Profit and loss

[Jane Sweet]

Phil Wise wrote:


> 
> 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?  

 No, of course not, most Lefties here in the States are not
communists. 


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.  

Yeah, I think that's correct. 

Their "basic revolutionary mistake" was a libinal
> attachment to Weed Atman, an attachment that suggested they needed someone
> to tell them what to do.  

Right. 

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.

Thanks you so much for using that very useful term, "implied
Pynchon." 
Yes, I think you are correct again. 

> 
> 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.

That's right. It's not that we don't want  to see the world
a better place, we all do. I am, as I have divulged here
more than once, a 
student of McKeon (as in UNESCO and HUMAN RIGHTS) and Dewey.
I'm simply not buying the hype, the propaganda: "We will
save the world from the evil corporate multinationals!" 
It's like something out of a comic book. 


> 
> 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.  

I'm with you up to here. Although, your talking history, not
current events, free trade is not totalitarianism, nor does
capitalism lead to totalitarianism so... I don't know why
you are talking about totalitarianism here except as
history. 


>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.  

And is W conjuring up destiny or who has the Charisma, who
is it that is conjuring the meta-narrative (another term I
dislike and distrust, but...) END, destiny, asserting that
he/she is Destiny itself? The living corporation? The
machine? The living conspiracy perhaps, perhaps the
entrepreneurial subjects conspiring, ultimately against
themselves? In love with their own Death?  


So far, the commodity and commercialization appear to have
gone
> quite a way toward infusing their way into most aspects of social life. 

Yes. 

 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. 

Interesting take on it, sounds a lot like history we all
know, but I don't think it's what is going on today. 



 Anybody who has lost their job during their
> company's "rationalisation" knows a little of this.  


I don't see the connection here or at least it's not very
clear to me that anybody that lost a job in the dot.bomb
business recently was sacrificed by scientific rationalists
with visions of meta-narritive entrepreneurial utopia.



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.

The goon squads are troubling. The rest I think is much more
complicated and what is being lost and what gained and who
are the winners and the losers in this is not so cut and
dry.