Friday, December 07, 2007

no future

Colonel Chabert certainly had some strong opinions about Mark K-Punk and his writing. Could part of it just be the Punk thing?

I remember growing up the kind of disdain working people had for the eight years out of date punk scene. Truly it was more loathing than disquietude. It was especially adressed to this one punk who wandered round the shopping centre with a child's swing chained to his jeans. Many drank. At this time cheap supermarket lager made it feasible to drink outdoors in the afternoon. There was also a glue panic. I was more into BMX. A playground marked up with sex pistols graffiti yet generated a sense of menace, both seductive and repellant, of the sort ruined by actually listening, years later, to the tedious sex pistols records.

Anyway, I think the line of argument borrowed from Dr Žižek in Mark's theory masterpiece Marxist Supernanny gets the "ideology of late capitalism" wrong. Mark writes:

"In Tarrying with the Negative, Žižek famously argues that a certain Spinozism is the ideology of late capitalism. Žižek believes that Spinoza’s rejection of deontology for an ethics based around the concept of health is allegedly flat with capitalism’s amoral affective engineering."*

There are really two things to consider that are intimitely related: liberalism as an ideology and the actual economic base, constructed on the principle of seperation, of which liberalism** represents an idealised version. Ideologically liberalism is basically private property conceived as not being underpinned by coercion. This is something like a philosophy where substances persist in themselves indefinitely without any kind of totalisation. And as such this diverges from Spinoza's metaphysical plan at the point where Spinoza introduces the idea of God as substance subsuming the various substances, and so effecting just this kind of totalisation. And we can maybe accept the Deleuzist argument, if only provisionally that politics and theology operate on the same "level" without making politics a determinant of theology or vice versa.

*my hacheks

** i.e. economic liberalism of which anglo-saxonic conservatism is a degenerate form

29 comments:

Le Colonel Chabert said...

"Ideologically liberalism is basically private property conceived as not being underpinned by coercion. This is something like a philosophy where substances persist in themselves indefinitely without any kind of totalisation. And as such this diverges from Spinoza's metaphysical plan at the point where Spinoza introduces the idea of God as substance subsuming the various substances, and so effecting just this kind of totalisation"

Hm, but isn't private property rather like potestas in this feature? Because to exist at all as it does at present it really must exist in everything, even things for which the specific owner remains undetermined. Like the moon is now pretty much concieved of as unclaimed property, not non-property or instrinsically inimical to privatisation.

Le Colonel Chabert said...

i liked punk very much as a kid, had the sex pistols and the jam recordings, and dutifully with my little friends went to see the Clash, who were not really punk but almost, at Bonds several nights in a row. But in the States it was just pop music, we thought the aesthetic slightly fascistic maybe, and preferred blues, but fashion was fashion and we obeyed.

Anonymous said...

Rabbit Shitter it's downright cretinous of you to be pushing me in the libertarian pigeonhole when I told you that I am neither

a) a Marxist
b) a Libertarian
c) a Lacanian
d) a Deleuzian
e) K-punk's butt boy or anybody else's
f) Colonel Sherbert's harem slave

but support ''overdetermination'' in my thinking, so that while for you two radical Commies there are only extremes, I believe one may hold libertarian views AND Marxist ones. Do you get it now or do you also need classes in overdetermination at the People's Parody Prole Edukation Center? Let me now in advance, there is an extra place because Kretinoma has to do some homework in the summer.

Anonymous said...

there is a problem with equating the two "levels" in what I've written, and I should have linked it into Hayek or something. I'll try to put this together when I get a chance.

Anonymous said...

"pushing me in the libertarian pigeonhole"

no, this is to with my Rebecca West Journey thru "Parody" - anyway, it's been called off

Anonymous said...

accepting these sly "us and them" fables as being somehow superior to fact is, I believe, characteristic of the right wing dupe

Anonymous said...

"but support ''overdetermination'' in my thinking"

yeah, one might ask, by whom?

Anonymous said...

Chabert, I don't know if you had this, but when I was at secondary school my pals had this one "friend" who didn't to school at all, but rather was a thirty year old unemployed male. Anyway this guy used to go on and on endlessly about how "subversive" the sex pistols were and I think this may have put me off. I quite like The Clash and The Stranglers, stuff like that, but I don't have the records.

