marx and the trouble he himself has caused… generatively: and the problem of the definition of ‘class’.
1. C-M- C
vs.
2. M-C-M:
1. = the power structure which keeps proles proles
2. = the power structure which keeps the bourgeoisie the bourgeoisie….
remember marx’s definitive definition of capital:
the complete form of capital =
capitalist M-C-M happens when, and only when, M = M’ = M + delta M = surplus value.
3. only those who are able to ‘participate’ in the generation of M’ can be considered capitalists. everyone else is a non-capitalist, by definition. and we are the vast majority. therefore, the proletariat, the working class, are all those who are unable to generate M’. therefore… and this is the force of the history of consciousness – ‘politics’ means cohering ‘us’ proles in a common cause, because we all inhabit the same oppressed class, no matter how much money we do or don’t make, relative to the so called, 1%.
4. IF, therefore, those of us who have no access to generating M’, begin to understand that, then we should reasonably come to together to fight against the generators of M’.
as a kind of seque to culture, i submit the following in response to our reading group:
the posts below comes from mackenzie wark’s recent article on the topic, @ [http://www.publicseminar.org/2017/01/black-accelerationism/] which i find annoying in many ways, [having once been a student of cyborgism and haraway], but which does do the job of remembering important left out historical moments in the history of music… a bit of which i’ve included below. and thanks goes to gerrie van noord for sending this on to me. [https://gerrievannoord.wordpress.com/] and thus all the more reason to be reading in depth, capital, cover to cover, thanks to michael c.
and when you have 3 hours…. and, the least that we can do is take 3 hours… which many of us have never have had… to even re-listen to what we already know.
“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.
From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.”
……..
“At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.
The Bible tells us: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”
We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.
When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.
There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected.
We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.”
from whitehouse.gov
The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.
…
Our country needs more law enforcement, more community engagement, and more effective policing.
Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter, or the violent disrupter. Our job is to make life more comfortable for parents who want their kids to be able to walk the streets safely. Or the senior citizen waiting for a bus. Or the young child walking home from school.
Supporting law enforcement means supporting our citizens’ ability to protect themselves. We will uphold Americans’ Second Amendment rights at every level of our judicial system.
the unorthodox, un-recorded-studio-cleansed, version, still in its ‘original’ avant-garde form: and therefore, with all it’s artistry and emotion, still in tact, as ‘high classical art’: think varese.
and, then, the more popularized version…
the james joyce sequel:
and if anyone wants to follow up, with intelligence, then one, and only one follow-on from this thread would be to listen to:
and for those who need the authorization of the classical tradition, there is always boulez’s versions of zappa, that to my ear, strip him of his brilliance, but worth listening to:
the point being: how influential he was. zappa was classical/rock/punk/theater/etc. like no other. he eschewed categories. he was brechtian and artaudian and himself.but mostly, he was one of the best critical prophets of ‘america’. he’s nietzcheian…
and another widespread brilliant rendition:
Plastic People of the Universe-Podivuhodný Mandarin
and, the ‘original’ again…
performance is one version… then there are the recordings… rock/jazz/punk/industrial is the result:
and then… the blend… using his band in the long tradition of medley. anyone who knows music will hear how extraordinary this work is. including this work’s politics. it was ‘postmodern’ before that term was available. zappa should have won the noble prize for literature. far more than dylan.
the more palatable king kong…
and then there is this spectacular german version:
the kinder version: and a refusal: and deliberate offense: and… superb musicality – the refusal to conform, as critique – the multiplicities of king kong – if listeners can hang in there:
and then…
even boulez conducted zappa. to come soon. meanwhile:
an apology: i’m new to the blogosphere, and haven’t worked out the tech completely. earlier today i somehow found a link to ‘comments’, which i didn’t know existed. and i haven’t been able to find my way back to that link… before anyone thinks i’m not tech savvy, i want to reassure you that i was, once.
once upon a time: i ‘was there’ in 84 in SF when digital tech entered the university for the first time. about 10 years before john perry barlow’s very naive declaration of independence of cyberspace, which i opposed at that time in a publication in an obscure, ‘university’-specific publication, in an article called: Technophilia vs. Technophobia. It was around that same time i curated a small show that was meant to challenge the term, ‘cyberspace’, which seemed to me was an unfortunate technophiliac interpretation of gibbson’s far more challenging, distopic coinage. barlow, i suppose it should be said, went on to redeem his naivety by cofounding the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which today is a very important organization waging major battles to keep the internet ‘independent’.
