#1
Representation recedes directly; the intermediary draws away from actuality. The spectacle of mediation accumulates an immensity of production under the condition of domination.
Socialism coexists with the production of the commodity; {C}. Kapital {K}, abstractly, is the commodity.
The society governed by Kapital is a “social formation in which the presence of commodity production reflects the struggle within the bureaucracy and between the bureaucracy and the proletariat.”1
Victor Riesel writes from 1970 concerning wage labour, portraying the immiseration of the Kansas City labourers union of unskilled workers. Citizen Riesel uses the term proletarian explicitly, a term not anachronistic to 1970. Citizen Riesel writes from a time when strikes in The United States of America spanned across 22 states. Rather than the mobilization of the sickle and the hammer, Citizen Riesel's comrades lay down their arms. America's “endemic rebels,” according to Citizen Riesel, redistribute the capital of their expropriation by means of the strike.
George Shultz and then-president Richard Nixon author the apology of capital's representation. The proletarian, the immiseration, the expropriation. Citizen Riesel assigns power to the radicalism of rebellion with a juxtaposed view of an establishment that considers the strike to be “militant.”2
In a 1970's America, those who built the structures owned the houses whilst those who did the talk wore the trousers, the labourers were the lower classes remaining expropriated and immiserated in their masses.
A rise in wages means a rise in commodity exchange value which has lead to a rise in the number of bureaucrats serving the bureaucracy that upholds capitalist domination. If each and every one who considered themselves a bureaucrat, thereby recognizing themselves as the proletariat – Citizen Smith addresses ye, o people of the telephone call centre, the mill worker, the night-shift shelf filler – and walked out «en masse» on bank holiday Monday in the month of May then each and every one of us would get their own way, put it to a vote, let each and every one have their say.
That is what the society governed by Kapital does.
The collectivity, extending to all members of the commonality, share a belief-system brought about by cohesion. Between individuals consensus is established. “At the same time, their voluntary consensus links up with a coercion imposed upon them 'from within' – that is, by the collectivity greater than their sum.”3Conscience collective describes the process of coercion by consensus. “Or, to reformulate, conscience collective is the norms, constraints, moral or religious sentiments, and all manner of symbolic representation that express a society and legitimate both its institutions and the actual behaviour of the people in it.”
°There must be something wrong with society if I'm behaving badly° thinks Citizen Smith.
The freedom to make choices falls under the illusion of external forces that nullify any determination of individual behaviour. Depressions mark the oscillations of liberal culture, the very thing that determines our behaviour, liberal culture. Material circumstances delimit the determinations that give us real choices.4
“Consciousness of the material origins of culture and its relation to material progress, the history of the material struggle of classes is disprivileged. This favours an appeal to 'man's history' in which the unified subject 'man' has progressed. It is 'in our day' that this progress is said to be challenged.”5
[1] Gillette, C./Raiklin, E. (1988) “The Nature of Contemporary Soviet Commodity Production.”International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 15, No. 516; p. 65.
[2] Riesel, V. (1970) "Nation Disdains Much Authority." Rome News-Tribune, Jun. 23.
[3] Shevtsova, M. (1989) “The Sociology of the Theatre.” New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 18; p.182.
[4] Wallis, M. (1994) “Pageantry and the Popular Front: Ideological Production in the 'Thirties'.”New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 38; p.140.
[5] Ibid., 141.
#2
A recovery of unity, from which streams commodity, merges aspects detached from reality as images. The view of this world of unity regroups reality looking back on itself fragmentedly. Images that autonomize worlds, through this fragmentation process, evolve these worlds of images through the specialization of their appendages. The movement of autonomy is inverted concretely to produce the totality of the spectacle of mediation.
“The capitalist economy represents a union of the material-technological process and its social forms, i.e. the totality of production relations among people.”1
Does Charles Levinson, writing from the same era as Victor Riesel, an era in which Citizen Smith fondly remembers by the apparel of the bellbottom trouser, make a socialist or conservative move when he states that “authoritarian regimes” become more abundant “through the influence of big western companies and groups” by leaving it open to doubt?2 Citizen Levinson reiterates what has become an adage of the contemporary age in the sentiments that “a few people at the top” subjugate the populations beneath them, pursuing greed through commercial empire-building and they do this because of their materialist background, one that has been ideologically reinforced by capital, capital being institutional; Kapital, the institutional being!
International trade was the one thing that state communism had to forego: the output of its internal production was unsustainable to its internal consumption. Neoliberal economies by their very abundance stifle the abundance of developing economies by flooding them with an inflated exchange value which alters the exchange rate of global capital thereby making commerce unsustainable.3
Citizen Levinson tells us of how “{i}n the United States, the Dartmouth Group {had} been studying for a long time how to overcome the obstacles in the way of exploiting the gold mine represented by Eastern Europe.”4 When capital becomes institutional it becomes more-and-more effective at exploiting people. Now Kapital even owns the Ruble even though there is no official symbol!
Citizen Levinson explains how in the mid-1960's the International Basic Economy Corporation took care of the interests of Standard Oil by colonizing, a process to which Citizen Levinson goes referring to as the white man civilizing, by colonizing communist states with the apparatuses of Kapital so that Kapital could extract capital for the lowest price of labour possible. According to Citizen Levinson, Europe was a breeding ground for subsidiary activity by firms that needed to hide the volume of their transactions, all in the name of higher profits, and all this at a time when the war in Vietnam needed an anti-communist line. A suitable distraction. War in one direction, in the other, extraction. Not backed by the collateral of treasury, vis-a-vis, gold, remunerations to the communist countries could be made at the lowest price.
