Neo Marxism

[phildwyer]

You are a master of wit and repartee.

How about telling me something I don't know? Like maybe contributing something positive to the thread?

 

[Spion]

It's not weird at all. When people first become aware of an evil metaphysical power in their midst, a power which works through human minds but seems to control rather than be controlled by them, a power which manifests itself in effiacious signification, they are horrified and terrified by it and they call it "Satan" and try to destroy those they think are held in its grip.

But once that power has conquered a soceity, dominating it and the way its citizens think and behave, it ceases to seem evil. People even forget that it exists. The postcolonial world, or much of it, is at the first stage of this process, just as Europe was in the C16th-C17th. The West is at the second stage. So you see there is not really any difficulty for my argument at all in the point you make here. Onto the next...

Yes, its all makes for a lovely theory but it's completely counter to the historical evidence, I'm afraid.

Belief in witchcraft flourished under the pre-capitalist system. It declined rapidly after the revolution.

 

[danny la rouge]

How about telling me something I don't know? Like maybe contributing something positive to the thread?

Are you going to persist with your Satan metaphor? If so, then the thread's dead.

 

[Spion]

Who would have come out on top in 1600? See? That's my point.

It's a very silly point. Sticking pins in a doll would have stood more chance because credit cards hadn't been invented.

But the real point is that there is a vast gulf between such witch-y practices and the working of the financial system. The former is only symbolic, while the latter uses symbols of the universal equivalent to represent real things measured in terms of the labour they contain.

 

[kyser_soze]

Belief in witchcraft flourished under the pre-capitalist system. It declined rapidly after the revolution.

I hate to say it, but he has a point. Look at what's caused the collapse of the financial markets - invisible, made up money conjured into existance by mathemeticians using arcana that only they really understand, and in some cases not even that. None of the money ever existed physically outside of an electrical impulse, but was used to buy real world objects, be that the mortgage that was lent or the bonus the banker took.

Witness also medicine, which lives by the rule 'Efficacy over mechanism' - i.e. if it works, you use it regardless of whether you understand HOW it works.

I don't like the Satan metaphor, but I think there's a bit of meat in there, especially the consideration of Lutheranism as a 'long tail' influence over Hegel and Marx (I was thinking about the religious backgrounds of Stalin et al, and what, if any, affect that had on how they saw the institutional structure and necessity of building what was, in effect, a secular variant of the Catholic Church at the height of it's powers)...

 

[phildwyer]

Belief in witchcraft flourished under the pre-capitalist system. It declined rapidly after the revolution.

That's my point. Witchcraft was not defeated, it was victorious--in the form of capitalism. So it was no longer considered evil to practice witchcraft, because the entire society was constructed around it. Withcraft is the belief in the objective efficacy of autonomous symbols. So is capitalism.

To be fair, this has only become clear since the Bretton Woods agreement, which revealed money to be a non-referential symbol by removing the gold standard. But this was not a change in the nature of money but a revelation of its true nature. I'd say that even twenty or thirty years ago, many people still thought that money "was" gold, or bank-notes, or something material. No-one thinks that now. Which in my view raises very interesting possibilities for political practice.

As an aside, it's not a matter of "belief in witchcraft." Everyone believes in withcraft--don't you yourself know some people who practice Wicca? The question is whether witchcraft involves a pact with the devil--in other words whether it is evil to attempt to alter objective reality through the manipulation of symbols.

 

[kyser_soze]

Could you say that capitalism has found the alchemist's goal of creating wealth out of thin air?

 

[Demosthenes]

So that's a label, if that's what you wanted. As for the consequences of my ideas, I hope to free socialism of the materialist taint that has attached to it since the late nineteenth-century, for it is surely obvious that materialist Marxism has little or no bearing on the *consumer* societies of the Western world, in which money has become abstract etc. And surely no-one will deny the irrelvance of materialist Marxism--just look at the state of their organizations. I think I'm doing something new. Or rather, I *know* I'm doing something new, I *think* it is useful. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating innit.

Why new? I would have thought the struggle between God and Mammon for humanity's faith is a very old story, though no less important for that. Or is the newness in the technical academic analysis you're doing of marxism, rather than in the general picture. ?

 

[Spion]

Perhaps an example will help? Consider then the concept of "indulgences," which as you know were the immediate cause of the Lutheran Reformation. What is an indulgence but a fetishized symbol of alienated human activity? Luther's initial protest was against this fetishization of alienated human activity, Hegel took it up from Luther (in practically the same terminology) and of course Marx took it from Hegel (unfortunately using the materialist vocabulary to which he had become committed through his efforts to distance himself from the Young Hegelians).

Form and content, dear boy, form and content. There three of them may have railed against forms of alienation, but the extraction of surplus by the church and the capitalist mode of extracting surplus are very different things. You collapse it all together.

So that's a label, if that's what you wanted. As for the consequences of my ideas, I hope to free socialism of the materialist taint that has attached to it since the late nineteenth-century, for it is surely obvious that materialist Marxism has little or no bearing on the *consumer* societies of the Western world, in which money has become abstract etc.

