Polanyi and Traffic (on grids)
Polanyi
Karl Polanyi, in his book The Great Transformation, said essentially that the so-called self-regulating market, far from being spontaneous or flexible, is only maintained by a despotic grid of money and politics – a Weberian colossus without which the entire social edifice of this so-called “free” system would fall into chaos.
Polanyi said that economics is submerged, or embedded – in all social forms – in social relationships; that people were not driven by and large by self-interest in the pure, “rational actor,” acquisitive sense, but that they strive to safeguard their social standing.
Traffic
You are driving in traffic. This is a near-perfect metaphor for an existence lived on the Mono-Grid. More than a metaphor, it is literally the experience of following lines along a grid, with every move directed and monitored by signs and signals and laws.
Everyone in that traffic is moving with some purpose in mind. In their lives, they are either accumulating to safeguard their social standing, or they are trying to keep up in the traffic of their lives – endebted, always behind, driven – again, to safeguard their social standing.
The thing is, on the Mono-Grid, these are the only choices. Accumulate or struggle to keep up. Either way you are on (or in?) the grid. In neither way are you off the grid.
Curt:
On the average from the time of our birth until we are about 20 give or take a couple years we are supported by are parents. Then we go in to debt to establish ourselves in a job or profession. We spend a few years paying back our debts trying to have some fun and save some money to buy a house and start our own family. Around the age of 30 give or atake a few years we have 2 or 3 kids. Then for the next 20 years we are then saving a lot less money than we would have had we remained childless. That puts us near the age of 60 before we can sart socking away some money for our old age. That is a decade at most. Not much time to save a lot of money. If we are lucky and all of children reached adult hood and did not end up in prison or end up becoming addicted to something our children may be able to give us a helping hand. But wait a second from the day that you reached 40 your own parents were reaching retirement age. In some cases they may have been lucky and be able to help pay your kids college but in other cases the parents will be yet another cost for those with older children.
9 April 2012, 3:19 pmSo where would many families be today if it were not for medicare? Right wing politicians like to villify welfare reciptians but my understanding or social security and medicare is that if most people totaled up their life time contributions they will have recieved more in benifits than they paid in.
I ask myself now why bother to try to save any money at all for old age. We do not know if we will die in our 66th year or our 76th year or our 96th year. In 80% of cases the first sign of heart desease is sudden death. Will we be able to check out with out ever seeing the inside of a rest home or will we need nursing care for a decade before we check out. In the second case there is no way that most normal people could ever hope to save enoughj money to cover those costs unless one thinks that it is the doctors, lawyers and airplane pilots that are the normal people.
Of course those who managed to make a career in the military will be taken care of at societies expense for protecting us from imaginary threats, or threats that they created. The high ranking commissioned officers reaaly need that help as they went from the military to a defense contractor or to a government GS position all with their own pension plans.
Maybe some stock brokers or Real estate agents will have portfolios that make a retired Colonels pension from the military and Boeing look small.
I know that Milton Friedman said that there is no correct savings rate for a national economy. I some had thought that there was a correct savings rate for a family budget. I now have serious doubts about that. It now appears to me that most wealth is the result of harnessing hydrocarbon power
and government policies that allow some people to prosper more than others.
It seems to me at the moment that a national and world economy is such a complex thing that balancing government policies to a point that people will not be victims or victimizers seems like and extraordinarily hard thing to do.
All of these thoughts have come about becaause a few months ago I asked myself the question what does it mean for a middle class perosn to lead a financially responsible life. The answer that I come up with is that it is not possible to lead such a life unless you are wealthy. I think that when
a family has the income of two high achieving individuals and only a few children they can honestly accumulate some wealth without directly exploiting others. If they lived in a country like Montenegro or Nepal or Uruguay or Kenya they may even be part of a system that does not gain wealth through
exploitation. But that same couple in the USA would be wealthier because of exploitation. Whether they should have any shame about that or not I think depends on which industries that they work in.
Curt:
for truth in advertising i should mention that i never did figure out how to solve the rubicks cube. I always got frustrated and gave up.
9 April 2012, 3:38 pmBob Luzern HS class of 78 can verify that. smart people can identify all the variables of a problem and their relationships to each other.
Henry:
…a recent study that looks at corporations. The study shows that a small number of financial institutions basically controls the overwhelming majority of transnational corporations (TNCs). To be precise “only 737 top holders accumulate 80% of the control over the value of all TNCs.” These, mostly financial, institutions “are at least in the position to exert considerable control, either formally (e.g., voting in shareholder and board meetings) or via informal negotiations,” still according to the same paper.
How many Chinese groups are part of these elite institutions? Well below the list of the top 20.