Guises were crucial to advisors. By 1970, 900 special partnerships existed that fused “anti-communist capitalist enterprise {with} anti-capitalist state organization”5 - amazing how overseas trade can oversee the affairs of states abroad. Yet, according to Citizen Levinson, the doublethink of this ideology in the undertaking of business relations led to richer profits, in the economies of motors, chemicals, and rubber. The communist hypothesis cannot call its dialectical materialism ideological doublethink by its very opposition.
Citizen Levinson describes Kapital's machinery perfectly: “{T}he western firm produces knowledge, capital and technology, and the eastern partner the work force, premises, energy and primary materials. In order to recover its investments and secure a profit, the western firm takes on the worldwide marketing of the part set aside for export, and makes its profit on what is sold abroad.”6
Citizen Levinson tells us that the need for a strengthening of commercial ties between Russia and America led to an end for the Vietnam conflict. The irony is, that the firm General Dynamics, the main armament supplier for the Vietnam war, in the 1970's “signed a technical agreement with the Russians which may be expressed in the terms of manufacture of its products in the Soviet Union and their subsequent export.”7 Same old story: manufacture cheap labour. Whether the Soviet Union would then arm a state that was antagonistic towards The United States is a question of Kapital's ultimate competition.
Corporations such as General Motors and certain Texas oil companies ended The Cold War with their contracts long before the fall of the Berlin Wall. That's the neoliberal rubric for international trade: keep import tariffs low and export tariffs high. Soviet leaders, Citizen Levinson aptly tells us, considered it important for their economy to acquire Kapital's technology; it didn't have to come with the appendage of a doctrinal ideology. This was left as a trade secret – perhaps communism blinded by the ideology of the proletariat it so wanted to abolish – within the cabal that is the very Kapital.
Authoritarian regimes become more abundant, “under which the rights of individuals or the community as a whole are not of paramount consideration{.}” It's not that the Eastern European countries of the Bloc were ever liberated from communism before this event took place within history but that they were already owned by the multinationals by 1970. The multinationals' participation in the economy subtracts from democracy, forms a democracy that is exclusionary, and reduces the abundance of any developing economy. If, as Citizen Levinson says, that “{r}unning a business efficiently and at a profit is not an activity which concerns itself with all the complications involved in the question of civil and human rights,”8 then, the state legislatory body should become separated from the economy.
[1] Kicillof, A. & Starosta, G. (2007) “On Materiality and Social Form.” Historical Materialism, Vol. 15, No. 3; p.12.
[2] Levinson, C. (1974) "Multinationals crusade in communist countries." The Montreal Gazette, Feb. 13.
[3] (p x i = wp x i / e ): price multiplied by investment equals world-price multiplied by investment over the exchange rate.
[4] Levinson, C. Op. Cit.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
#3
The unification of the society governed by Kapital and the division of the society governed by Kapital happens simultaneously through the presentation of the spectacle of mediation. The consciousness of {its} - the society governed by Kapital or the spectacle? - of its vision, or point of focality, guides the society governed by Kapital. A consciousness of falsity and delusion enters the domain of reality separating us universally.
The concrete activities of people in the material-technical production process of Kapital – material, technical, digital - presupposes concrete production relations among people, and vice versa. “{T}he unintended consequences {that derive} from the dimension of social transformation ... produces ... {a} multi-linear character of {transformation} of the sovereignty {of the people}.”1
Citizen Anonymous writes to us from 1970, a time when Leftists celebrated the victory of Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Colombo, Ceylon, but in the rampage speaks of the incident of a policeman losing his life. The return to power of the woman premier signified violent upheavals, so entrenched are the neoliberals, that they cannot concede ground without placing private mercenaries – no union to protect them or the ephemeral canvas of temporary state power either – the neoliberals cannot concede ground without placing private mercenaries upon it.
Bandaranaike's programme of 'Free Rice for All' gave her and her Socialist-Communist United Front a 73% majority in a democratically elected parliamentary system. The previous leader, Dudley Senanayake, could only just scrape 1% in the newly formed body. Russia considered it a victory for 'progressive regimes'.
The interests of peace and democracy require transformation socially, a radical new policy towards socialist sovereignty to strengthen societal progression. Citizen Anonymous tell us that “{t}he {Soviet} Communist party newspaper Pravda ... commented that 'the returns of the elections {were} evidence that the peoples of Asian countries reject the imperialist policy of setting Asians against Asains,”2 the legacy of which can be seen today in the relationship between North and South Korea.
[1] Shilliam, R. (2006) “What about Marcus Garvey?”Review of International Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3; p.384.
[2] Citizen Anonymous (1970) “Policeman killed in Ceylon violence.” Palm Beach Post, May 30.
#4
The method of confirmation, the conclusion of thought's refutation, here by this mode of philosophical abstraction, not forgotten, is that the historical action is the historical demonstration of the historical proletarian. This world in its totality operates via the consciousness of its historicity, nothing less than revolutionary, revolutionary proletarian practice; its praxis salvaging its historical axis. “{I}n order for the proletariat to become the new 'producer class' it {has} to equal and indeed surpass capitalism's formidable organizational capacity, not only in production, but in all its revolutionary structures.”1
So, private property remains subject to ownership but membership, membership of a public body, solely, belongs to the proletariat corporeally; the means of production cannot be owned by the agents of corporate commerciality. We have to relinquish this idea that capital is private. Kapital is ephemeral.
To negate the negation, to see power as ephemeral, forms a major part of the project of our commons. So, if power deludes the viewer of its form through its symbol then the question remains for those mounting a challenge as to how to co-opt or remove the symbol to reveal the vacuum that lies behind it, in order to fill it.
