It cannot be so, since the first humans evolved out of a pre-economic framework. In order for there to be such thing as economy, there must be the creature which has the potential to actualize it. Labor had no hand in the creation of the conditions of possibility of humans, therefore economic production cannot be primary in the arising of human society. I know that Marx already wrote that not all value comes from labor, but also from the material world. The problem is that the material world, categorized as "nature," is reduced in these terms to objects defined by their economic utility. So, if you take economic production to be primary because it gives rise to the conditions of possibility of warfare, what gives rise to the conditions of possibility of production?
nope good points, I spoke to soon on the whole warfare angle.
Tautological. The capitalist must be doing what is in their interest since if it weren't in their interest they wouldn't be doing it. Your underlying assertion is that people do things for the sake of production goals. The problem is that utility is judged based on fittedness to individual and social needs. These cannot be rigorously defined because purpose is not a brute fact.
Of course capitalists turn a profit… The point here though is, what is driving this behavior? Even if the capitalist is building the ultimate profit, what does he win- immortality, taking over the universe, incorporating everything into himself… for what purpose? The perspective I'm sharing here is that it has something to do with the pleasure of humiliating others, not some objective principle. In the end, capitalist means wind up overrunning their ends, showing that capitalism can't be based on stable processes. If the workings of production change what production means, how can production be a fundamental term?
If even the societal winners are driven to drug use by the hundreds of thousands, where does the impetus come from to create capitalism in the first place? The logic of accumulation is not rational on an individual level because of the problem of death. Therefore, there must be ideological identification going on whereby capitalists conceive of themselves as part of a social body, a class. So where does this class consciousness come from, if its implications extend beyond the grave? Self-destructive activities undermine the logic of production since through them, the subject is actively attacking their own material conditions; yet on your view they can remain part of a rational system where their behavior is benefitting the rest of their class. It's contradictory for a person to be oriented toward their own material destruction and the material prosperity of others. Their drive toward profit must then be seen as another form of addiction. My contention would then be that class consciousness can't really exist since consciousness must lead to the negation of classification as a form of alienation which is opposed to rationality.
Anthony Peterson
The question is not what productive purpose wastefulness serves, but rather what superfluous concerns are addressed by the system of production. This is easily summarized through appeal to Hume's correct quote that reason is the slave of the passions. Marxism simply takes for granted the utility of power, domination, profit, and accumulation. But what purpose is this serving? And tease it out a few thousand years… is the problem that at any time capitalists are simply oriented toward improving their position a little bit from where they are, under the present terms? Marx certainly didn't overlook quantitative -> qualitative change, but the implication here is that capitalist ideology is never coherent under its own terms. Since capitalists by definition detroy the conditions which make their work possible, they destroy any basis for collective identity which could ground a class consciousness which even then would still be a humanized version of the body of Christ.
We should talk more about life and death, otherwise we get so caught up in the drama of life that we forget it all takes place in the backdrop of indeterminacy.
How do you know it works lmao? Pray tell what happens after you die, can't wait to put this matter to bed. Suicide is structurally an important problem because the entirely theory of the bourgeoisie is of it as a suicidal class (indirectly by creating the proletariat), and the proletariat even more so (killing the concept of class itself). It is the very inability of socialists to suicide their own concepts which holds them back. As Marx discusses, it's important to move happily on from the past, in order words to commit suicide and leave a pretty corpse instead of hopelessly fighting fatal cancer. Marxism gestures toward the overcoming of the present mode of economic production and valuation, but this suggests that our current framework is ontologically inadequate even now. Acknowledging this removes the pressure to defend word fortresses which are fatally flawed.
But what's the purpose of limiting inequality? It certainly didn't turn out so great for those tribes, they just got fucked up by a different tribe in the end anyways. The question is what gives life value to these people? The answer does not have to be material security, because people can be aware of their life as an interaction with the cosmic unknown as opposed to a well-defined set of economic relationships.
William Gomez
Do you mean the rebel by Camus? Love that book why you hate it?
Gavin Williams
Yep, it's Rebel. Abandon thread.
Carson Lee
Is that who I'm supposed to be? Confusion rising
Austin Mitchell
Oh I see there's a person called Rebel Absurdity. Not me fammo
Every living being has an economic life in the strictest sense. Birds build nests, ants carry and stack up food, fungi unbuild a dead tree and move onto another, amoebae regulate their osmotic pressure dependent on their surrounding.
You speak of a "creature" separate and predating its economy, a life separate from its environment; an impossibility, a sophist's trickery.
Life's capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change are economic in nature and do have utility for the organism.
What makes and defines man is his capacity for conscious activity, and not, as you argue against ghosts of your own, a beginning of economic activity tout court.
As always, Rebel.
No, you are missing a point and keep on arguing against your own misunderstandings and constructions.
I'm done with you.
Side note: the typical Rebel thread involves several unrelated bumps by him.
Liam Price
I have no idea who rebel is or why you're sperging out about him.