but back to my intent in this post: so, i’m new to the blog format/tech, and have yet to figure out a few things. this blog is meant to be a non-blog, i suppose, and non-public. so i haven’t attempted to work out all the bell and whistle possibilities. i’ll attempt to get more up to speed on the tech in the new year, as it suits me.
but i do want to thank those of you who have paid attention to my blog dadadata/datadada sensibility. particularly to michael s. moore, peter cyote, gerrie van noord, and alf loehr. if i could find your comments, i would certainly respond….
stan vanderbeek, stills from ‘Science Friction’, 1959
being something of a ‘news junky’, i read several journalistic sources daily. though, i should point out, never naively, always with great skepticism. i always keep close to the surface of how i read, pierre bourdieu’s various critiques, such as those in his ‘little books’, as his trenchantly critical book on TV, presented on TV. and his short 2 volumes under the cover of the title: Against the Tyranny of the Market (ATM). these three works are particularly useful when one realizes when they were written: On Television, 1999; ATM vol 1, 1998, and ATM vol 2, 2001.
in the first entry in ATM 1, ‘The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State’, an interview, Bourdieu is asked:
Q: So if one wants to define an ideal, it would be a return to the sense of the state and of the public good. You don’t share everybody’s opinion on this.
he answers:
PB: Whose opinion is everybody’s opinion? The opinion of people who write in the newspapers, intellectuals who advocate the ‘minimal state’ and who are rather too quick to bury the notion of the public and the public’s interest in the public interest… We see there a typical example of the effect of shared belief which removes from discussion ideas which are perfectly worth discussing. One would need to analyze the work of the ‘new intellectuals’, which has created a climate favorable to the withdrawal of the state and, more broadly, to submission to the values of the economy. I’m thinking of what has been called the ‘return of individualism’, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which tends to destroy the philosophical foundations of the welfare state and in particular the notion of collective responsibility (toward industrial accidents, sickness or poverty) which has been a fundamental achievement of social… thought. The return to the individual is also what makes it possible to ‘blame the victim’, who is entirely responsible for his or her own misfortune, and to preach the gospel of self-help, all of this being justified by the endlessly repeated need to reduce costs for companies.
On Television, New Press, 1999
it is the view of this writer that individualism is the scourge of all progressivism, and as mentioned below, academia is one of the greatest proponents of that scourge, is a force that relies on journalistic stardom and celebrity, not on, quality of research, writing, exhibitions, or the like. as long as it gets a lot of journalistic attention, then it will pass any academic review. in previous eras, this problem as been called, ‘decadence’, and/or, nihilism.
be that as it may…
in a rare, forceful article in the Nation on 30 November 2016, Bill McKibben, has made a parallel critique, quite powerfully:
referring to, Jonathan Schell’s book, The Unconquerable World, published in 2003, McKibben comments:
in [that book], Jonathan writes, in his distinctive aphoristic style: “Violence is the method by which the ruthless few can subdue the passive many. Nonviolence is a means by which the active many can overcome the ruthless few.” This brings us, I think, to the crux of our moment.
while McKibben/Schell may be right to a degree, it seems to me problematic just how many of the ‘active many’ are driven by the very kind of ‘individualism’ Bourdieu laments, when they are not on the activist battlefield, when they revert and tend to succumb to the systems of individualism.
to not succumb in that way, requires a high order of commitment and sacrifice few can, or, are able to live up to. and mostly for completely understandable reasons. those who are able to, as those at Standing Rock, are able because they are already completely disenfranchised, oppressed, othered so completely that they have no stake in the systems of ‘individualism’ that the native americans, in this case, have abandoned, and replaced with their own cultural systems opposed to individualism.
thus, what McKibben/Schell have overlooked with their on the surface, trenchant aphorism, is the large percentage of what might be called, ‘passivist-activists’. i put it that way to challenge the view that those who don’t participate, in protests or through voting, are necessarily ‘passive’, or, ‘apathetic’. a large percentage of the whopping 42% who don’t vote, for example, don’t for perfectly good reasons, most of them from the black ‘community’. their non-participation, is, i suspect in the majority of cases, no different that the strategies of a union strike, or, a boycott. it’s non-participation as a conscious, activist, political choice/act.
so if there is ‘organization’ to be done, then it would be particularly powerful to get these 42% ‘on board’ in some way, that doesn’t mean getting them to turn out for protests, or to donate to sanders’ ‘our revolution.’ it would mean, wouldn’t it?, acknowledging their acts of resistance and protest, and joining them. why wouldn’t any serious group resistant to the status quo join the vast majority?
a notebook of epic reflections by mark bartlett 