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The New Totalitarianism of the Market
by DeAnander
lifted from a comment
the walls, the ghettoisation, the collective punishment, the
disproprtionate force – these are all lessons straight out of the nazi
occupation of the east or rotterdam for example – petraeus is their
stroop
r’giap
Random Morning Thoughts …
I think it is an unbroken historical legacy, a continuous process of
the industrialisation of warfare and extermination, a confluence of the
ideas of "hygienic" chemistry and nationalist / militarist / masculinist
obsessions. That continuity is obfuscated by our nationalist
educational systems, which "take sides" and portray e.g. the Nazis as
an ahistorical blip, a weird moment of pure Evil, rather than as
participants in an historical continuum of refinement and "improvement"
of the tools of occupation and control.
The Nazis studied the Boers and British methods in Africa; W
Churchill recommended the use of the then-novel "poison gas" on African
indigenes; the Nazis practised modern warfare on the Spanish
revolutionaries (and the US and UK governments also backed the Franco
regime); Guernica was a trial run for the Blitzkrieg theory and modern
aerial bombardment, but bright minds on all sides were already thinking
about the possibilities as soon as the first dirigibles flew.
The
poison gas of WWI trench warfare was based on insecticidal chemistry,
and after the war the insecticides were ‘improved’ based on the vast
profitable "experiment" of trench warfare; come the Nazi regime and the
gas used to murder Jews en masse in the camps was a pesticide.
Like the
revolving door of CEOs becoming senators and senators becoming CEOs,
the technology used to slaughter "lower life forms" en masse rotates
between deployment against invertebrates and deployment against
despised human beings redefined as lower life forms. The basic idea of
achieving cleanliness and closure by mass slaughter never changes. Collective punishment, collateral damage — just another way of
describing "bycatch" or "side effects" or "overspray."
The victorious Allies grabbed and studied the notebooks of the Nazi
merchants of horror, and gave special postwar protection to Nazi
scientists who might be useful in further developing the tools of
occupation and liquidation for "the good guys" (as if there were ever
any good guys in this filthy business) — as Tom Lehrer noted in his
Ballad of Werner von Braun.
The Israelis studied apartheid South Africa as
a textbook example of how a small Euro/White minority could control a
larger colonised, indigneous nation… The ironies, the hypocrisies,
the tragedies are endless. What goes ’round comes ’round, over and over.
The historical arc of industrial warfare is transnational,
supranational. Krupp sold to all sides, as has every arms merchant
before and since. The escalation ("arms race" is a classic games theory
model) is endemic, structural, inevitable without strong intervention
in deliberate, organised opposition to imperialism and profiteering. The walls, the ghettoisation, the collective punishment, the disproportionate force
are the face of Taylorism and industrialism as applied to warfare and
colonialism, the "improvement" of warfare for "increased efficiency"
(and of course, greater profit).
Along with this goes the industrial mindset which increasingly
regards the entire biotic realm as a Problem to be exterminated and
replaced with controlled, standardised artificial monocrop.
When
Israeli wingnut demagogues talk about the Palestinians as "cockroaches"
or as a "disease" they are not merely echoing Nazi antisemitic rhetoric
in a horrid historical travesty, but hewing to the long cultural
tradition that springs from (among others) Pasteur and Liebig, of a
hatred and loathing for "microbes" and for the working class, the
peasantry, "the masses". Pasteur – staunch royalist – spoke of the
masses and of microbes in the same disgusted tone, and of revolutionary
ideas as like the corruption in a wound that leads to gangrene and rots
the body/social order, causing the death of the brain/soul (the King
and royal caste).
There is a cultural continuity between the millions of acres of
genetically identical monocultured cropland now disfiguring most of the
world’s agricultural land, and the Aryan eugenicists’ ideal of reducing
the human race to one blond, blue eyed archetype of standardised
height, weight, and physical fitness. The urge to conformity,
uniformity, microcontrol, predictability, repeatability, surely has
been in us from the beginnings of militarism and hierarchy; but the
industrial revolution was like mixing crack with the baccy.
The success
of industrial processes (which from the beginning were driven
by military "needs" – the first mass produced assembly line techniques
were used to make Remington rifles – Ford’s automobiles were the
second wave; and the artificial soda process that jumpstarted
industrial chemistry was invented in response to a military requirement
for munitions materiel, not for soap making) lent the
militarist/Taylorist cult of regimentation and uniformity a halo of
divine right – if it succeeded so spectacularly at yielding working
machines, temporary gluts of resources, "labour savings" and immense
profits, how could it be wrong? And besides, it tweaked the human
appetite for control and power.
