Exchange Value

The consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness are identically the project which, in its negative form, seeks the abolition of classes, the workers’ direct possession of every aspect of their activity. Its opposite is the society of the spectacle, where the commodity contemplates itself in a world it has created. - Debord

[exval-blog]

Invisible Children's "Response" to Criticism & Humanitarian Imperialism

The clearest example of white privilege is, rather than stopping to reflect and seeking to change privileged behavior, to continue exercising it in the face of criticism from those who suffer most from it. This type of response is not unique from within the coordinates of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Our job is to challenge the basis of this "response" and those that accept it - to not do so would be to effectively normalize white privilege.

The problems with Invisible Children and the privileged white people that run it have been pointed out numerous times over the years not only by critics in the NGO community but Ugandans themselves. For more responses from Africans themselves see this.

So when IC published their "response" page to these criticisms they not only confirmed what many suspected (they are in fact poverty tourist Evangelical Christians acting out a white savior fantasy and completely oblivious to the privilege that oozes from every pore of their organization); they also dug themselves into a grave.

Let's start with the very first thing people see when going to their rebuttal page. It is an edited version of the new infamous image of several IC co-founders standing with weapons amidst SPLA soldiers, striking a pose. Although this image itself drew fire from almost anyone who was able to see the obvious white-savior mythology implicit in it, IC appears to be oblivious enough to make it the banner image for their rebuttal page. One has to wonder if this whole thing isn't a farce. They give some weasely excuse for the image, saying it was a "mistake", yet refuse to take it down.

The next point concerns the organization's finances. They argue that "the organization spent 80.46% on our programs that further our three-fold mission", although their spending on administrative costs (ie. salaries) is 16.2% of expenses (compared to 6.1 % for most US NGOs), and only 37.14% goes to "Central Africa Programs". In other words, only ~3.3 million of the ~8.8 million spent actual goes to  productive programs (assuming this money is well-spent and not being funneled to the corrupt Ugandan government). Thus, the 80% figure is highly misleading (a full 25% of the budget included in that figure going towards making pretty videos). Also notice how the graphic attempts to make the administrative spending bar look smaller than the awareness products bar, even though the former greatly outweighs the latter. We're beginning to see a highly manipulative pattern of behavior that began with the emotional exploitation of both an American and Ugandan child in the KONY 2012 video and continues with their misrepresentation of finances.

Next, IC goes on to brush aside their criticisms from the NGO community as based on technicalities and their lobbying efforts as being aimed at "no particular political party". Well what is it they are lobbying for?

In their own words:

The KONY 2012 campaign is calling for U.S. leadership to address both problems [with regional governments]. It supports the deployment of U.S. advisers and the provision of intelligence and other support that can help locate and bring Kony to justice, but also increased diplomacy to hold regional governments accountable to their basic responsibilities to protect civilians from this kind of brutal violence.

Readers of this blog should probably know why this is so problematic. But let's break it down. First, the implicit assumption that Africans cannot help themselves. Second, the assumption that white Westerners both know what is best for Africans and have the capability to solve their problems. Regional governments are incapable of handling this problem, not because they are caught in a network of US capitalist imperialism in the African continent, but because they don't have enough of it. I wonder how any Libyan, Afghan or Iraqi feels about this notion? IC can't ask the tough questions about these assumptions because, again, they come from a white, imperialist, first-worldist perspective. Their privilege is simply screaming here. Only a first worlder can claim to know better than the people that actually live in the region- and on top of that, claim that sending troops will help the situation!

What is so utterly dangerous about this call for intervention is that, even if it comes from good intentions (which it doesn't as we've already seen the evidence that these people are acting out an Evangelical white savior fantasy) the consequences are that it will be used by the imperialist machine for any number of its real motives: securing valuable resources, ejecting unfavorable governments, expanding the scope of AFRICOM, etc. This trend towards "imperialism with a human face", if I may, really kicked off with Libya and is now threatening the livelihoods of Syrians and Central Africans. There has never been a case of American intervention that did not result in more death, destruction and despair for innocents. Need proof?: http://killinghope.org/

Finally, I want to address the question about simplifying a complex issue. IC claims that their video was merely meant to be an entry point to the issue. "It was only propaganda" is not an excuse. Intent does not matter. What they spawned, because of this misleading, exploitative, distorting video, is a legion of ill-informed white hipsters running around calling for intervention that, if it escalates, will only harm everyone involved. Even if we take the precepts of the intervention at face value (assuming that NATO does not abuse the humanitarian call for its own devices - unlikely) removing Kony from the battlefield does nothing to change the conditions that lead to his rise and will be very unlikely to stop the LRA. This misunderstanding stems from a general lack of knowledge about civil conflict and a liberal-individualist outlook on world politics. Rebellions and civil wars are rarely individualist in nature and most rebel organizations have extensive contingency plans for replacing leadership or even operating as compartmentalized cell-structures. See the recent assassination of FARC's Alfonso Cano.

