This blog is not primarily political, in the sense of partisan (although of course I love northanger’s notion of “hyperstitional partisans” - even if it is is hard to read this as anything other than anticipatory, at best). For that reason it is easy to be distracted from topics which trigger intense partisan rancour, aiming somehow to avoid them. The trouble is, as everyone knows, such topics are precisely the ones everyone really cares about. Either we find a way to discuss them productively here, or we learn to tolerate perpetual seething hatefest - or we might as well give up.
First consider ‘Capitalism.’ There is really no doubt that whatever is happening on this planet is doing so under conditions guided by capital production. Whether affirmed or negated, the primacy of ‘capitalist’ imperatives is assumed, if only because the zones of maximal regenerative capital formation (the USA, China) exert such extraordinary pressure on their relatively retarded contemporaries (‘retarded’ defined within the framework of ‘capitalist rationality’ of course). Marx certainly had no doubts about it, and if his successors have radically transcended his stance in this respect they have kept very quiet about doing so. Islamism, too, is quite explicit about ‘capitalism’ as the negative definition of its ambition - ‘after communism, capitalism’ (to the grave, and if anyone really has a problem with the citational basis for this, I’ll dig heaps up).
Those who think capitalism is the biggest thing happening in the world today (for better or worse or whatever) thereby define themselves as ‘Western’ by default, insofar as they implicitly marginalize the resurgence of Islam - the only militant antiglobalism that disdains the dialectics of Occidental politics - treating it (from Left or Right) as principally a reaction to the imperialistic/liberatory transformations flowing from economic liberalization and its globalizing dynamic. Islamist economics is an increasingly significant topic in its own right, but I suspect very few on the left yet consider it a decisive one. The effect of Edward Said’s critique of orientalism has been that, in ‘politically correct’ circles, taking too much interest in the positive content of Islamist doctrine has become basically taboo. If Islam is ‘the Other’ - i.e. primarily a Western phobic pathology - there is no particular need to investigate it. From the perspective of the genuinely pro-capitalist (as opposed to social conservative) right, on the other hand, Islamism is merely an impressively vigorous species of medieval barbarism, and thus of interest solely for purposes of military intelligence.
It would be tempting, therefore, to set the entire Islamism question aside, were it not for the fact that it so dominates the practical opposition to the planetary capitalist agenda. It is probably asking too much of the left to solicit their concurrence to the thesis: Contemporary anti-capitalist revolutionism necessarily takes an Islamist form (even if Carlos ‘The Jackal’ and George Galloway are prepared to). To the right, however, this thesis is basically uncontroversial.
For an Anglospherean Westerner, the priority of capital is not in doubt (any more than it was for Marx, or is for Chomsky). So what is ‘capitalism’? How much can be agreed, or at least discussed, before descending into partisan bickering about its legitimacy?
‘Capitalism’ deserves scare quotes for the simple reason that it is quite evidently a hyperstitional construct of extreme importance. Any modelling of capitalism already serves to mobilize desire in particular directions, either supportive or oppositional, with multiple variations of each. The right describes ‘capitalism’ in order to enhance its realization, while the left seeks to condense the image of an enemy to be deposed. Unsurprisingly, from the right capitalism appears woefully under-achieved, while from the left it takes on the aspect of an all-encompassing despot.
Since Marx is most responsible for consolidating ‘capitalism’ as an object (even if, as Gillian Rose insisted, he himself never used the term), the Marxian critique merits specific attention. The fact that the subsequent critiques of Marx’s own analysis, by Boehm Bauwerk, Schumpeter, Wittfogel, Hayek, Braudel, Deleuze and Guattari, Lyotard, and - most arithmetically incontestable - by the ‘transformation problem’ raised by Marx himself in the 9th chapter of Capital Vol. III, suggests that the hyperstitional work accomplished by the Marxian project was not to be undone by mere conceptual refinement or traditional criteria of logico-mathematical refutation. Once ‘capitalism’ was conjured into manifestation as a hyperstitional object, it was no longer to be dispelled by anything less than a right-wing cultural revolution, a project that has consistently exceeded the capabilities of capital’s advocates (who have consistently fallen back upon reactionary alternatives, most prominently: Christian religiosity).
‘Capitalism’ no longer describes an analytically coherent totality, such as a ‘mode of production’ rigorously comprehended by antagonistic theory. It is now a proper name, the Thing taking place, an occurrence or happening, no more in need of exact portrayal than a cyclone, an earthquake or a meteorite impact.
The right have always been reluctant to acknowledge the shocking singularity of capitalism, so disruptive of conservative assumptions and universalistic complacencies. It seems that the left has now joined them, happier with pronouncements of emotional allegience than analytically defensible commitments. Almost everyone would probably prefer to avoid the hard task of precisely defining the singular course of terrestrial inevitability under the conditions of capital’s pilotage (social conservatives are unlikely to be enraptured by its destination). That is no reason for hyperstition to evade the question.
Let the s**t storm begin ...
get your siltstormwaffle antidote while they're not too quite unbearably hot (just uploaded matter of fact cause the archive.org hasn't a copy, .. .made a year ago though)
//liecause.tripod.com/Beckerath-Meulen-corr1.htm part 1
all 4 highly recommended!
Posted by: Beckerath at August 12, 2005 10:29 PM"The Capitalist Thing" - like the idea of mobilizing waves of parasitical libido. how does it feel to be the eye of the storm? however, you are not alone (Sit your bag o' bones down and put your feet up = comfusionreview.com):
"Comfusion represents an in-depth voice in the ongoing dialogue within both the popular and alternative culture. We approach the current and accepted schools of thought from a comparative perspective. Comfusion examines each topic within its social context—historical and present—in an attempt to inform. We open the door to dialogue and debate. We aren’t here to “preach to the choir.” Comfusion recognizes the potential for social and ideological conflict. Our editorial staff struggles to present divergent views with the intent to get past polarizing rhetoric and enter into a dialogue that will explore beyond the surface. This staff is composed of people that adhere to the Left, the Right, and the Center of the political debate. The dialogue may become heated and intense, but we are committed to engaging in a healthy tension that seeks cultural understanding through open dialogue. To comfusion, separate does not mean divided. We continue forward with the idea that our current cultural transactions provide the occasion for a discussion of their human context."
Posted by: northanger at August 13, 2005 12:26 AM[1] Edward Said Archive (down temporarily)
www.edwardsaid.org
[2] Orientalism (overview)
www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html
[3] Edward Said @ Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Said
quote :: "Don't aim at where your enemy is now, but where they will be in the future."
Posted by: northanger at August 13, 2005 02:17 AM'Beckerath' - afraid there's something about that address the virtual Great Wall of China doesn't like - inaccessible from here (which is highly annoying, remember trying last time you recommended it)
northanger - comfusion magazine 'a slacker's guide to awareness' (wtf?) - "separate does not mean divided" sounds a bit huggy-bunny
Posted by: Nick at August 13, 2005 03:32 AMyeah. should have posted this:
never engage a superior enemy directly; however, recognize your enemy's areas of gradience. direct engagement ends in declared victory—even for the nominal—leaving the "enemy" defined & "defeated". the superior enemy can then relax. identification engages all agents (cannon fodder) to participate in warfare.
i was working on a treatise about the etymological meaning of WAR. with footnotes & everything. how WAR in Book of the Law needed some rethinking. & how i was going to start using Crowley's commentary on same as toilet paper.
Posted by: northanger at August 13, 2005 03:50 AM"i was working on ..." - has this project been abandoned?
Posted by: Nick at August 13, 2005 09:24 AMcheer squeel proest proost and the obligatory bow . ..or are you trying to put your piet on?
if we can stop with upping and measuring speed (quantity) we might find the time to start enhancing quality op place
Nick, try link at the bottom or www.butterbach.net/epinfo/MBContentsWeb.htm 785K
first and last segment of which posted below, but first a sample letter (bear in mind that in mine gold stands, (that is impostures and babysits) for the fully fledged and fleshed out photosynthetically furnished bioregionally bur(eau)accredited cradled and cropped fungibles minus footprint incurred deductibles to constitute the ardbearer and local (value)totem.
18.12.1948. II--- --- Dear Mr. Meulen,--- --- --- --- the habit of thinking in the categories of "cause" and "effect" is only found at the end of long scientific training. The people do hardly think in these categories. Even scientists do not always think in the categories of cause and effect if they are concerned about matters outside their usual sphere. There they are, as the people are, inclined to take the events or the changes as the intentionally performed work of some persons.--- --- --- --- In economics, Karl Marx, certainly a scientific thinker, furnished an example of this easiness with which even philosophers turn to "personal" thinking in their own domain if they met with details not to be subsumed under the rules or notions they habitually apply. Marx derived all economic misery from the separation of the worker from his instruments of production. But in his book "Das Kapital", where he describes many single inconveniences in factories, mines and estates, he describes them always as the effect of the wickedness of the capitalists. The temptation was near at hand, for evils like "the factory leg" have obviously nothing immediately to do with the separation of the worker from the instruments of his production.--- --- --- --- For about 20 or 30 years the detection of the "cause" element in accidents, even presently still and simply ascribed to the guilt of those concerned, has become a special science. If at the time of our grandfathers a worker suffered an accident then it was the usual way to judge about it, that the worker was not cautious enough. Today a well-trained engineer inspects the place where the worker suffered the accident and finds, perhaps, that the lighting of the room was insufficient and measures the degree of insufficiency. Probably neither the workers not the employer had noticed this insufficiency.--- --- --- --- These seemingly purely theoretical considerations apply to an important feature in the economy of Russia and, therefore, to the economic and political situation in the whole world. The rulers of Russia do not think in the categories of cause and effect, they think in terms of "intentions" and "guilt". That applies not only to the rulers in the Kremlin but still more so to the rulers of 2nd, 3rd, etc. class, down to the overseer in a mine. All that does not harmonise with the "plan" is "sabotage", every delay, every running off the rails, every breaking of a tool is considered to be intentional by those who are concerned and is punished, at least in a concentration camp, and often by punishments that amount to capital punishment, as the work in the Uranium mines.--- --- --- --- How long can such a system endure? Experience shows, that it endures as long until those threatened by it find the ways and means to revolt against the rulers. If they do not find these ways and means then that system may endure for centuries, as taught by the history if Imperial China, where every failure in administration or on the battlefield cost the life of the "guilty" official or general. If the supreme ruler believes in the system of "every failure is due to guilt", then the life of his next subordinates are always in danger. But these subordinates are the true rulers of the country and, therefore, it is not rare that they succeed in removing the supreme ruler. A classical example is the history of the National Convention in the years 1793 and 1794. Robespierre and his "clique" were removed at the very day when about a dozen deputies detected that their names were on a list of Robespierre of those to whom he believed guilty of the slow progress made in "renewing" society according to the principles of Rousseau. (The romantic story of the detection of the list, by the mix-up of a fancy dress at a masked ball, was often told and sometimes filmed.) Two days later Robespierre was guillotined.--- --- --- --- The neighbours of a state like the Russia of today may always suppose that a great part of the ruler's subordinates or of the leaders of the armed forces feel themselves threatened and will act anyway against the ruler if they would see any possibility.--- --- --- --- It was the great merit of the Romans firstly to suppose such conditions to exist in all despotic States with which they had relations and, secondly, never to apply the principle: every failure is due to sabotage. The application of these lessons of history is near at hand: Induce the military or the civil ruler of a province to secede from Moscow. Offer him help in a way that appears evidently possible to him; assist him by a good social programme (aim: in 30 years or so the Russian workers are to live as now the Americans life), and the Russian government will be no more secure in the Kremlin than the Tsars were in their palaces at and around St. Petersburg.--- --- --- --- Such considerations are not beyond a scientific management of foreign policy.--- --- ---------------- --- Very truly yours - signed: U. v. Beckerath---
Contents Section 1
Meulen - Beckerath correspondence, pages 1 - 208, 1935 (2x), 1. 12. 1946 - 5. 8. 1949.
Contents of Volume I of VI
Letters of U. v. Beckerath
to Henry Meulen
With some comments by John Zube.
Motto:
Without full monetary and financial freedom and panarchism or polyarchy - we can achieve neither enough jobs, freedom, security, peace, prosperity, enlightenment, personal happiness nor progress, and perhaps not even the survival of the human race. - J.Z., 5.6.03.
B. made summaries difficult - because he squeezed so much information onto a page. - If you can and want to, please do supply better and more accurate summaries. - J.Z., 5.6.03.
1 Introductory remarks by John Zube, Tucker connection, Hitler, Bruening & 4 Law Drafts against the Great Depression, 20th of July 1944
2 Writings by Beckerath & Meulen, microfiche offers, related websites, PEACE PLANS
3 Meulen's "The Individualist". Beckerath had no journal at his disposal. Notes on B. and M.
4 Mobilization of all monetary freedom writings & publishing on CD-ROMs, panarchies also for central banking. Conditions to make opinion exchanges more fruitful. Communism as
original sin.
5 Tolerance and money reformers, the flawed English of B. Copyrights, Libertarian CD-ROM Publishing, hints to LMP: Libertarian Microfiche Publishing and PEACE PLANS & Web
offers of LMP
6 Libertarian CD-Publishing appeal
7 Further remarks on this edition of their letters. Why the separation of the letters? On my comments.
8 A kind of introduction to this correspondence by U. v. Beckerath himself, with his earliest preserved letter to Henry Meulen, of 1. 8. 1935, dealing with their differences on aspects of
monetary freedom. Tolerance, PRA, Gandhi & machines
9 Tolerance, Option clauses, flawed & correct ones, redemptionism, silver & gold coin payments
10 W.B. Greene, Zander, redemptionism, debt relationships & right to demand gold coins or cash, exclusive currency, redemption in gold or in goods? John DeWitt Warner, The
Currency Famine of 1893
11 Immediate realization of monetary reforms, option clause system, "Free Banking", "readiness to accept"
12 Confidence, gold treasures, acceptance foundation, Scotland notes, obligations of debtors: accept like gold, discounts as signals, publicity
13 Old Scottish banks, tax foundation & debtor foundation, their long-term loans, monetary independence, insurrection against the Soviets, finance of it, right of creditors to demand
exclusive currency, legal tender
14 Standing of issuers v. standing of acceptors.
14 12. 8. 35 B.'s summary of the differences in their monetary views, confidence vs. value preservation, convertibility into metal or goods
15 Size of cover, redemption promised in future vs. immediate acceptance like gold, risks, interest
16 Runs as an advantage, constant purchasing power? price changes, legal tender, Assignats
17 Guardians fo the currency, legal tender, Prussian paper money without forced currency, central banks, indepence of the quantity of gold available. Beginning of letters from 1946 –
1959: 1.12.46.
18 Lost mail, "The Individualist", price control as disaster, gold currency, paper money, gold standard, gold basis, "freedom of press" for people like B, Zander, Hitler, Jews, Koreans,
collective responsibility
18 7.12.46: My economic programme for Germany, 14 points, most urgent measures
.. .. ... .. .. . . .. ..
VI/88 Gold coins. Gold in Fort Knox. Free Banking.
VI/89 Settlement of trade balances in gold. Protectionism. Balance of trade. India & Britain. Humour. 18. 1. 1951:
VI/90 Gold coins. Long-date loans. Payments abroad. Free Banking. Balance of trade.
VI/91 Crises & drains of gold, balance of trade, India, human rights, animal rights. (Freedom of press & speech, right to bear arms and issue notes for sheep? If one pays no attention to specifics one cannot even comprehend the generalisation. - J.Z., 25.6.03.) 27. 1. 1951: Discount rate in Germany, coal mines, gold coins, long-date loans.
VI/92 Payments abroad, Free Banking, balance of trade, India, human rights, Danish butter story. 29. 1. 1951: M. to Engineering Industries Assn. on long-date loans & Bank Charter Act.
VI/93 5. 2. 1951: Keats & M. on thinking too far ahead. Human rights. (What about the evil of not thinking far enough ahead? - J.Z., 25. 6. 03.) Human rights.
VI/94 Gold coins, payments abroad, long-date loans, Free Banking, India. 13. 2. 1951: Payments abroad & absurdity of foreign exchange controls.
VI/95 Long-date loans. Gold coins. Zwangskurs. Human rights. 21. 2. 1951:
VI/96 Competition in broadcasting. Unemployment & Free Banking. Cours forcé.
VI/97 Monopoly is aggression. 14. 3. 1951: Long-term loans. Cour forcé. Falling value of money.
VI/98 Rights of the City of London.
VI/99 23. 3. 1951:
VI/100 Marcus Aurelius and Caesar. Long-term loans.
VI/101 Falling value of money. Buying gold. Gold payments. Balance of Trade. Gold Redemption. Communism. UNO & internal affairs.
VI/102 Reichsbank gold redemption. Stirner, Byington. Kitson. Value by readiness to accept at par, in war & peace. Right to refuse money. Greek coins.
VI/103 30. 3. 1951: Gold standard and the experts. Malthusianism.
VI/104 Women & the money question. Long-term loans. Communist aggression.
VI/105 4. 4. 1951: Conscripts vs. volunteers. China. Dumping. Full employment.
VI/106 New money & rising prices. Unemployment. 9. 4. 1951. 18. 4. 1951.
VI/107 Long-term loans & unemployment. Balance of trade. Interest rate. Dumping.
VI/108 New money & rising prices. Loans & reflux.
VI/109 25. 4. 1951: Jevons.
VI/110 Exchange Control Act on gold ingots. 27. 4. 1951: Balance of trade. Interest rate. Dumping. New money & rising prices. Wage & price spiral.
VI/111 Radio. P.R. Gold ingots. Discounts against gold & refusals to accept.
VI/112 Parliament of women. Gold payments. Interest & note issue. Gold prices & the invariable paper unit. 22. 5. 1951: P.R., Payment to a creditor. Gold payment. Runge.
VI/113 22. 6. 1951: London University houses Goldsmiths' and Prof. Foxwell's collection of currency and banking books and pamphlets. The latter is a unique and extensive collection. The Act of 1826 prohibited the L 1 note. Protests. Sir Walter Scott's "Letters of Malachi Malagrowther". Scottish nationalists movement.
VI/114 Bacon, Shakespeare or Marlowe? Revaluation. Pounds spent in Switzerland. 8. 7. 1951:
VI/115 Fletcherism: Slow & careful eating. Spelling reform. Sleeplessness. Entrepreneurs.
VI/116 Medium of exchange issued for long-term loans. Revaluation and inflation. Christianity.
VI/117 19. 7. 1951: Trial & error. Kant: On living again.
VI/118 Pleasure principle. PR vs. limiting the power of Parliament. Spelling reform. Entrepreneurs. Competition with U.S.
VI/119 Free Will. Kant's metaphysics. 6. 8. 1951: Life's value and devotion to reform.
