Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Both parties have a similar problem


Both parties have a similar problem. At their core they are servants of the ruling class. But, to survive, they must find votes among the masses. Traditionally this has been done with patronage. To some extent that is still the case. But the scale of an American presidential election exceeds any hope of getting more than a framework from patronage. To succeed in this arena the parties must each create their own dream state for their mass voters.

 For the Republicans this is becoming simpler each cycle. They have only to enroll those members of the working class who have abjured the political program of their own class. This is not false consciousness, This is inverted consciousness. It is the belief that the greatest danger to themselves is the political program of their own class.  Its source is a will to submit. It is no accident that a surrender to Jesus is so often also a surrender to the GOP.

Democrats will often profess confusion and astonishment at repeated Republican cannonades against creeping socialism, seen as advancing on all fronts, and now embodied in a Marxist-Leninist president. But in this, I’m afraid, there is more clarity on the right side of the chamber. If the main enemy of the present system is the revolutionary working class then all attempts at compromise with the program of that class, even such venerable institutions as Social Security, are subversive.

 The Democrats have a more complex task. They must collect the votes of a working class which is not revolutionary but which, nevertheless, is aware of its interests. It does this by the proposition that the class interests of its voters must be subordinate to the party’s ability to contend each election. This is not a tactic. It is the substance of the party. The political, economic structure of the world is unchangeable. The contending classes must, therefore, compromise.

And so the two blocks of working class votes are corralled by two tendencies within the ruling class, by the contradiction within capitalism itself. On the one hand it cannot escape its dependency on human labor to produce and reproduce value. On the other it cannot deny the antagonism between ownership and labor.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

I Like My Cigar

I will never understand the fascination with "liking" something. It all reminds me of what Groucho told a guy with a big family: "I like my cigar too but I take it out once in a while!" 
It's an abstraction from consumption, like derivatives abstract from investment. In a situation of chronic overproduction capitalism responds by pushing both investment and consumption into more distant orbits, further removed from reality. Consumption is anaemic due to falling wages so capital becomes obsessed with inclination, the possibility that someone somewhere might someday be able to take out a loan to actually buy something. Meantime, because it must track something with numbers, it counts wishes. With enough data it can actually match up the cloud of wishes to commodities.  What it cannot predict is actual consumption. That leaves an overhang of desire matching the over extension of the credit system. Crash. But the crash is still hidden. So folks go merrily along investing in their dream avatar. The more they are impoverished in reality the more they invest in dreams. Well enough of that. I need to get back to Facebook.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Chapters: a Novel

Mr. Slator has crafted a tumbling sort of adventure mostly in the direction north by north east from the studious roosts of dinkytown u.s.a. to the great northwoods proximate to Canada. There we uncover a crime of two score years and finish our saga, time wise, at the end of the second century of our declared independence. Part Bildungsroman, part Bowery Boys the storytelling is deft, the staging is good and the author’s asides give it, along with the time shifts, a pleasing rhythm in all. As for footnotes in a novel, you know, footnotes in a novel. As a coeval of the author I can testify that he has been faithful to his time/space continuum. Exchanging south side for north side, parochial delinquency was much the same and completely necessary. Congratulations to Mr. Slator on “Chapters” with eager anticipation for his epic of the Iron Horse. A solid recommend to all.