Good Evening Friends,
So, we've been talking about efficiency and whether this is an abstract universal human quality that is equally applicable to all of the classes. As you know, Existentialism rejects the notion of generalized human nature. We are in concurrence with this, both generally [remember we talked about the Existential Impulse of Mate Selection - we used an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigative Unit involving the case of the conventional sized woman and her fiancee of extraordinarily short stature (sorry, 'dwarf' was the term used); we offered the counterintuitive analysis that contrary to the abstract universal human quality of physical symmetry, in that the woman takes a lover who is taller and heavier than her, the young woman in this series episode went decidedly the other way and exercised an existential judgment and chose a young man, of the physical type, incidentally to which we said she was, in fact, physically and sexually attracted to despite societal implications that she shouldn't, despite, interestingly, the powerful wishes of her father (himself a 'dwarf' who said that such a couple had a fifty percent chance of having a 'dwarf' for a child; and who killed his own daughter's intended husband)] and with respect to the political economy.
Despite the attempt to impose the idea of uniformity, human beings are individuals. The values handed down to us by the bourgeoisie in order to make capitalism work, are in a sense, the exact reverse of those followed by themselves, almost by definition.
Anyway, one last thing I'll say about efficiency and the bourgeoisie. Look at the documentary movie, The New American Century and note the system by which the contractors were employed in Iraq, something called "cost plus," and I'll leave it there. I want to suggest that the bourgeoisie actually get to practice the reverse of efficiency. They seem to literally do less for more.
The point I'm trying to make in going through these values - under the auspices of Existentialism - is that even though we all give the same nominal allegiance to these values, and claim to draw on these values very much more than we actually do (in the political economic sphere), we are, by our particular relationship to the political economy, called, or not called upon, to exhibit these qualities in very different degrees. And we, of the lower classes, tend to look at those of us who don't seem to be interested in towing the Calvinist line, as a bit odd, even shady.
Who is the class of whom efficiency (therefore productivity) is most demanded? Upon whose shoulders is a nation's gross domestic product measured? Is GDP measured by the number of companies a huge multinational entity gobbles up? Is it measured by investor's return on their bottom line? Is GDP measured by the number of securities, stocks and bonds generated and wired around the world in nanoseconds?
Is it measured by the number of wrongly accused people won acquital by their lawyers? Is it measured by the amount of justice a lawyer obtains for those most vulnerable and in need? Is the national output measured by the number of children educated (when does education, per se, start and end, by the way?)? Is GDP measured by the number of lives saved from burning houses? Or is it measured by the amount of stuff a country produces? It is. And who is it whose hands produce the stuff, in all their mind-numbing, back-breaking monotony? That's right, the working class.
Alright, we'll go onto to something else in rounding out this summary. We'll talk about the one or two of the ideas of Noam Chomsky, as they relate to the so-called free market.
wingedcentaur.
wingedcentaur
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Good Afternoon Friends,
To continue.
Let's take another abstract universal human quality or virtue that capitalism promotes.
Punctuality. "Time is money," after all.
Bourgeoisie: Of course there is no need for them to be "on time," as they set the agenda. In the movie, Get Shorty II, I believe, John Travolta's character, "Chili Palmer" had a wonderful line. He had a new car and someone made a comment that it wasn't as fast as some other car and Travolta's line was: "If you're important, people will wait."
I think that line perfectly encapsulates the bourgeoisie's relationship to time. Indeed, if Chili Palmer's statement were not true, if the bourgeoisie were as bound to the clock as the rest of are, then they would lose an important benefit of being, well, the bourgeoisie.
The Petty Bourgeoisie: they, of course, do not have the degree of control over time that the bourgeoisie proper have, and I do not know the procedures common to financial institutions where the petty bourgeoisie work; but I would imagine that ambition drives them to maximize their time at their computer terminals, so that they can get as rich as possible, and then join the proper bourgeoisie. I would also imagine that they feel privy to more of the rights to time than the rest of the classes below them.
The Upper Middle Class: the one group of professionals of this class, who I would say are the most enthralled to time, in their way, are doctors. It is daunting to hear about the huge number of hours expected of them, especially as interns and then as doctors in hospitals, except when they enter private practice.
Lawyers, especially corporate lawyers, have rather flexible schedules, as long as they get the work done. Is that not so? Accountants, I would imagine, might have slightly more regimented, except when they go into private practice.
Judges have a great deal of control over what they do and when. Professors have a great deal of control over their schedules.
It is important to understand that all three categories, Upper Middle, Petty Bourgeoisie, and Bourgeoisie are all free of time in a vital way. Their baseline compensation, apart from bonuses and perks, is not directly related to their number of hours worked per week, unlike the rest of us. Enough said.
The Lower Middle Class: Of course, they are bound by the clock. They must put in their hours to provide the necessary protection of society and other functions. But they do not feel nearly the same extreme pressures to time maximization that the working class does. And small entrepreneurs can make their own schedules - at least for as long as they are able to remain entrepreneurs. Don't quote me, but I once heard a statistic that said that eighty percent of new businesses fail in the first year. And this group don't have their pay partially governed by each new "account."
Working Class: this is the only class entirely enthralled to the god of time. Baseline compensation depends number of hours worked, period. Overtime is the holy grail, manna from heaven; and even one hour of missed work in one week, seriously hits the worker's bottom line for that week. This class has no control over our work schedule and on top of all of this, working class folks are the ones most pressured to arrive at their jobs "on time," and are at least verbally upbraided when we don't, even though we only get paid for the hours worked - and even this assumes those of us lucky enough to work at places where mandatory, unpaid overtime is not imposed and shadowy figures from the company do not go into the computerized payroll and subtracted on-the-clock hours and pay from their employees.
The Poor: they are, in a sense, bound by time in one very important way. During the "entitlement reforms" that occurred in the 1990s, there was the welfare "reform" bill signed by President Clinton, that delivered a serious blow to a system of guaranteed support for the most vulnerable among us, by mandating that recipients, mostly single mothers of color, find work within two years, when their benefits will be terminated. Not that raising children or something, is work, mind you.
As we go through these values, always, always, always keep one thing in mind: Man is the desire to become God. God is not capitalist, doesn't have to be. "He" owns all wealth by virtue of being God. God does not follow rules, he makes them; and we are not allowed to even question "God," but he damn well extracts "accountability" from the rest of us. Let us proceed.
Efficiency. "Doing more with less." This is certainly considered a virtue in the workplace, especially during times of recession. Workers are "laid off," dismissed or terminated, and are not replaced, by and large. The remaining workers have to pick up the slack and not only make sure that productivity doesn't slip, but, indeed, continues to rise.
Bourgeoisie: First of all, as we shall see later, there is never any "downsizing" in the CEO, CFO, COO crowd of the multinational corporations. And second of all, as we shall also see later, there is a distinct pattern of coddling of the so-called private corporation at the teat of what Noam Chomsky calls the "Nanny State." Thirdly, there is a pattern of behavior that points to the exact opposite of efficiency on the part of the corporate sector.
We are all familiar with various kinds of accounting scandals of corporations, with respect to overcharging, double charging, and triple charging the government for the delivery of goods and services, after they got the jobs through "no bid" contracts. We all recall the scandal involving KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, in which they installed faulty plumbing which was responsible for soldiers dying of electrocution while taking a shower in Iraq.
There were other scandals of corporate war profiteering in Iraq, of course. I would refer you to an excellent documentary movie called The New American Century, which is available for viewing in full on the Internet. One involved a corporation that had been tasked with providing the troops in Iraq with clean water for drinking and bathing. A simple task, right?
It seems that one soldier noticed "something moving in his toilet bowel." He took a sample of the water and had it analyzed. It turned out that all manner of microbial bacteria, fungi, and viruses were floating around in it. The water hadn't been treated at all. Whatever the technical excuses that spokespeople for this company might have offered, we can say that this incident of criminal negligence is, in fact, rather reflective of the bourgeoisie/aristocracy's traditional, historical apathy for the public health of all the lower class - unless of course, there were any signs that germs did not respect class (see "The World of Capital" chapter in Chris Harman's A People's History of the World).
In a speech given at The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in 2007, Naomi Klein talked about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as climate apartheid (we needn't review the racialized and class character of the evacuation and delivery of services here, we are all familiar with it). She talked about the "Green Zones" in occupied Iraq, fully serviced American-style oases in the middle of the wreckage that is Iraq: its own electrical system, water, and the like; they are places with pristine, fully equipped operating theaters, as opposed to wreckage Iraqi healthcare facilities, in which incubators are held together with duct tape. The westerners get blast walls and body armor while Iraqis get prayer beads to protect them from the violence.
Klein said that the bourgeoisie (she called them, 'they') are not afraid of climate change or any other disaster because "They think they're saved. And you know what, they're right." She pointed out that, if you have the means, one can "buy" your way out of any disaster: you can turn up the air conditioner, stockpile Tamiflu and other AIDS/HIV related drugs; she said that there were people buying glacial front property somewhere, and the like. In her book NoLogo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Klein talked about Sandy Springs, America's first incorporated, privatized city in Florida.
So it seems that the bourgeoisie are driven to push things back to a medieval situation, complete with the deindustrialization of America, the targeted extinction of the middle class [Michel Chussudovsky talks about the globalization of poverty; Michael Parenti speaks of the third worldization of everywhere, and even the reinstitution of slavery:
'"This is a book to make you angry. From Florida field-workers who pick some of the fruits and vegetables we eat to prisoners in China who make the desk lamps we can buy at Wal-Mart, Bales and Soodalter show us the manifold ways that unfree labor is woven into the American economy. And most important, they show us what we can do to stop it."'
Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold's Ghost. That comment appears on the back cover of the book, The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today by Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter. University of California Press. Berkeley Los Angeles London, 2009
"This is capitalism at its worst, and it is supported by a dramatic alteration in the basic economic equation of slavery. Where an average slave in 1850 would have brought the equivalent of $40, 000 in modern money, today's slave can be bought for a few hundred dollars. This cheapness makes the modern slave easily affordable, but it also makes him or her a disposable commodity. For the slave holder it's often cheaper to let a slave die than it is to buy the medicine to keep the slave alive. There is no form of slavery, past or present, that isn't horrific; however, today's slavery is one of the most diabolical strains to emerge in the thousands of years in which humans have been enslaving their fellows" (Bales and Soodalter, p.6).
It is important to be clear. We are not talking about the usual sweat shop conditions at starvation wages conditions, we are all familiar with. What is referred to here as actual modern day slavey is a step way down, another order of exploitation entirely than the "sweat shop."
And, it is important to note that: "Where the slaves in America were once primarily African and African-American, today we have "equal opportunity" slavery; modern-day slaves come in all races, all types, and all ethnicities. We are, if anything, totally democratic when it comes to owning and abusing our fellow human beings. All that required is the chance of a profit and a person weak enough and vulnerable enough to enslave" (ibid).
A slave holder can be absolutely anybody. Absolutely anybody. Like Sandra Bearden, a twenty-seven year old homemaker "in a comfortable suburb of Laredo, Texas -a neighborhood of solid brick homes and manicured lawns. Married, the mother of a four-year old son, she lived a perfectly normal middle-class existence. By all accounts, Sandra was a pleasant woman, the sort you'd chat with at the mall or supermarket... the sort who might live next door. Yet she is currently serving a life sentence, convicted of multiple offenses, including human trafficking and slavery" (Bales and Soodalter, p.3). They say that there are twenty seven million people in the world actually held as slaves today, and that's more than the total number of people taken from Africa during the entire three-hundred-fifty years of the Transatlantic slave trade (Bales and Soodalter).
But I digress, we were talking about efficiency. We're still not done with the bourgeoisie.
To continue.
Let's take another abstract universal human quality or virtue that capitalism promotes.
