Newmedia on Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:02:34 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy... |
Brian: > Mark, I am always fascinated by your ideas and the things you refer to. So, Brian loves Mark (in public) . . . ?? <g> I find that if you want to "go" someplace, it is very helpful to know where you are already. And, if you wish to know where you stand today, it is indispensable to understand how you got there. People who don't care about any of this are generally not "serious" about going anyplace. But, far more interesting are those who seem to be engaged with history and, in constructing their "narratives," make some things up and leave other things out. History is tricky that way. So are people. For instance, Richard Barbrook has "made up" a story about Marshall McLuhan (which forms an important part of his lecture series) -- derived, I suspect, from his general distaste for the French and their once-upon-a-time fascination with "Le McLuhanisme." From what I can tell, the French never really read McLuhan. (Or, for that matter, since he incorrectly calls him a "determinist," has Barbrook.) You mentioned Joseph Schumpter as a favorite of the neo-liberals. Perhaps. But, if by that you mean the promotion of the "creative destruction" meme in the 1990s, that is the work of George Gilder in Forbes and, as best I can tell, he never read Schumpeter -- who was already expunged from the curriculum when Gilder studied economics at Harvard. Schumpeter's 1938 "Business Cycles," which is at the center of his work on econometrics, is long OOP, other than a very expensive re-print -- _http://www.amazon.com/Business-Cycles-Theoretical-Historical-Statistical/dp /1578985560/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861572&sr=1-1&keywords=schump eter+business+cycles_ (http://www.amazon.com/Business-Cycles-Theoretical-Historical-Statistical/dp/1578985560/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861572& sr=1-1&keywords=schumpeter+business+cycles) If you don't understand these cycles (and, importantly, the subsequent work on the topic), can you really say that you have read Schumpter? George Gilder, today's popularizer of Schumpeter, insisted that the Dot Com bust was the result of excessive "regulation." Wrong! If he had read and understood "Business Cycles," he could not (honestly) make that claim. You also mentioned Kondratiev and his supposed "waves." That is also a fabrication. The whole movement in finance to try to chart out these waves appears to have been constructed without the benefit of reading Kondratiev -- who wrote in Russian and the translation of whose work into English didn't happen until the 1990s. _http://www.amazon.com/Works-Nikolai-Kondratiev-Pickering-Masters/dp/1851962 603/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861757&sr=1-2&keywords=kondratiev_ (http://www.amazon.com/Works-Nikolai-Kondratiev-Pickering-Masters/dp/185196260 3/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861757&sr=1-2&keywords=kondratiev) Yes, Schumpeter read him in German, so maybe some others did as well but what is attached to his name today has little to do with what he actually said -- which is true for Schumpeter as well as Kondratiev and McLuhan. Sloppy scholarship? Sure. Laziness? Of course. But there is also a the drive to "invent" yourself and one of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to take a "popular" figure and put them on as a *cloak* to make yourself look erudite and, by association, worthy. Apart from ones own career, none of this is helpful -- if understanding the origins of the present-day context is the goal. Gregory Bateson is a fine case-in-point. To the extent that anyone knows the name, he is typically treated as a HERO and even a SAINT. But was he? I once had the head of the Communications Dept. a the New School storm out of a lunch, knocking the table over in her hurry, because she was so offended that I would question Bateson's legacy, on which she had written her PhD. There is plenty to question. Yes, Bateson and Mead and Lewin were all involved in aspects of what became the CIA, after being deeply involved in its predecessors during WW II. But, once again, the urge to fictionalize takes over the "story," since few seem to have bothered to sort out what the CIA was really up to in the 1950s. Here, the whole MKULTRA narrative and LSD-as-a-weapon story walks onto the stage. But, when you look more closely, this turns out to actually be a "cover-story" designed to fit in with the Church Committee purge of the agency in the 1970s. Spy vs. Spy?? For example, Timothy Leary was a CIA "asset" from his days as a graduate student studying personality -- where "personality testing" had been a specialty of the OSS. Then there was Allen Ginsburg. The counter-culture had significant CIA roots. As did the 60s anti-war movement (much of which was organized by Trotskyists, who were a CIA "specialty"). But none of that shows up in the popular narrative -- such as Marty Lee's "Acid Dreams," for which he consciously left out any details that didn't fit his Soros-inspired "legalization" storyline. Social science -- all of it, economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology and the various cross-breeds like linguistics and social psychology -- after WW II was deeply implicated in a broad attempt to "engineer" society. Where do you think Noam Chomsky came from? Yes, the CIA was involved but the "core" of the effort was co-ordinated by the BIG THREE foundations -- Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie. Much interesting research on how the foundations worked is being done today. For instance, take a look at Manchaster Prof. Inderjeet Parmar's 2012 "Foundations of the American Century" -- _http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-American-Century-Carnegie-Rockefeller/dp/ 0231146280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1358861166&sr=8-2&keywords=foundations+ame rican+century_ (http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-American-Century-Carnegie-Rockefeller/dp/0231146280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1358861166&sr=8-2&keywords= foundations+american+century) The "original" volume on how much of this worked in the social sciences is probably Chris Simpson's 1996 "Science of Coercion" -- _http://www.amazon.com/Science-Coercion-Communication-Psychological-1945-196 0/dp/0195102924/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861317&sr=1-1&keywords=sc ience+of+coercion_ (http://www.amazon.com/Science-Coercion-Communication-Psychological-1945-1960/dp/0195102924/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861317 &sr=1-1&keywords=science+of+coercion) What Simpson wrote could be (and maybe has been) done for anthropology and "Area Studies" as well as all the other social sciences. Following the Vietnam war, the Pentagon's ARPA was reined in and many of these projects were defunded -- leading to the addition of a "D" in the agency's name and a major upheaval in US academia. Then, under Clinton, the "dual-use" orientation (i.e. funding social science for "non-combatant" purposes) resumed. When an anthropologist shows up in the Arctic (like Ted Carpenter did in Cold War Dew Line territory) or in South Africa (like Keith Hart has today), it is quite reasonable to ask where these people stand in relation to this history and, of course, who's paying the bills. "Radical" pronouncements don't "absolve" anyone, since that was exactly what the "CIA" was doing. Building a "better world" has long been the preferred *hideout* for power-hungry scoundrels. Ask them questions. See how they respond. No need to listen to me -- although my past posts offer many guideposts. Just do the homework -- *without* a pre-determined "storyline" and *without* the urge to identify the "good guys" and the "bad guys." Start flipping over rocks and see what you find -- while trying to understand (and even sympathize with) what these people were doing and why they were so deeply motivated to "change the world." Then, take a good look in the mirror . . . !! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org