What is far more likely to happen is that time and resources will be spent advocating another NATO imperialist adventure that will do nothing to address the underlying material-social conditions that spawned the LRA and will, in fact, heighten and escalate the conflict as so many interventions have done in the past and how so many civil conflicts in the region have developed. In short, while Kony and the LRA are a serious threat to peace in Central Africa, the solution does not lie in advancing an imperialist agenda, but to listen to the innocent people caught in this network and to place agency in their right to self-determination. Asking the largest criminal organization in the world - the US military - to solve this complex problem is not only ignorant but dangerous.

[exval-blog]

RE: KONY 2012 and the White Man's Burden

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Invisible Children’s goals initially may have been to publicize the plight of children caught in Uganda’s decades-long conflicts; lately, IC has been acting as apologists for General Yoweri K. Museveni’s dictatorship and the U.S. goal to impose AFRICOM (the U.S. Africa Military Command) on Africa.

If Invisible Children was in fact a serious organization that has not been co-opted by the Museveni regime and the U.S. foreign policy agenda, the organization would inform the world that General Museveni, who has now stolen three elections in a row in Uganda, is the first person who deserves to be arrested.

[aidinnovations-blog-blog]

You must have heard of the viral video created by Invisible Children (IC), a U.S. organization that has launched a one-year campaign (expires December 31, 2012) to eliminate Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group in Northern Uganda that has been embroiled...

[fuckyeahanarchistcats]

[exval-blog]

RE: Invisible Children

[exval-blog]

RE: Laibman and “Insidious Threats” facing OWS

Since the Occupy Wall Street movement began, a debate has been circling around the edges concerning the movement’s relation to the Democratic party, the threat of cooptation by the liberal establishment and how to approach the issue of demands more generally. On one side, you have the radical and militant left (generally associated with anarchism, socialism, communism or some variant) pushing for more direct action, a break with the establishment political parties and a radical transformation of the social order. On the other side are  a significant element of occupiers that still identify and are willing to work with the Democratic party and its associated electoral organs that hold out empty promises of reform. Many more fall in between these positions.

One would think these two positions are mutually exclusive and permissive of sharp divisions within the movement. To be sure, such divisions exist and the gulf between the radical left and establishment liberalism remains wide. However, while I certainly fall within the former camp, I am nonetheless surprised when my own comrades take positions that are both equally reformist and outright puzzling. The inspiration for this post was an article written by David Laibman on the URPE blog titled “Concerning the Occupy Movement and “Insidious Threats”. It was so disturbing to me that I felt compelled to write a response.

In a nutshell, the article is an attempt to dissuade occupiers and supporters of the “fear of cooptation” by the Democrats as unjustified on several points. For one, he argues that “we need not fear cooptation, and betrayal.  If we are betrayed (and we will be, from time to time), that will help lay foundations for greater political independence.” Supposedly, by being coopted and betrayed by the Democrats, protestors will then realize that no one can save us and we must instead rely on our own devices. But, he says, cooptation itself is a distant possibility since “[t]he energy of OWS … is not a fixed quantity.  It can’t, ultimately, be coopted, for the simple reason that the crisis that created it, and continually re-creates it, will remain unsolved.”

Now, there are many very important assumptions being made here. Before we unpack them, let’s back up a moment and consider how the movement began. OWS did not start merely as a reaction to Republican economic austerity, bank bailouts and general neglect of the working class and youth. It was, in fact, a Democratic president and congress that not only approved of these policies but continued and deepened them. A two-party consensus was reached in which no American citizen was given a voice. The abysmal failure of President Obama and his Wall-Street representatives in the Democratic Party to meet any promises of reform did nothing but push an already angry population further to the left. This situation could only persist for so long until a decidedly non-establishment movement arose as both a pressure release valve and means to formulating alternative political structures.