I don't think you understand materialism. Plase tell me your definition.

 

[phildwyer]

I hate to say it, but he has a point. Look at what's caused the collapse of the financial markets - invisible, made up money conjured into existance by mathemeticians using arcana that only they really understand, and in some cases not even that. None of the money ever existed physically outside of an electrical impulse, but was used to buy real world objects, be that the mortgage that was lent or the bonus the banker took.

Witness also medicine, which lives by the rule 'Efficacy over mechanism' - i.e. if it works, you use it regardless of whether you understand HOW it works.

I don't like the Satan metaphor, but I think there's a bit of meat in there, especially the consideration of Lutheranism as a 'long tail' influence over Hegel and Marx (I was thinking about the religious backgrounds of Stalin et al, and what, if any, affect that had on how they saw the institutional structure and necessity of building what was, in effect, a secular variant of the Catholic Church at the height of it's powers)...

Thanks. My ideas might or might not be correct, but they're obviously not *crazy*--only someone extremely ignorant of the history of thought would say that (step forward Mr. Brainaddict).

Why don't you like the Satan metaphor? Do you find it inappropriate because there are still too many people who think of Satan in literalistic terms, as a red man with horns and a goatee? If so, I'd answer that it is precisely such people who are likely to be responsive to a theory that shows them what Satan *really* is.

Also, who are such people? Are they not, in large part, the American proletariat? And is not the American proletariat the single most powerful social class in the world? Lord knows they've been fucked over enough by the financial system to be receptive to a populist version of what I'm saying here. And if they were, then the political world-system would suddenly start to look very different, non?

 

[phildwyer]

Could you say that capitalism has found the alchemist's goal of creating wealth out of thin air?

That is in fact precisely what I do say, at considerable length, in print.

Anyway, I'll get back to everyone's questions later, but really, really must do some proper work now. Laters all...

 

[butchersapron]

There's tons of this stuff used in looking at the reaction of African populations to capitalism - it's an approach that's got a long and respectable history. Not sure we need it on every single thread you go on though phil.

 

[Demosthenes]

Thanks. My ideas might or might not be correct, but they're obviously not *crazy*--only someone extremely ignorant of the history of thought would say that (step forward Mr. Brainaddict).

Why don't you like the Satan metaphor? Do you find it inappropriate because there are still too many people who think of Satan in literalistic terms, as a red man with horns and a goatee? If so, I'd answer that it is precisely such people who are likely to be responsive to a theory that shows them what Satan *really* is.

Also, who are such people? Are they not, in large part, the American proletariat? And is not the American proletariat the single most powerful social class in the world? Lord knows they've been fucked over enough by the financial system to be receptive to a populist version of what I'm saying here. And if they were, then the political world-system would suddenly start to look very different, non?

It's a good point, but you'd need to be a rockstar to have the opportunity to preach to them.

 

[Spion]

I hate to say it, but he has a point. Look at what's caused the collapse of the financial markets - invisible, made up money conjured into existance by mathemeticians using arcana that only they really understand, and in some cases not even that. None of the money ever existed physically

Not true. The problem is that money that did exist was given to people who couldn't afford to pay it back. The derivatives thing parallels this but is not the same. And in any case that is all froth on the very real source of profits which is the production of real good, the vast bulk of capitalist activity

 

[phildwyer]

Why new? I would have thought the struggle between God and Mammon for humanity's faith is a very old story, though no less important for that. Or is the newness in the technical academic analysis you're doing of marxism, rather than in the general picture. ?

I think it's in showing that Marxism is *part of* the ancient struggle between God and Mammon. Which should be fucking obvious actually, but has been obscured by populist materialism for the last couple of centuries.

Spion: you ask a complicated question about my understanding of materialism. I will answer it, but it'll have to wait, I really do have to run...

 

[kyser_soze]

Why use a specifically Xtian image tho? Why use that precise image, and not something like Loki, Mercury or another older image? Altho I see the point in the obvious association with Europe where early cap emerged, what you're referring to is, in some way shape or form, a much older trait of human societies and the use of Satan seems both theo-and culturecentric.

 

[Spion]

Could you say that capitalism has found the alchemist's goal of creating wealth out of thin air?

No. Wealth only really comes from exploiting labour to make things/services. True there is the 'froth' of investment but it's as a moon to a planet re production - it couldn't exist without it

 

[kyser_soze]

very real source of profits which is the production of real good, the vast bulk of capitalist activity

Which is why the liabilities from 'crunch' were estimated, at one point, to be 10 times the worlds GDP.

 

[Demosthenes]

Why use a specifically Xtian image tho? Why use that precise image, and not something like Loki, Mercury or another older image? Altho I see the point in the obvious association with Europe where early cap emerged, what you're referring to is, in some way shape or form, a much older trait of human societies and the use of Satan seems both theo-and culturecentric.

Maybe because Loki and Mercury are not efficacious symbols. -- they don't have any purchase in the popular imagination.

 

[kyser_soze]

I'm talking specifically about this thread, not wider popular imaginings...

