Marx: the consciousness and the social existence that determines consciousness

Fri Feb 19 07:15:32 CST 2016

Cool.

On Monday, February 15, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

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> [image: Living in the Wreckage]
> Salvage: #1 Amid This Stony Rubbish
> author:  Various <https://lareviewofbooks.org/author/various>
> publisher:  Salvage Publications Ltd.
> pub date:  07.01.2015
> pp:  235
> tags:  SF <https://lareviewofbooks.org/genre/sf>
> Zak Bronson <https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/zak-bronson> on Salvage:
> #1 Amid This Stony Rubbish
> Living in the WreckageFebruary 12th, 2016RESET
> <https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/living-in-the-wreckage#>-
> <https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/living-in-the-wreckage#>+
> <https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/living-in-the-wreckage#>
>
> IN HIS NOVEL *Railsea* (2013), China Miéville portrays a postapocalyptic
> world littered with endless layers of leftover consumer waste. Salvors pick
> through mountains of junk, hoping to uncover secrets from the
> pre-apocalyptic world. Cut off from the past and lacking any framework for
> understanding these objects, characters are left sifting the rubble,
> picking through the remnants of history, and taking what is useful while
> discarding the rest. As one character explains, “you don’t uncover the past
> if you’re a salvor: you pick up rubbish.” *Railsea* provides an example
> of what Miéville and Evan Calder Williams have termed *salvagepunk*, a
> genre of postapocalyptic fiction that ranges from the post-oil catastrophe
> narratives of the *Mad Max* series to the collage aesthetic of Hayao
> Miyazaki’s *Howl’s Moving Castle* (2004). In these works, characters
> attempt to survive by picking through the waste of the Earth, combining and
> repurposing objects and ideas from the past based on their value within
> hostile environments.
>
> Anyone familiar with Miéville’s work knows that *salvagepunk* is more
> than just a genre; it is also a theoretical practice. The transition from
> salvage as a *noun* (something akin to garbage) to salvage as a *verb* (meaning
> to repurpose) evident in *Railsea* provides a model for thinking about
> the ruins that lay before us; it demonstrates a way of picking through the
> rubbish in order to recreate the world anew. *Salvage*, a new “quarterly
> of revolutionary arts and letters” co-edited by Miéville, continues this
> intellectual trajectory, shattering our slack-jawed complacency in the face
> of ecological disaster, economic disparity, and collective struggle and
> inviting us to participate in a new radical political activism. “Why
> Salvage?” ask the editors: “Because we are wrecked. Because we need a
> strategy for ruination.” Not content to stand by as the modern world
> crumbles into a postapocalyptic nightmare, the writers and artists in this
> debut issue of *Salvage* provide a fantastic collection of essays, poems,
> and artworks that engage with the hopeful and pessimistic realities of this
> ruined and dead world, seeking to expose the already catastrophic — and
> apocalyptic — nature of neoliberal capitalism in the hope of inspiring
> radical change.
>
> The collection’s centerpiece is “The Limits of Utopia,” written by
> Miéville himself. Avoiding any straightforward revival of hopeful optimism,
> Miéville’s essay provides a challenging discussion of deep problems facing
> the planet; in particular, it focuses on the fundamental incompatibility
> between environmental justice and the demands of capitalist accumulation.
> Countering the once-hopeful claim that climate change would unite rich and
> poor alike, Miéville notes that dreams of better worlds have become the
> fantasies of corporate newspeak. “Utopias are necessary,” he writes, “but
> not only are they insufficient: they can, in some iterations, be part of
> the ideology of the system, the bad totality that organises us, warms the
> skies, and condemns millions to peonage on garbage scree.” Exploring a
> range of problems — from a trash incinerator installed in the poorest
> district of Los Angeles to UN-backed plans to evict citizens from their
> land — Miéville portrays an increasingly polarized world where dreams of
> bright futures are often purchased at the expense of the world’s most
> disenfranchised. Miéville forces readers to question where they put their
> faith: what we need, in his view, is more rage at the false hope offered to
> us through the fractured lens of corporate solutionism. In what might be
> considered a slogan for the journal’s mix of optimism and indignation,
> Miéville writes that “[w]e need utopia, but to try to think utopia, in this
> world, without rage, without fury, is an indulgence we can’t afford […] we
> cannot think utopia without hate.”
