Captalism and Pynchon (was: RE: The Olympics)

[Scott Weintraub]

On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, Mr Craig Clark wrote:

> Agreed, but I think _Gravity's Rainbow_ indicates a deep hostility 
> towards capitalism. A very deep hostility. Way deep. I mean, you 
> thought _Capital_ was anti-capitalist, but boy you ain't seen nothing 
> till you read the Rainbow.

I never got this message from _GR_.  While I think it's extremely safe to 
say that Pynchon is anti-Big Business, I'm not sure it can be taken much 
further.  If we're sticking with the equation that chaos = good and
order = bad, in theory, what's better than a free market?  I'm looking at 
a dictionary right now (Webster's) and it says that capitalism is "an 
economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of 
capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision 
rather than by state control, and by prices, production, and the 
distruction of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free 
market."  With free enterprise, we have a market that is an entity of its 
own.  Every variable in the system determines how it will act next.  Just 
like any large system, there are plenty of unknowns.  The market takes 
random (entropic) shifts.  If it didn't, we'd all be rich.  I don't see 
why Pynchon wouldn't favor something like this.

> 
> Where the ambiguity creeps in is in regard to the alternative. Don't 
> think TRP is exactly enamoured of what Orwell calls oligarchical 
> collectivism, as practised in the former Soviet Union, either.
> 

Yeah, definitely not, although, keeping TRP's hippie background in mind, 
I could easily see him going for an "Easy Rider"esque commune, something 
self-sufficient.  He doesn't seem like the collective farm type.

When it comes down to it, I think the best theme to cling to would state 
that rules and authority figures in any economic system are bad.  When a 
commune is, in reality, a cult with a strong hold on its members, that's 
bad.  A Ma and Pa drug store in Tennessee, that's good.  Microsoft, an 
entity attempting to impose utmost order on a (theoretically) free 
enterprise system, is bad.  Something like that.

> Craig Clark
> 
> "Living inside the system is like driving across
> the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
> on suicide."
>    - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
> 
> 

Scott Weintraub
scottw at wam.umd.edu