Citizen Anonymous, who writes to us from 1978, explains how, just three years earlier “in 1975, at United Aircraft near Montreal, workers were savagely beaten by a pack of police, dragged before the courts and thrown into prison for the crime of having struggled to keep their union. Or again, at Robin Hood in 1977 private militia shot at workers whose only crime was refusing the wage freeze.”2So, it begs the question as to whether the proletariat should have its own public militia, considering that it appears acceptable for the ruling class to deploy violence to attain their ends - why should it be any different for the working class? “Wherever the workers stand up and resist the bourgeoisie and its State,” writes Citizen Anonymous, “they must confront the arsenal of repressive instruments by which the bourgeoisie exercises its dictatorship against them.”3
Citizen Anonymous, writing for the Leftist periodical, En Lutte, tells us that, in 1978, the Draft Program of the Canadian proletariat took a hardline militant view, by writing that “the program specifies that the party of the proletariat has the task of arming the masses to face reactionary violence and to guarantee the victory of the revolution in any insurrectional situation.”4
Citizen Anonymous contrasts this by explaining that the Communist Party of Canada stated that the working class could “carry out the transition to socialism without a civil war.”5 Citizen Anonymous ascribes the initiation of this attitude of pacification to Krushchev and the Soviet revisionists who saw parliament as the arena through which the working class could revolutionize the State but also acknowledges the contradiction in this since judges, generals, police and high-placed civil servants would remain.
So, on the one hand lies a proletariat as part of a military organization and on the other participating in a “strategy of open conciliation...” The working class as a massive body have their opposite and their opposite is hegemony. Why should it matter if either side is military? The equation is simple, if both sides are armed then the side with the greater majority prevails, no matter what the arsenal entails.
Citizen Anonymous writes that “the Draft Program clearly affirms, it's not a question of arming a few individuals or only the vanguard elements of the working class, but rather, the broad masses under the leadership of the proletarian party.”6This same Draft Program, from 1978, saw socialist revolution in Canada as necessitating the arming of the masses.
[1] McNally, M. (2008) “The Organization of Balance and Equilibrium in Gramsci's Hegemony.” History of Political Thought, Vol. 29, No. 4; p.666.
[2] Citizen Anonymous (1978) “Can we achieve socialism without making revolution, without arming the masses?” En Lutte, May 11.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
#5
The praxis of the transition to socialism has the apporpriate form of assuming the terrain of the historical, it does not abandon the praxis of ideas that recognize the historical subject of the proletariat. “{T}he crucial character of the transition to socialism is not that it is a change in the economic base but that it is a revolutionary change in the relation of base to superstructure.”1
Charles R. Smith, writing to us from 1974, explains the nature of this superstructure, that it is the “socialist ... {l}iterature and art ... which serves {the economic} base{.}”2 State communism in China, from the time when Citizen Smith writes, had the bureaucratic agency, the New China News Agency, to mediate its spectacle's transmission. Where state communism is primarily concerned with propaganda versus censorship, the society governed by Kapital is concerned with the mediation of consumption. 'This is what you shouldn't consume,' says the spectacle of mediation in its red beret, whilst, 'this is what you shall consume,' says the spectacle of mediation in its blue necktie.
Citizen Smith tells us: “the People's Daily and Red Flag Magazine, the party's theoretical journal ... {led a} criticism campaign against the ancient sage Confucius,” proving that the censorship of art in the communist state of China had reached the same proportions as Plato's republic. The question of art toeing the party line was raised by Chu Lan, “believed to be the pseudonym of an important party official ... with particular emphasis on who should be portrayed as heroes.” What is feared by these iconoclasts? It is the “omnipotence of simulacra ... and the destructive, annihilating truth that they allow to appear – from this came their urge to destroy the images.”3 Chairman Mao replaces Confucius in the temple for the sole purpose of changing the canon.
Citizen Smith reports Chu Lan as saying that the literature and art of state communism, which form part of the superstructure of state communism, are not in harmony with the socialist economic base they serve. Could the same be said for the society governed by Kapital? What is its harmony? T.V. Tele-visual, talking virtually. Division and separation, universally. Universally: digitally.
[1] MacIntyre, cited in Blackledge, P. (2005) “Freedom, Desire and Revolution.” History of Political Thought, Vol. 26, No. 4; p.704.
[2] Smith, C. R. (1974) “Chinese Art Doesn't Toe The Party Line.” Ludington Daily News, Sep. 17.
[3] Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra & Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press; p.4.
#6
The society governed by Kapital's omnipresent falsifications serve as the basis for unrealistic authoritarian planning, its industrial production proves superior to its bureaucracy, but its “bureaucracy cannot resolve the question of agriculture...”1 The beginning of labour is marked by the end of a contentless freedom, the end of idlety, when agriculture becomes sedentary, confined within a locality by the industry of the society governed by Kapital, confined to “the repetition of {the sequence of activity}.”2 Cyclical time, based on the rhythm of the seasons, governs the agrarians and their productions. “Eternity is within this time, it is the return of the same here on earth.”3 Without cyclical time, we are subjected to the movement of capital rather than the migration of people. The latter economy is more sustainable.
Bryan Silcock writes to us from 1975 to describe agrarian revolution, a “so-called green revolution ... that {can} produce enormous yields in response to massive applications of nitrogenous fertilizers.”4 Citizen Silcock goes on to explain that the fertilizers are “beyond the means of many peasant farmers in developing countries.”5 Citizen Silcock is looking for a “transformation in agriculture comparable in importance to {a} 'green revolution'{.}” Agrarian, proletarian, revolution. What the society governed by Kapital provides is a possibility.
°How does the society governed by Kapital feed me?° wonders Citizen Smith.
Citizen Silcock provides the answer: through the acquisition of the scientific knowledge that grass bacteria are able to alter their atmospheric conditions for growth rather than relying entirely on the soil. So, the lesson is simple – maybe the message prophetic – that when the system has appeared to have exhausted all its natural resources, it begins to adapt by colonizing outer space and create the conditions there to thrive. “There would be no such obstacle,” writes Citizen Silcock, “to the introduction of cereals able to 'fix atmospheric nitrogen.'” So, we see that the society governed by Kapital also has the ability to modify its own atmosphere to produce better growth conditions.
