The Audacity of Greed
In a perverse way you can't help but be impressed by these Wall Street cats, I mean, like a patient just hours out of open heart surgery who lights up a cigarette after wolfing down a cheeseburger, these guys display a demonic flair when it comes to risk taking. With renewed vigour they are pushing the next bubble tighter and tighter, partying like it was the Final Hour, ( perhaps they read Lovelock?) mere months after nearly bringing down the global economy!
What we used to call the Left and what was formerly known as the Working Class have no response to such a suicidal orgy, they gawk, stunned, and attend Michael Moores movie. They were used to fighting penny pinching plodders, old school magnates and barons who tried to avoid social unrest. This new breed of wheeler dealers could care less if we fold back into feudalism, and a lecture by Obama on "personal responsibility" is just more hilarity and high jinx. I don't see Bill Cosby lecturing black males on "responsibility" now that their unemployment rate is over 40% and foreclosures have tripled, either.
"What, asks Marx, is the power of the state over private property? The state has only the illusion of being determinant, whereas in fact it is determined; it does in time subdue private and social wills, but only to give substance to the will of private property and to acknowledge its reality as the highest reality of the political state, as the highest moral reality.( Gesamtausgabe,1927 pg.519)"
"For him the only resolution of political alienation and the contradiction between the state and society is within the framework of 'true democracy'.'All other political systems are specific ,definate, particular political forms. In democracy, the formal principle is also the material principle.'
Here he is saying democracy must govern ALL aspects of sociality including production and allocation. Central to the whole system is the point that political emancipation is not synonymous with human emancipation.
"Human emancipation can only be realized by transcending bourgeois society, "which has torn up all genuine bonds between men and replaced them by selfishness, selfish need, and dissolved the world of men into a world of atomized individuals, hostile towards each other."
In other words, Milton Friedmans dream-scape and Wall Streets reality.
Thanks to Ralph Milibrand for quotes from his essay Marx and the State lifted from Democracy and the Capitalist State edited by Graeme Duncan
posted by troutsky @ 11:03 PM
22 comments
22 Comments:
""Human emancipation can only be realized by transcending bourgeois society,"
Sounds like someone is championing individualism. Have you had an epiphany?
"Human emancipation can only be realized by transcending bourgeois society, "which has torn up all genuine bonds between men and replaced them by selfishness, selfish need, and dissolved the world of men into a world of atomized individuals, hostile towards each other."
First you must repair the bonds between man and nature. Man's hostility towards other men is a function of man's hostility to nature. Again, it began with the domestication of land and animals; and culminated in the domestication and enslavement of one's fellow man. There is a real strain in our psychological development ontogenetically and phylogenetically as a result of the factors leading to civilization. Only hope is to undo the fuck up.
Central to the whole system is the point that political emancipation is not synonymous with human emancipation.
True enough, but not much help.
Whoever said they were the same? But you're over the edge into Utopian dreaming here. Or should we just leave it to Lennon: "...better free yourself instead?"
The government takes away the bonuses, of people who make their living from their investments, not wages.
Obama's administration is more connected to finance capital than Bush's.
Notice when you talk about workers democracy, oafish cconservatives change the language, and talk about North Korea or some other Stalinist deformation. I would do that too, if my politics was that bankrupt.
Yodood, though it seems like splitting hairs, I think there is a very real and crucial difference between Marxs "the full development of each is the condition for the full development of all" and the Lockean individualism , so essential to the concept of private property rights, and which I believe I have seen espoused in your writings.(tell me if I am mistaken) Celebration of the self as the source of all authority is the foundation of Friedmans anarchy and Ayn Rands objectivism. and a destructive fetish.
kultur, why the need to prioritize? A simultaneous healing would stem from calculating "true" price when setting production and consumption goals democratically.
Isn't it true that native Americans who were not agrarian or kept domesticated animals took slaves? Sacajawea for instance?
Both you and Lichanos might find the article in Harpers called The Cold We Caused interesting. For kultur because it is another indictment of agriculture and for Lichanos because if the hypothesis is accepted, it is further proof of man-caused climate change.
Troutsky
Don't know how you get from some economic suppy and demand calculus, to a healed relationship with nature and your fellow humans... but god bless you if you can!
