t byfield on Wed, 28 May 1997 01:04:58 +0200 (MET DST) |
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Re: <nettime> The Piran Nettime Manifesto |
On Tue 05/27/97 at 10:05 AM -0600, John Perry Barlow <barlow@eff.org> wrote: > Wow. It sounds as if you folks had yourselves quite a time. Probably a good > thing I wasn't there... If I may ask: Why? I'm sure various people have various ideas about this, but fractionalism is one thing, but separatism quite another. This "manifesto" doesn't especially summarize anything that *I* saw or heard in Ljubljana--not any decisions, and certainly none of the debates. (Saying that implies no stand on the manifesto's content.) > >· We denounce pan-capitalism and demand reparations. Cyberspace is where > > your bankruptcy takes place. > > Reparations from whom and for what? It seems to me that pan-capitalism is > the natural state of things unless you have sufficiently authoritarian > governments to impose planned economies. The latter seem to have failed > universally. What's your alternative? If "pan-capitalism" is "the natural state of things," then there's no point in talking about it: it has all the conceptual clarity of the word "stuff." I suppose you can evaluate "the natural state of things" in a positive way, but what you're pretty much saying that the world's a great place. Indeed it is--now what? Well, now we'll need to think about it in clear terms that convey *some* amount of specificity. So let's do that... The notion that every regime that has imposed a planned economy has failed is clearly false: there's been a recent wave of collapsing governments in a specific region, and they followed a limited range of economic planning strategies; but they were never the monolithic bogey that the US made them out to be when they were in power--and nor were they the only examples of "planned economies." No amount of quibbling can change the fact that every major industrialized country imposes an incredibly wide range of procedures that serve to regulate their economies, and to do so with the aim of meeting very specific goals: *planning*. And they *all* do so through a range of techniques, which rely on both "incentives" and "coercion." So we have a spectrum or continuum of governmental techniques and styles of economic planning; some work better than others. For now, at least; wait two or ten years--your "results" will be quite different. So is this evanescent, shifting state of affairs "pan-capitalism"? I don't think so, for the quite simple reason this state of affairs--a hodgepodge of regimes using a mishmash of techniques to manage their economies--has lasted for as long as anyone can remember, certainly before industrialization and before feudalism too. Maybe that brings us full circle, to the claim that pan-capitalism is somehow "natural"; but if it does, it does nothing else--and leaves us wondering whether you're claiming that whatever you mean by "planned economies" was unique in all of world history as an unnatural creation of man. Thus genocide would be natural, atomic or genetic manipulations would be natural, even the histories of art, architecture, music, dance would be natural, but--I'll assume--Marxian-inspired socialism alone was somehow un- natural. It's possible you believe this, though I really doubt it. However that may be, your request for an alternative really has to be disingenuous: you're asking people to propose an alternative to "nature." I can't imagine that anyone would answer you or that you would for a second actually consider their suggestion if they did. Ted --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de