Citizen Silcock explains that “{l}egumes fix nitrogen with the help of bacteria of the Rhizobum genus, which form conspicuous nodules on the roots.”6 Alongside this thinking “Deleuze and Guattari offer a decentered and multiplicitous thinking which they call rhizomatic. The rhizome,” according to Postmodern Anarchist commentator Lewis Call, “is a nonhierarchical, centerless mode of organization.”7 Nothing in this pandimensional multiverse is unrelated to the centre, or hierarchy for that matter. The 'radicle' - part of a plant embryo that develops into the primary root – is related to the 'folicle' in that the structure of the flora and the fauna can replicate the rhizomatic foundations found below it, surviving in different conditions. Both the rhizomatic foundations and the flora and fauna configurations stem from the single radicle's extensions. The rhizomatic foundations rely on the radicle's attraction to light. The flora and fauna depend on the rhizomatic networks' capture of soil nutrients. This is our allegory for the relationship between the proletarian class and the bourgeoisie, that they are organically linked by the radicle, the root, of the tree schema, as once proposed by the eighteenth century statesman, Edmund Burke, whom Karl Marx vilified as playing the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution.
[1] Debord, G. (2002) Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Ken Knabb. London: Rebel Press; #108.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., #127.
[4] Silcock, B. (1975) “Another green revolution?” The Montreal Gazette, Sep. 29.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Call, L. (2002) Postmodern Anarchism. Maryland: Lexington Books; p.123.
#7
As history pursues its course of conflict, the society governed by Kapital reinforces its class structure ideologically. The effect of distortion upon the monocular and singular reality produces a fragmentation of reality, Walled City1, a representation of its own ideology.
The spectacle of mediation advances the intensification of the fundamental interconnection between the monocular-singular mediation of reality on the one hand and the fragmented mediation of reality on the other. The image of the society governed by Kapital is constantly reshaping the ideology of the society governed by Kapital through the {representations} of its own 'social' identity, virtually, an economy that produces a proliferation of virtual reality,Walled City, a proliferation via a system of autonomization, a concrete ideology of duality.
Walled City can be viewed as “a kind of subversive antinetwork.”2Walled City “exists outside the influence of law and corporate capital.”3 The domain of the virtual is a veil, a secret point of origin for the legends and myths, developed to a point of heritage, a veil for nodal end-user hackers who are “the denizens of Walled City ... very proud of their {transgressions}.”4
Hacktivists, White Hats and Elite hackers, all of them cybernetic and sociocratic, make up fragmentation of the real that opposes the monocular-singular reality of the society governed by Kapital's authority, a check and a balance upon its ultimate supremacy, by operating as “{i}ntelligence agencies and cyberwarfare operatives” of their own totality.5 The centralization of networked technology is the root point, the checkpoint, or gate, through which the sign of the commodity, the Logos of the society governed by Kapital, travels, is reconfigured, manipulated and redistributed to its destination points of multiplicitous localities; whole at the centre, monocular and singular, whilst also pixelated by the plethora of each nodal end-user. The 'pixelation' of the society governed by Kapital's own overall image is its own operation of subversion, the digital cognition of its own imagination, understanding its direct object, in flux, through direct communication with its multiplicitous subject.
The society governed by Kapital's order is able to remain monocular and singular through its radical flux of signs, these pixels making up its motion picture; it gives it a narrative that can at once be conceptual as either statist or political or simultaneously an affront to both of these. The society governed by Kapital is its own critique, it is its own dialectic. Its continued existence is not threatened by any community of hacker elites, rather, it interprets their codes and messages, without enmity, to relay a collection of signals, to form an overall signal, a signal that is tactical, to learn the function of the part of it, its nervous system, that is digital.
Citizen Smith found out that towards the end of the 1970s, Kapital was seeking to employ computer operators to learn its new procedures.
[1] Gibson, W. (1997) Idoru. New York: Berkley Books.
[2] Op. Cit., p.122.
[3] Op. Cit.
[4]Op. Cit.
[5] Chabrow, E. (2012) “7 Levels of Hackers: Applying An Ancient Chinese Lesson.” GovInfo Security. Retrieved Feb. 27.
#8
The objective worldview materializes actuality yet mass-media technology produces manipulation readily. Manipulation relies on power sustaining its coercion over the masses, through the direct application of force, which is why the society governed by Kapital requires an elite. Corporate America is the society governed by Kapital's contemporary power structure.1 The result of this is that “worldviews ... become embedded in the culture of institutions ... bowdlerized through media commentary.”2 So, the society governed by Kapital is adept at omitting its own dissent by its own extended commentary of its structures of power, reinscribing its domination upon those exposed to the discourses put through the channels of the mass-media.
Doug White writes to us from 1973 to explain that “{p}eople have certain, necessary limited experiences” and “contact directly and personally with a wider experience,” or, “indirectly by contact with others through {the media}. ... {T}he making of sense and order of this experience” is developed through explanations and generalizations “about the experience, producing a worldview that transcends the possibilities inherent in a narrow and circumscribed environment.”3
Citizen White implies that “{t}he generalizations are imposed rather than developed out of experience and new experiences are ... manipulated” so that only prescribed notions of the society governed by Kapital are allowed to form. Citizen White recommends that:
“{t}o change this, the notions of the relationship of {the society governed by Kapital} to experience have to be rethought and re-enacted, a more {egalitarian} atmosphere created and the ways of developing autonomy and independence investigated.”4
Citizen White helps us to deconstruct the method of control: so long as “the total social system {remains} mysterious ... the divisions of {the society governed by Kapital} remain ... accepted.” He says, “{w}e participate, communicate and commune; others in the outside world manage, exploit and manipulate.”5
The society governed by Kapital could “on the other hand, be united within itself, and with some other groups around it, in opposition to the local social structure.”