 

[Spion]

That's my point. Witchcraft was not defeated, it was victorious--in the form of capitalism.

Utter, utter twaddle - and you can't provide a shred of evidence to link the two causally for that in history.

 

[phildwyer]

There's tons of this stuff used in looking at the reaction of African populations to capitalism - it's an approach that's got a long and respectable history. Not sure we need it on every single thread you go on though phil.

It's not on every thread I go on, but it seems appropriate to a thread about Neo-Marxism. And yes, I've mentioned the anthropological studies on this thread already--though they start with Taussig's work in Bolivia rather than the African stuff that's been coming out more recently.

Has anyone read Ngugi's novel, "Devil on the Cross," btw? It offers a highly accessible version of what I'm saying from the perspective of the Kenyan peasantry.

 

[Demosthenes]

Besides which the mythology of loki and mercury doesn't have anything to do with the struggle between God and Mammon for humanity's soul,

whereas the myth made history that is the story of Christ it does.

 

[kyser_soze]

Stop trying to make this solely about Xtianity demos - Loki and Mercury both represent the trickster element of ourselves and society; and capitalism is nothing if not an embodiment of this (also, Mercury historically was a pagan 'saint' of trade and commerce); but it also means the downside of this - 'cleverness' without wisdom, the kind of cleverness it takes to make a $10 debt worth $1000 at the right time...

 

[DotCommunist]

Stop trying to make this solely about Xtianity demos - Loki and Mercury both represent the trickster element of ourselves and society; and capitalism is nothing if not an embodiment of this (also, Mercury historically was a pagan 'saint' of trade and commerce); but it also means the downside of this - 'cleverness' without wisdom, the kind of cleverness it takes to make a $10 debt worth $1000 at the right time...

iirc Loki isn't held up as proper evil until the Balder thing- Not all trickster Gods recieve such drastic punishment and condemnation. iirc

 

[Spion]

Why don't you like the Satan metaphor?

Because you're effectively saying, "The use of a symbol in our society (money) is a bit like a symbol from history (satan) so I'll call the former the latter and everyone will see what I'm talking about and become Socialists.

Aye, right. If your hare-brained scheme had the slightest chance of success (which it doesn't) you'd be up for the Pope Urban award for peaceful international relations.

Also, who are such people? Are they not, in large part, the American proletariat? And is not the American proletariat the single most powerful social class in the world?

Ah, so this is all just an opportunist and deeply-patronising response to the perceived consciousness of the US w/c? Of course, they don't have the brains to understand the real nature of capitalism so we have to dress it up in Christian mythology

BTW, the American proletariat isn't a class. It's one part of a class. I suggest you adapt your scheme to Chinese mythology if you want to get to where the real power will lie in future

 

[Demosthenes]

Stop trying to make this solely about Xtianity demos - Loki and Mercury both represent the trickster element of ourselves and society; and capitalism is nothing if not an embodiment of this (also, Mercury historically was a pagan 'saint' of trade and commerce); but it also means the downside of this - 'cleverness' without wisdom, the kind of cleverness it takes to make a $10 debt worth $1000 at the right time...

I think the xtian take on it is much more accurate and relevant.

It seems to me to be a matter of fact that much of humanity is enslaved by the need of capital to grow: Those without capital have to work their lives away, to pay the interest of those who have capital.

Furthermore, the kind of society created by this process is increasingly unpleasant and stupid, people have an increasingly negative view of humanity, and reports say that the pursuit of economic growth is going to cause climate catastrophe, that will mean that the competition for resources will probably create hell on earth, if it's not here already.

In these circumstances, how it is an exaggeration, or an overdramatic play on the situation to claim that we are enslaved by a demon that wants our destruction and is dragging us off to hell. ?

 

[DotCommunist]

I think the xtian take on it is much more accurate and relevant.

It seems to me to be a matter of fact that much of humanity is enslaved by the need of capital to grow: Those without capital have to work their lives away, to pay the interest of those who have capital.

Furthermore, the kind of society created by this process is increasingly unpleasant and stupid, people have an increasingly negative view of humanity, and reports say that the pursuit of economic growth is going to cause climate catastrophe, that will mean that the competition for resources will probably create hell on earth, if it's not here already.

In these circumstances, how it is an exaggeration, or an overdramatic play on the situation to claim that we are enslaved by demon that wants our destruction and is dragging us off to hell. ?

I think it entirely unhelpful to group a set of ideas, practises, attitudes and a whole socio-economic reality under a label so simple as 'demon'

 

[Spion]

In these circumstances, how it is an exaggeration, or an overdramatic play on the situation to claim that we are enslaved by a demon that wants our destruction and is dragging us off to hell. ?

Err, because it isn't a demon?

 

[Demosthenes]

I think it entirely unhelpful to group a set of ideas, practises, attitudes and a whole socio-economic reality under a label so simple as 'demon'

I think it's important to recognise that this set of ideas, practises and attitudes, is itself a destructive meme that has its own conatus to such an extent that it can and should be recognised as an independent entity, that needs to be recognised as such in order to be taken issue with and destroyed.