And so the mania for standards, metrics, artificiality, control and
conformity spreads and spreads, lending a new and bland acceptability
to genocide and the destruction of nations. As one US grunt said of the
Iraqis, they are sure backwards and poor, they don’t even have a
McDonald’s or a Carl’s Jr. …
And even as we speak, over the last few
years, Proconsul Bremer’s fiat laws attempt to wipe out the diversity
of Iraqi agriculture and force their farmers to grow GMO strains of
patented corporate wheat from US agribiz – standardised monoculture,
licensed and controlled, thousands of acres of undifferentiated
monocrop binding the farmer to the new feudal order of intellectual
property and privatisation of germline…
World without end, the
factory and the assembly line and the money economy remodelling every
facet of human existence, the new totalitarianism of the market.
It is not possible to unravel the war economy w/o unravelling these
memes:
- the myth that distance equals cleanliness (what we don’t see
doesn’t concern us, aerial bombardment is "clean" warfare, emissions
elsewhere mean "clean" vehicles, dumping our waste on the third world
keeps our countries "clean", dumping our sewage and toxic effluent in
rivers keeps our homes "clean" and so on);
- the myth that "efficiency"
is a virtuous end in its own right (efficient at what? to benefit
whom?);
- the myth that money is more important than biotic reality;
- the
myth that infinite growth is possible;
- the myths of race and nation, of
taxonomic obsession that flies in the face of the grand symbiosis of
biotic systems;
- and so on…
But I’m raving…
Though we are too close to it to make a completely objective judgement, it has become obvious that our own culture has fallen into a dangerously unbalanced state, and is now producing warped and unbalanced minds. One part of our civilization – that dedicated to technology – has usurped authority over all the other components, geographical, biological, anthropological: indeed, the most frenetic advocates of this process are proclaiming that the whole biological world is now being supplanted by technology, and that man will either become a willing creature of his technology or cease to exist.
Not merely does technology claim priority in human affairs: it places the demand for constant technological change above any considerations of its own efficiency, its own continuity, or even, ironically enough, its own capacity to survive. To maintain such a system, whose postulates contradict those that underlie all living organisms, it requires for self-protection absolute conformity by the human community; and to achieve that conformity it proposes to institute a system of total control, starting with the human organism itself, even before conception has taken place. The means for establishing this control is the ultimate gift of the megamachine; and without submergence in the subjective ‘myth of the machine,’ as omnipotent, omniscent, and omnicomptent, it would not already have advanced to the point it has now reached.
— lewis mumford, the pentagon of power
in the book, prophetic in parts & still most relevant, mumford also expounds on the “reciprocal interplay” between warfare and mechanization
Standardization, prefabrication, and mass production were all first established in state-organized arsenals, most notably in Venice, centuries before the “industrial revolution.” It was not Arkwright, but Venetian urban officials in command of the arsenal, who first established the factory system; and it was not Sir Samuel Bentham and the elder Brunel who first standardized ship production, with various tackle blocks and planks cut to uniform measure; for centuries before, the arsenal at Venice had so well mastered the process of pre-fabrication that it could put together a whole small vessel within a month. And though the priority for fabricating machines with standardized and therefore replacable parts belongs to the inventors of printing with movable type, it was in the production of muskets that this method first became widely adopted: first in LeBlanc’s innovation in France in 1785, and then, in 1800, in Eli Whitney’s factory at Whitneyville, under contract with the United States government.
…
Let us not forget that the same demands for accurate artillery fire resulted in the invention of the modern computer.
It was in the army, finally, that the process of mechanization was first effectively applied on a mass scale to human beings, through the replacement of irregular feudal or citizen armies, intermittently assembled, by a standard army of hired or conscripted soldiers, under the severe discipline of daily drill, contrived to produce human beings whose spontaneous or instinctive reactions would be displaced by automatic responses to orders. “His not to reason why,” was the motto for the whole system: the doing and dying followed.
…
Each solder must have the same clothes and the same equipment as every other member of his company. Drill made them act as one, discipline made them respond as one, the uniform made them look as one. [hence the need for the sewing machine]
…
From the sixteenth century on, then, the army furnished the pattern not only of quantity production but of ideal consumption under the machine system: rapid standardized production for equally rapid standardized consumption – with built-in waste and destruction as a means of averting financial bankruptcy through overproduction – the latter a recurrent threat to the capitalist system during the transitional era of competition in the free market.
The great change produced by this whole process of mechanization was to shift the balance of economic power from agriculture, with its accompanying industries – textiles and pottery and building, all neolithic in origin – to mining and warfare and machine production.
and from there he goes on about how “a monotechnics, based upon scientific intelligence and quantitative production, directly mainly toward economic expansion, material repletion, and military superiority, has taken the place of a polytechnics, based primarily, as in agriculture, on the needs, aptitudes, interests of living organisms: above all on man himself [sic].”