At least, for the most part, the society governed by Kapital attempts to give everyone the equal right to the opportunity for satisfaction. Yet, Citizen White considers even this a subtle form of manipulation.
Citizen White writes: “Satisfaction is like soma, the painless drug-control of Brave New World. While the structure of the social system remains unchanged, groups within it finding satisfaction will remain within the walls made for them.”6
Through the use of the mass-media we can see that the society governed by Kapital sedates any class antagonisms by creating an environment of control.
[1] Freedman, L. (Oct., 2006) “Confessions of a premature constructivist.” Review of International Studies, Vol. 32, No. 4; p.692.
[2] Ibid., p.702.
[3] White, D. (1973) “On making the community school stand up.” The Age, Apr. 16.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
#9
The subtlety of Kapital's ontology and the epistemology of the commodity: K ≈ C. C ≈ K.
The commodity is subject to the exchange of its own complexity. The actuality of its realization is the product, made obvious via the branding process – not at all trivial to the consumer glance. The process of commodification is Kapital enunciating the knowledge of the specificity of its own production. There is tension, a type of enmity, within competition, to lower wages and raise inflation. It is only through recognition of value that Kapital becomes able to transform its resources into the fixed material article. The commodity {C} as abstract entity is like a flux-capacitor – the capacity of flow – which enables the value of one product to be exchanged for another. If we consider Kapital {K} as a living being then the commodity {C} is its direct inversion, if the critic is detected then shut up and listen, its direct inversion, the exponential, epistemological subject of its person. The inversion is the reciprocity of its conversation. The form of the commodity {becomes} congealed when its possession is actively human; exchange has taken place and its direct object becomes its direct consumption. The brand is acknowledged by the living human. The brand adopts this living agency and returns it to the aspect of the commodity that is in flux. The incorporation of multiplicitous signs keeps the commodity in flux. This is the principle of trade, a principle that {becomes} the overall practice of Kapital, which leads us to a basic understanding of how the commodity is mediated via the spectacle.
The drawback, or flaw, of «laissez-faire» capitalism, individualism, per se, as a principle, let's say, is that even though governments cannot restrict what is commercial, the individual is controlled by Kapital.
The function of the commodity is that it plays a central role in the order of the economic regulation of the society governed by Kapital. The commodification of the worker is {its} identity as labourer. This gives us a treatment of Kapital, a sort of synopsis, of its humanity, its ability to at once identify with the human yet at the same time make the human the focus of its production. Kapital desires what is human yet the society governed by Kapital refuses to apologize in the face of its condemnation. The society governed by Kapital, merely, offers to that very face its concatenateous explanation. The desire of the human for Kapital's production is its ultimate consummation and affirmation.1
Kapital, as ontological, seeks to rationalize its suffering through spectacle, and anything else it seeks to examine that makes Kapital ontological, like the editorial of the Lewiston Evening Journal for example.
Citizen Lewsiton – the reader and the editor – writes to us from 1970 to bring to our attention the plight of the migrant worker. This coincided with the enquiry of the spectacle through other media. The Associated Press and the National Broadcasting Company of America both came together to investigate the well-being of the itinerant worker in Texas and Florida. Citizen Lewiston cites a doctor's report submitted to a Senate subcommittee which stated that “'thousands of our fellow citizens are manipulated and managed in such a way as to reduce them to sub-human status.'”2 Citizen Lewiston goes on to say that, “{o}ne of the doctors investigating a migrant camp area in Florida termed it 'the closest equivalent to slave quarters that could exist in a free society.'”3 Citizen Lewiston compares this status to that of the pre-Civil War slaves and feels the need to point out that conditions for workers on the best plantations of the Old South meant better treatment and better care. Is there a greater conscience for Kapital as Kapital becomes more-and-more ontological? - as the spectacle becomes increasingly more conversational, as the memory it has gained moves into the realm of the digital and the virtual becomes more actual?
Citzen Lewiston predicted, from our 1970's epoch, that the “shackles of a modern form of slavery”4 would take generations to throw off. The standard of living for migrant workers were dependent upon wages. Citizen Lewiston contextualizes this by saying that even if the father, mother itinerant labourer, as well as their school age son or daughter, were all to work they would “still fail to earn a sufficient amount of money to support a family adequately.”5 Despite Governor Claude Kirk of Florida refusing to talk to NBC, Kapital indicts the individual to hold the individual responsible and therefore make itself more accountable. As an egregore, that has become a legal individual, Coca-Cola is able to resist and leverage Kapital. This is why the corporation, as well as the individual, must be held accountable. It was “significant that one of the NBC interviewers was ordered out of Coca-Cola's migrant worker compound,” writes Citzen Lewiston.6
[1] O'Brien, J. C. (1981) “Karl Marx, the Social Theorist.” International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 8, No. 6; p.4.
[2] Editorial (1970) “America's Shame.” Lewiston Evening Journal, Jul. 17.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
#10
As crises gain momentum, from within contemporary capitalism, they can only prolong for a certain duration before they are modified by the system. Kapital advances from its programme of abundance towards the adoption of an economy that is a mixture of profit and loss. Kapital rolls over itself backwards to increase abundance. It can do this by harnessing the power of the state, a sort of «levée en masse», and Kapital reinforces its power through its techniques of resource capture. Imported wealth increases the size of the bureaucracy of the society governed by Kapital. The bureaucracy shares an association, primarily, with the spectacle of mediation and its concentration.
Bureaucrats comprise community, through their membership, the community which is married implicitly to the economy in its entirety. The state has direct ownership over the bureaucrat, vis-a-vis, the proletariat, anyone who uses QWERTY, basically; AZERTY, «autre économie». The individual concentration of self, within the economy, is juxtaposed to the mass concentration of property made up by the bureaucracy.
