Road rage

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Thu May 7 05:25:55 PDT 1998


James Heartfield:
>All of these are no doubt very interesting reflections on the state of
>late capitalism, but what do they have to do with cars? All of the car
>critics, it seems to me, are not really talking about cars, but about
>their own feelings towards society.

Talk about banal observations. Of course we are discussing our own feeling towards CAPITALIST society. Jim's group no longer wants to change it, as is his privilege. By the way, I note that LM leaders now openly call themselves "libertarians." From the current issue of LM:

Discussing the paedophile

panic

The libertarian

parent's dilemma

"As a father, I do not much care what happens

to those individuals who are guilty of sex

offences against children. Throw away the key,

throw them down the stairs, whatever."

But that doesn't stop Mick Hume worrying about

the consequences of the paedophile panic for

the rest of society

With all due respect to Yoshie, it is simply inaccurate to refer to this group as "Marxist". They reject the characterization and it discredits Marxism to apply it to them. By the way, what's next? A libertarian's guide to hot vacation spots? "Join Mick Hume and Rush Limbaugh for a 5 day cruise of the Mediterranean!"


>
>Charles was right when he allied this question to Marx's theory of
>alienation. He should have added 'commodity fetishism', that state that
>Marx described in which relations between men take the alienated form of
>relations between things. Its not the cars that are the problem, its the
>form of social organisation - but the car is a kind of stand-in.

Another banal observation. Cars of course are not the problem. The way society is organized is the problem. The bourgeoisie destroyed public transportation in the 1940s in order to foster the accumulation of capital. Trolly-cars don't generate profit, General Motors sedans do. It didn't matter that workers would prefer to take public transportation to get to work, the ruling class had another agenda.


>
>I was impressed recently when my sister-in-law calmed my niece after she
>hurt herself on a sharp piece of plastic by punishing the 'bad' piece of
>plastic. But then my niece is only three. Punishing the 'bad' car is to
>remain within the ideological framework of commodity fetishism.

What nonsense. Nobody is discussing "punishing" cars. Is that what James thinks the anti-car activists are doing in NYC when they try to keep cars out of the parks? What's next for LM? Guest editorials from the late Robert Moses?

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)



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