One-Dimensional Society

The Planning of Capital

2009-03-10T21:39:00.000-07:00

Rather than fall into the abyss that is free-market rhetoric we should realize that capitalism as a historical formation is much different than the 'free-market' fantasy of theoreticians - Hayek and Freidman, amongst others. Rather than an ahistorical model we should notice that the historical formation of capitalism constitutes and enacts ever higher levels of planning (such examples are the federal reserve, IMF, WTO, WB, and so on) in an attempt to regulate accumulation and prevent future crisis, which of course is inevitable since crisis is organic to capitalism as a social relation premised on antagonism.

That the economic crisis we are currently living in would usher in ever higher levels of planning of accumulation was only a matter of time.

And today, "in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mr. Bernanke said the financial system needed to be regulated “as a whole, in a holistic way” and that stricter oversight of banks would not be enough to guard against future crises." (link)

"Mr. Bernanke also called for the creation of an authority to monitor and oversee broad, systemic risks" and "He said the United States could take a “macroprudential” approach — surveying the breadth of markets and financial institutions for signs of bubbles, growing risks like the subprime mortgage market, or risks shared by interconnected markets. Congress could empower a government agency like the Fed to take on that task."

Capitalism is not a free market, it requires massive planning in order to create adequate conditions for growth, which means that capitalism is not anti-state nor does it require the night-watchman state, another myth. Capital requires an active interventionist state to maintain accumulation. And what we see now is an inclusion of neo-keynesian principles demanding greater regulation of markets and financial institutions to ensure a smooth regime of accumulation, since the myth of free markets has once again fallen on its face.

Buffet's Wrong: The economy did not fall, it was chased off a cliff.

2009-03-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

Warren Buffet recently said that the economy has "fallen off a cliff." Which makes it sound like the economy tripped over its own two feet while walking and went careening down the cliff. This depiction is grossly mistaken. The economy did not merely trip and fall on its own accord, as if it hit a rock while site seeing on the california coast, fell over the cliff, and plunged towards the sea, only to end up catching itself on a tree half way down and being rescued by the fire department and coast guard (hopefully).

Akin to the buffalo chases on the plains the economy was chased across the cliff at full speed knowing full well what would happen - massive debts, defaults, foreclosures, repossessions, economic downturn. Anyone who did not know this and should have, aka economists, has no understanding of how the social world operates and lives a life of fantasy, which of course is what happens when you put faith in theories that are trying to legitimate a class project as in the general interest of society as a whole (classical political economy) or relies on an ahistorical ideal type model of capitalism that never existed nor will it ever (Hayek, Friedmen and co.). But this gives them too much credit as being delusional, rather than knowing full well that their actions have no ethical foundation and that their everyday lives are premised upon the structural poverty, alienation, and exploitation of billions. I think its a bit of both - delusions of granduer (this model of capitalism really benefits everybody, it really is good! for if they didn't believe in it then they would have to reevaulte their self, life, existence. which is too much for most people to do, to interrogate their world view and thus themselves, that can lead to scary places. and revelations) and just plain 'I don't give a fuck' about anyone else but me (which of course is how a capitalist society is supposed to work, thanks Adam Smith! Somehow each person persuing their own individual self interest - I only care about me! - will produce a greater collective good for all - yeah right! That is the ultimate bull and self-aggrandizement of class power I have ever heard.).

Ok, enough with that. Buffet also used the word 'war' quite a bit.

"What is required is a commander in chief that's looked at like a commander in chief in a time of war." For "we're in a big war, and we're going to use money to fight it." We being engaged in an economic war of course!

Now the discourse of war is important. We always seem to be at war - War on terror, War on drugs, War on poverty, War on teenage pregnancy, War on underage drinking.

Now, whenever the word war is used it seems to be a legitimating rationale to through lots of money at the problem. Which is explicit in Buffet's talk. He directly links a war on the economy requires a lot of money. This of course assumes that money is necessary and sufficienct to end the war. This is far from the case, money is not going to solve this problem - throwing money has failed to work so far and will fail in the future, only massive restrucutring will work. Throwing money has not ended the war on terror, drugs, poverty, and it will not end the war on the economy.

But why use the language of war? Well war is good galvinizer for chavaunistic nationalism, for employing the language of 'shared sacrifice' and 'everyone is in the same boat.' It is a discourse that attempts to create an imaginary collectivity of belonging - via the nation state - where no collective actually exists. It tries to create a mythical community where a common shared good and a general interest exist. Bull, the only interest capital or the state talk about is growth and profit. nothing else matters. and those interests are particular class interests that only benefit a particular class.

War also tends to imply that there are bad agents that one is fighting against. And that war is just and necessary in order to, at least for the US, facilitate democracy, liberty, happiness, and all that clap trap. So who is the war against? Finance capital, brookers, mortgage companies, and so on? Last time I checked it looked this this economic war was waged against those at the bottom of the class, race, and gender ladder. We see massive layoffs, wage concessions, cuts in social services, massive disinvestment and capital flight, etc. Who the economic war is against and has been since the rise of neoliberalism is of course the working class, people of color, women. The economic war is not being waged against those agents who are proportionally heavily acountable for the economic crisis. The economic war of austerity and shared sacrifice is about forcing the cost of the crisis on the bottom of the social hierarchy - those least able and least responsible for the economy going over the cliff.

Ideology and They Live

2009-02-28T21:29:00.000-08:00

I was watching They Live (1988) by John Carpenter and Zizek and ideology popped into my head. They Live is about a man who discovers that aliens - free enterprisers for whom the earth (their third world) is ripe for their interests as another developing planet - are essentially brainwashing people through consumer society while concentrating massive power and wealth into their own hands and of course the human power elite.

The Zizek and ideology reference is because Roddy Piper only realizes the 'truth' of the world in which he lives when he puts on sunglasses. Following Zizek, since we are already and always constituted through ideology - we are interpellated in and through ideology - in order to see the ideology we have to put our ideological lens on, we do not take off our ideological lens'.

check out the clip here.

Native American Resistance to Capitalism's Enclosure: The Struggle for Subsistence and the Commons

2009-01-13T16:41:00.000-08:00

Premises

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In a little over two-hundred years industrial capitalism's death-machine has inflicted a toxic holocaust upon the totality of earthly relations. Capitalism's attempt to reshape the planet to suit its accumulation demands has meant the wholesale clearing of continents for cultivation, resulting in endless 'meadows,' extensive deforestation, soil erosion, and desertification; the loss of biodiversity and therefore ecosystem integrity through the extinction of thousands of species for quick profits; the massive die-off of tens of hundreds of fish species through the damming of lakes, rivers and streams for irrigation and electricity production; the global collapse of fish stocks in the oceans through industrial trawlers; the conversion of agricultural plains into deserts or salt ponds through over irrigation and over harvesting, and; the forced eviction and subsequent resettlement of whole populations from the countryside into cities.

In unison with treating the landbase primarily as a tap for resource extraction, capital also views the landbase secondarily as a place for the mass dumping of industrial chemicals and wastes originating from commodity production, a practice that has made vast swabs of the planet non-viable or extremely inhospitable for life. Corporations freely and willingly dump industrial pollutants from the extraction and manufacturing processes into the surrounding environment: PCBs, dioxin, uranium tailings, mercury, and arsenic are only a few of the common pollutants found in environmental testing. Today in the United States mothers milk is contaminated by dioxin's and PCBs and asthma and cancer rates are at historic highs due to industrial capitalism's toxification of land, air, water, animals, food, and people. Globally, the planetary ecosystem is in a state of decay, along with the aforementioned ecological catastrophes global warming, global dimming, depletion of the ozone layer, coral reef die-off, and melting of the polar ice caps compound the ecological crisis and threaten to annihilate the ecological flows that form the preconditions for life.

The current configuration of everyday life cannot continue: it is socially and ecologically destructive to all life forms. It systematically degrades all life to the profane commodity-form and eradicates the conditions for autonomy and self-determination. The gospels of industrial consumption advocated by both capitalist and socialist orthodoxies are premised upon colonialism: “repression at home and conquest abroad.” No longer can we look to the models of our industrialized elders to solve the problems of industrialism: the aim is not to perfect industrial capitalism but to smash it.

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The ecological crisis is not an environmental crisis but a social crisis, and its root cause is the socio-natural relation that consists of both intra-human relations and human-nonhuman relations – which are political, cultural, spiritual, and economic in form. The ecological crisis cannot be abstracted from the human organization of socio-natural relations and therefore cannot be solved in a technocratic or individualistic paradigm which emphasizes a “technical fix” to the problems of growth or the restructuring of industrial capitalism through changes in personal behavior, e.g. recycling, replacing plastic bags with cloth and regular light-bulbs with halogen (which contain mercury!), energy efficient appliances, alternative fuel automobiles, carbon offsets, downscaling, or energy substitution (e.g. solar for coal). All these proposed solutions to the ecological crisis reproduce the social framework and material relations that manufactured the ecological crisis – the abstraction of humanity from nature, the assumption that humans are at the top of the food chain, thatt the earth exists for humans, and that humans are to dominate nature, that there is no alternative to capitalism or economic growth, and that technology provides the path to the promised land. Rather than seeing the ecological crisis as a social and political crisis of humanity's relationship to the landbase capitalism's and mainstream environmentalism's focus is on maintaining industrial society, development, and civilization at all costs.

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The ecological crisis, popularized amongst social critics, theorists, activists, and scientists almost a half a century ago has only magnified in scale and severity. The problem is not just capital, the state. or the mainstream environmental movement, but the structure of everyday life. Radical steps must be taken to prevent a “hard crash” and realign lifeways within ecological flows and rhythms. The sooner the better. It is vital to restructure not merely the social world but the socio-natural relations that constitute the foundation for that social world. Such a restructuring means a turn away from a lot of the components of contemporary life that have brought the world to the brink of implosion: capitalism, patriarchy, christianity, the enlightenment's mechanistic conceptions of time and space, a competitive ethos united with a spirit of acquisitiveness, the conflation of atomized individualism with liberty and autonomy, and a blind faith in technology and so-called historical progress. The rejection of these foundational components of everyday must coincide with an incorporation of worldviews and lifeways premised upon landbase subjectivities that emphasize the commons, egalitarianism, reciprocity, respect, harmony, and subsistence.

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For the vast majority of life on the planet, neoliberalism (the social formation of capitalism from the late 1970s/early 1980s through today) has been an utter failure along social, political, economic, and ecological grounds. It has not increased the freedom, sovereignty, or wealth of the vast majority of citizens nor has it increased the health and integrity of the planetary ecosystem. The overall outcome of thirty years of neoliberal hegemony is increased national and global inequality, proletarianization, scarcity of access to water and food, low-intensity warfare, civil war and genocide, multinational corporate (MNC) control over the planet and ecological degradation. This degradation has increased to such a degree that a majority of the ecological cycles are in the state of decay, crisis, or collapse. Furthermore, what neoliberalism has been successful at is increasing the centralization of governance into the hands of non-democratic institutions. Principally, corporations, national governments, and supra-national political institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations (UN), and European Union (EU).

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However, the most successful maneuver of Neoliberalism has been the massive transfer of ownership of land, water, air, seed, and genes into the hands of corporations. This round of new enclosures (also referred to as primitive accumulation or accumulation by dispossession) is a process that forms the foundation of capitalism's economic growth model since the 1970s. Enclosure became a key mechanism of social control through forcing all space and therefore all production into the circuits of accumulation; for the accumulation of capital, labor, commodities, and wealth presupposes the accumulation of space, first and foremost. Enclosure became the primary mechanism employed to integrate the entire planet into capitalist accumulation through the destruction of non-capital producing spaces and subjects.

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Mainstream environmentalism – white middle class environmentalism – led by the Big Ten, is not a viable social movement nor does it address the root causes of the ecological crisis – industrialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and christianity. Its main focus is dominated by a preservationist camp that merely seeks ameliorative efforts to protect wilderness from the tendrils of capitalism. It is locked into a century and half old lens that is plagued by a dichotomy of nature and culture, humans and the environment, wilderness and civilization. This dichotomy manifests in the Big Ten's primary focus not on issues of social justice and equity nor on restructuring industrial society but on preservationism – protecting wide swaths of land from 'development' in their pristine wilderness state. Preservationist environmentalism is about preserving a pre-human contact wilderness that consisted of wildlife and not much else – enshrined in national parks, nature preserves, open space, and wild animal parks.

Mainstream environmentalism is incapable of forming a land ethic based on human stewardship and co-habitation. Furthermore, an environmental strategy premised on preservation works in combination with capitalism: they both demand the dispossession of land from indigenous people to maintain wilderness for preservation and to develop the land for capitalism. All the while, preservationist environmentalism continually avoids confronting capitalism about its anti-ecological growth demands, its production of an everyday life dominated by endless consumerism, and a relationship with the land premised upon human domination.

Moreover, when it is not confined to saving land from development mainstream environmentalism's adoption of “third wave” politics has its eco-consciousness confined to market-oriented solutions to the ecological crisis: solutions that rely on corporate volunteerism and self-regulation, tax based incentive schemes, technological innovation, and supply and demand programs, a la cap and trade that allow for the privatization and commodification of pollution and nature and their control by MNC's. The Big Ten's solution to the ecological crisis is essentially neoliberalism's solution: more 'free' markets, more corporate control, more private property, more growth. Both capital and Big Green argue that what created the problem can solve the problem. This line no longer holds.

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As a result, the historic struggle between capitalism and the indigenous is waged at numerous levels: philosophical, spiritual, socio-cultural, political, economic, and ecological. It is a struggle of different ways of being, both socially and with the landbase. For this reason, the struggle over the path of globalization and therefore the future of the planet is a struggle between the commons and capitalist private property, subsistence and accumulation, use-value and exchange-value, bio/cultural-diversity and monocultures, autonomy and dependency, self-determination and sovereignty, the indigenous and euro-americans.

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For over five-hundred years Native American's have been deemed expendable due to their 'natural' state of existence as wild savages who failed to 'use' the land. Both the landbase and their way of life was viewed as “open” to colonization – for colonization is both a cultural, political, economic, and ecological project. The history of the Native American post-contact is not a pretty one nor one that contemporary American's have come to terms with. Subsequently, it is generally a taboo topic in American society. No accurate history of the conquest and continuing slaughter of the indigenous is taught in the public education system and most American's celebrate Thanksgiving as part of a nationalist celebration marking the arrival upon a 'new' world that is only new if one is looking westward. In fact, the history of the indigenous post-contact is one of extreme and brutal violence, genocide, culturecide and ecocide by euro-americans. In the eyes of the settlers, miners, hunters and the state and Federal government there was no question as to whether the indigenous needed to go, the question was by what means: disease, war, massacre, or acculturation. The question was to either kill them outright or civilize them through “killing the indian to save the man.” There is no room for the indigenous within euro-american society. Until this is realized no transformative politics can commence.

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The genocide, culturecide, and ecocide of the indigenous was rationalized and legitimated through recourse to religion, racial superiority, civilizing tendencies, notions of progress and development, private property, and Christianity's quest for dominion over the earth – all of which are encapsulated under “Manifest Destiny,” the foundation of American colonization.
For this reason, there is no critique of capitalism without a critique of colonialism and therefore no critique of capitalism without a critique of ecocide, culturecide and genocide; processes that have occurred over the last five-hundred years and not just in parts of the globe external to the United States. They are omnipresent in the third world within the north: Indian Country.
There must be a critique of the primitive accumulation of the indigenous within the occupied territory of the United States. There can be no critique of colonialism without a critique of the enclosure of turtle island and its conversion into a playground for the accumulation of capital.

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The indigenous, the last “artifact” of the pre-history of capitalism, have resisted integration into the circuits of capitalist reproduction for over 500 years and currently display no willingness to succumb or halt that struggle today. The indigenous reject the death machine of neoliberalism – on both cultural, political, ecological, economic and spiritual grounds. Instead, they put forth the call “self-determination through control over our land.” For indigenous survival requires the survival of the landbase. The struggle is not for equality under colonialism. It is not a struggle for citizenship or sovereignty. It is a struggle against capitalism and the state. The indigenous struggle in the United States is the struggle for nationhood based on traditional indigenous values of “freedom, justice, and peace.”

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What can be learned from the indigenous struggle is that for the domination of both humans and nature to be annihilated we must restructure social and ecological relations. In other words, the struggle for the health of the landbase is for the social and ecological liberation from capitalism, patriarchy, and christianity. At its root, the struggle is over the landbase, over the relationship that humans are going to have with the landbase. Will it be one that is premised upon domination and control or one based on balance, harmony and reciprocity?

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The indigenous struggle of Native Americans is a struggle against the primitive accumulation of capital and all that that entails – dispossession, enclosure, enclosure, wage-labor, patriarchy, instrumental rationality, alienation and accumulation. The struggle against primitive accumulation is not just a social struggle but an ecological struggle, the latter part is often forgotten, ignored, or downplayed.

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The indigenous struggle was not merely for autonomy and liberation from domination but for a relation to the landbase that was premised upon the commons and subsistence. It is a struggle for a way of life premised upon the principles of egalitarianism, reciprocity, and harmony with all life.

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It is the unification of social and ecological that underscores the importance of the indigenous struggle against capitalism for ascertaining alternatives to industrial capitalist society. The struggle by the indigenous for the commons and subsistence is a struggle for cultural and biological diversity. Therefore, a struggle for a healthy environment, as their lifeway is dependent on it. It is not a struggle to separate people from the land or develop the land for a quick buck, but to preserve both people and the land forever.

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Those who struggle for liberation must be with the indigenous and not against them. The goal is not to 'civilize' the indigenous. The goal is not to 'develop' the landbase. The struggle is to embrace attempts to unite social and ecological liberation from capitalism, which do not have to be invented from scratch, but can be found with the indigenous and their landbased subsistence lifeways. It is high time that those in the 'advanced' north so willing to jump on the global south bandwagon turn inward to aid the colonized within the 'first' world: those in indian country. There is no justification to ignore the indigenous within the core of capitalism in favor of those in the periphery. It is high time the left faced up to its historical marginalization of the indigenous within the occupied territory of the United States. The struggle is to reclaim the land for the indigenous based upon their own traditional principals. This requires the end of capitalism and the state and the reimposition of traditional indigenous values based on social and ecological justice; anything less is unacceptable.

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The Rev is on the Rez.

Democracy as a Tool of Oppression

2008-11-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

The passage of the Gay Marriage Ban in California and Arizona reflects, in my opinion, how oppressed groups should not expect to be liberated by their oppressors. Asking the citizenry to vote for ending oppression based on sexual orientation in a society that valorizes the patriarchal family and therefore the male headed nuclear family is a non-starter. This is also a society where ‘common sense’ still conflates homosexuality with pedophilia and conceives of marriage as a ‘God’ given and ruled relationship, rather than a social relation of ownership and domination that tied women to men and made them subordinate to and dependent upon the husband. The annals of history show that marriage is not the bastion of love and equality, but a power relationship created through violence and dispossession. It has only been in the last forty years that spousal rape is even a legal category, since before that women had no right to say no to sex, since they were the property and therefore the play thing of their owner, oh, sorry, I mean husband.

Putting these questions to vote reproduces the tyranny of the majority. It makes about as much sense as putting to vote whether to let African-Americans have the right to vote during slavery. Asking a population that views gay people as an inferior subhuman ‘other’ whether they should be given rights may be formally democratic, but it is not the path to equality, at the current historical juncture. I know that saying democracy and equality are not one in the same may come as a shock to some of you but re-read your history books: democracy shaped by capitalism, racism, sexism/patriarchy and classism, amongst others, will never realize an egalitarian society. You do not ask the master to give the slave rights, the slave must demand rights from the master, which happens through struggle.

The denial of rights to Gay’s highlights the contradictions within a democratic society, where we are not all given the same rights from birth, in opposition to what we are told in school. Moreover, it shows how the democratic process can be employed to deny rights through the passage of law: we are a nation of laws after all! And if you haven’t been watching the news lately, especially Obama, laws are apparently the only things standing between us and barbarism or anarchy, take your pick. Laws, Laws, Laws. What people forget is that the law is not some neutral entity devoid of power. Law is reflective of the dominant power groups and therefore of class, race, and gender hierarchies, amongst others: and will be employed to provide and deny rights based on the current formation of power.