The form this concentrated mass takes is like the nucleus of the society governed by Kapital; the administrative and authoritative centric system controlling the organization which cannot develop without continuous production. The commodity and its assured survival depends on the wholesale input of data – the commodity's sale as labour.
Processes of production that have a scientific application significantly upgrade the skills of the workforce. The population's general proficiency has been upgraded by scientific sophistication which advances processes of production. However, “{p}erhaps, in our job specifications, each of us has learned more and more about less and less until we each know everything there is to know about virtually nothing.”1
The utility, returning to the idea of the bureaucracy, the utilization of its organization, represses the social totality appropriate to its control by the nucleus of the bureaucracy, or by the very participation in the processes of data production that run along its continuum. The welfare state serves as an experiment in human liberation.2 The welfare state “gives some solace from the worst effects of capitalist immiseration” whilst at the same time “does so only through coercive integration into rational-bureaucratic apparatuses.”3 Would higher wages for bureaucrats “{mark} the rise of a new social formation{?}”4
No other available practice, let alone conception, of a socio-economic system proves possible or viable other than the system governed by Kapital. Its social totality has a systematic nature of radical otherness, 'discrimination', radical difference, 'diversity', and representational mediation, 'democracy'.5
Ray Cromley writes from 1974 concerning bureaucracy to portray conditions surrounding the time period when the Watergate scandal was being absorbed and rationalized by the spectacle. Citizen Cromley describes the deterioration of bureaucracy, attributing decline to: “cronyism, heavy turnover, high loss of middle management and early retirements.”6 What does this tell us about our governments and their predicaments?
Citizen Cromley explains that: “Washington's bureacracy has been on this downhill road for years.”7 The agencies and departments that were responsible for the economy were those that exhibited these breakdowns. Citizen Cromley tells us that indexes that took stock of prices, shipments, and industrial production appeared to contain serious mistakes. Citizen Cromley parallels the conditions of the contemporary crisis to the conditions of the epoch from which he writes. “{A}n economic growth rate as low as today's must cause a marked month-by-month growth in the number of unemployed.”8 Citizen Cromley attributes this to the pace of the economy's expansion when, if slow, cannot absorb new workers in order for it to steadily grow. So, how does the bureaucracy rationalize unemployment when it recognizes that it must increase its numbers in order for the economy to grow? There must be growth in the public sector to expand economic growth. “The signs of a general decline are present in full array,”9 writes Citizen Cromley – so how does Kapital modify its conditions to cope with the crises of today? According to Citizen Cromley, who writes from a time when crises were similarly apparent as to today, the answer lies in making sure that the bureaucracy attracts as many young men and women as possible, that the numbers of middle management within government should remain relatively proportionate to those without, and that experienced top personnel should avoid early retirement. A richer workforce means a richer economy.
Citizen Cromley advises us that the government needs to: “draw in and hold the numbers of first-rate economists needed for data management, planning, and forecasting”10 - to create the rational-bureaucratic structures for Kapital to oversee its own transformation. If, as Citizen Cromley observes, “{k}ey economic posts are vacant or stand idle for months during searches for candidates of the proper caliber {then} these slots are ... gilled with time servers,”11 which means higher turnovers and, as a result, greater expenses. “Private industry seems to hold far more appeal for the able young man and woman just out of college,”12 and what serves as private means works for private ends. Employment, wages, scarcity and inflation: each of these is affected by the government's action or inaction. Cutbacks, employment, corporate expansion, consumer discretion – even the behaviour of the stock market – are all part of the same repercussion.
The economy depends on the continuous input of data which forms part of the machinations of a large computer that animates Kapital and its executive nature versus its bureaucratic-organic structure; to make it less cellular is to make it less popular. And what happens when a population goes elsewhere?
[1] Dugger, W. M. (1984) “Human Liberation: Workplace Reform as the Next Step in Social Evolution”International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 11, No. 5; p.35.
[2] Ibid., p.31.
[3] Day, R. J. F. (2005) Gramsci Is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements. London: Pluto Press; p.148.
[4] Dugger, W. M. (1984) Op. Cit.
[5] Jameson, F. (2005) Archaeologies of the Future.London: Verso; p.xii.
[6] Cromley, R. (1974) “Best and Brightest Avoid Posts.” Waycross Journal-Herald, Jul. 25.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
#11
Both from within each nation and also internationally, fundamental unity reflects the actuality of the society governed by Kapital. The task of the spectacle is the division of what is global, or total. Its role is to allot these divisions as specializations between the extremities of Kapital whose overall function is the control of communication by means of supervision – a sort of digital panopticon – rendering the social totality to be a specialized totalitarian unity.
Production processes in urban conditions bring together the proletarian class within an atomized population. Control of an atomized population is maintained via a method of sprawling isolation and separation of mass communication to create a one way system of overall supervision. Consumption and production is planned based on the needs of the proletarian class – the sprawling digital morass – and their reintegration into the controlled system of supervision.
A neopeasantry, digitally, artificial in its virtual reality, has been created by this planned environment of consumption and production – the snake eating its own tail – this environment of control created by the conditions of spectacular habitation. A centralized bureaucratic tendency arises from the fragmentation inherent in the foundations of this peasantry of virtual reality. Historical time represses the expression of this peasantry, who, in their totality, technologically, find their habitation in the landscape of the new city.
The overall activity of interconnectivity reveals the tendency of the social totality to move towards a fragmented dynamic hegemony; information communications technology such as Google and Facebook are instrumental in overseeing the social unity of the society governed by Kapital. We witness a dispersion of activity due to a widespread use of information communications technology.
