Scarcity

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Tue Apr 10 13:05:18 PDT 2001


In message <p05010414b6f8e43e8e78@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>But how completely can you separate "technology, medicine, knowledge,
>etc." from the modes of social organization - large-scale
>enterprise, to name just one - that make it possible? And how can you
>lift the bits you like from non- or precapitalist societies? Isn't it
>fetishizing both technology and social organization to treat them as
>so easily separable, even in thought?

How can you not, more like.

What is the case for social revolution other than the separation of technology from the modes of social organisation that made it possible.

If it were not possible to separate the technological base of capitalism from its mode of social organisation then there could be no liberation from capitalism without junking its entire achievement in technology. That solution was tried by Pol Pot in the 'year zero'.

The distinction between mode of production and means of production is the foundation of historical materialism. It is the prejudice of capitalist political economy that industry and capitalism are indivisible. In fact that is precisely the essence of fetishism, that it conflates social conditions with material conditions.

The whole of the course of human history is the separation of the means of production from the mode of production. Is the architecture of the coliseum in Rome distinguishable from the slave mode of tribute? I assume so. Can one drive down a Roman road without taking all your surplus to Rome? Of course you can. Did Trotsky command the Red Army from a train, running on tracks made by capitalists? Did the Communards not use muskets built under the Thiers regime to overthrow it, or their great grandparents use pikes to overthrow the Sun King? Isn't the regime in Cuba applying genetic modification techniques right now to increase its yields? -- James Heartfield



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