[lbo-talk] Sorcerer's Apprentice (Science, History, Freedom)

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Fri Apr 4 13:30:59 PDT 2008


Carrol:

As the saying goes, Yes & No.

Technology in hunting/gathering 'stage'

^^^^ CB: mode of production

^^^

was sufficient to secure continuation and even growth of the species.

Technology now seems more apt to destroy than to continue the species.

. . . .for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life. . .

^^^ CB: Another image for capitalist man ( sic), is the myth of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Capitalist science and technology, the Apprentice ( played by Mickey Mouse in Fantasia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_%28film%29)

has loosed forces, like anthropogenic climate change, that are now out of the Apprentice's control.

Somehow Marx and Engels got the Sorcerer into the Manifesto:

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/1998m04.e/msg00002.htm

"The power to call up spirits from the deep and the giant, Industry, return transformed once again. Modern capitalist society ''is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.'' The immediate reference here is to Goethe's poem ''The Sorcerer's Apprentice,'' but Marx has replaced the magician's apprentice with the master sorcerer himself. And hence, behind the figure of the conjurer who has lost command, we recognize as well Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and a host of other modern and mythological dramatizations. Capitalism has called up and created these embodied energies, yet its (or his) masterful ''spells'' cannot indefinitely keep them in ''fetters.'' In a final metamorphosis, the populations, powers and demons called up out of the earth, ''the giant, Modern Industry'' and the Proletariat itself all coalesce into the ''gravediggers'' who will bury the bourgeoisie that brought them to life."

^^^^

Socialist revolution on a world-wide scale can be seen as the narrow gate here through which we must pass if technology is not to destroy us.

Carrol



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