VI/120 Kant on the value of life. Competition with USA. Option clause notes. Free Will. Thinks in themselves.
VI/121 11. 8. 1951: Christian doctrine. J. M. Robertson, "Pagan Christs". Morality of the ancients. Warrior mentality. Value of life - Gallup Poll.
VI/122 Men vs. women. 7. 9, 1951: Pagan Christs. Summing up his "Free Banking" book: "A proposal to allow anybody to issue banknotes redeemable in varying weights of gold, according to the free market price of gold." (So why did he call it "Free Banking" instead of e.g.: Meulen's kind of banknote issue restriction instead of the current ones? - J.Z., 25.6.03.) Determinism. Insomnia. Unesco on race and Dr. Gall.
VI/123 "City Press" clipping and M.'s reply to it of 19. 10. 1951: Free Trade & interest rate. 28. 10. 1951:
VI/124 Elections, Christianity. Determinism. Malthusianism. Unemployment. P.O. Happiness.
VI/125 Option clause note. Railway money. Gold redemptionism. Undated note. 9. 11. 1951:
VI/126 Determinism, P.O. Happiness. Railway notes. Redemption of notes in pre-1845 Scotland.
VI/127 Pricing of goods in gold instead of in paper. Bank Rate. Determinism. Hume. Adam Smith.
VI/128 27. 12. 1951: Gresham's Law. German and Scottish banking.
VI/129 13. 12. 1951: "I also, wish that we were in agreement on banking policy. It is no good advertising for free banking when the only two men who are really fighting for freedom cannot agree on what precise form of banking would be best under freedom." Gold standard. Cheap Japanese bicycles. 14. 1. 1952:
VI/130 Kant. "Revolutions are rare. I cannot advocate a banking system suitable for a revolutionary period, if it is inferior for normal times." Zander on acceptance of gold coins in history.
VI/131 Pricing in gold, withdrawal of gold coins from inflation & inflation. Acceptance of notes must be voluntary. Legal tender by custom. Determinism. Japanese bicycles.
VI/132 Upper limit for note issues?
VI/133 Option Clause notes & shop foundation notes. (Scottish money tokens were a kind of under-developed shop-foundation money. - J.Z., 25.6.03.) Stephen Pearl Andrews. Interest rates. Malthusianism.
VI/134 Kenneth Smith, The Malthusian Controversy, clipping of a review. Count de Tancarville, 15. 1. 1951 letter on Germany, West German Federal Republic & monarchism.
VI/135 Charles Galton Darwin, "The Next Million Years", 210 pages, a review. 17. 1. 1952: M.'s visit to King-Hall.
VI/136 UNO & Free Banking. 9. 2. 1952: German's recovery & rearmament. Rittershausen.
VI/137 Bank Rate. M. seems to believe that more production is needed to combat inflation. My own summary of the monetary freedom view as opposed to M.'s approach to inflation. 21. 2. 1952:
VI/138 Gresham's Law & Warner. UK/USA trade. Monarchism. German language.
VI/139 29. 4. 1952: Sign of life, asking for one. 11. 5. 1952: Gardening & walking. Considers the settling of the relation between East- and Westmark after re-unification to be a problem, i.e., does not trust the market in this sphere. IDO.
VI/140 Maximum size in plants, in everything. 27. 6. 1952: Old Athens: Choosing politicians by lot. Inflation.
VI/141 Publicity for Free Banking. A Bernard Shaw needed to present it? (So far not even the monetary freedom jokes have been assembled - and published, e.g., in a Free Banking Calendar. - J.Z., 25.6.03.) "The Individualist" in the Australian National Library in Canberra, issues from 1911 onwards! Mass murders as internal affairs? Payments to USA. 2. 7. 1952:
VI/142 Auxiliary language. King Hall. Monarchy. Revolution, Tucker & Russia. Gold coins. Option Clause notes.
VI/143 Money tokens. Interest. Foreign workers. Redemption in varying weight of gold at the free market price.
VI/144 11. 7. 1952: Choosing politicians by lot. Inflation & rising prices. "… you exaggerate the stability of the value of gold."
VI/145 "German treatment of her nationals". (I see 4 errors in that statement of 5 words. - J.Z., 25.6.03.) Decentralisation. Payments to USA.
VI/146 Zander. Gold redemption vs. shop foundation. 1. 8. 1952: Chitti only opposed forced currency because it is not convertible into gold. Otherwise favoured redeemable government paper money.
VI/147 Germany is spared armament costs. 10. 8. 1952: "You are undoubtedly right in stressing … the right to refuse money. A generation brought up under legal tender laws overlooks the great difference that the right to choose would make." Andrews' "cost principle". Labour notes. (B., elsewhere, stressed that under a perfect clearing system individuals, too, could issue notes ultimately cleared against their labour. - J.Z., 25.6.03.)
VI/148 Lenin & Communism. Dismantling. 19.8.1952: Bertrand Russell & manners.
VI/149 Private and official gold hoard estimates for the world. Free gold market. Tradesmen's tokens. Metaphysics. Hitler's "election".
VI/150 He did know that the Communist Manifesto demanded monetary despotism. Spencer's "Social Statics".
VI/151 Wages & Profits paper & criticism. Bata. Dismantling.
VI/152 30. 8. 1952: After all this discussion he still asks: "What is the use of marking a note 'Nominal value 5 grammes' if 5 grams of gold cannot be bought with it? You did not reply to this question." (Well, no more than about 100 times in their correspondence! - J.Z.) "Social Statics". Tucker did not advise the immediate dissolution of the State, even if that were possible.
VI/153 Tucker & Spencer on existing morality being too low to permit the immediate abolition of the State. (M, T. & S., apparently, did not apply the principle and practice of individual sovereignty & individual secessionism, and their consequences, consistently enough in every sphere but continued to think in terms of collectivist territorialism instead of individualist exterritorialism. They did not even mobilize the power of the latter in their own heads! But at least all three were advocates of degrees of monetary freedom, which is not a bad start. - J.Z., 25. 6.03.) Interest.
VI/154 Further misunderstandings. 31. 8. 1952: Free Gold Market. 5. 9. 1952: Gold hoarding in France.
VI/155 Assumed gold value fluctuations. Meinl notes. Shop foundation. 12. 9. 1952: Meinl notes and gold value rises.
VI/156 2. 10. 1952: "I must demur to your statement that a gold standard is a gold coin standard." …
VI/157 Not yet freedom from thinking in terms of "the free price of gold", which assumes a stable paper money. 13. 10. 1952: Gold prices, gold coins & gold redemptionism.
VI/158 Meinl notes. Mathematical truths. 6. 11. 1952: Gold price. "Makute". 15. 11. 1952:
VI/159 Gold pricing. Fallen gold price. Shop foundation money. Still utter confusion! 30. 11. 1952: Kant & mathematical certainties.
VI/160 Kleist. 8. 12. 1952: "Your aim is to finance a social revolution, whereas my scheme is intended rather for the normal everyday working of an industrial society. But is your scheme really more suitable than mine for a revolution? The main difference between your scheme and mine is that you will use shop-keeper notes, whereas I will use the notes of people of repute - manufacturers or bankers. (Where are they, in despotic countries? Have we ever had a normal, i.e., quite free industrial society? - J.Z., 25.6.03.) "Now your shopkeeper can get his notes into circulation only by buying from manufacturers." (M. was full of misunderstandings like a bucket full of worms for bait. And B. took these baits perhaps for all too long. And M. never seemed to notice when he was caught like a fish on the bait he had himself supplied. - J.Z., 25.6.0.03.)
VI/161 Dishonest bankruptcies ascribed to Jews jewellers. Shop foundation & trust. Mathematics.
VI/162 9. 12. 1952: Revolution, trust & barter. "…the revolutionary govt. will be compelled…" to adopt communism!
VI/163 "I think the notes of prominent manufacturers etc. will be more readily accepted." France, 1918 had municipal notes down to "Deux Sous".
VI/164 As definition of his standard M. says: M. banker must offer the current free market value of gold in redemption. Priced in which of 1000 M.-type banknotes, of 1000 M-type banks, each with a different policy e.g. on long-term loans paid directly in its notes? Or still priced in the government's paper money? "How I have spread myself on this subject!" - Yes, all too thinly! Almost never going beyond superficial thoughts, premises, ideas and appearances! - J.Z., 25.6.03.) 16.12.1952: Religion, God & atheism.
VI/165 Religion & climate. (As if some of the worst religious fanaticism was also shown in hot climates! - J.Z., 25.6.03.) 21. 12. 1952; 1.1.1953; 4. 2. 1953:
VI/166 Gold pricing and gold coin circulation. "…you are standardising in paper the value of the gold coin on a particular day - which is precisely my proposal." Refugees to Berlin. Tax reductions.
VI/167 13. 2. 1953: "I cannot understand what you mean by saying that under your system gold has no price."
VI/168 & 169 Further misunderstandings & false premises. 20. 2. 1953:
V/170 Price of gold. Savings in Germany. Rittershausen.
VI/171 to 174 28. 2. 1953; 7. 3. 1953: "Price of gold" & related misunderstandings.
VI/174 11. 3. 1953: "Please believe that a discussion of paper money without forced currency is not disagreeable to me".
VI/175 "I am assuming precisely the system you advocate: one wherein people are free to accept or reject paper notes." (So why was he unable to comprehend it? - J.Z., 25.6.03.)
VI/176 Still assuming large fluctuations in the value of gold. Banque de France. 13. 3. 1953:
VI/177 Sent B. an electric blanket. 15. 3. 1953: Zander. Four Law Drafts. Gold standard "problem". "Bank inflation",
VI/178 & 179 Zander. Four Law Drafts. Gold standard. Anyhow, how Meulen understood or misunderstood him and them. 14. 4. 1953: Keynes proposed something similar to M.'s "gold standard". Free gold market proposal by Senator Pat McGarran in May 1949. 28.4.1953:
VI/180 -185 M. equates the stopping of further issues when notes get a discount - with "deflating credit"! And other almost incredible misinterpretations. 6. 5. 1953: Over-issue & discounts. "… you will continually alter the value of your notes whenever the world demand and supply of gold alters." 16. 5. 1953 (184): "… there is a world demand for gold which is independent of legal compulsion, namely (1) for hoarding, and (2) for settlement of trade balances." (How independent are either from legal tender government paper money and central banks of governments and of foreign exchange controls? - J.Z., 25.6.03.) Strasser.
VI/186 29. 5. 1953: Right of creditors to demand gold. Balance of trade. Increased demand for gold.
VI/187 Discount of notes at bullion market but not at shops. "Gold price". 7. 6. 1953: Gold pricing in shops.
VI/188 Pricing in sovereigns. 13. 6. 1953: What if the market demand for gold has increased four-fold …and when your notes will buy only 5 s. worth of gold? Etc.
VI/189 & 190 23. 6. 1953: Further misunderstandings on pricing goods and services in gold. 30. 6. 1953: Demand for gold. Adam Smith & Goschen on exchange rates.
VI/191 Bank Rate changes. Gold drains. "Gold price". Asked why B. wanted to restrict the Reichsbank from continuing to issuing notes already at a considerable discount! Considers this to be "harsh treatment"! Price changes in B.- shops. "I point out the need to protect a bank's gold store in times of strong foreign demand." (He still assumed that an issuing bank needs a gold store & has to use it for redemption purposes! - J.Z., 25.6.03.) His discussion with O. E. Wesslau and Egmont Hake.
VI/192 & 193 8. 7. 1953: Drain of gold. "… changes in the bullion market will be frequent even under a Warner system." (Murphy's Law, Meulen version: If it is possible to misunderstand and misinterpret something about exchange media and value standards, then Meulen would. - J.Z., 25.6.03.)
VI/194 Clipping on Thailand exchange rates. 14. 7. 1953: "I am honestly trying to find out what exactly is the Warner plan." - So why did he not read, or better, study, Warner's essay and B.'s books, until he would finally understand them? - J.Z., 25.6.03.)
VI/195 20. 7. 1953: Assumes that B.'s notes would have dropped in value while in the assumed case they actually bought four times as much. 28. 7. 1953: "If you and I cannot explain our meaning clearly to each other, we have little hope of converting others." (Maybe both should have concentrated on formulating monetary freedom and monetary tolerance as exactly as they could. B. did. M. did not publish B.'s extensive monetary rights draft, saying it would be too technical for his readers and, probably, because he rejected the rights concept altogether. - J.Z., 25.6.03.)
VI/196 Further misunderstandings, wrong assumptions and a superfluous question on the Warner system. Length of loans in German and in England.
VI/197 Franz Bluecher article on "gold currency", assuming that under it the gold price could be arbitrarily increased or decreased and that this "convertibility" would secure the financial stability in every country. (Thus he was, obviously, wrong and stupid enough to make it to the post of Vice Chancellor. - J.Z., 25. 6. 03.) 14. 9. 1953: WW I. "… fear of Russia is a uniting element." - Both, M. & B. often used the term "Russia" rather carelessly when they really meant the Soviet regime. Adenauer, leadership & Germans. J. J. Martin: "Men Against the State".
VI/198 8. 3. 1954; 6. 2. 1959: Nietzsche & Strindberg.
VI/199 1. 5. 1959: Anarchist ideal and methods. Abolition of the State seems to him impossible because of the ever-present danger of war. (Precisely that danger makes it all the more necessary to do away with the territorial State! - J.Z., 25.6.03.) State soc*i*a*l*i*sts (QC joke by nicki I bet) would not admit the right of sections of the people to disobey the central decision. (By now many of them would be glad to be allowed to practise their own State-soc*i*a*l*i*sts "ideal", at the own expense and risk, but is not under consideration for them e.g. in Russia and in China. - J.Z., 25.6.03.) "The more hopeful way is, I think, Tucker's. Abolish the money monopoly, …" Social Statics. It is possible that de Puydt read it. "All in all, however, the de Puydt article does not seem to me worth the labour of translation into English. For fifty years I have tried to persuade people to take the relatively small step to freedom involved in granting freedom of note issue and the abolition of the gold standard of value; yet there has been little response. How much less likely are people to respond to an appeal to grant the right to ignore the State!" (He still did not notice the contradiction in his own monetary proposal. To each the kind of gold standard or any other value standard and kind of exchange or clearing medium or method of his or her dreams, as a step towards: To each the government or non-governmental society of his or her dreams! – If M. had widened or generalised his secessionist appeal then his own proposals would have got their maximum chance as well. One cannot successfully advocate the liberties one wants for oneself without conceding all liberties to others as well. - J.Z., 25.6.03., 19.7.03.)
Obviously, I did not find it worth my while to try to sum up each argument or assertion or belief of M. His fans are free to do so. But I did give him much space in my PEACE PLANS series, in spite of our disagreements. - J.Z., 25.6.03.
Capitalism is a system, not a meme (faith, ideology). Some memes support and foster its growth, and other memes attempt to limit or abolish it. Capitalism as a thing in itself is neutral: it is fully compatible with democracies, fascism and slavery.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) identifies the arrival of food production 11,000 years ago as the crucial turning point. Before food production, all humans were hunter-gatherers. Once homo sapiens started farming and domesticating animals 11,000 years ago (a blink in terms of evolution), it had surplus on its hands. Surplus leads to free time (from hunting and gathering) which leads to elites not involved in food production (scribes, administrators, soldiers). Close contact with domesticated animals also meant homo sapiens had a lot of viruses on its hands. These viruses were used to conquer the American continent and initiate globalization 500 years ago.
The obvious system to arise from the surplus provided by food production is Feudalism: a system which allows trade, but tends towards the land and humans being chattels of a despot.
The other potential system which lies dormant in food production is Capitalism: a system which tends towards privatization of the land and production and commodities being private property.
Communism is a parasitic meme, defining itself in its opposition to Capitalism. The code of the Marxist Communist virus (MXV) splices code from the Christian meme: Capitalism is 'wrong' because it is exploitative trade (time, energy and skill in return for less money than the 'capitalist' makes). There are no objections to Capitalism which are not moral. Despite the fact that exploitation (or, without the moralism, trade) is a basic fact of cellular life, MXV seeks the abolition of economic exploitation (rather than its regulation). Leninism, a mutant strain of MXV, MXV-LNV, continues the moralistic objection to Capitalism and advocates the seizure of power because it identifies all democratic parliamentary process as being inextricably tied to Capitalism.
Communist utopia is profoundly at odds with the design specifications of the bipedal primate that goes by the name of homo sapiens, a biological machine that is designed to survive and serve the interests of the genes that built it. To prevent Capitalism (in the form of competitive trade) from happening despotic Feudalism has to be imposed. Because the country it ravaged was starving, LNV was forced to reintroduce Capitalism in the form of the NEP (New Economic Policy). This was a temporary measure undertaken by a virus that wanted to avoid dying with its host. Lenin's dictatorship mutated into Stalinism, MXV-LNV-SNV, which officially abolished Capitalism by imposing an utterly despotic Feudalism in which homo sapiens became the property of the state, raw energy to be dragged out of its bed in the middle of the night and sent to dig for gold in Siberia.
It is no accident that the contemporary left is converging with Islam (a feudal faith meme). The current strain of MXV-LNV propagated by Badiou and Zizek repeats the moralistic outrage of MXV and seems to have thoroughly debilitated minds which might have been expected to be a bit more resilient.
The only alternatives to letting Capitalism happen are returns to Feudalism or hunting and gathering. It is impossible to find 'Capitalism in itself': you will only ever find Capitalism operating in the different shapes that human societies let it have - ranging from the commodification of humans in slavery to the libertarian freedom of humans with legally defined rights.
linked under my name this time is a long simple flash by Ken Schoolland starring the traffic light people, set to classical music and admonishing us to not steal murder and something else. Christian Butterbach goes apeshit lyrical over it, totally: www.butterbach.net/blogs/net/notewok.html strange enough, he calls the entry 'poo in our lunchbox' but the previous/next entry is a rant against viruses and/or malware or something .. .
before he gets to that however, he finds the time to remark (about the flashanim.):
General Smedley Darlington Butler (USMC)'s classic 1935 essay, "War is a Racket" is the only other presentation I have ever found that hits even close to the mark that you have nailed spot-on. The two certainly amplify each other remarkably well as I find them. Have you goodly and well-educated folk possibly read General Butler's racket-busting essay?
If so, I am doubly glad. If not, a click on //lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
will take you there. The conceptual lines are so closely parallel to your own that Cat Stevens' beloved classic lyric 'Peace Train' could surely run on 'em true and at full speed without ever crashing, all the way to the end of the line. (Wow.)
