Its always refreshing to read such an elegant and simple truth overview of capitalism as the Pfaff piece. The evolution of which follows a path of progressive disassociation – beginning with the notion that (free) market economies can be sustained without regards to their effects on both labor and ultimately society. Especially the rote commodification of labor. Followed by the “quasi-universalization” of the distribution of risk into the realm of the unaccountable and unidentifiable. Coupled with what can only be understood as greed and self interest assuming a moral standard. The train of thought that informs each of these developments is how capital always seeks to disengage itself from its original role in the intercourse of human affairs. And has in effect been allowed to develop into something altogether inhuman, as a kind of exclusive game of power for the sake of power – locked in a perpetual warfare against human culture.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 28 2009 9:45 utc | 3

There’s this quote at Fabius Maximus from Lewis Lapham’s Money and Class in America – again just for elegance’s sake;

About Social Hygiene (pages 114-115)
Transferred into the political arena, the doctrines of social sanitation oblige all candidates for public office to feign the clean-limbed idealism of college sophomores. Even the meanest of politicians has no choice but to present himself as one who would remove the stains from capitalism’s bloody clothes and wash the sheets of American conscience. The post of innocence is as mandatory as the ability to eat banquet food and endure the scourging of the press.
No candidate can say with Talleyrand, that he is int it for the money, or that it is the business of politicians to add to the wealth of their handlers. The system in place is always assumed to be corrupt, and the electorate expects its once and future Presidents to tell wholesome lies — to present themselves as honest and good-natured fellows who know little or nothing of murder, ambition, lust, selfishness, cowardice, or greed. The more daring members of the troupe might go so far as to admit having read about such awful things in the newspapers. but the incidents in question invariably have to do with a foreign country or with somebody belonging to the other political party.
Generations of reformers — whether liberal or neoliberal, conservative or neoconservative — come forward with plans to remove the politics from what hey prefer to describe as “the political process.” They campaign on the preposterous notion that if only all the smoke-filled rooms in the Washington could be aired and fumigated, then all the deals could be done on public televisions by civic-minded officials shuffling their papers with white gloves.

Whew!

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 28 2009 10:20 utc | 5

As the physical manifestations of spiritual differences become increasingly acute, the West finds itself at a crossroads: does growth imply growth in empire or something else entirely? Can one scale down the so-called ‘physical needs’ to a bare minimum, sustain growth in education and research and development, both provide for and meet the expectations of the young, etc?
The individualism of the ‘traditional’ Western mindset has encountered a literally pre-historic and of Biblical proportions tribal fellowship that resists Western interpretations of history and values such as romanticism, adherence to ‘technology’ as a continually improving concept regardless of costs, notions of ‘scientism’.

Posted by: Sustain | Mar 28 2009 13:02 utc | 7

ABC special: Does Satan Exist?

Yes, yes Satan does exist. This very “face off” proves it. The fucking pain of it all to watch the whole thing. Can you do it? Watching this shit may be the hardest thing you have ever done in your life! Hell may very well be nothing more than a bunch of right wing retards telling you about their life stories and how they overcame it by the use of 2mg Jesus (TM).

Beware, again. Watching this WILL BE PAINFUL!

This tells you all you need to know about America…
Happy Ostara!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 28 2009 14:50 utc | 9

Reliable touchstone: http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20090304-Wed1300.mp3

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 28 2009 16:47 utc | 11

Sustain @7
When I reflect about the imminent problems that afflict our society, I wish in my most fanciful thoughts that I could live perhaps like the shepherds of the Eclogues. Then I think how I would react to a fracture of a hip. Would I want to lie in bed for weeks awaiting the lethal pneumonia or expecting the overwhelming infection or would I want a quick restoration by having my hip replaced with a prosthesis? The prosthesis and the operation and the anesthesia and the aseptic hospital represent the accumulated experience of our civilization. Would it be possible to have a prosthesis without all the metallurgy, summary of our history, or the anesthetic gases without the whole chemical production of the civilization? We are what we are, we cannot be otherwise except in dreams. Even those that desire to live “primitively” make their girl friends take their contraceptives or they themselves may use a rubber device that presupposes all our civilization. I could go on but I guess the idea is not difficult to grasp. We are the result of a civilization and we cannot be otherwise.

Posted by: jlcg | Mar 28 2009 20:55 utc | 13

AFP article reports on Friday that Hamas leadership says they had nothing to do any convoy of arms coming through Sudan that was bombed.
This story may yet get fleshed out, but is still murky.

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 28 2009 22:41 utc | 15

Hello jlcg@13,
The West has simply leveraged itself out of existence. The externalized costs of our lifestyle were either willfully ignored or ‘expediently’ suppressed. We grossly overestimated both the power and value of our achievements, e.g. Katrina and the levees.
There are serious efforts by mostly private groups to restructure, rebuild and reinvent ‘modern’ civilization. If successful, energy requirements and resource utilization will decrease by several orders of magnitude while preserving our ability to provide hip replacements for both overpaid athletes and suffering pensioners.
Sustainable growth will no longer be an oxymoron, and the ‘backward’ tribes will see the inherent value in our achievements that they found so lacking previously.

Posted by: Sustain | Mar 29 2009 0:40 utc | 17

sustain @17
Thank you for your comment. My point at bottom is the love of ourselves, a love that overrides every other consideration. For example you wrote a comment and I commented and you looked for an answer and then I looked for one. We like to be noticed and we must, in order to preserve our own identity, be recognized by others by establishing differences. The creation of differences brings up an enormous proliferation of commodities and activities that result in our present predicament. I really really wish that you be right but I know that you won’t. The Mores and the Campanellas and the Condorcets and the Owens have devised means to improve the human race and they are just historical foot notes. Thank you again

Posted by: jlcg | Mar 29 2009 9:02 utc | 19