With this passage into law we see how the concrete inequality of everyday life, the ‘private’ sphere, is transformed into the ‘public’ sphere and consequently becomes state law. The state is now directly reflective of the oppression occurring on the level of everyday life. What happens in the daily life of gays, their status as second-class citizens, is now legitimated as just because the oppressor, through the ‘democratic’ process of voting, reaffirmed their constitutional right to maintain their position of power vis-à-vis the oppressed.

The right of gay people to marry whomever they want to will not come by way of the ballot anytime soon, at the state or federal level. If must be wrestled in the streets, which means building a broad based coalition that fights for this, and not just at the level of electoral politics. It is battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. And as one approaches the battle we must realize that many hearts and minds are too couched in anger, violence, bitterness, and close-mindedness to see that the oppression of others means that they themselves are oppressed: that until all bonds of oppression are ended no one can be equal.

The goal is not to replace the master but to end the position of master.

Why Obama is not a socialist nor a Marxist.

2008-11-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

In the past few weeks the right-wing media machine has made a lot of hay around Obama's downward re-distributional economic policies. Obama has been called everything from a socialist to a Marxist because he advocates increasing a progressive tax system where those who make more pay more - which means re-instituting higher effective tax rates on those who make over $250,000 a year and lowering taxes on those who made less than $250,000. This would only go a small way to re-imposing the tax levels of the 1970s - which is needed to repair the infrastructure of the United States, meet social need and reduce inequality, which in the US is the highest of all 'western' post-industrial nations. Ever since the tax revolt of the 1980s through the present - at the level of the corporation and wealthy families - there has been less and less money to lay the foundation for true social wealth for all, not economic wealth for the elite.

On a local Florida news station the anchor even asked Biden if Obama was a Marxist. Her empirical support? A famous quote from Marx: "from each according to their ability to each according to their needs." A hallmark statement for re-distributional class politics. This phrase is therefore not solely a marxist statement but one championed by all those fighting against oppression and for the creation of a truly egalitarian society that realizes and meets the concrete social needs of people - be you a marxist, socialist, anarchist, ad infinitum. The fact that this phase is treated as a slur is beyond imagination, except in the nation-state that is the hegemonic center of global capitalism, where social needs are secondary to an adequate rate of return. And for the most part in American society never the two shall meet! The capitalist system is not designed to meet social needs as a primary function, and if it does, that is merely by accident, not by choice.

That people's concrete social needs are seen in such a negative manner expresses the illogic and irrationality of the capitalist system: a system that produces a culture where the concrete daily needs of people are not only unimportant and for the most part denied/repressed but are verbally denounced as socialist and marxist. If demanding that people have a house to live in, a secure job that pays a living wage, food on their table, and an affordable education and medical plan makes one a Marxist, then the majority of American's, based on public opinion polls, would be Marxists and socialists, but sadly, non of these demands a Marxist does make.

The capitalist press is designed to maintain the capitalist system, we should not expect them to tell us anything but lies, as such, what passes as fact, truth, or reality is really falsity.

The history of both Western Europe and the United States displays that downward economic redistribution does not lead to socialism nor communism. In fact, in the US, capitalism operated very well under a Keynesian (Welfare Capitalism) social contract where income re-distribution towards the working class occurred for two reasons: (1) the working class' political organization forced concessions on corporations and the state in a time when the state wanted to prevent the development of truly oppositional socialist, communist, and anarchist political movements, and; (2) the integration of the working class into the circuits of capitalism via higher wages was necessary to fuel mass consumption and thus increase accumulation through the development of a mass consumer society. The problem of effective demand required re-distributional policies combined with higher wages for more work (increased productivity - think of the Ford $5 wage as a national strategy). Keynesianism essentially combined the expanding of the economic pie with a larger share being given to the working class.

Capitalism is about production for profit as the guiding indicator of investment and thus production; along with the requirement that production be owned by private individuals, and under the current formation of capitalism - neoliberalism - this means ownership by transnational corporations [since corporations are now legal individuals and have the same rights as you or me - thank you ingenious lawyers for expanding the 14th amendment that freed the slaves and gave them personhood to include that of the corporation as well - may you rot in hell]. Therefore, economic redistribution is compatible with capitalism as long as it does not infringe upon the profit motive, in the sense of causing an unhealthy or detrimental decline in the rate of profit.

Socialism is about production for social needs where production is in the hands of the people. Obviously state-socialism fails to put production in the hands of the people, instead it goes into the hands of a bureaucratic political elite. Thus, libertarian socialism calls for the production of social needs as determined by worker and consumer councils - removing corporations and the state from control over production and therefore putting people in the hands of crafting the social world directly.

Moreover, if we look at Marx himself, he argued that the working class struggle was not solely about becoming better compensated wage-labor, sure that was a part, no one is going to argue against getting a higher wage, better working conditions and shorter hours, except your boss. But this was not the end-goal of Marx, who argued that the goal of the working class was to end their existence as a class: to end their existence as wage-labor. Marx sought the end of capitalism through the struggle of the working class to reclaim their power over shaping the world, their power of labor, from capital and subsequently place it in their own hands. Such a maneuver would end the workers subordination to the capitalist through the obliteration of that relationship of domination: a relationship where the employer controlled the labor of the worker and denied them their capacity for self-determination. Under capitalism, labor, as free spontaneous creative practice was denied the worker who had to submit to the work demands of their boss. Workers would only be free to realize their power over shaping the social world when they expropriated the expropriators - the capitalists - and ended the existence of capitalist private property - individual and corporate ownership over the means of production - and replaced it with the means of production held in common by the workers.

Therefore, we can see that Obama is no socialist nor Marxist. Obama supports both the profit motive, its priority over social need, and the right of capitalist property relations to determine what is produced, for how much, where it is produced, and so on. Obama is a capitalist and imbues and eschews capitalist ideology, but his re-distributional rhetoric speaks to the working class who is swamped with debt, and seeks to appeal to their psychological anxieties in order to obtain the imperial office. He could in fact institute this re-distributional politics but it does nothing to address the question of power, of having control over shaping the social world, which would be left in the hands of transnational corporations (an extremely undemocratic form of governance). Ownership over productive property is key, ownership over consumptive property provides no power whatsoever.

Obama is not a threat to US capitalism nor global capitalism. If Obama was truly a socialist or a Marxist there is no way he would be on the democratic ticket - which is bought and paid for by finance capital - Wall Street - amongst others, foremost among them, Goldman Sachs. The fact that sections of the capitalist media are trying to paint him in such a way show their affiliation with the McCain ticket - another faction of the capitalist class vying for power - or their explicit identification with the logic of the capitalist system unmediated by any political party, as such they are merely capital personified.

The Financial Crisis: An Opening for Housing Reform?

2008-10-30T21:47:00.000-07:00

This is the synopsis of the argument put forth by a NYU economics professor

Brief synopsis:

The bailout proposed by Henry Paulson does not even address the systemic collapse of the financial and banking system brought on by the collapse in the asset (mortgage) and credit bubbles. If you are trying to stabilize the system, i.e. capitalism. What needs to be done is 3 things: 1) take toxic products off the balance books of wall-street, but in a way that does not have taxpayers footing the bill, meaning that the creditors and investors need to take the hit. 2) need to recapitalize the banks so they can start a new round of growth, this can happen only through government lending to the banks, because no one else has enough capital nor is willing to lend it. 3) and this is key, you need to decrease the debt levels of homeowners, meaning restructure the ARM loans into fixed rate loans and re-negotiate the loans at current market values so you do not have negative equity problems. Without this re-negotiation of debt the crisis will not resolve itself, because US consumption is and will drop dramatically and send us into a deeper recession then is already projected [18 months]. The average household debt to income ratio in the US is 140%, this is unsustainable given the current economic climate.

This recession will mean gradual decline in the value of the dollar and higher interest rates as well, and higher unemployment rates, officially up to 8% potentially, unofficially - once we include those out of work who stopped looking and those forced into part-time work who want full-time - around 13-15%. oh, and we still have the possibility of a massive number of smaller banks going belly up, this is in addition to the run on all the investment banks - Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, etc, the insolvency of IndyMac, WAMU, Wachovia, etc. What is next for collapse is the hedge funds and money market funds. and the FDIC is running out of money.

what we are now seeing is a global recession, one that if it is to be corrected requires a massive restructuring of the financial banking system. increased regulation and oversight along with the collapse of the shadow banking system - investment banks, hedge funds, money market funds, broker dealers, non bank mortgage lenders - and extensive regulation of mortgage backed securities and collateral debt obligations. along with increased minimum liquidity requirements, minimum capital requirements, limits to leverage, reporting requirements, etc. to prevent bank collapses if a 'run to withdraw money' occurs, which was a major problem this time. [the entities in the shadow banking system were over leveraged, had high debt levels with little capital on hand, since they had invested in long-term illiquid investments. thus when people ran to draw their money out, the entities did not have enough cash on hand, could not gather together enough capital in time because they could not sell off the illiquid investments, and no one would lend them more money. they were therefore unable to 'pay out' to their debtors while having enough left over to cover day-to-day expenses. they therefore went belly-up]

without this overhaul of the financial system and a restructuring of US household debt the 18 month recession could turn into a Japan style decade long recession - which was caused by doing too little too late and not addressing the fundamental structural problems.

---------------

I still think 18 months sounds rather tame. I do like how he is addressing 'main street'.

now lets move from the level of capitalism as a system and its needs to everyday life, the arena for struggle and revolution. I would love to see some bottom up movement. i see no better time for an 'organizational' push for affordable or socialized - community owned and operated but state and federal funded - housing. No other time highlights the disconnect between capitalism's demands for profit above anything else and people's social need and right to affordable housing. but rights are not given by those from above but taken by those from below, rights are won through struggle. rather than letting those at the bottom continually be subjected to the profit motive, which underproduces low cost affordable housing and overproduces high profit luxury homes, it is time for community mobilization to demand the social right to affordable housing, thus the elimination of the profit motive from housing. homes should be about living not making money. the subprime crisis is a perfect example of why the lower classes will never have good quality affordable housing under capitalism - there is no profit in it without the creation of mortgage products that are systematically unsustainable and toxic. leaving home ownership for the poor and people of color to the vagaries of the marketplace and the profit motive created this whole mess in the first place. now is the time for a movement for socialized housing at the community level. this would allow the local community to have control over the rebuilding of social space, to create a space for life, debate, party, labor, art, pleasure, peace and so on, operated from the flow of life. rather than social space dominated by the logic of profit, control, the automobile, and so on - the time of death.

The fact that this collapse or 'moment' has not spurred a grassroots push to raise this issue is deeply problematic.

MARX’S INVERSION OF HEGEL’S DIALECTIC

2008-05-11T21:16:00.000-07:00

Followup to the Hegel piece below.

Marx is greatly influenced by Hegel’s dialectical theory. Yet, at the same time he is bothered by Hegel’s mystification of the dialectic: “with him it [the dialectic] is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”(1) The rational kernel being the conception of the self creation of man as a process, labor as the essence of man, humanity’s alienation (estrangement) from their social world and the dialectic of negativity as the motor of social change:

The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phenomenology and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labor and comprehends objective man – true, because real man – as the outcome of man’s own labor.(2)

Thus, while Hegel grasps these concepts he mystifies them by locating them within the mind, a product independent of material experience: “Hegel’s Encyclopaedia …is in its entirety nothing but the display, the self-objectification, of the essence of the philosophic mind.”(3) The result of situating self-objectification within the mind is that alienation becomes that of thought – the alienation of consciousness. Alienation fails to be grounded in the social relations between material practice and the corporeal body:

Logic…is alienated thinking, and therefore thinking which abstracts from nature and the real man: abstract thinking…the whole history of the alienation process and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of the production of abstract (i.e.) absolute thought.(4)

Subsequently, alienation - the objectification of the powers of humans – is merely the loss of power over thought and the objects of thought. Alienation is not grounded in material processes and is therefore not alienation of the worker from the product of their labor, from the act of production, from their species being and from other men. (5) For Hegel,

the appropriation of man’s essential powers, which have become objects— indeed, alien objects—is thus in the first place only an appropriation occurring in consciousness, in pure thought, i.e., in abstraction: it is the appropriation of these objects as thoughts and movements of thought.(6)

Since man only alienates thought, all that he can reclaim is his thought. Hegel’s confinement of alienation to consciousness results in man being unable to reclaim power over the commodities that are alienated during the course of capitalist production. Under Hegel’s scenario, dealienation is merely the supersession of an alienated abstract man and his alienated abstract thought. Subsequently, alienation not grounded in material reality and the relations of men and nature is one ‘torn from real mind and from real nature.’ While the Phenomenology of the Spirit ‘grasps steadily man’s estrangement’ it fails to escape the realm of consciousness and place man in his material world. For that reason, Hegel’s man appears not in his corporeal form but merely as mind.

Despite Marx’s critique of Hegel for constructing concepts that reside solely in consciousness and therefore in abstraction from nature and material man, Marx praises Hegel for realizing the importance of these concepts. Foremost is Hegel’s conception of labor as the essence of man. Even though Hegel’s labor is only that of ‘abstractly mental labor’, he conceives of the process of abstract mental labor as one of alienation, as the objectification of thought and eventually its dealienation through the realignment of reality with thought – the unification of what is and what ought to be.(7) Moreover, Hegel formulates supersession as a process of transcendence involving the recombination of the self and their alienated objects. Through supersession the individual reappropriates the object of their estrangement by ending the alienating nature of reality: “supersession as an objective movement of retracting the alienation into self…the real appropriation of his objective essence through the annihilation of the estranged character of the objective world.”(8) The culmination of which is that Hegel posits a process of alienation/disalienation as the nodal point around which the concept of labor fluctuates.(9) Hegel’s formulation of the process of alienation/disalienation is itself an example of another concept central to his theory, the negation of the negation. Through his creation of each concept he conceives “of each of them first as negation—that is, as an alienation of human thought—and then as negation of the negation—that is, as a superseding of this alienation, as a real expression of human thought.”(10) Following Hegel, Marx perceives this negativity to be the positive and creative force in history. Nonetheless, Marx flips this principle on its head and places the negation of the negation in the material world, positing the advent of communism and the death of capitalism as the material realization of the negation of the negation.

Marx therefore adopts from Hegel a certain conceptual framework that seeks to relate appearance and essence within a social totality where concepts are always in motion.(11) For instance, Marx separates value into its form of appearance, exchange value, and its essence, abstract labor.(12) Moreover, concepts can only be understood through their reciprocal relation to one another and their connection within the totality, which for Marx was the totality of capital. Subsequently, concepts form a unity through the contradiction of opposites, e.g. commodity as use-vale and exchange-value, mode of production as relations of production and forces of production.(13) In addition, the movement of phenomena, including the totality, is based upon the ongoing contradiction between the reciprocally related phenomena, e.g. capital and labor, use value and exchange value, wages and profits, relations of production and forces of production.(14) All of these presuppositions form the basis of dialectical theory and method.

1) Karl Marx, Capital Volume I (New York: Penguin Books, 1976[1990]), p. 103.
2) Karl Marx, “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole,” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, New York: International Publishers, 1964[1988]), p. 177.
3) Ibid., p. 174.
4) Ibid., p. 175.
5) Ibid., p. 178.
6) Ibid., p. 175.
7) Ibid., p. 177.
8) Ibid., p. 187.
9) Ibid., p. 188.
10) Ibid., p. 190.
11) Marx, Capital Volume I, p. 18.
12) Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically (San Francisco: AK Press, 1979[2000]), p. 111.
13) Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Penguin Books, 1973[1993]), p. 39, 41.
14) Marx, Capital Volume I, p. 18.

HEGEL’S DIALECTICAL PHILOSOPHY

2008-05-10T21:51:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from a paper I was working on for class. the basis of the paper is a critique of positivism. Up next is Marx's "inversion" of Hegel's dialectical method.

HEGEL’S DIALECTICAL PHILOSOPHY(1)
Hegel’s philosophy constituted an amalgamation of the enlightenment exposition of reason as the harbinger of freedom and the romantic notion of historical progression as an organic process.(2) Through the utilization of reason, Hegel sought to empower individuals as masters over themselves. However, in opposition to positivism, rational society and thus the realization of freedom are not born through separation from and domination over nature. For Hegel, freedom through reason is produced in the course of the “subject’s entering the very content of nature and history.”(3) The historical process of the actualization of freedom is only possible through the dialectical interplay of the subject and object. His theory thereby broke with the general inclination of enlightenment thinking that articulated a fixed subject-object hierarchy. Moreover, Hegel’s philosophy, whose foundation is dialectical, revolves around a subject-object relationship that is encased in a continual process of conflict and negativity and therefore an unrelenting historical movement.

The articulation of a concept of reason that contains a ‘spirit of contradicting’ leads Hegel into a critical intercourse with the Kantian dualism of form and content and positivism’s reification of the social world. His exposition of the dialectic is a critique of Kant’s epistemological framework “dissociating form from content, thought from the ‘thing-in-itself’, and the faculty of knowing from the object of knowledge” as well as positivism’s endeavor to confine truth to a given state of existence.(4) Instead of separating subject/object, form/content or attempting to create a system of independent fixed things, Hegel puts forth the statement that there exists a relation between subject and object, one born from their antagonism as opposites that is the moving, generating principle of history: “in being and in thought negativity is creative, it is the root of movement and the pulse of life.”(5)

Hegel’s thought is organized around the conception that only through the transformation of subject and object in unison can freedom be realized: only through the incorporation of the object into the subject can the subject undergo a development towards the actualization of their potential.(6) Truth is not to be sought in objects that are independent of the knowing subject, for subject and object mutually constitute each other. The unity of a thing, its truth, is determined neither through its separation from others as a particular within the general nor in its existence at a given state of space and time. Positivism’s whole project is founded on an inaccurate premise: that the subject can be removed from their relationship with the subjective world and that the objective world can be frozen in space-time. Hegel argues that to know the thing is to know it through its relations, its oppositions and its contradictions because phenomena are always in a state of movement from actuality to potentiality due to their content of negativity. In fact, positivism’s conflation of existence with the real, the potential, and the essence not only leads to the reification of social reality but also denies the demands for fulfillment of the ‘ought’ implicit in phenomena.

As was alluded to in the prior sentence, Hegel employs the distinction between appearance and essence to critique the separation of form and content, the isolation of social phenomena and the reification of the social world. In stark contrast to positivism, dialectical thinking conceptualizes the appearance or existing form of things in contrast to their potentiality. Through emphasizing the contradiction inherent between phenomena, do to their essence of negativity, dialectical thinking underscores the discrepancy between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. The current state of being of any thing is only a temporary moment towards the realization of its potential. Each thing is not to be concretely understood based upon its present reality, for its potential is held back by its ‘determinate conditions’. Only through the negation of its existing conditions can the thing transition to a stage closer to its ‘ought’. Hegel’s emphasis on the negativity of being and the historical movement from actuality to potentiality produces a critical and positive conception of social change: “in being and in thought negativity is creative, it is the root of movement and the pulse of life.”(7)

Intertwined with Hegel’s conception of ‘negativity’ and contradiction are the notions of labor and alienation (estrangement). Labor is a vital activity within Hegel’s system because of its centrality in the relationship between subject-object and in its basis as the mechanism for overcoming alienation. Through labor, humanity as subject is able to bring the object into them and overcome their current state of existence. Thus, labor becomes the mechanism through which transcendence is possible, as it enables humanity to enter into nature and history and thereby transform them while transforming themselves. Additionally, the active transformation of subject/humanity and object/ nature through labor assists in dealienating the reified world through demonstrating that it is humanity who constructs this world. For Hegel, it was through labor than humanity is able to overcome alienation: “the estrangement between the objective world and the subjective world.”(8)

Hegel’s philosophy emphasizes the essential features of the dialectic: the relational nature of subject and object, the historical and contradictory qualities of phenomena and the distinction between appearance and essence. These notions are front-and-center in Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history, which seeks to investigate and explicate the concept that “world history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”(9) History being the gradual elimination of self-alienation: “the tension between (its potentiality and its actuality) what it is in itself, subjectively, in its inner purpose and essence, and what it really is (objectively), is thus abolished. It is with itself (actualized), it has itself objectively before itself.”(10) Freedom is thereby actualized when the individual has ‘power of self-determination’, a culmination of the subject’s ability to transcend historical determinations through their negation vis-à-vis their subsumption into themselves.

