environment as a back drop of a
play. He says, "all the world is a sage" instead of a stage. McLuhan
understands a figure through its ground, and a medium through its affects,
that’s part of what he means by, the medium is the message. You don't
understand a medium like TV or a car until you analyze its effect on its
surroundings or environment, the first generation to grow up after the advent
of TV was less eager, (like a paper boy might be) more laid back, more
gestural, less emphatic, you know that greaser thing. When the car was first
invented "city slickers" would take it out for a country drive, later
under the influence of TV They decided they could just move away altogether.
So what's the big deal? Why
should we care if the medium is the message, or the message is the message, or
a medium is just something to hold something else? Isn't it in a way obvious that
the experience of listening to the radio is different from watching TV, even if
it were the same program being broadcast? Well yeah, that’s great if that is
obvious, but what fallows from this observation might not be so obvious. The
implication is that the things we use have a kind of power aside from what we
bring to them. This is a radically different kind of perspective from the one
that see's matter as inert, or dead. McLuhan’s view of the world is one in
which the things of this world have a life of their own. McLuhan is in a very
real sense a modern animist. Animism is a world view in which physical
entities—including animals, plants, and inanimate objects possess
spiritual power.
As a modern animist McLuhan
can help us understand a world view that humans have held for the vast
majority of our existence on this planet. In a way though, according to
McLuhan’s own philosophy he doesn’t really need to teach us this, because the
technology will eventually teach us this, any way. Each technology teaches us
about the environment it creates. What McLuhan is really trying to teach us is
how to stay vigilant, so that these new technological circumstances don’t catch
us off guard. In a sense McLuhan’s project is similar to the psychologist Carl Jung who analyses myths and dreams in
order to uncover the subconscious forces that disrupts modern life. This new
world, ever more animated by things then ever, is part of what McLuhan means by
the global village. It's often been pointed out that technology will bring us
together, but what a lot of people miss about the Global Village is that it’s a
place where inanimate things become animated, where the tools of man become
caricatures in a vast cosmic drama, a new epoch where the world once again
becomes enchanted by Angles and Demons, messages and mediums.
A prominent student of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, was
once asked if there were a mythic tail that could illuminate the struggles of
our own time, to which Campbell replied,
technological development is moving too fast for such a story to be told just
yet, it would be out of date before it could shine its light on our ever
changing social environment--(or
something to that effect), maybe though we do have such a myth, one that stands
high enough to illuminate the hidden mysteries of our ever changing times. Many
have referred to McLuhan as a prophet, for his anticipation of the decline of traditional forms of literacy and the increases of globalized connectedness, maybe the secret of his prophetic power
lies in his discovery of this new kind of story. Perhaps The Extensions of
Man is the myth
of our time. The Cosmic story that shines a light on our on going struggle with Being.
Extra Link:
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, By Marshal McLuhan.
Daniel Coffeen’s teachings on the work of Marshal McLuhan.
On truth and Lies: Jessica Berry on the partially examined life Show (Hosted Media).
Partially examined life Show: Episode 61: Nietzsche on Truth and Skepticism.
Notice that Jessica Berry totally kicks ass.
Read along with the conversation and make up your mind about, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
On truth and Lies: The Daniel Coffeen lectures.(Hosted Media)
Daniel Coffeen teaching, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
List of smarties that talk about new-imperialism.
This list of critics of neo-imperialism is in no way complete.
- Vladimir Lenin
- Kwame Nkrumah
- Noam Chomsky
- Louis Althusser
- Edward W. Saïd
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Ché Guevara
- Jeffrey Sachs
Doo-Bop from wikipedia: Miles Davis.
I thought this wikipedia entery was fun to read. What an amazing man this Miles Davis.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doo-Bop was jazz musician Miles Davis' final studio album, which would have marked the beginning of his turn to hip-hop-oriented ("Doo-Bop being a portmanteau of "doo-wop" and "be-bop"[2]) tracks. However, Davis died on September 28, 1991, at which time only six pieces for the album had been completed.[3] To finish off the album, producer Easy Mo Bee was asked to take some of the unreleased trumpet performances (stemming from what Davis called the RubberBand Session), and build tracks that Miles 'would have loved' around the recordings. The album's posthumous tracks (as stated in the liner notes) are "High Speed Chase" and "Fantasy". A reprise of the song "Mystery" rounded out the album's nine-track length.[1]
The project stemmed from Davis sitting in his New York apartment in the summer with the windows open, listening to the sound of the streets. He wanted to record an album of music that captured these sounds. In early 1991, Davis called up his friend Russell Simmons and asked him to find some young producers who could help create this kind of music, leading to Davis' collaboration with Easy Mo Bee, his last, the result of which, Doo-Bop, was released by Warner Bros. Records on June 30, 1992, to mixed reviews. The album won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance.[4]
22 years earler he recorded, In a Silent Way.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Imperialist Economics 101
Under a fractional reserve monetery system: inflation causes prices to swallow savings, and deflation causes defaults. Both are bad. The reason for this is that in a fractional reserve system debt is always larger than the money available to pay that debt. This means that if the banks don’t continue to expand the money supply people will default and if they do continue to expand the money supply then prices will rise, and swallow up the savings. (It is important to note that this wouldn't happen in a full reserve system, because a full reserve system means that debt is never larger then amount of money available to pay that debt.When fractional reserve is done to other countries most smart people called it neo-imperialism, when the Fed does it here they call it Keynesianism or progressivism.
