Carol says: "I haven't been following this thread, but if this is the sort of material you have been offering as relevant to "original accumulation," you've wasted a lot of bandwidth."
Thanks. Carol says: "You seem to be talking about the "original accumulation" of particular capitals by particular capitalists. Granted, that usually involves some sort of legal or illegal pure theft. But who cares?" I do, because in my theory, based on Marx, but going beyond Marx, original accumulation says not just something about the past, as backward-looking Marxists think, but about the shape of the future of capitalism: the modalities of expropriation, on the basis of "divide and conquer". The cutting edge of bourgeois political economy is the search for fresh exploitable regions of original accumulation, which yield the greatest profits, interest, rents and other returns, with the least risk and the least uncertainty, in the shortest possible time, with the lowest capital outlay, the lowest personal cost, and the least labour effort. Accumulation at a glance. This however requires some act of enclosure, so that capital is appropriated, embraced, possessed and consumed privately. And this has long-term historical implications for the mutation of human moral behaviour, and consequently for the shape of politics to come. Sex plays an important role in this, because Capital hungers to extract semen, spirit, energy and blood and anything else that can be extracted and appropriated and gobbled, so that Capital can grow and develop. Just as long as the blood or semen is not contaminated with HIV or depleted uranium or viruses of any sort, a few bacteria are okay, as long as they have no noticeable effect. It is like that album title by the Red Hot Chili Peppers: "Blood Sugar Sex Magik". You need a bit of magic to fool people with, to seduce people into the trance and the dream of capital accumulation, boundless accumulation, enrichment so great, that the whole universe is conquered, and we possess God himself, so that we become God ourselves, are God, forever, immortal, infinite. Carol says: "The question of how capitalism as a system continually reproduces itself by various means, or how a given capitalist first becomes rich, belongs in the day's news, not in a theoretical discussion of "original accumulation."" But I don't take a bureaucratic, Stalinist approach to political economy, or a schoolmarm approach to political economy, where I dictate what shall be discussed on the basis of having power, that is a US Government strategy, not my personal strategy. Rather I use the power of rational argument to explain why something ought to be discussed, or why something need not be discussed. Marx says, "accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets" (if I don't have the exact formulation of the quote correct, the "biblical expert" Melvin P. can correct me). How a capitalist becomes rich today, is a very sensitive indicator of the development of the capitalism in the future, particularly in the age of monopoly capitalism and boundless imperialism, where somehow you have to extend the boundaries of the exploitable to get into the game. Or, as my cousin once put it, "you have to find a hole in the market somewhere". If no news ways are found to get rich and stay rich, bourgeois culture is dying. If new ways are found to get rich and stay rich, bourgeois culture gets a new lease of life, it becomes more dynamic, more buoyant, more happy really. Being creative is a matter of life and death for the capitalist system, if you cannot find solutions, you're dead, at least in the long run. Of course we are all dead in the long run, but creative solutions must be found sooner, otherwise Capital cannot reincarnate and perpetuate its progeny. So you have to keep an eye on creative people, grow them, nurture them, because you can extract new ideas from them, sort of like "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with C", or "A" or any letter of the alfabet. Or a number that just happens to be vital. Marx said to Weitling, "ignorance never helped anybody", but it just depends on who is helping whom, and that is what Weitling is talking about. Ignorance in the era of "class warfare in the information age" (Prof. Perelman's phrase) is a rich and boundless source of exploitation and original accumulation, at least for the golden philosopher kings at the summits of human knowledge. "At point X in history capitalism doesn't exist, though great wealth and great productive capacities exist, the wealth being obtained in various ways all ultimately grounded in the 'extra-economic' extraction by coercion of the wealth produced by peasantry." I don't know if this is a sexed-up statement about arranging a jerk-off or not. The real coercion of real peasants is however a topic worth discussing, since, statistically, peasants form a very large economically active population in the world, and given their ability to meet their own subsistence requirements without recourse to the market, then they have considerable fighting power, other things being equal. Thus, if the market collapses, the peasants can still keep going. Unless there is no more water because the river has run dry or because of changing weather patterns. Extra-economic coercion is precisely the "cutting edge" of bourgeois political science. If you can, as a result of economic and sexual liberalisation, no longer force people politically with economic instruments and threats to do what you want, then what forms of extra-economic coercion can you use to maintain the stability of bourgeois class society ? The science of extra-economic coercion gets an enormous boost and becomes a highly profitable and lucrative area. I have mentioned this before: the person who can make others do what he wants is at a premium, and an important person is a person who can make the most people do what he wants. Carrol says: "No one has the remotest idea of "creating capital" or capitalism. No one anyplace could even begin to understand what can with care be made crystal clear to any bright high-school sophomore today in reference to the mode of accumulation under capital." Is this another sexed-up statement or what ? It does not matter if you know or do not know how to create capital or capitalism from a systematic point of view. It is all a rich source of exploitation and original accumulation by the intelligent predator. Carrol says: "Then (without intending to or knowing that they are doing something wholly new) some wealthy or middling men someplace (or places) or other begin to accumulate something entirely new in world history, CAPITAL, in the modern sense." Again a false statement, this time along the line that "in the past, people did not know what they were doing." They knew exactly what they were doing, they just didn't know the full moral implications of what they were doing, that is all. Carrol says: "And when we ask about the original accumulation of capital that is what we are talking about." No. They acted with knowledge, but the interaction of knowledges is unpredictable, since, from the same experience, numerous different conclusions can be drawn. The predictability of knowledge is a rationalist fallacy, exposed among others by Paul K. Feyerabend. This dovetails with Greenspan's argument. Carrol says: Do read the books of Ellen Meiksins Wood. That is just a status and style embellishment, how would that advance the socialist cause ? Because Ellen's name starts with "Ell" and because you have to "knock on wood" ? ATTENTION, that is the final frontier of original capital accumulation, the ultimate meeting point for production and consumption, the alpha and omega of bourgeois culture, where the ultimate can be appropriated and consumed under the most optimal sensate conditions. Refer to the book "The Pursuit of Attention Power and Ego in Everyday Life", Second Edition, by Charles Derber (or was it Darebare ? Whatever). Got brass in pocket Got bottle I'm gonna use it Intention I feel inventive Gonna make you, make you, make you notice Got motion restrained emotion Been driving Detroit leaning No reason just seems so pleasing Gonna make you, make you, make you notice Gonna use my arms Gonna use my legs Gonna use my style Gonna use my sidestep Gonna use my fingers Gonna use my, my, my imagination 'cause I gonna make you see There's nobody else here No one like me I'm special so special I gotta have some of your attention give it to me
