heh sheesh! look, i'm already doing duty for the left by duking it out on dc-stuff with the likes of matt cramer and others. reese just got my mata hari of the left routine. i give it ALL to the left, believe you me. hell, i even posted an earlier review AT dc-stuff! /. is a kiddie pool with rubber shark toys compared to the big bad dc-stiffs who r00l the h4x0r underground.
now, will someone explain to matt what the difference is between a lefty and a liberal and then maybe explain all the distinctions *within* the left. riiiiiiiiight!
kelley -------------
If you want to hit digital capital where it hurts, try hammering away at the intellectual property rights that have created their world of virtual production, products, and businesses. I suspect they will be particularly sensitive to an intense examination of their concept of value.
While your at it, don't forget to remind these new libertarians that the US government created their entire world. Pure fiat drew the new economic miracle out of thin air, as Al Gore will probably be reminding us in the near future.
But reflect on something else, which occurred to me while I was looking around IMC news on LA and wondering at how effective the anarchist and other movements have been in raising the level political consciousness. There is something dialectical about the match between the street or concrete world orientation of the new movements and their media, and their primary targets of a rationalized, cyberized and globalized new economic imperium.
If the new economy was essentially created by legal fiat, an act of pure state authority through intellectual property rights law, then doesn't it seem fascinating that a chaotic, satirical anarchy of anti-authoritarian derision and ridicule, and newly criminalized reproductions and representations should be its nemesis? Whether this analysis has any merit or not, it has a kind of poetic justice to it, doesn't it?
When you line up the focus of the movements arrayed against globalization they all share concern for the tangible and concrete: work, food, housing, health, transportation, the enviornment. And then line up their dialectical image in the hyper-rational virtuality of the new economy where working twice as long produces absolutely no change in material conditions, the food is potato chips and bottled water, there is no housing or it is so elaborate as to be beyond any use as shelter, health is a default deduced from the labyrinth of policy exclusions, all travel is literally setting in place, in some gray cubicle staring at a screen, and the only concern for the environment is limited to considering beach property values, if the north pole really has melted back into sea water.
So, the rational for focusing on concepts of material value is of course to drive a Marxist stake through their cold dead hearts.
Chuck Grime