Consider then, Laibman’s claim that really, cooptation wouldn’t be so bad because if we get betrayed occupiers will just become more independent and seemingly realize the error of their ways. First of all, the assumption is made that most protestors are not already prepared to think and act independently of the Democrats. This is, on the face of it, absurd. No occupation would have occurred had the occupiers themselves not wanted to send a clear message to the Democrats that they are carving out their own turf in political space beyond the establishment’s reach. We should remember that it was an Anarchist named David Graeber that first floated the idea of an occupation, and I don’t recall anyone asking for Obama’s permission before they put up a tent. So why, then, does OWS need to go through the distracting, costly and destructive process of cooptation for people to realize that the Democrats are not our allies? Are the last 4 years of economic and social deterioration not enough proof? Did the silence of the Democratic apparatus during Wisconsin’s assault on organized labor (arguably the spark that started the occupation movement in America) not already send a clear message that the Dems have no concern for labor rights and activism? Yet if there are still some True Believer holdouts within the occupy movement, is it not the duty of the radical left to show them the laundry list of Democratic lies and distortions? The very last thing OWS should do is place political agency – once again – within the Party of Wall Street and wait idly for MoveOn.org and MSNBC to stroll through, make empty gestures, distract the movement, betray it and maybe, maybe radicalize a few people in the process. Radicalization should no longer be seen only as a thing that comes from without. As leftists, we must reclaim that responsibility and not leave it to mere chance and vague allusions to accelerationism- especially when the movement’s survival is at stake.

But, Laibman goes further. Aside from all this hand-waving away of the consequences of cooptation (it is actually a good thing, you see), he argues that really cooptation isn’t a big threat. Why? Because “[t]he energy of OWS … is not a fixed quantity.  It can’t, ultimately, be coopted, for the simple reason that the crisis that created it, and continually re-creates it, will remain unsolved.” Okay, take a deep breath. First, what does it mean that “the energy of OWS is not a fixed quantity?” Are people suddenly robots that have an unlimited amount of time to spend on political activism and don’t have jobs, families and social lives? If anything has been proven since the 1960′s (which the author, ironically, claims to be a descendent of) it is that political apathy rules. And those young people that concern themselves with politics are socialized into the two-party system while old radicals become coopted. In fact, if I had to venture a guess, I’d say the author falls within that latter camp, despite being a member of the “Union for Radical Political Economics”. Cooptation and normalization of bourgeois political values is the modus operandi of the ruling class. To say that cooptation is not a threat because occupiers are, by implication, somehow able to garner infinite energy from somewhere is absurd on its face.

What is this “somewhere” that Laibman thinks the occupiers are getting their energy? It is the economic crisis itself. Laibman argues that no amount of reforms will fix the causes of the capitalist crisis and, to a certain extent, I am in agreement. However, Laibman makes the stunning theoretical leap in assuming that this means OWS has a limitless source of political energy to draw from. First, there is no guarantee that this crisis is the death knell of capitalism and that a recovery is impossible. Certainly, the 2008 recession was the worst since the Great Depression – but remember how that turned out. It is very possible that this crisis will be resolved with a new wave of capital devaluation and destruction, guided by austerity, sovereign defaults (and other manufactured crises),  and/or outright war. Second, even if present economic conditions persist or worsen, there is no reason to assume that the occupation will gain strength or simply fade into the historical background as countless left movements in America have done in the past. The fact that many, many other recessions in the US did nothing to spark political and social upheaval should be a testament to the lack of political will and organizational strength in this country. And let us never forget the very real possibility of a neo-fascism stepping into the arena. This is a very real possibility if we lower our shields and wish away the threat of cooptation. Considering all of this, why wouldn’t the Democrats launch a massive campaign to fully absorb the movement should a new Obama-lite emerge in the future? It worked in 2008. Our task is to ensure that mistake is not repeated.