1. BARCLAYS PLC (UK)
2 CAPITAL GROUP COMPANIES INC (US)
3 FMR CORP (US)
4 AXA (France)
5 STATE STREET CORPORATION (US)
6 JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (US)
7 LEGAL & GENERAL GROUP PLC (UK)
8 VANGUARD GROUP, INC. (US)
9 UBS AG (Switzerland)
10 MERRILL LYNCH & CO., INC. (US)
11 WELLINGTON MANAGEMENT CO. L.L.P. (US)
12 DEUTSCHE BANK AG (Germany)
13 FRANKLIN RESOURCES, INC. (US)
14 CREDIT SUISSE GROUP (Switzerland)
15 WALTON ENTERPRISES LLC (US)
16 BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CORP. (US)
17 NATIXIS (France)
18 GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC., (US)
19 T. ROWE PRICE GROUP, INC. (US)
20 LEGG MASON, INC. (US)
The first Chinese corporation is at number 50, the China Petrochemical Group, a resource based State firm. Oh yes, the evil giant vampire-squid is only number 18, but it is on the list. The Chinese economy, like the economies of almost any peripheral country, is partly owned and managed by a network of firms that are fundamentally from developed countries (in the top 20 above, from the US, the UK, France, Germany and Switzerland). The reverse, that is Chinese control of firms in developed countries, is minimal.
http://nakedkeynesianism.blogspot.com.ar/2011/05/collapse-of-dollar.html
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The study referenced above is here:
The Network of Global Corporate Control
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025995#abstract0
9 April 2012, 4:16 pmHenry:
Superb article by Chuck Spinney. He also posts Naomi Wolf’s important article, “Sexual Humiliation, a Tool to Control the Masses.”
————–
Goodbye Occupy: Political Engineering the Police State
The politics of fear in insecurity are now the staple of American politics. They were used habitually during the Cold War to create powerful vested interests in a permanent war economy. These interests are clearly reflected in the pattern of political practices of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) that maintains and increases the flux of money flowing through the MICC. It is this flux that gives the MICC its form and vitality.
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.mx/
9 April 2012, 4:21 pmStan:
Polanyi would probably recognize the current IMF/World Bank/WTO consortium as the highest regulatory edifice, the place where politics and high finance directly make policy together with no pretense of middlemen.
What he also said was that all economies are “embedded.” All of them operate from within social relations and social standing. What has happened, with the commodification of three non-commodities (land, labor, and money — surely sex, too – but this is Polanyi), is that exchange has come to suffocate all other forms of economy (he cites reciprocal and redistributive — yet we could also add, maybe, gift). The hegemony of money in an exchange-dominated economy (which we have seen requires the Weberian Beast to make free choices the correct free choices) disembeds economy from local social relations, and re-embeds economy in distant ones where your social standing is only as clear as your ability to acquire and spend money.
The second idea, about traffic, is less clear; and I guess I’m soliciting thoughts. Underslept, maybe.
9 April 2012, 5:07 pmStan:
Spinney is voicing something I’ve been thinking, too… perhaps not with as much worry as others, but with some worry nonetheless. Population control tactics are being refined to contain the efficacy of public demonstrations, which Occupy has made its staple.
It relates to my second concern about grid entrapment, too. The reality is that demonstrations like those Occupy did are every effective in the beginning to draw attention to a problem; but over time they lose their appeal and efficacy anyway. The best follow-up for a demonstration is not just another demonstration. It becomes more and more just background noise over time; it keeps those people who are demonstrating on a constant war footing – with its difficult logistics; and (as we are seeing) it gives the authorities time to study, analyze, and develop more and more effective counter-measures.
Lots of leftists will say the follow-up is strategic, finding some way to exploit enemy weakness and disadvantages, organizing direct political struggles, adopting strategies. Good luck with that, I say. I’ll be prayin’ for ya. Their game in their house; and far as I can tell, the house always wins in the end.
Same stuff I said in the million gardens piece, really. You can’t defend Zuccotti Park as easily as you can defend a million gardens, or whatever other local transition/transformation work. Sometimes after facing the adversary, it might be wise to leave the adversary on high alert while you drift away and do something quiet. Changes the game, too – because it becomes your game… and you can’t be portrayed as a heavy.
9 April 2012, 5:19 pmMichael Anderson:
Stan, your comment about the best followup for a demonstration is well-taken.
I recently received an email from the Anonymous “collective”. I have the somewhat ironic honor of being a STRATFOR subscriber (under the philosophy of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”) whose email info was hacked in December by Anonymous. They are advocating and advertising huge demonstrations at the Houses of Parliament in the UK and @ The Capitol in DC on respective Veteran’s days in November. There is a video on the site, extremely well produced, with nice EFX of Big Ben blowing up and the Tower of London falling. I think this is definitely a setup for massive police and military retaliation, as described by Spinney and Wolf.
10 April 2012, 8:49 amSam:
Yasha Levine: Recovered Economic History – “Everyone But an Idiot Knows That The Lower Classes Must Be Kept Poor, or They Will Never Be Industrious”
Our popular economic wisdom says that capitalism equals freedom and free societies, right? Well, if you ever suspected that the logic is full of shit, then I’d recommend checking a book called The Invention of Capitalism, written by an economic historian named Michael Perelmen, who’s been exiled to Chico State, a redneck college in rural California, for his lack of freemarket friendliness. And Perelman has been putting his time in exile to damn good use, digging deep into the works and correspondence of Adam Smith and his contemporaries to write a history of the creation of capitalism that goes beyond superficial The Wealth of Nations fairy tale and straight to the source, allowing you to read the early capitalists, economists, philosophers, clergymen and statesmen in their own words. And it ain’t pretty.