>
> For Miéville and his fellow contributors, this combination of optimism and
> anger provides an oppositional politics that challenges the complacency of
> the Western world in the face of crisis and catastrophe. The essays can be
> seen to respond to what Mark Fisher has termed *capitalist realism*, or
> “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political
> and economic system, but also that it is now impossible to even *imagine* a
> coherent alternative to it.” Jamie Allinson’s “Don’t Mourn, Accelerate”
> builds on these ideas by looking at the impoverishment of the Left’s
> response to the unending realities of crisis: instead of engaging with
> anticapitalist politics, the Left has sought refuge by nostalgically
> promoting a revival of organized class struggle or by turning toward the
> interconnected workers of the knowledge economy to coordinate a fitful
> battle against an amorphous, evasive, and decentered capitalism. Allinson
> examines the internet buzzword *accelerationism*: an emerging theoretical
> frame, adopted by revolutionaries and bros alike, that suggests that the
> only way out of capitalism is to expedite its violent, inhuman, and
> destructive forces so that it tears itself apart. Such a process does not
> necessarily lead to the end of capitalism, nor will it prevent ecological
> damage and worldwide disasters. Allinson, in contrast, highlights the need
> for a theoretical position that works “within and against” capitalism,
> which aims at hijacking the tools of industry in order to organize a
> postcapitalist world.
>
> Capitalism’s destructive capacity then takes center stage in Neil
> Davidson’s engaging essay “Neoliberalism as the Agent of Capitalist
> Self-Destruction.” Neoliberalism, he argues, has erased the basic division
> between capital and the state which is vital to the protection of
> individual citizens. Beginning by challenging fantasies of the free market,
> Davidson highlights successive shifts brought about by neoliberal policies
> that have slowly eradicated the state’s opposition to capitalist growth; he
> further charts the ways that these shifts have led to increasingly divisive
> politics evident in reactionary policies such as the repressive enforcement
> of immigration laws in the United States and Europe.
>
> Davidson’s analysis intersects with Daniel Hartley’s “Against the
> Anthropocene,” which articulates a way of imagining capitalism as a
> “world-ecology.” Hartley’s article expands the notion of the
> *Anthropocene*, a term coined by scientists to denote a new geological
> epoch demarcated by the human transformation of the environment. Geologists
> have generally traced the beginning of the Anthropocene to the invention of
> the steam engine in the 18th century; however, building on the work of
> Jason W. Moore in his recent *Capitalism in the Web of Life*, Hartley
> contemplates the world-historical changes brought about by the
> *capitalocene*, a moment originating in the 15th century which led to a
> reorganization of social and political life according to capitalism’s
> accumulation of “nature’s free gifts.” In contemplating these changes,
> Hartley also advances a much broader way of thinking about the capitalocene
> beyond its impact on the natural environment. In his thoughtful elaboration
> on “world-ecology,” Hartley expands capitalism’s zone of appropriation to
> include others forms of unpaid labor, including colonial appropriation of
> land, women’s domestic labor, and the possession of racialized and
> sexualized bodies — ideas that intersect with several of the essays that
> appear throughout this collection.
>
> If it isn’t already abundantly clear, the essays collected in *Salvage* focus
> on rethinking the political valence of Marxism in the present. However,
> rather than simply scavenging Marx’s ideas, the authors revive the spirit
> of Marxist thought by creating a “salvage-Marxism” that rustles through the
> legacies of the past to contemplate their contemporary value while
> simultaneously integrating vital lessons from feminist, queer, and
> postcolonial studies. A number of essays explore these ideas through
> practical examples of ongoing sites of struggle and contestation.
>
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 3:30 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','brook7 at sover.net');>> wrote:
>
>>  I totally agree. Marx analysis of capitalism remains powerful and
>> insightful.  I do question the premise that  economic system changes always
>> come before intellectual system changes, which is what I really wanted to
>> talk about.  One could also reasonably argue that Northern European
>> socialism is closer to marxism than the communist party. I was admittedly
>> being a little flippant. All isms do however come in for some legitimate
>> resistance and probing.