Finally, Laibman seems utterly confused on his position towards reform. On the one hand, he argues that reforms have no possibility to solve the crisis of capitalism, and this is what will constantly renew the energies of the movement. On the other hand, he believes we should be open to demands for reforms because this is what the working class wants: “small victories”. Well, which is it? Are we going to lie through our teeth to our working class supporters saying that we want reforms and believe they will work – when really we know they won’t- for the sake of building a base? Or, should we, as leftists, acknowledge the reforms that are possible and will help people, critique those that are impossible within the framework of capital or serve false interests, all while maintaining that the ultimate answer is a radical reorganization of society? I would answer with the latter, although Laibman’s position is ambiguous if not contradictory. He seems to think that the Democrats intend to advocate reforms that serve working class interests and not, as it were, distract them from a revolutionary program. I would call this naivete at best and a poisonous distortion at worst.

Ultimately, as I hope I have made clear, I believe our task as the counterpoint to establishment liberalism in the occupy movement is to stress the dangers of cooptation by the Democrats and advance a program of viable reforms that benefit the working class while sticking to a revolutionary path. I’m sorry to inform Laibman that political time and energy is scarce. Anything that gets in our way should be discarded, especially outside organizations that have a proven track record of failure (and many well-meaning leftist parties fit this bill) and especially those parties that are now entirely owned by capitalist class interests, ie. the Democratic Party.

Also see this post concerning organizational form and resistance to cooptation.

[exval-blog]

New Blog

I've started a new blog at https://exval.wordpress.com/ that I will use to post some of my better posts from here. Hopefully this will also remind me to keep updating!

[manasobject-blog]

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

marx - the german ideology (via manasobject)

[exval-blog]

The consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness are identically the project which, in its negative form, seeks the abolition of classes, the workers’ direct possession of every aspect of their activity. Its opposite is the society of the spectacle, where the commodity contemplates itself in a world it has created.

Debord

[exval-blog]

Notes on Kliman: Value Production and Economic Crisis: A Temporal Analysis

I've been reading "Value and the World Economy Today" recently and came across a very interesting article by Andrew J. Kliman that critiques two popular theories of crisis: the well-known Keynesian-like "underconsumption" theory and the physicalist argument. What follows are just my thoughts on some key elements of the article. This book is very good so this probably wont be the only post like this.

One widely held view on the Left attributes economic crises to the anarchic and competitive nature of private capitalism, which causes firms systematically to expand faster than demand will permit in the long run. Periodically, this results in excess capacity and overproduction, that is, production in excess of demand.

This account is actually a tautology, not an explanation. As Marx (1978: 486) noted, '[i]t is a pure tautology to say that crises are provoked by a lack of effective demand or effective consumption... The fact that commodities are unsaleable means no more than that no effective buyers have been found for them.'

(Kliman, pp. 120)

This, Kliman argues, does not explain 'why the volume of output has proven to be excessive - why, that is, demand has been too sluggish to enable everything to be sold at existing prices.'

The argument made by other Marxists (including Harvey), that suppressed wages in the first world led to excessive borrowing, is convincing. Harvey attributes this suppression to the third wave of globalization and relentless attacks on labor that really kicked off in the 80's. While this may be the case, and it seems likely, it does not explain how the resulting indebtedness became excessive. Kliman asks: "Why is the economy unable to absorb credit at the same pace as it is created?" (pp. 121)

Is it the case that all production, and as a result all demand for investment, is determined by aggregate demand, ie. the rate of consumption? Many demand-side theorists have argued this, and Kilman targets Sweezy as among them. He quotes Sweezy as saying that, 'the process of production is and must remain, regardless of its historical form, a process of producing goods for human consumption' (Sweezy 1970:172).

The "regardless of its historical form" bit should make every reader cringe. It is also a fundamental mistake to assume that production is completely constrained by consumer demand. As Kliman points out, Marx showed in Volume 2 of Capital that production occurs under two main departments:

One part of output consists of consumer goods. Another consists of means of production that are used, directly or indirectly, to produce new consumer goods. Consumer demand sets a limit to the expansion of these parts of output. Yet Marx's schemes demonstrated that there exists a final part of output that does not enter into consumption either directly or indirectly. Iron is used to produce steel, which is used to produce mining equipment, which is used to produce iron, and so on. The growth of this part of output is not constrained by 'human consumption,' since its demanders are not humans, but capitals.

The schemes also demonstrated that growth under capitalism generally requires that this final part of output grow faster than the others. Thus, rather than being a system that produces for consumptions sake, capitalism increasingly becomes a system of production for production's sake. (pp. 122)

Thus, Kliman argues, the demand for investment and new production can rise independently of limits to consumer demand. I tend to agree with this conclusion, and the general thrust of his argument that underconsumptionists place too much emphasis on the consumer as the motor of value expansion.