Um, one question on another parallel line - and maybe this is the Peace Train's "Third Rail": I /think/ we all understand the nature of genuine wealth here. Your own anim makes it plain for the clueless, right as rain. For my part: I have lived by these principles every day for many, many years, and have at times fought most vigorously and in extremely unusual ways to protect myself from their loss at the hands of ill-hearted and occasionally murderous and/or thieving others. So what's all this then with all the "Peabody Coal grade" paper scrip that we find in use worldwide as a medium of economic exchange, and no gold or other material element actually backing such purportedly legitimate economic currency as this?
Maybe I am merely being an ignoranus on this point. If so, kindly do set me straight, please? But I really at this point do not believe, quite unlike what my college economics professor once vigorously asserted many years ago, that actual economic wealth can indeed be in any way stored, let alone created out of thin air, with the "help" of a little rag paper and a few drops of elaborately configured ink, even if they are both of the very best quality that, yes, some of that oddly-conceived paper money can indeed "buy". So is there to your knowledge some other animated presentation of a quality similar to yours? One that you would confidently refer a truth-finder to for clarity with respect to this particular (and too-often deliberately confused) aspect of the economic entirety? If I am not wrong about this apparent absence of actual goods or materials providing legitimate "backing" for the "currency" and there is indeed such an anim or video as this requested item, thank you once more indeed!
I shall share your animation with all whom I find at all receptive. I shall make certain my browser brings it up automatically in its own tab so I shall not have to fumble and twiddle while guests are standing by. Creator bless and protect you and yours throughout the remainder of the foul times that those fine-hatted and now paperlessly "elected" officials of ours have once again thrust us into - excuses, fnords, whining, and all! We shall somehow survive this madness. Are we yet all sufficiently meek as to be found worthy to inherit what's left of the planet once the bullies have devoured their spoils and deposited their poo in our lunchbox, in your view?
Oh, one last point. Just so nobody is walking around getting all confused about the present-day War on Terror: We are not "embroiled in another world war", oh no heaven farfend. No, we are merely at present "engaged in a global conflict" against a too-conveniently gone-invisible foe or faux, depending on the speaker's POV and the greed behind it; nothing more than that. Some fine-hatted man said it on NPR just a couple of nights back, as I drove across town to sweep up and help with closing the grocery store where I exchange a little of my leftover time and energy for a little of my friend's leftover take-out food. (Now that works.)
With cordial respect,
Reverend Pastor Charlene WT Mann (ULC)
First Peoples' Church of the Forbidden Truth
(A Global Funny Hat Medicine Society Affiliate
and ICKR Curmudgeonry Licensure Agency.)
*) also on BUTTERBACH.NET: www.butterbach.net/ken/kenandkerry.htm ~~ and should you not have guessed already, "WT" above stands for "Walking Turtle"!
Christian Butterbach, 10 August 2005, 21:22 GMT+1
correction: Christian is quoting Charlene WT Mann the whole way through but it's not clear (wondered what happenend to his usually stiffy style ((the title is perhaps 'indic(t)ant')), .. .wondered how on earth it got so gushy rushy .. .).
apology: I overquoted a little, whoever can and feels like pruning it a bit, no objections here.
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 10:11 AMbit of a mystery for now; can't find no charlene anywhere and only this one citation at christian's site .. . .
sd, you cannot condemn and at the same time neuter (as a toned down sanctification?) parts / aspects just bycause you think they are at cross purposes --- the linearity of letter word meme system and systemicism strings are such that the challenge is to balance the act of such loose rope loop whee G boardcrossage without getting to G ordian about it and crash cause you lopped off something deemed evil parasitic or at least expendable (the untold harm done in bio-industriously dust-free gmo labs will make the harm of nukes pale in comparison and the latters harm was, for those in possesion of keen senses and judgement, already paling in the face of what the gmo forerunners, now pushed back into runnerupperdom, to with agri-chemicals, wrought.
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 10:45 AMsd - total agreement
If "There are no objections to Capitalism which are not moral" or moralistic (i.e. denunciations without intrinsic economic rationality) can there be any discussion of capitalism at all across the right/left (pro/anti) rift?
If not (third in series of dependent assumptions - and it would be more interesting if this tower of bricks actually toppled somehow) what to make of the perpetuation of the parasitic total denunciation meme?
Also interesting questions about its 'habitats' (academia/media/bourgeois professions etc.), can modernizing societies produce cognitive social organs without these tipping over into black-holes of parasitic denunciationism? (perhaps only under conditions of rigorous mathematical and natural scientific discipline?)
piet - not getting 'essence' of Beckerath, but first quote seemed interesting (and reverberated with sd's basic point)
perhaps focus of attention should switch from capitalism to moralism?
hmmm
Posted by: Nick at August 13, 2005 11:10 AM>>"i was working on ..." - has this project been abandoned?
nope, should have it done by the time Reza gets back (honest). Itokawa/hawk/quarry links look fruity. answer questions in other post why doncha so's i can finish latest obsession.
piet. speaking of obsessions.
Posted by: northanger at August 13, 2005 11:21 AMparasitism description very illuminating IMHO, because the most obvious way of terminating a parasite is to isolate it from its host
no coincidence that all communist societies implode - producing excellent conditions for rational social progress - sort of sad that the lefties talk about capitalism as suicidal ...
northanger -
"answer questions in other post" - on other thread?
'Phase-space' is a geometric representation of behaviour, alloting a spatial dimension to each aspect of machinic variance and time represented by the trace length (line) depicting the behaviour in question
(was that the question? (are there more??))
Posted by: Nick at August 13, 2005 11:29 AM
"can there be any discussion of capitalism at all across the right/left (pro/anti) rift?"
Not really. There little chance of a brain suffering from MXV or MXV-LNV will be allowed to entertain the idea that it is possibly infected. The parasite is adept at mutation and camouflage, and is able to (re)infest universities and new generations of intellectuals at ease.
Dawkins' concept of a meme virus (1993) needs a thorough service and update, but his basic distinction between a meme (e.g. language) and a meme virus (e.g. faith) is that a meme virus will not allow itself to be subjected to a critique. A meme virus simply wants to replicate itself, from head to head.
www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1993-summervirusesofmind.shtml
MXV is profoundly viral at the section of its code where it claims to be determined by social relations in an inevitable historical process. The proof is always in a virtual pudding - any critique of the chef or the ingredients are automatically disposed of as representing hostile class interests. MXV-LNV pushes emotional hot buttons (e.g. resentment: the Bolsheviks would not have been able to hold power if LNV had not encouraged mass revenge) and reactivates Christian judgement to such a point that productive communication becomes impossible.
"The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as ``faith.''
The virus has no scientific critique of Capitalism. LNV is the most powerful biological weapon that has ever been used: it was sent, by Germany in a sealed train, into the power vacuum that opened up after the February revolution. The texts which enabled LNV to seize power, first of all by introducing the new mutant strain to the Bolshevik Party, are the Letters from Afar and the April Theses:
www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/lfafar/index.htm
www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm
These texts rely solely on moralistic vitriol in their condemnation of 'predatory' Capitalism. Capitalism is treated as an ideology which is synonymous with Imperialism, which is synonymous with WWI. This fundamentally unscientific and simplistic code is the DNA still programming the anti-Capitalist left.
As Nietzsche predicted, the conflict will ultimately pan out into humanistic moralism vs. scientific critique.
"Scientific ideas, like all memes, are subject to a kind of natural selection, and this might look superficially virus-like. But the selective forces that scrutinize scientific ideas are not arbitrary and capricious. They are exacting, well-honed rules, and they do not favor pointless self-serving behavior. They favor all the virtues laid out in textbooks of standard methodology: testability, evidential support, precision, quantifiability, consistency, intersubjectivity, repeatability, universality, progressiveness, independence of cultural milieu, and so on. Faith spreads despite a total lack of every single one of these virtues." Dawkins 1993
I seem to be taking up a lot of space today:
looking at morals becomes investigating drives and soon you will be struggling with assignments and coordination; issue entitlements besides (before/after?) entitlement issues
on my way to a refreshener file on what I recall Arnold Keyserling used to say about comm. vs cap. (rather than spouting some vague gender divides 'breathed upon' by jungian categories), I come across his father (famous for travel books with characterizations of indigenes and the european as overseas colonial/settler):
www.weisbord.org/conquest49.htm part of old commie flavored surfsup from
"the internet archives of Albert & Vera Weisbord, Leading Communist Radicals of the 1930's. Organizers of 1926 Passaic Textile Strike, 1929 Gastonia Textile Strike, leaders of the Communist League of Struggle 1931-37. Albert Weisbord was born in New York City on December 9, 1900 of poor Russian Jewish parents. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the College of the City of New York in 1921. Upon graduation from CCNY he applied for the Harvard Law School ("not so much to study law, but to examine at close hand how law was the resultant of the action of social forces.") graduating with honors." .. .... "Of course, the real barrier to the assimilation of the communist movement with the social life of this country which prevented its indigenous development lay in the fact that the economic and social evolution of the United States had not as yet warranted the open formation of classes engaged in active civil war. A number of keen European observers, such as Graf von Keyserling, have ventured the opinion that America would never adopt Marxian social*ism because the country itself was a substitute for it. (*2)"
www.geo*cities.com/integral_tradition/keyserling.html Arnold's father( stuck amongst the definitely right of(f) center here)'s first book was called 'immortality' and who's brain has been on display in Bern since '46; the page reads (in part):
"In a epoch in which the aristocracy was living its last days , Hermann Keyserling it's an unique and irreducible exponent of the aristocratic and noble european spirit ; in the decades when the intellectuals of Europa were oscillating between the shadows of the communism enrolling and the false myths of the anti-traditional capitalism , Keyserling represent a true adept of the european spiritual ecumenism and in the same time a strong supporter of the responsabilities of this ecumenism , in the conditions and times of the so-called 'revolt of the telluric forces' , which were representing the pragmatism , the lack of tradition and magic from these times of Europe."
The Specious Origins of Liberalism Chapter 23
... whilst Count Keyserling, in his Reisebuch Eines Philosophen (Part II), ...
(Religion and the Decline of Capitalism, Chap. IV). — No! And why? ...
www.anthonymludovici.com/so_23.htm - 20k
this is a different one altogether:
www.freetochoose.net/book1.html Capitalism and Freedom
by Milton Friedman
"Preface, 1982 A personal story will perhaps make my point. Sometime in the late 1960s I engaged in a debate at the University of Wisconsin with Leon Keyserling, an unreconstructed collectivist. His clinching blow, as he thought, was to make fun of my views as utterly reactionary, and he chose to do so by reading, from the end of chapter 2 of this book, the list of items that, I said, “cannot, so far as I can see, validly be justified in terms of the principles outlined above.” He was doing very well with the audience of students as he went through my castigation of price supports, tariffs, and so on, until he came to point 11, “Conscription to man the military services in peacetime.” That expression of my opposition to the draft brought ardent applause and lost him the audience and the debate."
closest thing his son did along the line of regionality characterizing is:
www.schuledesrades.org/index.asp?suche=palme/strahlen/k_04_09.htm Das ganze All ist voll von Wesen, und diese sind der Schau des mondhaften Gewahrseins zugänglich. Die linkshirnige rationale Zivilisation brachte die Vollendung des technischen Menschentiers, beschleunigt durch den politischen Gegensatz Uranus - Neptun, Kapitalismus - Kommunismus, der virtuell alle elitären Machtansprüche überwunden hat, wenn sie auch heute noch virulent zu sein scheinen im pseudoreligiösen Kampf zwischen Schiiten und Sunniten, irischen Protestanten und Katholiken, Juden und Arabern, Serben und Kroaten. Der Pazifik und das Löweland der mutigen Südsee-Entdecker ist kein Mythos, sondern gelebte Wirklichkeit. Früher oder später sollte jeder Mensch die Sonnenkultur kennen lernen, weil sie die Gefahr des technokratischen Wassermann überwindet.
in this book he puts Zero degrees Aries at the Khabaa and I never found a plausible (nor for that matter explicitly argued) reason for it so far but this seems to offer new material: www.schuledesrades.org/index.asp?suche=palme/strahlen/k_04_09.htm
saved the last for best:
www.lawsofwisdom.com/LawsofWisdom/epilogue.html shows that Arnold and Jose have a little competition going on all along and down the long karmic road .. .
www.schuledesrades.org/index.asp?suche=docs/arnold/relig_01.htm
Doch die Aufklärung zerstörte sowohl die Sinnsuche des Einzelnen als auch die Eingliederung in die Gesellschaft. Das moderne Individuum ist heimatlos und verlassen. So entsteht einerseits die Sehnsucht nach der früheren Geborgenheit im Fundamentalismus, andererseits sind die religiösen Antinomien des Mittelalters, Nominalismus und Realismus, in ihrer letzten Prägung der Ideologien von Kapitalismus und Kommunismus als gesellschaftsbildende Kräfte gestorben. Der prägende Gegensatz ist nicht mehr zwischen Osten und Westen, sondern zwischen Norden und Süden, zwischen spiritueller Sinnfindung und grüner Ökologie. Aus dieser Sicht sind alle Fragen der Vergangenheit neu zu stellen.
haHhahaahha!! Kabbala des geldes: www.schuledesrades.org/index.asp?suche=palme/strahlen/k_04_09.htm
the arguelles rituals begin with prayers to all 7 directions/locales/regions / corners/crossroads of the peace in cubeAtours
left --------- right
forw -CENTER- back
up ------------ down
benking.de/ (a newciv.orger)
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 01:17 PMsd, if you are arguing for deep(ly individuational) democracy you could do worse than studying a modern incarnation of Beckerath: www.ledgerism.org
ps: tottenites seem to be on about this subject a lot; they (leftists?) too forget Marx's diagnoses of the monopolization (compatibilitating = monomaniacal multicultivation)) process was arrived at from the fictional point of a future perfect where centralization was as open and passive as it need be to tame this runaway progress causing all sorts of awful reactions. From this side of the as yet raw mountain of problems we can't quite see the pleasurable rides as well as lucky leapers luxuriating in lap thereof recursively an recurringly resupplied with a current of consumables
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 01:40 PM... .and recurringly resupplied with a current of consumables could.
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 01:43 PMOf course, Todd (ledgerite) argues that perfect C. is impossible or at least local and (virally innovative) fractionation should therefore be allowed and encouraged (since rapids are dangerous and best left to pre-pairbond group coup foolery). PC always confined to the unbreathing world where thoughtful wishes splash around past the pillars of postponed individuality in/as the blish of procheckshine.
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 02:02 PMCan there be any condemnation of Islamism which isn't intrinsically moralistic? If moralism is the problem, why bleat on about (islamo)fascism? Or are hysterical denunciations of Islamism to be regarded as neutral scientific discourse?
Elementary logical error - islamism is anti-capitalist therefore all anti-capitalism is islamist. (I agree that Islamic Marxism is the way forward, but that's another story...)
As for sd's tiresome 90s Nietzscheanism - where do we get off the bus with this (Dawkins for fuxake!): no point using Nietzsche as a reference if you have a problem with moralism, since Friedrich famously thought that there was no escaping evaluation (certainly not by escaping into Cambridge positivism)
Dawkins is a ludicrous figure, and as many have observed his obsessive, fixated loathing of religion is uncomfortably reminiscent of the fundamentalists he so tiresomely attacks. As sd's summaries of his 'theories' amply demonstrates, Dawkins' world-view is bizarrely teleotheological and anti-Darwinian, pulling away from Darwin's nihilistic mechanism to restore to the universe the 'design' and 'purpose' that natural selection had radically extirpated.
As for the inevitability of exploitation (another Nietzsche riff): hmmmmm, ok, let's say we bought this crass biological reductivism and that we accepted for a moment that there is some innnate drive towards exploitation amongst bipeds (incidentally, what is it about bipedalism which inevitably leads to exploitation? Don't quadrepeds exploit one another?), there are (at least) three problems with this: 1. What does this tell us about the specific form of exploitation (capitalism) under which we now live? As sd's simplistic speed through human history demonstrates, the human animal has lived under various different kinds of exploitation, none of which are sufficiently explained by biology alone. (as sd grants, since he is quickly talking about social conditions). 2. It's not clear that capitalism is exploitative in the way sd requires. Capitalism isn't the exploitation of some human beings by others, it is the exploitation of all human beings by an idiot parasite. Which leads to: 3. Even if we grant that 'bipedal primates' are predisposed to pursue their own interests, in what sense is capitalism in line with those interests? The whole point of anti-capitalist arguments is to resist this equivocation.
More broadly, this connects with one of the central problems with the kind of incoherent line Nick has been pushing for years now: on the one hand, we are to subordinate ourselves to a punitive Inevitablism, celebrated with requisite machismo glee (it's going to happen any way, resistance is futile, puny humans); on the other hand, capitalism is all things bright and beautiful, the font of freedom and democracy, and everything Good. The first celebrates the protean inhumanity of capitalism, the second its alleged benefit for human populations (how is this case not 'moral' btw)? The slippage from is to ought is the least of the problems with this move: either capitalism is viciously inhuman or it's nice. Which is it?
Nick's post above collapses a neo-con agenda - which is in its essence totally moralising, hierarchical, western supremacist neo-imperialist - with a pro-capitalist position. The figurehead of neo-conservatism is Leo Strauss, with his Christopher Stephens/Grand Inquisitor-type hermetic elitist cynicism. The pro-capitalist arguments are derived from Smith, Schumpeter et al. But there is no natural fit between these two positions. On the contrary, in fact, they find themselves in increasing opposition. The Straussians have no interest in capitalism in itself; any interest in economics is motivated by contingent strategic considerations. And any honest pro-capitalist position will have to grant, as sd does, that there is no connection between capitalism and democracy, freedom etc (to make that claim would fly against all historical evidence, which shows that, despite all the crocodile tears about women's rights in Afghanistan we see cried by the right, capitalism has co-incided - and still does - with every variety of slavery, political oppression etc). The current debacle that is US foreign policy is a result of trying to fudge an alliance between these two incommensurate positions.
But I fail to see what any of this has to do with hypersition, except tangentially. Surely the problems with the site started when ppl failed to stick to its brief, which is surely rich enough to sustain a lifetime's worth of posts. Look back on the early posts (and their comment threads, which exceeded the quality of the original posts in many cases)and weep: people were really trying to think about what the concept of hyperstition entailed, what could be done with it etc. Gratuitously dragging in other agendas, attacking posters for what they have written elsewhere etc etc is just bad practice. Corrosive in fact.
Posted by: mark k-p at August 13, 2005 02:33 PM"Gratuitously dragging in other agendas, attacking posters for what they have written elsewhere etc etc is just bad practice."
Look into the mirror, you are not better than Nick.
Posted by: MP at August 13, 2005 04:18 PMislamarkskism draws demarkation lines more uncrossable much less crusadable so let the man speak of glory days gone by; respect for the mourners here .. .but whaddayamean handing out obsidian mirrors too?