Sacajawea? - you mean the Indian woman who was born in 1788, was taken )bought) as a wife by some whiteman trapper, and then joined the Lewis and Clarck expedition? That one? Don't see the relevance!
The Hidatsa tribe who stole her away prio to this, was already a sedentary, agricultural group. So somenstication had already set in through much contact with the white settlers over generations.
Comrade Gassy Sandwich
You have no politics and are soulless. North Korea and Jim Jones are the ultimate examples of your bufoonery. Humans are cattle to be given meaning only when they are slaughtered for your power mad fancy.Stalinism is the logical progression of your demented death cult.
Kultur
Are you going into the noble savage BS? Preindustrial cultures were many things and diverse as man itself. The notion that preindustrial man was in harmony with nature is only real in Mazzola
commercials.
Preindustrial man hunted animals to
extinction, depleted resources and sometimes were quite brutal to each other. However, even their worst behaviors do no compare to the evils unleashed by Marxists and their Nazi cousins. Preindustrial man faced many of the same concerns we face. They were not that different on a day to day basis.
A savage is an uncouth individual with no concern for human beings, no morality and no respect for private property. This does not describe preindustrial man, but it
does describe Marxists.
Troutsky
Individuaslism is the essence of Americanism. It is the height of delusion that bug eyed death cultists know more about the needs of the people than the people themselves. The "false consciousness" is a product of self
serving delusions by bug eyed death
cultists.
kultur- the Hidatsa were agriculturalists long before contact with whites. I'd suggest reading "1491" by Charles Mann to get an idea on the scope of native societies before Columbus. The outlook you seem to subscribe to seems to rely heavily on the stereotype of the "noble savage" and it hasn't done native people any favors over the last 500 years.
There also seems to be a heavily primitivist strain in your thought, which is a nice romantic idea, but will never happen unless there's a near-extinction of humanity. Even writers who promote primitivism like John Zerzan admit this. Nobody's going to sign up to smash civilization so they can go die in childbirth in the woods.
"To destroy science - that would be high treason to humanity"-
Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State"
PS: Beaker- although we seem to vaguely agree on some point here ('noble savage' and whatnot), I'm still telling you to get your ass away from the keyboard and develop a social life beyond internet harassment of "commie" blogs with readerships in the dozens.
...in Harpers called The Cold We Caused interesting. ... for Lichanos because if the hypothesis is accepted, it is further proof of man-caused climate change.
Can't find it online yet, but I found a long abstract and a link to the article by Ruddiman on which it is based.
Interesting hypothesis: paleolithic land use and changes in medieval land use caused steep drops in atmospheric CO2. Far from proven, however. Furthermore, even if proved, it proves nothing about climate change. The link between CO2 and significant climate change is a separate hypothesis that must be proven idependently.
Good try, Trout.
Charlie
My social life is quite full. You must have me confused with the Kultur
or the gassy sandwich.
Charlie
I would not be giving too many people advice without first understanding their position. Perhaps you should google me and read two or three of my works. Mostly academic publications. But there is also the philosophical memoir, The Recovery of Ecstasy. You have no idea who I am, so don't lecture me with your sophomoric knowledge!!
Take your own advice to Beakerkin - Go out and get a FUCKIN life
With Love and Rage,
s krolick, ph.d.
Troutsky: I think you should add a code of conduct for this blog. Once it is established your free to delete comments such as personal attacks and being off subject.
Beak's blog is moderated. If someone did at his blog, what he does here, he'd delete the comment.
Charlie - BTW; checked out your site... it is cute... but I don't know what it can achieve!!
kultur-
Have fun being petty.
That's all.
just *had* to come back...
Kultur- Just checked you out. Ha- good for a laugh.
I'm sorry, when I said petty I meant "petty-bourgeois".
Waving your Ph.D around to show your intellectual supremacy is about as anarchistic as joining the fucking army.
I'm glad you were born into a well-to-do family. Very nice.
As for what I can "change"- I don't know. Maybe as much as someone in pleated pants discussing theory in a philosophy department does. Maybe a little more. All I know is that while that person sits around and romanticizes the Native American past, I watch my modern native friends get harassed and profiled by our modern police department. While some people sit comfortably and write in their blogs about the evils of technology, I'm filling out job applications in a never-ending battle to fucking survive. While some peoples' fathers sit comfortably in their half-million dollar homes, mine lives in a tent on the edge of clearcut.
