Mark Stahlman (via RadioMail) on Tue, 3 Jun 1997 21:26:18 +0200 (MET DST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
<nettime> Political Economics 101 |
Folks: Raging against "pan-capitalism", demanding the end of work after age 40, re-hashing St. Fred and St. Karl's follies, isomorphing economics with ecologics (Bateson, anyone?), decrying the "end of the social", wailing about why Soros is the only water-supply, pretending that British or French "Social Democracy" is anything but a brutal and cynical safety valve, exhalting the pathos-soaked hobos of the world, yearning for "noble savagery" and farting loudly about "unintended consequences" all demonstrates a profound and posturing ignorance of the basic political economics of the Information Age. Why are we -- apparently deliberately -- so ill-informed about the mess we are now in? Who runs the world? Nobody? Guess again. When Newt Gingrich stepped up to the PFF podium in January 1995 -- with J.P. Barlow on the stage (to deliver a lyrical but typically deceitful attack on the "natural" free-market policies, "red in tooth and claw", which he now embraces), he credited two people as the principle architects of the Information Age -- Peter Drucker and Kenneth Boulding. Newt said that he was merely the "hand-maiden of the intellectuals" and he wasn't kidding. Instead of hanging out with us in Ljubljana, Barlow (that "infernally cussed" acid-head) was sitting at the feet of Drucker (the ultimate management guru), his new idol -- does a pattern seem to be emerging? How many of us have even read Boulding or Drucker? Earth to nettime! We live in a post-industrial oligarch-controlled world. It is a world that is characterized by economic scarcity (Maastricht austerity), studied irrationality (post-structuralism), electronic narcotics (user interfaces and virtual reality), semiotic occultism (hermenetics), accelerated looting and the global crushing of hope. This world was absolutely planned and it has been quite deliberately articulated and implemented. It was designed in order to end the possiblity that human creativity would ever again threaten the oligarchs and their power. In the name of guarding against dreaded "instability", post-industrialism's target has consistently been economic growth, creative intellect and anti-oligarchist sovereignty. To pretend otherwise is to have missed the past 50 years of human history (and then some). To imagine that this economy isn't planned by the oligarchs for their own overwelming advantage is utterly naive. And, for the aristocratic hanger-on Barlow (personally selected by Jackie-O to finish JFK Jr's "schooling" in drugs and women, fer chrissakes), such naivety is quite unlikely. This "poet" is an oligarchist whore -- not exactly a "job in the formal sense of the word", I would agree. In the real world, unemployment is endemic (or "jobs" are low wage and unproductive), overall wages are stagnant (except for the "Brain Lords"), productivity is paradoxically "flat" (computers cut costs not generate wealth), unrest is palpable (deadly in many locales), China is declared the new "enemy"(it's not post-industrial), schools no longer teach learning (keyboard skills and behavior mod are plenty), narcosis is considered truly religious (Wow, God lives in the rocks!), plagues are threatening (or real) and the stock market is booming (cut costs boost profits) and all of this is for the same reason -- oligarchist post-industrialism. Each of these "consequences" was widely forecast and absolutely intended. Read Boulding and Drucker and it's all layed out. To pretend otherwise is to profoundly misunderstand what and who we are up against. And, in championing misunderstanding, we are thoroughly impotent against these oligarchs and their minions. All we can do is "refuse." All we can do is spin our own utopian fantasies. All we can do is long for an autonomy from necessity, from authority and from rationality -- from being human. All we can do is take our medicine, pick at our nits and lay down to die. Or, worse yet, we can become "Social Democrats." But, in forging an understanding, we see other possiblities, however dimly. History makes some semblance of sense. Power is real and ideas actually have consequences. Technology becomes a two-edged sword. Despair is checked. Strategies begin to come into focus. Which will it be? Studied irrationality or tentative pattern recognition? What the hell, let's party. Mark Stahlman New Media Associates New York City newmedia@mcimail.com --- # 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