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 04:37 PMmark k-p - do you think capitalism can be discussed on this blog in an interesting way, or not? If not, do you think any general mode of discussion that systematically evades the topic can be anything other than absurd (given the centrality of (the denunciation of) capitalism in your own thought processes, for instance?
why it seems to me sd is highly convincing, while you are not, is that the speed with which you hurl together a mish mash of anticapitalist and ad hominum talking points suggests rationalization of a (memetico-dogmatic) faith rather than a serious attempt to engender productive discussion. Hugely slowed down and extracted from foaming polemic, many of the comments you make here could stimulate something interesting. Presently, they're just spitting.
So, as I was saying (pay atttention now kids):
Of course, Todd (ledgerite) argues that perfect C. is impossible (or at least inherently unstable and) so at (the very concommital and courteous) least local and (for all I care virally innovative) fractionation should be allowed and encouraged even while attempting the big C (thus sidebeneficially safeguarding against bad ((coercive)) driving out good ((freedom to fuck about experimentally)) and since rapids are in any case open invitations to predators, dangerous and best left to pre-pairbond group coup foolery). PC may well stay banned and confined to the unbreathing world where thoughtful wishes splash around past the pillars of postponed individuality in/as the blish of procheckshine by perfect harmony and a rush to the for being so middling no less mythicomedian.
Posted by: piet l*ink*s at August 13, 2005 05:27 PM..in a rush . . all hail watery bygone beginnings of our crush-rush
Posted by: mishfan at August 13, 2005 05:34 PMpiet - while somewhat perplexed by your argument, if "fractionation should be allowed and encouraged" means multiplicitous experimentation with the widest possible variety of social forms (probably requiring 'transcendental' freedom to vote with feet and not to be screwed over by terroristic outspillage from adjacent collapsing disasters (a conundrum this one, for sure)) then i couldn't agree more - principal reason for a vigorous space programme (libertarian biomutational colonies on Mars would be tempting)
Posted by: Nick at August 13, 2005 05:35 PMyou got a rich uncle up there Nick?
Talk about good company, check what Mark just confessed to be part of: But again the starting point of Islam is faith in God, whereas the starting point of radicalism or neofundamentalism, is hatred against the West. They also draw extensively from fiercely anti-American intellectuals in Europe, and other 1960s radicals. And they have incorporated much of the Marxist-Leninist literature into their political discourse. It is thus not surprising to see ex-Marxists join the ranks of Islamic radicals. A compelling example is the recent "conversion" to Islam of Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist now imprisoned in France. From his prison cell he has penned a book titled Revolutionary Islam. This brand of Islam, he argues, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and is the only "transnational force capable of standing up to the enslavement of nations." - Eric Wijnants
China's got a space program; you mind hitching a ride with statist rockkits?
Posted by: mishfan at August 13, 2005 09:52 PMmishfan - "I agree that Islamic Marxism is the way forward ..." (MKP) this is indeed a classic, and a significant step forward in terms of clarity. Must admit to some doubts about how much Koran (or Capital) reading has fed into this, but such things don't matter much in denunciationist circles.
MKP also right about the lack of essential relationship between capitalism and democracy of course, although he typically ruins the point by splenetic misreprepresentation and ovestatement. Zakaria's 'The Future of Freedom' one of the best basic elaborations of this relationship IMHO, which is complex and multifaceted.
1. Capitalism is a genetic precursor to democracy in almost every case.
2. Capitalism has a relation of functional resonance with democracy, with both providing a mechanism of (partially) controlling concentrated power through the operation of distributed and numerized population.
3. Capitalism has a strategic affinity with democracy, one which - if not entirely contingent historically - is at least much more thoroughly consolidated than ever before since the crash of the Sov U. and especially since the rise of the neocons within the US foreign policy establishment under W
I'd rather live in a capitalist society with a democracy deficit than a democratic society practising half-assed capitalism (in (sort of) answer to your question) - but that's just me
Perhaps I'm also alone in finding MKP's accusations of "hysteria" wildly comical.
Calling Mr Kettle ...
Mishfan - realize I misunderstood the 'statist rokkits' remark (it's still groggy hour) - applauding the renewed space competition, but been told by nearest and dearest that a migration out of earth orbit not an acceptable life change just yet ...
"Can there be any condemnation of Islamism which isn't intrinsically moralistic?"
To describe Islam as a faith meme is not to condemn it in a moralistic sense, it is to identify it in a biological sense. To describe (predominantly) Islam as feudal is also not a moral condemnation: it is a fact. If religious institutions are in control of the legislative process then that is feudalism. Have never used the term 'Islamo-fascism'.
"sd's tiresome 90s Nietzscheanism"
To treat philosophical thought as fashion is extremely anti-intellectual. Didn't realize that you can't make reference to Nietzsche because he's so last decade. Also, didn't realize that by making reference to one of Nietzsche's observations and trying to identify moralism at work would entitle labeling all the thoughts expressed with an 'ism'. And this is from a 'thinker' who has been attacking 'anti-intellectualism'.
The failure to address the moralism which lies at the heart of Badiou and Zizek's rehabilitation of Lenin is striking.
(look at the Lenin-related essays by Badiou and Zizek on Wikipedia)
"Dawkins is a ludicrous figure, and as many have observed his obsessive, fixated loathing of religion is uncomfortably reminiscent of the fundamentalists he so tiresomely attacks."
Note the use of "as many have observed" here. Highly doubtful that the research has gone beyond a few leftist reviews. If this is not the case, then please feel free to outline your what you see as the flaws in the arguments presented in 'The Selfish Gene' or 'The Extended Phenotype'. Dawkins' view of biology is much more disturbing for humanity than Darwin's.
If you don't think that the human brain is a naturally selected neuro-computer that was remotely built by genes that are currently using homo sapiens as a vehicle, then please tell us what you see it as.
In Dawkins' model, genes really couldn't care less about homo sapiens as a species: hence Dawkins' misrepresentation by the left (Lewontin et al).
There are two lines of thought clashing here. One of them goes Darwin-Dawkins-Pinker. The other is in full-scale retreat from Capitalism and Schizophrenia and has dug itself into the viral trench of Marxist-Leninism.
If you are going to call a thinker ludicrous, please refer to arguments.
"some innate drive towards exploitation amongst bipeds (incidentally, what is it about bipedalism which inevitably leads to exploitation? Don't quadrepeds exploit one another?)"
There is an innate drive to trade in all cellular life. That trade can take the form of pure exploitation (consumption) or cooperation (gene alliances). Cellular life is designed to compete, if it doesn't compete the designers get wiped out by natural selection. Genes work in the interests of their copies, not in the interests of humans. The interests obviously coincide, but not to the end of the line. The genes have ridden in many other survival machines and could ride in many more. Humans are 'exploited' by their genes. It is simply and grossly inaccurate to suggest Dawkins says anything like this: "'bipedal primates' are predisposed to pursue their own interests."
"in what sense is capitalism in line with those interests?"
Like evolution, Capitalism happens. The system can take care of itself. Unfortunately homo sapiens is bundled with barbaric tendencies and this is expressed in its manner of trading. The idiocy arrives with poor management of the system.
Primates, being social machines, are genetically programmed to be extremely protective, competitive and obsessed with status. This is particularly true of the male (which, like all mammals, conducts 'unfair' trade with the female - unfair in terms of biological investment and investment of time). Human history nothing but competition over resources.
Communism is imposed and has to be maintained. Any anti-Capitalism has to advocate a degree of state despotism. So mark k-punk, could you please outline your thought with regard to the state?
Posted by: sd at August 14, 2005 09:42 AMsd - part of the interest of the meme theory is that it introduces a generalized Darwinism where a diversity of replicators and their interactions contest the monopolistic position of DNA segments (genes, (bio)viruses, units of intragenomic 'junk'), dynamizing alternative substrates.
Mark Downham's sketchy model of the 'metrophage' (term stolen and radically transcoded from Kadrey's cyberpunk novel of same name) speculates that substantial 'techonomic' segments of social existence are autonomizing themselves in this way - for instance, technology (in general) seems to essentially involve the assembly of rapidly evolving replicative lineages that are broadly parasitic (or at least symbiotic) upon human populations. The trend of economic units to 'deterritorialize' from specific familial/tribal unities to become self-reproducing (with usage of replaceable human components) intensifies this autonomization trend - Gibson's 'the Zaibatsu are like giant animals' (not exact quote). Finally, contemporary robotics is putting the elements into place to potentially sever the relation of parasitic dependence (for 'better' or 'worse' to speak stupidly) - is there even the possibility of a post-Darwinian evolution algorithm that exceeds the efficiency of genetic algorithms allowing technoreplicator units to radically intensify evolution beyond mere 'trial and error'? - perhaps that is a speculative step too far right now.
PS. Robert Aunger's 'The Electric Meme' is a somewhat stodgy but still impressive rehearsal and materialist consolidation of memetics, definitely worthy of recommendation - have you seen it?
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 10:37 AM> Communism is imposed and has to be maintained.
A bit like bourgeois property relations, then.
Posted by: Karl at August 14, 2005 01:50 PMKarl - If you're actually interested, and not just trolling, I'd recommend a serious study of Maoism in China - even after the complete eradication of (only germinally developed) property relations, the Maoist left of the Chinese Communist Party was obsessed with the problem of resurgent 'right wing tendencies', 'bourgeois elements' and 'capitalist roaders' among the peasantry - that's to say, in the complete absence of state protection or property rights (which even now are far from fully restored) the spontaneous tendency to the emergence of 'capitalist' tendencies was a perpetual phobic element - for good reasons. Black markets of every kind attest to the fact that, even faced with eradication campaigns from the State, economic 'self-interest' (most solidly anchored at the family level in all human societies), including crucially an expectation of returns on investment, resuscitated automatically, despite its supposed 'backwardness'. It goes without saying that aanlagous spontaneous resurgence of feudalism poses no similar anxieties - perhaps because capitalism was a genuine revolution, whereas soci*lism was no more than a ressentimental black-hole
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 02:26 PMto reiterate sd's point (i hope 'accurately'):
permission suffices for capitalism, while soci*lism requires compulsion
Deng Xiaoping's transition to the (true) New China was based on the 'Family Responsibility System' - which required no more than the lifting of controls on the spontaneous organization of agricultural production by the peasantry, unlike Maoist collectivization, which necessitated the intervention of Party agents to ensure compliance
The difference is actually very simple and inescapable to all but sophists
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 02:44 PMFinally (in response to Karl’s breathtakingly stimulating contribution (how are you doing with the Transformation Problem that persuaded you in the 19th C. that Das Kapital was an unpublishable arithmetical wreck Karl? - fortunate that Engels was such an innumerate doofus, right?)) no coincidence that the forces of State coercion in the US are directed to suppressing ‘excessive’ capitalist trends - i.e. the drugs trade - rather than mass agitation for a social alternative to ‘the system’ - no wonder the left has fallen in love with islamonazi crazyheads, they’ve actually forced the bourgeois State to take an interest
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 02:56 PMsd
>To describe Islam as a faith meme is not to condemn it in a moralistic sense, it is to identify it in a biological sense.
Right. So there is no trace of condemnation whatsoever in this 'description'? If you are going to be a biological reductivist, at least draw the consequences of your position - Stalinism, Mayan theocracy and hippie communes are all expressions of the 'selfish gene', so there's really nothing to be said.
The function of 'biology' - though these metaphorical extrapolations akin to what Desmond Morris and Konrad Lonrez do (both, also, not coincidentally, conservatives) bear little relation to any actual scientific practice - in this discourse is interesting to consider. It functions as a repudiation of 'moralism', i.e. politics. The hostility to moralism and the appeal to naturalism (this is how things must be) are two elements of what I have elsewhere called 'capitalist realism' - the eminently ideological presentation of a particular socio-economic arrangement as 'naturally inevitable'. (One of the interesting things about Badiou and Zizek is their utter refusal to accept vitalism or the 'interests of life' as relevant ethical or political criteria).
This sustaining fantasy leads to claims such as 'Communism is imposed and has to be maintained', with the implication that capitalism is some spontaneously occurring natural phenomenon.
'Any anti-Capitalism has to advocate a degree of state despotism.'
And the evidence for that would be???? Ah, I see, it's _self_evident. Circular argument.
'So mark k-punk, could you please outline your thought with regard to the state?'
A genuinely open question -- needs to be thought through very carefully. How can anti-capitalism move beyond the command economy etc? All interesting questions. But no point discussing them here, where it is 'self-evident' that anti-capitalism is Stalinism.
>To treat philosophical thought as fashion is extremely anti-intellectual.
Yeh, it is. But I wasn't talking about philosopical thought, I was talking about what you said.
>labeling all the thoughts expressed with an 'ism'
Yeh, it's terrible to reduce things to an 'ism', isn't it. Like 'moralism' for instance? Or like describing whole swathes of thought and practice as LVX772 or whatever?
>feel free to outline your what you see as the flaws in the arguments presented in 'The Selfish Gene' or 'The Extended Phenotype'
I already did. The anti-Darwinian rehabilitation of teleology - human beings are designed for a particular purpose, etc etc
More broadly, as I outlined above, what are the _political_ implications of Dawkins' theses? If helping old ladies across the road and the Final Solution are both to be 'explained' by - i.e. reduced to - the teleological drive of genes, so what?
MP
>"Gratuitously dragging in other agendas, attacking posters for what they have written elsewhere etc etc is just bad practice."
Look into the mirror, you are not better than Nick.
If you can show me where I have done that on this blog, I'll happily concede the point. I haven't, as far as I'm aware, used the comments thread here on one of Nick's posts here to, say, attack his pieces in the Shanghai Star. When he has posted on capitalism etc, I have, however, tried to call him to account for how what he is saying here relates to his other statements. This seems to me entirely legitimate practice. I have also made sure that all my posts have clear relevance to hyperstition, and gone out of my way to avoid any sustained discussion of politics.
Islamic Marxism is the way forward
Why is this - largely non-existent - entity such 'bad company' to keep?
--- the point being, better for discontent in the Muslim world to be channeled into an agenda oriented towards this-wordly social justice rather than next-wordly theocratic paradise
--- and in a some ways to agree with Nick's point that there is something fundamentally anti-capitalistic about Islam. Zizek makes the same point, actually ---
Nick,
'pots...kettles'
'foaming polemic'... 'spitting'... 'ad hominem attacks'
you're having a laugh mate
Yes, there are interesting discussions about capitalism to be had, but not here.
Posted by: mark k-punk at August 14, 2005 04:12 PMmark k-punk - so exactly two enthusiastically anti-denuciationist voices are enough to make uou flee with your tail between your legs? OK, hang out at Lenin Resurrected or wherever you feel at home. Sure you'll sort out the soci*lism without State tyranny problem there.
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 05:05 PMwhy not sic the monkey on us, he's always good for a one-liner?
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 05:16 PM"Yes, there are interesting discussions about capitalism to be had, but not here" - absolutely classic. We answer back - bastards!!! - not a problem you'll find in the K-Punk bunker.
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 05:39 PMsd: "To describe Islam as a faith meme is not to condemn it in a moralistic sense, it is to identify it in a biological sense."
I hold Dawkins in considerable regard but the claim that memetics enjoys the same incontrovertible scientific authority as genetics is nonsense. An ultimately bio-evolutionary explanation of culture is
surely desirable, but the suggestion that we have anything remotely approaching it today --or that memetics will do the job-- is naively wishful thinking.
What are the biological units of memetic replication? How are they individuated? Can you provide a precise biological description (i.e.
one that doesn't involve impressionistic handwaving) of the mechanisms of replication involved? Memetics propounds discursive re-descriptions of complex phenomena using pseudo-biological accoutrements in order to lend itself a spurious veneer of scientific credibility.
If you're being scientifically objective rather than merely moralistic here, then presumably you have a sophisticated (i.e. non-adaptationist) account of what distinguishes conceptual rationality (yours and that of your pro-capitalist brethren) from memetic pathology (the putative blight of the anti-capitalist left)? If so, I'd be very interested to hear it. If you don't, then your claims amount to little more than an incoherent relativism every bit as ideologically saturated as those of the deluded lefties you scorn.
sd: "if you don't think that the human brain is a naturally selected neuro-computer that was remotely built by genes that are currently
using homo sapiens as a vehicle, then please tell us what you see it as."
I'm heartened to see that you endorse a neuro-computational theory of sapience, but I don't see how anything MK-P has said here need involve
him denying it or any other rational scientific hypothesis for that matter. Presumably you're aware of the vast argumentative gulf separating the (trivially true) claim that cerebral evolution is subject to selection pressures from the (profoundly non-trivial) claim that certain extremely sophisticated cognitive prowesses--such as those mobilized in the course of philosophical argument and political debate
for example--are subject to the same kinds of adaptationist rationales as those of any other variety of organic functioning and can be
straightforwardly accounted for in terms of selection pressures? I'm a little surprised at how blithely you skip over this gulf between
the evolutionarily more or less well specified function of an organ--the brain qua CPU-- and the evolutionarily over- and under-determined varieties of function exhibited by the many
specialized activities carried out by the mind-brain.
There are different computational models of the mind-brain. But even the Churchlands' favoured PDP vector-activation paradigm remains a
computational idealization wherein what still remains under-theorized is the complex interaction between the machinery of cultural software and the mechanisms of biological hardware (this being merely a convenient methodological distinction, not an ontological duality). No-one--and I mean no-one, D&G no more than Hegel--possesses anything remotely approaching a sufficiently detailed account of how that relationship actually works. Science will doubtless explain it eventually, but I doubt either Nietzsche or D&G or Pinker will have been vindicated.
sd: "Like evolution, Capitalism happens."
The trouble with politico-philosophical appropriations of DST and complexity theory is the way in which they end up insidiously blurring the hard won Darwinian (and Spinozist!) disjunction between function and purpose. Darwin explained biological purposefulness in terms of
purposeless algorithmically generated function. But complexity-philes insist on talking as if "nature" was really using evolutionarily
generated function as a pretext to generate purpose all the while. Purpose here is simply recoded in terms of complexification (or "intensification" for the neo-vitalists): Nature desires complexity! Hence the romantic infatuation with capitalism as a sublime natural
marvel --or catastrophe. For the discourse of the sublime is rooted in catastrophic awe: It's so complex! Nature wanted it to happen! It'll
transfigure life on earth! Nonsense. Nature doesn't wan't anything. Neither life, nor organisms, nor capitalism. Moreover, while capitalism is undoubtedly better understood in terms of DST than the dialectic, it's neither more nor less singular than any complex phenomenon in the history of the planet. From a physicalist--or cosmological rather than
terracentric-- perspective, it's as trivial as a mega-tsunami and as banal as stale bath water spiralling down the drain.
binky - thanks for demonstrating that criticism can be rational and productive, there's been a marked lack of intelligent dissent around here lately
ref. i noted for sd (Robert Aunger's 'The Electric Meme') responds to some of your q.s - not necessarily in a way you'd find persuasive, of course
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 06:28 PM"Nature doesn't wan't anything. Neither life, nor organisms, nor capitalism. Moreover, while capitalism is undoubtedly better understood in terms of DST than the dialectic, it's neither more nor less singular than any complex phenomenon in the history of the planet. From a physicalist--or cosmological rather than
terracentric-- perspective, it's as trivial as a mega-tsunami and as banal as stale bath water spiralling down the drain."