The rest:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/yasha-levine-recovered-economic-history-everyone-but-an-idiot-knows-that-the-lower-classes-must-be-kept-poor-or-they-will-never-be-industrious.html
10 April 2012, 4:48 pmStan:
I don’t even want to get started on the incredible danger imposed on Occupy and related initiatives of – pardon me – macho shitheads (I love you macho shitheads, because I must, but until you stop doing that dumb, immature, irresponsible stuff, well… you are what you do) with their calls to violence or employment thereof. Aside from the real problems associated with keeping a high-maintenance, direct action campaign going for any length of time with NO resistance from authorities, and aside from the fact that the authorities have been able to gauge very well – for the most part – how much mayhem they can get away with to disrupt Occupy’s direct action campaigns, aside from all that, there is a very real danger that young (overwhelmingly male) adventurists – who invariably attract a retinue of undercover cops – will give the authorities far more leeway with far less public scrutiny or resistance. Kind of a trimple-whammy if you ask me.
Haven’t read it, Sam, tho it looks interesting.
The two subjects – Polanyi and traffic – seem to suggest something about the dilemma of institutions. We been over that here bunches… Dunbar, covenantal versus contractual relations, strong bond versus weak bonds, the layering of ‘management’ over larger and larger polities — the dog waggery, the inhering corruptibility of the Weberian management game, on and on. At the same time, administration, management, and governance by managers, seem to be very durable and persistent features of society… I seriously doubt any of us will ever see the end of institutional management, of institutions (which are also beneficial when they are authentic carriers of some traditions – there are self-policing associations of chess players and sailors and archers and rugby players, etc etc etc, who are custodians of certain standards of excellence.
So if I am right (I’d love to not be on this one) that the Grid as we know it is stable and strong – in large part because it has been successful at making us 100% dependent on it; then how do we get out of the traffic (the dilemma of living in a monetized world, where there is only one choice (to run after money, using the Grid) that has two outcomes – you either accumulate (often out of fear about the future) or you run to catch up. It is actually like being in a traffic jam – where the flow of traffic is what it is, and you accelerate and brake your way forward (like these are choices).
It’s late. Just trying to frame some question about institutions, or maybe that’s not the best word… and what are some ways to reduce our dependency on them, even as we continue to live both on and off the Grid. I lean to the ark strategy – channeling Mike Davis here – where small subsistence communities act as arks not just for survival, but as safe havens for a counterculture that grows and spreads in the interstices of an imperium in gradual but certain decay.
10 April 2012, 8:41 pmMichael Anderson:
…and when you travel, don’t travel on the strong grid, if you can help it. Travel as close to NO grid as you can. with your informal networks…
11 April 2012, 12:53 amSam:
Here’s a pdf of “The Invention of Capitalism.”
http://mir.cr/WM0IU9ZU
11 April 2012, 2:44 amCurt:
“Everyone but an idiot knows that the poor must be kept poor or they will never be industious”
11 April 2012, 10:27 amCould that actually be more enlightened than we want to believe. I never lived in the east bloc but a common perception among some people in the USA was that it did not work because when people were guaranteed security they did not want to work. I think to better explain this perception it was that a person might understand that for the system to work work needed to be done but that it would get done by someone else. I believed in this perception in the 1980s. Now I would say that such views were at least partly the result of propoganda. PARTLY!! Would I say today that collective laziness was responsible for the fall of the USSR? I would say that it is plausible that collective laziness might have had something to do with it. Of course the Russians and the Ukrainians and the the Kazaks and so on are in a better position to answer the question, or refute the charge if you perfer to see it that way.
My view of human nature is that people are basically lazy, unless they have something like fear to motivate them not to be lazy. Lazy is good becasue when we are lazy we do not burn up much oxygen let alone anything else. Is it in the good book anywhere that faith is needed to over come fear? If it does say that the good book is stupid. It should say something along the lines that faith should balance fear not over come it. Maybe it really does say that if you read everything in context.
Bittu:
Easier link to the Pdf of “Invention Of Capitalism”.
http://libcom.org/files/The%20Invention%20of%20Capitalism.pdf
11 April 2012, 12:49 pmMichael Anderson:
@ Sam…thanks for the link. This is a much easier read (for me) than Marx’s tortured 19th century academic German! And, BTW, it is reinforcing opinions already held (over on the Sex Power Agency topic). PMV will flourish in any primitive accumulation environment. Sorry….
I would wager that students who study for a business career are exposed to much more of the “hidden” philosophy espoused by Smith, Bentham, et al, mentioned thus far in the book.
@ Curt: from the FS Memebar (I save these quotes…they have led me down many paths of discovery):
If ‘conspicuous consumption’ was the badge of a rising middle class, ‘conspicuous loafing’ is the hostile gesture of a tired working class.
11 April 2012, 1:52 pmDaniel Bell
Curt:
Michael A.
11 April 2012, 3:47 pmThere have been days that I have just sat here and kept hitting the refresh button just to read the quotes as they changed:)
m.c.:
hey, Chico State isn’t a redneck college…. don’t be a snob…?
There’s a fine beer brewery there in town.
11 April 2012, 4:28 pmSam:
@m.c.
Don’t shoot the messenger
Just citing the article over at Naked Capitalism. I should have put it in quotes.
12 April 2012, 4:02 pmSam:
Marx and Engels and “Small Is Beautiful”
http://monthlyreview.org/2012/02/01/marx-and-engels-and-small-is-beautiful
12 April 2012, 4:25 pmStan:
I was one of those marxists who pointed out the ecological insights – remarkable for their day – of the more mature pair of thinkers. They have, however, been dead for quite some time; and many more people have gained many more insights, a lot of stuff that was not even accessible through certain doctrinaire filters. There is a kind of leap over some essential step that seems to disallow marxists from seeing not only the philosophical advantages of relocalization and its account of the current state of the relationship between ecology, personhood, and culture… but the material and TACTICAL advantages of relocalization as a political practice. I think that is because marxists still believe in their heart of hearts that centralization is necessary (and in a bit of magical thinking, that if centralization is necessary for X, then a centralized strategy is the only way to get there). There is a strong liberal-like tendency to see homogenization and conformity as the keys to a harmonious future. That’s what those fantasies called ‘programs’ reflect.
