[lbo-talk] why Prince is right

Mike Beggs mikejbeggs at gmail.com
Fri Jul 9 21:19:25 PDT 2010


On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 7:30 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:


> When I talk about 'circuitous' I'm talking about the fetishization of "free"
> such that people no longer understand how they pay for something - like
> health care in currently existing societies that have "free" health care.
> There's a story there, ripe for analysis, that a contemporary Marx could
> examine for the way this fetish is working to obscure the godamned social
> relations of production. The thing magically lands on the supermarket
> shelves, where you buy it. No idea or understanding of the social
> relationships that went on to create that product and get it on the shelves.
> People - the actual involvement of *people* in the creation of those
> productions - is hidden from view. When it isn't even a commodity anymore -
> but really fucking is, just in a very circuitous way - the shit is still
> going on - the commodity fetishism, only now, really people and the labor
> they do to create things have totally evaporated from the picture.

I think it's a good point - non-commodity fetishism. But clearly with IP stuff the free came first and the ideology followed - it's not because people thought music should be free that it got that way. (I know you're making a broader point but I'm sticking with music, print etc here.) It's that technology evolved so as to make the marginal cost of production negligible.

I take Doug's point that there's about as much chance of getting the Easter Bunny elected president as there is of getting a 'public solution' for intellectual property. But we're quixotic socialists right? We're in it for the longue duree. When hand-weavers are losing their livelihoods our answer is not to ban the power loom.

It seems to me like what's happening to media is not concealing but actually uncommonly revealing about the social nature of production, a good anchor for making your points, and actually something in which socialism seems like common sense for a change. Precisely because the Chris Anderson line - just get your business model right - is so stupid. But Julio's kind of scheme scheme is perfectly workable.

Mike Beggs



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list