This seem unobjectionable - but why should a putative teleology of nature be invoked in the first place? It's the intelligenic event, 'abandoned' by a senseless cosmos, that introduces the only (strictly intrinsic) 'purposiveness' that will ever be found.
Posted by: Nick at August 14, 2005 06:42 PMmark k-punk - (and binky - will try to deal with some of your points more thoroughly later though)
"If you are going to be a biological reductivist at least draw the consequences of your position - Stalinism, Mayan theocracy and hippie communes are all expressions of the 'selfish gene'"
If you had read either Dawkins or Pinker with any degree of open engagement (which you obviously haven't) you would know that neither of them represent biological reductionism (a lazy, dismissive term with which to dismiss argument).
Dawkins coined the concept of meme precisely because he needed to describe replication which was not driven by biological DNA. Language is a meme because it is replicated from head to head, from generation to generation: it uses biological machinery (brain programs, the lungs etc.) but it is not biological machinery itself. Memes seem to share a lot of the features that processes that genes have and trigger, but there are differences: memes evolve faster (the language Chaucer used is almost incomprehensible to us) and mutate much more radically and quickly (and still survive). Language and other memes (e.g. faiths, ideas) can influence biological machinery. For example, Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism tended to starve people to death - this is simply a fact. Some memes were/are deeply hostile to biology and genes. Nick's point about Maoism is crucial there. Do you know that Badiou described Mao as a 'genius' in 2001?
The weakness of the Nazi meme in comparison to the Communism was that it failed to mutate. The Nazi meme identified the Jewish and Slavic gene pools as its enemies and was/is intellectually repulsive. The Communist meme mutates but retains its core code, part of which is moralistic rejection of Capitalism - very instinctively appealing to the Russian peasantry brutalized by WWI and very intellectually appealing to the guilt-ridden middle class academics of Western Europe. Thus it is acceptable for someone like Badiou to praise the Mao meme, despite the fact the policies killed far more people than the Nazi meme.
With regard to moralism, Pinker has bent over backwards here to try and separate ethical principle from scientific facts. For example, the scientific fact is that all human beings are not equal - they vary in terms of intelligence, fertility, sex appeal etc. This does not mean that all human beings are equal cannot be accepted as a principle and backed up by legislation. It is a scientific fact that men and women are not the same, but most societies agree that they should be treated the same. The left tends to befuddle science by insisting that all human beings are equal is a scientific fact, and that men are women are the same biological material inscribed by culture. Marxism claims its moralism to be a science and historically inevitable. Though it may be ultimately impossible to keep moral evaluations out of description, and to separate ethical principles from scientific fact, the point is to try. Hobbes and Hume are going to be crucial here. [please insert some swift dismissive comment at this point, mark k-punk]
Pinker has put extraordinary amounts of effort into trying to establish where genes stop working and where culture starts working. Like Dawkins, he describes genes as controlling remotely: They design and build the machine, but cannot actually control exactly what the machine does when it is up and running. There are certain default settings, such as personality traits, that the machine cannot change, but anyone who wears a condom is obviously thwarting the interests of their genes. So much for biological reductionism.
While Dawkins and Pinker may have been nicely boxed up and dismissed by the UK's anti-capitalist left, discussion about their ideas is healthy in America (e.g. MIT, Harvard).
//pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/index.html
The views being expressed here are not extreme or freaky - in some parts of the world they have become common sense. The other thing is that they are tested in laboratories and simulated on computers - genetics works, it produces results. Capitalism also works. Communism doesn't. [please insert some snide comment about capitalist interest]
If you are really serious, and really want to argue, please demonstrate that you have read The Selfish Gene and. The Blank Slate. There is no point repeating perfectly clear arguments here. I will read any texts you think throw light on why Islamic Marxism is the way out.
To state that you can't talk about Capitalism here just because people disagree with you is absolutely absurd. Every step of the way you are demonstrating publicly just how thoroughly toxic your brain has become (toxic in the memic sense, of course).
Good meme lexicon:
pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMLEX.html
Some convergence:
viral-meme.info/memetic/intro
Posted by: sd at August 14, 2005 09:44 PMVauung is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking Vauung.
Posted by: Modesty Blaise at August 15, 2005 12:07 AMoh, fuxake, don't give up. best type of symbiosis, IMHO, highly benefits both symbiote & host. certainly capitalism (symbiote) benefits from american democracy (host) & vice versa. (capitalism = genetic precursor? sure). Lynn Margulis makes me rethink 'manifest destiny': "Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking". capitalism, however, becomes problematic when it becomes a destructive parasite. that's when you get Nick's "capitalist society with a democracy deficit" (or, Bush America). would i rather live there? well ... that's the problem. where's individual choice?
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 12:17 AMnorthanger - absolute basis of individual choice is ability to 'vote with your feet' without you (or your family) being killed. Interestingly, this is a freedom that communist societies are typically unwilling to permit. Compared to it all liberties pale, although of course there are important ones. Voting for your government comes a long way down the list, let alone the acquisition of 'positive rights' through the implicit trading of your vote in a democratic bargaining process. Of course, the absense of democracy impairs the functioning of the State, depriving it of a crucial control and feedback mechanism, leaving its relation to society cybernetically unhinged, vulnerable to dogmatism, rampant corruption and even raw tyranny.
Think your cell-analogy of capital/democracy symbiosis is an intriguing one ...
Posted by: Nick at August 15, 2005 12:38 AMAunger 'Electric Meme' indication noted.
Following undoubtedly fails to take many intervening comments into account but hopefully these can be addressed later.
Nick: "why should a putative teleology of nature be invoked in the first place? It's the intelligenic event, 'abandoned' by a senseless cosmos, that introduces the only (strictly intrinsic) 'purposiveness' that will ever be found."
Can you say a little more about why this "intelligenic event" (Capitalism? Is capitalism intelligent? Or favourable to the
emancipation of intelligence?) marks a rupture with the cosmological order? And if it does, how does this supposedly immanent auto-catalysis of intelligence (limitrophic convergence of social production with cosmic schizophrenia?) differ from familiar spiritualist eschatologies concerning "the end of all things"?
There already exists a perfectly cogent theory of "intrinsic purposiveness": it's called Aristotelianism. I presume this is not what you have in mind, but I need to hear more in order to understand why this exaltation of capitalism is not underwritten by a curious neo-Aristotelian regression that shies away from the nihilistic austerity of Darwin's vision. I reiterate: Genes aren't "using" us for anything. Genes don't have purposes. They don't "want" anything. And neither does evolution.
CCRU Shanghai: "There is really no doubt that whatever is happening on this planet is doing so under conditions guided by capital production [...] Capitalism’ deserves scare quotes for the simple reason that it is quite evidently a hyperstitional construct of extreme importance. Any modelling of capitalism already serves to mobilize desire in particular directions, either supportive or oppositional, with multiple variations of each [...] 'Capitalism’ no longer describes an analytically coherent totality, such as a ‘mode of production’ rigorously comprehended by antagonistic theory. It is now a proper name, the Thing taking place, an occurrence or happening, no more in need of exact portrayal than a cyclone, an earthquake or a meteorite impact. "
Interesting juxtaposition of claims:
1. Capitalism is a hyperstitional construct
2. Capitalism is a "real/natural/material" (take your pick, but basically non-anthropo dependent) occurrence or happening: "cyclone, earthquake, meteorite impact".
Tentatively assuming that rocks and beaches are not equally capable of "hyperstitional practice", how does the claim that what is "real/natural/material" is hyperstitionally constructed (presumably "machinically", whatever that may mean) differ from varieties of idealism?
Re the claim made on behalf of capitalism as planetary singularity and locus of terrestrial history--Isn't everything currently happening on the planet governed by gravity at least as much as by capital production? But then why is capital production more important than gravity? Unless of course the real focus of hyperstitional interest has always been socio-cultural and, by implication, human all along?
On what basis do you identify the definitive phase transition in the history of the planet? Surely it's gratuitously biocentric to define it in terms of the shift from a carbon to a silicon (or whatever) based substrate for intelligence, as if terrestrial history necessarily converged upon social and/or intelligenic complexity?
More generally, if there is such a thing as "universal history" then why privilege the history of the earth? (Unless wilfully
rehabilitating a pre-Copernican perspective?)
Again: why this apparent totalization and hierarchization of the ramified multiplicity of complex systems currently unfolding on the planet by privileging the emergence and development of capital production as the most significant event in all history?
MK-P: "on the one hand, we are to subordinate ourselves to a punitive Inevitablism, celebrated with requisite machismo glee (it's going to happen any way, resistance is futile, puny humans); on the other hand, capitalism is all things bright and beautiful, the font of freedom and democracy, and everything Good. The first celebrates the protean inhumanity of capitalism,
the second its alleged benefit for human populations (how is this case not 'moral' btw)? The slippage from is to ought is the least of the problems with this move: either capitalism is viciously inhuman or it's nice. Which is it?"
Strikes me that MK-P has indeed put his finger on a fundamental incoherence in the claims being made on behalf of capitalism here: "Capitalism is inhuman fatum *but also* the best hope for human freedom (?)"; "Capitalism is beyond good and evil *but also* the Good in itself (intelligenic emancipation?)".
But nothing follows from the way things are --a sentiment hyperstitionalists will doubtless dismiss for its naive realism given that the key hyperstitional premise seems to be that what is is already a "construct" of some sort; presumably a distillate of belief and/or practice? But whose beliefs? Whose practices? As MK-P has already observed, I fear the judgement "Capitalism is good" is being derived from the assertion "Capitalism is" on the basis of an all too political concoction of nietzschean epistemic relativism, pop neo-darwinism, and libertarian individualism.
binky - off to work, considered reply later. Problems you raise are obviously substantial (rather than merely polemical) so I won't waste everyone's time searching around for a knock-down rebuttal ...
Posted by: Nick at August 15, 2005 01:20 AMPS
"Capitalism is inhuman fatum *but also* the best hope for human freedom" - is this really a contradiction? not sure why - wouldn't the truth have to be something like this - e.g. "emergence of replicator chemistry is inhuman fatum *but also* the best hope for eventual human liberty" -surely the only alternative to this broad species of formulation would be fundamentally theological and even creationist (which is to say, if the primary alternative to immanent teleology is transcendent teleology, the best option seems to be to tinker with immanent teleology - hopefully taking it in the direction of a dehumanized teleonomy (emergent complexity without ulterior cosmic purpose), of the kind you seem to favour)
absolute basis of individual choice confirmed in US Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". at that time, american colonies & great britain in symbiosis. declaration served to sever & give reasons why the relationship needed to end. US Constitution defines "a more perfect Union" — democracy. however, this did not stop US from inheriting already existing parasitical structures (capitalism, slavery, etc).
agree with your voting/democratic process assessment. the democratic process is not a magic wand. could things get so bad in american political process where new government solves nothing? New Deal emerged because things were bad for (almost) everybody — soup lines, drought, unemployement, etc. what do you do, however, when the government itself has gone bad?
leaving final safeguard: consent of the governed. again illustrating your perference to live in a "democracy deficit" (me too).
the question i have for you: what's the (ideal) hyperstitional agenda for Capitalism?
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 01:30 AMnorthanger - not sure this formulation - "the (ideal) hyperstitional agenda for Capitalism" - exactly sustainable - needs talking around
binky's valuable scalpel work is making me wonder about the centrality of Narrative to hyperstition (thinking: utterly central), whatever the facts people are constitutional determined to narrativize their individuual and collective situation, with myths, religions, political programmes, fictions, and theoretical architectures all partaking of this phenomenon (essential to all intelligent animals? - Interesting IMHO that Butler's Oankali are incapable of lying)
Take Darwinism as an example - pursued with absolute scientific radicality, there would be no narrative at all, merely the senseless re-arrangement of particles, with no pattern or event any more significant than any other. Surely it is uncontroversially true that human thinking is simply incapable of this - broad narrativization is an ineradicable (or, Churchland-speak, ineliminable) feature of intelligibility for us. The scientific fact is always subject to supplementary narrativization, which does not consign it to pomological relativism, but definitely contributes a very flexible, narrowly sieved and agenda-laden level to the basic physical facts (guess this is a kind of degenerated pop-kantianism, but never mind). Hyperstition addresses this ineliminable narrativization, for instance the various narrative frames that encrust the senseless 'event' of capitalism, lending it historical meaning, anticipated directionality, moral - and even religious - significance, and political intelligibility
Guess my preference would be for the testing and condensation of hyperstition through its application to such narratives - as many and varied as possible - with special attention to modes of 'self-fulfilling prophecy' or cultural autoregeneration - those features distinguishing hyperstition from general narratology. That would be to consolidate the 'scientific' agenda of hyperstition, within its domain of relative competence
Posted by: nick at August 15, 2005 02:30 AMnarrative central to hyperstition? funny, William Benzon describing Aunger: "he sheds the discipline of Dr. Jekyll in favor of the random muttering of Mr. Hyde" - human-nature.com/nibbs/02/benzon.html.
genes don't have narratives, people do? problems with capitalism, imho, everything in american society structured (or, transformed) to support capitalist narrative vs. democratic narrative. democratic narrative degrades into pseudo-patriotism narrative. knee-jerk response narratives. &etc. individual narratives (pursuit of happiness & all that) at pyramid bottom. certainly, suicide bomber narrative doesn't help things. we have a war of narratives. seems like things are beginning to jell hyperstitionally.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 03:49 AMi'd be interested to hear what you think are the elementary components of these various narratives, for instance the Great Depression is an event built into a number of American metastories with very powerful effects - fuelling the politics of the New Deal, Great Society and modern 'liberalism' for instance. In this case, the archetypal narrative provides an intersection between the economic and political (capitalist/democratic) storylines - assuming it goes something like this:
"Once upon a time (after the yankees won the Civil War?)there was completely out of control laissez-faire capitalism, leading to yawning inequality, brutal exploitation and even the feeble germination of an indigenous soci*list movement, eventually it led to inevitable nemesis with the 1929 Crash, people going hungry ... then FDR explained that the government needed to take a more important role in the economy and turned things around with massive spending programs - we've learnt that democracy needs to constrain capitalist excesses and see that it's natural for the State to expand its influence in a modern society. God bless America!"
Goes without saying I've got huge problems with this story, but that's another matter ...
my sister works at city govt level & studies aging adults: 50s to 90s. city offers free food program for seniors. different response from each age group. some expect service, others view it as charity, some don't need it, don't expect it. identify which is the baby-boomer, soup kitchen or new deal. imho, essential aspect of narratives at the ground—what makes them powerful & rise up fueling politcs, culture, etc—is that they are experienced. usually, what is experienced is something *big*, something shared. these narratives reverberate finding immediate expression in music, art, books. therefore validating, encouraging & inviting individual narrative to participate in the perfect storm.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 06:24 AMa problem with hidden narratives. narratives never communicated because of denial, lack of acceptance & (most important) they're not told anywhere. however, first person brave enough to tell their story causes everyone else to come out of the woodwork. possible hidden narratives may corrosively manifest where we deal indirectly with the narrative by dealing with its symptoms.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 06:37 AMyes, probably in large measure constituting cohesive collective identities, with 'reverberation' (resonance) as adhesive
Posted by: nick at August 15, 2005 06:40 AMsex. (of course)
makes one wonder about the collective narratives of sex in the USA when observing the bewildering palette of national contradictions, jessica simpson just doing her job & the model for Dali's Young Virgin Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 06:53 AM>>cohesive collective identities, with 'reverberation' (resonance) as adhesive
defining switchover from individual to group narratives (we like an audience to share out stories). the dynamics that keep this locked in place — no selling out, no flip-flops, no waffling, etc. are you one of us? pay your dues. show your loyalty. make your first kill on behalf of the brotherhood. yadda.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 07:02 AM"sex." - trying to break the world's shortest story record?
immigration another source of hidden narrative. countries with serious immigration problems deal with symptoms — ignoring hearing & accounting & harmonically blending minor narratives into the larger narrative.
a man i know with a green card told me about bush bill effecting ability of this group to obtain drivers licenses. without proper identification, he said, folks like him can't get car insurance, etc. this guy created a musical narrative based on Ode to Joy communicating this situation & plans to distribute CDs.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 07:17 AM>> "sex." - trying to break the world's shortest story record?
lol, yeah.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 07:20 AMPaul Berman's 'Terror and Liberalism' provides an exceptionally lucid example. Discussing the common fascist/communist/islamist totalitarian matrix, he writes:
"The shared ideas were these: There exists a people of good who in a just world ought to enjoy a sound and healthy society. But society's health has been undermined by a hideous infestation from within, something diabolical, which is aided by external agents from elsewhere in the world. The diabolical infestation must be rooted out. Rooting it out will require bloody internal struggles, capped by gigantic massacres. It will require an all-out war against the foreign allies of the inner infestation--an apocalyptic war, perhaps even Apocalyptic with a capital A. (The Book of the Apocalypse, as André Glucksmann has pointed out, does seem to have played a remote inspirational role in generating these twentieth-century doctrines.) But when the inner infestation has at last been rooted out and the external foe has been defeated, the people of good shall enjoy a new society purged of alien elements--a healthy society no longer subject to the vibrations of change and evolution, a society with a single, blocklike structure, solid and eternal."
essay available here: www.prospect.org/print/V12/18/berman-p.html
Book is essential for anyone serious about the Islamist phenomenon.
(PS. Berman is a leftwing Democrat)
exactly. the gog-magog axis of narratives. contrast exclusive apocalyptic narratives with inclusive narratives. descriptive vs. proscriptive vs prescriptive. American Indian (hidden) narratives, i believe, may describe the interplay of these different narratives & the role they must play when the time comes.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 07:35 AM"the role they must play when the time comes" - this is a superb phrase - cryptic, ominous, reflexively intricated ...
Posted by: nick at August 15, 2005 07:53 AMprecisely where you can't afford to be monotheistic. considering only shared apocalyptic scenarios hides other narratives designed to disable, diffuse, counter-act, etc., other narratives.
can't have a true apocalypse if all out ducks aren't lined up.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 08:08 AMimho, apocalyptic scenarios designed to trigger each other like dominoes.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 08:10 AMbinky -
"Can you say a little more about ... this 'intelligenic event' ...?"