12 April 2012, 8:41 pmJosiah:
Stan, your critique of Marxism is fascinating, and (I think) thought-provoking for many people who have seen similar flaws in it, while clinging on as a last bulwark against the neoliberal ideological onslaught. Regarding ecological issues, I know that even before the U.S.S.R. collapsed, folks like Jim O’Connor were talking about “eco-socialism,” arguing that even though “actually existing” state socialism was repressive and bureaucratic, socialism was still a desirable banner to rally behind because capitalism would ultimately outstrip the earth’s carrying capacity. In retrospect, it’s easy to see them as opportunistically using the “eco-” prefix to revivify an increasingly defunct political program with appeals to the looming threats of nuclear disaster and global warming (etc.) since the 1980s.
But (as you simply, in your “heart of hearts” phrase) many “eco-socialists” like Chris Harman, John Bellamy Foster and others write as if it were still possible for a mass movement with democratic yet socialist values to capture state power and institute some kind of ecologically sustainable regime of production and consumption on a global scale to save us.
Now, I must confess that I find this vision, on the one hand, academic, unrealistic and utopian; but, on the other, compelling when I think of what climate science is telling us. When you look at some of the things people like James Hansen are saying (along with people who look at forests, oceans, or agriculture), it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the global corporate industrial-capitalist machine isn’t driving us all toward the extinction of life on earth. Some of the scenarios for runaway global warming, if carbon emissions continue to increase, are no less nightmarish than the nuclear winter scenarios of decades past.
While I sympathize with the skepticism of those who point to other motives behind climate alarmism (and Big Science has been wrong about plenty) I fear that the climate alarmists are right. The situation seems more like the tobacco-lung cancer link than eugenics, neurasthenia, or other disastrously faulty pseudoscientific paradigms. I fear it’s terribly real.
Given all that, the question remains: what the hell do we do? I utterly sympathize with the idea that “capturing the state” in the U.S. at this historical juncture for the purposes of social justice and ecological sustainability is laughably naive and utopian. But what worries me about the arguments I often hear in favor of localization is how they’re pitched in opposition to militant challenges to the state and corporations by mass movements (not entirely what you’re saying, I acknowledge). From the perspective of people losing their landbases in Bangladesh, or already being poisoned by fracking, let alone all the other evils we find anatomized in every pre-existing left platform, it’s hard to see how the status quo is less awful than Nazi Germany.
In some ways, it’s worse, because it’s a less centralized target, and the analogies that Derrick Jensen and others make with this system and the Nazi regime seem misleading for that reason. It’s one thing to assassinate Hitler, or eject the Portuguese from Angola. It’s something else to stop every other American with an S.U.V. and a suburban McMansion from living a way of life they increasingly find a hard time affording, but still buy into ideologically, whatever future generations think.
It’s like we live in a system whose trajectory is so disastrous, and morally offensive, as to suggest the necessity of immediate action aimed at halting its death-march, but which has effectively preempted imaginable challenge. Hence the head-slapping so many of us engage in. And so, while I feel on some level like planting gardens is necessary but not sufficient (and fantasize about the revolution that would change the status quo in fundamental ways), the former is quite believable, and the latter is not.
Sorry for ranting. Just some reflections on your usefully provocative comments, from somebody who sympathizes with your tactically realistic perspective as well as the old dream of revolution.
12 April 2012, 10:48 pmHenry:
Agreed. Relocalization is key; in a sense, given our urban majority, it implies de-urbanization or maybe better, “degridation,” to the extent practicable (think rooftop gardens, etc.), as well as the online proliferation of community groups, which is cyber-localization.
The Marxists are hypnotized by quantity in the mass. Historically,they have thought in terms of “the masses,” which in the last analysis is inhuman, when you think about it. It means conceiving the human being merely as a “worker” (drone), as a replaceable entity, a “proletarian,” in the mass “proletariat.” This is not a humanity, it is an antheap. Humanity comprises an uncountable richness in aptitudes and personality. Notice how industrial machine “progress” implies a progressive reduction to quantity: the human becomes a number: driver’s license, social security, passport, bank accounts, passwords, census, and so on. The modern financial system is essentially a cyber-spreadsheet. Relocalization implies an intention of re-humanization and genuine community, hence a return to qualitative richness and not merey quantitative fragmentation and increase. This allows for real unities and not fake “unifications” (corporate rosters, e pluribus unum) which do violence to human nature and human aspirations and produce conflicts at all levels.
13 April 2012, 12:57 amStan:
The “mass” notion is at bottom a military metaphor. Almost a Napoleonic military metaphor. That speaks somewhat to my belief that asymmetry (also associated with warfighting theory) is the only effective mode of operation for the politically weak. At bottom, I don’t make an argument from efficacy; but it just so happens — in this case, not all cases — that the more virtuous action corresponds to what is also more efficacious.
Local bases, associated through the stronger, more covenantal bonds, are less visible, less immediately threatening (and the Weberian layer around Big Society is capitalist, therefore it has a short, triage-like attention span that seeks the most immediate emerging threats), and far easier to defend (even within existing legal structures!).
