Marx’s critic of capitalist (bourgeios) society displays deep scholarly insights as poignant today as when they were written over a 150 years ago, perhaps more so.

“all fixed, fast-frozen relations with their train of venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned”

Everything it builds must be torn down, Marx observes a constant endless innovation is implicit in this system. It is an amoral system, always building and tearing down, buildings, systems, relations and lifestyles. It is a system which acknowledges but one value; profit. All other values are bought and sold. Marx’s conviction of the inevitability of the coming revolution is based on this DNA to innovate, that inevitably Capitalist society would come around to innovating itself.

But where Marx’s study of this system is deep, his work on its future successor, Communism, is profoundly superficial. His critic of our system is based on scholarship, but the thought required to implement and sustain this future utopia is entirely missing.

Thus, the Communist Manifesto is ultimately a work of shallow idealism. Its practical implementation would inevitably become an act of pure vandalism. In proposing or predicting communism, Marx naively ignored the powerful forces, structures and politics that constitute a society; The history of empires, revolutions and their administration. Where are the references? His how is almost metaphysical: inevitability!

The city of Chicago has applied for the 2016 Olympic games. The proposed Olympic Stadium is to be a temporary structure and will be disassembled immediately after the games. Marx would not be surprised. Everything that is built must be torn down at an ever-faster pace.

I am interested in how you see Capitalism evolving and into what?

Edited by yebiga on 10/02/09 - 12:00 AM

I do not believe the executives (CXOs) of our global multi-national organizations are exactly what Nietzsche's had in mind with his overman/supermen. But the force they represent has indeed revalued all our values. It is a creed of endless and breathless rebuilding and tearing down. Marx identified the sacrilegious logic ingrained in a system which had but one value that of profit.

But the evolution of capitalism continues in directions entirely unexpected by Marx. The global multi-national corporation is less and less owned by industrial moguls and more and more by thousands of faceless shareholders, as larger and larger quantities of retirement funds move across continents and large numbers of middle, lower and aspirant classes become seduced by the universal measure that our worth is entirely monetary.

The mogul or oligarchy has become a mere anachronism which arises and flourishes in the midst of revolution: technical as in a Gates or socio-political as in an Abramovich. The level of competition, the appearance and disappearance of fortunes and the pace of this movement has seen the moguls take a back seat, diversify their wealth, and more and more the keys to the empire are in the hands of the Business School Technocrat. We move from Imperial Rome back to the Republic. CxOs can exercise ultimate power, are rewarded well, but the power is not embodied in themselves but the position they occupy. The power is both temporary and precarious, under constant surveillance, and criticism.

The existence of the Multi-national organization is also under constant threat. Literally overnight the largest organization, the most reputable and stable, as we have seen in the last 18 months, simply disappears. The Mogul, the oligarch, the established rich, like all of us live in a constant state of anxiety that their wealth and livelihood will simply "melt into air".

Marx's oppressed and exploited worker has also ossified as a paradigm. While the worker must continue to be exploited his/her importance as a consumer is now the subject. It is no longer sufficient to merely produce what is wanted or needed, capitalism operates far more efficiently when it can create what is wanted and needed. Marketing, advertising, focus groups, demographic segmentation, the entire force of media and its persuasive powers are deployed to create and control the consumer. 200 years of administrative, statistical, psychological knowledge is deployed to win the heart and mind of the consumer.

Complicit in this are governments who have been usurped by the global market and have adopted their language and technique to transform the citizenry into consumers. Every method of surveillance, categorization, persuasion and civil coercion are deployed to maintain a docile population of consumers.

This is not a denial of gross inequalities and the misery they create. Rather, I am suggesting that these inequalities are a product of mans greed and not something implicit in the capitalist system. On the contrary, I suggest that a healthy distribution of wealth is essential for the health of the capitalist system and that economic catastrophe’s occur when the in balance of equality becomes too large. I am suggesting that the force of capitalism will demand a greater and fairer distribution of wealth if only to ensure its own increasing success.

The cost of this new utopia may be too high not only from an environmental perspective but perhaps even more frightening is the prospect of 7 or more billion consumers who measure their respective worth solely as assets less liabilities plus cash flow.

Edited by yebiga on 10/04/09 - 02:29 AM