On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure what Foucault would have said about the possibility of
> interacting "in an uncoded way".
He wouldn't have liked it, but I think you are being too literal and less than charitable. She clearly meant something like becoming-decoded or working at undoing capitalist coding.
> But anyway, is this not saying 'it's
> all in our heads', the manacles are mind forg'd?
No, it's exactly the opposite. I agree with Shag: it's deeply materialist. Instead of assuming that capitalist command works because people lack the nerve, will, or organization to throw it off (as soft materialism believes), it recognizes that it works at all levels of existence, not just the obviously economic ones, and that we reproduce it every day in our actions, relationships, etc. This is the meaning of the quote Angelus passed around: Capitalism works because you do. There's no moralism in that; instead, it's an acknowledgment of capital's working in every pore of society, its ability to touch every aspect of our lives. But it's also an acknowledgment of its limitations: it always relies on reproductive labor it can never fully control.
Monetary policy and full employment are not the only ways to elude that control. Struggle works too
^^^^^ CB: The concept of unconscious structures of capitalism is already present in Marx before the more recent structuralists and post-structuralists in such notions as the system going on behind the backs of the producers or some such famous phrase. Building class consciousness and socialist consciousness is difficult because the ruling ideas of every society are the ideas of its ruling classes, etc. This analysis is not new with the new lefts of various periods, including the French in the 60's