And ‘da System’ has dissolved all the former bonds of solidarity afar (an action of money and advancing commoditization). There is no effective basis (except ideological) for mass solidarity. Ideology is not as efficacious or as strong as the relations between friends.
As to Derek Jensen — whose work I admire — I have one big bone to pick with him, and that is his adventurism. It does not automatically follow from his analysis of the gravity of our ecocidal epoch that we answer that grave state with “explosives.” (his word) His fantasy about bombing dams and whatnot are not only infeasible (scientifically – one person cannot blow up a dam), and they not only fail to understand that these kinds of paramilitary actions will force participants to establish their own hierarchical staffs; but he and others assume the unlikely outcome that the eco-damage will be reversed. What will in fact happen is the weight of the whole system – legal, armed, ideological, et al – will come down on these adventurists like the proverbial ton of bricks, and the public will cheer when their heads are offered up as a spectacle. The end result of adventurism will not be damage control, but a hugely strengthened repressive state apparatus with a good deal of popular support.
I have never claimed that all public politics is bad, or that people ought only to attend to the business of relocalization. But right now, the balance between on-the-grid political advocacy and actual redesign of the local built environment is all wrong. We ought to be 80% relocalizing, and 20% selectively doing politics where we might have some actual strengthening effect. A lot of electronic communication venues right now have facilitated people’s ability to engage in one of the most important and effective tactics we have against governments – delegitimizing them. It is harder to prosecute (for now) and far harder to respond to without getting mud-stuck in their own bullshit (further delegitimizing them). If the government (whether it is Bush’s or Obama’s, or X’s) is made into an object of ridicule, it loses a substantial amount of power – that is, actual popular bases. Oddly, people did a good job with Bush – who, admittedly, was hard to satirize – but they’ve given Obama a pass (the right-wing attacks on him are silly and ineffectual [Muslim, socialist], making them the ones who come off like buffoons – whose real objection is his ‘negritude’ – as Fanon might have said).
I guess what I’m thinking is that every day that passes, we could be strengthening ourselves locally, and that every distraction now takes away from this most critical and practical shift. An old organizer from Birmingham, Scott Douglas, once told me, “People think we have to build the community in order to win. Truth is, once you’ve built a real community, you’ve already won.”
13 April 2012, 7:01 amStan:
Postscript – a lot of the bad things that are now happening are unlikely to change soon enough to stop the long-term damage. If we quit pumping carbon into the air, we’d still see climate instability for decades to come, eg. Using the art of the possible, we can do a few things to stall or ameliorate the damage; but the overall prognosis is that the political economy will itself have to falter and fail before many of the worst practices end. The Japanese nuclear meltdown is a bitter taste of the depredations we still have to face (and an example of one of those problems that marxists rightly point out will require some state formation to exercise the long-range custodial responsibility for facilities – even shut-down ones – that contain such dangerous materials.
One thing some relocalizers are doing, however, is trying to preserve biodiversity of many kinds. Seed-saving is a god example, which parallels perhaps the first Benedictine communities, that withdrew support from the imperium to preserve a moral vision and alot of literature through a difficult period between stable epochs. Mike Davis talks about a diffuse strategy of Arks.
More bad things are going to happen, and our world will be diminished by these things. Acceptance is difficult, but it may be something we have to learn in pursuing the art of the possible (locally and otherwise). Otherwise we get caught up again and again with the fantasy of salvation from the Great Leader.
13 April 2012, 7:14 amHenry:
One of the axes of the Marxian argument against capitalism is that it treats labor as a commodity, hence since human beings are not in reality commodities, the result is alienation. Commodification under capitalism is quantification. Under a military it amounts to commodification in the guise of cannon fodder. Military jargon speaks of “massing” troops. Under communism, there is exactly the same mentality: the “masses”, the “workers,” the “proletariat.” In short a mass that is only a quantity, hence a uniformity devoid of qualitative distinctions. In the peripheral species of nature, the qualitative distinctions are largely outward in the widest sense; in humans, who all belong to the same species, the qualitative distinctions are fundamentally inward. Hence the stupidity of reducing men to “material” and to “homo economicus.” The modern mind, worshipper of progress, whether of the left or the right, is fundamentally at odds with the human being. It is basically a spiritual problem that is in question here.
This implies that the fundamental problem is a spiritual one rather than only economic or even political. Capitalism, especially dominated by monopoly capital, is an attack on the human spirit. Obviously, a host of institutional arrangements, with their corresponding human interests, undergird this mentality and the overall thrust of the modern world, which has now just about terminated all qualitative distinctions in human cultures in favor of the “modernity.” This is the result of the generalized quantification of human life.
From a different angle, it could indeed be said that modernism and progressism are essentially a promethean attempt at realizing the impossible. The price for this fundamental unrealism and false idealism will inevitably entail a series of destructions which may very well turn out to be catastrophic.
13 April 2012, 7:21 pmDeAnander:
It’s late and I’m tired, but the thing that popped into my head wrt grids and traffic — as soon as Stan painted the metaphor — was that one can ride one’s bike on the grid intended for cars. It’s not perfect; there are forces militating against cycling in car-centric built environments; but one can use the grid for a purpose other than its design purpose, and one can get away with it, and by doing so realise direct personal benefits (such as exercise, saving money, easing one’s conscience, and bypassing those traffic jams).
