4 May
2013
4 May
'13
5:02 a.m.
Aestetix & Yo's-
Re. power, continued:
Agreed, language is a fundamental element of control, but it's also a
fundamental element of liberation. As a language-making and
language-using species, language is foundational to everything we do:
it's the fundamental "building material" of human culture.
In physics terms, power is the capacity to do work: to convert energy
from one form to another.
Translated to the human social ecosystem, power is the capacity to have
work done on one's own behalf: to compel the use of natural resources
and labor to convert energy for one's own benefit. Usually this is done
via the application of stored energy in the form of capital.
Power in human societies is also the capacity to limit the ability of
others to have work done on their own behalf. This we do via the law,
such as the Constitution (limiting the powers of government) and statute
law (limiting the powers of private parties such as individuals and
incorporated entities). We also do it via contracts, backed by contract
law.
Law and contracts are examples of the use of language to define and
exercise power. They establish customs and traditions, and together are
for the most part sufficient. Outgoing presidents leave office
voluntarily, rather than by being escorted out in handcuffs by the
Capitol Police. Citizens refrain from robbing banks voluntarily, rather
than as a calculation of whether they'll go to prison. Only if language
fails to exercise its agreed power do we have recourse to power in its
application as force: arresting the recalcitrant president or the bank
robber.
Interestingly, our legal system primarily deals directly with the
_means_ of accumulating or using power, and only indirectly with the
_amount of power_ that is accumulated or used.
For example the Constitution forbids the executive branch from
legislating or adjudicating, but this has not stopped the vast expansion
of the executive branch and its power to affect (for good or
not-so-good) the lives of individuals. Statute law forbids slavery and
child labor, but does not forbid the accumulation by the private sector
of a degree of power that in many ways exceeds that of the state
itself. This is a bug, not a feature, and we should do well to fix it.
Liberation is the removal of oneself from the influences of illegitimate
power, or the removal of the illegitimate power itself, expressed not
only in language but in other forms such as painting, poetry, music, and
public celebration. But liberation is only a beginning, not an
endpoint: nature abhors vacuums, and human nature doesn't much like
power vacuums. In the absence of one illegitimate power, the failure to
construct limiting legitimate power usually leads directly to a new
illegitimate power arising. Somalia and Afghanistan are the paradigm
cases of "laissez-faire utopia", with warlords, pirates, and fiefdoms
exercising brutal power over individuals, restrained only through mutual
warfare.
One of the primary tasks of a movement for progressive social change
(whatever ideology you want to call it or associate it with) is to take
on the issue of the _amount of power_ held by various actors in
society. And the goal we probably all agree on, is that the _amount of
power_ that any given individual or institution or entity can hold,
should be subject to checks and balances, and ultimate limits.
-G.
On 13-05-03-Fri 11:30 PM, aestetix wrote:
You've opened a can of worms here :)
Since elucidated discussion seems to be the modus operandi lately, I
have a few thoughts on this matter that are worth contributing. Feel
free to ignore at your pleasure (free listening is just as important
as free speech).
I think that the two key elements of your essays, food and power, are
rather interchangeable depending on the contexts. It's (hopefully)
obvious why we need food. Power in a more abstract sense is
fascinating to me, though. Other words that come to mind are drive,
charisma, persuasion, but also intellect, and most important, control.
IMHO, one of the most fundamental elements of control is language, as
shared patterns are effectively a way to communicate and attain
various levels of self-mastery. An easy way to experience this is to
try to understand a foreign language: there might be some hints of
familiarity within the chaos, and as we find them, it's a bit like
setting markers around, and using the markers to control the direction
of your ultimate understanding. You can extend that to vocabulary and
concepts as well. One of the hallmarks of a good education is the
ability to curse someone out without using the generic "fuck shit
damn" slurs.
Language is composed of words, symbols which point to meanings, and
one of the most interesting set of words is our names. And you all can
guess where I'm going with this one ;)
Hail Eris,
aestetix
PS: it might be worth doing another cryptoparty soon.
On 5/3/13 7:58 PM, GtwoG PublicOhOne wrote:
2) Where the power is, and where it isn't.
Now we come to the proletariat and the
lumpenproletariat.
For this, credit also goes to a good friend of
mine who I won't
name here, but who's welcome to name him/herself if s/he so
chooses: s/he got me thinking down this trail a few months ago.
The proletariat is the working class: basically
defined as people
who have full-time jobs or at least jobs that provide sufficient
income for the core necessities (shelter, clothing, food,
transportation, sanitation, communication), but who have little or
no ownership stake. This includes people who are in business for
themselves, but earning a working class income: they own their
employment, but their economic wellbeing is at the same level as
that of a wage-worker.
The lumpenproletariat is the level below that:
basically defined
as people whose employment is marginal at best, and whose access to
the basic necessities is frequently interrupted in some way. The
unemployed, homeless, couch-surfers (another form of
homelessness), people who live at the margins of the law in order
to survive, and people who earn their livings on criminal activity.
This also includes wage-workers whose wage income is not sufficient
to provide their basic necessities from month to month: they have
jobs, but their economic wellbeing is at the same level as that of
someone who's marginally employed at best.
Decades ago, the Bay Area left/radical community
made the deadly
strategic error of embracing the (essentially Maoist) analysis that
the lumpenproletariat is the revolutionary class. This error
continues to this day, in the ideology of Black Block tactics,
which are founded on the idea that expressing rage and provoking
police over-reaction will somehow spark The Revolution.
The very same tactic in more obviously violent
form pops up in the
ideology of the extreme right: such as the Hutaree, a group that
was busted by the FBI for planning to shoot a bunch of cops and
then set off bombs at their funerals, in the attempt to provoke
martial law and thereby set off a "revolution" from the extreme
right.
But here's the nexus of the problem:
To the oligarchy, the lumpenproletariat is
disposable: their roles
in production and consumption are so minimal that they can be
totally disregarded. They have NO power. N-O power. As
individuals or as any kind of collectivity or class.
When a social movement identifies with the
lumpenproletariat
and/or attempts to organize the lumpenproletariat, the movement
effectively short-circuits its efforts into something that is
inherently doomed to failure. They may as well be trying to
organize the squirrels on the Cal Berkeley campus to strike for
better teaching-assistant salaries. How seriously do you think the
UC Regents would take the threat of a squirrel strike?
The proletariat is where the power is: the power
to produce and
consume at the level that drives the engine of oligarchy, is also
the power to refuse consent in a meaningful way.
The power of the proletariat takes two forms:
One, the power to remove themselves from the
oligarch's engines of
production: by going on strike (which translates to the power of
collective bargaining), by going into business for themselves, and
by developing alternatives to conventional capitalism such as
cooperatives and other forms of production that subordinate capital
to labor.
Two, the power to remove themselves from the
oligarch's
consumption matrix: by boycotts (consumer strikes), by
anti-materialist or "simple living" principles that reduce
consumption levels (the equivalent of consumer general strikes), by
shifting their consumption to alternative institutions such as
coops, credit unions, and small local producers (e.g. buying
veggies at the farmers' market rather than Safeway), and very
importantly for _us_ as hackers/makers/etc., the power to build
for our own use.
This is real power. It's the power that
makes the oligarchs quake
in their boots and have nightmares. And it's the power that gives
the oligarchs strong incentive to keep us distracted, digressed,
and disempowered by wasting our time trying to organize a squirrel
strike.
-G.
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