Profit and loss

[Phil Wise]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2001 12:49 AM
Subject: Re: Profit and loss


>
> ----------
> >From: "Phil Wise" <philwise at paradise.net.nz>
> >
>
> > You're right, it
> > is more complex, but Pynchon's narrator does say that PR3's people made
the
> > basic revolutionary mistake by investing in a cult of personality.
>
> I rather got the impression that Weed lacked "charisma", that this
so-called
> "cult of personality" was artificially-manipulated. Wasn't it just because
> he was tall?

That may have been part of it, but it certainly wasn't manipulated by Weed -
he doesn't welcome it (although he likes the sex, of course).  His height
mainly gave him an accidental leadership position at the start - he could
see further and report it.  It also means he sees enough to have "a law
enforcement epiphany".
>
> > As were the revolutionary and reactionary selves of the young PR3ers
before
> > and after they were turned by Vond.  Pynchon's implied author clearly
> > regards one as a totum of failed promise, the other as fascism.
>
> This is certainly one interpretation. They weren't *all* turned, of
course.
> Frenesi's seeming genetic predisposition to uniforms certainly complicates
> the issue, as does Prairie's final wistful call to Brock: "You can come
> back. ... Take me anyplace you want." (384) I'm not convinced that the
> intentions of Pynchon's "implied author" are as clear-cut as you say they
> are.
>
I imaging most of them were only "turned" insomuch as they settled down and
became good, obediant, productive citizens, which unless they were useful
would have been an acceptable outcome for Brock.  If such a time arrived
when they would be useful (I'm speculating), they'd probably snitch.

Yes, the attraction thing.  This libidinal attachment to authority is surely
related to the PR3ers' attachment to Weed's authority, such as it was, and
is why they are, in Brock's view, "easy to turn and cheap to develop".
Prairie has clearly had Frenesi's little weakness passed on to her.  In
Prairie it probably has something to do with Zoyd'd being a "weak" father.
I wonder how related this weakness is to that "virus" Weissmann talks about
in GR?


> >   Why can it
> > not be the same with laissez faire capitalism?
>
> Well ... there's absolutely no commonality between the one and the other,
is
> there?!
>
If Vineland suggests that the participants of the 60s democratic movements
could stay "revolutionaries" (these days mostly translated into alternative
lifestylers) or be "turned", depending on various factors (i.e., the one
cause can have two opposed results), why do two other historical phenomena
that derive from the same sequence of events (i.e. democracy, laissez faire
capitalism) have to be identical?  I think Pynchon's still using the V shape
in one form or another.

> > How can it be the archetypal
> > expression of democracy when many of ther most powerful figures cannot
be
> > held to democratic account?
>
> Of course they can. It's an *open* marketplace: that's the whole point of
> it.
>

I'm not sure I follow you.  If you are saying that, as consumers or maybe
stockholders, people have the power to change corporate policy by witholding
their purchase, or voting for the board if they are stockholders, and that
this is sufficient substitute for a roll back in their democratic rights to
vote for a Government who can make laws on their behalf, then I believe
that's the very objection that's usually mounted to this.  Is this mechanism
really sufficient?

> > Not best: this makes me mad.
>
> I'm sorry, but that's actually your problem. It's a salutation, nothing
> more.
>
There's a song on the famous Eminem CD in which he robs a bank, kills the
teller, and then says "thank you!" in his cheeriest voice as he is leaving.
I take it you'd regard that as a salutation, nothing more?

> > I didn't label anything anything - I explained some similarities I
> > perceived, explained that they made me nervious.
>
> I did read your post carefully, and this is what you wrote:
>
> > 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.
> snip
> > 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.
>
> The comparisons you made were between utopian Marxism and Nazism, i.e.
>
> > the inevitable historical rise of the
> > proletarians to achieve dialectical materialism, the historical destiny
of
> > the Germanic people because of their innate superiority.
>
No, even with disingenuous snipping it is clear that the comparisons I am
making are between the two examples laid out just above and the possibility
that the move to a global free-market is underpinned by a metanarrative of
capitalist progress - a myth of the entrapreneurial subject's rise which, if
universalised, will lead to a free-market utopia of global growth, which
apparently has no need for democratic process.  I asked if, given the way
I'd defined totalitarianism, if the striking similarity between the two
historical examples and my reading of the current situation were not a cause
for concern.  This is a very long way from calling George W a Nazi.  There
are a number of points at which you could argue against this comparison, but
you chose to portray it as a cheap rhetorical trick and ignore the concerns
in it.

> The conflict, as I see it, is between *national* democracies, which have
> *national* economic interests at heart, and *global* economic growth.
>
Which is probably right.  I asked Jane in another post: if totalitarianism
in history was faciliated by the end of the European aristocracy's influence
(basically WW1 is a watershed here), then if the Nation State is nearing the
end of its natural life, how do we know this fissure won't lead to something
similar?  Why aren't we debating the question?


> best
>
>
Phil
>
>
>