Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> Is there a major public figure who really believes in the free market?
> Certainly no body I know of in politics -- I have not followed Ron Paul
> closely.
>
> On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 04:51:06PM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
> > Michael Perelman wrote:
> >
> > >I was thinking Panopicon-like. Just make people do what you want--
> > >especially work. We are getting there.
> >
> > That's not very free market - it's directly coercive. Money's
> > supposed to do the trick, and money makes it all look like free
> > choice.
> >
We are coming closer now to the _real_ "intersection" of relations of production and culture. Bourgeois culture for nearly 4 centuries (popular, high, what-have-you) has been in the first instance always a manifestation of the glories of "choice" and the horror of any sort of inter-dependence or of social constraint. As Doug points out, that "free choice" is rather illusory (not wholly, there are real complexities here). I would define "free choice" as a choice divorced from its material grounds. Go to the grocery store for a brownie mix. Prior to brownie mixes of course, there was just chocalate, flour, etc. But leave that aside. "Originally" in brownie mix there were three or four brands to "choose" from: you _had_ to make an absolutely freefloating choice in contrast to to pre-brownie mix days. But _now_ you find that each brand has five or six different varieties, their packages all look the same, and you are overwhelmed with the "richness" of choice: that is, all this richness of choice is a real suppression of human freedom, in so far as freedom means having time at one's disposal. By the time you choose brand and variety you don't have any time left to eat the damn things.
Which brings me back to Louis Kampf's defintion of culture: the organization of daily life. And that organization is now subordinated to the transformation of labor power into a commodity and of the results of labor into an almost infinite sea of compulsory free choices. Culture tries to make sense of how that _feels_. But the culture theorists simply lobotomize themselves if they don't recognize that the parameters are set by relations of production (commodity production).
Shall we say that culture is visible. Relations of production are invisible?
Carrol
Carrol