I do, however, object to the claim that there is a portion of output with no connection to consumption, even indirectly. This strikes me as wholly un-dialectical. Making this claim assumes that one portion of capital can be neatly segmented and isolated from the rest. Consumption is a key element of the logic of capital. After all, how would the M-C-M' circuit continue expanding without the corresponding C-M-C circuit? Demand-side theorists, however, go too far in suggesting that all production is directly tied to consumption. There are important time-lags, between investment in new production and output, that necessarily imply a lose connection between investment and consumption. Kliman could have made his point by asserting that many investment and production decisions are made only with indirect consideration for consumption (the bolt-maker does not worry about every one of the myriad ways his bolts will be used in the production of cars, machines, etc. way down the production chain).

Nonetheless, Kliman is right to criticize demand-side theorists for not explaining where the ultimate breakdown occurs or by what mechanisms. To do this, he argues we need to take a closer look at the relationship between the rate of profit and the rate of indebtedness.

First, we take a look at the rate of profit. Marx famously claimed that the rate of profit has the tendency to fall as the rate of exploitation (S/V) falls. This can be due to a number of factors, including the growing replacement of living for dead labor (a rising organic composition of value). It also has a number of countervailing tendencies, such as increasing productivity in the sector for wage-goods, thus reducing V.

Increasing productivity, as Kliman argues, can also work both ways. Increasing productivity means that a particular capitalist can lower the price of their product below the social average, thus increasing market share and raising profits. However, as more capitalists lower prices and attempt to increase productivity, total profit rates tend to fall. Kliman argues that this is not a "secular" decline in profit rates, but a 'tendency of the profit rate to adjust downward toward rLR'. (pp. 126) He defines rLR as the 'long-run profit rate' or the convergence between the rate of profit (r) and percentage growth in surplus value (S') over the share of profit reinvested (I/S) . (pp. 125)

He then argues that there are "strong theoretical and empirical arguments" to suggest that "profit will be a more or less constant share of the aggregate price of output over the long haul, since wage-increases that threaten profitability will be temporary and self-negating. Thus S will grow at a rate close to the same rate as P [the aggregate money-price of commodities] and there is little, if any, reason to presume any particular trend in the latter's growth rate."

How, then ,can we say that the rate of profit will have a falling tendency? It is precisely the necessity for profit rates to adjust towards rLR.

Put differently, the profit rate will decline if rLR is too low to allow the current rate to be sustained. But what makes rLR too low? It is limited by the growth rate of profit, which in turn is held in check by sluggish employment growth and reduced by productivity growth. (pp. 126)

He also notes that:

any reduction in the percent growth of prices - any disinflation - will tend to reduce profitability. Outright deflation ... is not necessary. Nor is the supposed distinction between 'bad' deflation, 'caused' by inadequate demand, and 'good' deflation, caused by technological progress, relevant here. 'Good' deflation depresses profitability no less than does 'bad' deflation, because it, too, reduces revenues today in relation to costs incurred in the past.

...

The tendential fall in the profit rate therefore expresses itself not through a secular decline in profitability, but through recurrent crises. This was Marx's (1981: 367) view as well: 'the falling rate of profit... has constantly to be overcome by way of crises.' The destruction of value 'overcomes' the falling tendency and sets the stage for renewed expansion. And since profitability can always be restored if enough capital-value is destroyed (which requires only a sufficiently long and severe crisis), no crisis is permanent.

(pp. 126)

The last sentence is crucial for Marxists to remember, especially today. No crisis permanent. We often succumb to the bearish news out of the financial press as signs of the end-times. Capital is resilient and will be to the bitter end.

Kliman goes on to use this framework to describe how Minsky's concept of "ponzi finance" can help establish a line at which indebtedness reaches unsustainable levels. If S' is the growth of surplus-value, i is the rate of interest and b is the ratio of net borrowing to existing debt, then the debt/profit ratio will rise as long as

S' < i + b

He explains that if the rate of interest is higher than the rate of growth of surplus value, the debt level is not sustainable. This debt to profit ratio will "rise indefinitely and without limit, even if b = 0" (pp. 127). And "even when S' > i, businesses still have to reduce their rate of net borrowing. In either case, the drop in b causes a drop in investment spending, which in turn causes S' to fall, making yet another decline in b necessary, and so on."