Punctuality. "Time is money," after all.
Bourgeoisie: Of course there is no need for them to be "on time," as they set the agenda. In the movie, Get Shorty II, I believe, John Travolta's character, "Chili Palmer" had a wonderful line. He had a new car and someone made a comment that it wasn't as fast as some other car and Travolta's line was: "If you're important, people will wait."
I think that line perfectly encapsulates the bourgeoisie's relationship to time. Indeed, if Chili Palmer's statement were not true, if the bourgeoisie were as bound to the clock as the rest of are, then they would lose an important benefit of being, well, the bourgeoisie.
The Petty Bourgeoisie: they, of course, do not have the degree of control over time that the bourgeoisie proper have, and I do not know the procedures common to financial institutions where the petty bourgeoisie work; but I would imagine that ambition drives them to maximize their time at their computer terminals, so that they can get as rich as possible, and then join the proper bourgeoisie. I would also imagine that they feel privy to more of the rights to time than the rest of the classes below them.
The Upper Middle Class: the one group of professionals of this class, who I would say are the most enthralled to time, in their way, are doctors. It is daunting to hear about the huge number of hours expected of them, especially as interns and then as doctors in hospitals, except when they enter private practice.
Lawyers, especially corporate lawyers, have rather flexible schedules, as long as they get the work done. Is that not so? Accountants, I would imagine, might have slightly more regimented, except when they go into private practice.
Judges have a great deal of control over what they do and when. Professors have a great deal of control over their schedules.
It is important to understand that all three categories, Upper Middle, Petty Bourgeoisie, and Bourgeoisie are all free of time in a vital way. Their baseline compensation, apart from bonuses and perks, is not directly related to their number of hours worked per week, unlike the rest of us. Enough said.
The Lower Middle Class: Of course, they are bound by the clock. They must put in their hours to provide the necessary protection of society and other functions. But they do not feel nearly the same extreme pressures to time maximization that the working class does. And small entrepreneurs can make their own schedules - at least for as long as they are able to remain entrepreneurs. Don't quote me, but I once heard a statistic that said that eighty percent of new businesses fail in the first year. And this group don't have their pay partially governed by each new "account."
Working Class: this is the only class entirely enthralled to the god of time. Baseline compensation depends number of hours worked, period. Overtime is the holy grail, manna from heaven; and even one hour of missed work in one week, seriously hits the worker's bottom line for that week. This class has no control over our work schedule and on top of all of this, working class folks are the ones most pressured to arrive at their jobs "on time," and are at least verbally upbraided when we don't, even though we only get paid for the hours worked - and even this assumes those of us lucky enough to work at places where mandatory, unpaid overtime is not imposed and shadowy figures from the company do not go into the computerized payroll and subtracted on-the-clock hours and pay from their employees.
The Poor: they are, in a sense, bound by time in one very important way. During the "entitlement reforms" that occurred in the 1990s, there was the welfare "reform" bill signed by President Clinton, that delivered a serious blow to a system of guaranteed support for the most vulnerable among us, by mandating that recipients, mostly single mothers of color, find work within two years, when their benefits will be terminated. Not that raising children or something, is work, mind you.
As we go through these values, always, always, always keep one thing in mind: Man is the desire to become God. God is not capitalist, doesn't have to be. "He" owns all wealth by virtue of being God. God does not follow rules, he makes them; and we are not allowed to even question "God," but he damn well extracts "accountability" from the rest of us. Let us proceed.
Efficiency. "Doing more with less." This is certainly considered a virtue in the workplace, especially during times of recession. Workers are "laid off," dismissed or terminated, and are not replaced, by and large. The remaining workers have to pick up the slack and not only make sure that productivity doesn't slip, but, indeed, continues to rise.
Bourgeoisie: First of all, as we shall see later, there is never any "downsizing" in the CEO, CFO, COO crowd of the multinational corporations. And second of all, as we shall also see later, there is a distinct pattern of coddling of the so-called private corporation at the teat of what Noam Chomsky calls the "Nanny State." Thirdly, there is a pattern of behavior that points to the exact opposite of efficiency on the part of the corporate sector.
We are all familiar with various kinds of accounting scandals of corporations, with respect to overcharging, double charging, and triple charging the government for the delivery of goods and services, after they got the jobs through "no bid" contracts. We all recall the scandal involving KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, in which they installed faulty plumbing which was responsible for soldiers dying of electrocution while taking a shower in Iraq.
There were other scandals of corporate war profiteering in Iraq, of course. I would refer you to an excellent documentary movie called The New American Century, which is available for viewing in full on the Internet. One involved a corporation that had been tasked with providing the troops in Iraq with clean water for drinking and bathing. A simple task, right?
It seems that one soldier noticed "something moving in his toilet bowel." He took a sample of the water and had it analyzed. It turned out that all manner of microbial bacteria, fungi, and viruses were floating around in it. The water hadn't been treated at all. Whatever the technical excuses that spokespeople for this company might have offered, we can say that this incident of criminal negligence is, in fact, rather reflective of the bourgeoisie/aristocracy's traditional, historical apathy for the public health of all the lower class - unless of course, there were any signs that germs did not respect class (see "The World of Capital" chapter in Chris Harman's A People's History of the World).
In a speech given at The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in 2007, Naomi Klein talked about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as climate apartheid (we needn't review the racialized and class character of the evacuation and delivery of services here, we are all familiar with it). She talked about the "Green Zones" in occupied Iraq, fully serviced American-style oases in the middle of the wreckage that is Iraq: its own electrical system, water, and the like; they are places with pristine, fully equipped operating theaters, as opposed to wreckage Iraqi healthcare facilities, in which incubators are held together with duct tape. The westerners get blast walls and body armor while Iraqis get prayer beads to protect them from the violence.
Klein said that the bourgeoisie (she called them, 'they') are not afraid of climate change or any other disaster because "They think they're saved. And you know what, they're right." She pointed out that, if you have the means, one can "buy" your way out of any disaster: you can turn up the air conditioner, stockpile Tamiflu and other AIDS/HIV related drugs; she said that there were people buying glacial front property somewhere, and the like. In her book NoLogo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Klein talked about Sandy Springs, America's first incorporated, privatized city in Florida.
So it seems that the bourgeoisie are driven to push things back to a medieval situation, complete with the deindustrialization of America, the targeted extinction of the middle class [Michel Chussudovsky talks about the globalization of poverty; Michael Parenti speaks of the third worldization of everywhere, and even the reinstitution of slavery:
'"This is a book to make you angry. From Florida field-workers who pick some of the fruits and vegetables we eat to prisoners in China who make the desk lamps we can buy at Wal-Mart, Bales and Soodalter show us the manifold ways that unfree labor is woven into the American economy. And most important, they show us what we can do to stop it."'
Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold's Ghost. That comment appears on the back cover of the book, The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today by Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter. University of California Press. Berkeley Los Angeles London, 2009
"This is capitalism at its worst, and it is supported by a dramatic alteration in the basic economic equation of slavery. Where an average slave in 1850 would have brought the equivalent of $40, 000 in modern money, today's slave can be bought for a few hundred dollars. This cheapness makes the modern slave easily affordable, but it also makes him or her a disposable commodity. For the slave holder it's often cheaper to let a slave die than it is to buy the medicine to keep the slave alive. There is no form of slavery, past or present, that isn't horrific; however, today's slavery is one of the most diabolical strains to emerge in the thousands of years in which humans have been enslaving their fellows" (Bales and Soodalter, p.6).
It is important to be clear. We are not talking about the usual sweat shop conditions at starvation wages conditions, we are all familiar with. What is referred to here as actual modern day slavey is a step way down, another order of exploitation entirely than the "sweat shop."
And, it is important to note that: "Where the slaves in America were once primarily African and African-American, today we have "equal opportunity" slavery; modern-day slaves come in all races, all types, and all ethnicities. We are, if anything, totally democratic when it comes to owning and abusing our fellow human beings. All that required is the chance of a profit and a person weak enough and vulnerable enough to enslave" (ibid).
A slave holder can be absolutely anybody. Absolutely anybody. Like Sandra Bearden, a twenty-seven year old homemaker "in a comfortable suburb of Laredo, Texas -a neighborhood of solid brick homes and manicured lawns. Married, the mother of a four-year old son, she lived a perfectly normal middle-class existence. By all accounts, Sandra was a pleasant woman, the sort you'd chat with at the mall or supermarket... the sort who might live next door. Yet she is currently serving a life sentence, convicted of multiple offenses, including human trafficking and slavery" (Bales and Soodalter, p.3). They say that there are twenty seven million people in the world actually held as slaves today, and that's more than the total number of people taken from Africa during the entire three-hundred-fifty years of the Transatlantic slave trade (Bales and Soodalter).
But I digress, we were talking about efficiency. We're still not done with the bourgeoisie.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Good Evening Friends,
You know, if you read the chapter entitled "The World of Capital," in Chris Harman's A People's History of the World, one is struck at the extent to which our very values and sense of ethics have been handed down to the rest of the population, in a top-down manner from the bourgeoisie to the rest of us. To ponder this makes one almost feel dirty and violated.
These values and sense of ethics were entirely consonant with, and seem to have grown out of, the emerging capitalist means of production. These ideals include: punctuality (as work became more and more tied to the clock and moved further and further away from the natural rhythms of the day and year); efficiency (getting the most productivity out of each worker through the least number of motions) - "time is money;" "clean living," (in the form of a stable home life - a man/wife nuclear family (such an home life, it was decided by the capitalist producers, that such a private home life tended to make workers more acclimated to punctuality and productivity; and this set the right example for the next generation of workers.
The promotion of organized sports by the bourgeoisie, in addition to being yet another means they had/have at their disposal, to drain away the disposable income of the working class back into their own pockets, also served as a means of promoting nationalism, something completely unknown to European popuations during the early periods of post-Roman/Byzantine monarchical rule.
There are other values of modern capitalism (in America in particular and perhaps promoted and practiced by the lower classes with special intensity since the 1970s), that have suffused society and have, arguably been imparted to us from the top down. What makes this objectionable is that the bourgeoisie, very nearly by definition and by the nature of their power, do not seem to feel bound by them and indeed, may not even see this characteristics as virtues applicable to people like themselves; and I would go as far as to say that they seem to see the exact opposites, for themselves as virtues.
But before we enumerate some of these others values, let me remind you of the ethical definition of Existentialism I take from the Cambridge Dicitonary of Philosophy (1991): a philosophical and literary movement that came to prominence in Europe, particularly in France, immediately after World War II, and that focused on the uniqueness of each human individual as distinguished from abstract universal human qualities.
So we're talking about the abstract universal human qualities that capitalism promotes - for the lower classes, of course.
Perserverance: "Never give up." "Fall off a horse, get back on again." "Winners never quit and quitters never win." "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." And so on and so forth.
What this means in the economic life of our society is that when one of us loses his job, he has to find another way to earn a check. We are constantly enticed with the panacea of going back to school or "retraining." We are steered to career counseling and the like, with all the attendant services that go along with this. We're offered advice on writing winning resumes and sharpening our interviewing skills and the like.
A period of unemployment can be like a dark sojourn through the wilderness. We got to remember to "keep [one's] head up," "keep a stiff upper lip," and remember that "the sun'll come out tomorrow. Failure brings admonition, from various quarters to "try harder."
Do the bourgeoisie need to have perserverance? By definition, no, not when you are at the top of the power structure. When a member of the capitalist ruling class "loses" his job, for whatever reason - even by his own fault- he does not find himself "scrambling" for the next opportunity. We have seen this is so during this crisis of the economy with respect to the banks that were "too big to fail, which means, really, that the top executives, were, themselves, too big to "fail," go personally bankrupt paying lawyer fees, and go to jail, as we don't lightly jail billionaires in this country.