The planned environment of consumption and production forms part of the comprehensive ideal of the urban space's constitution. The urban space's fragmentation reflects the market's segmentation. “{T}oday the regulation of access to the Internet is increasingly governed by the workings of market forces and is de facto reserved for certain social groups{.}”1
The urban space becomes splintered by information communications technology whereas social groups tend to coalesce because of it; markets form and arise from the cultures of social groups. Social groups are no longer fixed by urban spaces but remain connected whilst on-the-move, synchronized by their mobile digital devices. The development of urban spaces takes on an unintentional, market-driven logic, moving its sphere of control to private authorities – the memetic content of information communications technologies – from public authorities which no longer control or develop the character of the franchized urban area in the same way that they once might have done.2
Whether integration or segregation contribute to the social formation, the movement of social change now relies on the technological development of spatial organization and the phenomenon of urban fragmentation which fractures the spaces of the city and its overall composition.3
Citizen Anonymous writes to us from 1976 to foretell how the power that governs us seeks “jurisdiction over all forms of communication,” - in that case in particular the Quebec government's control of Bell Canada – and “a say in the policies of national networks.”4 Moves like these are not necessarily constitutional and there is a distinction between unity and uniformity.
Citizen Anonymous quotes Quebec's then-communications minister, Denis Hardy, as saying, “{t}he centralization of decision-making powers in the name of national unity constitutes without a doubt a very important factor of dissension and fragmentation.”5 So, with network technologies being the way that they are, unique and individual voices may arise but because of the nexus of centralization, the panopticon's dominion, they are kept in check, whether through monitoring or sedation by overexposure to information. The overexposure: simulation and simulacra - “information is directly destructive of meaning ... The loss of meaning is directly linked to the dissolving, dissuasive action of information{.}”6
Returning to The Phoenix newspaper, Hardy appears diplomatic in defence of the government when he says: “Quebec can only develop culturally by taking charge of communications within its territories.”7So, from the vantage point of 1976 we can see the agencies of control spreading out over network technology to form its own hegemony. Whilst network technology gives social groups cohesive mobility it simultaneously allows the urban space to retain its cultural topography which makes for greater control. Google and Facebook – both products of the evolution of telecommunications – can be viewed as having, or at least sharing, federal jurisdiction. Bringing populations under federal jurisdiction brings together unity and the economic, socio-cultural reality.
[1] Fernandez, V. & Puel, G. (2012) “Socio-technical Systems, Public Space and Urban Fragmentation.”Urban Studies, Vol. 49, No. 6; p.1298.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Citizen Anonymous² (1976) “Quebec Reveals Wants in Communications.” The Phoenix, Mar. 26.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra & Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press; p.79.
[7] Citizen Anonymous², Op. Cit.
#12
The present stage of this world relies on the perception of its population; its very transformation relies on perception. The method of the police-state is to fix the general perception so as to avoid revolution, or, let's say, subversion. As the society governed by Kapital advances economically, the world and its transformation is subject to the perception guided by ideology; it is the ideology of Kapital's materialization contemporaneously. The development of global Kapital relies upon the mediation of the spectacle – its role is essential – but the role it plays is nevertheless regional; Kapital attempts to penetrate even the most underdeveloped areas to capture the resource of its people. The purpose of the spectacle is to portray the reality of the society governed by Kapital, to obliterate completely any pronouncement that does not satisfy it ideologically – it appears that its totalitarian existence relies on nothing other than the formation of its own crude abstraction.
Complexity of plurality becomes in itself the site of opposition to the power base of Kapital and its abundant, sophisticated construct.1 “It is apparent that authority is not simply one entity, and that there are many perceptions of the boundary.”2 The operations of the society governed by Kapital and their associated power structures can either punish or privilege non-conformity, or conformity respectively, to form the perceptions of the society governed by Kapital objectively. Society and Kapitalismo are exclusive respectively; it is the relationship of power, between the structure of what makes the two bipolar that ties the one to the other.
Max Lerner writes to us from 1977 to illustrate how people's perception of power manifested themselves in the personality of their leader and that leader's association to a structure of power. Citizen Lerner tells us the story of how Menahem Begin came to power, taking his place as Israel's sixth prime minister. Citizen Lerner describes Begin as “an Israeli nationalist – scornful of socialism, determined to drive a hard bargain in peace negotiations.”3
Citizen Lerner suggests that Arab militancy brought Begin to power to form a stronger Israeli national identity. Wherever 'society' increases disproportionately, in this case Arab militancy, Kapital responds accordingly. “Is it surprising,” writes Citizen Lerner, “that a third of the Israeli voters should cast their ballots for a strong identity for Israel?”4 This signifies that the reinforcement of power, redressing its own balance, comes through the personification of Kapital in the subjecthood of Menahem Begin. The subjecthood of Kapital, which stands above the sign as the personification, comes about when there is a greater opposition to liberal values. Inflation is proportionate to consumption, to which if there is opposition, a decline in plurality occurs and the totalitarian impulse of the spectacle recurs. Reading through Citizen Lerner's broadsheet it is evident that support for a Palestinian state would be solely a socialist objective, but this could only begin to come about when inflation is at its lowest and wages are at their heighest, so long as there is a majority of plurality within the Knesset.
Citizen Lerner implies that the strong figure, Begin's strength of character, assuages Israel's sense of insecurity. Citizen Lerner also associates the effect of this sense of insecurity to the “number of working-class Sephardic emigrants from southern and eastern countries,”5 most likely unwilling to compromise their reason for a strong sense of identification with the state of Israel.
