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Class / War

  
  

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hermetic archipelago
23:13 / 09.01.08
here is a quote from another thread which quoted this article.

I suspect that America's fabulous growth in productivity is another illustration of the disconnect between economic measures and human experience. It's been attributed to better education and technological advances, which would be nice to believe in. But a revealing 2001 study by McKinsey also credited America's productivity growth to "managerial innovations" and cited Wal-Mart as a model performer, meaning that we are also looking at fiendish schemes to extract more work for less pay. Yes, you can generate more output per apparent hour of work by falsifying time records, speeding up assembly lines, doubling workloads, and cutting back on breaks. Productivity may look good from the top, but at the middle and the bottom it can feel a lot like pain.

im sure yall will be underwhelmed, but i just had a realization on marxism. sorry for rephrasing marx when i do that; i hope theres something interesting in here.

marxist revolution is not progressive, its homeostatic. bourgois capitalists grow the economy until the only resource left to exploit is the proletariat. when the strain is too much, the proletariat take over-- in a revolution or an election or more subtly-- and grow infrastructure until its possible to return to the environment for resource-based economic growth. at this point, the proletariat give themselves up to the machine, as the capitalists once again extend humanitys tentacles.

this means that capitalists arent really capitalists, they are resourcists. capital is generated by labour. capitalists dont care about capital, they care about resources. they dont use labour to create capital, they use capital to create profit. communists create capital in the form of infrastructure, which are later transformed by the bourgois into wealth.

it kind of feels like im just 'zooming out' on class struggle. im seeing these two global entities rather than a collection of personal struggles. this detachment makes the model more ecological and less political. does this homeostatic model still demand inevitable revolution? am i misusing jargon and embarrassing myself again? who should i read on homeostatic communist revolution?

actually, im really taken with this concept of infrastructure. it has no inherent value, but allows 1. movement and communication, such as roads and computers; and 2. integrity and exclusivity, which lets us differentiate things, and thus transport and communicate them. this second part allows us to include things like families, religions, and art in the category of infrastructure.
 
 
webmadman
05:26 / 11.01.08
Yup, either system ends in the same place, keeping everything gridlocked and controlled... points to the general issue of theory (whether communist, capitalist or whatever-ist), it's usually upper/middle class folks saying how things ought to be. This is not an anti-intellectual stance, I read and educate myself on every level possible, but then I filter it through my own experience to the greatest extent possible...

I also think mass revolution will always inherently be co-opted- mob rule creates a power vacuum that some singular ego will always fill, giving mouth to whatever theory is most popular with that mob at that time (whether that ego believes it or not)...

So I think the only real revolution that's possible is on a personal level...

Personally, my own form of revolution is to use money as little as possible- in a monetary sense I've lived in destitute poverty for over 2 decades (previous to that I was raised by a single mother on welfare), but I live an incredibly rich life- I have everything I need plus a whole lot more- I refuse to allow my life to be mediated by an abstraction- but I live pro actively, when I see something needs doing and I have the wherewithal to do it, I do it- without expecting "reward"- to the point of refusing money, once someone gives you money, the dynamic changes and expectations are created. This generates a lot of good will in general and grants me access to the resources I need/want...

That's my personal path to revolution, not for everyone, but there is no one-size-fits-all, which brings me back around to my main criticism of Marx, he tries to postulate an all encompassing system and I just don't think that will ever work. I would also never refer to myself as being part of the "working class"- I haven't had a job in any traditional sense for almost 20 years- and I feel that term in and of itself can act as a bit of a trap.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
09:31 / 12.01.08
communists create capital in the form of infrastructure, which are later transformed by the bourgois into wealth.

What you're saying is, everything is capital. Because if 'infrastructure' is capital, then the social relations that your communists, using this logic, might initiate to counter the transformation of life into capital, are also a kind of capital.

The homeostatic thing doesn't work for me, for precisely this reason: any resistance is futile, and the resistors are only a part of an inevitable cycle -- already part of capitalism itself.

History is too complex to reduce things to this level of dialecticism.
 
 
webmadman
19:11 / 13.01.08
any resistance is futile, and the resistors are only a part of an inevitable cycle -- already part of capitalism itself.

No, I don't think any resistance is futile, but you have to be very aware of just how easy it is to be co-opted.

Personally, I feel it tends to be a matter of scale-

From one angle, I see that as soon as something passes a certain threshold, it turns back on itself. Much like the idea found in the Kabbalah- when the light emanating out of the Sephirot gets too far from it's source, it turns back on itself and becomes Qliphoth- containing rather than liberating- yesterday's radicalism is today's orthodoxy. I see this concept playing itself out all over the place.

From another angle I look at the major breakthroughs in computer technology- such as object oriented programming or point to point protocol- where it has been much more effective to use many small things instead of one big thing.

So in terms of revolution, for me it's about keeping focused on a local level first- developing a localized autonomy- while keeping an eye on, and networking with, the larger scope of things- the old "think globally, act locally", but keeping in mind that what works in one locality is not necessarily going to work in another- the diversity of process is key.

The one thing that I see as not allowing for this to happen is the monetary system- it promises a universalized means of exchange, but has become a system that dictates the terms of exchange, so who controls the money, controls exchange, on a universal level- and there in lies "the problem" as I see it. Once you reduce all value to a singular system, you negate all other forms of value. Which tends to be the issue with any reductionist approach to things- the meat is cut away in favour of the bones- not a pretty sight.

In terms of infrastructure, I think the brute force, top down approach that may have been necessary for the industrial age is now becoming increasingly unsustainable (as my ex-boyfriend used to put it, "it shits in its nest and eats its young"). So, for me, it's not a matter of elimination, it's more about an inversion- where we had unity through isolation, I hope to see us move towards intimacy through diversification... In this I might be completely up a tree, but a boy can dream can't he ;-)
 
  

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