Thus, we can establish a line at which the system reaches a financial point of no return. There are, as always, some countervailing tendencies. If, as happens during the expansionary phase, nominal prices of aggregate output grow faster than real value, nominal profit rates will rise and temporarily relieve this tendency (pp. 127). It is also possible for easy government lending to raise aggregate demand past the total real value of output which has the same effect of raising nominal prices past their values.  This, however, "exacerbates the debt problem, precisely because excessive debt buildup - a buildup of debt in excess of the underlying values - is the very mechanism that is propping up prices".

As Kliman then concludes, "Keynesian policies do not negate, but only displace, the system's crisis tendencies". (pp. 128)

To finish the article, Kliman does a demolition job on the theory known as "Physicalism". This argument runs as follows: the profit rate is positively, not negatively, tied to productivity in the long-run. Thus, the only way for the profit-rate to follow, assuming wages are constant, is for productivity to fall as well. This is, as we have seen, entirely contrary to Marx's theory. They argue that, although technological changes can cause prices to fall, they deny that this has an effect on profitability because:

A. technology may have reduced prices in the past, but this cannot continue indefinitely. This is wrong for obvious reasons, and I'm not sure why anyone would believe this in the first place.

B. some really confusing distinction between the rate of output and the rate of profit that really makes no sense. The argument appears to be that raising total output determines the rate of profit, even if price is not a factor.

C. that absolute prices are irrelevant. This is shockingly silly and breaks down the moment debt relations over time become involved.

D. the use of replacement cost valuation. Physicalists calculate profit rates based on the replacement cost of capital, not the actual price paid in the past. This is, again, entirely counter to the most basic notion of capital: that value is expanded through the process of production. Marxists are concerned with how value enters and exits the production process, and to do that requires looking at the initial costs incurred and how value expands over time. The physicalist model denies this and as such their "'profit' is simply not surplus-value; it is the difference between the value of output and the inputs' replacement costs at a single moment in time" (pp. 131)

Overall, I think this was a very interesting article and although I have some problems with it, I think the notion of contradiction between short and long-run profit rates is very telling. It allows us to think more clearly about relative declines in profit and how crisis can restore the system. The practical implications of this concept, including the ineffectiveness of Keynesianism, need to be explored more fully.

[exval-blog]

OWS, symbols and organizational form

one, with regards to the use of symbols. a symbol is contextual, spatially and temporally. a guy fawkes mask at a comic con and a guy fawks mask at an OWS protest are two different symbols that express themselves differently depending on the environment. symbols and their meaning(s) are only as real as the audience makes them. that, however, does not separate the guy fawkes mask from its material, historical (temporal) context, as another poster pointed out. this temporal dimension of symbolism relates to both it's origin and it's various usages or use-values. a swastika, even if it originated in asia, saw the heaviest appropriation, usage and reproduction under nazism and as such the symbol is 'weighted' heavier towards fascism rather than mysticism in the eyes of a Western audience... and, in the other direction, towards mysticism rather than fascism in the eyes of an Eastern audience. like commodities, symbols can alternate between use-values depending on the society that appropriates them and their "consumer preferences", in bourgeois terms. there is a danger in this line of logic, though. we shouldn't, like the capitalist, largely disregard the use-value (the symbol's material basis) of a commodity-symbol in favor its exchange value (the symbol's immediate spatial effect) in our tactical decisions. when it comes to the guy fawkes mask: is the ironic irrelevance of its historical origins enough to negate its immediate practical effects in OWS, such that it becomes a detracting force? or has the symbol been re-appropriated and 're-weighted' towards a more positive meaning in this context? or is it simply impossible for this symbol to be extracted from its origins, both in history and in its corporate reproduction in film?

