#15

#15

A medium that is reproductive can take reality and reduplicate it meticulously, the way that virtual reality is pushing us deeper into hyperreality¹, a reality that collapses in on itself and brings the spectacle to an end. The tendency of reality to reproduce from one medium to another is the reproduction of the medium into the message. This tendency towards hyperreality was inaugrated by realism. “Realism seeks essential or scientific correspondence with physical reality.”² Reality and its representation is fundamentally linked to the imitation of the ideal. Appropriation, reproduction, simulacra, and simulation all comprise the 'new realism'.

Paul Harvey writes to us from 1976, to quote the then-Republican Party politician George Romney who described the American “economic system as neither capitalism nor socialism – but 'consumerism.'”³ Citizen Harvey goes on to say that the industrialist and former Interior Secretary Wally Hickel redefined the American political preference as “neither liberalism nor conservatism – but 'realism.'”⁴

Citizen Harvey cites Hickel as saying that down through the twentieth century the American political system has been swinging like a pendulum, from left to right and back again. Citizen Harvey demystifies any reality of there being a post-McCarthy era hidden Communist lurking underneath every American bed or that the U.S. Economy is somehow isolated from the rest of the world. Rather, for Citizen Harvey, the realism is in the enlightened selfishness of capitalism. And in this light, Citizen Harvey quotes Hickel as saying that “the wave of the future is realism.”⁵

Citizen Harvey stresses that this does not mean that the government should take care of everybody whilst nobody is left to take care of the government. “In trying to do everything for everyone,” writes Citizen Harvey, we almost destroy the system of capitalism.⁶ And nobody'll do that any day will they? Even so, as a caution Citizen Harvey warns that a minority can litigate and legislate away the citizen's own freedom, a freedom that is inherent within capitalism. So, it would appear that some amount of realism is needed to bridge the gap between capitalism and socialism and keep in check a rampant consumerism. Citizen Harvey's article also raises the question as to whether we should prioritize unemployment ahead of concerns about the environment.

From the epoch of Citizen Harvey, there might be something to be said about the myth of scarcity. “{An oil} driller dares not plan a $10 million investment when he doesn't know whether the price is going to be 52 cents or $2.”⁷ Prices have to have a high fixivity according to the myth of scarcity for any real capitalist to make any serious money. Meanwhile Citizen Harvey reports that economists protest the economy for its increasing complexity. Yet, “{i}n reality, economics is as simple as this,” Citizen Harvey tells us, that, “{t}here is no wealth without production. The way to stop inflation is to increase production.”⁸ The rubric of consumerism: once again exploiting the proletarian. It bears repeating: the proletarian must be abolished. Surplus-value can be proportionate to an increase in wages. Citizen Harvey tells us: “{t}he cost of electricity will go down when there is more than enough electricity. The prices of houses will go down when there are more houses than buyers. That is realism.”⁹

1See Chapter 2 for the definition of 'hyperreality'. Basically, it means the simulation of reality.

2Jones, B. (1989) “Computer Imagery: Imitation and Representation of Realities.” Leonardo. Supplemental Issue, Vol. 2; p.32.

3Harvey, P. (1976) “It's Time For Realism.” Ocala Star-Banner, Sep. 26.

4Ibid.

5Ibid.

6Ibid.

7Ibid.

8Ibid.

9Ibid.

©Elijah Nathaniel James

#14

#14

The social, not beyond the dynamics of Kapital, controls the rational excess of surplus-value. The power to extract this through the commodity of labour is at the heart of the concept of production. Production is our reference for the mode of social production around which we can form a critique of political economy. Surplus-value is measurable. Social labour and its rational operation is distinctly assigned to value. Labour of every kind is generally equivalent to the law of value and the production of value depends on wealth and its natural distribution.¹ The law of value is desired vertiginously, Kapital is desired profoundly, and exchange bears the quality of a certain humanist morality. Kapital makes a profit from labour power which is traded off against productivity.²

Kapitalismo-sozjietie self-evidently contains the abstract quantity that forms the immanent system in which Kapital becomes embroiled in a flux of signs, where signs undo what has been done and social relations are rendered virtual - a reappropriation of the actualization of Kapital. Static, industrial Kapital is being transferred to the virtual.

