See the poor people everywhere? See the hunger, despair, war? See the self-violation which proceeds from mandatory markets? See the loss of horizon? Smell the poisoned air? Hear the mother's heart break as she travels from her first job to her second? Taste the sewage processed into foodstuffs?
That's "good capitalism."
There is no "bad capitalism."
Capitalism is death, arranged in working shifts, arrived at with a weary sigh and a savaged memory, felt in every moment, overriding the will to enjoy, broken down into consumable bites, inevitable as plague which follows the transformation of bodies into carrion and lives into fetish. It is the reward of kitsch, in exchange for a calibrated dying.
It is the body, broken to a transcontinental rack.
The mind rendered mindless.
The reproduction of life as the gateway to grave.
Crow's Eye: Maintaining a commitment to Pointless Acrimony™ and Hate Filled Invective™! Also available in corvid mischief and traditional sly dog's mistrust.
Overall I support the Occupy Wall Street protests, with many reservations, and you just nailed one on the head. There is no such thing as Capitalism without exploitation and privation and the manic need for growth through resource extraction(be it human or non-human). The other reservation is unemployed folks begging for Wage Slavery from the very monsters who created their penury!!! "Please Mr. Looter hire us!"
ReplyDeleteCapital Punishment is the punishment par excellence of Capital--the only way to pay off debt is to sacrifice your labor and life to the masters of Capital.
One other beef, it's psychotic to speak of "markets" as free. They're tyrannical in assessing value, distributing poverty, and subsidizing looters(with the backing of the State--it's Deus ex machina when in need, bombs, bail-outs or policemen's knouts).
War, Slavery, and Legalized injustice are its arsenal. Its meanness is the royal way to the desired end of many for the benefit of an elect few.
Excellent post.
Marx often criticized the naivete of "reformists" for harping against the "bad side" of Capitalism while defending the "good side". As if one, "the bad side", wasn't the underlying aim of the whole with the "good side" serving as cover and crumbs to inspire or dupe people into collaborating.(Consumer societies are built on Collaboration--Brand identification, shopping as the greatest frontier of freedom,etc)
Enjoy your day mindfully.
Anatole,
ReplyDeleteWe must have read similar reports of the OWS speech given yesterday?
I'm such a fucking rube. I thought you were actually going to tell me there's good capitalism somehow. Shame on me.
ReplyDeleteThere's good capitalism, Landru, like there's good child molestation?
ReplyDeleteIs that meeting you part way?
Well past halfway, my friend.
ReplyDeleteSusan of Texas, over at The Hunting of the Snark, gawks at the sort of mentality (what Blake had called "the mind-forg'd manacles") that helps make lives unliveable:
ReplyDeletehttp://agonyin8fits.blogspot.com/2011/10/authoritarian-mothering.html
We look at our "way of life," the stolid buildings and the thwarted lives within, and only begin to see the extent of the damage.
I doubt if most of the people at Occupy Wall Street are there to say "Please give us a job." They know that the drawbridge will not be lowered to allow them across the moat. They know they are surplus goods.
Maybe they're sometimes baffled, as many are, about this stage of the capitalist game. Inevitably it renders many of us unnecessary as workers; and yet it still needs to keep us around as consumers. It requires our money without providing the means of earning it or receiving it. You might almost think they hadn't worked that part out. It isn't mentioned in the quarterly report. Whatever shall be done with us?
Verry nice blog you have here
ReplyDelete