Posted by: b real | Mar 28 2008 3:59 utc | 13
@madison… yeah… “cattle cars” being a railroad (industrial) method of transporting cattle-as-meat en masse to industrial slaughterhouses… for “efficiency” in slaughtering (paging Upton Sinclair) i.e. higher profits and more concentration of control in the hands of processors not farmers. another application of industrial methods that work very well for handling non-living materials, but involve enormous cruelty (and eventually negative returns) when applied to living systems or organisms.
I recently participated in the killing of a few roosters for meat on a homestead belonging to friends of mine in inland/Northern BC. it was not the most pleasant work, but it was sobering to reflect that the suffering for the birds was so much less than it would have been in a commercial slaughterhouse. one of the worst aspects is the transport to the abbatoir and the rough, inhumane handling during unloading. the “cost of transport” for centralised animal slaughter is not just measured in BTUs.
way back when, when I was young, we used to watch the original Star Trek series with rapt attention — such a hopeful future — and I recall a fictional technological device wielded by the ship’s doctor called a dolorimeter. it measured pain. there was never any mention of units (dolories?) but the concept is, on reflection, radical. if we had dolorimeters we could measure the cost of our economic model in pain — suffering, terror, agony. however I doubt that anyone in the current ruling elite would be interested in developing the technology — after all, they “don’t do body counts.”
anyway, back to industrialism — I should note that no one can credibly claim that “handcrafted” killing rules out genocide — the recent unpleasantness in Rwanda was mostly done without the benefit of industrial methods, except for the forging, manufacturing and distribution of machetes. but it does make it a bit more difficult. and the awfulness of it is more visible, it is less possible to yawn and switch the channel, it is less possible to pretend that nothing happened… or at least I would like to think so, but for all I know the TV-addicted majority has laready forgotten Rwanda except as a dramatic backdrop for some slick Hollywood movie…
I’m going to backtrack for a moment and say that though I just said that industrial methods “work well” for non living materials, I now have a bad feeling about those words. industrial “efficiency” is what enables e.g. the devastation of MTR and the Alberta open-pit “tar sands” catastrophe. it’s what enables us to pile up mountains of toxic gold mining tailings in a matter of months. it hastens the conversion of viable biome to toxic wasteland in the process of “improving” the extraction of minerals from the earth’s outer crust. so “working well” is still in direct opposition to the health of biotic systems and the sane stewardship of land and biological capacity. it works well in a singleminded, obsessive, autistic sort of way — the reductive approach, focussed narrowly on one desired outcome and ignoring all unintended consequences — particularly when the costs of same can be fobbed off onto designated “losers” while the winners walk off with the loot…
industrial methods speed up processes so that biotic systems have no time to recover from the insults of liquidation and extraction. again, humans have proven ourselves perfectly capable of wrecking a functioning biome without industrial technology, but advances in “efficiency” enable us to do it so much faster these days. we can shoot ourselves in the foot with a semi automatic and reduce the whole limb to hamburger in seconds, instead of having to take several shots at it with an unreliable black-powder pistol.
it’s not that I wish to ditch all the advances of industrialism — as I’ve explained before… sewing machines and needles are mighty fine stuff, and so is steel (generally, for many applications) especially stainless, which can last for generations if well made and properly kept. but it seems as though the industrialism/capitalism/colonialism nexus is inherently cancerous. the colonialism creates a devalued periphery which is exactly what capitalism needs to float its fictional compound interest (a rate of return that can only be achieved by theft and looting); the capitalism injects vast rewards into a feverish fit of innovation, with raw materials kept cheap by the colonial exploitation of the periphery; and the whole thing spins out like a steam engine with no governor…
I’m grateful for steel and technology today. it’s snowing a stubborn, grim, depressing wet snow in Nanaimo, but my boat is almost too hot for comfort due to a nice fire in the (steel) wood stove with its (stainless) stovepipe; atop the stove is a stainless steel pot with potatoes (organic) baking in it on the “free” heat; in the stove I’m burning sections of my downed mizzen mast, cut up a couple of days ago with an excellent (good steel) Japanese crosscut (hand) saw; on the stove a thermoelectric (fancy semiconductor tech) heat-powered fan pushes warm air around the cabin. and my laptop sits here keeping me entertained and connecting me with far-off friends on a dull rainy day. come nightfall I will not have to squint at my book by candlelight or breathe kerosene fumes, because high-tech LED lighting will give me reading and working light w/hardly any drain on 2 (industrial magic) sealed AGM house batteries which have charged (a little) all day from a Siemens PV panel (more industrial magic).