Surplus-value is realized in the order of simulacra, united by a common feature, embodied by the concrete.³ We often remain unaware of the concrete ways that specifically affect our capacity to act due to the way that Kapital invests our desires, our impulses, and, the assemblages of our specific drives. It channels them into channels of simulation.

Surplus-value, that is, labour productivity, contributes to the immanent system that makes Kapitalismo-sozjietie unique.⁴ “{S}urplus value ... expresses the movement and contradictions of immanent relations of capitalist exploitation.”⁵ Surplus-value and its procurement stem from the immanent and incessant drives that come from the decoded flux of signs that are contained within social flows.⁶ Kapitalismo-sozjietie measures the quantity of the decoded flux of signs, their abstractions and their universal impositions, and surplus-value is generated with a constant necessity, without limitations, from the flow of social relations.⁷ Kapitalismo-sozjietie's virtual spheres of actuality contain the means of production from which labour and its division is associated with the exploitation and alienation of the immanent event expressed by the productivity of labour which generates surplus-value.⁸

Surplus-value within a socialist system, Kapital amassed by labour productivity, reappropriates material accumulation for redistribution to meet people's needs. We can view this through the lens of China's economic system in the immaediate wake of Chairman Mao's legacy preceding globalizations' hegemony.

Citizen Anonymous, writing for The Spokesman-Review in 1977, explains how “China called on its people ... to help raise 'enormous funds' to build a modern Socialist state ... 'entirely different' from capitalism.”⁹ In capitalist states, economic growth and prosperity can often be sacrificed for the sake of ideological purity, where the maintenance of the status quo would rather leadership remain static than be pragmatic. If the means of surplus-value is to increase accumulation for the state then its end is towards its redistribution amongst its citizens and not lining the pockets of its upper-echelon denizens.

The situation requires a radical divergence from all ideologies of leadership parties, a 'cultural revolution' of people and polities, and the installation of a new international economic order that can guarantee the interests of developing countries. Socialist ends can be met by the correct appropriation and remuneration of funds channeled into agriculture, industry, science, technology, and protectionism in trade relations. By the end of this century the continent of Africa shall be united by an economic union in its entirety. The creation of a new international economic order for developing nations can safeguard the labour of Africa from being expropriated from the worker and the manufacturer. It is the union of the union led by the chairperson and the delegation coalition.

The gains of enterprise under socialism differ essentially from capitalist profit. Citizen Anonymous tells us: “{t}he gains of a Socialist enterprise are a manifestation of the workers' conscious effort to create material wealth, provide funds for consumption and accumulate capital for building socialism.”¹⁰ A manifestation of cooperation, not a manifestation of prestation.

In our contemporary day, China manipulates economic accounting in enterprise to increase accumulation for socialism, but it does this, like any other outfit that is nominally socialist, by putting profit in command. Returning to our epoch of 1977, Citizen Anonymous writes that “Peking has experienced trouble within the economy because 'people became wary of finance and accounting.'”¹¹ The same rings true in our contemporary day. Suspicions have been raised, doubts have been confirmed, and the people and their polity under the prestation of capitalist hegemony are beginning to demand revisions to the decisions within our global economy.

1Baudrillard, J. (1993) Symbolic Exchange and Death. London: SAGE Publications Ltd; p.9.

2Ibid., p.47, n.21.

3Roberts, J. M. (2012) “Poststructuralism against poststructuralism: Actor-network theory, organizations and economic markets.” European Journal of Social Theory, Vol.15, No.1; p.48.

4Ibid., p.49.

5Ibid., p.37.

6Ibid., p.46.

7Ibid.

8Ibid., p.37.

9Citizen Anonymous (1977) “China calls for economic growth.” The Spokesman-Review, Aug. 28.

10Ibid.

11Ibid.

©Elijah Nathaniel James