Anonymous said...

accepting these sly "us and them" fables as being somehow superior to fact is, I believe, characteristic of the right wing dupe

read the new kenoma thread, i am not supporting any ''us and them'' fables but countering Trotskyan propaganda which falsifies Serbian history and annuls the roots of the KLA in Albanian Leninist-Marxist groupings, and all in the hope of making sense out of Communism instead of letting it work for the Empire as it does

For the record, I am now employed on a deadend Action Script job much like what Dominic does, which is why I am so sensitized to his adumbrations this week

Anonymous said...

"i am not supporting any ''us and them'' fables but countering Trotskyan propaganda which falsifies Serbian history and annuls the roots of the KLA in Albanian Leninist-Marxist groupings, and all in the hope of making sense out of Communism instead of letting it work for the Empire as it does"

I've never been Marxist-Lrninist. As political platforms go I'm broadly in agreement with the (now defunct?) SWP joint venture RESPECT. I read some (very good) articles by Louis Proyect today and he articulates quite well some of the quirks of the UK SWP proper. You've got the link, yeah?

anyway, I'm fairly sure they had Hoxha's Albania as a state capitalist regime. I don't know their position on Yugo.

Anonymous said...

If you're still mulling over the crazy ultraright "population bomb" "thesis" - the median age in Kosovo is 28, same as Albania, same as Argentina. If someone tried to arue from a "communist" perspective that the leaders of the Argentine christians in the vatican had ordered this population growth as a bulwark against communism - it's an argument made out of facts - but you'd dismiss this right away as a kind of lunacy, right?

Anonymous said...

You've got the link, yeah?

No

If someone tried to arue from a "communist" perspective that the leaders of the Argentine christians in the vatican had ordered this population growth as a bulwark against communism

I don't get it - why MUST I generalize the thesis on the Kosovo population bomb to include Argentina, Ireland or I don't know where else? Why is it so impossible to you that Kosovar-Albanian ethnic identity contains as its nucleus the idea of Greater Albania, for which biological weapons may also be perused? Why would this exclude the possibility that yes, there are ALSO European racist lunacies about the Islamic population threat in general? This is Sherbert's mannerism, to always jump to extreme conclusions.

Anonymous said...

"I am now employed on a deadend Action Script job much like what Dominic does"

well there you are Grey Pigeon, you spread vindictive lies about Albanian people, abuse my guests, and then come limping back for a few scraps 'cos someone else has hurt your feelings

Anonymous said...

And all because (whatever your brand of Marxism is) you posit it as something holy, something that may not be questioned - ''holy feminism'' and ''holy humanism''. Well I think a Marxism unable to look at itself honestly is one most prone to all kinds of extremist lunacies, such as a certain well-known Vulval Lunacy known under the endearing nick ''Missus''.

Anonymous said...

Louis Proyect is The Unrepentant Marxist

Anonymous said...

Other than me, you only really have ONE guest, and you know it!

Anonymous said...

he median age in Kosovo is 28,

please how can that be an indicator of the Albanian population's NUMBERS, Rabbit-who-shat-in-his-pants-when-he-saw-
the-Cobra?, in proportion to the
territory of Kosovo, and where are
the other variables (the time span,
the frequency, and the relation of
the numbers to the Serbian numbers
etc) From what I know the Albanian
population quadrupled in a span of
10 years, which implies that the
population growth rate is one of the highest in the world! But
anyway, let's drop that argument -
what about the fact that nobody
actually tried to decimate the
Albanians, and yet they feel themselves jeopardized and oppressed. Who is oppressing them and how? The last time I saw massive killings of Albanians, it was the NATO bombs!

Anonymous said...

"Why is it so impossible to you that Kosovar-Albanian ethnic identity contains as its nucleus the idea of Greater Albania, for which biological weapons may also be perused?"

it's their kids for christs sake. Don't you think they love their kids? This really is a kind of fascist tactic, making fertility equivalent to an act of aggression. And I already told you the median age of the population, which ought to track the birth rate fairly closely, is the same as for Albania proper.

Anonymous said...

"Who is oppressing them and how?"

the impression in the British press is that it's a done deal between the elite in Kosovo, the EU and NATO and the subtext is it's for business reasons. The only humanitarian concern is for the Serbs in Kosovo (they don't mention other minorities). I can't say I've really researched this though.

