It's undeniable that some sort of growth limit must eventually be reached--and what better proof of that than the crisis of climate change unfolding at present, although the devastation wrought by current industrial and (perhaps above all) agricultural practice and intensity should warn us against a narrow focus on climate change alone.
Perhaps we should take another look at good old Veblen recently the object of a new book, review cited on Marxmail. Certainly Trumpism focuses on the celebration of conspicuous consumption by all classes allegedly--the obscene boat parades and the tulip-mania of gun, woman, car, and truck consumption by his people are a prime example of this pseudodemocratic authoritarian anarchist focus on waste of all kinds as a basic human (manly) right. What better argument against the civil war portended by the 400-million-weapon mostly rightwing gun supply than the riposte that the point of gun ownership is not to kill anything, but simply to consume the guns, ammo, and infinitely ramified "technical" accoutrements of gun ownership to the greater glory of Profit? It goes without saying that modern capitalism depends for the mass of its profits on what could be considered conspicuous consumption by all classes to the extent feasible, at least in the "advanced" United States. This parallels the increasingly desperate gyrations of capital as it seeks to slither around the crises generated by the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. The focus by Michael Marking on governance and even "government"--dangerous territory for Marxists--suggests that whatever we may prepare in the "cookshops of the future" may be based in large part on our superior ability, through computing, to calculate inventories to a far greater extent than was possible in Marx's time. It looks directly infrastructure, something regarded by vulgar Marxists as best left to a kind of dialectical laissez faire and by the vulgar Graeberites who seem to dominate the non-BLM demonstrative Left in the US as "bullshit"--currently tended to by bullshit people doing bullshit jobs who would best be eliminated entirely. Why deal with boring subjects like standards, protocols, and procedures when you can consume limitless self-generated media spectacle (oh the consumption of cameras and cell phones!) by setting fires, smashing plate glass windows, and picking fights with the police on their ground and their terms. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#4038): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4038 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/78610767/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