(1) This synopsis of Hegel’s philosophical theory is extracted from two books: Herbert Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution (New York: Humanity Books, 1941[1999]) and Henri Lefebvre’s Dialectical Materialism (London: Jonathan Cape, 1968).
(2) Irving, M. Zeitlin, Marxism: A Re-Examination (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1967), p. 2.
(3) Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p. 7.
(4) Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism, p. 25 and Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p. 113.
(5) Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism, p. 33.
(6) Ibid., pp. 37-39.
(7) Ibid., p. 33.
(8) Ibid., p. 77.
(9) G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History: A General Introduction to the Philosophy of History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc, 1953), p. 24.
Ibid., p. 90.

CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE STATE:FROM KEYNESIANISM TO NEOLIBERALISM

2008-01-18T19:14:00.000-08:00

This section is from a paper I wrote on Emissions Trading Schemes and the neoliberalization of carbon for a course called 'Key Debates in the Study of Capitalism.' This section is a good overview of the differences between Keynesianism and Neoliberalism, so I thought I would share it.

Akin to the emergence of the environmental movement in the 1970s the last decade has witnessed the re-emergence of the environmental turn in both academia, the political constituency and the working class as well as its recuperation by the state and capital. However, unlike the flourish of historic legislation that was instituted in the United States and Europe in the 1970s, the omnipresence of 'global warming' today has not similarly manifested itself in renewed environmental regulations or if it has the principles behind the new legislation are markedly different. What accounts for this reversal and policy change? Why has the environmental movement, so successful in the 1970s been unable thirty plus years later to maintain its effectiveness and protect human and nonhuman life from capitalist exploitation and degradation? The answer can be found in the transition from Keynesianism to Neoliberalism and the alteration in power relations that are born from this historic shift. For neoliberalism represents an attempt by capital to reclaim conditions conducive to accumulation through an attack on working class gains, and in order to accomplish this feat it must dramatically alter the formation of the state and the state's mediation of capital-nature relations.

The environmental legislation of the 1970s was premised upon the principles of state regulation of the environment through the erection of state agencies geared towards regulating business relations with the environment, measures designed for land and species preservation and conservation, and designating what could be externalized and what had to be internalized as a cost of production. The formation of the EPA was a landmark in state regulation of capital's relations with nature. Overall, the environmental movement of the 1970s was successful in forcing limits on capital: making it internalize some of the ecological and social costs of production and in limiting its access to nature in both a qualitative and quantitative manner. However, as all of these limits placed upon capital occurred through a movement that worked “in and against the state”, they were not fixed in stone but subject to erosion or elimination based upon a loss of power to capital. This loss of power is exactly what has occurred over the past twenty-five years and with it environmental regulations and enforcement. Capital's power over labor through the state has increased dramatically and been able to re-impose a capitalization of nature that far succeeds that of previous decades. This power alteration between capital and labor through the state is starkly apparent when we delineate the different theoretical logics of each form of capitalism, how they are historical responses to the power of labor vis-a-vis capital and how each encompasses different strategies in terms of how the state should mediate capital-nature relations.

The Keynesian State signals the emergence of the state as a regulative arm of the economy, primarily in its attempt to smooth out the business cycle to prevent another Great Depression or long-lasting recession. This is the major difference that separates Keynesianism from capitalism's prior to its existence. Rather than letting the business cycle self-regulate the state was expected to intervene directly into the business cycle and ensure that the conditions for continued economic growth, i.e. accumulation, were maintained for reasons of political sustainability. Additionally, Keynesian policies represented a rupture from previous economic orthodoxy's because its spotlight was concentrated on effective demand, as it assumed that a lack of effective demand contributed to the Great Depression and the inability of the business cycle to regulate its way out of depression into growth. Appropriately, the state's primary role was to ensure effective demand through enlargement of the public sector, increased taxation, running state deficits and the attempt to institutionalize the 'productivity wage' by tying wage increases to productivity increases.

Keynesian policies represented a profound change in capitalist relations with labor. They were a response to the newfound power of labor through unionization and the fact that wages became “sticky downward.” As a result, the old methods of regaining growth through increased unemployment and wage reductions were no longer successful. Rather than grapple with the political and social ramifications of wrestling with labor Keynes advocated that through the “productivity wage” the power of labor could be used to capital's advantage. By implementing taylorist and fordist principles of production rates of profits would be regained at the same time as the objective conditions of the working class increased: it was a win-win scenario. The solution was not to announce a war on labor but to bring unions into a compact with capital and the state.

In combination with the “productivity wage,” increased taxation upon business in-conjunction with running state and federal deficits were instituted by the Keynesian state as a strategy to insulate effective demand – the newfound key to economic growth – from downturns in the business cycle. By increasing taxes and running deficits massive public works projects could be instituted that maintained employment and thus consumer spending irrespective of recessions. These policies were also expected to reduce the severity and length of recessions through maintaining effective demand and therefore, hopefully, investment opportunities. Additionally, the government became more active in monetary policies and creating the conditions necessary for economic growth through the Federal Reserve which regulated interests rates and the liquidity of money through the central bank, both of which were either increased or decreased based upon upswings and downturns in the business cycle. The federal government now acted directly in economic matters to balance growth, consumer spending, inflation, productivity rates and wage levels.

Before I explicate the major differences between the Keynesian state and the Neoliberal State, it must be understood that Neoliberalism emerged as the dominant capitalist response to the crisis of Keynesianism that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. A rupture in the “productivity wage” with wage increases outpacing productivity increases meant falling profit rates, slower economic growth, rapid inflation. These production problems combined with a student revolt in the university system, an energy crisis, the civil rights movement, colonial rebellions and the reemergence of economic competition from Europe and Japan led American capital to squeeze labor through rising inflation, automation and reductions in real wages, pensions, healthcare benefits, and union power. Moreover, capitalism launched this attack against labor through the state which was now regulating capital-labor relations. What emerged out of the Keynesian crisis was an attempt to reclaim conditions suitable to economic growth, which required a decrease in the collective power of labor and therefore altered capital-state-labor relations: alterations whose unity is referred to as Neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism represents a significant break with Keynesian theory and practice and constitutes a return to several basic principles of orthodox economic theory but with a more statist glare. The foremost discrepancy is that Keynesian economies were largely production orientated and production led. Growth under Keynesianism was based upon expansion of commodity production within factories through taylorism and fordism. As a result, industrial capital was the dominant faction of capital and its demands were adhered to by the Keynesian state. However, under Neoliberalism finance capitalism is the key factor, thus monetarism is the predominant economy theory and policy guiding capitalist growth into the twenty-first century. Not only has there been an explosion in the financialization of everyday life since the 1970s, with almost all social relations being incorporated into financial markets but there has occurred the exponential growth in secondary and tertiary capital markets with the emergence of derivatives, hedge funds, mutual funds, commodity markets, currency markets, and future's markets (Martin 2002). Whereas Keynesian growth was premised upon the M-C-M' cycle Neoliberalism has sought liberation from direct commodity production with its inherent complexities and labor problems through a flight to M-M' (Arrighi 1994). Neoliberalism is a phase of capitalism engulfed in speculation and the financialization of all social relations, an impetus reflected in the predominance of and dependency on credit that fuels the escalation of consumer and national debt.

The move from production-led to finance-led capitalism is not the only major difference. There are significant alterations in the role of government in the economy. Neoliberalism represents a movement towards pre-Keynesian economic theory and practice, where government intervention into market operations are generally considered detrimental to economic growth. It is presumed that the business cycle can regulate itself through the laws of supply and demand and that government intervention to alleviate market slowdowns or turndowns will only exacerbate the movement back towards equilibrium by upsetting the basic operations of the market. Subsequently, government is expected to take a hands off approach and let business regulate itself. However, this theoretical logic rarely applies to practice where the neoliberal state is expected to create markets and enforce their existence - legally and militarily – through enclosure, privatization, commoditization and marketization. In addition to securing the existence of markets and their continued functioning because it is presumed that through the coercive laws of competition markets are the most efficient allocators of resources and the mechanism that best ensures personal freedom and liberty state regulated industries or resources are forced to 'deregulate' themselves and become subject to privatization and the laws of the marketplace. State regulation in the form of the provision of services or setting the terms of exchange - the price of goods and the quality of goods - are denounced as bureaucratically burdensome, economically harmful and a limitation on choice.

Another primary attribute of neoliberalism is the emphasis placed upon the 'free mobility of capital' and the necessity of creating a 'positive environment for economic growth.' These phrases amount to the reduction and elimination of barriers on capital movement “such as tariffs, punitive taxation arrangements, planning, environmental controls, or other locational impediments (Harvey 2005:66).” Coinciding with the calls for reduced taxation and the reduction of state regulation is a direct attack upon the formation of a social welfare state that occurred through Keynesian policies. Budget austerity is imposed, first upon New York City and then on numerous states and the federal government in an attempt to force state's to reduce social service spending and taxation levels on business. These maneuvers are conducted in an attempt to free capital of the gains forced upon it by labor and the working class and thereby restore the conditions favorable for an increased rate of profit and economic growth. By preventing states from running deficits and implementing balanced budget demands capital succeeds in lightening its 'obligations' to labor through a reformation of the state in a Neoliberal manner: one where markets reign supreme. The most recent example of budget austerity, as of this writing, is in California under Governor Schwarzenegger.

The state therefore appears to recede from the lives of individuals as the markets take over the functioning of everyday life. In actuality, the state's form has merely been altered in a manner that puts the control over the facets of life in the hands of capitalism, a transition that can only occur through and with continual support by a reformulated state. This philosophical and political transition in the state, from Keynesianism to Neoliberalism, cannot be explained through a systems theory approach describing the political-administrative system as an autonomous externally constituted integrative mechanism that balances the demands of the economic system and the socio-cultural system. The state is an outcome of and historically constituted by the class struggle and represents the historical legacy and current configuration of class power. As class power has been dramatically rescaled under Neoliberalism, where capital is on the offensive and labor the defensive, the state becomes a purveyor of neoliberal principles, which is explicit in the articulation of carbon trading and emissions trading schemes as the premiere strategy to combat global warming.

Bush's Economic Stimulus Plan - Part I

2008-01-18T17:39:00.000-08:00

Bush released his 'economic stimulus plan' today and called for more of the same, that is, neoliberal economic restructuring. We are told that we must institute more of the same restructuring to solve problems that the last round of restructurings were supposed to solve. Fool the U.S. population once, looks like you can fool them again and again.

If you watched the Bush proposal, as I did on C-Span, and then the followup debate with Edward P. Lazear , President's Council of Economic Advisers and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Department of the Treasury, then you actually learned quite a deal about the basics of Neoliberalism: what it is what it is not.

The primary problem for Global capitalism and many national capital's is a downturn in U.S. consumer spending. For it is the US's ability to run massive consumer and national debts that is fueling global capital growth, even though that growth percentage is weak, as a historical average. U.S. consumer overspending and thus increasing consumer debt props up a sagging global economy, without it the economies of Asia, notably China and Japan, and Europe, notably Germany, would be in a far worse state - most of these economies are export led and while they have strong domestic markets - China's is still developing, the others are pretty much solidified - their recent growth is export led. A downturn in U.S. consumer spending means that these national capitals need to find other outlets to pick up the slack, otherwise their economies will suffer a downturn as well. There is no telling where this increased demand might come from. China and India are not developing fast enough nor a rich enough middle class yet to devour these commodities. where will this demand come from? All look to the U.S. and the U.S. government, manager not only of US capital but global capital, puts forth the initial salvo that other countries might try and follow, if they can force it upon their citizens - knowing the collective organization of labor and the favor that the welfare state has throughout Europe, trying to get this policies enacted in Europe is much more of a struggle, but capital has been increasingly successful over the last decade of pealing back gains by labor under claims of global competitiveness, flexibility, nationalism and xenophobia. The U.S. government's - manager of collective capital - primary solution is therefore mechanisms to increase consumer spending at a time when U.S. consumer debt is at historic levels. the government's problem is then how to increase spending that is already economically unsustainable at a global level - correcting this imbalance would be catastrophic, so it must go on - at a personal level - people will be unable to save for retirement and forced to work into their twilight years - but moreover is ecologically unsustainable - an issue that no mainstream spokesperson dare raise. Trying to maintain or increase consumer spending at a time when it is out of control displays the irrationality of capitalist development and its need for growth.

This is where you see the first of two major components of Bush's economic stimulus plan, consumer spending must be maintained, as this is the key to growth. We will discuss the fetishization of growth in a little bit and how it is the sin qua non of capitalism. Back to consumer spending. the other major component was the solution - reduces taxes!

Now, there are several historical methods to increase consumer spending and thus prop up sagging effective demand:

(1) you can increase the wages of workers, thus shrinking profits for individual or sectors of capital while maintaining conditions for capitalist development as a whole. Since workers earn more money they can potentially spend this on commodities, thus realizing the profit (unpaid labor) in the commodities. However, this potentiality is the problem, capitalism must get workers to parley the increased wages into commodity consumption and not into savings - this struggle occurred throughout the 20th century - I think we all know that time free from work was turned into leisure time as cultural activities soon became recuperated into commodified activities - and capital won: time outside of work must now reproduce capital as well; it cannot be self-managed time allowing for self-determination. This was the major strategy under Keynesianism. It was able to get around the inverse ration between wages and profits through a relative surplus strategy of the 'productivity wage', where wage increases were tied to productivity increases. Thus working class power was tied to increasing capitalist power over labor, particularly as power over the labor process was given up under taylorist and fordist methods of production. Capital and the working class both won, supposedly, and as of the 1960s you might have given a qualified yes. but now it clearly seems that capital, on the offensive, is stripping away all the hard one gains of labor during the 20th century.

(2) find cheaper labor to produce the commodities, thus maximizing the existing buying power of another group of workers, hoping that they now buy more goods. this can be more problematic than the first strategy in the sense that this labor must be found either internally or externally of the country. Now, this is the major strategy of U.S. capitalism, under neoliberalism, since the 1970s. Faced with increased working class power, student rebellions, increased global competition - Europe and Japan - and so on, US capital moved to automation and an attack on unions at home and outsourcing abroad in an attempt to stagnate US wages while increasing their purchasing power through exploitation of South American, Southeast Asian or Chinese workers. This also has problems, labor in these foreign countries can also fight back, but moreover, trying to exploit other workers so that you can continue to exploit and maintain power over another nation of workers is best by difficulties. trying to prop up effective demand through exploiting one group more than the other is a tricky balance and one obviously failing since the U.S. consumer must still go into debt to buy products that cannot be automated or outsourced that effectively - they cannot be rationalized enough, yet: thus, the reason why housing, education, health care are some of the most expensive items and what generally drives people into debt and bankruptcy. This strategy can only work for so long and not for all commodities, and it is not working now, as education, housing and healthcare are out of reach of a majority of americans by any reasonable standard of affordability.

(3) reduce taxes is another strategy, one employed increasingly by Neoliberals as a guise under which corporations, the capitalist and upper classes dramatically cut their taxation levels and institute a regressive tax system. cutting taxes also dries up social service spending, allowing the neoliberal governments to cut social spending and services - which they are more than happy to since they want to privatize everything and do not want any social obligation to 'the wretches at the bottom' - they advocate social darwinism through the market.

Deconstructing Bush quotes

Bush: This growth package must be built on broad-based tax relief that will directly affect economic growth -- and not the kind of spending projects that would have little immediate impact on our economy. This growth package must be temporary and take effect right away -- so we can get help to our economy when it needs it most. And this growth package must not include any tax increases.

Bush thereby rules out "outdated" Keynesian policies designed to maintain effective demand through downturns in the business cycle. The Keynesian state's primary role was to ensure effective demand through enlargement of the public sector, increased taxation, running state deficits and the attempt to institutionalize the 'productivity wage' by tying wage increases to productivity increases. The Neoliberal state does away with about all of these policies, favoring reducing taxes, not running budgets for social spending - but military deficits are of course ok. Thus Bush writes off spending projects, not based on any empirical reality but based on ideology, because the state is not supposed to be a social service provider anymore or a funder of even last resort for projects - the market is to be sole entity that people turn to. Spending projects cannot be instituted because this would mean that taxes would have to be raised on the rich and corporations, the exact opposite of neoliberal theory and practice. The state is purely an institution for monetary policies/adjustment and a military/prison state.

When one looks closer his tax rhetoric is really about taxes on the wealthy:

Bush: Passing a new growth package is our most pressing economic priority. When that is done, Congress must turn to the most important economic priority for our country, and that's making sure the tax relief that is now in place is not taken away. A source of uncertainty in our economy is that this tax relief is set to expire at the end of 2010. Unless Congress acts, the American people will face massive tax increases in less than three years. The marriage penalty will make a comeback; the child tax credit will be cut in half; the death tax will come back to life; and tax rates will go up on regular income, capital gains, and dividends.

It is really about cementing the temporary reduction of taxes on the rich, for the 'death' tax and tax rates on capital gains and dividends are what Bush and the capital class care most about and where most of the money in tax reductions went. Because the rich are the only who are affected by the death tax and capital gains/dividends tax - most americans and especially the lower classes do not own any stock and if they do, it is a small amount in their ESOP.

Moreover, when Bush speaks it is also in half-truths or one-sided statements:

Bush: In a vibrant economy, markets rise and decline. We cannot change that fundamental dynamic. As a matter of fact, eliminating risk altogether would also eliminate the innovation and productivity that drives the creation of jobs and wealth in America.

Yes, markets rise and decline. the issue is to what degree do the people or an alienated form of government have control over this market and how far will they let the market rise and fall - it is an issue of control over the market. Also, the issue of risk is not eliminating it outright, for under capital risk could never be eliminated, but subordinating the market to control by the people and therefore reducing risk. It is a question of severity and on a continuum of risk, how much is enough? You can have innovation and productivity with a quality welfare state/social safety net - look at the western european countries, they have good rates of productivity, innovation and balance it well with a high standard of living. Trying to argue that the U.S. could not have innovation or productivity with a larger social safety net or even a nice cushy one - since we have the largest economy around - is plain ludicrous. It not only assumes that people are inherently lazy and need to be forced to work but it is apologetic for an economic system premised on forced work and exploitation of labor - that needs us to work so it can extract surplus labor.

And to sum up, throughout the speech it is clear that capitalism is a system dependent on growth - that it is a 'grow of die' economy because the word growth was uttered 14 times. And the whole purpose of the bill was to address the "growth issues", nothing else, which means maintaining effective demand, which raises the problem of how to increase consumption when the market is in a downturn and for ideological and political reasons you are not going to increase wages, create spending initiatives and are unable to force greater exploitation on foreign labor, although this remains to be seen. Capital is thus in a bind and it must resort to reducing taxes, which is acceptable, as reducing taxes is a fundamental of neoliberalism. the problem with this is that it will only increase inequality in the long run and cause a further decline in the quality and quantity of social services and the infrastructure of the United States. It remains to be seen if the American public will buy this, but since it is not subject to a democratic vote or debate they will take it just like they accepted their $300 rebate last time and spent them on a sharper image foot massager.

Swiss People's Party (SVP): Racism and Zenophbia at its finest

2007-10-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

SVP is the Swiss People's Part, a far right-wing party that has the largest number of seats in parliament, not enough for sole rule, so it will have to form a coalition of some sorts. But the party has campaigned around a purity theme and fear of increasing non-white immigration. Their major push is deportation of criminals and their families if they are immigrants.

On top of this one must realize that non-natives do not have the right to vote unless the states or municipalities within Switzerland allow them to gain voting rights after a certain length of residence. I am sure denying foreigners the right to vote sure makes them feel wanted and included in society. Great tactic for integration.

SVP campaign video
For those who cannot read Swiss, one of the titles partway through reads "Heaven or Hell"

Other campaign posters.

The tagline reads"to create security." Notice how the white sheep are kicking out the black sheep?

Live Earth and the Ecological Crisis

2007-07-13T23:08:00.000-07:00

In honor of Live Earth I felt it was my duty to write an article dealing with the ecological crisis brought on by “carboniferous capitalism” and its desire for endless accumulation. Live Earth was a very decent left/liberal attempt at raising environmental consciousness through both explication of the existing climate crisis and the concrete actions, both local, national and global that are necessary to reduce our ecological footprint - focusing on the small: switching to CFL light bulbs [which are more efficient and therefore produce less carbon contain mercury and thus must be recycled in a special manner - is the tradeoff worth it?], turning off and unplugging lights and electronics when not in the room or in use. And focusing on the large: using renewable energy such as hydro, wind, solar, taking mass transit or the bike instead of the automobile to decongest downtown.