We have seen the irrelevance of perserverance to the bourgeoisie, as the recovery of the financial sector as a whole was heavily favored over the manufacturing sector, Detroit; especially in the way contracts were held to be sancrosanct with respect to payments made by AIG (facilitated by the U.S. taxpayer) to foreign banks and members of the international investment sector - having bet correctly, apparently, on derivatives- as well as unconditional bonuses paid over to employees of the domestic investment apparatus; while the living standards of auto workers came under relentless assault, as the CEOs (at one time even criticized for coming to a hearing before Congress, one time, via corporate jets) had to submit these "restructuring" plans proving their path to viability before the government would give them one dime. The banks were not subject to any such "accountability."
Also, when a member of the capitalist ruling class "loses" his job - whatever the reason, his own fault or some other reason - his departure from the corporation is usually facilitated through a negotiated settlement, perhaps allowed to resign, and he is, of course, given his "golden parachute," tens of hundreds of millions of dollars. He is promptly hired somewhere else (and he probably hasn't lost any of his, on average, fourteen board memberships) - long before you and I would have received our first unemployment check.
Be we, on the lower ends of the food chain, must perservere the turbulence of the free market.
Petty Bourgeoisie: they are the next rung down and don't quite have the social power of the upper capitalist ruling class, to persuade the government to "bail" them out and so forth. I guess you could call the petty bourgeoisie the near-rich. When one of these loses his jobs, I doubt that he has to suffer the indignity of "retraining" or the unemployment line, as the members of this group tend to heavily aggregate around the dominant sector of the economy, finance, or whatever it might be in any period in history. When one of the petty bourgeoisie loses his job, he is likely to get a very respectable severance package, so that he doesn't have to get another job right away. But he can probably get another gig soon enough, since he either knows a guy or knows a guy who knows a guy, and presto! he's got another job - again, long before you or I would have received our first unemployment check.
There is a speech available on the Internet given by Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman in the year 2007. He said that the top "hedge fund guy," in 2006, had made the salary of all eighty thousand New York City public school teachers - wait for it - for the next three years. Such a man we would identify, I think, as the top layer of the petty bourgeoisie. You know, I had seen a story on television about a man who had been a hedge fund operator for a firm, lost his job in this recession, opened his own shop, but the economic downturn forced him to close his doors, and found himself delivering pizzas after having previously pulled down a salary of seven-hundred-fifty thousand dollars a year.
That he could fall so hard and so quickly marks him as a member of the lower rank of the petty bourgeoisie. No doubt circumstances do call upon him to exhibit a certain resilience, as he struggled, last I "heard" from the program, to keep his family in the large, petty bourgeoisie-type home (obviously he had some money saved. Ah, savings, what a concept). It looked like he was going to pull his children out of the private school they were attending. But a mysterious benefactor had stepped forward to cover the costs of keeping his youngsters in their school and with their friends.
Now, our friend, the sidetracked hedge fund investor/pizza delivery man, made an explicit statement of class solidarity, that illustrates that perseverance - to the limited extent that it is even called for , even by this deposed member of the lower echelon of the petty bourgeoisie - operates in an entirely different way than it would for you and me. He said something to this effect: he made a statement that was a combination vow, assertion, wish, and invocation that he was going to be back on top and be in a position to do what the mysterious benefactor did for his kids, for someone else's children. All he needed, he said, was to score a few "wins" that year.
First, families whose children attend public schools have no need of such a service. Second, you and I know that working people (low income and low-middle income) do not talk this way about making their personal recovery from extended periods of unemployment or underemployment, in terms of "wins," lightning in a bottle, unless, of course, we're talking about winning the lottery.
You know, our friend, the investment pizza delivery man, has every reason to be hopeful. The entire resources and power of the federal government is clearly devoted to the recovery of the financial sector, as we see, and which I understand comprises twenty percent of the economy, and which is far more than can be said for manufacturing - refugees from which must undergo the indignity of "retraining," seminars on writing winning resumes and interviewing and keeping a "stiff upper lip," and so on and so forth. And if this green jobs bubble ever takes off, why the investment opportunities should be limitless.
What about the upper middle class? Do they need perseverance? The upper middle class is made up of lawyers, doctors, college professors, journalists of radio, television, and print, accountants; politicians (my reckoning is informal and imprecise): they are generally, in terms of income of income and wealth are in this area, upper middle class/petty bourgeoisie, depending on their office they hold; and depending on their status in their party and the political system in general, they may reside at the power nexus of the bourgeoisie itself.
These are not sectors of the economy that tend to be cut back. We are familiar with the incumbency rates of American politicians and we have seen how the mayor of New York and the city council decree themselves a third term despite the wishes reflected by voters in two public referendums. These are not people, who, should they "lose" a position need to undergo "retraining." They may undergo retraining, but it is by and large because they wish to make a career change for personal reasons; it is not because they find their whole world crumbled down around them because of deindustrialization, the offshoring of productive capacity to areas with less expensive "labor costs," and mass layoffs, plant closures which seem to close down whole town and cities as well, and so forth.
The Lower Middle Class: police officers, fire fighters, public school k-12 teachers, unionized public sector employees, small entrepreneurs, nurses, x-ray technicians, EMTs, and the like. Here is where we begin to have need of the abstract universal human quality of perseverance. City and state budgets go through periodic cycles of "belt tightening," and so on and so forth. But these are "skilled" workers (I put the word "skilled" in quotes because I do not believe any human being, by definition, can be unskilled). There will always be need for emergency services, especially the police, and not to mention the prison complex, as long as economic inequality continues to deepen. There always be a need for educators, presumably, even in the privatized, corporate world of private and charter schools. Small entrepreneurs are on a more precarious ledge, as their business might ebb and flow with the seasons, and be constricted by other factors. And so on and so forth. But because there folks are skilled labor in trades that cannot be easily outsourced and offshored, we don't think it is likely that they have persevere in this political economy as the next two groups we'll look at, but I hope we are coming recognize, even now, that these supposedly universal human qualities are abstract because they are not imperative across the board; the different classes experience them or not, in vastly different ways.
Its important to say that these values we are examining were handed down to the rest of us from the bourgeoisie, and were necessary for us to "believe in" in order to make the capitalist system work for the ruling class; but because of this, almost by definition, they not only see themselves as bound by them (in terms of the political economy), but, again, almost by definition, they, as a matter of course, practice the very opposites of these values; and it is vital to note that each of us claim to draw on these values much more than we actually do, as everybody knows, America is the land of the "rugged individual." This gulf between the claim and the reality will come into stark relief when we acquaint ourselves, very briefly, with the analysis of Noam Chomsky, concerning the actual nature of the free market, and we will see how, in addition to the structure of our political economy, the very nature of what we think of as the component parts of our sense of values, were, in fact, handed down to us by the bourgeoisie, in a kind of paternalistic, do as I say not as I do form.
Working Class: people who work in the "unskilled" or "low skilled" service sector, all the lower echelons of retail, all non-supervisory personnel certainly; people work in factories - most likely lost them to offshoring as America transforms itself into the "knowledge" society, and so forth. Construction workers, mechanics, plumber, electricians: especially non-union workers in these trades; landscaping workers; people who work in restaurants, hotels, airports.
But what about perseverance? What need of perseverance do we, working class people, have? Much more than the classes above. It is this class who must persevere, who are told that they must "update [their] skills," and the like, when their world crumbles around them with the plant shutting down, as has already been discussed.
The Poor: here it is important to note the difference between what is called the competent poor and the abject poor (it makes a world of difference when you have access to some land on which you can do a little hunting and fishing, maybe grow some vegetables, to sustain yourself and your family - which what is called the abject poor do not have, of course).
The abject poor, of course, have the most need for perseverance, for obvious reasons; and they make for a compliant potential labor pool, naturally.
We're going to go to another post on this.
wingedcentaur.
You know, if you read the chapter entitled "The World of Capital," in Chris Harman's A People's History of the World, one is struck at the extent to which our very values and sense of ethics have been handed down to the rest of the population, in a top-down manner from the bourgeoisie to the rest of us. To ponder this makes one almost feel dirty and violated.
These values and sense of ethics were entirely consonant with, and seem to have grown out of, the emerging capitalist means of production. These ideals include: punctuality (as work became more and more tied to the clock and moved further and further away from the natural rhythms of the day and year); efficiency (getting the most productivity out of each worker through the least number of motions) - "time is money;" "clean living," (in the form of a stable home life - a man/wife nuclear family (such an home life, it was decided by the capitalist producers, that such a private home life tended to make workers more acclimated to punctuality and productivity; and this set the right example for the next generation of workers.
The promotion of organized sports by the bourgeoisie, in addition to being yet another means they had/have at their disposal, to drain away the disposable income of the working class back into their own pockets, also served as a means of promoting nationalism, something completely unknown to European popuations during the early periods of post-Roman/Byzantine monarchical rule.
There are other values of modern capitalism (in America in particular and perhaps promoted and practiced by the lower classes with special intensity since the 1970s), that have suffused society and have, arguably been imparted to us from the top down. What makes this objectionable is that the bourgeoisie, very nearly by definition and by the nature of their power, do not seem to feel bound by them and indeed, may not even see this characteristics as virtues applicable to people like themselves; and I would go as far as to say that they seem to see the exact opposites, for themselves as virtues.
But before we enumerate some of these others values, let me remind you of the ethical definition of Existentialism I take from the Cambridge Dicitonary of Philosophy (1991): a philosophical and literary movement that came to prominence in Europe, particularly in France, immediately after World War II, and that focused on the uniqueness of each human individual as distinguished from abstract universal human qualities.
So we're talking about the abstract universal human qualities that capitalism promotes - for the lower classes, of course.
Perserverance: "Never give up." "Fall off a horse, get back on again." "Winners never quit and quitters never win." "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." And so on and so forth.
What this means in the economic life of our society is that when one of us loses his job, he has to find another way to earn a check. We are constantly enticed with the panacea of going back to school or "retraining." We are steered to career counseling and the like, with all the attendant services that go along with this. We're offered advice on writing winning resumes and sharpening our interviewing skills and the like.
A period of unemployment can be like a dark sojourn through the wilderness. We got to remember to "keep [one's] head up," "keep a stiff upper lip," and remember that "the sun'll come out tomorrow. Failure brings admonition, from various quarters to "try harder."
Do the bourgeoisie need to have perserverance? By definition, no, not when you are at the top of the power structure. When a member of the capitalist ruling class "loses" his job, for whatever reason - even by his own fault- he does not find himself "scrambling" for the next opportunity. We have seen this is so during this crisis of the economy with respect to the banks that were "too big to fail, which means, really, that the top executives, were, themselves, too big to "fail," go personally bankrupt paying lawyer fees, and go to jail, as we don't lightly jail billionaires in this country.
We have seen the irrelevance of perserverance to the bourgeoisie, as the recovery of the financial sector as a whole was heavily favored over the manufacturing sector, Detroit; especially in the way contracts were held to be sancrosanct with respect to payments made by AIG (facilitated by the U.S. taxpayer) to foreign banks and members of the international investment sector - having bet correctly, apparently, on derivatives- as well as unconditional bonuses paid over to employees of the domestic investment apparatus; while the living standards of auto workers came under relentless assault, as the CEOs (at one time even criticized for coming to a hearing before Congress, one time, via corporate jets) had to submit these "restructuring" plans proving their path to viability before the government would give them one dime. The banks were not subject to any such "accountability."
Also, when a member of the capitalist ruling class "loses" his job - whatever the reason, his own fault or some other reason - his departure from the corporation is usually facilitated through a negotiated settlement, perhaps allowed to resign, and he is, of course, given his "golden parachute," tens of hundreds of millions of dollars. He is promptly hired somewhere else (and he probably hasn't lost any of his, on average, fourteen board memberships) - long before you and I would have received our first unemployment check.