>> > On Feb 13, 2016, at 3:04 PM, Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mike.weaver at zen.co.uk');>> wrote:
>> >
>> > When approaching Marx's writings, personally I think it is very
>> important to tease out the different threads he followed and look at each,
>> if not separately from the others, at least in themselves without judging
>> them by the others. His analysis of the way capitalism works, his
>> philosophical thought and his predictions of how human society would
>> develop are the three threads I am thinking of. The first has proved to be
>> as enduring as Darwin's theory of evolution. His philosophical thought has
>> proved more contentious, but many, myself included, will defend its
>> profundity. But Marx was as poor a futurologist as he was a husband and
>> parent, which is to say he had his virtues but they were rather
>> overshadowed by his failures.
>> > Yet many people justify their dismissal of marxism by referring to his
>> predictions only, and refuse to engage with his politico-economic and
>> philosophical work. It's a shame.
>> >
>> > On 13/02/2016 18:01, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>> >> Marx was a smart guy but the communist party has not proven too
>> impressive in healing the excesses of capitalism. And the whole theory
>> about the workers paradise has not worked out that good. The thing about
>> material power and economic arrangements is that whether or not they
>> precede an intellectual frame, they always produce benefactors who will
>> promote and defend such a frame. That generation of a belief/intellectual
>> system defended by the powerful is a problem with Marxism and Capitalism.
>> >>
>> >>  The portion of the book I am now reading concerns the kinds of things
>> being talked about. Interestingly, McGilChrist  proposes not only a kind of
>> dialectic between left hemisphere ideologies/systems and right hemisphere
>> ways of thought, but also between the material cultures that arise and
>> either their own past or other competing cultures. It is hard in his
>> tracking of key historical turning points to separate intellectual changes
>> from practical material changes. Money for example favors left brain
>> systems that equate symbols with goods but also promote a fluidity of
>> cultural exchange. Any material culture favors and produces certain
>> intellectual biases, but often seems to emerge out of
>> philosophical/intellectual tendencies. ( Even the direction of signal
>> communication systems like writing or pictograms mark changes in
>> hemispheric bias)
>> >>
>> >>  The big problem right now is the discord between measuring success in
>> money and measuring success in terms of widespread happiness and long term
>> planetary sustainability/health/resilience/diversity.  Our material culture
>> has presumed that life-forms and biospheric ecosystems are simply material
>> resource pools( and dumping grounds)  rather than proceeding out of an
>> emergent integrated whole and elegantly balanced living wisdom shaped by
>> millions of years of evolutionary experimentation.  This bias has led to
>> the delivery of machine and fossil fuel based comforts at the direct
>> expense of species diversity, the suffering of the colonized, climate
>> stability, clean water, clean air and thriving oceanic abundance. This bias
>> also has favored the most skillfully devised sytems of control and
>> violence, which appear quite practical to winners, less so to losers, but
>> have many large -scale dangers as weapons systems become more powerful and
>> leaders become wackier.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> On Feb 13, 2016, at 6:29 AM, ish mailian<ishmailian at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','ishmailian at gmail.com');>>  wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Why was Marx a materialist?
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/28/why-was-marx-a-materialist
>> >>>
>> >>> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 6:22 AM, ish mailian<ishmailian at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','ishmailian at gmail.com');>>  wrote:
>> >>>> In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter
>> into
>> >>>> definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
>> >>>> relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
>> >>>> development of their material forces of production. The totality of
>> >>>> these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
>> >>>> society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political
>> >>>> superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
>> >>>> consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the
>> >>>> general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not
>> >>>> the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their
>> >>>> social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain
>> >>>> stage of development, the material productive forces of society come
>> >>>> into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this
>> >>>> merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property
>> >>>> relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.
>> >>>> >From forms of development of the productive forces these relations
>> >>>> turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
>> >>>> changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
>> >>>> transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> In studying such transformations it is always necessary to
>> distinguish
>> >>>> between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
>> >>>> production, which can be determined with the precision of natural
>> >>>> science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic
>> >>>> – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this
>> >>>> conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual
>> by
>> >>>> what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of
>> >>>> transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this
>> >>>> consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material
>> >>>> life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of
>> >>>> production and the relations of production. No social order is ever
>> >>>> destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient
>> >>>> have been developed, and new superior relations of production never
>> >>>> replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence
>> >>>> have matured within the framework of the old society.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to
>> >>>> solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem
>> >>>> itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are
>> >>>> already present or at least in the course of formation.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
>> >>> -
>> >>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>>
>> -
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