Yet, I want to raise some 'outside the box' questions that were not addressed in the portions of Live Earth that I watched. For Live Earth failed to adequately, in my view, link the ecological crisis to the basic premises of industrial society and more so capitalism, but also the dialectic of the enlightenment. Live Earth, through its all day coverage by Sundance and partial coverage by Bravo and other assorted new channels provided an excellent opportunity to articulate a viable critical ecological message, even an anti-capital ecological orientation. Live Earth had the attention of millions of individuals around the globe. It was a perfect time to articulate a well-constructed message emphasizing the extent of the ecological crisis and linking it to the cultural foundation of bourgeois society – that of capitalism, the enlightenment, and liberal democracy. While I saw one speech discussing how “corporations put profit before people”, this is a generalization and such an abstract reference that it hardly grasps the major foundations of capitalism. Principally since the production for profit is not a unique incentive to capitalism, particularly to the current form of late capitalism.

What is unique to late capital is the mode of production and organization of labor [wage-labor] that is used to accumulate capital. Additionally, capital is premised on the continual accumulation of capital founded upon the production of surplus-value extracted through unpaid labor. Additionally, industrial society [which is capitalist] is fueled by a protestant work ethic and the enlightenment exaltation of science as the mechanism to free humanity from the limits of nature. These cultural foundations have lead to the domination of humanity by a philosophy of continual economic growth and expansion, but more importantly the obsession with work in general and that work is inherently a morally good and worthwhile activity. Moreover, industrial society is constructed upon the belief that humanity is not a part of nature, but is in fact destined to be in control over nature and should use it to further the greatness of humanity. This is the main argument of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno. That the enlightenment via science was to take over humanity’s desire to free itself from nature and its fear that nature controlled humanity. Before the enlightenment there was myth, which tried to control nature through mimesis – imitation. Through imitating nature humanity sought to control nature’s power and subsequently humanity’s fear by reversing the historical relationship, placing humanity in power over nature. However, myth failed in its quest and so the enlightenment prophesized science as the mechanism to continue this project and fulfill its aspirations.

Skipping forward over two hundred years, the culmination of endless work and capital accumulation is the pursuit of perpetual economic growth while science has created industries whose primary byproduct is the severing of ecological constraints, evidenced via the mass pollution of the air, water, land and the creatures that inhabit the ecosystem of earth. Thus, capitalism’s continual expansion of an economic system that is anti-ecological has fueled a mode of life that is inherently anti-life, as it breaks down the life processes and eco-structure necessary to support complex life - i.e. human life. The failure of Live Earth to address this exemplifies the failure of the left/liberals to adequately conceptualize the deep-rooted nature of the ecological crisis and the need to fundamentally restructure not only the economic and political institutions of today but the culture which reproduces these institutions.

Furthermore, when I accessed the Live Earth website I became even more disappointed. The website fails to radically inspire the big questions in how we live and work, how society, particularly the urban-suburban relationship is structured. Is a nonsustainable economy really worth saving or being dominated by? Should we be subordinate to a mode of production that is fundamentally negligent of the most basic and precious of systems - that of the ecological system, whose healthy functioning is a precondition for complex life - i.e. human life.

We need to understand and recognize that the utopian quest for freedom, its realization via an emancipatory politics must not address only capital and its destruction of material welfare – in terms of extended working hours for full-time workers, its preference for part-time contingent low paid labor, technological unemployment, and the destruction of the welfare state, etc., but must tie the ecological crisis and oncoming ecological scarcity to the failure of capital, industrial society and liberal democracy to provide the solutions to this self-made crisis. Moreover, the fundamental principles of capitalist industrial society and liberal democracy are at odds with an ecological and symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature. In fact, it is only through the creation of a post-capitalist post-liberal democracy post-industrial society that the emancipatory project of freedom can be realized. Realized through the creation of a decentralized, deindustrialized society premised on communalism and direct democracy using local/regional social economies and ecotechnology, as well as automation and computerization to reduce working hours and therefore increase both the quality and quantity of freetime, while deemphasizing material relations and obsessive commodity ownership over social relations and creativity and ultimately the replacement of the welfare state and top-down authoritarian welfare with universal basic income and bottom-up local/communal welfare.

Emancipation and liberation cannot occur under carboniferous capitalism and liberal democracy: we must rethink human-nature relations, how we live, and how our political and economic institutions are structured and their basic principles.

The End of Work and the Reactionary Middle Class

2007-07-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

Powerful words by Jeremy Rifkin:

"Rising technological unemployment and declining purchasing power will continue to plague the global economy...the middle class, long the voice of reason and moderation in the political life of industrialized nations [as long as the economy is booming, and even then that is questionable], finds itself buffeted on every side by technological changes. Squeezed by reduced wages and rising unemployment, growing numbers of the middle classes are beginning to search for quick solutions and dramatic rescue from the market forces and technological changes that are destroying their former way of life. In virtually every industrial nation, fear of an uncertain future is driving more and more people from the mainstream to the margins of society, where they seek refuge in extremist political and religious movements that promise to restore public order and put people back to work.

Rising levels of worldwide unemployment and the increasing polarization between rich and poor are creating the conditions for social upheaval and open class warfare on a scale never before experienced in the modern age. Crime, random violence, and low-intensity warfare are on the rise and show every sign of increasing dramatically in the years immediately ahead. A new form of barbarism waits just outside the walls of the modern world. Beyond the quiet suburbs, exurbs, and urban enclaves of the rich and near-rich lie millions upon millions of destitute and desperate human beings...

Still our leaders talk of jobs and crime, the two great issues of time, as if they were only marginally related, refusing to acknowledge the growing nexus between technological displacement, job loss, and the rise of an outlaw class for whom crime is the last means to secure a piece of a shrinking economic pie...This much we know for sure: We are entering into a new period in history where machines will increasingly replace human labor in the production of goods and services...The service sector, while slower to automate, will probably approach a nearly automated state by the mid-decades of the next century. The emerging knowledge sector will be able to absorb a small percentage of the displaced labor, but not nearly enough to make a substantial difference in the rising unemployment figures. Hundreds of millions of workers will be permanently idled by the twin forces of globalization and automation. Others, still employed, will work far fewer hours in order to equitably distribute the remaining work and provide adequate purchasing poweer to absorb the increases in production. As machines increasingly replace workers in the coming decades, the labor of millions will be freed from the economic process and the pull of the marketplace. Unused human labor is the central overriding reality of the coming era and the issue that will need to be confronted and addressed head-on by every nation if civilization is to survive the impact of the Third Industrial Revolution (Rifkin 1995[2004]: 289-291)."

As my past few blogs have emphasized, we are seeing a reemergence of Neo-fascism across Western Europe and the United States as the middle class, itself born of collective bargining through powerful unions and Keynesian economics, continues to try and retain its material and economic security under the continual frontal attack by corporate capital under Neoliberal restructuring. Beset by continual wage stagnation or outright decline, increasing cost of living (the inflationary prices of education, housing, health care, energy, etc.) and rising unemployment or underemployment the middle class is begining to lash out at the poor, underclass and minorities who are being blamed for taking 'middle class' or 'native' jobs. These economic occurrences and their 'causes' appear to be a qualitatively new emergence of a problem that flarred up during the early and mid twentith century and lead to the birth of WWI and WWII, will their exacerbation lead to WWIII? Only time will tell.

However, these tendencies of the middle class currently expressed, although qualitative unique, are not in themselves new nor historically undocumented. Writing back in 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of his travels to America and the historic tendencies he foresaw in the emerging democracy. One of the tendencies was America's obsession with individualism and the pursuit of material wealth in the market place would lead to privitization of the individual and the decline of local/community political associations that would check the democratic tendency toward the centralization of power under a federal government. Under the threat of losing their economic standing and power in society the middle class, a byproduct of an emerging industrial democracy will give up its political freedoms, rights and autonomy to a centralized federal/state authority in exchange for economic security. Tocqueville argued that once initiated, this tendency would continue unabated unless citizens understood that political liberty is a precondition for all other freedoms and that economic liberty and security cannot truely exist without a base of political autonomy, an autonomy that is continually eroded under democracy due to a conservative and reactionary middle class. A class that mistakenly aligns itself with the interests of the capialist class rather than asserting their own demands or aligning themselves among the other 'lower' classes - the working class, poor, and underclass.

Even though the middle class continually erodes their political power they still reside in a society referred to as democratic, so the leaders must at least give face value to the democracy and therefore hold elections and gather public support for their policies, no matter how absurd or reactionary they are, but as long as these policies are linked to maintaining the material welfare of the middle class, the later tends to support them. Thus, much like in Germany, France, Italy and the U.S. in the 1920s-1950s and again today in these very same countries you are seeing the reemergence of an authoritarian nationalism fueled by social conservatives and used by corporations to regain or entrench their power while feeding scrapes to the middle class, all in an attempt to by them off and prevent them from actually pursuing not radical but even mere reformest proposals.

As Rifkin addresses in his book, it is time to move past the old welfare state and laissez faire models for society. We need to push forward with a shorter hours higher wages movement and rebuild social capital through moving away from the public and private sectors and enlarging the 'third sector' of the social economy, one not founded on principles of efficiency, the profit motive or the continuous accumulation of capital. It is premised on the building of and strengthening of social relationships between individuals and therefore the community as well. It is designed on reducing the bureacracy of everyday life and the alienation that is born from institutions that are not subject to the everyday control of the people who are directly affected by them. It is also designed to reduce the stranger phenomenon that is a constant problem of everyday life under late capital. Through volunteer work and community organizing the social economy is premised on rebuilding social capital and the relationships necessary for a vibrant and meaningful life. Relations that are not primary nor even necessary under a market economy, where buyer and seller exchange goods so that each can maximize their own personal desires, an exchange that can then somehow create a greater social good.

In a world with increasing technological unemployment, underemployment in the form of part-time contingency labor, or elongated 40+ hour workweeks for those fulltime employees it is crucial that we as a global community organize and push for shorter hours higher wages to spread the work around and ensure everyone an income, but we also need to reprioritize our values and realize them in everyday life. A realization that will only occur through persistence and the repoliticization of everyday life, which means the reduction of institutions that exist over and above the individuals that constitute them or that they are supposed to serve. The increasing productivity brought on by increasing automation and computerization allows humanity to severe the historic tie between labor and income while reducing the work week for everyone. However, an opposite tendency appears to be developing, where fulltime high paid employment exists for only a small perecentage of humanity while the rest is subjected to either unemployment or deskilled parttime contingent labor: fueling the increasing polarization of society between those who can guarantee their children high quality education and for the rest whose educational attainment does not cut the mustard in a post-industrial society premised on intellectual property rights.

Works Cited
Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 1995[2004]), pp. 289-291.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Penguin Books, 2003)

France and Regression Part II

2007-06-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

Sarkozy's response to his election win in France:

"[Voters] have chosen to break with the habits and the ideals of the
past so I will rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect,
merit!"

I have previously addressed, albeit in a short-hand manner [France and Regression Part I], my general objections to this quote based on its logic of a society of scarcity. Within this critique I will excentuate to a greater extent Sarkozy's and the Right's perpetuation of the myth of personal responsibility and individual will, its ability to overcome all social impediments, and the outright denial of the existence of large scale social-structural factors.

Sarkozy's quote, or the logic behind it, emphasizes personal responsibility and individual meriotocracy turns away from economic and political restructuring post 1970s that has significantly affected the social relations affecting access to and quality of employment and allegiance to the state, which continues to reduce its legitimating functions of social service provision while increasing its coercive function of social control through overt violence or legal rangling.

Behind his logic is the assumption that people should help themselves, 'pick themselves up by their bootstraps' and rely less on the government for assistance. Sarkozy has bought into and perpetuated the myth that upward social mobility is solely the product of hard work and individual effort: that those who make it and end up on top have achieved these positions solely based upon their own efforts, while those at the bottom are lazy and maladjusted to the social norms and values conducive to upward mobility. Through doing so Sarkozy ignores the extensive academic literature whose findings support the social-structural arguements documenting that social (im)mobility is highly correlated with parent's socioeconomic position and educational attainment, which is itself highly correlated with parent's socioeconomic position. Furthermore, access to high quality social networks and the cultural capital conducive to upward mobility is highly correlated with parent's socioeconomic position and residential segregation that reinforces class and race segregation and therefore highly stratified and unequal acess to the resources conducive to upward mobility.

Moreover, Sarkozy's logic attributes joblessness, or weak labor force attachment and increased welfare recipients largely to a "declining commitment to the core values of society and therefore that the incentives for idleness or the factors that lead to a lack of personal and family responsibilites ought to be removed (Wilson 1996-97:570)." This argument has been systematically disproven through extensive ethnographic and qualtiative studies which find a majority of the underclass and poor desire work but are unable to obtain employment for numerous reasons - lack of educational qualifications, social networking, transportation, and cultural capital.

What is more insidious is that Sarkozy's argument, which focuses attention onto individuals and away from structures, is articulated with the explicit/implicit desire to destroy the welfare state and reduce public policy intervention into solving poverty and unemployment that result from structural factors brought on by global Neoliberal restructuring. He has attempted to argue that it is not the government's job to address social inequality because it is not a social-structural factor; for Neoliberals and social conservatives like Sarkozy social inequality is purely the result of individual choice and the defects of the individual. When in fact research consistently displays that social inequality is largely the result of the concentration and exploitation of wealth and power, which is used to perpetuate a specific structure of power to the detriment of social groups that lack economic and/or political power. A structure that deprives the working class, poor and underclass of high quality education, social networks and the cultural capital necessary for job advancement - deprivation resulting from residential segregation and the destruction of social services and the welfare state, which is itself the byproduct of capital [acting through corporations, the Right, and Left] systematical defunding the public infrastructure by reducing taxes on corporations and the rich.

The decline of social services to and residential segregation of the poor and underclass has resulted most recently in France in the massive riots among the ethnic slums in and around Paris. These riots are the byproduct of Neoliberal restrucuting which has lead to the social isolation and exclusion of minority groups from mainstream society. Coinciding with the Neoliberal destruction of the welfare state, which produces these urban slums in Paris but also in Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Newark, Detroit and Buffalo in the US, but in far worse numbers and severity throughout Latin America, India, and China, is the reinforcement of the claim that the state has the sole legitimate right to the use of force/violence.

Therefore, Neoliberalism is premised on the hollowing out of the state, the destruction of its traditional legitimating functions for the provision of social services and the rearticulation and heightening of its mechanisms of social control and cohersion. Therefore, when Sarkozy calls for a return to authority he means that the masses need to obey the state and therefore the demands of capital, if obedience does not occur, than the state will use its force to ensure that you are either a worker, prisioner or a prisioner who works - which under capital is the existence of most of the human race.

In summation, Sarkozy's quote needs to be deconstructed and upon doing so his words reveal their true meaning:

I will rehabilitate work = I will enforce degraded working conditions upon the mass of France: reducing work wages, the social wage, and job security while enforcing extended work hours.

I will rehabilitate authority = I will keep the poor and underclass [which Neoliberalism has increasingly created and perpetuated] under control through incarceration and social isolation/exclusion in ghettos.

I will rehabilitate morality and merit = I will move all blame for increasing social inequality onto the individual and deny the existence of large-scale social, economic and political factors, seeking to reproduce Thatcher's famous quote: "there is no society, only individuals!"

I will rehabilitate respect = I will enforce the myth of state neutrality and reinstigate allegiance to the state and capitalist class, who deserve their riches and political power based not on exploitation but because of hard work and individual effort.

Works Cited
William Julius Wilson, "When Work Disappers," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 111, No. 4 (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 567-595.

Lou Dobbs and the Politics of Reactionary Class Warfare

2007-06-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

CSPAN 2, promptly following congress’s 64 to 35 vote to reopen the immigration debate, broadcasted Lou Dobbs response to the vote and dramatically displayed the fragmentary and reactionary tendencies of his populist rhetoric. This essay will highlight the important tendencies and problems that he addresses, issues that are largely ignored by the mainstream press, particularly on the TV format, while highlighting that how Lou conceptualizes these tendencies, their causes, their solutions and who they directly affect signals his illusionary and politically oriented verbiage, language that is designed to increase his own status and reinforce the tendencies fueling the problems he directly claims to be attempting to solve. Lou claims to be against the de-facto one-party system through his populist stancebut is in fact reproducing a fractured from of knowledge that fails to adequately conceptualize the totality of today’s socio-historical existence, especially that of capital. Lou’s logic is ultimately exclusionary and celebrates the white American middle-class while forgetting the working-class and underclass in the United States but more so in the Global South.

Even though Lou Dobbs draws attention to several disturbing trends:
- Increasing power and control over the democratic process and its institutions by corporations.
- Lack of public process and debate over policies and active citizen involvement in politics.
- The declining quality of media and the freedom of the fourth estate
- That the Democrats and Republicans are nothing more than two wings on the same bird; that they are proxies of corporations and special interests.
- The Bankruptcy Protection Act of 2005 as harmful to the middle class.
- Attributing the decline of the middle class to corporate control over government.

There are several disturbing statements within his speech:
First, he links ethnocentric interests [code for Latino interests] and corporate interests together and opposed to those of the middle class [code for whites]. Now, this is fundamentally misconstruing the relationship between corporations and Latinos. Corporations want cheap, temporary, and contingent labor, meaning easily expendable labor with no legal and or political protections. Latino’s, particularly non-American Latino’s want access to jobs that will guarantee them a higher quality of life then they currently experience. However, they also want political and economic rights so that they are not exploited. To conflate these two groups as in cahoots against a middle class is illogical, as the interests of corporations and workers are rarely on the same side. In fact, in most of the industries where these undocumented workers would obtain employment is where corporations are most active in reducing wages, the social wage and worker rights.

Furthermore, attempting to link the decline of the middle class to the rise of illegal immigration is dubious at best and displays Lou’s inability to adequately critique Neoliberal restructuring since the 1970s. Through emphasizing illegal immigration as a major component in the destruction of the middle class he fails to address the elimination of manufacturing jobs [high quality jobs in terms of a social wage and security] with service sector jobs [not all but a majority of which are low quality in terms of a social wage and security], offshoring, automation and/or computerization, anti-union practices, and the vehement attack by corporations on the social wage in general, all of which have a far larger negative effect on the U.S. working and middle class then illegal immigration, which is itself the byproduct of Neoliberal restructuring of Latin America post 1950s. The IMF and World Bank restructured their economies, assuming unilateral economic growth [development] was possible for all countries and in return created massive debt programs that inhibited these governments and their attempts at creating welfare states and basic social service infrastructures for its citizens and instead fueled the privatization of national resources and industries so American and European multinational’s could buy them, exploit the countries natural resources, and funnel the profit out of the Latin America; leaving Latin America without any benefits to show for the exploitation of their natural resources and the inability to pay off their mounting debt. Two factors which have lead to massive populist resistance to America and neoliberal policies during the 1950s-1970s in Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua and a rebirth post 9/11 in Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil. The failure of Neoliberal restructuring is most prominent in Africa, which was subjected to IMF and World Bank policies post 1940s, policies that have exacerbated civil war, corrupt governments, authoritarian regimes, coups d’etat’s and the general economic collapse of Africa.

Lou’s inability to understand or if he does, honestly attribute the decline of the middle class to the collapse of Keynesianism and the reemergence of Neoliberialism leads his audience and followers away from the fundamental culprits, capital and the left’s disintegration in the face of the far-right onslaught post 1970s. The collapse of Keynesian in the 1970s signaled not only the end of American economic dominance since WWII, as Europe and Japan had regained their economic competitiveness but moreover the radical separation of productivity and wages. The hallmark of Keynesianism was collective bargaining and the agreement to harness the power of labor in capital’s favor only if labor was adequately rewarded. The result was that labor shared in the gains of economic growth and increased productivity not only in the form of increased wages but in the form of a radically expanded social wage – state and employer subsidized mass higher education, social security, health insurance, and generous pensions. Yet, with the 1970s oil crisis and the reemergence of global competition the U.S. corporations launched an attack against U.S. labor through the delinking of productivity and wages, now productivity gains are shifted away from workers towards corporations, therefore leading to increased profit margins and stagnating or declining real wages. Combined with this decoupling of productivity and wages capital’s continued attack via the state against labor’s power to unionize and strike has resulted in a fragmentary work force unable to unite against capital’s demands for continued concessions in the form of social wage cuts – elimination of pensions, increased employee contributions to healthcare coverage, increased work hours and productivity levels, increased cost of higher education and loan interest rates – while either automating or computerizing jobs in addition to their offshoring to Latin America and/or Southeast Asia.