Be we, on the lower ends of the food chain, must perservere the turbulence of the free market.
Petty Bourgeoisie: they are the next rung down and don't quite have the social power of the upper capitalist ruling class, to persuade the government to "bail" them out and so forth. I guess you could call the petty bourgeoisie the near-rich. When one of these loses his jobs, I doubt that he has to suffer the indignity of "retraining" or the unemployment line, as the members of this group tend to heavily aggregate around the dominant sector of the economy, finance, or whatever it might be in any period in history. When one of the petty bourgeoisie loses his job, he is likely to get a very respectable severance package, so that he doesn't have to get another job right away. But he can probably get another gig soon enough, since he either knows a guy or knows a guy who knows a guy, and presto! he's got another job - again, long before you or I would have received our first unemployment check.
There is a speech available on the Internet given by Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman in the year 2007. He said that the top "hedge fund guy," in 2006, had made the salary of all eighty thousand New York City public school teachers - wait for it - for the next three years. Such a man we would identify, I think, as the top layer of the petty bourgeoisie. You know, I had seen a story on television about a man who had been a hedge fund operator for a firm, lost his job in this recession, opened his own shop, but the economic downturn forced him to close his doors, and found himself delivering pizzas after having previously pulled down a salary of seven-hundred-fifty thousand dollars a year.
That he could fall so hard and so quickly marks him as a member of the lower rank of the petty bourgeoisie. No doubt circumstances do call upon him to exhibit a certain resilience, as he struggled, last I "heard" from the program, to keep his family in the large, petty bourgeoisie-type home (obviously he had some money saved. Ah, savings, what a concept). It looked like he was going to pull his children out of the private school they were attending. But a mysterious benefactor had stepped forward to cover the costs of keeping his youngsters in their school and with their friends.
Now, our friend, the sidetracked hedge fund investor/pizza delivery man, made an explicit statement of class solidarity, that illustrates that perseverance - to the limited extent that it is even called for , even by this deposed member of the lower echelon of the petty bourgeoisie - operates in an entirely different way than it would for you and me. He said something to this effect: he made a statement that was a combination vow, assertion, wish, and invocation that he was going to be back on top and be in a position to do what the mysterious benefactor did for his kids, for someone else's children. All he needed, he said, was to score a few "wins" that year.
First, families whose children attend public schools have no need of such a service. Second, you and I know that working people (low income and low-middle income) do not talk this way about making their personal recovery from extended periods of unemployment or underemployment, in terms of "wins," lightning in a bottle, unless, of course, we're talking about winning the lottery.
You know, our friend, the investment pizza delivery man, has every reason to be hopeful. The entire resources and power of the federal government is clearly devoted to the recovery of the financial sector, as we see, and which I understand comprises twenty percent of the economy, and which is far more than can be said for manufacturing - refugees from which must undergo the indignity of "retraining," seminars on writing winning resumes and interviewing and keeping a "stiff upper lip," and so on and so forth. And if this green jobs bubble ever takes off, why the investment opportunities should be limitless.
What about the upper middle class? Do they need perseverance? The upper middle class is made up of lawyers, doctors, college professors, journalists of radio, television, and print, accountants; politicians (my reckoning is informal and imprecise): they are generally, in terms of income of income and wealth are in this area, upper middle class/petty bourgeoisie, depending on their office they hold; and depending on their status in their party and the political system in general, they may reside at the power nexus of the bourgeoisie itself.
These are not sectors of the economy that tend to be cut back. We are familiar with the incumbency rates of American politicians and we have seen how the mayor of New York and the city council decree themselves a third term despite the wishes reflected by voters in two public referendums. These are not people, who, should they "lose" a position need to undergo "retraining." They may undergo retraining, but it is by and large because they wish to make a career change for personal reasons; it is not because they find their whole world crumbled down around them because of deindustrialization, the offshoring of productive capacity to areas with less expensive "labor costs," and mass layoffs, plant closures which seem to close down whole town and cities as well, and so forth.
The Lower Middle Class: police officers, fire fighters, public school k-12 teachers, unionized public sector employees, small entrepreneurs, nurses, x-ray technicians, EMTs, and the like. Here is where we begin to have need of the abstract universal human quality of perseverance. City and state budgets go through periodic cycles of "belt tightening," and so on and so forth. But these are "skilled" workers (I put the word "skilled" in quotes because I do not believe any human being, by definition, can be unskilled). There will always be need for emergency services, especially the police, and not to mention the prison complex, as long as economic inequality continues to deepen. There always be a need for educators, presumably, even in the privatized, corporate world of private and charter schools. Small entrepreneurs are on a more precarious ledge, as their business might ebb and flow with the seasons, and be constricted by other factors. And so on and so forth. But because there folks are skilled labor in trades that cannot be easily outsourced and offshored, we don't think it is likely that they have persevere in this political economy as the next two groups we'll look at, but I hope we are coming recognize, even now, that these supposedly universal human qualities are abstract because they are not imperative across the board; the different classes experience them or not, in vastly different ways.
Its important to say that these values we are examining were handed down to the rest of us from the bourgeoisie, and were necessary for us to "believe in" in order to make the capitalist system work for the ruling class; but because of this, almost by definition, they not only see themselves as bound by them (in terms of the political economy), but, again, almost by definition, they, as a matter of course, practice the very opposites of these values; and it is vital to note that each of us claim to draw on these values much more than we actually do, as everybody knows, America is the land of the "rugged individual." This gulf between the claim and the reality will come into stark relief when we acquaint ourselves, very briefly, with the analysis of Noam Chomsky, concerning the actual nature of the free market, and we will see how, in addition to the structure of our political economy, the very nature of what we think of as the component parts of our sense of values, were, in fact, handed down to us by the bourgeoisie, in a kind of paternalistic, do as I say not as I do form.
Working Class: people who work in the "unskilled" or "low skilled" service sector, all the lower echelons of retail, all non-supervisory personnel certainly; people work in factories - most likely lost them to offshoring as America transforms itself into the "knowledge" society, and so forth. Construction workers, mechanics, plumber, electricians: especially non-union workers in these trades; landscaping workers; people who work in restaurants, hotels, airports.
But what about perseverance? What need of perseverance do we, working class people, have? Much more than the classes above. It is this class who must persevere, who are told that they must "update [their] skills," and the like, when their world crumbles around them with the plant shutting down, as has already been discussed.
The Poor: here it is important to note the difference between what is called the competent poor and the abject poor (it makes a world of difference when you have access to some land on which you can do a little hunting and fishing, maybe grow some vegetables, to sustain yourself and your family - which what is called the abject poor do not have, of course).
The abject poor, of course, have the most need for perseverance, for obvious reasons; and they make for a compliant potential labor pool, naturally.
We're going to go to another post on this.
wingedcentaur.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Good Evening Friends,
Remember, the (Man is the desire to become God) principle is the completion, the end-state of the idea that (consciousness is not what it is but what it is not), which is so because (the consciousness cannot apprehend itself as an object. At no point can the consciousness catch itself as a totally unwavering, unchanging, complete whole - like a rock, which is, was, and will never be anything but - and, as we mentioned before, this is something any Buddhist might say.
It is perhaps "human nature" never to be "satisfied," to constantly, invariably, although futily "grope for the infinite." In many ways this is a good thing, as this tendency frequently releases the creative potential. And it must be said that this drive to reach the unattainable mark, when applied to materal acquisitiveness, it's not so good.
We applied this tendency of human beings to ceaselessly reach for an unattainable point - as focused on material acquisitiveness - to examine the traditional intra-class tension within the bourgeoisie, the capitalist ruling class - Old Money and New Money. Old Money and New Money are terms used to describe the length of time a family has had great wealth. We proposed that New Money is capitalist and that Old Money is transcapitalist, or has actually been liberated from capitalism, which the bourgeoisie, judging from their actions don't seem to like very much and, in fact, desperately seek escape from; and this, despite the pronouncements of theoretically ideological, non-practicing capitalist.
The French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre said something else: Man exists without justification. What does this mean? It means that God does not stop buy and say something like: Hey, Joe! Sorry to get you up at such an hour (The Lord glances at his solid gold Rolex). Wow, three in the morning! But don't worry about it. You'll wake up feeling better than you've ever felt in your life and I'll give you the strength of a bear for two weeks. Here, let me get that hangover for you - ZZZAAAPPP! There you go. Listen, I just stopped by to say I like what you're doing, overall, with your life. You're not perfect, of course. But then again, who is beside Me, hunh? But I want to give you particular kudos on how you handled that sticky moral situation last Tuesday. Nice application of my Commandments seven and nine. Joe, I'm hear to tell you: You da man! Anyway, just wanted to give you your props. (The Lord gives Joe's shoulder a hearty paternal squeeze). I'm outta here, bye.
That doesn't happen to anyone, whether they nominally believe in God or not. No one experiences such unvarnished, unequivocval, certain "justification" from above. Because this is so, we have developed innumerable structures of justification that seem to come from outside of ourselves; and depending upon our level of attainment in various areas, we feel ourselves to either be in or out of accord with "universal law;" and subsequently, to a certain extent, our feeling of self worth rises and falls.; and I think this helps to explain the generalized human tendency to class mimicry in material aspirations.
Whether one nominally believes in God, I would argue that there are very few actual atheists, in fact. Because man exists without justification, man seeks to become God, strangely, in order to prove he exists, or at least an idea of infinite capacity, in one way or another, at least, can exist. Therefore, the many ways we strive or "grope for the infinite," are forms of prayer, whether there is a nominal "God" that one formally "prays" to or not. And therefore, people (but again, we must particularize this for American society, for historical reasons we have reviewed) functionally "believe" that the more money and wealth one has, the closer he and/or his family are to "God." Have you ever heard the expression "She has more money than God?"
"God" is not capitalist. "God" does not have to be capitalist. Isn't that right? "God" possesses all wealth by virtue of being... well, "God." Have you ever heard the expression from medieval and ancient history "divine right of kings?"
To return to the New Money/Old Money historical intra-class tension within the bourgeoisie. Why have the Old Money guard always been slightly contemptuous of New Money, the world over, no matter where and when one looked? We proposed that the underlying ideological reason for this is the following: New Money is an uncomfortable reminder to Old Money of the less-than-divine origins of their own wealth, their own mortal past, if you will, which they desperately strive, daily, to forget. But New Money always wants to become Old Money, because they wish to enter that celestial realm of dominion and put their mortal past behind them just as quickly as possible. They wish to enshroud themselves and their wealth in the same aura of impregnability and inevitability and eternal pedigree that they perceive that Old Money enjoys.
The main traditional way New Money has always sought to become Old Money, is marriage, of course. We said that the main method today of "quickening" the "aging" process of their wealth (whether the subject be an international drug dealer, Don Corleone, or a "legitimate" businessman) are the various mechanisms of financialization, as well as the focus of corporations on selling "brands," while letting other, starvation-wage labor overseas, handle the actual production of stuff. Manufacturing cannot compare to the profits to be had from speculative finance.
We proposed that the bourgeoisie actually sees capitalism as a lower form of existence, much like the "agents" in the first Matrix movie thought of Earth. And because of this, they practice capitalism or anti-capitalism so ruthlessly. They wish to get as rich as quickly as possible so that they can break their chains and become Old (transcapitalist) Money, as quickly as possible.
In addition to this, we also proposed that every time capitalism hits its natural political, social, cultural, environmental, and indeed, its legal limits, either one of two phases of capitalism are triggered: virtual capitalism (financialization, branding) and "disaster" (a la Naomi Klein) capitalism. In his writings, Kevin Phillips talks about a discernible, historical tendency of "great powers" to periodically lapse into virtual capitalism (an over-reliance on finance to drive national economies and create wealth, concentrated at the top of society, of course), in the west going back at least to the eighteenth century.