two, with regards to the organizational form. the critique zombie-stalin offers is certainly valid. when horizontal forms of organization emerge, all the informal (structural) inequalities and systems of violence are imported to the degree to which that organization's members are still tied to those informal structures from the 'outside'. i do believe, however, that with enough transparency, so long as the units of organization remain small, these structures should and will be rooted out by the victims of those imported structures and sympathetic allies. the strong caveat here is that communication must remain open and equal, if not subgroups and splinters will emerge - and they should, as we are seeing in philly right now. these splinters should be able to exert pressure on the movement to reform its methods. if they don't change they should be rightfully denounced as reactionary and either rejected or, preferably, new methods of persuasion will be found. the reason i hesitate to jump immediately to the vertical power alternative, at this stage, is the same as i posted earlier: easy to coopt, easy to infiltrate- and most importantly, there is no guarantee that a reactionary power structure will not supplant progressive structures in the ensuing struggle for ascendency. for all its flaws, a horizontal organizational form implies a kind of open struggle between the component classes in which the reactionary elements can be rooted out by progressive forces (and it is our mission to ensure this); jumping too soon to install vertical power structures, again, at this stage, means that the likelihood of a reactionary force seizing control is very high- as we know, all of the most powerful vertical institutions in this late capitalist society are just that: reactionary, and they will seize on that opportunity immediately.

[exval-blog]

Co-opting Marx

The ultimate show of power on the part of the ruling ideology is to allow what appears to be powerful criticism. There is no lack of anti-capitalism today. We are overloaded with critiques of the horrors of capitalism: books, in-depth investigative journalism and TV documentaries expose the companies that are ruthlessly polluting our environment, the corrupt bankers who continue to receive fat bonuses while their banks are rescued by public money, the sweatshops in which children work as slaves etc. However, there is a catch: what isn’t questioned in these critiques is the democratic-liberal framing of the fight against these excesses. The (explicit or implied) goal is to democratise capitalism, to extend democratic control to the economy by means of media pressure, parliamentary inquiries, harsher laws, honest police investigations and so on. But the institutional set-up of the (bourgeois) democratic state is never questioned. This remains sacrosanct even to the most radical forms of ‘ethical anti-capitalism’ (the Porto Allegre forum, the Seattle movement etc).

-Slavoj Zizek, "Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks"

Writing in the context of a wave of leaked State Department cables, Zizek aptly describes what he sees as the 'ethical anti-capitalism' of the media. Public outrage over the visible excesses of capitalism has, for some time now, become daily news. Yet, as this trend continues the question becomes how far this criticism (timid as it is) will be allowed to go. Two weeks ago I was browsing Bloomberg at work (definitely productive labor time) and nearly choked on my drink as I read the front-page headline:

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans

I actually had to make sure I was at the correct website, not Michael Hudson's. Unable to contain my shock, I tried explaining to my co-workers exactly what was so incredible about this headline. This is Bloomberg, the owners of Business Week magazine, which lands on the doorsteps of finance workers around the country. The same Bloomberg that services hundreds of thousands of trading terminals around the world. And here are the words "Wall Street Aristocracy" on their front page. Calling your subscriber base aristocrats isn't exactly a winning business model- unless you are writing to attract (or co-opt) a very different audience.

Of course, Morgan Stanley and BoA aren't the only ones reading the business and financial press. The financial crisis put even relatively mundane economic topics on the front pages of every major newspaper and on cable. Coverage was, as expected, vague and misleading: a bank failed due to bad loans, something about "systemic risk", closed-door meetings, the genesis of the "Wall Street/Main Street" dichotomy, and crisis. Suddenly, millions of Americans found themselves in the middle of a financial 9/11 which "no one could have predicted".

The reality is that many people did see the crisis coming years before it blew up all over the NYSE. The problem is that these people were not on CNN or the WSJ. Why? Those who did see the outlines of an approaching crisis did not come from the dominant neoclassical school of thought. That is because neoclassical thought has no working theory of crisis. Or, I should say, they have no endogenous theory of crisis. For them, markets fail due to some outside factor - typically the government or unions.

Now we have a problem. Americans just witnessed their savings get wiped out at the same time that government retreated dramatically from their economic lives- all the while expanding its role as the lender of last (or first) resort. Those without significant savings saw unemployment skyrocket, job insecurity, etc. And these policies continued seamlessly through the reign of both dominant parties. Not only can the state no longer be scapegoated, the monumental failure of neoclassical theory leading up to the crisis has left people searching for alternatives.

