>>23608>>23608>So if it is fated to collapse, all outmoded modes of exchange that feed into the economy will likewise, or do you assume capitalism will be superseded by something precisely because it can reterritorialize them?i consider capitalism to primarily be a mode of distribution, not a particular form of commodity-exchange. as marx notes, the essentially capitalist commodity is labour-power, which produces surplus value (through its use-value, not its exchange-value), so you might say capitalism is based in wage-exchange, but thats getting too thickety, especially since wage-labour has existed throughout all of history. marx says that bourgeois society is crafted via "primitive accumulation" whereby private and social property becomes bourgeois (commercial) property through state re-allocation. the capitalist himself as marx says is a miser (a hoarder), but a mercantilist hoarder, turned investor. in money, property and power, he is a monopolist, which is from where he is able to create dependence for the public. so the capitalist is in the first place, a monopolist, not a humble competitor. this constitutes what i call "the end of exile" where capital is deterritorialised yet labour is made entirely territorial (the factory and prison in modernity are the same thing, as foucault understands). marx gives an example where those who wished to flee early industry were forced to work by being hunted down, but the cruelty of capitalism (and what constitutes its unconscious) is that the wage-slave is forced to sell himself, and so his surplus is hidden, via the appearance and essence of labour.
the issue then is that capital's sphere of exchange is too limited. to exchange means to share; to give, and not take. the capitalist exchanges for labour-power but he doesn't give enough in wages. he hires men, but doesn't hire enough men to work. the contradiction here is that money is how we (legally) access commodities, yet society's money is sterile in a dusty vault. the limit of the capitalist is that he literally cannot invest all his money into society, but only into profit. this is why the drive for profit undoes profit, since in the end, no one has a job, so no one has money.
this state of affairs also gives us a contemporary paradox, where in some sense, consumerism acts as an ideological rival to capitalism, by reversing the imperatives of the relations of production (the same way that in the west, the superstructure took precedence over the economic base, causing many marxists to actually become quasi-reactionary in attempting to revive industrial subjectivity). the crises of overproduction thus have inverted into crises of underconsumption; this i think has shifted capitalist subjectivity from production to exchange. the reserve army of labour then (as a surplus proletariat) have proven to be the revolutionary subject, even as engels writes in a preface to capital vol. 1,
>"While the productive power increases in a geometric, the extension of markets proceeds at best in an arithmetic ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, over-production and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867, seems indeed to have run its course; but only to land us in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression. The sighed for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, “what to do with the unemployed"; but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed losing patience will take their own fate into their own hands."i think its for this reason that the socialist causes across the world have never been led by an industrial proletariat, but only by the mass of the "people" (akin to the nationalism of the french revolution). this is why all successful socialisms also appear as nationalisms and why the "reactionary mass" is what it is; Spirit.
so maybe i am a succdem (a "social fascist", or a "bourgeois socialist" as marx calls the lasalleans in critique of the gotha program), but to me, re-distribution is the key transition from capitalism into socialism, which then broadens the sphere of exchange, as industrial production (via automation) becomes more and more alienated. lenin said that his vision of socialism was society as a factory floor, but to me, its more like a shopping mall (or the internet). this however is only the primary stage of socialism, which will become much more communal overtime, as exchange becomes decommodified and enters into a symbolic framework. socialism means a mass gift-economy. thus you will have a form of public religion, as hegel understands it, and the end of history shall be twain met by prehistory. the solemn tomb of the factory is now expessed in the pagan feasts of music festivals, as a form of a collective identity. we have become increasingly culturally mediated. Jesus turns water into wine.
so to conclude, capitalism crumbling only means the liberation of mankind, either by reverting historical forms, or by advancing them, since it enters us into free exchange either way. as mark fisher says, "capital is an anti-market"; an "anti-culture". what we want is "markets, not capitalism" et al. what people want is to live in a society.
>The value is created by stimulating demands for gifts, cash being frowned upon outside of certain social contexts like a childs birthday or a wedding.well i was using a marxist concept of value. if we share a fixed amount of cash, we can only engage in commodity-circulation (C-M-C) and thus never expand trade into an expanded market of goods. this is why symbolic exchange is primarily interpersonal, while commodity-exchange, turned to capital-circulation (M-C-M'), is international, since it inscribes a surplus. travel is a rent on goods, as the "bridge tolls" of the past tell us, and still today.
>Yes, but once we have received enough forms (i think this is the psychological stage of realization), we can in some cases autonomously perceive of the world around us and freely adapt our conceptions to suit reality.by forms of thought, do you mean something like an alphabet and grammar? a symbolic framework to conceptualise with?
>if dialectics is the motion of thought after all, the wealth of synthesized thought is greater than that which we can realistically receive, while still occupyin g the entire spectrum of abstract and concretewell this is the paradox as i say. all knowledge is actual to the mind, and the mind can be expressed by 26 letters. therefore, all of knowledge is self-completed in-itself, and so what we do is negatively construct in-complete knowledge (like how there are too many books to read or too many movies to watch). to have knowledge thus is to lose the self-completion of knowledge. there is no original thought or original speech, but only an original *sequence* of thought or speech. this is why as hegel says, "history is the spirit emptied out into TIME".
>Combing through infinity for something is easy when you're doing it all the time. I find myself thinking of past events, past emotions, past thought processes more often than going through the letters of the alphabet to find the right word (i do this only when struggling to express myself in language).well all languages are self-limiting, and this is the dialectic. whenever we think, we are embodying the formless infinity into a finite being, but if we only dwelled in the formless, we would have no thoughts at all. to know every-thing is know no-thing, such as socrates says. however, i see a progressive embodiment of mind in creation, and therefore appeal to my own ignorance as a limited creature. now, where it concerns languages, something is *always* lost in translation, and so infinity has no name. the occult delusion is that you can call upon the name of God as tetragrammaton (YHWH). vain works.
but language is not the only form of communication. animals communicate, computers communicate; even atoms communicate. art-forms often express the nameless. ah, but does this then qualify as a form of knowledge? well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so it cannot be said to be *known* until it is spoken of, and therefore entered into a social judgement (such that if i see a UFO and have no proof, i might as well be hallucinating. only in re-presentation do things attain reality). so i think there are forms of un-knowable communications which we are constantly engaging in, but poetry is giving infinity a name, and art is giving it a face. they capture some-thing, but not every-thing, and we should be glad for this sake, for elsewise, we would have no-thing at all. this is my own "materialism" and vitalism. laugh til you cry; live til you die. so mote it be.