I’m grateful for every bit of this, and at the same time uncomfortably conscious of the mountain of industrial waste, slag heap, effluent, consumed water, sunk energy, pirated resources involved in all these comforts. here’s the dilemma of our times… there’s no spoon long enough to sup with this devil of resource liquidation and uncontrolled consumption, without being implicated in the results. we may be the first generation in our cultural tradition to come face to face with the possibility that all our ingenuity and creativity and “drive” is making things worse and not better. the cognitive dissonance is truly painful. it doesn’t surprise me that so many people want to keep whistling past the graveyard and insisting that everything is just fine and “they” will think of something…
meanwhile? relocalise, relocalise, relocalise π the closer that our processes (and their outputs) are to home, the more likely it is that accounting will be visible and honest. or so I hope. global commerce makes a mighty big rug to sweep the dirt under. smaller, more local rugs will betray visible humps and visible stinks, and that — one could hope — might inspire some kind of housecleaning effort. (and here I rest my somewhat belaboured metaphor).
Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 28 2008 20:24 utc | 32
Well, r’giap, we got our Politburo now, our gulag, and DOW 300 on Monday.
Four new Federal financial agencies, thus Federalizing all monetary
instruments, allowing full spectrum dominance and surveillance of all of US.
Largest consolidation of power since beginning of the Republic under Bush.Con,
and why not? The Bush Cosa Nostra is a major in arms, oil, drugs and banking.
MOC, ONI, PFRA, BRA and all their little scurrying welfare whore drones.
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Sweeping Changes in Paulson Plan
By DAMIAN PALETTA
March 29, 2008
WASHINGTON — U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson plans on Monday to call for sweeping structural changes in the way the government monitors financial markets, capping a broad review aimed at revamping a system of regulatory oversight built piecemeal since the Civil War.
If all the changes get made, they would represent a complete reworking of the U.S. regulatory system for finance. Such an outcome would likely take years and would also require major compromises from an increasingly partisan Congress. The proposal, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, is likely to trigger messy feuds over turf at a time when confidence in government supervision is low.
Even so, the blueprint could be a guide for future action. Senior Democrats have expressed in recent weeks that they also believe the regulatory system should be overhauled, potentially paving the way for possible deals.
Mr. Paulson’s plan will include merging some agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (defanging both in one brilliant stroke), while broadening the authority of others, such as the Federal Reserve, which appears to be a winner under the proposal. Mr. Paulson is expected to recommend that the central bank play a greater role as a “market stability regulator,” with broader authority over all financial market participants.
Mr. Paulson is also expected to call for the Office of Thrift Supervision, which regulates federal thrifts, to be phased out within two years and merged with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks. One reason is that there is very little difference these days between federal thrifts and national banks.
The Treasury plan has been in the works since last year but has taken on greater prominence since the onset of the housing crisis and ensuing credit crunch. Critics have blamed lax regulation at both the state and federal level for exacerbating the crisis.
A key part of the blueprint is aimed at fixing lapses in mortgage oversight. Mr. Paulson plans to call for the creation of a new entity, called Neo Mortgage Origination Commission (more Big Brother, up your ass), according to an outline of the Treasury Department’s plan, which was first reported by the New York Times. This new entity would create licensing standards for state mortgage companies. This commission, which would include representatives from the Fed and other agencies, would scrutinize the way states oversee mortgage origination.
Also related to mortgages, Mr. Paulson is expected to call for federal laws to be “clarified and enhanced,” “resolving any jurisdictional issues” that exist between state or federal supervisors.(killing off any lingering loopholes and making credit availability 100% Federalist … e.g. Neo Pope in Town) Many of the problems in the housing market stemmed from loans offered by state-licensed companies. Federal regulators, too, were slow to create safeguards that could have banned some of these practices.
Mr. Paulson is expected to repeat his assertion that the Fed should have much more access to information from securities firms (yeah, every investor’s account information, and links to all their offshore accounts) and investment banks that might borrow money from the central bank.
Presently, insurance is regulated on a state-by-state basis, but the Treasury review is expected to call for the creation of an optional federal insurance charter that would be overseen by a Neo Office of National Insurance. Such an idea has been floated for years but never directly endorsed by Treasury.
In addition to some of the short- and medium-term changes, Treasury officials have also designed what they believe to be an “optimal structure” of financial oversight. It would create a single class for federally insured banks and thrifts, rather than the multiple versions that now exist. It would also create a single class of federally regulated insurance companies and a federal financial-services provider for other types of financial institutions.
A market stability regulator, which would likely be the Fed, would have broad powers over all three types of companies. A new regulator, called Neo Prudential Financial Regulatory Agency, would oversee the financial regulation of the insurance and federally insured banks. Another regulator, the Neo Business Regulatory Agency, would oversee business conduct at all the companies.
Posted by: Petey Michelson | Mar 29 2008 4:56 utc | 43
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