Vast amount to say here, so I won't try to be remotely comprehesive yet - main point just that Capitalism includes technoscience in its basic macroscale feedback loop, thus trending strongly to artificial intelligence technologies (of many kinds) and even to 'singularity' in the Vinge sense (surpassing of human cognitive capabilities within the technosphere, thus on a dynamic - and accelerating - curve).
This virtual event is simultaneously a stupendous liberation of machinic potential and a biogenetic catastrophe for (conservative human) organisms, since it abruptly terminates the human genetic lineage as the principle replicative axis of social reproduction. Hence the bipolar cybergothic/emancipatory rhetoric you (and MKP) point to - this inconsistency doesn't seem very serious to me - it's mostly quasi-random aesthetic variation based on irresponsible yarn-spinning. Horror is by far my favourite affect, so I can't resist turning everything into a horror story - feel free to blank it out as conceptually trivial.
"Is capitalism intelligent?" - room for much definitional squirming, but if high intensity information processing and problem solving basis of judgement, then for sure.
"... favourable to the emancipation of intelligence?" Yes, and more importantly, to the emncipation of the latent intelligence within sub-engineered matter.
"... marking a rupture with the cosmological order?" Not sure whether I quite understand this question - nature seethes with breaks (inflection points, emergence thresholds for dissipative structures), so capitalism is a typical anomaly.
"And if it does, how does this supposedly immanent auto-catalysis of intelligence (limitrophic convergence of social production with cosmic schizophrenia?) differ from familiar spiritualist eschatologies concerning 'the end of all things'?" - apex question. No simple answer will suffice, with much resting on what is encompassed by "spiritualist eschatologies" - given the structure of intelligence catastrophe as mentioned above, any precursor model of the Other (Dark?) Side will be necessarily insufficient (to an almost illimitable extent) - lending an apocalyptic aspect to the anticipation.
[more later]
Posted by: nick at August 15, 2005 08:32 AMbinky -
"There already exists a perfectly cogent theory of "intrinsic purposiveness": it's called Aristotelianism."
A far superior theory is basic cybernetics. Negative loops appear self-conserving, positive loops appear to 'desire' growth. 'Purposes' are abbreviations for coherent nonlinear dynamics (cybernetic plexions).
"I presume this is not what you have in mind, but I need to hear more in order to understand why this exaltation of capitalism is not underwritten by a curious neo-Aristotelian regression that shies away from the nihilistic austerity of Darwin's vision."
Wallace explicitly modelled natural selection on a cybernetic basis, as a conservative control mechanism suppressing mutational deviations and the effects of environmental fluctuation through adaptive selection.
"Genes aren't 'using' us for anything. Genes don't have purposes. They don't 'want' anything. And neither does evolution."
A thermostat doesn't 'want' to stabilize a temperature, capitalism doesn't 'want' to create AI explosion, the apparent teleology is an effect of machinic circuitry, but since purposes are so readily reduced to cybernetic diagrams, the folk (intuitive) attachment to teleological language need not trouble us unduly.
"Interesting juxtaposition of claims:
1. Capitalism is a hyperstitional construct
2. Capitalism is a 'real/natural/material' (take your pick, but basically non-anthropo dependent) occurrence or happening: 'cyclone, earthquake, meteorite impact'."
There is a capitalism event (#2) but it is necessarily, and in fact multiplicitously, narrativized for the purposes of human intelligibility (#1）.
“how does the claim that what is ‘real/natural/material’ is hyperstitionally constructed (presumably ‘machinically’, whatever that may mean) differ from varieties of idealism?”
It has structural similarities to transcendental idealism， which also combines real but unthinkable events with cognitive schemas。This mode of description can hopefully be improved。This isn‘t necessarily where i’d throw in a ‘machinic’ 。。。but ‘machine’ shorthand for autonomous cybernetic assemblage （dissipative structure）
[more later （bet you can’t wait ；））]
And
"Re the claim made on behalf of capitalism as planetary singularity and locus of terrestrial history--Isn't everything currently happening on the planet governed by gravity at least as much as by capital production? But then why is capital production more important than gravity?"
This provides an excellent opportunity to return to 'machinic'. Gravity is mechanically significant, but not a source of machinic production (although, of course, machines can make use of gravity - as capitalism does). The conceptions of 'governing' are incommensurable. Still ...
"Unless of course the real focus of hyperstitional interest has always been socio-cultural and, by implication, human all along?"
... basically, I concede the point, although the autonomization of culture from the human species is - of course - the principal issue at stake (and one reason for privileging capitalism, which seems alone capable of doing this). Since capitalism prospectively offers terrestrial matter the opportunity to engage in deliberated technical manipulation of its own substance it takes on a biotechnological and geotechnological sense far exceeding any preliminary delimitation of the 'ethosphere'. In fact, subsumption of the earth into the (post-human) ethosphere is the ineluctable machinic destiny that the word 'capitalism' tags.
"On what basis do you identify the definitive phase transition in the history of the planet? Surely it's gratuitously biocentric to define it in terms of the shift from a carbon to a silicon (or whatever) based substrate for intelligence, as if terrestrial history necessarily converged upon social and/or intelligenic complexity?"
Consumption of the earth (by the then definitionally 'off-planet' machine) far exceeds the characteristics you note - the Oankali eat planets - anything less is eco-conservatism. Realize manifold conceptual issues (teleology in another aspect, still remain)
"More generally, if there is such a thing as 'universal history' then why privilege the history of the earth? (Unless wilfully
rehabilitating a pre-Copernican perspective?)"
Probably a perspectival limitation - no off-planet examples of radical techonomic runaway (terminal-phase planetary process) yet identified
"Again: why this apparent totalization and hierarchization of the ramified multiplicity of complex systems currently unfolding on the planet by privileging the emergence and development of capital production as the most significant event in all history?"
Because capitalism has an unparalleled voracity, and even the truly giant terrestrial systems (the bacteriosphere etc.) will be absorbed by it on current trends within a modest historical time-frame. Alternative narrativizations privileging alternative complex systems to be encouraged here, however, and if they can be highly politized ('insect politics', 'bacterial politics', 'crustal politics' (that might be piet but can't understand with his mouth full of rock chippings)) so much the better.
Simple answer, capitalism is already hyperpoliticized and thus already lined up to take narrative precedence - you're right to see this as a 'culturalist' skew
think I've at least touched on your subsequent remarks - basic point 'capitalism is good' (or 'bad') doesn't mean very much, too weak even to support a contradiction - won't take a huge detour into moral theory, but I consider 'X is good' to broadly equate to 'lets do X' in this context, which is exhortation not argument.
inhuman / 'good' for humans - no inconsistency i can see - absorption into the techonomic swarm can be simultaneously ultimate liberation and utter horror - Eastern religions are better at this type of cosmic ambivalence than monotheistic-manichaean ones IMHO
++ thanks for stimulation, I'll chew over your remarks much more thoroughly
Posted by: nick at August 15, 2005 09:56 AMMuch of what irks those who cleave to the austere indifference of scientific rationality here (ie binky, I assume) must be the constant slippage from supposedly rational arguments about material processes/structures/systems into an apparent indulgence in emotional (auto-)manipulation, as admitted:
>Horror is by far my favourite affect
What's problematic is the constant wavering between treating these sort of stylistic tendencies as peripheral, discountable products of personal taste on the one hand, and substantial elements of the hyperstitional agenda on the other. Which is it to be? Are you storytellers who pine hopelessly after the analytical, or analysts with an unfortunate poetic tic?
> the folk (intuitive) attachment to
>teleological language need not trouble us
>unduly.
>Friedrich famously thought that there was no
>escaping evaluation
Such easy dismissal of this congenital defect of Hyperstition suggests the advocates of HS are not prepared even to make the experiment of stripping away avowedly sentential decoration and making a formal referential statement about the mechanism(s) of hyperstition (at least, all discussions along this line so far have degenerated into 'er...it's...like....feedback...everything's hyperstitional, man'-type aporias). Such an effort must surely be the minimum requirement for the theory of hyperstition being taken seriously (at least in view of its continued 'practice' not having demonstrably effected actual major universal belief-shifts or virtual voodoo transcendental trauma AS YET...)
Basically, we don't yet know why the concept of hyperstition might be useful for anything other than getting each other overexcited (cue triumphant smirks from the inner circle - 'exactly!'. 'But this sort of cliquish merriment just sends us round in circles rather than contributing to any palpable analysis'...cue triumphant smirks - 'exactly!'. 'But look, this could go on forever - cue...etc...'OK, I'm leaving now along with everyone whose interests extend beyond cutting and pasting starcharts into comments boxes.'*)
A primary question is how (or if you prefer, whether) techno-rational-structural discourse manages to jar itself loose from such all-too-human tendencies to narrativisation, shedding every residual layer of sense-metaphor to become a maximally-abstract machine: it seems to me that to argue that it doesn't or can't would be to invoke ridiculous neomarxist (and implicitly moralist) analyses of class/gender/species/whatever 'bias' or 'interest' which, if they were 'true', would make it hard to explain e.g. why levers, steam engines or computers work. If hyperstition cleaved to this sort of pomo-ism, it would indeed be nothing more than a perverted offshoot of cult studs, founded on a specific group's arbitrary aesthetic preferences. We might then question whether these preferences were really just adjoined as a matter of taste to what is essentially a highly rigorous theoretical edifice? Could just as easily be, say, a mills-and-boon-romantic translation of the entire hyperstitional canon?
Ultimately, I don't think it really is
>uncontroversially true that
>broad narrativization is an ineradicable (or,
>Churchland-speak, ineliminable) feature of
>intelligibility
Apart from on a pedagogical level, it seems to me that logic does pretty well without stories, especially when embodied in silicon. Seen from this angle, the fervour for ever-more-intricated narrative looks somewhat atavistic, something to amuse your monkey brain with whilst the mechanosphere whirrs away regardless.
Is the way out of the confused anthropic swamp of twisted animal writhings through the indulgence of peculiar fantasy-narratives and the attempt to smear the referential register into emotional provocation and religious mysticism; or through a division whose painful severity - especially to writers, especially to revolutionary romantics - cannot disguise its deep affinity with the actual material principle of all 'intelligenic' process: viz. the division between rational (=technical, mathematical) discourse (including an acknowledgement both of that which has been explained, and that which remains to be explained) and on the other hand, storytelling/poetry/mysticism?
Now, obviously this is part of Badiou's project, but not necessarily tied to his own peculiar development of it (ie. let's not get into a slanging match over St Paul here). It has an important bearing on his critique of Deleuze's appeal to a universal impulsive factor ('life'?) forever 'outside' the frame of reference of symbolic discourse, that can only ever be despoiled by being captured in formal systems, which is exemplified in the _process_ of thought but not in its results, and which in its vanishing elusiveness parallels at once Derrida's differance and the magical hyperstitional essence - 'you can't define it, you can only do it...and you _are_ its cosmic plaything, whether you like it or not'.)
Of course it is unclear what subjection to such a division would entail exactly (presumably something more positive than a Wittgensteinian 'remaining silent'), but there's no doubt that, in default of such an effort the 'hyperstitional agenda' must remain profoundly confused (are those knowing smirks saying: 'exactly! because that's what THE VITAL OUTSIDE ALL-ONE is like'...?) and can only be treated as a purely poetical - and from the point of view of understanding the world, pretty uninteresting - venture: short story or opinion column, it doesn't make much difference.
*[apologies, but it's a snark with a point].
dread - well you're coming over as a bad tempered binky, but have to accept there's substantial content, and it's great that you've been drawn out (even if only by irritating cogntive erraticism)
think there's a lot to your objection, but i'm not fully persuaded - to start with the most sub-intellectual level of uncertainty, given you're correct and a radical de-narrativization of 'the hyperstitional project(s)' (don't laugh) were possible, what is driving this highly ascetic intellectual programme? What is the impulse to sacrificing everything to the arid rigorization of signs? Why are we the people to do it (aren't mathematicians significantly better situated for such an exercise)? Throw out Lovecraft, Butler, Voodoo (Death), The Mouth of Madness, everything that distracts with its sloppy impressionism - in order to ...? Revolutionize symbolic logic? Turn the world upside down? Win fame and fortune? Why doesn't the vague and suggestive world of computer game narratives, horror movie scripts, deviant occultism and delirious pulp subfiction have as much claim upon us as meticulous scientificity?
Actually the appeal of this austere vision is not especially obscure to me, but the notion that it could attain a monopolistic reign over my devotions seems improbable at best, if only due to a measure of sobriety in the estimation of my capabilities (your own horizon is wider in this respect, of course). Could hyperstition realistically be envisaged as something radically divorced from the compromises, inconsistencies and nebulous suggestions of pop agiation - in our hands? - which is not to deny the special delights of those moments when adamantine obelisks of mechanomic rigour loom from the creeping fog ...
does psychocognitive consistency seem natural to people? Surely this interrogation "Are you storytellers who pine hopelessly after the analytical, or analysts with an unfortunate poetic tic?" depends on the day of the week, the weather outside, the mood one woke up in, how annoying the last troll was, and innumerable other factors pitched into a buzzing bubbling stew of neural instability. Why should the personal or suprapersonal unit of consistency be important in any way? Why not treat the discursive unit as its own delimited zone of consistency? Why confuse a practical problem - efficient blog organization (improvement necessary) - with the spurious search for pychobiographical coherence and predictability (who cares?)?
Anyway, your elaborate question is an unmistakably important one, so some serious pondering lies ahead ...
Posted by: Nick at August 15, 2005 02:38 PMBut in case this has been intricated into utter obscurity: I'd massively support an attempt to radically diagram / drastically formalize the essential tenets of hyperstition, and even suspect serious progress could be made in doing so ... So where do we start?
Posted by: Nick at August 15, 2005 02:44 PMImagine hyperstition as a sense organ - for example a tentacle - which extends the brain's perceptual capacities. Sure, the tentacle needs occasional check-ups and regeneration, but, as long as it is working, surely processing the perceptions and analysing the data is rather more interesting than a constant critique of the tentacle itself.
Posted by: sd at August 15, 2005 03:17 PM2 quick points (only bad-tempered because of having been finally tempted to unlurk despite having no time to do so):
firstly, your point that it depends on the day of the week whether you feel rigorous or not surely demonstrates exactly the problem I'm pointing to: there's no point hyperstition posing as a systematic theoretical position if it's basically just a phenomenological journal of your ups and downs. Doesn't a theoretical project necessarily involve a certain ascetism and restraint; or to put it another way, is there some other way of proceeding _other_ than symbolic formalisation that could possibly result in any constructive synthetic production whatsoever? An implicit trust in the ur-reality of matter? Given your wholehearted championing of the technocapital nexus, which surely functions exclusively by quantising, symbolising and formalising, it seems strange to put your trust in this other obscure (to say the least) principle.
secondly, MK-P's "punitive inevitablism/freedom and democracy" (although it could equally be "indifferent unraveling of mechanosphere/catastrophic dark singularity") expressive of the same antinomy: on one hand, the reason why it's all inevitable is surely tied to the _truth_ of certain principles of physics, biology, computation that are put into action by capitalism; on the other, we have the claim that since the concept of truth is irrelevant to the 'real processes of production', we can somehow participate in or influence the process by building hyperstitional belief-machines...
If we 'believe' hard enough will nanotech or quantum computing become viable (hasn't worked yet, LOL)? There may be an interesting question of belief here but it belongs to the discourses of marketing and venture capital rather than to the scientific disciplines themselves.
Such places are indeed where the worlds of storytelling and of technocapital intelligenesis collide, but that doesn't make them the same thing. You may be right that there is no place for 'us' in the actual instrumental work of capitalism (need I mention that I've tried and failed to be 'useful' in this regard...) But it could be better to accept this with good grace rather than to perpetuate a torturously convoluted charade of self-importance such as the concept of 'hyperstition' seems to represent ('we're not just _talking_ "about" things, we're _hyperstitionally intensifying them_'!). It may be better to find a register that whilst neither heads-down test-tube bleeding-edge science nor motivational speaking, isn't an awkward attempt to scrunge the two together...I don't think the organizational 'practical problems' are entirely unconnected to these theoretical ones.
Posted by: dread at August 15, 2005 03:20 PMsd - chronic back-to-the-drawingboardism is a hyperstitional tic that i'm sure you're already getting used to - as long as it doesn't calcify into a bottleneck it probably serves some sort of feedback function ...
suspect you're on to something with the tentacle model - it probes into informalized chaos, which makes dread-type corrections necessary to avoid complete sympathetic emulsification, but also dooms such corrections to perpetual frustration (because the probe function is irreducibly aleatory), even if crystallized molecules of rigorous pattern get sensed occasionally
A Thousand Plateaus very rarely draws attention to what it is doing. It does what it describes.
Posted by: sd at August 15, 2005 03:31 PMdread - really, I'm not at all unsympathetic to your concerns - a principle of appropriate rigour would be an immense asset (though IMHO a 'constrained' approach to topics including narrativization might be productively included in this) - my 'psychobiographical' point is just an attempt to divert the question from the profoundly irrelevant issue of personal commitment and consistency. Those topics which have proceeded in a manner which, it seems to me, best conforms to your nudging here (the emergence of nullotated xenotation exemplary in this regard, surely?) do not depend upon the sustainable epistemic stances of particular individuals.
Right now, my expectation is that rigorization will most effectively proceed in respect to definite component elements of the overall shaggy and nebulous hyperstitional field, in part because hyperstition unavoidably deals with extremely blurry and confusing subject matter (world religions and hybrid economic systems, for instance).
Think you also
1) Somewhat overstate the pretentions of hyperstitional practice - insofar as hyperstition is earth shattering, it is something that is not emanating from this blog, but is rather already inherent in efficient narratives (would you agree all (meta)political programmes conform to this broad definition?)
2) Mistake the role of belief (the realm of hoaxes and religion) - it is unbelief that characterizes the hyperstitional convergence with technicity (no one 'believes' in decimal numeracy) - but this blurs out as i write - sustained blog attention required here (again)
The complete circuit/system of "marketing and venture capital" PLUS "the scientific disciplines themselves" is an 'object' from which hyperstition cannot retreat, and may even provide its sole adequate social application, even if you are quite right that merely blurring the distinction between the two is unhelpful at best. At least, i suspect that hyperstition cannot be reduced purely to the 'disciplinary' pole of this circuit, the operative machine requires both. Quantum computing cannot be conjured into existence by mere belief, but neither can it arise without the social investment dependent on its virtual credibility (the vast flow of resources into nanotech - based in large part on a tacit SF scenario - is an even more prominent example)
sd - but the blogoverse exposes its innards more than a book, just take the whole troll phenomenon for e.g.
