Profit and loss

[Phil Wise]

----- Original Message -----
From: <calbert at tiac.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2001 2:01 AM
Subject: Re: Profit and loss


> Mr Weaver:
>
> > >Profits allow one to attack poverty,
> >
> > Profits allow you to attack poverty that you have created, but even
> > then you don't have to, giving is voluntary y'understand. A-and it is
> > permissible to turn a profit - modest of course ;-) - on those
> > donations, tho of course the profits are greater from war promotion.
>
>
> ....and yet, looking back on the 20th century, the greatest examples
> of "created poverty" are, by orders of magnitude
>
> 1) the famine in the Soviet Union following Stalin's program of forced
> collectivization of agriculture.....the toll stands in the 10s of
> MILLIONS......
>
> 2) the famine in the PRC subsequent to "the Great Leap Forward",
> again the toll in the 10s of MILLIONS
>
> btw, note that neither Uncle Joe nor Uncle Mao missed a meal.....
>

Which were two of the totalitarian regimes I mentioned when I first posted a
reply to Doug's question.  I noticed that Jane Sweet asked (possibly with
tongue in cheek) whether people thought Pynchon was a communist.  Is the
pinko communist the only figure on the political left that people in the US
can conceive of?  In Vineland P asks why the sixties failed; the answer is
the participants mirrored official power, and so were not up to the
challenge of democracy.  Their "basic revolutionary mistake" was a libinal
attachment to Weed Atman, an attachment that suggested they needed someone
to tell them what to do.  The implied Pynchon would seem to be closer
politically to a version of the sixties movements that doesn't make the
basic revolutionary mistake; a democratic Pynchon.

It was a mistake to bring Castro into this because he is a tyrant, and so it
then becomes that much easier to ignore what he might have to say.  It also
allows the introduction of Stalin and Mao as an argument, by implication,
against the concerns of the protesters in Quebec.

Totalitarianism is neither about economics or ideology.  It is about the
total domination of its subjects, and about the official ideology, which
could be virtually anything, infusing its way into every aspect of social
life.  One of its pre-conditions seems to be a "scientific", systemic,
underpinning - the movement aligns itself with a metanarrative that makes
results seem pre-determined: the inevitable historical rise of the
proletarians to achieve dialectical materialism, the historical destiny of
the Germanic people because of their innate superiority.  What I am seeing
appears to be conditions in the process of being set in place to achieve the
inevitable rise of the entrapreneurial subject leading to a free-market
utopia.  So far, the commodity and commercialisation appear to have gone
quite a way toward infusing their way into most aspects of social life.  The
free-market ideal, underpinned by scientific rationality, is there as a
metanarrative, so that those in power can sacrifice what needs to be
sacrificed to achieve it.  Anybody who has lost their job during their
company's "rationalisation" knows a little of this.  The fact that people in
nation states are being forced to give up significant rights to influence
the political direction of society, and that official power has acted like
goon-squads to prevent the expression of dissent, only adds to my
nervousness.

Before achieving power, totalitarian movements historically achieve
considerable support, especially from elites who are likely to do very well
under their rule.  Once again, this mirrors (so far) what is happening at
very high political levels.  What I don't want to have to wait for is
confirmation: once totalitarian regimes have established themselves,
historically, they start feeding on their populations.  That is exactly what
happened with the two famines you cited - they were political as well as
economic events, designed to liquidate classes that apparently had no right
to exist.

Capitalism is a method of distributing resources throughout society; in many
ways it is a very successful one.  But it is one that establishes elites,
and capitalists themselves throughout its history have done some terrible
things in its defence.  Communism too is a method of distributing resources
throughout society; the totally planned model that has so far been tried has
some inherent problems.  I'm not economically literate enough to go much
further than that, but I do know that free market solutions in New Zealand
did not dramatically increase standards of living for most people, although
they did increase our access to cool gadgets, and they limited our ability
to choose the government we want.

I am nervous about what may or may not be a totalitarian movement, different
(ie less centralised) than previous models, being given access to power.  So
far, it seems similar in important ways, and yet when people try to talk
about this aspect of the protests, they are ignored or given short shrift.
IMO it is a political discussion we need to be having, not an economic one.
Let me concede that capitalism can work well as a wealth distribution
system, if you concede that this has its limits.  But politics...

Phil

[snip]