So one response to a totalising grid is to make a different use of it; much as one can use the AC wiring in a building to transmit information, turning it into a network of sorts. Or one could reverse this idea by using the standing voltage on a phone company landline to power something that is not a phone… the grid can be seen as an opportunity for repurposing, which is not a big showy revolutionary act like blowing up the grid, nor a complete purist disconnection from the grid, but still in some way defies the intent of the grid’s controllers/designers and so would qualify as mildly subversive, yes? I wonder if there are ways to extend this metaphor into other types of grid.
I don’t know if this is actually an interesting avenue to explore but thought I would toss it out there as another possible way of relating to a hegemonic grid: ride yer bike on it. I am thinking here also of those clever folks in CA who are grafting fruit-bearing branches onto official ornamental “city trees”, repurposing a bureaucratic grid of decorative, tame plantings into a food source. The grid (the system of centrally-planned, regimented urban plantings) was already there, but they modified it.
14 April 2012, 12:43 amMichael Anderson:
Quotes from “The Invention Of Capitalism” that got my attention (so far):
“Eventually, the technological capacity of the capitalist sector increased
by leaps and bounds, especially with the tapping of the power of fossil
fuels. Even so, some traditional methods of production can be relatively
economical even in modern times. Their relative efficiency must have
been considerably greater during the age of classical political economy.
This insight reinforces the realization that the purpose of enclosures and
other forms of primitive accumulation was not technical. Primitive accumulation
appealed to the ruling classes because it was so effective in
subordinating the working classes.”
“Because time spent in the household economy limits the number
of hours available for wage labor, the tenacious attachment to self-provisioning
eventually becomes inconvenient for employers. Business
had no interest in adapting itself to the rhythms of the agricultural cycle. In
England, for instance, as capitalist farming came to depend more and more
on specialized labor in the middle of the eighteenth century, spinning and
weaving in the cottages was sometimes prohibited lest it interfere with the
supply of agricultural labor (Ashton 1972, 115). As British industrialist
Edmund Ashworth told an early-nineteenth-century economist, Nassau
Senior, ‘‘When a labourer . . . lays down his spade, he renders useless, for
that period, a capital worth eighteen pence. When one of our people leaves
the mill, he renders useless a capital that has cost 100 pounds’’
Must we watch for enclosures, rules, regulations, and a matrix media blitz to self-provisioning as fossil fuels become the province of the rich? Betcha it starts on the Food Network…
16 April 2012, 4:48 pmMichael Anderson:
As I read more and more the writings of these “classical economists”, I find myself wondering what kind of drugs they were taking to be so arrogantly disconnected from reality….too much Ergot mold in their grain?
16 April 2012, 5:01 pmkim sky:
La Commune (de Paris,1871)
The quote below would be another way of saying what you’ve said here, I believe …
Why this film, at this time?
We are now moving through a very bleak period in human history – where the conjunction of Post Modernist cynicism (eliminating humanistic and critical thinking in the education system), sheer greed engendered by the consumer society sweeping many people under its wing, human, economic and environmental catastrophe in the form of globalization, massively increased suffering and exploitation of the people of the so-called Third World, as well as the mind-numbing conformity and standardization caused by the systematic audiovisualization of the planet have synergistically created a world where ethics, morality, human collectivity, and commitment (except to opportunism) are considered “old fashioned.” Where excess and economic exploitation have become the norm – to be taught even to children. In such a world as this, what happened in Paris in the spring of 1871 represented (and still represents) the idea of commitment to a struggle for a better world, and of the need for some form of collective social Utopia – which WE now need as desperately as dying people need plasma. The notion of a film showing this commitment was thus born.
http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/commune.htm
22 April 2012, 11:55 pmChristine:
Resource Wars – Egypt scraps pipeline agreement with Israel
I’ve been following the ongoing saga of the notorious natural gas pipeline which has been providing Israel with about 40% of its energy needs.
The pipeline which runs through the Sinai, has long been a thorn in the Egyptians’ side. The original agreement dates back to the original Camp David Peace Agreement between Egypt & Israel. Egypt was supposed to supply oil, but when that ran out they switched to natural gas.
When Mubarak was kicked out last year, local Egyptians finally decided to take matters into their own hands and they blew up the pipeline. It’s been blown up 14 times, to date. Egypt has been fairly slow to fix the pipeline while Israel started to get worried.
Some interesting details have come out about the pipeline; it seems that Mubarak and his kids pocketed the revenue money, also a Mr. Salem who is now hiding in Spain. Spain has just started extradition. It’s interesting because there’s hardly any mention in the US press about this, but it’s an ‘explosive’ story. And the fireworks haven’t started yet.
Meanwhile last year, Israel went about 220 days without power as the pipeline was being fixed. They had to go out on the open market and buy expensive fuel; I think I read they spent some $20 billion on expensive spot purchases.
As a final blow, last week Egypt decided to terminate the contract. They complained that Israel had not paid its gas bill for 4 months (are they broke?). Israel wants the contract reinstated, but Egypt says No Way all the would-be presidential contenders they all say they will scrap the deal.
So now is where it gets interesting. Israel is agressively looking for alternative energy sources. It seems they’ve found some gigantic oil fields in the Mediterranean. They are negotiating with Cyprus for drilling rights, meanwhile Turkey is furious they claim that Cyprus has no power to issue contracts. Other regional countries are starting to move on these finds.
