Captalism and Pynchon (was: RE: The Olympics)

[Mr Craig Clark]

Scott Weintraub <scottw at wam.umd.edu> writes:
> 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.

I'd argue firstly that the "chaos=good, order=bad" conflation is 
immensely simplistic in regard to Pynchon. I'd suggest that the 
following summary, though pretty crude itself, probably comes closer 
to capturing TRP's opinions on order and chaos:

(i) Too much chaos - try one of those amazing parties dotted throughout
     TRP's oeuvre, most notably in this regard Meatball Mulligan's party in 
    "Entropy" - is bad (hence Meatball's decision to impose some kind of 
     order on the party, which reads like TRP thinks it's a good thing).
(ii) Too much order is also bad - it's what They want, it's what Orwell describes
      in _1984_. 
(iii)Some kinds of chaos are better than others, just as some kinds of order
      are better than others.
(iv)The cusp when order becomes chaos and vice versa: that seems to be where 
     things are most interesting, and where the chances are best for
     good things (like freedom) to happen (I suspect there's scope for an
     entire thread here on whether the Zone is an order becoming a chaos
     or vice versa). 

As a Marxist scholar, I'd take serious argument with Webster's definition of
capitalism: like all such definitions, it is guilty of concealing 
from our scrutiny large and utterly important aspects of capitalism. Firstly 
note that it makes no mention at all of the labour component of capitalist
systems of production, nor of the fact that profit results from exploitation of 
the labour of the working class. These are critical to any definition 
of capitalism: without them, we are in fact ignorant of (a) how goods 
are produced and (b) where profit/capital accumulation comes from. In 
Marxist terminology this is the fetishisation of the commodity: 
attention is focussed on the commodity itself and not on the 
exploitative dynamics of production which produce it.

Webster's also fetishises market processes: it claims that they are "free", 
it implies that they are "natural". The definition does not encourage 
us to examine the question of whom "free" market processes serve. The 
answer is simply that the free market serves those who have 
sufficient capital to compete in it, but it excludes those who are 
not sufficiently capitalised. Have a look at the Third World to see 
this in action (it's from the Third World that I'm writing). I'd argue that
the "free" market is not "free", not an expression of Adam Smith's
"hidden hand", not the working out of some divine or at least 
supra-human law, but rather that the free market is a creation of 
capitalised interests intended to serve their interests.
 
> 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.
 
I think I'm in agreement with you on this, to a point. I do think TRP 
is wonderfully cynical of authority figures and people in power, and 
if I had to try to put him into a political pigeonhole I'd tag him as 
an anarchist - but may I never be called upon to do this, either here 
or in any official report... :-) But I think while TRP wouldn't 
recommend firebombing Ma and Pa's drugstore in Tennessee, I think 
he'd expect us to ask why it is Ma and Pa are charging poor foax 
money for the stuff they buy. It ain't ma and Pa's fault, and maybe 
they're trying to do their best to live as decent caring human 
beings, but they're living inside the System too, and my sig tells 
you where that one leads.

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"