Anonymous said...

Don't you think they love their kids?

Why couldn't they love their kids parallel to seeing them as carriers of the new revolution, one involving the coveted, highly prized, mystical Great Albania? Why do mothers send their sons to war, if not for the love of their country? This is quite common amongst all nations struggling for identity, and this is a young nation. Nothing extraordinary about it. And then part of the reason for so many kids being born is that it's a custom. It's evidence of manhood that you have six instead of two.

But let's say all this is an eugenic fantasy, a Lovecraftian miscegenation trip. How do you SOLVE the problem of overpopulation if the population completely refuses to integrate?

Anonymous said...

is it's for business reasons.

if you believe in political economy, as I do, then it's also a political business.

I can't say I've really researched this though.

well, research and report to me once you've formed an opinion, instead of speaking in Chabert's perverse esperanto

Anonymous said...

...readers may be interested
in a review of this site by, it seems, an economics historian (the point was I was working round to criticising Marx's version of LTOV):

"Interesting, if strange, discussion about Adam Smith’s alleged labour theory of value from the perspective of David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy, by ‘catmint’, on a ‘strange’ Blog site, Rabbiter, here (26 November): ‘Labour was the first price’

Comment
I refer to the site carrying this post as ‘strange’ because it is not obvious what its about (without trawling through its archives). ‘Catmint’ is obviously switched onto classical economics.

However, I am not so sure that ‘catmint’ has read Adam Smith closely (nor for that matter do I think Ricardo did).

The very first sentence of the above quotation from Ricardo opens with: ‘In the early stages of society’, from which references to labour as the source of ’exchange value’ may have some validity (the beaver/deer exchange ratio) because a hunter’s labour was the only factor of production – the land, the bounty of nature were free goods; no property.

But once society had moved onto the existence of ‘property’ (shepherding/ farming in Adam Smith’s ‘ages of mankind’), labour was no longer the only factor. Property in land and in capital-stock participated in production and had a claim on the revenue raised from selling the products.

It ought to be clear that Adam Smith moved from a labour theory of exchange value to the basics of a modern theory of exchange value. I say ‘ought to be clear’, but it wasn’t, and Smith wrote a less than perspicuous text covering this important distinction. He keeps switching from ‘rude’ society (labour the only factor) to society with property and does not always make it clear enough that he has switched contexts. But by carefully noting the switch it is clear that he believed labour was no longer the sole source of exchange value with landlords and stockholders involved and that prices were determined by effectual demand and supply.

It should also be mentioned that ‘value’ in these contexts if a ratio, not something intrinsically ‘worth’ something called ‘value’ (a la Oscar Wilde), the source of much confusion by people claiming to exercise their aesthetic judgements. The ratio is what is given up for what is received in exchange, otherwise known as its price. With an aesthetic judgement there is no exchange and therefore no price.

With these confusions in place, David Ricardo marched into the labour theory of value cul de sac, followed by Karl Marx. Modern exchange value theory emerged once economists re-discovered demand and supply market prices already described by Adam Smith in 1776.

See Wealth Of Nations, Book I, chapters v-viii. "

catmint said...

& ad space for NAZIs is henceforth BANNED

Anonymous said...

why do you reject parody centrum's interpretation of Albanian Kosovar overpopulation? if we may apply foucaltian terms of biopower elsewhere, why would they not be applied to islamic fundamentalism? you did not provide any explanation aside from calling the blogger in question a Nazi.

Anonymous said...

well, samuel, how do you characterise ideas like this?

"How do you SOLVE the problem of overpopulation if the population completely refuses to integrate?".

in neo-pomo terms, what kind of subject is adressed by this question?

Parodycentrum, by his own account accidently because he didn't check the source, quoted an article by a white supremacist about the Kosovo Liberation Army. This I deleted. If you're interested in Parodycentrum's ideas you can find his blog easily enough.

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

...from another perspective Spinoza is a model proto liberal. whether the machine code leads in directions contrary to his sentiments - is arguable. The gist of my argument concerns more liberalism, & what it is, than what spinozism is. In my opinion, which perhaps does not coincide with that of liberals writing on liberalism, the key theorist of liberalism is Pareto.