We proposed that, therefore, crisis in capitalism, is caused by the New Money bourgeoisie, making an en masse prison break from capitalism through massive, astronomical applications of virtual finance. I would refer you to the October 15, 2009 show of the television and radio public affairs program, DemocracyNow! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales. You can find it at DemocracyNow.org.
The first guest was a former bank regulator with the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, William K. Black. Black helped to expose and unravel the Savings and Loan scandal of the eighties. The first thing he said that today's situation represented "one of the proofs" that finance had come "completely unhinged" from the real economy; he said that finance is supposed to exist for one reason, to make the real economy work better, but that now finance exists for finance's sake, and "in particular the elites in finance" and that "they harm the real economy on a regular basis and periodically come close to destroying it." Why? Aren't they afraid they'll destroy themselves as well? No.
Black talked about the scandal of the eighties. He said that there was an "epidemic of, what we call in criminology, control fraud." Control fraud, said Black, is what we have when the fraud is led by a seemingly legitimate executives of a seemingly legitimate organization. In the eighties the fraud had to do with commercial real estate, but today the fraud started in private home mortgages. He said that today, we're looking at another epidemic of accounting fraud. And so on and so forth. I reccomend you check out that episode.
The next guest was the Slovenian philosopher I've told you about, Slavoj Zizek. He started by paraphrasing Nobel-prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, who apparently said something to the effect of: suppose we could travel back in time, two years, with the "advantage" that the financial people who caused the crash, would retain the memory of what happened two years later. Let's not delude ourselves, there would be no change in their behavior. Why not?
I think its because a inmate is going to try to break out of prison when and if he gets the chance.
One more post will do it, I promise. And then we shall move on to fresh territory.
wingedcentaur
Remember, the (Man is the desire to become God) principle is the completion, the end-state of the idea that (consciousness is not what it is but what it is not), which is so because (the consciousness cannot apprehend itself as an object. At no point can the consciousness catch itself as a totally unwavering, unchanging, complete whole - like a rock, which is, was, and will never be anything but - and, as we mentioned before, this is something any Buddhist might say.
It is perhaps "human nature" never to be "satisfied," to constantly, invariably, although futily "grope for the infinite." In many ways this is a good thing, as this tendency frequently releases the creative potential. And it must be said that this drive to reach the unattainable mark, when applied to materal acquisitiveness, it's not so good.
We applied this tendency of human beings to ceaselessly reach for an unattainable point - as focused on material acquisitiveness - to examine the traditional intra-class tension within the bourgeoisie, the capitalist ruling class - Old Money and New Money. Old Money and New Money are terms used to describe the length of time a family has had great wealth. We proposed that New Money is capitalist and that Old Money is transcapitalist, or has actually been liberated from capitalism, which the bourgeoisie, judging from their actions don't seem to like very much and, in fact, desperately seek escape from; and this, despite the pronouncements of theoretically ideological, non-practicing capitalist.
The French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre said something else: Man exists without justification. What does this mean? It means that God does not stop buy and say something like: Hey, Joe! Sorry to get you up at such an hour (The Lord glances at his solid gold Rolex). Wow, three in the morning! But don't worry about it. You'll wake up feeling better than you've ever felt in your life and I'll give you the strength of a bear for two weeks. Here, let me get that hangover for you - ZZZAAAPPP! There you go. Listen, I just stopped by to say I like what you're doing, overall, with your life. You're not perfect, of course. But then again, who is beside Me, hunh? But I want to give you particular kudos on how you handled that sticky moral situation last Tuesday. Nice application of my Commandments seven and nine. Joe, I'm hear to tell you: You da man! Anyway, just wanted to give you your props. (The Lord gives Joe's shoulder a hearty paternal squeeze). I'm outta here, bye.
That doesn't happen to anyone, whether they nominally believe in God or not. No one experiences such unvarnished, unequivocval, certain "justification" from above. Because this is so, we have developed innumerable structures of justification that seem to come from outside of ourselves; and depending upon our level of attainment in various areas, we feel ourselves to either be in or out of accord with "universal law;" and subsequently, to a certain extent, our feeling of self worth rises and falls.; and I think this helps to explain the generalized human tendency to class mimicry in material aspirations.
Whether one nominally believes in God, I would argue that there are very few actual atheists, in fact. Because man exists without justification, man seeks to become God, strangely, in order to prove he exists, or at least an idea of infinite capacity, in one way or another, at least, can exist. Therefore, the many ways we strive or "grope for the infinite," are forms of prayer, whether there is a nominal "God" that one formally "prays" to or not. And therefore, people (but again, we must particularize this for American society, for historical reasons we have reviewed) functionally "believe" that the more money and wealth one has, the closer he and/or his family are to "God." Have you ever heard the expression "She has more money than God?"
"God" is not capitalist. "God" does not have to be capitalist. Isn't that right? "God" possesses all wealth by virtue of being... well, "God." Have you ever heard the expression from medieval and ancient history "divine right of kings?"
To return to the New Money/Old Money historical intra-class tension within the bourgeoisie. Why have the Old Money guard always been slightly contemptuous of New Money, the world over, no matter where and when one looked? We proposed that the underlying ideological reason for this is the following: New Money is an uncomfortable reminder to Old Money of the less-than-divine origins of their own wealth, their own mortal past, if you will, which they desperately strive, daily, to forget. But New Money always wants to become Old Money, because they wish to enter that celestial realm of dominion and put their mortal past behind them just as quickly as possible. They wish to enshroud themselves and their wealth in the same aura of impregnability and inevitability and eternal pedigree that they perceive that Old Money enjoys.
The main traditional way New Money has always sought to become Old Money, is marriage, of course. We said that the main method today of "quickening" the "aging" process of their wealth (whether the subject be an international drug dealer, Don Corleone, or a "legitimate" businessman) are the various mechanisms of financialization, as well as the focus of corporations on selling "brands," while letting other, starvation-wage labor overseas, handle the actual production of stuff. Manufacturing cannot compare to the profits to be had from speculative finance.
We proposed that the bourgeoisie actually sees capitalism as a lower form of existence, much like the "agents" in the first Matrix movie thought of Earth. And because of this, they practice capitalism or anti-capitalism so ruthlessly. They wish to get as rich as quickly as possible so that they can break their chains and become Old (transcapitalist) Money, as quickly as possible.
In addition to this, we also proposed that every time capitalism hits its natural political, social, cultural, environmental, and indeed, its legal limits, either one of two phases of capitalism are triggered: virtual capitalism (financialization, branding) and "disaster" (a la Naomi Klein) capitalism. In his writings, Kevin Phillips talks about a discernible, historical tendency of "great powers" to periodically lapse into virtual capitalism (an over-reliance on finance to drive national economies and create wealth, concentrated at the top of society, of course), in the west going back at least to the eighteenth century.
We proposed that, therefore, crisis in capitalism, is caused by the New Money bourgeoisie, making an en masse prison break from capitalism through massive, astronomical applications of virtual finance. I would refer you to the October 15, 2009 show of the television and radio public affairs program, DemocracyNow! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales. You can find it at DemocracyNow.org.
The first guest was a former bank regulator with the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, William K. Black. Black helped to expose and unravel the Savings and Loan scandal of the eighties. The first thing he said that today's situation represented "one of the proofs" that finance had come "completely unhinged" from the real economy; he said that finance is supposed to exist for one reason, to make the real economy work better, but that now finance exists for finance's sake, and "in particular the elites in finance" and that "they harm the real economy on a regular basis and periodically come close to destroying it." Why? Aren't they afraid they'll destroy themselves as well? No.
Black talked about the scandal of the eighties. He said that there was an "epidemic of, what we call in criminology, control fraud." Control fraud, said Black, is what we have when the fraud is led by a seemingly legitimate executives of a seemingly legitimate organization. In the eighties the fraud had to do with commercial real estate, but today the fraud started in private home mortgages. He said that today, we're looking at another epidemic of accounting fraud. And so on and so forth. I reccomend you check out that episode.
The next guest was the Slovenian philosopher I've told you about, Slavoj Zizek. He started by paraphrasing Nobel-prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, who apparently said something to the effect of: suppose we could travel back in time, two years, with the "advantage" that the financial people who caused the crash, would retain the memory of what happened two years later. Let's not delude ourselves, there would be no change in their behavior. Why not?
I think its because a inmate is going to try to break out of prison when and if he gets the chance.
One more post will do it, I promise. And then we shall move on to fresh territory.
wingedcentaur
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Good Evening Friends,
We are going to leave this topic, you will all be relieved to learn. I'm getting tired of it now and I've become repetitive, quite a while back. If I haven't made my point by now, I shall never do so. Of course, there are one or two points I might elaborate on, but... nah! To sum up, here's what I've been suggesting.
My whole argument has been animated by a single principle, given to us by the great French Existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980): (consciousness is not what it is but what it is not) which ultimately ends up as Man is the desire to become God. Having been personally persuaded by this, I proposed that throughout global history, the extent to which an individual might consider himself successful, depended and does depend, in part, on the extent to which he can mirror or mimic the lifestyle of the socioeconomic class above the one which he inhabits. You may have heard about the vast (over) self-designation of people as belonging to the middle class.
This tendency to try to mimic the classes above ourselves is reflected in the black market, as well as the discount retail set up, for "knock off" designer clothes, purses, and the like. In other words, there is a tendency to want to seem, to the outside world, richer than we are. I think we have to say that this tendency is particularly marked in American society because of the unique history of how capitalism developed in America. You may recall the thesis, I offered, developed by a professor of economics called Rick Wolf. America had one hundred fifty years of an absolutely unfailing rise in real wages for workers, worker productivity, and last but not least, the profits of the capitalist owners of the means of production.
It had seemed as if a "rising tide lifts all boats," and so forth. This seeming paradise, according to Dr. Wolf, helped to shape an American midset of exceptionalism. Indeed, one of the explanations bandied about during this period was to "look up" (He likes us better than everybody else). The American working class expected that we would be able to consume more and more with each generation. This went on from 1820-1970, says Wolf. But it stopped in 1970, for various reasons, and real wages have remained flat since the mid seventies.
But we of the working class didn't "give up" and stop consuming. Among other things we did to keep the consumption going, was to borrow, far more than any other working class. Wolf says that the bourgeoisie loaned, the money the working class should have been getting as wages, back to them; which they had to repay with interest, of course. Credit is the fuel that allows us to mimic the appearance of the lifestyle of those classes above our own.
Kevin Phillips cited Time magazine from 1977, which stated that '"the Affluent Society has become the Credit Society, and an insistence on buying only what can by paid for in cash seems as outmoded as a crew cut (1)."' So, where the ability to consume from wages ends, the ability to borrow, in order to project a sense of affluence, begins.
And an economist at Philadelphia's Fidelity Bank, Lacy Hunt, said, '"the ability of the consumer to take on more debt will be the underpinning of th economy in 1977. This is the year of consumer credit (2)."'
Personal debt began to take off out of sight in the eighties and this state of affairs dates back to "innovations" of the seventies. Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971. Currency trading and foreign exchange markets "boomed;" and future trading began in 1972. The infrastructure that supports the speculative exotic financial transactions we are barely aware of today. For example, the first mortgage-backed bonds started in 1975 (3).
Credit is our ability to project "affluence," and this has its contemporary origins in the fifties, Truman's America, actually (4). An entire investment (for the investor class) infrastructure was built up to bet on the performance, to oversimplify, that debt. You could say that the investment sector made real money off the fantasies of the working class and the poor. Think about that.
Have you ever seen any of those movies concerning Greek mythology or some such? Do you recall the usual scenario in which the "old" gods seem to begin to fade away? This is invariably explained by the fact that times are changing and Christianity and other new religions are gripping the imagination of the masses of the population. There are fewer and fewer people who believe in the traditional deities, and thus their anchorage to this reality grows steadily more tenuous.
