AtDDtA(15): The End of the Capitalistic Experiment

Sat Aug 11 15:58:06 CDT 2007

   "'We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present--your
future--a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal
poverty--the end of the capitalistic experiment.  Once we came to
understand the simple thermodynamic truth that Earth's resources were
limited, in fact soon to run out, the whole capitalist illusion fell
to pieces.  Those who spoke this truth aloud were denounced as
heretics, as enemies of the prevailing economic faith.  Like religious
Dissenters of an earlier day, we were forced to migrate,with little
choice but to set forth upon that damn fourth-dimensional Atlantic
known as Time." (AtD, Pt. II, p. 415)

"the end of the capitalistic experiment"

   As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently
decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers
are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as
soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then
the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the
land and other means of production into socially exploited and,
therefore, common means of production, as well as the further
expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is
now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself,
but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is
accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic
production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist
always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this
expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an
ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the
conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation
of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into
instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all
means of production by their use as means of production of combined,
socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the
world-market, and with this, the international character of the
capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of
the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of
this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression,
slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt
of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of
capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter
upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along
with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and
socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become
incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is
burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The
expropriators are expropriated.

--Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Ch. XXXII, "Historical Tendency of
Capitalist Accumulation" (1867)

"the simple thermodynamic truth"

Rifkin, Jeremy with Ted Howard.
   Entropy: A New World View.  NY: Viking, 1980.

http://www.foet.org/books/entropy.html

"religious Dissenters of an earlier day"

English Dissenters were those who separated from the Church of
England.[They opposed State interference in religious matters, and
founded their own communities over the 16th to 18th century period.
Having hoped for a more Protestant Reformation in the Church of
England, many individuals were disappointed that political decisions
were made by the Monarch in order to control the Established
Church....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters

The term Dissenter refers to a number of Protestant denominations --
Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, and others --
which, because they refused to take the Anglican communion or to
conform to the tenets of the restored  Church of England in 1662, were
subjected to persecution under various acts passed by the Cavalier
Parliament between 1661 and 1665....

http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/dissntrs.html

English Dissenters

http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/index.html

Daniel Defoe, The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for
the Establishment of the Church (1702)

http://209.10.134.179/27/12.html

"that daunting fourth-dimensional Atlantic known as Time"

Taking of refuge in a planet's past was the plot of a Captain Kirk-era
Star Trek episode; the unintentionally-transported Kirk is taken to be
a religious dissenter; fortunately his judge is one of the "refugees".

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_415

Star Trek, "All Our Yesterdays" (1969)

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68816.html

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/All_Our_Yesterdays

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708415/

"against the current"

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by
year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no
matter--to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....
 And one fine morning----

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/f/fitzgerald/f_scott/gatsby/

http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=505494

"certain of your great dynamos"

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Ch. XXV, "The Dynamo and
the Virgin" (1900)

http://209.10.134.179/159/25.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hadams/eha25.html

"'The Fraternity of the Venturesome--'"

Mistranslated 'Chums of Chance'.

nzzt
Electrical short?

Suggests "he" could be a holographic image. Time traveling holograms
were one feature of the "Temporal Cold War" subplot of Star Trek:
Enterprise; one such manifestation (complete with "nzzt's") is set in
a huge dynamo station in a Nazi-occupied New York. This is two
possible Star Trek allusions in a single page.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_415

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/ENT/episode/6356.html

Star Trek: Enterprise, "Storm Front, Pt. II"

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/ENT/episode/6356.html

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Storm_Front%2C_Part_II

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0572241/

Interestingly, BOTH Star Trek episodes possibly/allegedly alluded to
here are the 78th of their respective series.  Hm ...

"as if laughter were an unfamiliar vice whose power to shake him apart
Mr. Ace could not afford to risk"

Why?  Something, however, tells me lacking a sense of humor is Bad
Shit in Those Pynchonian Texts ...