Merely, cutting off the flow of illegal immigration, which is highly improbable in the first place, as Dobb’s policies do little to address the social, economic or political factors leading to this immigration in the first place, will do little if anything at all to halt the decline of the middle class, as it does not address the root of the problem – Neoliberalism and the collapse of the left and anti-capital forces. Lou’s logic also does not address the increasing rate of structural unemployment, which is being feed by automation and computerization. Structural unemployment has increased precipitously in each decade in the 20th and now 21st century, from 3% to 7% or higher. Not to mention that the U.S.’s incorrect tabulation of unemployment means that the current figure of around 5-6% is actually closer to the European levels of 10-12%. Lou is still locked in the belief of full employment, which is an historical impossibility. Structural unemployment will only become an ever-increasing reality for U.S. citizens, meaning that a universal basic income and shorter-hours higher-wages should be at the forefront of any labor struggle against capital.

Additionally, illegal immigration depresses wages because these workers are excluded from having the legal and political rights of citizens, the capacity to unionize themselves or join existing unions or organizations for labor. Thus, illegal immigrants become second-class citizens; if these individuals were brought into society, the collective power of labor as an inclusive movement predicated upon the shorter hours higher wages motto would be beneficial to whites and nonwhites, men and women, rather than the existing exclusionary movement premised on high wages for some by denying employment to ‘outsiders.’

Another problem with Lou’s take is that he focused largely on the unification of Democrats and Republicans behind big business, the political manifestations of the economic base of capital. He never attacks the economics of capital, only the politics of Republicans and Democrats and never gets the root of their compliance with corporations. Capital is premised on the increased concentration and centralization of power and under late capital this results in the creation of a hollow state whose function is largely not of providing social services to its citizens but in maintaining the status quo of capital accumulation through a repressive state apparatus of coercion and violence. As the political process is dominated and currently dependent upon massive monetary funds to run campaigns and win the electoral vote parties are dependent on corporations to feed their bank accounts and therefore control the hands of politicians. Democrats and Republicans will not choose the interests of ‘the people’ [Lou’s words] over corporations until the political process is fundamentally altered through the eradication of gross inequalities in political and economic power, which requires the total public financing of political campaigns, making election day a national holiday, proportional representation and an instant runoff provision, worker control over industries, local autonomy for municipalities, a progressive income tax and the reduction in the work week, so that people can become educated and politically active. Thereby, creating the preconditions for ‘radical’ direct democracy rather than the existing ‘liberal’ representative democracy. Lou does not address nor call for any of these provisions, which are necessary for the liberation of the individual and their ability to achieve emancipation.

Finally, Lou’s whole focus on the middle class goes to show his subjective and biased nature, his call and attention is on only a certain percentage of the electorate, one that will probably buy his book and watch his show, consequently lining his pockets with money. Lou’s systematic exclusion of the working class and underclass exemplifies his liberal democratic ideology and his belief in the middle class and reform of the capitalist system. He pander’s to the middle class, which is itself the byproduct of Keynesian economics; the turn away from Keynesian economics has subsequently resulted in the decline in terms of the quantity of the middle class and the quality of their lives. Yet, he fails to address this in his lecture: the middle class will not be reborn without an all out frontal attack on Neoliberalism and capital. Moreover, the middle class is only now subjectively and objectively experiencing what has been an everyday experience for the American working class and underclass for the past 100 years: temporary and contingent labor without living wages, healthcare, pensions, home ownership and economic security. Once again, the middle class, in its reactionary logic, will seek to guarantee its own continued existence and leave the working classes and underclass to fend for themselves. Rather than uniting together and realizing their similar class interests the middle class will try to stuggle against capital by itself, a struggle it will ultimately lose unless it allies with its class brethern. Without historical knowledge of the continual struggle of the working class and underclass against capital Lou will naively believe that the middle class can return to its glorious past solely through electoral politics and not based on direct action. Additionally, the gains of the white middle class he cherishes so well were largely founded on the exclusion of political and economic power to women and minorities in the US, and the denial of sovereignty to nations whose interest do not correlate with US hegemony, facts that can no longer be tolerated if America is to fulfill the claims of its liberal democracy – claims that I feel it cannot fulfill, nor will it choose too, under the current formation of society.

France and Regression Part I

2007-06-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

The new French president is the symbol of world regression. Rather than moving forward and realizing the potential of a post-scarcity society, i.e. reducing work hours, allowing for decentralization, severing the tie between work and income, conservative's are trying to reinforce the attributes of a society of scarcity.

The regressive qualities of the 'New' France are explitict with Sarkozy's response to his election win:

"[Voters] have chosen to break with the habits and the ideals of the past so I will rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect, merit!"

Excuse me, rehabilitate work and authority, why? We can now reduce work and authority is no longer needed. Authority is only required to maintain hierarchy, domination and subjugation. Authority is necessary to enforce work and its extension, rather than automating work and decentralizing society those in power seek to maintain their privilege. They seek to enforce the existence of social relations conducive to the perpetuation of a system of domination that can be transcended. You must realize that all these qualities are those of a society of scarcity and are feed by a mindset of enforced society. Free your mind of social constraints and realized that these are defunct values that need to be transcended. Of course Sarkozy wants to rehabilitate work and authority, capital is forced work and needs to extend work hours to increase its profit levels and in order to extend work hours it is much easier if people have internalized the work ethic and manifest social-discipline on themselves rather than forcing the state to enforce social control upon them.

Instead, we should be rejecting enforced and inhumane work and unnecessary authority. We need to decentralize power relations, we need to free work from capital, we need to eliminate domination and hierarchy.

No Gods, No Masters!

Creative Maladjustment

2007-04-26T05:55:00.000-07:00

With the U.S.'s attempt to spread a missle-defense system across Eastern-Europe (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missile4apr04,1,409648.story) I believe it is important to visit the past and embrace the concept of creative maladjustment.

"There are certain technical words within every academic discipline that soon become stereotypes and cliches. Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word "maladjusted." This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities.

But I say to you, my friends, as I move to my conclusion, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence. But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence, and the alternative to disarmament. The alternative to absolute suspension of nuclear tests. The alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation.

In other words, I'm about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment--men and women who will be...maladjusted."

Martin Luther King Jr.
1963 WMU Speech

Newt Gingrich's Racism Card

2007-04-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

Before I critique Newt for his ineptitudes let me repeat a line from David Cross, which is most apropos for this situation.

"I am not a Republican. Why would you think I was a republican? I am not a member of the party of inclusion. A long list of wonderful, tolerant, inclusive, people. That's what Bush had to say. They were the party of inclusion and nobody called him on his shit. Remember when all that shit was going down with Trent Lott and Rick Santorum and Orin Hatch all at once and not spread out over a matter of weeks like it usually is. Nooo, Republicans got some awesome racists, great racists, great sexists, ah, homophobs, A number 1. Absolute A number 1. Crazy, crazy homophobic crazy people. And look, listen, listen. I am not saying that all Republicans are racist sexist homophobs, just the people they choose to elect into office to represent them are. That's all."

Newt was making a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women. But to me it sounds more like supporters of the KKK who are worried that their white culture is becoming tainted and diluted by the coloreds. That their 'pure' blood is becoming defiled by the evil-doers. Those non-white poor minority groups who are the downfall of American society.

Newt's own words:

The American people believe English should be the official language of the government. ... We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

Yet, this hate speak is nothing for Newt.

In 1995, for example, he said bilingualism poses "long-term dangers to the fabric of our nation" and that "allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous."

First off, most other countries in the world have forms of bilingual education and so should the U.S., confining yourself to one language in a global world is the most limiting and debilitating thing a person could do. Since Newt is so pro-capital and pro-laissez faire economics he should know that it is in the workers best interests to know more than one language.

Furthermore, he clearly has no conception of how capitalism works and that the ghetto is a result not only of the class structure but racism. Racism which is clearly evident in the rhetoric he uses, "that non-English is the language of the ghetto." His understanding that bilingual students are not learning English if flat-out not true. I have spent time in bilingual classrooms and they are trying to learn English, but there are not enough structural supports systems in place. One of the reasons is that schools are underfunded, a direct result of policies advocated by Newt's Republican party. My girlfriend taught English Language Learners who were in high school and she had recent immigrants in her classroom from six different countries: Russia, Laos, Mexico, Liberia, Guatemala and Niger.

Now, with only one student aid coming in once a week for a couple hours to help her try and teach them English please explain to me how she is supposed to give each of these students enough one-on-one time to master the English language, as Newt wants them too. It simply cannot be done with the current lack of resources provided to the faculty. Each student has a different native language and so comes to this country with different skills levels of English and different problems related to learning English. Also, due to government defunding of education there are no after-school programs that can provide intensive English education that would assist these students in learning English. Add on the fact that the parents of these students probably do not speak English themselves or are not fluent speakers it leaves the student dependent on the school or friends to help her learn the language.

Newt's inability to conceptualize that a class structure exists leads him to perpetuate the myth that English is your ticket to prosperity, which is simply not true. The fact that he focuses on the ghetto clearly shows his racist attitudes. He fails to address the rampant poverty in rural white America. Which cannot be blamed on the lack of English speaking abilities, as these individuals are predominantly white Americans, born and raised. Even if these immigrants/'ghetto' youth speak English they still have the stigma of being labeled as 'ghetto' kids and being non-white. He fails to realize that just because the students learn English does not protect them from racial profiling or racist attitudes by both prospective employers, the police or worried whites. The individuals will still be culturally influenced by the neighborhoods they grew up in, one which scares Newt and his Klan, although it should not.

Moreover, the ghetto's were created by whites, with white flight to the suburbs in the 1950s-1970s the cities fell into disrepair at at the same time that blacks where just beginning to win their civil rights. Therefore, they were left behind to fend for themselves as all public services left those areas - police, fire, education, health care - and all prospective employers closed down shop and moved to the suburbs as well. Thus creating the ghetto. I am sick and tired of Newt and individuals like him failing to own up to his Racist attitudes and placing all the blame on non-whites for situations that are structurally forced on them by whites. Especially when inner city residents are not given the adequate structural support to lift them out of the situation that they were born into. The quality of education and other social services they receive is far below that of white suburbia, so they are structurally disenfranchised compared to whites from the start.

I do not see him advocating to fix 'Honky' English or 'Appalachia' English. No, Newt is trying to whip up a fan base of hatred against non-whites so whites have someone to blame for their problems rather than looking at the real culprits for their declining economic status: corporations and capital. This routine of blame the immigrant, blame the non-white is nothing new for America. We have done it throughout time: from Mexicans and Africans, to Middle Easterners, to the Irish and Polish to the Indians. The Race card is a major factor in keeping the working classes from forming solidarity across class lines and will remain so as long as people remain unaware of their social-historical existence.

On top of this, I do not see him advocating for either himself or his Klan to volunteer their time and help these 'ghetto' dwellers to learn English. Nope, he just wants to keep this country pure and clean. Next thing you know he will setting up segregated non-white only towns where non-whites are forced to live in inhuman poverty conditions - oh wait, that is the ghetto. So Newt's plan is to rally support by blaming America's downfall on the 'ghetto' while at the same time cutting all funding towards transforming the ghetto into a beacon of light. This underfunding ensures that the ghetto will never improve which as a result creates an 'other' that he can continually use to bolster his own political ambitions.

Fascist Poland

2007-03-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

President Kaczynski of Poland

You need to go read this blog.

Highlights:

The right-wing government headed by the gay-baiting Kaczynski twins -- President Lech and his brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw (LEFT) -- announced it was planning to pass a sweeping bill that, under the guise of interdicting “the promotion of homosexuality,” would ban discussion of, or teaching about, homosexuality in the schools.

If you do not discuss 'the gay's' they dissapear, right? This is the same type of lack of educational empowerment that dooms future generations to teenage birth because they do not learn about birthcontrol or sexuality, both of which are natural parts of life. We must repress who we really are!

Vice Minister of Education Miroslaw Orzechowski told reporters that the main goal of the law is to “punish whomever promotes homosexuality or any other deviance of a sexual nature in educational establishments,” and that any teacher who violated the law could be fired, fined, and even imprisoned.

Little does he know that sexual nature is of a polymorphous nature and that homosexuality is natural. Homosexuality is now becoming more visible because the repressive apparatus used to either kill or marginalize homosexuals is begining to weaken in certain areas.

“Europe needs changes,” Giertych affirmed in his March 1 Heidelberg speech, saying that abortion -- which he called “a new form of barbarism” -- “must be banned,” and demanding that “homosexual propaganda must also be limited so children will have the correct view of the family.”

I am sorry, but 6 billion people is too many. I cannot be anti-abortion when the the ecological balance of earth is being flushed down the tubes. Not to mention there is no correct view of the family, only historically varying configurations.

Sub-Prime Market in Freefall

2007-03-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

What do I see all over the L.A. Times today, huge problems within the sub-prime market due to delinquincies and foreclosures. Well, I called this 'collapse' of the sub-prime market a long time ago, it was only a matter of time, and is a manifestation of the inherent contradictions in the accumulation process of capital and the dialectic of class struggle.

Below is from an article I drafted back in 2006.

Historically, within the Marxist literature on housing the concern has been over the conditions of housing for the working class, lack of affordable housing and the crisis in terms of inability to provide housing for all. The first being an issue of quality and the later two issues of quantity. These main concerns were first highlighted in Engels’ “The Question of Housing”, where he outlined three main thesis of housing under a capitalist economic system, affordable housing will never exist in abundance because mass housing is not profitable enough, affordable housing is secondary to issues of income distribution and the issue of affordable housing will never be solved without ending capitalism and it is these three thesis that continue to hold the focus of Marxist’s with respect to the question of housing. However, I would like to shift attention away from the first issue – the conditions of housing - and indirectly towards the latter two - the inability to provide housing for all and the lack of affordable housing. I wish to specifically focus on how capital uses these two realities to its advantage in the accumulation process.

I write this paper with a few assumptions about capital that I must make explicit: (1) capital not only seeks the accumulation of capital but to guarantee this accumulation process, (2) capital seeks to expand the accumulation process, (3) capital seeks to prevent overproduction generally [although overproduction can also be used as a crisis mechanism to reduce to cost of labor], (4) capital seeks to minimize the existence of the white elephant – to minimize the time span between production and consumption and (5) different capitals can compete for the same total piece of the pie – (workers wages). I must also make clear that when I speak of capital I understand that capital can only act through human action and that although it may appear that I speak of capital as an inanimate entity I am merely referring to the internal logic of capital and the laws that guide its movement, which are typically manifested in reality through human actors.

These five assumptions underlie the foundation of my thesis, that Alternative A (Alt-A) loans are one attempted solution concocted by the industries of housing construction and mortgage lending to the problem of capital accumulation in the housing market. Through an investigation into the trends of wages, housing construction in aggregate numbers and sale price, alternative loans, default rates and bankruptcy laws this paper will demonstrate the my thesis holds true: that through the creation and extension of Alt-A loans capital seeks to expand the accumulation process, minimize the white elephant of unrealized exchange-value and prevent overproduction in the housing industry while through the legislative process capital seeks to guarantee its accumulation process through the passage of stricter bankruptcy laws.

Any capitalist industry is confronted with roadblocks at one time or another in its quest for the valorization of capital, and when these events occur capital will seek to overcome these roadblocks in several ways, depending on the industry – within this article I will display that the Alt-A market emerged as one avenue to address the problems of capital valorization in the housing market. Yet, this attempted solution also creates its own problems or risks that must then be dealt with to minimize the interruptions that might occur in the process of accumulation. One way was to counteract the higher rate of delinquincy and foreclosure that exists in the sub-prime and Alt-A marekt is to charge higher interest rates on the loans.

However, the sub-prime companies failed to realize that or did not really care that with interest rates at historic lows they were bound to only go one way, up! And that the individuals taking out these loans whould not be able to afford such increases, since the only way they can afford a mortgage in the first place is through the opening up of these sub-prime markets. If you do not pay the worker enough, they cannot afford to own a home and therefore produce capital for your through interest payments. On top of this, the whole conception that since the worker already gets paid a shitty wage and therefore lacks savings and credit etc., they are thus forced to pay higher interest rates is ridiculous - in essence the worker gets jacked twice. Yet, this problem of trying to ensure demand while limiting disposable income, which is intrinsic to capital, may not be perceived as a problem with the tough consumer bankruptcy bill that was passed 2006, as these lenders are guaranteed their money some way or another, so who gets screwed in the end, again, the working classes.

LA Times Articles
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-subprime14mar14,0,7406728.story?coll=la-headlines-business
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgage14mar14,0,4068976.story?coll=la-headlines-business
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-market14mar14,0,4631202.story?coll=la-headlines-business

Antonio Gramsci's Notion of Hegemony

2007-03-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

What we can do, for the moment, is to fix two major superstructural “levels”: the one that can be called “civil society”, that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called “private”, and that of “political society” or “the State”. These two levels correspond on the one hand to the function of “hegemony” which the dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of “direct domination” or command exercised through the State and “juridical” government. The functions in question are precisely organizational and connective. The intellectuals are the dominant group’s “deputies” exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government (12).

These comprise:
1. The “spontaneous” consent of the given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is “historically” caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.
2. The apparatus of state coercive power which “legally” enforces discipline on those groups who do not “consent” either actively or passively. This apparatus is, however, constituted for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed (12).

The function of organizing social hegemony and state domination certainly gives rise to a particular division of labor and therefore to a whole hierarchy of qualifications in some of which there is no apparent attribution of directive or organizational functions...The democratic-bureaucratic system has given rise to a great mass of functions which are not justified by the social necessities of production, through they are justified by the political necessities of the dominant fundamental group (12-13).

The modern State substitutes for the mechanical bloc of social groups their subordination to the active hegemony of the directive and dominant group, hence abolishes certain autonomies, which nevertheless are reborn in other forms, as parties, as trade unions, cultural associations. The contemporary dictatorships legally abolish these new forms of autonomy as well, and strive to incorporate them within State activity: the legal centralization of the entire national life in the hands of the dominant group becomes ‘totalitarian’ (54).

This study also leads to certain determinations of the concept of State, which is usually understood as political society (or dictatorship; or coercive apparatus to bring the mass of the people into conformity with the specific type of production and the specific economy at a given moment) and not as an equilibrium between political society and civil society (or hegemony of a social group over the entire national society exercised through the so-called private organizations, like the Church, the trade unions, the schools, etc.); it is precisely in civil society that intellectuals operate especially (56).

The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as “domination” and as “intellectual and moral leadership”. A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to “liquidate”, or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise “leadership” before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even it if holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to “lead” as well (57-8).

A class dominates in two ways, i.e. ‘leading’ and ‘dominant.’ It leads the classes which are its allies, and dominates those which are its enemies. Therefore, even before attaining power a class can (and must) lead; when it is in power, it becomes dominant, but continues to ‘lead’ as well…there can and must be a ‘political hegemony’ even before the attainment of governmental power, and one should not count solely on the power and material force which such a position gives in order to exercise political leadership or hegemony (57).

The ‘normal’ exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is characterized by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. Indeed, the attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of public opinion-newspapers and associations-which, therefore, in certain situations, are artificially multiplied (80).

Undoubtedly the fact of hegemony presupposes that account be taken of the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed – in other words, that the leading group should make sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind. But there is also no doubt that such sacrifices and such a compromise cannot touch the essential; for though hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be hegemonic, must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity (161).

(Gramsic, Antonio. 1971[2005]. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. NY: International Publishers).