But there are always one or two of the old gods who are determined not to go away. These tend to be the strongest willed of the old pantheon. There are determined to make the people remember them, fear them, and worship them. Usually they stir up an evil, Byzantine scheme, and then it comes down to a volcanic one-on-one battle between one of these "old" gods, usually depicted as bad or evil and some wizard or some such, who represents modernity or the "good," and so forth. The side of "evil" is concerned and ding dong The Wicked Witch is Dead!
The structure of the political economy is like that, don't you think. The Bourgeoisie retain their power just as long as most of us are willing to believe, in what Ronald Reagan once called, "... the magic of the marketplace." Valhalla, Olympus.... whatever.
And while we're on the subject of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush, his political heir in many people's view), you may recall that I proposed another connection. I wondered if there might have been a connection between the deregulation of finance that started off in the seventies and eighties, which, of course, mostly benefitted the rich - and the marketing (via the infomercal) of certain get-rich-quick techniques. Therefore, did George W. Bush, and to a smaller extent, Ronald Reagan before him, see themselves as a kind of Republican Prometheus, giving the lower classes a magical means to the good life, especially since hope was bleak that America would ever again be the industrial force it had been in the post war years up until the seventies, for various reasons.
I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I have privately wondered if George W. Bush, with his famously tolerant attitude toward undocumented workers from Mexico, - somewhat unusual for a Republican - his advocacy of a "guest worker" program and the like, hadn't privately conceived that illegal Mexican immigrants might, somehow, be made to comprise the new American underclass, while everyone else is enjoying the good life - that is, until these, now undocumented Mexican worker, become fully assimilated, and they, too, can make millions buying real estate with no money down, and so forth. Then repeat the process, perhaps changing the demographic of global desperate brought into country.
But I suggested another interpretation. Beware the Ring of Sauron, I said, of these techniques which seem targeted to the working class. In other words, such things like buying real estate with no money down and placing ads (for whatever) in newspaper or the Internet, selling odds and ends from some warehouse, and others, and of course the faith exercise of buying lottery tickets are the poor man's version of what the rich man does, in todays deregulated finance. But as I pointed out before, all fantasy stories of the Ring of Sauron paradigm, never end well for the mortal that has come into possession of the godly ornament.
That is, because as I said before, the mortal remains as comparatively fragile as ever. He does not have the invulnerability to protect himself, as the god does, to protect himself from the very forces he unleashes. I wondered if there might not be some real life analog to this dynamic. I theorized that there must be. The analog I proposed was this: the rich do things with respect to their financial and business dealings, certain things on the edge of legal propriety, and routinely get away with it (or, indeed, do these things without anyone ever acknowledging the commission of a crime); but if the lower classes try to do similar things, analogous things, they may suffer penalties and deprivations, up to and including getting the book thrown at you and being sent to prison.
Let's take one example. Democratic senator, Tom Daschle had to withdraw his name from nomination for a cabinet post in the Obama Administration over taxes. The present Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, also had a tax issue. I didn't pay attention to the details but he had a tax issue. Many people said that, having previously been the president of the New York federal reserve bank, Mr. Geithner should have known better. In any event, he said he was sorry and then went on to be overwhelmingly confirmed to the post by the senate.
This comes under the category of "Kids, don't try this at home!" Credit checks are a routine part of the backround investigation for prospective employees for even very low level, low skill, low wage jobs. I bet it would be hard for a working class person to get a job as a bank teller, if, say, his record showed that he had an outstanding tax bill; suppose he accidentally bounced a check to cover the bill, because he'd thought an electronic transfer from the settlement from an auto accident would hit his account in time, but it didn't.... so on and so forth.
I didn't follow Geithner's explanation but it was something convoluted, I'm sure. I'd take a thousand to one odds that our friend wouldn't get that bank teller job.
Anyway, I'll continue with my summation in the next post.
wingedcentaur.
We are going to leave this topic, you will all be relieved to learn. I'm getting tired of it now and I've become repetitive, quite a while back. If I haven't made my point by now, I shall never do so. Of course, there are one or two points I might elaborate on, but... nah! To sum up, here's what I've been suggesting.
My whole argument has been animated by a single principle, given to us by the great French Existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980): (consciousness is not what it is but what it is not) which ultimately ends up as Man is the desire to become God. Having been personally persuaded by this, I proposed that throughout global history, the extent to which an individual might consider himself successful, depended and does depend, in part, on the extent to which he can mirror or mimic the lifestyle of the socioeconomic class above the one which he inhabits. You may have heard about the vast (over) self-designation of people as belonging to the middle class.
This tendency to try to mimic the classes above ourselves is reflected in the black market, as well as the discount retail set up, for "knock off" designer clothes, purses, and the like. In other words, there is a tendency to want to seem, to the outside world, richer than we are. I think we have to say that this tendency is particularly marked in American society because of the unique history of how capitalism developed in America. You may recall the thesis, I offered, developed by a professor of economics called Rick Wolf. America had one hundred fifty years of an absolutely unfailing rise in real wages for workers, worker productivity, and last but not least, the profits of the capitalist owners of the means of production.
It had seemed as if a "rising tide lifts all boats," and so forth. This seeming paradise, according to Dr. Wolf, helped to shape an American midset of exceptionalism. Indeed, one of the explanations bandied about during this period was to "look up" (He likes us better than everybody else). The American working class expected that we would be able to consume more and more with each generation. This went on from 1820-1970, says Wolf. But it stopped in 1970, for various reasons, and real wages have remained flat since the mid seventies.
But we of the working class didn't "give up" and stop consuming. Among other things we did to keep the consumption going, was to borrow, far more than any other working class. Wolf says that the bourgeoisie loaned, the money the working class should have been getting as wages, back to them; which they had to repay with interest, of course. Credit is the fuel that allows us to mimic the appearance of the lifestyle of those classes above our own.
Kevin Phillips cited Time magazine from 1977, which stated that '"the Affluent Society has become the Credit Society, and an insistence on buying only what can by paid for in cash seems as outmoded as a crew cut (1)."' So, where the ability to consume from wages ends, the ability to borrow, in order to project a sense of affluence, begins.
And an economist at Philadelphia's Fidelity Bank, Lacy Hunt, said, '"the ability of the consumer to take on more debt will be the underpinning of th economy in 1977. This is the year of consumer credit (2)."'
Personal debt began to take off out of sight in the eighties and this state of affairs dates back to "innovations" of the seventies. Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971. Currency trading and foreign exchange markets "boomed;" and future trading began in 1972. The infrastructure that supports the speculative exotic financial transactions we are barely aware of today. For example, the first mortgage-backed bonds started in 1975 (3).
Credit is our ability to project "affluence," and this has its contemporary origins in the fifties, Truman's America, actually (4). An entire investment (for the investor class) infrastructure was built up to bet on the performance, to oversimplify, that debt. You could say that the investment sector made real money off the fantasies of the working class and the poor. Think about that.
Have you ever seen any of those movies concerning Greek mythology or some such? Do you recall the usual scenario in which the "old" gods seem to begin to fade away? This is invariably explained by the fact that times are changing and Christianity and other new religions are gripping the imagination of the masses of the population. There are fewer and fewer people who believe in the traditional deities, and thus their anchorage to this reality grows steadily more tenuous.
But there are always one or two of the old gods who are determined not to go away. These tend to be the strongest willed of the old pantheon. There are determined to make the people remember them, fear them, and worship them. Usually they stir up an evil, Byzantine scheme, and then it comes down to a volcanic one-on-one battle between one of these "old" gods, usually depicted as bad or evil and some wizard or some such, who represents modernity or the "good," and so forth. The side of "evil" is concerned and ding dong The Wicked Witch is Dead!
The structure of the political economy is like that, don't you think. The Bourgeoisie retain their power just as long as most of us are willing to believe, in what Ronald Reagan once called, "... the magic of the marketplace." Valhalla, Olympus.... whatever.
And while we're on the subject of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush, his political heir in many people's view), you may recall that I proposed another connection. I wondered if there might have been a connection between the deregulation of finance that started off in the seventies and eighties, which, of course, mostly benefitted the rich - and the marketing (via the infomercal) of certain get-rich-quick techniques. Therefore, did George W. Bush, and to a smaller extent, Ronald Reagan before him, see themselves as a kind of Republican Prometheus, giving the lower classes a magical means to the good life, especially since hope was bleak that America would ever again be the industrial force it had been in the post war years up until the seventies, for various reasons.
I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I have privately wondered if George W. Bush, with his famously tolerant attitude toward undocumented workers from Mexico, - somewhat unusual for a Republican - his advocacy of a "guest worker" program and the like, hadn't privately conceived that illegal Mexican immigrants might, somehow, be made to comprise the new American underclass, while everyone else is enjoying the good life - that is, until these, now undocumented Mexican worker, become fully assimilated, and they, too, can make millions buying real estate with no money down, and so forth. Then repeat the process, perhaps changing the demographic of global desperate brought into country.
But I suggested another interpretation. Beware the Ring of Sauron, I said, of these techniques which seem targeted to the working class. In other words, such things like buying real estate with no money down and placing ads (for whatever) in newspaper or the Internet, selling odds and ends from some warehouse, and others, and of course the faith exercise of buying lottery tickets are the poor man's version of what the rich man does, in todays deregulated finance. But as I pointed out before, all fantasy stories of the Ring of Sauron paradigm, never end well for the mortal that has come into possession of the godly ornament.
That is, because as I said before, the mortal remains as comparatively fragile as ever. He does not have the invulnerability to protect himself, as the god does, to protect himself from the very forces he unleashes. I wondered if there might not be some real life analog to this dynamic. I theorized that there must be. The analog I proposed was this: the rich do things with respect to their financial and business dealings, certain things on the edge of legal propriety, and routinely get away with it (or, indeed, do these things without anyone ever acknowledging the commission of a crime); but if the lower classes try to do similar things, analogous things, they may suffer penalties and deprivations, up to and including getting the book thrown at you and being sent to prison.
Let's take one example. Democratic senator, Tom Daschle had to withdraw his name from nomination for a cabinet post in the Obama Administration over taxes. The present Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, also had a tax issue. I didn't pay attention to the details but he had a tax issue. Many people said that, having previously been the president of the New York federal reserve bank, Mr. Geithner should have known better. In any event, he said he was sorry and then went on to be overwhelmingly confirmed to the post by the senate.
This comes under the category of "Kids, don't try this at home!" Credit checks are a routine part of the backround investigation for prospective employees for even very low level, low skill, low wage jobs. I bet it would be hard for a working class person to get a job as a bank teller, if, say, his record showed that he had an outstanding tax bill; suppose he accidentally bounced a check to cover the bill, because he'd thought an electronic transfer from the settlement from an auto accident would hit his account in time, but it didn't.... so on and so forth.
I didn't follow Geithner's explanation but it was something convoluted, I'm sure. I'd take a thousand to one odds that our friend wouldn't get that bank teller job.
Anyway, I'll continue with my summation in the next post.
wingedcentaur.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Good Morning Friends,
The point I was trying to drive home last time was simply that New Money always wants to become Old Money, as we have already defined these terms, just as quickly as possible. This drive is invariable, universal, worldwide, and historical. There comes a point when the bourgeoisie seems to just get tired - for a variety of good reasons - of the struggle of overseeing production, and capitalism lapses or triggers what we have called "virtual" or "disaster" capitalism. As I have tried to indicate, this is so wherever we look, at whatever nation, in any time period.
I would compare this drive to the old caricature we used to hear about concerning the young woman, fiercely independent, flying under the banner of feminism, charge into the paid workforce - only long enough to land a husband, preferably a wealthy one, the boss would be good, so that even the work of mother and homemaker could at least be partially displaced unto nannies and other live-in help.