Resource Wars – I read about this a few years ago, now we’re seeing them in action. Does anyone believe these countries would not pump out every last drop, rather than conserve their precious natural resources?
30 April 2012, 8:10 pmHenry:
“‘Free’ markets are an aberration, no matter what sort of society one is to analyze.”
Introduction to an Alternative History of Money
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_717.pdf
8 May 2012, 2:08 pmStephan:
Hi y’all
Just humbly passing along a memorable and
somewhat(?)
pertinent post I found.
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.
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Thank you for the post, and for the change in venue!
I agree with you that political change is impossible through the sort of gesturing that typifies slacktivism and the ritual of the peaceful demonstration. However, I believe that there is likewise considerable danger in sitting back and withdrawing from all activities of dissent.
The danger here lies in learned helplessness. One can argue quite reasonably, as you have done in such an engaging manner, that efforts to challenge social structure should be reserved for a more opportune time. Unfortunately, the actual practice of non-involvement in one’s surroundings leads to a state of inertia that remains unchanged even when the opportunity to act meaningfully presents itself. Like a caged lion that loses the spark in its eyes as the years of captivity drag on, our seated Buddha becomes rooted in place if he does not periodically get up to use his legs!
This dilemma begs a solution: how does one keep the ability to disobey authority alive in oneself while staying out of battles that cannot be won? The internal dialogue of the obstinate captive is one approach: “Just N more years. I shall will myself to wait it out, and I will come out the other side intact.” However, this solution is doomed to failure if undertaken in isolation. Positive affirmation alone is not sufficient to preserve a fighting spirit in the face of forced stasis.
My proposal for a solution harkens back to that ancient and venerable Russian art of ‘pofigism’, or not giving a flying fuck. Contrary to what one may think on approaching the concept initially, not giving a fuck is a very active process! It takes conscious effort and no small battle against personal anxieties to start ignoring social mores that are past their expiration date and to contravene rules that can no longer be enforced. Engaging in carefully thought out activities of asset reclamation, self-care and general indifference can not only bring about positive material and health benefits, but will also keep the mind acclimatized to dissent.
So, pick up some tricks from parkour to help you get from point A to point B. See if you can take a day off work without consequence. Pick up a piece of furniture that is in the process of getting discarded. Use the time you save for yourself, and do remember to take some deep breaths! Explore the boundaries of the system and find out just how much you can get away with. Doing some or all of these things will initially provoke anxiety in rule-abiding individuals. This anxiety will decrease with time, leaving you better prepared to fend for yourself when the time comes, and generally better off regardless.
People overestimate the change they are capable of producing in the geopolitical sphere, but consistently underestimate the change they can produce in themselves and their immediate social surroundings. We serve the greatest insult to the system enslaving us by simply refusing its claim of ownership on our concept of our surroundings. Those close to you take notice of how you live your life, and will begin flipping it the same bird in good time. Working ideas have a way of spreading.
http://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/t1eil/cluborlov_making_the_internet_safe_for_anarchy/
14 May 2012, 7:12 pmCurt:
The World Wild Life Foundation recently released a report on world wide resource deplition. I saw a list from this report that listed the 25 countries in the world which use the most resources per capita. It also listed those countries which used the least resources per capita. What I would have found very useful was an example of a country in which the WWF could say in this country the people are living on one earth.
16 May 2012, 3:25 amSoething else that I found interesting was that Germany was not even in the top 25 on the list. This despite the fact that Germany produces many things that are exported to other countries. All thought the use of the end items would no doubt go against the account of the coutries where they were purchased there were certainly costs to producing these items that would be on the German balance sheet that would not reflect the actual resource use of Germans. The use of the energy to make a car that has been exported would occur in Germany yet the car would be driven by a non German after it has been exported. That would make Germany’s footprint appear larger than it actually is. On the other hand many Germans take one month vacations outside of the country. Spain is a frequent destination of such German travalers. Spain finished 25th on the list if I remember correctly. Yet the amount of resources used in Spain is artificially raised by the many tourists who spend time there each year.
It would be really good if the WWF could set a visable concrete goal. Would it be Costa Rica? Would it be Venezuala? Would it be Malaysia? Would it be Bulgaria?
Curt:
Same report same comments year after year after year. Well it is like Christmas the same stories get shown on TV each year at that time.
16 May 2012, 5:42 pmMichael Anderson:
Something I put together in 1995 from a couple of sources…
http://west-of-the-cascades.blogspot.com/
35 YEARS LEFT?
17 May 2012, 1:29 pmHOW CLOSE TO PRACTICAL LIMITS?
LIMITS TO GROWTH: THE CORNUCOPIA SCAM
Henry:
The New Economy cannot flourish with fiscal austerity
Posted on Thursday, May 31, 2012 by bill
I often get E-mails from readers – some hostile others more reasonable – telling me that I should stop arguing for more economic growth. The reasoning is relatively straightforward – the Earth is buckling under the rapacious resources demands of the capitalist system and not only is that process likely to be finite, notwithstanding substitution via technological advances, but also in the process of exhaustion the amenity declines. The argument juxtaposes ecological claims with other claims relating to the desirability of the current neo-liberal dominated system which relies, seemingly, on creating more inequality, a reduction in government oversight and allows the worst aspects of the capitalist system to run amok. However, somewhere along the way, the 99% or whatever percentage it is (I think it is substantially lower than 99) miss the boat. The current crisis is used to demonstrate that conjecture. I haven’t time to reply to all the E-mails and I try to provide “collective” replies (which should tell you something in itself) via my blog posts. So today I am addressing that issue. The message is simple – I am very sympathetic to localised, new economy-type collective ways of organising social and economic activities. I support egalitarianism and co-operative solutions rather than competitive, dog-eats-dog approaches. I don’t mind working and giving my surplus to aid those who are unable for whatever reason to achieve the same material outcomes by their own hand. I am happy with consolidation rather than growth. But despite the romantic appeal of all this – as the solution – we have to understand that there is still something called a monetary system and a currency to deal with. Localised solutions are still constrained by the sovereign state they are located in and their fortunes are determined in no small way by the way the currency-issuing government conducts its fiscal policy. There is no escape from that.