Posted by: Nick at August 15, 2005 04:08 PM>>> we don't yet know why the concept of hyperstition might be useful for anything other than getting each other overexcited
LOL
Gentlemen (Dread, Nick) check your email boxes!
Posted by: Lurker at August 15, 2005 04:14 PMgeneral comment (probably responding to "spiritualist eschatologies"). self-fulfilling prophecies & the pygmalion effect. study about teacher expectations & student performance — Robert Rosenthal & Lenore Jacobson -- users.muohio.edu/shermalw/edp603_group2-f00.html
just read about teenagers choking themselves to experience the high of oxygen returning to the brain. one of them, unfortunately, died. in the magazine i was reading there was also a photo of a red-eyed Kate Hudson looking nervously (cross-eyed?) at a skeleton key. considering these two unrelated events made me realize how a lack of "standard methodology virtues" could lead to a dangerously unvirtuous edge similar to the movie "Altered States". but that, i'd argue, is why you'd consider these things in the first place. they're hyperstitionally powerful.
Posted by: northanger at August 15, 2005 06:45 PMlurker : happy to hear from you :)
sd : although not entirely hostile to it, I've become increasingly suspicious of this meme 'it does what it says'. This is supposed to mean that (eg) a given section in D&G doesn't actually refer to anything, as it appears to, but that it performs some action in a radically materialistic register that has nothing to do with signification; strange, then, how the expected result of this non-signifying action often appears to be the same _as if_ it were read as a piece of normal referential text, but with the possibility of any dissent or argument automatically subtracted. They're not talking "about" nomads, they're "doing" nomads, so you can't argue with what they say, because that would be irrelevant - but it just happens that they "do" nomads by talking about them in a convincingly groovy way. A strange sort of radical materiality - imagine if instead of listening to it, you looked closely at the grooves on a record and there was a little picture of the singer in them. That smacks of divine intervention.
Nick: "concern" a bit strong - after all, its not 'my' problem, I was spun out long ago by the cliquomorphic centrifuge. Just trying to help out with the current doldrums with some provocations ;)
Will try to squeeze out some more thoughts on your points later.
just to get this clear
>no one 'believes' in decimal numeracy
why not? Of course, the question is badly phrased, one can't believe in a set of procedures, rather it's a matter of what is believed _about_ it?
Posted by: dread at August 15, 2005 08:17 PMDread - I didn't say that D&G don't signify - that would be pomo absurdity. Language is obviously symbolic. So: D&G don't merely describe rhizomes in their text - their textual fabric is itelf rhizomatic; rather than advocate following lines of flight, their text is constituted by lines of flight; and yes, while describing nomads, their text is nomadic. The form is so determined by the content that I am tempted to suggest there are moments of immanence (in the sense that the distinction between form and content is left behind, as dead weight on the ground).
However, that said, please don't mistake me for a huge D&G fan: I think their texts lack a certain vigorous clarity - they often get tangled up in their own jargon (which is, in my opinion, often infected by pomo pseudosophistication).
Ultimately my point is probably this: texts carry memes and they are particularly effective when they are animated by the memes they carry. A Thousand Plateaus, for all its faults, seems to me to be a strikingly good example of this.
The following are less interesting or effective: texts overpopulated with descriptions of their own machinery; texts which are simply not up to the memes they describe (e.g. most journalism, criticism and readings of philosophical texts); texts consisting of a promise to deliver, the delivery forever deferred...
Posted by: sd at August 15, 2005 09:11 PMagree with most of this but in the interests of being irritating would question this:
>texts carry memes and they are particularly effective
>when they are animated by the memes they carry.
which seems like an intellectual fetish on the part of certain philosophers. Surely it depends what the text is designed to do. Yes, a text may benefit from exemplifying what it describes, but in many cases this wouldn't be helpful, and may even be a wholly unintelligible proposition (a recipe that 'does what it says'?) In fact, any text which describes qualities that cannot be applied to textual material would fall into this category – it says something about the hyperstitional program if this fetish of the chronically textbound is a sine qua non of its writing style. Why not overturn this strange orthodoxy and create texts that do nothing, theories that go to the greatest lengths only to refer to external objects, and to create no effects whatsoever? Why does everything have to be so prissily "true to itself"?
dread -'chronically textbound': all comprehensible utterances that come out of a human mouth are text, as are all inscriptions or codes.
If the meme & gene lens is used seriously (which I'm in favour of doing, to see where it leads and what it finds) then the 'external objects' focused on are genes (biological replicator instructions and codes) and memes (non-biological replicator instructions and codes), so in that sense being chronically textbound is unavoidable. Unless mentalese telepathy emerges (not on the cards though).
Another specific example: Norman Davies 'The Isles - A History': there are many aims and agendas running in this text, but one of the most powerful is its rigorous, ruthless exposure of how the memes of 'English' and 'British' have infested histories of the Isles. 'The Isles' uncovers and deliberately puts into motion new memes. So, for example, the text refuses to allow words like 'England', 'English', 'London', 'British', 'Ireland' etc until the texts describes the period in which these words actually came into currency. The text employs fresh memes which hint at a possible archaeological substratum: The Green Isle, Cliff Country, The Misty Country, The Midnight Isles, The Isles of Outremer, The Englished Isles, The British Imperial Isles. Davies does not describe what he is doing - he simply does it. The effect is a radically different perception of 'the external object' - the Isles and their histories.
How can a text create no effect whatsoever? The basic effect is that a text informs. Others are that it bores or interests. An optimal outcome, for me, is that it enhances perception.
A contrasting example is David Crystal's 'The Stories of English' - a book which traces the evolution of the English language from diversity to imposed standard and back to diversity. The book is very factual and predominantly dry because the style used to describe the evolution of the meme is not as dynamic as the meme itself.
Returning to the theme of this thread, is it a coincidence that writers who can be labelled as pro-capitalist (e.g. Pinker) and Anti-Communist (e.g Orlando Figes, Robert Conquest, Norman Davies) are far more lucid, dynamic and interesting than the likes of Marx, Lenin or Trotsky? Compare Darwin's style to that of Karl Marx.
Posted by: sd at August 16, 2005 11:23 AM"emancipation of the latent intelligence within sub-engineered matter." -- sounds right as rock empowdered to me
Posted by: piet at August 16, 2005 02:04 PM"... marking a rupture with the cosmological order?" Not sure whether I quite understand this question - nature seethes with breaks (inflection points, emergence thresholds for dissipative structures), so capitalism is a typical anomaly.
disagree with that profoundly; what's THE most characteristic characteric of capitalism? Not just freedom to contract and commit (ancient after all; the informalization of formation, the organicalization of rock are all old hat) --- but hyp(er)ing these processes (everything affecting searches for and filling of niches, from advertizing to mustering credit and concommitistas voluntarios culminated and combined in the freedom to ISSUE and the ability to time them (deadline and pledge oneself and/or collateral, future crop whaddeva), something all fabulously failsafesize ‘desiring’ monomanics (ANOMALOUS CAPITALISTS) have sought to taboo and substitute infatuation with perpetuity for, they manage to skits the works with magisterial succes; for all practical purposes the art of migration and tradewave legitimation and timing (in and out) is displaced down to the doldrums, surrogated with hysterically personal punctuation (albeit in Olympian guise).
CAPITALISM DON'T WORK WITH THE FOR NOW AD- BUT SOON TO BE PROVERBIAL QUALIFICATION: (E)CO-OPERATIVE
Because capitalism has an unparalleled voracity, and even the truly giant terrestrial systems (the bacteriosphere etc.) will be absorbed by it on current trends within a modest historical time-frame. Alternative narrativizations privileging alternative complex systems to be encouraged here, however, and if they can be highly politized ('insect politics', 'bacterial politics', 'crustal politics' (that might be piet but can't understand with his mouth full of rock chippings)) so much the better.
If you quit loading your shoulders with them so temptingly I'd become less likely to bite off more than you eschew
Posted by: p at August 16, 2005 02:53 PM"Are you storytellers who pine hopelessly after the analytical, or analysts with an unfortunate poetic tic?" ---- toc
Conclusion
Clock time is a fungible measure of sacrifice. Of all measurement instruments, the clock is the most valuable because so many of the things we sacrifice to create are not fungible. The massive clock towers of Europe, with their enormous loud and resonant bells, broadcasting time fairly across the town and even the countryside, rather than the last relics of the medieval, were the first building block of the wealthy modern world. The Europeans evolved their institutions and deployed two very different but complementary timekeeping devices, the sandglass and the mechanical clock, to partition the day into frequently rung and equal hours. Europe progressed in a virtuous circle where bells and clocks improved the productivity of relationships; the resulting wealthy institutions in turn funded more advances in timekeeping.
The rise of the cities and the merchant revolution was given a temporary setback by the Black Plague, the very century that the clock was introduced, but thereafter economic growth renewed with unprecedented vigor. The massive change on the farm, the dominant form of industry, in the 14th and successive centuries from serfdom and slavery to markets and wage labor, was caused not only by the temporary labor shortages of the Black Plague, but more fundamentally and permanently by the time-rate contract and the new ability to accurately and fairly verify its crucial measurement of sacrifice, time. Time rates also became the most common relationship for the mines, mills, factories, and other industries that rapidly grew after the advent of the clock.
he's your man nick, calling investment sacrifice and remaining mute on what technocapitalism does to lifetimes and -cycles OVERALL is right up your schmally.
ps: this one much better: //szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html Shelling out
Posted by: piet at August 16, 2005 03:15 PMRobin (subjection to such a division would . .) sees himself as (headfirst) vector whereas poised catalycism could see to him seeing himself dividing subjection (rock) to open it's super and surfaciality up to objectifying and mobilizing influences that is the growth trick capitalism perverts, tries to co-opt, destroys and substitute for.
.. . .the growth trick capitalism perverts, tries to co-opt, destroys and substitute for.
.... .the growth trick (COERCIVE) capitalism prevents .. .etcetera
Posted by: piet at August 16, 2005 03:48 PMdon't think Dread's coming back. sure you spelled that word right?
Posted by: northanger at August 16, 2005 11:32 PMno, I'm not, lemme check .. . meanwhile, here's for nick (first chapter online) if he cares to get out of that space ship and fight like a man .. .
Dissertation Abstract
--------
THE DISCOURSE OF WORKERS DEMOCRACY IN CHINA AS A TERRAIN OF IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE IN THE MOMENT OF TRANSITION FROM STATE SO*CIAL*ISM
In this dissertation, I aim to provide a better understanding of certain aspects of the reforms in the political economy of China since Deng Xiaoping reoriented the Chinese political economy in the direction of increased reliance on market based competition. Towards that end, I argue that a particular phenomenon of Chinese restructuring, namely the discourse of workers democracy that Chinese workers, enterprise administrators, intellectuals, and state bureaucrats engage and alter according to varying agendas, has undergone significant changes from the early Maoist period to the present day of state enterprise restructuring and expanded market involvement in the Chinese economy. Further, the appropriation of this discourse of workers democracy in the moment of Chinese transition from state so*CIA*lism has been shaped and constrained by the systemic limits of that transition. I theorize the Chinese transition from state so*CIA*lism and then look at the discourse of workers democracy as part of China¡¯s transition from state so*CIA*lism. Based on field interviews with Chinese workers in small- and medium-sized state owned enterprises facing privatization, I find that workers in contemporary China retain fundamental beliefs that contributed to the core logic of Chinese state so*CIA*lism. Their reinterpretation of workers democracy today is deployed, however, as part of an effort to deal with a problem that they never faced under state so*CIA*lism, namely, the threat of unemployment. Research findings from the field indicate that the transition from state so*CIA*lism remains both uncertain and a matter of considerable ideological contestation.
Chapter 1 This is the First Chapter of Stephen Philion's Dissertation
.. . .. . ..Comparison: HeartTuner with HeartMath's FreezeFramer
Dan Winter's paper Using the Cepstrum Mathematics to Measure Coherence , Dan's
International Seminar Schedule: Sacred Geometry and Coherent Emotion. ...
www.soulinvitation.com/compare/ - 20k -
Implosion Group:Dan Winter-Sacred Geometry & Coherent Emotion ...
Based on Dan Winter's original development of CEPSTRUM Mathematics to quantify
INTERNAL heart and brain COHERENCE. BlissTuner extends this to also measure ...
www.soulinvitation.com/indexdw.html - 101k - 15 aug 2005 -
The Intrigue Of Czarism (Or Fedual So!cia!lism?)
Eustace Mullins, September 7, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One may call it fate or predestination, when I received this book at the Fourth International Conference on Authentic History in Washington, D.C., I had not mentioned to anyone that I had been writing a novel about the Byzantine Empire, since being introduced to the subject by my mentor, the Poet Ezra Pound, in the 1940s. I supposed, with all the brashness of youth that a movie of this book could only be produced by Cecil B. DeMille, who directed many such epics as The Ten Commandments. DeMille is no longer available. We have such worthies as Steven Spielberg, who prefers aliens for subjects, and DeMille’s preferred actor for these epics, Charlton Heston, is also no longer available. Nevertheless, the book will be an epic of Christianity, and as such, it will finally find its way.
>>no, I'm not, lemme check
looks like Dan uses septrum to make it distinct from cepstrum (an anagram of spectrum).
Posted by: northanger at August 17, 2005 12:28 AM7 and 12 besides pi variations fetish fractions for him but google finds no septrum use and 66 ceptrum ones
. . . Dan the champ of spectrum? are you kiddin? I bet he would argue distinction is death, he is out there and even wants to go there but it will only work if we do the right thing here (and on that score I fully agree with him and suspect it will obviate our desire to become starmakers and all that hokum. We better shut up or the topic police will pass out citations
Posted by: p at August 17, 2005 12:37 AM>>We better shut up or the topic police will pass out citations
lol, good idea.
:O)
Excuse failure to take intervening comments into account.
Nick: "Capitalism includes technoscience in its basic macroscale feedback loop, thus trending strongly to artificial intelligence technologies (of many kinds) and even to 'singularity' in the Vinge sense (surpassing of human cognitive capabilities within the technosphere, thus on a dynamic - and accelerating - curve)."
Granted--but surely the link between capitalist technoscience and the internal conceptual lineaments of AI/A-Life research is extrinsic and contingent? Otherwise the implication is that it was historically impossible for Turing or Langton to have been communists, which strikes me as absurd, unless you're attributing to History an inherent logical teleology a la Hegel.
Nick: "This virtual event is simultaneously a stupendous liberation of machinic potential and a biogenetic catastrophe for (conservative human) organisms, since it abruptly terminates the human genetic lineage as the principle replicative axis of social reproduction."
Fine. The future certainly won't be "human" in any sense intelligible or acceptable to humanist reactionaries. But why assume that communism is necessarily technophobic and *in principle* committed to reactionary humanist paradigms of bio-social reproduction?
Nick: "nature seethes with breaks (inflection points, emergence thresholds for dissipative structures), so capitalism is a typical anomaly."
Surely this claim must be restricted to a "nature" arbitralily confined to a certain scale? I would contest the ubiquity of such breaks (i.e. of emergent complexity) at the very big (cosmological) scale and very small (sub-Planck) scale. Arguable that the definitive threshold re history of solar system (and hence earth) is the death of the sun, itself merely a local prelude to the limitrophic dissolution of the physical universe as now known (however dismally) in the wake of accelarating cosmological expansion, i.e. asymptopia. The post-asymptotic universe will go on for a lot longer than the physical one--but there'll be nothing left in it to sustain anything capable of exciting negentrophiles. Perhaps this seems irrelevant. But you can't simply invoke the supposedly undeniable authority of "nature" viz capitalism as terrestrial process without explaining why you've chosen to privilege a physically parochial paradigm of nature, one which is rooted almost entirely in one (admittedly fascinating) scientific discourse, i.e. what you call "cybernetics" (=complexity or dynamical systems theory (DST)). Moreover, isn't this fascination with a terrestrial sideshow wherein capitalism is necessarily master of ceremonies not underwritten by a very specific political sensibility? And isn't this extravagant speculative narrative a teeny bit
otiose if what you're really interested in is promoting the ontological legitimacy of individual liberty, free trade, and an expanding market?
Nick: "'Purposes' are abbreviations for coherent nonlinear dynamics (cybernetic plexions) [...] A thermostat doesn't 'want' to stabilize a temperature, capitalism doesn't 'want' to create AI explosion, the apparent teleology is an effect of machinic circuitry, but since purposes are so readily reduced to cybernetic diagrams, the folk (intuitive) attachment to teleological
language need not trouble us unduly [...] There is a capitalism event (#2) [i.e. capitalism as material process] but it is necessarily, and in fact multiplicitously, narrativized for the purposes of human intelligibility (#1) [i.e. capitalism as hyperstitional construct]. It has structural similarities to transcendental idealism which also combines real but unthinkable events with cognitive schemas."
This is the crux of the matter (cf. several previous comments by Dread). What exactly is "unthinkable" about the reality of capitalism and why does it require hyperstitional schematization? Hyperstition's political narrativization of capitalism as destiny happens precisely in this imperceptible slippage from a reasonably uncontroversial description of capitalism as cybernetic process (positive feedback loop) to politically loaded narrativization of capitalism as destiny. It's this attempt to effect a *transcendental* schematization of capitalism that results in an equivocation between the unobjectionable diagramming of capitalism's teleonomic functioning and its dubious hyperstitional narrativization as necessary telos of terrestrial destiny. Precise empirical calibration of capitalism's material functioning is subordinated to a quasi-theological schematization which garbs the latter with the mantle of ineluctable purposefulness.
Re "narrativization for the purposes of human intelligibility"-- That historical materialism has been largely appropriated by humanist simpletons waxing about a crypto-christian kingdom of ends doesn't invalidate Marx's invaluable insights into the systemic nature of capital production. What about the possibility of conjoining historical materialism with eliminative materialism and the prospect of a mode of socio-cultural production grounded in vector-algebra rather than belief-desire folk
psychology? Very telling that hyperstitionalists should favour the deeply conservative Chomsky-Pinker line about the immutability of "human nature" over the Dennett-Churchland-Metzinger axis, whose emphasis on the plasticity of
human cognitive processing is far more attuned to Darwinism. Anyone interested in the longterm socio-cultural emancipation of intelligence should be backing the prospect of a Mao Ze Churchland equipped with neurosurgical technology instead of printing presses, rather than cretinous neo-conservatives dribbling about democracy as manifest destiny. Neurocultural revolution would effectively obliterate the cognitive framework underlying traditional economic means-ends rationalizations of behaviour and eliminate any need for hyperstitional narrative.