When Citizen Lerner cites President Carter, of the United States of America, as referring to the authority of Israel as having “defendable boundaries” are we to assume that its authority is not wholly one entity but one based entirely on plurality? All this, of course, came at a time when President Carter had assured President Assad of Syria of a “homeland” - a diplomatically innocuous statement to say the least, since it doesn't really promise anything concrete but it did affect public perceptions of America's “special relationship” with Israel. Citizen Lerner sums this all up perfectly when he says: “{t}here is such a thing as being so 'open' in one's diplomacy that it gets battered by every new current of opinion” - President Carter's comments coming just days before the Israeli election - “and becomes a cave of the winds.”6
Citizen Lerner describes Israeli national unity as comprising the heighest level of plurality and an even distribution of party diversity. Citizen Lerner does suggest however that the territorial views of Begin would be compromised by a cabinet made up of equal parts. According to Citizen Lerner, the personification of Kapital is seen “as a special guardian of the territorial integrity of Israel.”7 The imperative of Kapital is wholly territorial: returning to the rubric of resource capture.
[1] Lambley, D. (1992) “In Search of a Radical Discourse for Theatre.” New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 29; p.36.
[2] Ibid., p.40.
[3] Lerner, M. (1977) “Believes Begin Will Prove Responsible.” Sarasota Journal, May 27.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
#13
The domination of science according to the contemporary paradigm that necessitates the objective worldview - »weltanschauung« - makes political economy the force-dominant behind the establishment. The colonization of social life by the machinations of power leads to a higher visibility of the commodity within the open market; its global production depends upon mass consumption, which can only be sustained by labour and its division into its associated areas of manufacture, thereby suppressing any volition towards revolution.
There is an essential element of Kapital that remains largely unknowable. Similarly, like the ephemeral nature of power, when Kapital's power becomes greater its sophisticated and ramified qualities retreat from the knower. Kapital is the grand artificer. “Representation recedes directly.”1 Representation recedes directly into the plenipotentiary, where Kapital assumes full power to act independently; we serve this master apparently through our direct relationship to money, the sum of all its parts, the commodity, the actuality of the society governed by Kapital.
The manner in which Kapital remains opaquely covert is by its exertion over the economy and its dominion over the commodity to reduce its visibility; the commodity and the economy mask Kapital's true identity. Kapital makes these particular aspects familiar to us, as if they were its conduit, whilst as an entity, by itself and at large standing alone, its complete form can remain relatively unknown. When understood as an independent entity we notice that Kapital moves through all areas of social life. If Kapital's base is material then its role is economical.
“{C}ommodities, money, capital and the state are fetishes,” writes Daniel Bensaïd.2 They are illusions that are fabricated and are only necessary because they depend on social relations; abolishing these social relations would abolish these illusions. “{C}apital exists because we create it,” argues John Holloway3, but will it cease to exist if we do not create it tomorrow? “Abolishing the conditions of fetishism in reality means overthrowing the despotism of the market and the power of private property and breaking the state that ensures the conditions of social reproduction.”4
If labour is the social relation that produces the commodity then it is labour itself that would have to be abolished to remove the social relations that manufacture the fetishistic illusions. We return to Victor Riesel, writing to us from 1972, who calculates that “American labor now can influence directly and indirectly ... almost $40 billion.”5 Citizen Riesel writes to us from a time when American banks were going through the process of being unionized after unions had been kept out of the banking field for so long.
Citizen Riesel tells us that unions begin moving union money into union banks. Society has the ability to bargain with Kapital – where Kapital is a singular entity, Society is a nebulous and populous body. Society wants money. Society knows that Kapital has the exchangeability. If society has the employability, Kapital sees the opportunity. Profitability. Labour unions give profitability some measure of security.
Citizen Riesel's report is documenting a historical precedent. Social relations are strengthened by the unions. The more labour becomes social, the more it is in the service of Kapital. It would be more insecure without unionization. The two of them can work together to lower inflation. It all depends on the negotiation and type of transaction.
Citizen Riesel describes this transaction as “a flow of multi-colored checks, totalling billions of dollars, pour in futuristic cinematic fashions from union treasuries into the unionized banks.”6 Citizen Riesel credits Howard Coughlin, then-president of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, with 'cracking the dike' by fully unionizing the National Bank of Washington. “On Aug. 11,” writes Citizen Riesel, the Union Label Department of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, “mailed a $10,000 check to True Davis, National Bank of Washington president. The check was for a certificate of deposit for two years.”7 Union label attracted union dollar. “The implications are obvious,” writes Citizen Riesel. “The unions ... can influence the deposits of billions of dollars.”8 Here we see a sharp inversion of the orthodoxy of monetary influence. In a quick turnaround, or role reversal, the unionists have become the capitalists and the social interests lie with the one who invests.
[1] #1.
[2] Bensaïd, D. (2005) “On a Recent Book by John Holloway.” Historical Materialism, Vol. 13, No. 4; p.188.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., p.189.
[5] Riesel, V. (1972) “Labor Backing Unionized Bank.”Ludington Daily News, Sep. 11.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
#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
The society governed by Kapital 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 the society governed by Kapital 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 The society governed by Kapital 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 The society governed by Kapital'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.
[1] Baudrillard, J. (1993) Symbolic Exchange and Death. London: SAGE Publications Ltd; p.9.
[2] Ibid., p.47, n.21.
[3] Roberts, J. M. (2012) “Poststructuralism against poststructuralism: Actor-network theory, organizations and economic markets.” European Journal of Social Theory, Vol.15, No.1; p.48.
[4] Ibid., p.49.
[5] Ibid., p.37.
[6] Ibid., p.46.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., p.37.
[9] Citizen Anonymous (1977) “China calls for economic growth.” The Spokesman-Review, Aug. 28.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
#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
[1] See Chapter 2 for the definition of 'hyperreality'. Basically, it means the simulation of reality.
[2] Jones, B. (1989) “Computer Imagery: Imitation and Representation of Realities.” Leonardo. Supplemental Issue, Vol. 2; p.32.
[3] Harvey, P. (1976) “It's Time For Realism.” Ocala Star-Banner, Sep. 26.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