This is the most significant danger to hegemony. When a material crisis becomes an ideological crisis, the elite pay attention. There are two ways to deal with a crisis of legitimacy. One is repression, censorship, and outright ignoring the problem entirely- omission. The first two have significant drawbacks. Repression and censorship often strengthen the opposition by increasing curiosity and the "forbidden fruit" effect as well as solidifying the conviction of radicals. Whats more, the US simply cannot afford to tighten information flows given the nature of the service economy. As a consequence, omission also becomes impossible at both the level of information and material reality. You can't ignore unemployment (although you can hide it), and you can't ignore the faults of economic dogma when you're face-to-face with its contradictions.

That leaves one other option: co-option. This method has become the primary means of maintaining ideological hegemony, at least in the core states. By absorbing the opposition and reframing it's critique into something more edible, the system consumes dissent and embodies it- without the harsh, radical element. Opponents become reformers, and radicals are sidelined.

Enter Karl Marx.

Marx is no stranger to repression. Ignored for most of his life, then discredited, censored and misrepresented for decades after, Marx was/is probably the most controversial thinker in economics or politics. His name has been loaded with almost as much ideological pretension as Zizek's toilets, and in most circles Marx is a four-letter word in the bad sense.

Now picture my surprise when I see a string of headlines the past few weeks like this:

Economist:

Marx’s revolutionary bourgeoisie finds its voice again

The piece describes various cases of anti-corruption sentiment in the media of China and "middle class activism" in India or Brazil. In the eternal spirit of our favorite Imperial Messenger, Thomas Friedman, the article takes anecdotal evidence (eg., train crash in China) as proof that it is in fact only the refined middle-classes that care about corruption in their countries:

In one example of media criticism of the crash, an announcer on state-run CCTV turned to the cameras and, instead of reading the news, launched into a diatribe of classic middle-class complaining. “Can we live in apartments that do not fall down?” he asked. “Can the roads we drive on in our cities not collapse? Can we travel in safe trains?” The poor don’t live in city apartments, drive cars or travel on bullet trains.

Their "defenders of democracy" are even more supportive of honest elections:

This, of course, can have nothing to do with the sentiment among working-class poor that liberal democracy is a facade for the interests of wealthy elites. Nope.

After making a sound reference to twitter revolutionaries (we're in the post-Mubarak world now!), the Economist finishes off its masterful analysis with this gem:

In these circumstances, anti-corruption protests could easily morph into something wider. It used to be said that the emerging middle classes would not be politically active. Now they are “just” objecting to corruption. Both arguments underestimate the consequences of the middle- class rise. As Marx said, “historically, [the bourgeoisie] played a most revolutionary part” in Europe. In emerging markets, that revolution now looks closer.

To put it briefly:

Can't you hear the expert renditions of Marx's political economy by every polisci professor you've ever had playing back in your mind? I can. Let that sensation sink in.

If the author actually read the Manifesto that he cherry-picked this line from, he might have come across this bit in the very next paragraph:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Not only is Marx's "revolutionary bourgeoisie" acting against the feudal state (not the already bourgeois state of emerging markets), it does so to establish new, more efficient means of "naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." That's not at all the progressive middle-class Force for Change that the Economist seems to think Marx was talking about.

Now, if you want to take this concept and honestly assess its relevance today, you might say that the already established bourgeoisie are just continuing to break down any and all barriers to exploitation through neoliberal policies. The Economist, of course, can't import this historical concept into their liberal democratic framework without mangling it and entirely abusing its contextual relevance.

So why do it at all? The reference to Marx is made almost as a throw-away line in the final paragraph, yet there's that four-letter word in the title. Shock-value was certainly a factor in terms of marketing. We're also talking about the Economist, which thrives on pumping up the egos of college-aged liberals who think they're getting educated (shockingly, the magazine itself is run by college-aged liberals). "Well you see, I'm part of the revolutionary bourgeoisie... yeah, I read about in the Economist, why do you ask?"

Then there's the (more) cynical answer. By extracting a seemingly relevant concept and putting it to use in an utterly flawed analysis it both (a) gives the article some historical legitimacy and (b) gives the author plausible deniability: "What, my middle-class twitter revolutionaries didn't change society and usher in the liberal-democratic utopia state? Marx has failed us again!" This is just a poor attempt at co-opting what is, in its full context, a devastating critique of the bourgeoisie. The astounding lack of awareness on behalf of the Economist should surprise no one, however.

Since this post is getting a bit lengthy, I'll end here for now. In the next post we'll take a look at the other recent, and more competent, articles and try to draw some conclusions about the nature of this trend.