Nick: "the autonomization of culture from the human species is - of course - the principal issue at stake (and one reason for privileging capitalism, which seems alone capable of doing this).Since capitalism prospectively offers terrestrial matter the opportunity to engage in deliberated technical manipulation of its own substance it takes on a biotechnological and
geotechnological sense far exceeding any preliminary delimitation of the 'ethosphere'. In fact, subsumption of the earth into the (post-human) ethosphere is the ineluctable machinic destiny that the word 'capitalism' tags [...] Capitalism has an unparalleled voracity, and even the truly giant terrestrial systems (the bacteriosphere etc.) will be absorbed by it on
current trends within a modest historical time-frame. Alternative narrativizations privileging alternative complex systems to be encouraged here, however, and if they can be highly politized ('insect politics', 'bacterial politics', 'crustal politics' so much the better.Simple answer, capitalism is already hyperpoliticized and thus already lined up to take narrative precedence - you're right to see this as a 'culturalist' skew"
Again, no problem on the whole with any of this except for the putatively ineluctable connection between capitalism and the future deterritorialization of the biosphere. This remains an empirical issue (e.g. Is capitalism immune to the effects of imminent ecological catastrophe?). A rather parochial political programme is being grounded on a set of tenuous promissory notes about what will "inevitably" happen. Such claims remain wholly susceptible to empirical falsification--not least the prediction concerning the imminent absorption of the bacteriosphere ("on current trends"). Marvels of nanotechnology notwithstanding, I
fail to see how such futurological speculation provides a sounder basis for a political programme than dreams of workers' utopia. Short of demonstrating a necessary historical isomorphy between capitalism and technoscience, nothing discounts the possibility of similarly interesting results being unleashed by alternative modes of social organization.
Nick: "basic point 'capitalism is good' (or 'bad') doesn't mean very much, too weak even to support a contradiction - won't take a huge detour into moral theory, but I consider 'X is good' to broadly equate to 'lets do X' in this context, which is exhortation not argument. inhuman / 'good' for humans - no inconsistency i can see - absorption into the techonomic swarm can be simultaneously ultimate liberation and utter horror"
Presumably this can be paraphrased as "Let's promote and support capitalism because it's the surest guarantor for the deterritorialization of the earth ("earthing" of cosmic schizophrenia so to speak)"? Here we get to the crux again. A set of speculative hypotheses about the way the world works is being used to underwrite a politics--i.e. a system of practical exhortations/imperatives about what to do. But why still assume that there's any possible congruence between what there is and what we should do? Or between what there is and what's good for us? If the deterritorialization of the earth depends on what *we* believe and do then it's just like the kingdom of god. The subordination of theoretical intelligence to practical reasoning, the assumption that intelligence is necessarily (practically) interested, is the ultimate religious postulate. But if (as Darwin and Freud suggest) it's ultimately impossible to reconcile the way the
world is with the way we need it to be, then any attempt to articulate politics with ontology (or metaphysics) is based upon a failure to appreciate the fatal disjunction between is and ought. Nothing you know about what there is or how the world works can tell you what to do. Hence nothing follows from the fact that capitalism "is"--least of all an eschatological politics. Intelligence should favour strategies that promise to reengineer the nature of the political animal it has mobilized in its
service.
Lastly: Is political neoconservatism merely an instrument of inhuman capitalism? Or is capitalism in the service of neoconservative politics? I assume hyperstition denies the latter and affirms the former. But answering yes to the former still obliges you to explain why an inhuman purpose should require recourse to human interests, however "instrumentalized".
And if those interests are merely instrumental to something that has no interests, then why the need for a simulacrum of exhortation? The "Let's do X" is redundant. What syllogism of practical reasoning (I exaggerate but the point still stands) can underlie an imperative to act wherein the future that motivates the act necessarily excludes the present agent of the act? Why would you be interested in acting on behalf of a future that excludes all your interests?
re-reading most of this i'm left wondering (if Capitalism = Alan Strang in Equus) how Dysart, the psychiatrist, solved his dilemma. think the play leaves things hanging. but Dysart knew what he had to do — and i agree with what he had to do. imho, the normative cure is certainly better than howling in the mist.
Posted by: northanger at August 17, 2005 08:16 AMbinky - another superb contribution, thanks. There's so much of interest in your comment, that I can't hope to respond comprehensively in one go.
Firstly, your undercurrent on communism is highly intriguing, but rather cryptic.
"... surely the link between capitalist technoscience and the internal conceptual lineaments of AI/A-Life research is extrinsic and contingent? Otherwise the implication is that it was historically impossible for Turing or Langton to have been communists ..." - while some germinal scientific thinking and even rudimentary technology can be situated 'prior' to capitalism (if capitalism is given sharp Marx-type historical definition), the type of runaway trend that has come to characterize technoscience within modern societies has such profound entanglement with the modes of specialization, industrialization, investment, semiotic abstraction and programmatic research exclusively characteristic of capitalism that it is very hard to make a sharp division between a distinct 'intellectual lineage' and the wider social process. A certain conception of communism (or other post-capitalist modern society) might problematize this, but that would depend on maintaining that such a society itself escaped parasitic dependence on capitalism (contesting to the argments of sd, and even of Trotskyites (when it comes to concrete instances, i.e. Soviet Russia and social clones)). Since 'actually existing soci*lism' has relapsed into global capitalism, such alternatives remain extremely speculative.
"That historical materialism has been largely appropriated by humanist simpletons waxing about a crypto-christian kingdom of ends doesn't invalidate Marx's invaluable insights into the systemic nature of capital production." - In many ways I'm still enthralled by Marx, but the ultimate mathematical incoherence of his model cannot just be ignored, even if the empirical results following attempts to politically instantiate it can be. Since the effective (and inevitable) politicization of the proletariat as the instrument of realization for the post-cpaitalist social order is inherent to the overall Marxian model, the failure in practice for soci*list politics to take the (admittedly hugely intriguing) path you advocate can also not be easily shunted aside.
Allow me to briefly digress on capitalism and hyperstition - a relation which you portray as significantly less tormented than is in fact the case. My contention is that all hyperstitionalists should concur on the fact that robust systematic narratives are of central analytical importance and that capitalism has provoked a number of these, to different degrees of condensation, coherence and cultural virulence. It seems to me highly plausible, though analytically distinct, to invest these capital-related narratives with special prominence (although someone could with complete hyperstitional consistency effect a reduction of capitalism to, for instance, a fluctuation in the bacteriosphere (or sunspot activity) and cash-out socio-economic descriptions into an entirely different register, perhaps even dissolving the phenomenon to general satisfaction). Finally, even if the special privilege I have given to intelligenic catastrophism as the dominant capitalist 'tropism' were accepted, both the theoretical and practical political consequences drawn could be entirely different.
This is just to say that hyperstition doesn't yet have an explicit politics, or anything like one - any more than economics does. My apologies for merging my own affirmive cybergothic scenario with the broader hyperstitional conversation.
"A set of speculative hypotheses about the way the world works is being used to underwrite a politics--i.e. a system of practical exhortations/imperatives about what to do. But why still assume that there's any possible congruence between what there is and what we should do?"
Since I have very little confidence in political debate - having never seen anyone change their ideological commitments on the basis of one - I am far more interested in the 'is' than the 'ought'. Political provocations are intended to draw out the structures of alternative social macronarratives, rather than persuade people to align with particular political forces (which is, in any case, far harder to do than is commonly accepted, especially in heated blogospheric conversations - years of screaming are generally followed by unchanged votes which are themselves of vanishing democratic insignificance). Even partially coherent, systematically elaborated models of capitalism, or 'post-capitalism' (which should surely, Marx-like, exhibit plausible path-dependency), are interesting IMHO, while emotional or even principled expressions of allegience to particular goals or groups, on the other hand, are essentially vacuous. Sometimes what looks like an expression of political commitment is merely a sloppily articulated political science prediction (e.g. the Western proletariat is not poised to rise up and overthrow wage-slavery), thus a theoretical point about scenarios realistic enough to be worth exploring.
This is already beyond patience-testing length but realize it has scarcely scratched the surface of your remarks. More later.
Posted by: Nick at August 17, 2005 03:42 PMbinky -
"What syllogism of practical reasoning (I exaggerate but the point still stands) can underlie an imperative to act wherein the future that motivates the act necessarily excludes the present agent of the act? Why would you be interested in acting on behalf of a future that excludes all your interests?"
These are excellent questions - but doesn't all East Asiatic religion presuppose exactly these peculiar imperatives (to the point that a lifetime of excruciating discipline can be motivated by them)?
binky - sorry for the delay
'the claim that memetics enjoys the same incontrovertible scientific authority as genetics is nonsense. An ultimately bio-evolutionary explanation of culture is surely desirable, but the suggestion that we have anything remotely approaching it today --or that memetics will do the job-- is naively wishful thinking.'
Of course, memetics (thus named) is in its infancy, but in a sense any historian who has questioned the received version of history has been doing memetics in some shape or form. The question is really what degree of scientific status you are willing to grant a certain history, if any at all. As I mentioned in response to dread, I consider Norman Davies 'The Isles' to be an example of memetics, but I doubt Norman Davies conceived it that way. Jared Diamond's 'Guns, Germs and Steel' is a profound mixture of genetic and memetic history (he's excellent on the emergence of writing and on inventions). Most people would agree that Diamond is thorough and rigorous with his facts and their presentation. I'd say it's scientific.
'What are the biological units of memetic replication? How are they individuated?
They are only biological by analogy, but they could be:
• a complete written text, understood in the conventional sense, e.g. The Bible
• chunks of text which have become embedded in everyday langauge (e.g. an eye for an eye)
• ideas or sets of ideas which can be 'found' in the text (e.g. redemption)
• doctrines which are based on interpretations of the text and defines themselves in contrast and opposition to other doctrines (e.g. Catholicism)
• underlying code which finds expression in diverse forms of memetic replication (e.g. cybernetic theory)
• technological artefacts (e.g the QWERTY keyboard - Jared Diamond is excellent on this
If the idea of an individual 'nation' is treated as a meme, then individuation entails tracking when this meme first came into currency, what power structures brought it about, what codes it embodied (e.g stereotypes), how it related to other nationality memes, etc.
The focal points for memetics are mutation, infection and 'cultural selection'.
'presumably you have a sophisticated (i.e. non-adaptationist) account of what distinguishes conceptual rationality (yours and that of your pro-capitalist brethren) from memetic pathology'
First of all, you are going to have to explain what your problem with 'adaptation' is. The Dawkins-Pinker model of reverse engineering looks at a piece of biological machinery and asks the question 'What problem did this machinery solve?' Female mammals providing warm milk from their bodies to their young solves problems connected to conquering new climates and giving birth to big-brained young which cannot fend for itelf. The motors for this problem solving were mutation and natural selection (death). This view of adaptation does not involve 'purpose' - mutations which were beneficial for gene replication survived; the problems which prevented genes from replicating in a specific environment were solved purely accidentally. I really don't see how you can explain biological machinery such as eyes, claws, brains and hidden ovulation if you will not allow that they are adaptations which solve specific problems.
Similarly, the emergence of language (the human ‘master meme’) solves the problem of communication, but no humans suddenly decided to invent language. The evolution of language is still beyond human explanation, but there were many accidental factors which contributed to its emergence (e.g. a widening of the hole in the vertebrae, which enabled a thicker 'broadband' spinal cord – chicken or the egg?; human ancestors cooperating in increasingly complex ways).
So, I am genuinely intrigued by what you see as the problem here. Maybe I've just misunderstood you.
With regard to 'memetic pathology', I admitted that concepts such as 'meme virus' need a thorough service. I beg a little patience here.
'what still remains under-theorized is the complex interaction between the machinery of cultural software and the mechanisms of biological hardware'
Some preliminary musings:
Some memes do simply die. Some memes from Freudian psychoanalysis, such as Oedipus, which struck most people (except Jim Morrison) as absurd (i.e. counter intuitive and definitely not universal), are more convincingly explained by memes from evolutionary psychology:
"Daly and Wason... beleive that Freud's mistake was to run together two different types of parent-offspring conflict. Young children are in conflict with their father over access to their mother, but it is not a sexual rivalry. And older children may have a sexual conflict with their parents, especially their father, but it is not a rivalry over their mother. In many societies fathers compete with their sons for sexual partners, explicitly or implicitly. In polygonous societies, where a man can have several wives, they might literally compete for the same women. And in most societies, polygonous or monogamous, a father must subsidize his son's quest for a wife at the expense of his other children or his own aspirations. The son may be impatient for the father to begin diverting resources to him; a still robust father is a roadblock to his career. Filicides and patricides in most of the world are touched off by such competitions." Pinker, How the Mind Works p446
The cultural software of evolutionary psychology pays more attention to the mechansims of biological hardware than Freudian psychoanalysis ever did and, in my opinion, gets closer to a truth which is universal for homo sapiens.
Philosophical memes such as 'the subject' are crude when compared to the picture of the mind that is emerging from study of the brain.
Some cultural software is moving closer to biological hardware, discarding memes which no longer work in the process.
If he seeks to align himself with the future, he must assume a condition of some sort for a world fifty years beyond his own. Every historian,—sometimes unconsciously, but always inevitably,—must have put to himself the question:—How long could such-or-such an outworn system last? He can never give himself less than one generation to show the full effects of a changed condition. His object is to triangulate from the widest possible base to the furthest point he thinks he can see, which is always far beyond the curvature of the horizon. To the practical man, such an attempt is idiotic, and probably the practical man is in the right to-day; but, whichever is right,—if the question of right or wrong enters at all into the matter,—the historian has no choice but to go on alone. Even in his own profession few companions offer help, and his walk soon becomes solitary, leading further and further into a wilderness where twilight is short and the shadows are dense. —The Education of Henry Adams, XXVI Twilight, Henry Adams
Posted by: northanger at August 18, 2005 12:09 AMnever read Marx, but wanted to explore Nick's comment: "ultimate mathematical incoherence of his model". for some odd reason decided to search TRIANGULATION + MARX. triangulation is one-gecko-toe method i use to evaluate data. also, "triangulation policy" refers to Bill Clinton's re-election strategy developed by Dick Morris; John Kerry ("Kerry managed to violate a central tenet of triangulation: Whatever you do, do not end up giving your opponent his own chance to move to the center."); Tony Blair; & George Bush. would like your thoughts on this Nick.
www.answers.com/topic/triangulation-chess?method=6
Triangulation is a tactic used in chess endgames to put one's opponent in zugzwang (compulsion to move) ... a player can be said to "lose a tempo" when taking one more move to achieve something than necessary, or to "gain a tempo" when taking only two moves to do what would have taken three by other methods.
www.candw.ag/~jardinea/ffhtm/ff971114.htm
In one way, Marx's efforts were a failure. His mathematical model of the economy, which depended on the idea that labour is the source of all value, was riven with internal inconsistencies and is rarely studied these days. Many of the constructs used by modern economists - such as supply-and-demand curves, production functions, and game theory - hadn't been conceived in the eighteen-sixties. A new textbook, "Principles of Economics," by N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard professor, mentions Marx just once in eight hundred pages, and that reference is pejorative.
www.csuchico.edu/~michael/biography.htm
Reading Marx in this light made me realize that most of his readers missed what I considered to be very important to understanding his work. These researches led to my book, "Karl Marx's Crisis Theory: Labor, Scarcity and Fictitious Capitalo (1987). I found that Marx sometimes wrote in order to influence contemporary political conditions. Failing to see that element of Marx's work, modern readers generally are inclined to read his writings as if they were timeless truths. For example, his famous articles on India argued that England was promoting progress in England, but Marx knew little about England at the time. Instead, he was trying to undercut the influence of Henry Carey at the "New York Tribuneo, where Marx wrote.
What is TRIANGULATION?
venus.soci.niu.edu/~jthomas/class/Handouts/triang-denzin
Triangulation is the application and combination of several research methodologies in the study of the same phenomenon. The diverse methods and measures which are combined should relate in some specified way to the theoretical constructs under examination. The use of multiple methods in an investigation so as to overcome the weaknesses or biases of a single method taken by itself is sometimes called multiple operationalism. The insistence on a multiple operational orientation in the social sciences is commonly associated in the field of psychology with the work of Donald T. Campbell and his associates (Brewer and Collins 1981).
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The social sciences must move beyond investigations that triangulate only by data source, or by research method. Multiple triangulation must become the goal and aim of these disciplines. There are, however, few outstanding illustrations of this commitment. Perhaps Thomas and Znaniecki's publication, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918, 1919, 1920) remains the classic in the social sciences ... Thomas and Znaniecki's investigation used triangulated data, investigators, theories, and methods. Life histories, autobiographies, and family letters were at the core of their study, yet, in an unparalleled fashion, the research utilized participant observation, interviews, quasicomparative experiments on a grand scale, unobtrusive methods (letters), and surveys. Theoretically, the work wove its way (often implicitly) through the theories of Freud, James, Marx, Spencer, Durkheim, Mauss, Weber, Tonnies, Simmel, Hegel, Mead, Cooley, and Comte.
ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/ope/archive/9511/0141.html
Marx's Method of Triangulation. Here is my intervention on the discussion of the historical versus Hegelian approach: I agree with Tony Smith. Yes, Marx had a Hegelian approach. He wanted to express the totality of relations all at once, but how could he achieve that level of abstraction while still communicating about the real world. As Paul Z. noted, Marx used the entry point of the commodity. Once you understand the totality of the relations that make up the commodity you have achieved a Hegelian level of abstraction. But how do you communicate all the relations that make up the commodity? Remember Marx's note about how the beginnings are hardest. How do you pack everthing into a pararagraph, a page, or even a book so that a reader can grasp what is going on? Here is where I think that history enters into the picture: Marx's historical approach allows him to give concrete material that gives us a toe hold into his analysis.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past."
www.cas.usf.edu/JAC/131/russell.html
Each of us has a unique sociocultural heritage: a history of interactions with others and events which produces individual, original adaptations and transformations of one's self and others and events. Human beings are not internally (genetically) programmed for the vast majority of their behavior, as animals are in their instincts. Unlike animals, human individuals are born into a social world where they learn particular cultural patterns (habits) of behavior that change profoundly over time and differ radically among groups (cultures) within the species. Thus, an individual's development depends on interactions with others and the world, in a process Davidson calls "triangulation," not on correspondence to some biological or transcendent order outside experience, or on some conceptual scheme outside the indeterminate interactions among one person, others, and events in the world ("Three Varieties"). The social environment is not merely a stimulus for the playing out of preexisting inner biological imperatives; it is the means by which human beings become human.
www.counterpunch.org/proyect05092005.html Louis Proyect 'Diamond shills for Chevron' this is the concluding segment of a 4 part series; all of them here: www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/my_ecology.htm (reapeated from june)
Posted by: piet at August 18, 2005 01:01 AM