Yes, sir, I am very impressed by what you've achieved. Some people don't have those opportunities.
If you really, really, think you're up to affecting change, I have a suggestion. Hang yourself. You, your Ph.D, and your safe suburban home are the problem.
Sorry if I'm fuming here. I take this all very personally. While some people can afford to wallow in cesspools of theory, none of what's happening right now is abstract for me in the least.
I'm sure I'll catch hell for this, but the truth is I don't give a fuck.
CHARLES!!!
You are just a barrel of laughs.
First, I wish to acknowledge your attempt at research about me. However, about that "the upper-middle class status you were born into, that social pedestal which has afforded such opportunities to you..." the record needs to be corrected. Obviously, again you make assumptions that are groundless and based on prejudices that stem from a possible arrest in your normal psychic development.
My father was a gunner in the US Army in the second word war... Upon his return, my mother and he gave birth to my brother and then me. We were living in a bronx walk-up, on the southside of the Bronx. My father was never educated past high school; my mother had some college courses in the city, but no degree. My dad's family had no money, nor did my mom, whose parents died within 2 days of one another before I was born. My dad became a shoe salesman in the city to support his family. Years later, when I was a teenager, he had enough, as your critique of capitalism suggests... to open his own shop and become a boss.
He never turned into that nasty man, Phillip whom you describe in your pamphlet. But, the work, cigarettes, and perhaps my mother's nagging killed him at the age of 51.
I took out govt loans, and recieved, work study money and late, teaching assistantship's to continue and graduate with my three diplomas.
I also paid back all of the $30,000 I owed back in the 80's. There was never any social platform or upper middle class life style that provided me with opportunity.
Again, I say to you... GET A LIFE
s krolick
Oh and Charles
YOU ARE A FUCKING LOSER!!!
sandy
Charles, one more thing for your bong-pipe...
I love you trotting out your poor man credentials; your wow is me, i am such a fucking loser credentials; oh my god, i can't make it in a capitalistic world; so it SUCKS!! My degenerate friends are all harrassed, because all we ever do is sit around smoking crack all day. WELL FUCK YOU AND YOUR ANARCHIST CREDENTIALS> YOU ARE A REAL FUCKIN BORE! Nobody but you can speak becuase you are the only one with the man's dick up your ass!!
Hey, Trout. Time to do some policing of your site, I think.
OK, OK, that seems like enough. This blog is about debate, but, as in society at large, does at times devolve into cage fighting.
Charlie, Sandy: We need neither "love" nor "rage"if we are going to understand either of your various strains of anarchism and world views.
Sandy, Charlie made what I felt was an honest and far from sophomoric attempt at critique and you lashed out. Thanks for the bio, I think it does help us relate to one another, though I have mixed emotions about the fact that this seems SO necessary.
Charles, Sandys book is all about change, though we both may disagree with his thesis or on whether writing is enough.Social psychology plays a role in praxis and his "recovery of ecstacy" deserves consideration. I admire your heart felt motivation, anger and disgust at the status quo and try to tap into my own because action is needed and when Marx said "It is not enough to interpret the world..." he was correct.
But we do first need to do SOME interpretation.I don't believe much will come of spontaneous re-action to this system and so any Left movement needs a coherent vision. Marx,Bakunin and others left much to work with but not enough, in my opinion.So while it may seem grandiose to some and naive to others, this blog is about building dialectically on this work.
This goes to Che Bob and the others, I hope you all stick around and figure out how to communicate. Change We Can Believe IN! (joke)
Ah Comwad Gassy Sandwich is crying again. Relax unlike you I have no need to invade people's privacy or summon henchmen to do my dirty work,plausible deniability.
FYI My blog is moderated because your henchman do not know how to behave. I post virtually all non criminal comments including very critical ones.
Cry me a river comic book comwad.
Yes sandy, your willingness to generalize poor working class people as "crackheads" shows how well you've clung to your humble roots...taking up Reaganite slander is great. I suppose I'll see you harping on "welfare Cadillac mothers" next.
AND YES! I AM A LOSER!
I've lost in a system based on competition and back-biting. You, on the other hand, have clearly won.
How does it feel to be a class-traitor?
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