That is how the industrial capitalists are. There comes a point when it becomes too hard for them to achieve the profits that they and their shareholders need and want, when they run up against the natural limits of political, material, social, and economic limits of capital expansion. And when this happens, they resort virtual and disaster methods (created by them or merely harnessed) to get around those barriers and keep profits up; and they also aspire to the lordly aristocratic class, from which they see themselves as having "fallen" from.
Capitalism is see by the bourgeoisie, therefore as a transitional system at best, and as a prison or lower realm at worst. I claim, therefore, that crisis in capitalism is caused by a mass attempt of the New Money bourgeoisie to escape capitalism, at least the "free market" capitalism that is professed in the west. These mass prison escape attempts - and successes - are as destabilizing to an economic system, as much as mass inmate escape attempts, on a regular basis, are destabilizing to a prison.
Their primary means of achieving this escape or transitioning from New Money to Old Money, is the various techniques of financialization and brand-focus and speculation on financial derivatives, as opposed to investment linked to actual production. Man is the desire to become God, which is why New Money Bourgeoisie always wants to become Old Money Bourgeoisie.
We'll take a different tack next time.
wingedcentaur
The point I was trying to drive home last time was simply that New Money always wants to become Old Money, as we have already defined these terms, just as quickly as possible. This drive is invariable, universal, worldwide, and historical. There comes a point when the bourgeoisie seems to just get tired - for a variety of good reasons - of the struggle of overseeing production, and capitalism lapses or triggers what we have called "virtual" or "disaster" capitalism. As I have tried to indicate, this is so wherever we look, at whatever nation, in any time period.
I would compare this drive to the old caricature we used to hear about concerning the young woman, fiercely independent, flying under the banner of feminism, charge into the paid workforce - only long enough to land a husband, preferably a wealthy one, the boss would be good, so that even the work of mother and homemaker could at least be partially displaced unto nannies and other live-in help.
That is how the industrial capitalists are. There comes a point when it becomes too hard for them to achieve the profits that they and their shareholders need and want, when they run up against the natural limits of political, material, social, and economic limits of capital expansion. And when this happens, they resort virtual and disaster methods (created by them or merely harnessed) to get around those barriers and keep profits up; and they also aspire to the lordly aristocratic class, from which they see themselves as having "fallen" from.
Capitalism is see by the bourgeoisie, therefore as a transitional system at best, and as a prison or lower realm at worst. I claim, therefore, that crisis in capitalism is caused by a mass attempt of the New Money bourgeoisie to escape capitalism, at least the "free market" capitalism that is professed in the west. These mass prison escape attempts - and successes - are as destabilizing to an economic system, as much as mass inmate escape attempts, on a regular basis, are destabilizing to a prison.
Their primary means of achieving this escape or transitioning from New Money to Old Money, is the various techniques of financialization and brand-focus and speculation on financial derivatives, as opposed to investment linked to actual production. Man is the desire to become God, which is why New Money Bourgeoisie always wants to become Old Money Bourgeoisie.
We'll take a different tack next time.
wingedcentaur
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The New Money - Old Money Dynamic
China 11th century
The examination system now became a route by which increasing numbers of men from outside the circle of great families could enter the higher levels of the imperial government... The new bureaucrats were increasingly drawm from the families who had benefitted most from the comercial revolution... the rich merchants and wealthy landowners.
Chris Harman quoting a source in his A People's History of the World: From Stone Age to the New Millenium. London, New York, 1999. Verso Books. p.112
"The state itself was run by bureaucrats trained as scholarly officials, whose ideal was the country gentleman. This was also the ideal for the merchant's son who obtained an official position." Same source. A People's History. p.112-113
Byzantium 12th century
"Byzantium survived as a last bastion of Graeco-Roman culture because the imperial bureaucracy was run by a layer of literate Greek speakers. But it was a group that lived off the production of others rather than contributing to or organising it. It therefore prided itself on its remoteness from the material world, and was afraid of any class emerging whose closeness to production might lead to it diverting some of the surplus into its own pockets. It is this which explains the sterile, pedantic character of Byzantine culture. It also explains the strength of superstitious and magical beliefs among all social groups. The priests were usually at least half-literate, and their message relied upon simplified stories of the saints, tales of miracles, and faith in the magic of holy relics." A People's History. p.121
The Islamic Empire 8th century
"The unification of a vast area into a single empire gave an enormous boost to the trade in luxuries. Merchants, shopkeepers, clerks and artisans flocked to the garrison cities, settling in growing suburbs around their walls and providing for the needs of the Arab rulers, their palaces, their armies and their administrators. Mostly they were non-Arabs, but were attracted to the religion of their rulers - which was, after all, not all that different from the monotheistic religions that had dominated the old empires. But the Arab Muslims were not keen to extend the newcomers their religious right to tax exemption and a share in the tribute. So new converts were designated mawali and excluded from the privileges of the Arabs, who regarded themselves as the only genuine Muslims.
"By the time the Arab Empire was a century old, the non-Arab Muslims were the majority in the cities of the empire and the key to its industries and trade, which the Arabs merchants had abandoned to become a new aristocracy." A People's History. pp.127-128
Class collusion among Arab and Persian aristocracies: same period
The surviving Persian aristocracy cooperated with the Arab state as long [as] the state recognized its privileges. On conversion it exchanged its Zoroastrian for a Muslim orthodoxy. The Islamised Persian townfolk and peasants exchanged their Zoroastrian for Islamic heresies directed against the aristocracy, both Arab and Persian. Chris Harman quoting a source in People's History, p.128
One can imagine that the Persian hereditary nobility probably gave tutelage in proper comportment for the new Arab emerging elites not yet used to such things.
European feudalism 14th century
"The lords grew ever more remote from the practicalities of producing the wealth they consumed. The descendants of the warriors in rough fortresses resided in elaborate castles, cloaked themselves in silk and engaged in expensive courtly and knightly rituals which asserted their superiority over other social groups. They regarded themselves as a caste apart from everybody else, with hereditary legal rights sanctioned by religious ceremonies. Within this caste an elaborate gradation of ranks separated the great aristocrats from the ordinary knights who were legally dependent on them. But all its layers were increasingly disdainful of anyone involved in actually creating wealth - whether wealthy merchants, humble artisans or impoverished peasants. The popes, abbots and bishops were part of this ruling class and shared its attitudes, but had distinct interests of their own." A People's History, p.147
"The popes, bishops and abbots also devoted themselves to upholding the wider values they shared in common with the lords. The cathedrals, the greatest artistic creations of the period, were also the greatest symbol of the power of the ruling class, emphasising the God-ordained character of society, with heavenly hierarchies of angels, saints and humans corresponding to earthly hierarchies of kings, lords, abbots, bishops, knights and commoners." A People's History, p.148.
We'll sum it all up next time.
wingedcentaur.
China 11th century
The examination system now became a route by which increasing numbers of men from outside the circle of great families could enter the higher levels of the imperial government... The new bureaucrats were increasingly drawm from the families who had benefitted most from the comercial revolution... the rich merchants and wealthy landowners.
Chris Harman quoting a source in his A People's History of the World: From Stone Age to the New Millenium. London, New York, 1999. Verso Books. p.112
"The state itself was run by bureaucrats trained as scholarly officials, whose ideal was the country gentleman. This was also the ideal for the merchant's son who obtained an official position." Same source. A People's History. p.112-113
Byzantium 12th century
"Byzantium survived as a last bastion of Graeco-Roman culture because the imperial bureaucracy was run by a layer of literate Greek speakers. But it was a group that lived off the production of others rather than contributing to or organising it. It therefore prided itself on its remoteness from the material world, and was afraid of any class emerging whose closeness to production might lead to it diverting some of the surplus into its own pockets. It is this which explains the sterile, pedantic character of Byzantine culture. It also explains the strength of superstitious and magical beliefs among all social groups. The priests were usually at least half-literate, and their message relied upon simplified stories of the saints, tales of miracles, and faith in the magic of holy relics." A People's History. p.121
The Islamic Empire 8th century
"The unification of a vast area into a single empire gave an enormous boost to the trade in luxuries. Merchants, shopkeepers, clerks and artisans flocked to the garrison cities, settling in growing suburbs around their walls and providing for the needs of the Arab rulers, their palaces, their armies and their administrators. Mostly they were non-Arabs, but were attracted to the religion of their rulers - which was, after all, not all that different from the monotheistic religions that had dominated the old empires. But the Arab Muslims were not keen to extend the newcomers their religious right to tax exemption and a share in the tribute. So new converts were designated mawali and excluded from the privileges of the Arabs, who regarded themselves as the only genuine Muslims.
"By the time the Arab Empire was a century old, the non-Arab Muslims were the majority in the cities of the empire and the key to its industries and trade, which the Arabs merchants had abandoned to become a new aristocracy." A People's History. pp.127-128
Class collusion among Arab and Persian aristocracies: same period
The surviving Persian aristocracy cooperated with the Arab state as long [as] the state recognized its privileges. On conversion it exchanged its Zoroastrian for a Muslim orthodoxy. The Islamised Persian townfolk and peasants exchanged their Zoroastrian for Islamic heresies directed against the aristocracy, both Arab and Persian. Chris Harman quoting a source in People's History, p.128
One can imagine that the Persian hereditary nobility probably gave tutelage in proper comportment for the new Arab emerging elites not yet used to such things.
European feudalism 14th century
"The lords grew ever more remote from the practicalities of producing the wealth they consumed. The descendants of the warriors in rough fortresses resided in elaborate castles, cloaked themselves in silk and engaged in expensive courtly and knightly rituals which asserted their superiority over other social groups. They regarded themselves as a caste apart from everybody else, with hereditary legal rights sanctioned by religious ceremonies. Within this caste an elaborate gradation of ranks separated the great aristocrats from the ordinary knights who were legally dependent on them. But all its layers were increasingly disdainful of anyone involved in actually creating wealth - whether wealthy merchants, humble artisans or impoverished peasants. The popes, abbots and bishops were part of this ruling class and shared its attitudes, but had distinct interests of their own." A People's History, p.147
"The popes, bishops and abbots also devoted themselves to upholding the wider values they shared in common with the lords. The cathedrals, the greatest artistic creations of the period, were also the greatest symbol of the power of the ruling class, emphasising the God-ordained character of society, with heavenly hierarchies of angels, saints and humans corresponding to earthly hierarchies of kings, lords, abbots, bishops, knights and commoners." A People's History, p.148.
We'll sum it all up next time.
wingedcentaur.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Friends,
The destabilization, degradation, and deindustrialization here, in America, seems to have a connection to degradation of work, deindustrialization (after a necessary period of industrialization to make cheap consumer goods for the consumerist developed world), and destabilization, abroad.
Here, in America, in the nineties, we were given to understand, by then-vice president Al Gore, among others, that we were transitioning from an industrial economy to a "knowledge-based" economy. We were given to understand that, therefore, a college education would and has become more crucial to sucess in the "new" economy than ever before, and so forth. Be a lawyer, a doctor, accountant, journalist (but for how much longer with newspapers undergoing the big squeeze and media consolidation continuing to throw reporters out of work?); but best of all, be high-tech, remember?
and yet "... today's high-tech jobs are as unstable as any other. Part-timers, temps, and contractors are rampant in Silicon Valley - a recent labor study of the region estimates that between 27 and 40 percent of the Valley's employees are "contingency workers," and the use of temps there is increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the country. The percentage of Silicon Valley workers employed by temp agencies is nearly three times the national average" (1).
