Profit and loss

[Phil Wise]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jane Sweet" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2001 5:24 PM
Subject: Re: Profit and loss


>
>
> 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.
>
Thanks for the reply; it is good you are willing to engage.  I'm not talking
history because this is the very question I am asking.  I recognise
differences between the totalitarian regimes (these, in my opinion, should
be confined to Stalin, Hitler and Mao, although there are several, notably
Pol Pot's, that were totalitarian movements in power) and the move toward
free-trade.  But I have also noticed that there are considerable structural
similarities, those outlined above.  The major difference I see is that
there is no longer a centre - no Jo Stalin or Chairman Mao, both of whom
portrayed themselves as mere functionaries anyway.  This difference may or
may not be crucial.  I also don't see a conspiricy in any traditional sense
of the word.  But there is an accumulative effect of ideology that appears
to have established a momentum toward the establishment of a utopian
destiny - that we should all be living as one under the rule of a pure
scientific process (market forces).  And that this leads to assumptions
(I've seen it) about what people should think and how they should behave in
life, so that people with an aggressively ambitious, entraprenurial (sp?)
personality are valorated over others with different priorities or
personalities (I'm not very pushy myself).  My question remains: how do we
know that these things will not lead to a totalitarianism appropriate to the
times?  You merely deny that capitalism is totalitarianism.


>
> >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?
>
>
George W is not entirely relevant (I assume that is the W to which you
refer).  Despite the controversey over his election, he is a democratic head
of state.  The protesters in Quebec and Seattle (and Melbourne) are arguing
that before long elected governments will have little power to stop or
enable the system they are setting up.  As I said above, I am not accusing
Bush or anyone of being Jo Stalin.

> So far, the commodity and commercialization appear to have
> gone
> > quite a way toward infusing their way into most aspects of social life.
>
> Yes.
>
This is the nub of Claude Lefort's analysis of totalitarianism.  Another
little alarm bell...

>  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.
>
>
But why/why not?  I'm perhaps being too cautious.  But I'm sure the
totalitarianisms were enabled by people who didn't realise/couldn't conceive
of what eventually happened.

>
>  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.
>
>
I'm not particularly interested in the dot.bomb business.  When NZ
restructured its economy along free-market lines in the mid 1980s, this
eliminated an entire strata of low-skilled jobs, and that section of the
population has never really recovered.  That was who I was thinking of.


>
> 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.
>
This is perhaps so, but you have to admit that it can be seen as a
preference of corporations over democratic voter rights.  Governments might
not be able to enact sovereign laws, for fear of it costing them too much in
a lawsuit.  As it is, populations are in fear of electing a government left
of centre, in case the markets punish them for it.

Another way of looking at it is: the totalitarian regimes were partly
enabled because of the vacuum created by the functional end of the
aristocratic classes' power in Europe.  Now it is beginning to seem as if
the Nation State is coming to the end of its useful life; how do we know
what the consequences of this will be?  Shouldn't we be thinking very
seriously about it, given the results of the last major fissure?

Phil