Robert Hass's poem, Ezra Pound's Proposition, is rather stunning in the way it presents the invisible connections between International finance and prostitution.
Robert Hass:
Ezra Pound's Proposition
from Vol. 36 No. 5
Beauty is sexuality, and sexuality
is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics. Though he is no recommendation
For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night. Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,
"How about a party, big guy?"
Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way
To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam’s great turbine, beautifully tooled
In Lund or Dresden or Detriot, financed
by Lazard Freres in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Fransisco
or Halliburton in Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.
is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics. Though he is no recommendation
For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night. Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,
"How about a party, big guy?"
Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way
To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam’s great turbine, beautifully tooled
In Lund or Dresden or Detriot, financed
by Lazard Freres in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Fransisco
or Halliburton in Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.
Occupy Wall Street revisited: ideas in conflict.
Don't forget the dream of occupy walls street: to make a
true alliance against the two main modes of empire; the Corporation, and the State. Most people are starting to understand that these two things are linked, but It seems that very few people understand the impossibility of corporate
power apart from the state. The State is the monopoly of force. The corporation
is a legal entity contracted, sustained, and defended by the State. Who does Black Water call when it's systems get hacked? One of the
major pit falls of the ill faited occupy Wall Street, in my opinion, was its
unwillingness to address the role of progressivism in the very formation of the
Corporation. The Corporation as we know it today arose from the kinds of
public works programs and progressivist policies one sees in F.D.R.'s New Deal. The corporate charter was penned in order to lower the burden (responsibility) of corporations
so that they could produce more jobs for the working class. But it wasn't just
the progressivis that refused to see the pit falls of there ideology, the Libertarian
wing of the movement had even harder internal conflicts to deal with.
How progressive are the interment camps?
No Doubt the Progessivist wing had a few blind spots, but they weren't the only ones protesting wall Street. It was Libertarians like Peter Schiff and Ron Paul, who most accurately predicted
both the coase and the nature of the 2007 finical crises, but alas, they where unable to reach
out to the people hardest hit by the crises, because of their opposition to the kind of
government ad that this population has come to depend on, larglely do to sustemic problems with both wings of politics. Thus came the re-emergence of Marxism in the occupy movment.
No Doubt Marxism is sexy, although I fail to see how 1x1=1 could salve the real world problems we find our selves in today. I do owe a debt of gratitude to Marx for
inspiring a number of my own direct influences; Guy Debord, and Herbert Marcuse to
name a few--"Zizek will put you in gulag!"...[[one of the most glaring, yet unanounced, conflicts
between Zizek and the occupy wall street movement is Zizek's concept of the "Big
other." For Zizek the "Big other" is an imagened conspiracy that limits
our ability to enjoy pleaser, the 1% is an example of the "Big other"
only for occupers the 1% is real. This aperint contradiction with the movment didn't stop Zizek from capitalizing
on the movement though.]] It was occupy Wall Street that got me seeking out
these Marxist types. There is a lot of veriety in Maxist thinking. But really, what does a credit bubble have to do with labor value?
It does, albeit in an indirect way, the Fed prints money to keep pace with the
debt they make possible, which leads to inflation, which widens the gap between
wages and the cost of living, which increases the working classes dependence on
credit, starting the whole process over again. Each time this process is repeated
the working class gets more in debt to the "capitalists.” See Richard Wolf,When Capitalism hit the Fan, for a more detailed alyises. Richard Wolf thought he came up with a radical new
theory, What he doesn't seem to realize is his thoery depends on the kind of credit critique that
was pioneered by the Austrian school economists like, Friedrich August Hayek,
and Murray Rothbard. Marx doesn’t address the calculation issue, which is the core
problem of bubbles, overproduction is one of the major contributors to bubbals.
One way that Marxism could solve this problem is by putting the power of
"market" planning in the hands of the consumers themselves, and sense
workers are also consumers this could be done at the factory level. Worker counsels
that make only what they need, pace Guy Debored, and/or anarcho-syndicalism.
But that’s not really what the current wave of Marxists like Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou are calling for,
those guys are Trotskyite globalists that just want to incress global codependency. In
the end the issues that divided all these groups to begin with proved to be insurmountable
to make a true opposition to the status-quo, and the open form made space for
all manner of washed up old ideology. In the process of examining all these
political philosophies I've come to realize something though. The State is primarily
concerned with controlling the means of production, in our case the State has
handed over that control to the Corporations, through land grants, production
contracts, legal immunity, money laundering privilege, I couldn't list all the ways the government makes corporate corruption possible. We can't forget that
this handing over is no lose to the State its self, the State and the Corporation
are made up of the same people, the Corporation is powerless without the State
and the State is even more powerful with the Corporation as a mechanism of manipulation
and rescores extraction. Government services, the benevolent arm of the State,
is just a way to keep its host alive while it sucks its vital life blood. The
means of production, and the land it is made from, does not belong to the Government.
It belongs to the people, and the plants and animals that inhabit it. It is only
though a monopoly of force, and contral of vital resources that the Government is able to
continue its false pretense of benevolence. This is the same strategy the Empire
uses to conquer other countries through the faults pretense of nation building, foreign ad, and (predatory) lending.
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