Read the rest of this entry:
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=19641#more-19641
31 May 2012, 1:03 pmHenry:
How Coal Brought Us Democracy, and Oil Ended It: Lessons from the New Book “Carbon Democracy”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/how-coal-brought-us-democracy-and-oil-ended-it-lessons-from-the-new-book-carbon-democracy.html
13 September 2012, 2:30 pmHenry:
Wisdom from the Orient: Self-Sufficiency
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.mx/2011/07/wisdom-from-orient-self-sufficiency.html
The Globalists’ Worst Nightmare
Self-Sufficiency: a universal solution to the globalist problem.
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ca/2011/03/globalists-worst-nightmare.html
Farmers begin ‘mass slaughter’ of animals as food prices spike
http://grist.org/news/farmers-begin-mass-slaughter-of-animals-as-food-prices-spike/
20 September 2012, 3:26 pmHenry:
Interview with the author at Electric Politics
The End of the Age of Oil
Coal, because strikes could cut off its supply, made modern social democracy possible. Oil, because its supply has been pretty much guaranteed, compromised democratic gains. Now that we’re running out of cheap carbon fuel what happens next? Dr. Timothy Mitchell, author of Carbon Democracy, brings the problem into focus and explains how serious it is. Reason, to be honest, won’t get the establishment’s attention. A full nelson will. Total runtime fifty three minutes. C?nsumm?tum est.
http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2012/10/the_end_of_the_age_of_oil.html
5 October 2012, 2:22 pmHenry:
Philip Pilkington: Libertarianism and the Leap of Faith – The Origins of a Political Cult
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/philip-pilkington-libertarianism-and-the-leap-of-faith-–-the-origins-of-a-political-cult.html
Journey into a Libertarian Future: Part I –The Vision
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-i-–the-vision.html
Philip Pilkington: The Austrian Disease – Poor Scholarship, a Priori Bias
5 October 2012, 10:47 pmhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/philip-pilkington-the-austrian-disease-poor-scholarship-a-priori-bias.html
Henry:
Video:
The true cost of oil: Garth Lenz @ TEDxVictoria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=84zIj_EdQdM
7 October 2012, 10:36 pmHenry:
Moyers & Company: Plutocracy Rising
https://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/10/20
Take some anti-nausea medicine before watching.
20 October 2012, 11:45 pmcharles:
You are driving in traffic. This is a near-perfect metaphor for an existence lived on the Mono-Grid. More than a metaphor, it is literally the experience of following lines along a grid, with every move directed and monitored by signs and signals and laws.
Everyone in that traffic is moving with some purpose in mind. In their lives, they are either accumulating to safeguard their social standing, or they are trying to keep up in the traffic of their lives – endebted, always behind, driven – again, to safeguard their social standing.
The thing is, on the Mono-Grid, these are the only choices. Accumulate or struggle to keep up. Either way you are on (or in?) the grid. In neither way are you off the grid./////
Polanya was an anthropologist. The US whole territory is mapped out as a rectilinear grid of property section . This is learned in law school property law classes. In general , rectilinearity of a fundamental European “deep” cultural structure. See Cartesian coordinates in analytical geometry. I wrote on this in my paper on Yurok Social Philosophy and conception of the land,which of course, is not a rectilinear grid.
11 November 2012, 3:59 pmMichael Anderson:
http://mondediplo.com/2013/02/15internet
Interesting article on the big grid…the Internet.
4 February 2013, 9:35 amMichael Anderson:
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/us/broad-powers-seen-for-obama-in-cyberstrikes.html?pagewanted=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130204
4 February 2013, 9:41 amMichael Anderson:
Class war, anyone?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22007058
“People in the UK now fit into seven social classes, a major survey conducted by the BBC suggests.
It says the traditional categories of working, middle and upper class are outdated, fitting 39% of people.
It found a new model of seven social classes ranging from the elite at the top to a “precariat” – the poor, precarious proletariat – at the bottom.”
“The new classes are defined as:
Elite – the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals
Established middle class – the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital
Technical middle class – a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy
New affluent workers – a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital
Traditional working class – scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66
Emergent service workers – a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
Precariat, or precarious proletariat – the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital”
4 April 2013, 12:01 pmMichael Anderson:
Met up with a old musical acquaintance over the weekend, and he told me an interesting story.
His son, who had originally gone to a music school on the east coast, and a short time later became a professional gambler in the Atlantic City casinos, has gone to work in a high-risk securities trading firm in NYC.
The telling piece in this tale was that the kid had put his gambling experience on his RESUME, and that it was a major factor in his getting hired.
The more I think about this, the more revolted I get.
22 April 2013, 2:51 pm