1. Klein, Naomi. NoLogo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York, New York. Picador. p.249
I want to take a look at one last story from NoLogo that I think is marvelously instructive about the nuances of class solidarity, as it relates to the art of branding. We shall also see, in this tale, just how Wall Street is moved by "spiritual goals as well as economic ones," - that is, apart from the way in which we have been insisting that the spiritual and ideological are intrinsically intertwined with the material.
"Branding" and "financialization," as I have mentioned are two sides of the same coin. They both point to a desire, on the part of the New Money bourgoisie to transcend capitalism into the realm of Old Money, which, as we have also previously insisted, decidedly is not and never has been, capitalist.
In the late nineties, the Sara Lee corporation was a successful conglomerate of the old school. In addition to its own frozen food line of products, the organization also owned 'They plump when you cook 'em," Ball Park Franks, Hanes Underwear, Wonderbra, Coach Leather Goods, Kiwi Shoe Polish,, and Champion Sports Apparel. It had solid growth, healthy profits, good stock return, no debt, and profits - which had risen ten percent in the fiscal year 1996-1997 - of one billion dollars (2).
And yet, Wall Street analysts had apparently become disenchanted with the organization, deriding them as "lumpy object purveyors." They began undervaluing Sara Lee's stock. Not good, of course. To correct the situation, starting in September of 1997, the company announced a 1.6 billion dollar restructuring plan, that would enable them to get out of the "stuff" making business. Thirteen of its factories were sold to contractors, who became Sara Lee's suppliers. Sara Lee would use the savings to double its ad spending (3).
The plan worked and Sara Lee's CEO, a man called John H. Bryan did a mea culpa, saying, "It's passe for us to be as vertically integrated as we were." As a reward the company was treated to a fifteen percent rise in their stock price and flattering portraits of its bold and imaginative CEO in the business press (3).
You know what this story reminds me of? A Hindu tale I read once. It seems there were these three gods - let's call them god A , god B, and god C, mainly because I've long forgotten their names. One day they were in their divine repose, in their celestial realm, contemplating the unity of all things, so on and so forth. In other words, they were just chillin.'
B became curious about the nature of life on Earth. So, he descended to our planet and took the body of a pig. He did what pigs do, as far as we know. He oinked-oinked, ate absolutely anything imaginable, and suppose quite a few things unimaginable, and rolled around in slop. A and C looked on, amused at first. But then some time went by with no sign that their divine friend and companion was coming back. You know what they say, "Happy as a pig in s---."
Not only that, but the god-pig took a female pig mate and, with her, had pig children. At this time A and C's curious amusement morphed into impatience and amazement. A said to C, one day, 'You know, I think B's gone native. I think he really believes he is a pig and not a god at all!'
A and C sought to shock B out of his delusion by killing his pig mate and pig children. They did so, but with no effect. The god-pig reacted to this turn of events, however pigs react to such things, but he did not shed his succulent, porky existence.
Finally, the A and C destroyed the pig body of their friend. B returned to his true state and to his celestial companions, relieved and grateful, of course. You see the parallels, don't you? Wall Street and the business press play the roles of gods A and C. Sara Lee corporation is god B, ignorantly trolling around in a lower form of existence, one that A and C (both the gods of heaven and Wall Street) view as beneath B (the third god of heaven and Sara Lee.
It does not matter to the other two of the triumvirate (A and C gods of heaven and Wall Street) that B (the third god of heaven and Sara Lee) is seemingly content, happy, and indeed, thriving. What matters is that B' s earth-bound presence is an affront to the dignity of the godhood as a whole (heaven and Wall Street).
Therefore, the fallen son must be chastised and reminded of his proper station in the scheme of things. If I understood Naomi Klein right, there had been no logic to how Wall Street had treated Sara Lee during its pre "restructuring" period, than this, the fact that "... Wall Street,... is guided by spiritual goals as well as economic ones."
2. ibid. p. 199
3. ibid., p.200
More next time.
wingedcentaur
The destabilization, degradation, and deindustrialization here, in America, seems to have a connection to degradation of work, deindustrialization (after a necessary period of industrialization to make cheap consumer goods for the consumerist developed world), and destabilization, abroad.
Here, in America, in the nineties, we were given to understand, by then-vice president Al Gore, among others, that we were transitioning from an industrial economy to a "knowledge-based" economy. We were given to understand that, therefore, a college education would and has become more crucial to sucess in the "new" economy than ever before, and so forth. Be a lawyer, a doctor, accountant, journalist (but for how much longer with newspapers undergoing the big squeeze and media consolidation continuing to throw reporters out of work?); but best of all, be high-tech, remember?
and yet "... today's high-tech jobs are as unstable as any other. Part-timers, temps, and contractors are rampant in Silicon Valley - a recent labor study of the region estimates that between 27 and 40 percent of the Valley's employees are "contingency workers," and the use of temps there is increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the country. The percentage of Silicon Valley workers employed by temp agencies is nearly three times the national average" (1).
1. Klein, Naomi. NoLogo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York, New York. Picador. p.249
I want to take a look at one last story from NoLogo that I think is marvelously instructive about the nuances of class solidarity, as it relates to the art of branding. We shall also see, in this tale, just how Wall Street is moved by "spiritual goals as well as economic ones," - that is, apart from the way in which we have been insisting that the spiritual and ideological are intrinsically intertwined with the material.
"Branding" and "financialization," as I have mentioned are two sides of the same coin. They both point to a desire, on the part of the New Money bourgoisie to transcend capitalism into the realm of Old Money, which, as we have also previously insisted, decidedly is not and never has been, capitalist.
In the late nineties, the Sara Lee corporation was a successful conglomerate of the old school. In addition to its own frozen food line of products, the organization also owned 'They plump when you cook 'em," Ball Park Franks, Hanes Underwear, Wonderbra, Coach Leather Goods, Kiwi Shoe Polish,, and Champion Sports Apparel. It had solid growth, healthy profits, good stock return, no debt, and profits - which had risen ten percent in the fiscal year 1996-1997 - of one billion dollars (2).
And yet, Wall Street analysts had apparently become disenchanted with the organization, deriding them as "lumpy object purveyors." They began undervaluing Sara Lee's stock. Not good, of course. To correct the situation, starting in September of 1997, the company announced a 1.6 billion dollar restructuring plan, that would enable them to get out of the "stuff" making business. Thirteen of its factories were sold to contractors, who became Sara Lee's suppliers. Sara Lee would use the savings to double its ad spending (3).
The plan worked and Sara Lee's CEO, a man called John H. Bryan did a mea culpa, saying, "It's passe for us to be as vertically integrated as we were." As a reward the company was treated to a fifteen percent rise in their stock price and flattering portraits of its bold and imaginative CEO in the business press (3).
You know what this story reminds me of? A Hindu tale I read once. It seems there were these three gods - let's call them god A , god B, and god C, mainly because I've long forgotten their names. One day they were in their divine repose, in their celestial realm, contemplating the unity of all things, so on and so forth. In other words, they were just chillin.'
B became curious about the nature of life on Earth. So, he descended to our planet and took the body of a pig. He did what pigs do, as far as we know. He oinked-oinked, ate absolutely anything imaginable, and suppose quite a few things unimaginable, and rolled around in slop. A and C looked on, amused at first. But then some time went by with no sign that their divine friend and companion was coming back. You know what they say, "Happy as a pig in s---."
Not only that, but the god-pig took a female pig mate and, with her, had pig children. At this time A and C's curious amusement morphed into impatience and amazement. A said to C, one day, 'You know, I think B's gone native. I think he really believes he is a pig and not a god at all!'
A and C sought to shock B out of his delusion by killing his pig mate and pig children. They did so, but with no effect. The god-pig reacted to this turn of events, however pigs react to such things, but he did not shed his succulent, porky existence.
Finally, the A and C destroyed the pig body of their friend. B returned to his true state and to his celestial companions, relieved and grateful, of course. You see the parallels, don't you? Wall Street and the business press play the roles of gods A and C. Sara Lee corporation is god B, ignorantly trolling around in a lower form of existence, one that A and C (both the gods of heaven and Wall Street) view as beneath B (the third god of heaven and Sara Lee.
It does not matter to the other two of the triumvirate (A and C gods of heaven and Wall Street) that B (the third god of heaven and Sara Lee) is seemingly content, happy, and indeed, thriving. What matters is that B' s earth-bound presence is an affront to the dignity of the godhood as a whole (heaven and Wall Street).
Therefore, the fallen son must be chastised and reminded of his proper station in the scheme of things. If I understood Naomi Klein right, there had been no logic to how Wall Street had treated Sara Lee during its pre "restructuring" period, than this, the fact that "... Wall Street,... is guided by spiritual goals as well as economic ones."
2. ibid. p. 199
3. ibid., p.200
More next time.
wingedcentaur
Good Morning Friends,
To pick up where we left off. It is important to note that when we speak of "branding," we are also talking about a different means of production that seems to go along with it. Again, Naomi Klein wrote:
"For some companies a plant closure is still a straightforward decision to move the same facility to a cheaper locale. But for others - particularly those with strong brand identities like Levi Strauss and Hanes - layoffs are only the most visible manifestation of a much more fundamental shift: one that is less about where to produce than how. Unlike the factories that hop from one place to another, these factories will never rematerialize. Mid-flight, they morph into something else entirely: "orders" to be placed with a contractor, who may well turn over those orders to as many as subcontractors, who - particularly in the garmet sector - may in turn pass a portion of the subcontracts on to a network of home workers who will complete the jobs in basements and living rooms (1)."
For some companies, the "sweatshop" model of "racing to the bottom," is just fine, thank you very much. But for other companies, perhaps, who have more of a public relations concern, but most definitely those with strong brand identities, this "entrepreneurial" system (as they, said corporations, no doubt would describe it) is preferred. This approach would certainly serve some ideological functions.
Such companies can say that they either have never had anything to do with, or have moved away from the sweatshop model - as information about its exploitativeness has been put forward.
They can advance the dubious claim that they are, in fact, doing a good thing for the poor people of the developing world, you know, by fostering "entrepreneurialism." One wonders how this intersects with the practice of certain globe-trotting venture capitalists, I guess you'd call them, who offer "micro-loans" to communities in the developing world. One wonders if the two practices, the "morphing" plant and micro-loans, compliment and sustain and even justify each other.
We'll go to another post and look at something else.
wingedcentaur
To pick up where we left off. It is important to note that when we speak of "branding," we are also talking about a different means of production that seems to go along with it. Again, Naomi Klein wrote:
"For some companies a plant closure is still a straightforward decision to move the same facility to a cheaper locale. But for others - particularly those with strong brand identities like Levi Strauss and Hanes - layoffs are only the most visible manifestation of a much more fundamental shift: one that is less about where to produce than how. Unlike the factories that hop from one place to another, these factories will never rematerialize. Mid-flight, they morph into something else entirely: "orders" to be placed with a contractor, who may well turn over those orders to as many as subcontractors, who - particularly in the garmet sector - may in turn pass a portion of the subcontracts on to a network of home workers who will complete the jobs in basements and living rooms (1)."
For some companies, the "sweatshop" model of "racing to the bottom," is just fine, thank you very much. But for other companies, perhaps, who have more of a public relations concern, but most definitely those with strong brand identities, this "entrepreneurial" system (as they, said corporations, no doubt would describe it) is preferred. This approach would certainly serve some ideological functions.
Such companies can say that they either have never had anything to do with, or have moved away from the sweatshop model - as information about its exploitativeness has been put forward.
They can advance the dubious claim that they are, in fact, doing a good thing for the poor people of the developing world, you know, by fostering "entrepreneurialism." One wonders how this intersects with the practice of certain globe-trotting venture capitalists, I guess you'd call them, who offer "micro-loans" to communities in the developing world. One wonders if the two practices, the "morphing" plant and micro-loans, compliment and sustain and even justify each other.
We'll go to another post and look at something else.
wingedcentaur
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