Laissez-Faire Liberalism

2007-03-09T22:22:00.000-08:00

The ideas of the Free Trade movement are based on a theoretical error whose practical origin is not hard to identify; they are based on a distinction between political society and civil society, which is made into and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological. Thus it is asserted that economic activity belongs to civil society, and that the State must not intervene to regulate it. But since in actual reality civil society and State are one and the same, it must be made clear that laissez-faire too is a form of State “regulation”, introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means. It is a deliberate policy, conscious of its own ends, and not the spontaneous, automatic expression of economic facts. Consequently, laissez-faire liberalism is a political programme, designed to change – in so far as it is victorious – a State’s leading personnel, and to change the economic programme of the State itself – in other words the distribution of the national income.

In the case of laissez-faire liberalism, one is dealing with a fraction of the ruling class which wishes to modify not the structure of the State, but merely government policy; which wishes to reform the laws controlling commerce, but only indirectly those controlling industry.

(Gramsic, Antonio. 1971[2005]. Pp. 160 in Selections from the Prison Notebooks. NY: International Publishers).

Denmark: The Police State

2007-03-04T22:54:00.000-08:00

Squatter's beware, you are not wanted in Denmark, they would rather fill the youth centre you occupy for leftist politics and housing with a Christian Fundamentalist Group. And if you do not comply, you get the iron law of oligarchy slapped down on you.

Can't find any 'illegal' immigrants to pick your crops, just make the convicts do it.

2007-03-04T22:50:00.000-08:00

This article highlights the extreme degree that capital and its enforcer, the state, will take to obtain cheap labor. If they lose access to one social group that lacks political rights (illegal immigrants) and therefore can be easily intimidated, controlled and forced into degrading, inhumane and unjust working conditions state-capital jumps all over the next subservient, controlled population that lacks political rights – prisoners. Yes, Colorado passes a strict illegal immigration bill, causing all the “illegal’s” to flee the state. Guess what happens, the crops go bad because they do not have anybody to pick them. So what is the solution, have the Department of Corrections set up a program where the prisoners pick the crops for 60 CENTS A DAY. Yep, 60 cents a day, now if that does display how exploitative the working conditions are for migrant farm workers I do not know could.

But guess what, the cost to pay the prisoners and the guards to watch them supposedly will cost more than paying the “illegal’s” how pathetic and disgusting is that.

"Prisoners who are a low security risk may choose to work in the fields, earning 60 cents a day. They also are eligible for small bonuses. The inmates will be watched by prison guards, who will be paid by the farms. The cost is subject to negotiation, but farmers say they expect to pay more for the inmate labor and its associated costs than for their traditional workers."

If capital decided to pay workers who performed these jobs living wages than you would have a lot more people lining up to perform them. When you pay someone less than ONE DOLLAR A DAY and a Taco Bell taco costs 80 CENTS, the job will only be taken by lose lacking any better alternative, the marginalized and exploited individuals at the bottom of the social hierarchy, a population that capital is dependent upon.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-inmates1mar01,0,7469220.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines

Whose Freedom?

2007-02-19T14:14:00.000-08:00

Sidney Mintz: "The choice between a ‘Danish’ pasty and a ‘French’ doughnut during a ten-minute coffee break is a choice, but the circumstances under which this choice is made may not be freely chosen. Like the choice between a McDonalds hamburger and a 'Gino’ chicken leg during a thirty-minute lunch hour, the choice itself is far less important than the constraints under which the choice is being made...[t]he proclaimed freedom to choose meant freedom only within a range of possibilities laid down by forces over which those who were, supposedly, freely choosing exercised no control at all (Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, PP.182-83)"

The Autonomous Working Class in Mexico

2007-02-01T03:38:00.000-08:00

MEXICO CITY - Some 75,000 unionists, farmers and leftists marched to protest price increases in basic foodstuffs like tortillas, a direct challenge to the new president's market-oriented economic policies blamed by some for widening the gulf between rich and poor.(1)

Once again, capital attempts to cause a shift in the transfer of money from the working class to the capitalist class through an increase in food prices. An increase in basic food prices not only decreases the overall wages paid to workers, while increasing the amount of money paid to agri-capital, but it highlights how the working class needs to own its own means of food production. Working class ownership over food production is crucial as capital control over food is a key ingredient in the class struggle and a basis for forcing individuals to work, as they have to purchase food as commodities.

The marchers are angry about tortilla prices that have doubled over the last year to roughly 45 cents a pound, causing hardship among the millions of poor Mexicans for whom they are a staple…with the new prices, workers earning the minimum wage of about $4 a day could spend a third of their earnings on tortillas for their family.(2)

The activity was also unaffiliated with leftist leader Obrador:

[The protest] was also a setback for his archrival, leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who protest organizers prevented from speaking at the demonstration in Mexico City's Zocalo plaza. He held his own rally afterward, and most of the crowd stayed to hear him.(3)

It was very good to see that Mexico still has autonomous working class activity that is spontaneous and not instigated from the top down through some bureaucratic organization. This is another sign that working class activity does not have to be ‘mediated’ through the party but occurs through direct action. This autonomous activity is most clearly articulated here by this corn farmer

"This is a spontaneous people's movement, with no political affiliation," Olivaria said. "Lopez Obrador can participate, but he should not head the march. He should not even speak about it."(4)

The protestors also had additional demands beyond the scope of basic food prices and plans for future action.

The protestors are also demanding wage increases as well as an agricultural policy to promote the cultivation of basic foods such as corn, beans and grains.(5)

Labor unions and leftist groups also plan a "Day Without a Tortilla" on Friday as a show of defiance against major tortilla firms.(6)

2007-01-27T11:54:00.000-08:00

IDEOLOGY

ACTUALITY

Critique of the WEF and the environmental or 'green' concern upcoming.

The End of Protest (Pt 2)

2007-01-27T07:27:00.000-08:00

(2)Continuing the theme of protesting, next time you march in a protest look around you, are the individuals there because they believe in the cause or are they getting paid to do a job. Yes, a job! Well apparently the expansive commodification of reality has hit a new low, with a German company finding the uncommodified niche of protesting and turning it into a profit-oriented activity. “Good-looking protestors can help an organization get its political message to the public for as little as €145 a day.”

Talk about the end of protest and the growing commodification of rebellion. Protest as a form of political action has waned in the western world, particularly the U.S. since the 1960s and 70s, but now protesting as a job, this is another low for capitalism. Turning another activity that historically has been relatively spontaneous and a manifestation of the autonomous struggle for power by the downtrodden into work, into a profit orientated activity. That is the goal of capital, to enforce work and the commodity form upon individuals, as this is the only way it can realize surplus-value (profit). Without commodities capital cannot accumulate capital. Additionally, these pseudo protestors are not down for the cause nor will they be militant long-term followers willing to be engaged in the movement. They are merely the entry-level short-term temporary functionaries in a bureaucratized organization that is attempting to grab a little bit of the cheese from the system.

This is just another step in the dominance of one-dimensional thought and the decline of protest. Now actual protest of the system strengthens the system, through its commodification no longer is protest commodified solely into consumption [which can be seen as labor/work designed to strengthen the domination of capital], but now actual protest is commodified into work. Capital will not let any activity not be commodified or fall outside the system. Capital must commodify all productive and consumptive relative activities, productive for the creation of surplus value and consumptive for the realization of surplus value.

The End of Protest (Pt 1)

2007-01-27T07:26:00.000-08:00

(1)The U.S. government finally unveiled technology that has long been rumored to be in existence. The technology is a heat-ray gun called the Active Denial System (ADS). How does it work? It shoots an invisible millimeter-wave beam at individuals, penetrates the skin to 0.4mm and heats up the water underneath the skin at a ‘gentle’ clip up to 130 degrees, at which point the individual is supposed to run away.

Ok, a few things, now the manufacturer and the government say there are no long-term effects, that it is a relatively harmless event. Are we to trust this, they said the same thing with Agent Orange in Vietnam and Depleted Uranium in both Iraq wars. This is because either (1) they do not conduct tests before hand, wait until enough outside research is conducted and years later they go back and run tests of their own or (2) they conduct tests and know the adverse effects but do not release them because it would not be profitable to the corporation or government to do so. With the short production times of technology like this, conducting years of tests to determine their health risks is not conducive to the bottom-line of the corporation and will of course not occur for this reason. In reality it is probably a mix of both reasons.

Secondly, they say this is largely for military purposes to stop ‘suspicious’ individuals or clear a crowd with gunmen. Come on, this technology will definitely be used against civil disobedience and protestors. The U.S. used water cannons and tear gas against civil rights protestors and anti-war activists during the 1960s and 1970s and this technology will be used by the police-state against anti-war protestors, free-trade protestors, etc. Saying the government will not turn this technology against its own citizens flies against recorded history, where technology that was once ‘only’ for military purposes against ‘foreigners’ is then brought to use against the country’s own citizens who refuse to tow the line of totalitarianism, imperialism etc.

Youtube has intellectual purposes...

2006-11-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

Some Highlights

Chomsky
BBC Interview Part 1
BBC Interview Part 2

Debate of Chomsky vs. Foucault
Part 1
Part 2

Michel Foucault On 'Disciplinary Society,'
Part 1
Part 2

Michel Foucault On 'Pleasure Vs. Desire'
Clip

Sut Jhally and Edward Said on "Orientalism"
Clip

There are tons more on youtube, use it productively.

The Decline of the American Dream…For the Working Class

2006-11-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

This article (1) seems to be cautiously worried and partially intrigued about the American public’s failure to increase consumer spending when wages have increased and energy costs have fallen. Yet, through its explanation of the factors that could be attributing to this dilemma for capital the article points to the logic of capital and its inherent bias against labor - the working class.

Where are Americans spending all the money they’re saving on gas? Not at Wal-Mart, it seems. Wal-Mart Stores was one of several large retailers, along with Target and Costco, to post disappointing October sales totals yesterday. The results suggest that lower- and middle-class Americans are holding on tightly to their wallets even as energy prices fall and wages rise.(2)

And holding on tightly they should, because American consumers bank accounts are in the red, America has a negative savings rate folks, that is not good for the lower and middle classes.

The slowdown in business at big-box retailers like Wal-Mart is one sign that some consumers are cutting back as the weakening housing market is dragging down overall economic growth.(3)

This is also not good news for two reasons (1) the housing bubble has to deflate at some point in time and (2) all the individuals just scraping by who bought a house during the low interest rate boom of 2003-2004 are just now starting to declare bankruptcies and this should become an even bigger problem as interest rates rise. Most lower income and middle class families turned towards ARM – adjustable rate mortgage - loans when interest rates hit historic lows in 2003-2004. Unlike traditional fixed rate loans whose rates are fixed over the life of the loan, typically 15, 20, 30 or now 40 years the new ARM loans have low teaser rates for 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 years which then adjust after that initial low rate to the going market rate and then can readjust as soon as every year after that. In addition, during the initial low teaser interest rate period the home owner can also choose P&I – principal and interest - or IO – interest only - payments, P&I pays off the interest on the loan as well as the loan itself, while interest only merely pays the interest on the loan and does not even begin to reduce the actual loan amount.

Now, the ARM loans are appealing to lower income and young buyers who believe they will be making more money in 5-10 years and they better be, because when their ARM adjusts or the P&I payments start kicking in their monthly payments will skyrocket. An example:

For Inga Rogers, the party ends in 38 days. On Nov. 1, the adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, she took out three years ago at the spectacular rate of 3.875 percent will get considerably more expensive. Ms. Rogers, a single mother of two living in a three-bedroom ranch in suburban Boston, faces a rate increase of three percentage points, raising her monthly house payment by $300, to $1,419, and putting her at a financial crossroads(4).

Now, this situation is not in the best interests of lenders nor homeowners, the American government and the business industry does not want individuals to grow sour on the myth of obtaining the American dream and lenders with high bankruptcy rates make no profit. But with so many people taking on ARM loans it signals the main problems that the lower and middle classes are facing: HIGH HOUSING PRICES and LOW WAGES.

Another topic we could address in a future article is what is going to happen to the generation coming out of college now that is being priced out of the housing market on the West and East coasts and is forced to either (1) move back in with their parents and save money to buy a home or (2) rent for a majority of their life and pray that the housing market crashes so they can find an affordable house.

Think about how much rent you pay or the cost of your mortgage for the year...if it is over 30% of your annual income then where you live does not meet HUD’s (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) definition of affordable housing.

The generally accepted definition of affordability is for a household to pay no more than 30 percent of its annual income on housing. Families who pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing are considered cost burdened and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care. An estimated 12 million renter and homeowner households now pay more then 50 percent of their annual incomes for housing, and a family with one full-time worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford the local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States.(5)

Based on the 2003 American Community Survey:

In 2003, more than one-third of renter households in every state lived in unaffordable housing...nationally, 47 percent of renter households paid over 30 percent of their income on housing in 2003 (up from 45 percent in 2002).(6)

There is not a single jurisdiction in the country where a person working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year at the prevailing minimum wage can afford a one-bedroom apartment. On a national basis, a person needs to earn a Housing Wage of $15.78 an hour, working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, to afford a two-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent.(7)

Obviously, there is a housing crisis in America, everyone should not only be guaranteed a place to live, but one that is affordable. These statistics display just how precarious the lives of the lower classes really are, how individuals struggle day by day to not just put food on the table, but a roof over their head. For more information on actions going on to remedy this situation check out: National Low Income Housing Coalition(NLIHC) or The Joint Center for Housing Studies(JCHS)

In essence, by paying worker's little they are forced to take out high-interest high-risk loans to purchase a home and live out the American Dream and when interest rates increase and their paychecks do not they will have to default on their loans and possibly declare bankruptcy, which will no longer wipe their slate clean, but force them to pay back their debt - no chances to screw up anymore. The capitalist class will get its money one way or another. The extension of credit to the masses, one way to increase profit levels - to bridge the gap between low worker pay and the high cost of commodities - can be seen as one way to attempt to squeeze as much capital from the hands of workers as possible.

Another interesting point, giving high-interest high-risk loans to individuals who are realtively unlikely to afford these loans in the long run benefits financial capital but does not benefit other forms of capital - such as entertainment capital, for consumers who are burdened with housing debt are no longer able to enjoy time out on the town anymore, because their housing payments eat up all their disposable income. This displays the contradictory nature of competing capital - they fight with each other over the same nest egg.

Back to issues of consumer spending:

But even as the economy continues to downshift, wages are increasing and Americans are finding themselves with more disposable income, in part because of falling gas prices. Instead of spending that money, low-and middle-income consumers appear to be sticking to their budgets…There is some evidence to suggest that Americans are putting more money aside. This week, the Commerce Department reported that the national personal savings rate in September came the closest it has in a year and a half to being positive. It was negative $15 billion, its healthiest level since May 2005.(8)

Excuse me? The healthiest level since May 2005, back in the 1980s the savings rate of the U.S. was 8%, it has been negative for several years now. If this is a not a key example of the lower and middle classes getting screwed by the capitalist class then I do not know what is. The fact that so many families are spending more than they take in is definitely not good news for the working classes, especially in light of the recent action by congress, which passed their heavily class biased bankruptcy bill that in essence prohibits working class families from declaring bankruptcy and starting over, it is now harder to do that, most will have to pay back their debt. So much for a new lease on life.

Explain how good the retirement of the working classes will be if they are forced to live day-to-day for their entire lives? With no savings means no retirement, abysmally low social security payments, elongated working lives and the loss of leisure and relaxation in one’s old age.

Welcome to the fifth layer of hell.

From Ideology to Hegemony

2006-11-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

Below is a section from my thesis on how Marx, Gramsci and Althusser saw the concept of ideology. It is very informative in my study of society and I hope it will be helpful for you as well.

For Karl Marx (Tucker [1972] 1978), when individuals view the world through the lens of ideology “men” and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura. This brings up two important questions: (1) What does this mean? (2) How does this happen? For Marx, the lived ideology of the subordinate class, the proletariat, was based upon the dominant classes mode of thought. The bourgeoisie use the power legitimated to the state to make their particular interests appear as if they are in the interests of all of society, that they are the general interest. To do so the bourgeoisie employ the superstructure (the legal and political structure of society) to reproduce the existence of a capitalist base (the economic structure of society). In essence, ideology causes men to see their social existence and relations in ways that do not actually exist, as a result of a socialization process into the dominant classes way of thinking. A mode of thought that does not speak to nor is it from the proletariat’s location within the forces of production, which causes the proletariat’s mode of consciousness to support the dominant class and further their own exploitation. The proletariat sees an economic system of man as a social being and between men as one of autonomous individuals and between things. This view obscures their exploitation and allows the bourgeoisie to accumulate surplus value (profit) from the labor of the proletariat.

In Marx’s view, as individuals enter into relations to reproduce their material livelihood, relations that are independent of their will, they enter into social and political relations as well, ones that are constructed and based upon the form of production through which individuals reproduce their material existence. Furthermore, it is through the reproduction of their material existence that individuals produce their ideas, conceptions and consciousness. Consequently, each persons consciousness is determined by where they fall in the reproduction of society’s material existence. A system of reproduction that depends on an increasingly regimented division of labor, a division of labor that produces different forms of consciousness that come into direct conflict. This conflict arises from the division of labor, as intellectual and material activity are separated and given to different individuals who now have different interests, goals and outlooks on life. Consequently, the struggle for power between these different forms of consciousness are played out in the sphere of civil society, that of the state. Since it is through the state that a group of individuals can gain the political power invested within the state and turn their particular class interests into that of the general interest. As a result of the successful attempt to exercise their particular interests as the general interests, the civil society becomes that of the bourgeoisie and reproduces in the superstructure the same conflicts that exist at the level of the base. “For the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its intellectual force (Tucker [1972] 1978:172).” The class that owns the means of production is at the same time the class of mental production and therefore, the class that lacks ownership of the means of production is unable to articulate their material interests and becomes subject to the ruling classes mental productions.

In summation, the ruling classes ideas must obtain a universal dimension and speak of their communal orientation, they must become the only way of seeing society and its form of existence, their ideas must appear to gain an independent existence apart from the ruling class. As a result, it is illusion when laws appear to gain independence of their relation to the ruling class, who use the state to reinforce their particular interests as the general interest. Thus, the ruling class and the ruling ideas become “lived” by the subordinate classes even though they do not correspond to their actual mode of existence. Thereby, when the division of labor in society that reproduces man’s material existence is actually a social division of labor and therefore a relation of men it can appear as merely a relation of things. For that reason, the current form of production and consumption takes on the appearance of autonomous individuals exchanging private property and denies the interconnection of man that is required for their production and consumption; when in reality this form of production and consumption actually creates men as independent individuals who interact through private property. How individuals view the world is largely imaginary for Marx, a world of illusion, as they do not correspond to reality. They view what is a man made activity and inherently a relation of “men” as a relation of things, one that obscures the capitalist economic system as a historical creation of man and is thereby subject to their control. This illusionary world furthers the proletariat’s exploitation at the hands of the bourgeoisie, who have made their specific value system a universal value system.

Antonoi Gramsci (1971) builds off of Marx’s exposition on ideology and its relation to both the base and the superstructure of society with his discussion of the formation of hegemony. Gramsci argues that every social group arising out of economic production creates a group of intellectuals that provides the group with the knowledge of its purpose in the economic, social and political spheres. These intellectual elite attempt to function as the organizers of society and seek to not only keep but also extend their own classes power. For Gramsci there are two superstructural levels, the civil society (private individuals) and the political society (the state) that work together to preserve hegemony, one groups dominance over others that is exercised throughout society. The two major effects of hegemony are (1) that the masses give consent to the way society is structured and run and therefore give consent to the dominant social group to continue as rulers and (2) this consent thereby allows the dominant social group to exert its force legally to maintain the current societal form.

For that reason, hegemony consists of not just political force to make compulsory the current economic form, which benefits the dominant group, but that the dominant group is able to maintain a hegemonic influence on subordinate groups through the use of culture as well. Hegemony is maintained through ideas and modes of thought; its power can be wielded either through physical force or intellectual force. It is through the intellectuals of the dominant group that an ideology is disseminated that cultivates within the subordinate groups the bourgeois values that will maintain the current economic, social and political structure. Therefore, through the use of ideology the dominant group is able to gain consent over the lower classes, as the lower classes see their reality through the lens of the bourgeoisie and do not see the world as it is, but as they live it through ideology. It is important to note that Gramsci did not see hegemony as static nor without conflict. Hegemony must be constantly maintained through the use of the superstructure – the apparatuses of the church, education, media and family, which all contribute to the creation and implementation of ideology, which allows for the maintenance of hegemony. Consequently, Gramsci saw that hegemony is difficult to maintain and that total incorporation or domination does not occur, thereby enabling resistance to the dominant ideology. Thus, the role of ideology in the subordination of the working classes was key for Gramsci and he argued for the creation of “organic” intellectuals that were of the working class and spoke of and to their interests. If the working class was ever to gain control of the means of intellectual production, that of the education system and the state and therefore the means to disseminate values that favored themselves then they needed to create a mass of “organic” intellectuals who would popularize the values of the proletariat.

