Re: [Marxism] Do words matter? [was Re: Hedges: The American EmpireIs Bankrupt]

[Jon Cloke <copito61@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You miss the point entirely; this is not about morality but about the use of
the word ‘advanced’. You persist in employing it as if there were some
absolute quality to it, an inherent quality which is attached to some
independent state (and therefore beyond question) whereas the truth of the
matter is that the word ‘advanced’ is always used in a subjective fashion.
Think of the word ‘advanced’ not as an absolute measure but in the
Archimedean sense: Archimedes said, 'If you give me a lever and a place to
stand, I can move the world.' The lever is the word advanced, and what is
important (but not permanent) about it is the way that it is employed, and
who is employing it. How that lever gets used depends on the socio-political
stance (location, position) of the person using it and where and what the
motive for employing it (i.e., of what the fulcrum is constituted) is.

A Protostar is more ‘advanced’ than a Bok globule and less advanced than a
Red Giant, if you’re using a narrow definition of advanced to describe the
age of a star during the particular period of its growth when it becomes
relevant to and describable by humans, but in terms of the ebb and flow of
the universe, what does ‘advanced’ mean, if it has any meaning at all? The
Great White Shark may have reached some kind of evolutionary stasis whereby
it hasn’t changed in literally millions of years, simply by being one of the
best and most effective predators that ever existed – in a human-free ocean.
So (again without reference to any kind of morality) if that humanity is
busily making that ocean on which that humanity depends unusable and making
the shark extinct in the process, which is the most evolutionarily advanced
species? In purely survival terms?

I give you a couple of technocratic examples; the Chinese invented gunpowder
maybe a thousand years before the predatory western proto-mercantilist
economies discovered its uses, but instead of using it for the purposes of
weapons, they used them for entertainment and enjoyment and for some kinds
of primitive rockets. Never mind any moral arguments, were they more
advanced than the west because they invented it far earlier, or less
advanced because they either didn’t know how to, didn’t want to or couldn’t
be bothered to employ the weapons capabibility? The Ancient Greeks invented
the recently re-discovered anti-Kythera mechanism, the first analog
computer, by which they could navigate by the sun and the stars, a
technology that got lost for over a thousand years, fifteen hundred years;
they had primitive steam engine prototypes worked out and they were the
progenitors for a form of government, democracy, that continues to inspire
political thinking long after their own democracy disappeared (particularly
interesting to you I would have thought given your recent statement about
the Russian Revolution being the single stand-out event in human history;
not even a hundred years old yet, is it?). These are not moral questions –
advanced, or not advanced, by your standards (or are they moral questions
and all such pseudo-technocratic terms are)?

The ability to manipulate (or not) advanced technology does not make you
advanced or backwards; if advanced capitalism so dominates its
socio-economic relations and yet at the same time it generates so much
poverty and pollution that one or the other (all moral considerations aside)
seems likely to destroy the whole system, then how can such a
self-destructive system be considered advanced? If capital accumulation
alone is the solitary measure of advancement, then surely any form of
communist or socialist government that eschews such accumulation is less
advanced? Or, to be measured by a new scale more in kin with the ideas of
the ancient Greeks, hyper-advanced?

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your
structuralist absolutism, Horatio. You continue to spray absolutes around as
if they were somehow doxa, that which may not be questioned, and yet here
you are on an allegedly critical list that exists for exactly that purpose.
A bit like that breath-taking statement of yours that went somewhere along
the lines of ‘no woman in the 17th or 18th century created any capital.’ I
mean, do you even think before you write this stuff?


On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 8:19 PM, S. Artesian <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> That's certainly helpful, but moral quantities, qualities are not at stake
> here.
>
> Advanced capitalism is advanced on the basis of the extent, and domination
> of its capitalist social relations; on the strength of its ability to
> accumulate capital, and reproduce the accumulation of capital throughout
> all
> areas of the economy-- industry, transport, agriculture.
>
> As for the statement about Laos being better off under French
> colonialism...
> sure, the "what if" category is a wonderful diversion at cocktail parties--
> having nothing to do of course with actual history.
>
> Several years ago,  some op-ed political economist at the Wall Street
> Journal, opining on the collapse of the USSR wrote that, based on the
> growth
> rate of the USSR after 1917, and the overall growth rate of Western
> capitalist economies, there was no reason for the October Revolution to
> occur-- that if Kerensky has stayed in power, Russia would have experienced
> the same growth with, of course, "less bloodshed, greater freedom."  Sure--
> as if Kerensky COULD have stayed in power...  The category of necessity
> disappears, as is to  be expected at cocktail parties after the 3rd
> martini.
>
> In response we should tell our dabblers in speculative morality, "Sure, and
> if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass on the ground."
>
> Contact me offlist for the more vulgar version of the above.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jon Cloke" <copito61@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 2:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Do words matter? [was Re: Hedges: The American
> EmpireIs Bankrupt]
>
>
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