kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Are you so thick you can't even work out that people's wants and desires are things that are controlled and manipulated by captialism? Fucks sake, if you haven't even got this far down the road I can't be arsed.
Back to the factories?
- Thread starter david dissadent
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Are you so thick you can't even work out that people's wants and desires are things that are controlled and manipulated by captialism? Fucks sake, if you haven't even got this far down the road I can't be arsed.
_angel_
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Yep. I think I credit people with a bit more intelligence than Kyser seems to.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
No I don't, but quite honestly I cannot be bothered to argue with someone who seems to think that having an iPod is a 'need' and not a consumer desire.
_angel_
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A car is an interesting one. If you work a long way from where you live (most people do) your choice might be to spend two hours and a lot of waiting around for a bus in the cold, it may be packed and uncomfortable, if you had a car you could be home in 20 minutes. Maybe having the car isn't a 'need' but it makes your life a hell of a lot easier so wanting a car isn't exactly a consumer 'desire' because you've seen the adverts of how great the car is-- it's just something to get from A to B.
It may be there is no bus to where you want to go to and so to get to your job you do therefore *need* a car in order to work.
It may be there is no bus to where you want to go to and so to get to your job you do therefore *need* a car in order to work.
Spion
I hear ya
There's also the effect of (monopoly) capitalism that suppresses new technology. Fact is that Blu Ray could have been superceded by now by holographic storage, but the big disk makers are sitting on the patents so they can get several years worth of profits out of the current generations of storage media. I don't doubt that happens in many areas of technology. Profit comes first in this system.
Spion
I hear ya
A rational system would divert the resources currently used to make X different types of almost identical cars that were sold to a market that was artifically pumped up, and which also exists in an envinronment of unplanned working locations with poor (or even intentionally suppressed in some cases) public transport. I think a socialist system would need less cars, with some kept for need and pleasure, rather than having a major chunk of its economy built around them
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
As Spion says, in a system based around rational allocation of resources this situation simply wouldn't arise. Do you seriously think that public transport would be an issue under a socialist regime?
Spion
I hear ya
LOL You fuckwit
_angel_
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Do you seriously think you're ever ever going to persaude people to do without their cars etc??
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
I don't think we'll remove the want to use cars, nor indeed do I think they'll be gotten rid of, but the notion of private ownership of cars, outside of collecting them as a hobby, is something that will change, if only because the space and resources necessary for them simply won't be there, or will be too expensive for the majority (if we're assuming no change in society - if it goes balls out socialist then i suspect it will be far, far quicker and not driven by oil becoming too expensive.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love cars, but as something that billions of individuals own and use they're an environmental and social disaster, from production all the way through to use.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love cars, but as something that billions of individuals own and use they're an environmental and social disaster, from production all the way through to use.
danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
It's a use-value, and has use. Not all things which have use are commodities, though. And one of the defining characteristics of commodities are that they conceal a social relation: they are an expression of concrete labour, the process is objectified in the thing, but also the exchange value of the thing. This is important in understanding how value arises, and how that is passed on in the process of exchange. All this is expressed by Marx in the concept of socially necessary labour time.
The question I think kyser is asking is what commodities a rational society will think it worth expending labour time on, given that the ever increasing accumulation of surplus value won't be driving production, and therefore having to manufacture demand, in an ever spiralling feedback loop.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Change their wants and desires - it happens every single day every time you look at an advert.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Depending on how, when, where and what they're being told, in some cases no. Someone who has never developed their critical faculties beyond looking at consumer reviews for DVD players but is incapable of realising that they're being manipulated by the manufacturers doesn't have any useful critical faculties and is a piece of piss to market to.
Don't forget, I've got 10 years experience in marketing and advertising, and believe me, there are lots and lots of people out there who have next to no critical faculties to call on...no real surprise because the society we live in frowns on and doesn't inculate it's population with the mindset required for it, but that's capitalism's own form of indoctrination, far more subtle, nuanced and insidious than anything the socialists or communists try to do, because it re-directs criticism into areas it can control easily, rather than attempting, as centralising socialists have done in the past, to stop the criticism completely.
Oh yeah, as for people being suckered, the dodgy dossier is a classic case in point.
danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
Well, we can guess, though, and when you look at all the people and processes which come together in even the simplest of commodities (and all the expenditure of effort and resources tht requires), I'll wager a rational society will not be producing anything like the number of things we see around us today. Indeed, it would need not to, if it is to deserve the description "rational".
Spion
I hear ya
You have absolutely no critique of production under this system do you?
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
No, but what do you think is a more rational thing to make, a new TV or a new hospital machine?
Kyser - we'll agree to disagree on that one then.
Danny - Guessing is pointless in this instance though. It's wrong to assume that people will suddenly find no need or want for things they currently enjoy.
Spion -
Why do we have to make that choice? A future society should be more than capable of producing both, if that's what the populace desired.
Danny - Guessing is pointless in this instance though. It's wrong to assume that people will suddenly find no need or want for things they currently enjoy.
Spion -
Why do we have to make that choice? A future society should be more than capable of producing both, if that's what the populace desired.
danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
Spion
I hear ya
Why can't you say what you think now? And we won't get to 'a future society' if people don't suggest what they want to see in it will we?
It seems blindingly obvious to me that there are far too many cars produced and that each family having several of them is unsustainable and undesirable ecnomically and environmentally and that that situation is driven by profit.
People want to make a living and care for their families and enjoy themselves and they want the mobility to be able to do that. Every person owning a car is not the only way to achieve that.
_angel_
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Every person in the UK could own a car, but the question is where and when they choose to use it is really the issue..
_angel_
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So having just slagged off capitalism for undermining people's crictical facilities, you then say you want to do the exact same thing.
I don't think in general people, just because they may not be educated, are just unthinking sheep taught to go out and buy the next thing the telly tells them to.
Of course. But how do you go from this to thinking a post-capitalist society would not produce tvs, computers, 'crappy' tv shows...
Well, whether you think it's desirable or not is irrelevant. There's millions of cars around simply because people want a car. You may think they've been brainwashed into wanting a car, but they are incredibly useful. Who are you to decide whether ownership of cars is desirable or not?
How did Kyser escape this mentality? How is he able to see through the capitalist lies, and no one else can (or at least, no one else who isn't educated)?
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