Althusser expounds upon Marx’s concept of ideology and Gramsci’s concept of hegemony through his essay on “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (2001). Althusser begins with the explanation that the dominant mode of production conditions the social formation and that the continuation of the social formation requires the reproduction of the current productive forces and the existing relations of production. For Althusser, the current productive forces and the existing relations of production are reproduced through the interrelations between the Repressive State Apparatus and the many different Ideological State Apparatuses: religion, education, family, law, politics, communications and culture. In contrast to the Repressive State Apparatus which is one public entity that functions through the use of violence and repression there are a plurality of ISAs whose province is private and function primarily through ideology. Yet, the two are linked since the ruling class that holds State power and controls the RSA also has influence over the ISAs, as “no class can hold State power over a long period without at the same time exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses” (Althusser 2001:98). The RSA secures by force the political conditions necessary for both the reproduction of the relations of production and the power of the ISAs, while the ISAs primarily secure the reproduction of the relations of production. Therefore, it is through both control of the RSA and the ISAs that the ideology of the ruling class becomes the ruling ideology. Additionally, Althusser agrees with Gramsci in two respects: (1) that the control over the ISAs by the ruling class is not concrete, resulting in the ISAs being the site of class struggle and (2) that the foremost or dominant ISA in capitalist society is the school or educational ideological apparatus; the school is one of the foremost reproducers of the relations of production and infuses each type of worker with the ideology necessary for their reproduction of the existing relation of production, it socializes them into the ruling ideology.

Althusser builds off of Marx’s work and argues that through ideology men do not represent the real world to themselves, the world as is exists, but an imaginary representation, the world as it appears to them. Ideology represents not the system of relations that actually exists in society and by which men interact with each other but the imaginary relations to which they believe they are governed. “Ideology represents the imaginary relationships of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser 2001:109). It is an ideology that becomes lived by the people and therefore gains a material existence, as it exists within an apparatus of control and influences action. Ultimately, ideology is situated on turning individuals into subjects, on creating a subject who sees him or herself as a self-contained subject who subjects himself to self-control; rather than being forced into submission the individual submits themselves to subordination, a process Althusser named this interpellation. The individual views him or herself as an autonomous person, a construction of his or her own action rather than their construction through the pre-existing social structures. In actuality, the individual is constituted as a subject not by themselves but by the ISAs. Althusser’s structuralist oriented philosophy shines through in his idea of ideology and interpellation, he argues that the individual is constituted as a subject by pre-given structures; that they are socialized into existing modes of thought with little ability to resist and that the individuals inability to see the process of their social constitution as an autonomous individual is itself ideological.

Althusser, Louis. 2001. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards an Investigation.” Pp. 85-126 in Lenin
and Philosophy, and Other Essays. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey
Nowell Smith. New York, NY: International Publishers.

Tucker, Robert C, ed. [1972] 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

Class Struggle and The Logic of Capital: France

2006-11-05T23:04:00.000-08:00

France expands working hours:

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said the changes were aimed at restoring the work ethic in France and improving its sluggish economic performance by encouraging people to earn more by working more…He said the change was vital to keep the French economy competitive and to create more jobs...Employers said the 35-hour week, introduced in 1998, had failed to create jobs and was uncompetitive…the changes will allow workers to work up to 48 hours a week - the maximum allowed by the European Union.(1)

This is a perfect example of how capital valorizes itself, how capital begets capital. Now capital is produced through the production of surplus value, a process that can go either of two ways – the production of absolute surplus value or the production of relative surplus value. Absolute surplus value is produced through the elongation of the working day while relative surplus value is produced through the increase in productivity of labor.

An example is that the working day is 8 hours, the necessary labor time is the amount the laborer has to work to produce the equivalent value of their wage. Under capital this time is always less than is actually worked, for as labor power is the only commodity that produces value – machines merely transfer value from themselves to the commodities, they do not produce additional value – if the worker stopped producing at the equivalent of their wage there would be no surplus value for the capitalist – the owner of the means of production.

Therefore, the excess labor the worker expends past the amount of time necessary to reproduce their wage value in commodities is labeled as surplus labor time – during this time the commodities produced are combined together and become the surplus value. Consequently, the elongation of the working day is one way to produce more surplus value, as the wage paid out will not be equal to the value of the commodities produced. The capitalist would not push to extend the working day if it was not in their favor.

Another tactic is relative surplus value – increased productivity. An example of which is where the worker now produces in two hours what they used to produce in three hours. They are paid the same amount, but must produce more commodities in the same amount of time. Meaning, that they now produce more surplus value in the same time than they used to, due to mechanization.

Yes, France is beset by several economic problems, one being a labor problem, another a capital problem, the former being unemployment which is hovering around 10% and the latter being rigid hiring and firing regulations which are blamed by industry for preventing corporations from easily hiring and firing labor, which industry argues produces the high unemployment levels. Additionally, industry attacks these labor laws for limiting innovation and growth.

These arguments leave out the facts that the French welfare model is much more supportive and plush compared to the U.S. welfare model – which is almost non-existent. Moreover, capital wants and needs flexible and cheap labor and so desires as little labor protection and regulation laws as possible, for these labor laws limit the exploitation of labor by capital. Implicit within this argument is the assumption that economic growth and innovation is always good – but one must ask good for whom? What standards are we judging economic growth by – nuclear proliferation, pollution levels, GDP, profit levels?

And so what is the solution to unemployment and supposed lack of competitiveness on productivity levels: INCREASE WORKING HOURS!!!

Now this defies most logic for the workers, while it may benefit a small number of individual workers it will negatively harm the workers collectively, it gives in to capital’s desire for surplus-value through an increase in ASV – absolute surplus-value - an increase in the total working day. Corporations benefit because they can now have their current workers work longer hours and avoid the hiring of new employers whose costs are more than the mere regular or overtime pay the current worker would receive, because a new worker would get benefits and other costs that are tacked onto their wages, new increases which are not incurred through the elongation of exploitation of the current worker.

In addition, the elongation of working hours actually directly maintains the current unemployment rate, especially within that industry, for instead of hiring new workers to fill up the required working hours they now force their current workers to work longer. This is where the movement for shorter hours, higher wages comes in. So capital wants to elongate working hours, mechanize, or automate to increase productivity levels. The workers response should be yes, but we will work less as a result, for this increase in productivity, spurred by the desire to decrease costs of production, will result in layoffs which will increase the unemployment levels and decrease the wages of the current workers – as increasing unemployment tends to decrease wages due to higher supply and lower demand. By saying they will work less they allow for the increase in productivity while not increasing the unemployment rate and maintaining their wage or salary level.

For instance, if 7 workers reduce their work week from 40 to 35 hours a week, there is now one more 35 hour work week position available. Imagine this taking place on a large scale, wages are relatively maintained, workers can work less, unemployment decreases and production levels increase. The one problem is that for this movement to work it needs to be inclusive and global, which is a major hurdle, but not one that should detract us from its pursuit, the shorter hours, higher wages movement had its birth in the U.S. and needs to be revived as a sound and plausible theory for social change.

Restoring the work ethic, come on, last time I checked people did not want to work more because they enjoyed their jobs, but because they needed the extra money – does this not signify that maybe the jobs do not pay enough and it is a tactic of capital’s to underpay their employers so they are forced to take overtime or work longer hours to earn enough money to survive and thereby maintain the current unemployment levels, which continues to depress the wages or salary of their job. If the workers created a tight labor market through shorter hours – higher wages then workers could get the best of both worlds. Most people do not like to think of being exploited, it is not top on the list of things one wants to do on a daily basis; the whole concept of a work ethic and working longer hours is ridiculous. The language of the work ethic and uncompetitiveness is the language of capital and is a race to the bottom for the worker.

To see labor's response to these and previous attacks on the rights and lives of workers, to see their show of refusal and their collective power, check out these news articles, (2), (3), (4), (5)

Freedom and the ability for security, stability and self-determination are not gained in a day nor given to you, it must be obtained through struggle.

Labor will not put up without a fight!

The State as a Class Weapon

2006-11-03T11:53:00.000-08:00

The Capitalist Class has succeeded tremendously in transforming the state from that of a welfare oriented model to that of a mechanism for capital accumulation. From a state that is geared towards the workers and therefore the lower and middle classes towards the capitalists and therefore the upper and capitalist class.

Through rewriting the tax code, increasing bonuses for top-executives and providing enormously generous stock options and severance packages the rich are getting much richer and the middle classes and the poor are falling behind significantly (more on this in a future post).

The first graph (right) shows the dramatic increase in CEO to average worker pay that has occured in the U.S. since the 1940s, with a dramatic take-off occuring in the 1990s. The numbers are mindboggiling and unique to the U.S., for other countries are no where near as high (more on this in a future post).. For instance, in 1940, half of the executives earned more than 54 times the average worker's pay and in 2004, half of the executives earned more than 104 times the average worker's pay. What is even worse is that the top 10% of executives earned 74 times the average worker's pay in 1950, in 2004 this had increased to 350.

The second graph (left) shows the increase in dollars of average executive pay, increasing from around $1 million in the late 1960s to $4.4 million dollars today. An increase of 77.3% (comparision to average worker's pay increase in % in a future post).

The last graph shows just how much the guilded age is back in full swing, how the richest of the rich are becoming more rich and distancing themselves from even the rich. How the rich are amassing more and more wealth (futher numbers on this in future post).

Class Struggle: Workers and the Nation-state of Greece

2006-11-02T23:25:00.000-08:00

The marxian view of the state (simplified): under capital the state is a weapon of class warfare, controlled by the ruling elite and used to maintain its political and economic power while subordinating others classes to its interests.

But look at what has happened recently in Greece, the workers are fighting back.

[A] 24-hour general strike [was] called by the main public and private sector unions…There was widespread disruption to transport and public services across Greece on Wednesday…The unions called the strike as part of an escalating campaign of action over the conservative government's attempts to reform the economy…There is real discontent amongst the workforce at low wages and high prices. Union officials say the minimum wage in Greece is half the European Union average(1).

It is nice to see that labor has some organization and power in the world today. The Greeks know how to stand their ground and fight for the hard won benefits that all individuals should receive. This is not just a one of occurrence either, Greek labor has been very active the past two years in striking and letting their voice and power be shown(2)(3)(4)

It would be nice to see this type of syndicalistic labor action in the United States, whose corporatist labor structure has effectively gutted any radical potential of labor to create a social welfare state. The extremely bureaucratic and top-down business and management approach of American labor has decimated the rank-and-file and grassroots support which was a key for mobilization and building bridges within the labor movement and making it part of a wider social struggle as well. Additionally, the heavily anti-labor laws in the U.S. gutted a lot of the radical potential of labor unions as well.

However, the loss of a rank-and-file labor organization structure lead to the lack of focus on increasing membership, maintaining energy in the labor organization process and building coalitions with other groups oriented to social struggle. About the only worthwhile and grass-roots oriented labor organization now is UNITE(5).

Labor’s demise is largely its own fault for not branching out and increasing membership - through grass roots campaigning and union leadership, failing to make labor part of a broader coalition for social change and for letting the government rob it of its revolutionary potential through the enactment of anti-labor legislation, which was allowed to pass precisely because of the two problems mentioned previously.

Commodification and the Counterculture

2006-10-31T21:13:00.000-08:00

I think we need to investigate the relationship between commodification and the counterculture a little deeper.

First off, what is the difference between a dominant culture, a subculture and a counterculture?

Simplified sociological definitions:

Dominant Culture: The values, beliefs, norms that maintain the ruling social, economic, and political interests.

Subculture: Segment of society whose values, beliefs, and norms differ from that of the dominant.

Counter Culture: A subculture whose values, beliefs and norms deliberately oppose those of the dominant culture.

The relationship between commodification and counterculture also raises several key questions which could guide research and understanding of this relationship. Questions that link the individual and culture, the individual and the social structure, ones that address the interrelationship between consumption and identity:

Why do people rebel/What causes rebellion?
How is rebellion commodified?
How does commodification affect the rebellion? Its goals and aims?
Does commodified rebellion address social issues that underlie the rebellion?
Has rebellion become individualized, rather than a social movement?
Why has rebellion been individualized, if it has?

I believe what has been lost in the ongoing debate within research on consumer culture and the argument over the consumer as dupe or the consumer as sovereign is a middle ground that addresses both the desires and identity of the individual and the requirements of capitalism for profit maximization – how it uses these identity needs in its such for profit (I believe this middle ground has been taken by some but does not seem to be overwhelming)

This angle is the product of William Fritz Haug and his book Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality, and Advertising in Capitalist Society.

Haug argues that commodity aesthetics is

a complex which springs from the commodity form of the products and which is functionally determined by EV – a complex of material phenomena and of the sensual subject-object relations conditioned by these phenomena (P.7).

For Haug commodity aesthetics has two main parts, (1) signifying beauty – appearance appealing to the senses and (2) a beauty developed in the service of the realization of EV – commodities designed to stimulate in the onlooker the desire to posses and the impulse to buy (P.8).

Commodity aesthetics is born from capital’s demands for valorization, a demand and a process which is encumbered through the process of exchange – where a seller attempts to unload a commodity in the search of exchange-value and a buyer attempts to use money to obtain a use-value. This process of exchange is key for capital to obtain profit, for without exchange profit would not be realized. So in an attempt to increase consumption and therefore the profit levels of corporations, as well as an attempt to decrease the time between production and consumption, commodity aesthetics is born. For the whole purpose of commodity aesthetics is to give the appearance of use-value to its commodities so that individuals will part with their money.

“The aesthetic abstraction of the commodity detaches itself from the object acting as a carrier of exchange-value and makes the two available separately (P.50)”

Appearance is detached from the material form and quality of the commodity and is embellished and altered for means of deception – promising what it is not.

“At first form and surface are merely separated – the form being cheapened while the surface appears of a higher quality or quantity. But then its image is splintered from the commodity itself – fed through the mass media – and arrives to the individual before the formal commodity every does (P.50).”

The disassociation of the commodity object and commodity image has occurred.

It is within this discussion of commodity aesthetics that Haug lays out his thesis of manipulation:

“that manipulation can only be effective if it somehow latched on to the objective interests of those being manipulated (P.6).”

The masses, he argues, are being manipulated while pursuing their interests. If we take Haug’s work as legitimate and true than I think his argument ties in well with an attempt to understand the ongoing sub-culture and counterculture pandemic among advertising and marketing. His manipulation thesis ties together the economic system and the individual’s identity needs.

Working with the arguments that individuals crave a meaningful existence and the desire for uniqueness and distinction, all attributes that can be provided by belonging to a subculture or counterculture, I would argue that when individuals consume commodities that are to provide one with or facilitate their belonging to a sub- or counterculture they sincerely believe that these commodities will bring their desires or dreams into reality. They believe commodity consumption will meet their identity needs and provide them with happiness.

However, I would argue that commodified rebellion must work within the existing property relations of capital, of bourgeois private property. As a result, in consumer culture sub-cultural components or counterculture rebellion must be individualized. It must become “image” and/or “style.” It must become removed from the political process and social movements - reduced to an image or collection of signs. Primarily because social movements affect the political and economic systems and therefore have qualitative social and economic change potential – which is a potential disaster for the power elite, but also this reduction to image or style occurs do to the logic of the market – which presupposes commodification and individuation – that the market is the answer to all your “individualized” problems.

Consequently, rebellion has become hip or cool based on both the needs of the individual and capital. Therefore, rebellion is commodified to sell as identity components, as something to display on your shelf - look I’m different, I’m not a corporate tool. Rebellion has been subsumed under the demands of the fashion system – its image obliterated from its meaning and social context to become an ahistorical entity, reduced to merely one “style” among many, one choice of life among a plethora of other lifestyles that the market can provide to you, if you can afford it.

Working off the belief that individuals are indeed being manipulated, as the market fails to follow through on the use-value of commodities – they fail to actually provide happiness and rebellion, then the question becomes, how can a radical aesthetic seek to change society through individualized consumption? Is this possible? Can a radical aesthetic work within the confines of the society that is it apart of – can it use commodified leisure time to its advantage, can it use the logic of capital to its own advantage to bring about a revolution in the social order of society. Can an aesthetic be introduced into the market via commodities that would facilitate social movements to alter the political and economic system?

Capitalism as a Global Phenomenon

2006-10-31T21:12:00.000-08:00

Student said: “So if capitalism has subsumed or partnered with coolness, can it survive without it? What about cultural facets, outsiders who are not part of this totality of the protestant ethic (like developing nations) that capitalism has not found a way to market/profit from?”

“Developing” nations are indeed crucial for the sustainability of capital, for capital is a global phenomenon, both in thought and action. Several authors have written on this, V.I. Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism(1) and Immanuel Wallerstein’s World System’s Theory(2) both discuss the need of Advanced Industrial Nations – first world powers – for these developing countries for several reasons (1) raw materials and resources which are crucial for mass production and cheaper to extract due to cheap labor, lax environmental regulation and state oversight, really flexible labor laws and low corporate taxation, (2) cheap labor also keeps commodity prices down so that the first world consumers can buy the products for sale, even with their wages stagnating since the 1970s – it is one way to increase the purchasing power of “first world” consumers without having to raise their wages and decrease corporate profits, you just decrease the products cost of production via decreasing the cost of labor-power, (3) these labor markets can be used to keep the wages of “first world” workers from rising substantially – through the threat of off-shoring, (4) these markets can be used to dump product that cannot be sold in the U.S. do to lack of consumer demand or their becoming illegal to sell – for instance, Nestle sold millions of packages of dry formula to mothers in Africa and ran a campaign to get mothers to stop breastfeeding their babies and use the Nestle formula instead, at a time when these practices were illegal in the United States. Globalization and colonialism is a direct result of capitalism and colonialism is a direct manifestation of accumulation through dispossession.
Additionally, through IMF and World Bank policies “developing” countries are kept in a state of dependence on “first world” countries through debt repayment plans and industrialization plans which tend to push money away from creating a viable autonomous state with a self-sufficient industry and infrastructure to one dependent on being integrated into a world economy – with devastating affects on the agrarian population and small industries who cannot compete with the big industrial or agri-business of the U.S. or Europe. These policies tend to focus on opening up their markets to “first world” investment, with the majority of profits going to the U.S. or European corporation and not staying locally or national to benefit the nation itself.
If Capital was merely a national phenomenon and not a global phenomenon it would be even more unstable and class conflict would be even more salient than capital is on a global level. For capital’s internal logic makes it a global phenomenon, it cannot be kept nationally, it will expand all over the globe, converting everything in its path over to its side. If Capital was forced to be national the internal contradictions within capital would manifest themselves at a much more frequent and deeper level than they currently do.

Student said: “So if capitalism has subsumed or partnered with coolness, can it survive without it?”

For the past 40 years capital’s advertising and marketing of products has been directly intertwined with youth, sexuality, being rebellious and being cool. These components I believe are identity needs, the last three primarily of the youth – adolescence and early adult hood. Youth subcultures are constant springing up because they want to be cool, be different, be rebellious, it has become a natural part of life. As long as the youth create new subcultures then capital will use their image and style to mass market them to the masses who want the same things. Capital might find a way to work around it, find something even better – but I think it has found the perpetual fountain of youth – the geyser of eternal ideas and change, which is great for capitalism – giving it new images and styles to sell to the public.

"Counterculture" and Capitalism

2006-10-31T21:11:00.001-08:00

For an interesting read on the unity that exists between the counterculture and capitalism check out The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism(1). In the book Thomas Frank basically links up the importance of business in fueling the popularity of subcultures and countercultures for their own economic needs and the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. It is in this decade that a focus on being a rebel, on being alternative and against the man became in vogue. Frank argues that the livelihood of the capitalist economy is dependent on this image and selling of being "counter to the mainstream". The counterculture, argues Frank, is a product of capital's need for valorization and of the individual's need to feel unique and cool.

Another book that focuses on the unity of the counterculture and capitalism, as sharing a similar entrepreneurial spirit that feeds the growth of capital, check out Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture became Consumerculture (2). The authors basically argue that the counterculture has very similar orientations economically as that of capital and therefore they are easily mass marketed and popularized, because in reality, cultural opposition is not that hard to sell or profit off of. In fact cultural opposition is what has fueled the growth of capital in the last fifty years. Everyone wants to be hip, cool, an outsider, for they base consumption and subcultures along lines of status - of distinction. Being part of the counterculture is cool, it makes one superior to all those boring, workaholics who have no life - "the squares". The selling of a counterculture and people's own needs for individualty and coolness directly supports the capitalist econoimc system, the counterculture is not oppositional politically or economically in its current form, so argues the authors.

When someone speaks of countercultures I always try and look at that counterculture and determine what exactly are they counter to? Does it lie on a cultural, economic, political, ecological level, etc. How do their ideals or goals oppose those of the dominant cultural, economic, or political systems - and who are these dominant groups/systems? To what degree of change would the exisiting society have to go through to implement their demands? Who would fight against these changes and how hard - what tactics would they use to prevent this changes from happening? Based upon what I have seen in the U.S. oppositional economic, political and ecological ideals and models - which of course are tied up with cultures, are more counter-to the dominant power blocs than easily commodified lifestyles - skating boarding, hipsters, punk, hip/hop. Now there are certain groups within each of these just mentioned that may be truely oppositional, but by and large these groups are either tamed by the marketplace or not really threatening the existing power blocs, in my opinion.

The Protestant Ethic and Capitalism

2006-10-31T21:11:00.000-08:00

Explanation of the Protestant Ethic and its historical transformation for those not familiar with it.

Max Weber(1) argued that the (PE) was an important cultural factor in the creation of modern rational capitalism, it was a critique of Marx’s theory of historical materialism, which argued that cultural and political factors – part of the superstructure – were merely a manifestation of economic factors – the base. Weber attempted to display the relations between religion and the economy, highlighting the relative autonomy of religion and cultural factors from economic matters.

The (PE) was birthed by the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, which posed troubles for followers; how was I to know that I was one of the chosen? The followers looked to their pastors who offered two remedies 1) a lack of faith in feeling that one was chosen signaled lack of faith in God and a fall from grace and 2) that a tireless labor in a calling was the best possible means of attaining this self-assurance – one needed to constantly display their proof of being “a chosen” through labor. The result was innerworldy rational asceticism: rigorous, scrupulous, methodical work within a calling and the individuals who practice this discipline are the vehicles of the rationalizing capitalist spirit.

The rise of the (PE) signaled the destruction of traditional forms of work and profit orientation. Labor was soon organized along lines of efficiency and lax time was not allowed. However, while profit and material wealth displayed that you were chosen by God, this wealth was not to be consumed by the individual for leisure purposes. The wealth was not supposed to support an idle or luxurious life, the money was to be reinvested into the business – creating ever expanding industries and drawing more people in the production and consumption spheres into this new economic production system.

Yet, over time the economic foundation of modern rational capitalism would be able to survive without this religious impulse, as future generations would no longer have a choice nor religious conviction to engage in “the calling”. All would be forced to work under the new economic demands of modern rational capitalism.

Subsequently, the stigma against conspicuous consumption, against using wealth to provide for a luxurious or idle life, against instant gratification would fall away, especially with the rise of marketing and advertising in the early 20th century, which focused on breaking down the stigma against instant gratification and materialist hedonism. Strategies that focused on inducing people to consume the commodities of mass production and linked happiness, freedom, democracy and the American dream with consumption of commodities, material wealth, ownership of the newest toys.

So modern capital tends to focus on maintaining the methodical and rigorous work discipline (the production side of the PE) while breaking down the taboo against consumerism and enjoyment of wealth production (the consumption side of the PE). This apparent conflict of the production and consumption ethics of modern capitalism is viewed as very problematic for capitalism by Daniel Bell in his book “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism”(2), others disagree and that these two spheres work very well together, increasing worker dissatisfaction is sedated through leisure activities and entertainment industries, which appease the individuals need for satisfaction that is denied them in their working life. Instead of the working classes attempting to create social change and overthrow capitalism, the leisure and entertainment industries keep the masses happy and isolated, preventing the formation of a historical bloc that seeks to change the existing society.

Mass Culture: A response to a student

2006-10-31T21:04:00.000-08:00

Student's question: I had wondered in recent weeks about a good working definition of mass culture. My internal assumptions, which of course could be faulty, are that (a) mass culture as is a product of the industrial, market-driven age -- i.e. that there is a recprocal relationship with the marketplace (in its abstract defition) and culture and (b) that mass culture is some kind of social remix of the low/popular, and high/authoritative cultures that, as we have seen, were divided out when certain societal hierarchies were formed. But, perhaps we can think of it as (high-culture) power's appropriation and transformation of low culture forms, which it "tames" or censors in some manner, and then reimposes it back onto the less powerful classes. So, I suppose related questions I have are: is modern mass culture a stripped-down carnival culture--non-threatening to power-- in a box? If so or even if not, who are the 'masters' of the culture and who are the 'slaves' to it, or is this even an appropriate way of thinking about it, when everyone is a consumer, even the 'masters'

Mass culture from my perspective and based on the readings that I have done in this area tends to be tied to the growth of industrial society and now is a key component of advanced industrial society. Mass culture is born of mass production which begets mass consumption.

Therefore, mass culture is not merely an autonomous cultural manifestation but is the product of certain economic modes of production that necessitate that a mass of people consume the commodities in production, otherwise you have overproduction and a crisis sets in leading to a recession, unless new markets for consumption are found. Therefore, historically there is movement by capitalist industry to devalue the protestant ethic in the sphere of consumption only, not in the sphere of production. There is movement, espeically through marketing and advertising to get people to consume the commodities for sale, the linkage of democracy and happiness and equality through the consumption of the commodities become omnipresent, so the market becomes the beacon of freedom, equality, individuality, etc.

This is of course incorrect, for several reasons, (1) consuming requires you have money and therefore a job, we all know how "free" we are to work and how work is in our best "interest", (2) equality of consumption is impossible since income inequailty is produced through the sphere of consumption, therefore as long as the sphere of production is unequal in pay then then "the democratic equality of the image" of commodities will be false, (3) mass produced goods cannot provide you individuality, it is its antithesis.

Additionally, not only does capitalist industry seek to change the culture of society towards their interests there is now the production of mass culture - where art, literature, music, film, etc. is mass produced for the masses, so cultural production is now tied into the profit motive and its form and content are altered by the economic requirements of large scale corporations to meet their needs, while also appearing to meet the desires of the populace. (We can talk about the manipulation thesis of the consumer later).

Indeed, mass culture does tend to be a merging of lower and higher cultural into this odd manifestation for sale to all. The barier between high culture and high art and the rest of the people tends to be reduced in mass consumer culture - for high art becomes subject to similar economic demands as almost any other piece of art does.

Mass culture does tend to remove the oppositional or critical content from popular/working class culture. This is very evident in the birth of rock and roll, punk, etc. all lower class/working class and in rock's case, black culture, same thing happened with rap, it is lifted out of its lower environment, its scene, shorn of its true meaning and essence and converted into aesthetics of image and clothing styles, into fashion. same thing has happend in teh last 5 years in the underground hardcore/metal scene which i frequent, fashion and image are so dominant now, its community mindedness and oppositional content, what little there was, is now fading.

We must also determine how oppositional are these culture's? on what level? culture, economic, political, etc. Sub-culture's tend to be easily mass-marketed, oppositional economic/ecological agenda's are less easily adopted into capital's demand for valorization - maximization of profit. [a good book on how capital has been able to incorporate all oppositional elements into its continued and strengthened existence and the brith of one-dimensional society and throught is Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. He was part of the Frankfurt School in Germany in the 40-60s. They attempted to bring Marx up-to-date and even combined him with Freud and focused on capital and culture primarily.]

In terms of who controls what, that is an interesting question with many different answers depending on who you ask and what academic department they work in and what lens they see the world through. Sub-culture's manifest their own content but it tends to get modified through its massification by captialist industry and I would argue that there is a continual battle for control over meaning production and consumption.

If you are interested in the concept of culture from a cultural studies perspective than the work of the Cultural study pioneer's in the 1960s in Britian check out E.P Thompson, Stuart Hall, they saw culture as a way of life lived by people, as a struggle over meaning between a subordinate and superior culture (based on a power dynamic, not on aesthetic taste). Their work focused on working class culture and the affects of mass culture on it.

In addition to Herbert Marcuse in the Frankfurt school you have Theordor Adorno who has book intitled "The Culture Industry" its on mass culture and the commmodification of culture for the masses. From a different perspective, that of cultural studies you have Dick Hebdige's classic "Subculture" and Friske "Reading Popular Culture", they champion the person's ability to subvert industry while the frankfurt school saw capital as a totality that allowed for little subversion or resistance.

Individualization and Energy Policy

2006-10-29T17:03:00.000-08:00

Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim have written a book entitled Individualization(1). In it they discuss the concept of individualization, where the structure of society forces the person into being an independent individual. This is a process where the individual is disempowered because they actually lose structural supports that provide for autonomy, freedom and choice. Instead of the society empowering the individual and providing them with the structure necessary to cope with the negative effects of globalization and the growth of capital it forces each and every individual to deal with large scale structural problems by themselves and with their own resources.

Now this situation is extremely problematic, as it creates individuals who are unable to shield themselves from the global and national problems that affect thousands and millions of people and therefore should be dealt with through a structural realignment or a collective action solution. If you leave each and every individual to deal with large scale structural issues by their own accords than the richest groups in society will feel the negative effects the least and the lower and middle classes will bear the most weight.

An example of this was the solution proposed by Bill Frist in congress to deal with the rising gas price. It is a perfect example of the false logic of personal solutions as the avenue to empowerment and problem solving. This solution is not really a solution at all, it is merely a heartless gesture; a short term hand out that will in no way address the true factors fueling the rising gas prices. If the American government and the American citizen actually wanted to empower individuals and reduce our dependence on oil than there are several large scale structural solutions that would not only be beneficial for lowering gas prices and reducing pollution but it would provide the United States and its citizens with more autonomy, a higher level of self-sufficiency. The solution would be to actually have a long-term alternative and environmentally sustainable energy policy that is well funded.

Bill Frist, a Senate Republican, wanted to offer a $100 tax rebate. Senator Frist said the rebates would go to single taxpayers making less than $125,000 per year, and couples making less than $150,000(2). The rebate would target only the first half of that income group - you do the math - its probably around $440 million. Which would be about 57% of the current fiscal spending on alternative energy(3). Now the rebate might appear to be good but, in fact, this solution in no way changes the structural issues that created this problem in the first place. The United States has learned nothing from the 1970s oil crisis except that if you do not own enough oil you can attempt to appropriate it from other countries through military force. Considering the U.S. government’s budget this year for alternative energy is $771 million(4), the hundreds of millions the U.S. governemnt would be giving back would be much better spent on investing into alternative and sustainable fuel, fuel that will exist long after oil is gone, fuel that is cleaner than oil and fuel that would make communities, states, and the U.S. much more self-sufficient energy wise.

Think about it, the lower west coast and the southwest is almost always in the sun. There is no reason that a significant portion of these regions could not be powered by sunlight, making each home and neighborhood self-sufficient. But one must remember that oil corporations have a significant say in the oval office and congress and do not want to see individuals who are self-sufficient and autonomous. Oil corporations depend on our dependency on them. Self-sufficient communities and individuals, who can live off of the sun, wind or waste products is not the in these corporation’s best interest, but it is in the citizens best interest and the nation as a whole. No longer should we allow big oil to control our own lives nor our countries. An America with an energy policy built around sustainable clean energy, biomass, sun, water, and wind can be done, we just have to incentivize the government and business, through a combination of “voting” with your dollar, but also with who we put into office and the legislation we pass as citizens in a “democratic” country. The future lies in a combination of legislation and funding that promotes biomass and biofuel, increased gas mileage for all automobiles, solar power, wind power, and tidal wave power.

Some ideas(5)

Thoughts on Education and the Economy

2006-10-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

Assorted free-flowing thoughts of the day:

(1) Free education for all. This is a must. No litmus test based on money, but not just free education, for the lower classes could still not afford living expenses. Therefore, education should be free and all those who go to college should get a living stipend as well, to allow for rent, food, health insurance, etc. Working detracts from a quality education.

(2) Acknowledgment that taking on debt and then starting out in the job market with a B.A. and $20K in debt (at least) puts the worker in even more of a disadvantage than typical capital-labor relations. Since payment on debt starts six months after one graduates one cannot hold out for the best job that they want but is typically forced to take whatever job they can get so they can start paying those loan bills.

(3) The credentialism aspect of education is very true, Max Weber said it best, “the demand for regular curricula and special examinations, the reason behind it is, of course, not a suddenly awakened 'thirst for education' but the desire for restricting the supply for these positions and their monopolization by the owners of educational certificates." [From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, p.240-244]. University education, the process of certification, is the means for class privilege and the way to protect one's economic and social class position, particularly the middle or upper class, but primarily the upper class.

(4) That university education is nothing more than costly individualized job training. All the costs of having semi-skilled workers are passed from the corporation to the state that passes it onto the individual. I have to pay to obtain skills so I can be employable. This is ridiculous, if we are forced to take loans than corporations should have to payback our loans for hiring us, but that sets up a whole new set of problems.

(5) Accept the fact that the link between academia and the job market is tenuous at best and that higher education should be for creating knowledge and civically active people on an ethical, ecological and political level. If one wants an education strictly for the job market than go to schools specifically designed for that.

(6) Realize that oil is purchased in U.S. dollars, if enough countries go off the dollar to the euro, like Iraq (with Saddam) and Iran have threatened than that will hurt the U.S. economy even more, since the Euro is worth more than the U.S. dollar.

(7) Realize that one path to autonomy and self-determination for all within capital, at least at a higher than current level is through the guaranteed universal income, with no work requirement. http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.html

(8) Realize that in all actuality capital might not fail during our lifetime, so one path is to try to work on improvements within that system. I am not giving up on a different economic model, but with western Europe turning towards capital along with China and India and south America turning relatively leftist I think there is a long time left, hence the search for alternatives within capital, like the one above. The proper question is, what economic model can provide for the autonomy and self-determination of the majority.

Impassioned Rant...512 [The Society of the Spectacle]

2006-10-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

We live in a society divorced from matter, a society where the democratization of the class based image has fueled the belief in the loss of class creating an image of equalitarian society. Yet, if we divested ourselves of this split, negated its separation through a reunification of matter and form we would be able to see how unequal we really are. We must move beyond this split and unify the divested image to the matter of society. Only though the reunification of form and matter can we advance as a society.

For only through disassociation of form and matter could we realize just how false and unsafe a world of image is. One divested of the link between form and matter is one inherently out of touch with reality, with the objective social conditions within which people live. This dissasociation relies on a world full of subjective perceptions of mistruths, lies and misinformed conceptions.

The self as an image is reproducible, it is manufactured and sold not for one person, but for the millions, what is offered to you and I as unique, individualized, is the antithesis of this, it is mass produced, standardized, subject to a routine. Life is no longer about crafting a truly authentic self, even though that is what people want.

The economic system has taken the desire for authenticity and individuality and rubber stamped it with mass produced materialism. A self for the market place means, fancy car, fashionable clothing, big screen TV - it is the commodity self, a self built around an image of material wealth.

This world of image, dominated by mass technology is totally divorced from the reality of the material world, it seems to float above the material world, smothering its existence in its wake, its model of reality appears to take precedence in the lives of people, we now communicate solely through free floating signifieds unattached to their signifiers. Reality is now dominated by image, people simulate what they wish their lives were or what they want them to be. People no longer display who they truly are. Individuals now produce their own reality via their presentation of self, via images of the world.

People now interact primarily through their presentation of self, images converse with images, signs interact with other signs. The body is now devoid of any purpose other than as a hanger for the signs of self. The interplay of signs has obliterated the importance of material reality, it is no longer able to bind people to natural limits, the world of the image knows no bounds or limits, it is a world of image that has become substance, one is now forced to play in its reality, its world, for any tie to the land is now obliterated.

We are now socialized into a world that deemphasizes the material world and concrete human interaction. We are socialized into a world of mass mediated images. The image is now autonomous from material reality, yet it begins to obtain its own material form, its own reality, one that becomes the dominant mode of thought in 21st century society. It is a society that has transformed the concept of being into having and then taken it one step further again, from having into the appearance of having.

The world of touch has been replaced by the world of sight.

As long as people equate the appearance of having with being, then the dominance of the spectacle, the dominance of disembodied images with no correlation to reality reigns supreme, and then the goal of individual emancipation is doomed. The world of spectacle allows for the obliteration of the conception of class society and the consciousness that the societal form that humans have constructed can be altered through political action.

The commodity self is a part of an apparatus of social control, one designed to focus one's concentration on their relative status to others, their material shortcomings, their failure to obtain the image of the good life - that of material wealth. It is created to blind people from the reality that an authentic and happy you is not dependent on material wealth, that freedom, autonomy, choice, security is not to be found in your current job nor the existing commodity market, it is to be found in your human interaction, in your political activism.

The Splinter of Form and Matter

2006-10-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have come to the conclusion that matter no longer produces form, that substance no longer determines style. Consumer culture has created the ultimate reversal, a complete alteration has now occured in how people interpret the world and themselves. Today image determines substance, style creates substance, form creates its own matter. Plastic surgery determines your inner self. Your clothing determines who people see you as and who you see yourself as. The image of happiness now produces the appearance of happiness. We no longer work from the inside out, but outside in. A great reversal has occured and it will be interesting to see where it takes us.

Guaranteed Universal Income

2006-10-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

Many economic elites speak out against the guaranteed income movement specifically because it is for the working classes and might end up hurting their profit levels, as it would give some leverage to the workers against corporations, allowing them to demand more pay and benefits from corporations. U.S. GIM
My response is "capitalist's want a guaranteed income for themselves and no one else." Think about it, it makes perfect sense. They seek to guarantee through labor and tax laws that they get paid, while also denying the legal rights of workers to a guaranteed income. The interest of labor and capital are anitithetical in the long run.

Republican Race baiting

2006-10-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Republican Party plays the race card, what? No way! You mean they are racist? Of course they are, they are classist and misogynist, why not the trifecta?

So for those not following politics, the Republican's are trying not to lose Bill Frist's seat in Tennesse to a black democrat. In response they go to the race card. Lately, the focus has been on an ad that tied him to white playboy bunnies who wanted to have sex with him and that he gave money to porn companies.

But this is worse, check this out:

"a radio ad accusing him of unfairly favoring blacks repeated the word "black" six times in its first twenty-four seconds, warning Tennesseans that he's a member of the "Congressional Black Caucus, an all-black group of congressmen who represent the interests of black people."

The Nation

Now if that is not trying to create a race war than I do not know what is.

But what is worse is that the Republicans win either way, they are too blind to see that this guy is a republican, he is such a republican that it makes me sick. Southern democrats are so backward that they should just join the republican party so the democrats can actually start being left. The democrats need a cleansing if Ford is a democrat. Listen to what he has said and voted for and against:

"I voted for the Patriot Act, five trillion in defense, and against amnesty for illegals. I approved this message because I won't let them make me somebody I'm not. And I'll always fight for you...Junior" came to Washington preaching the New Democrats' gospel of fiscal restraint, corporate-friendliness and social moderation...In the past two Congresses, he voted the conservative line on every issue likely to matter to Tennessee voters come 2006. From being a moderate on immigration, he became one of Washington's staunchest border-warriors. He voted to extend Bush's tax cuts and supported constitutional amendments against flag-burning and gay marriage. His old F rating from the National Rifle Association turned into a B."

The Nation

If that's a Democract we are all in trouble. I cannot belive this is what the democratic party has come to. I knew they sucked, but not this much. None of these isssues are going to solve the issues of the working class or bring stability, security or autonomy to individuals. I hope that neither party wins and Tennessee implodes from this insanity.