Economic Determinism Marxian Style

[phildwyer]

no i'm saying that they mistook circulation and the commodity form for the whole and so tended to overlook the contested and dynamic nature of capitalism as a social relation. They overlooked how capital sets the working class to work and how it is a process that involves constant struggle and compromise, meaning that the spectacle is not an overarching field of bourgeois dominance but rather it will contain many fractures and fissures in which the needs and desires of the proletariat will be glanced.

No, the {needs and desires of the proletariat{ will be (manufactured( by the spectacle. It{s not a matter of [bourgeois dominance{, or of class at all, its a mater of the dominance of exchange'value over use'value, appearance over essence and representation over reality. Sorry about the mad punctuation, I{m in Mexico.

 

[revol68]

but these separations are never total, the essence is always present in the appearance albeit in a distorted form.

 

[Fruitloop]

Isn't Gramsci's point that the spectacle is in part manufactured by the nature of the proletariat? Society is simply not composed merely of exchange and use values, but also of a multitude of other social facts.

 

[phildwyer]

Isn't Gramsci's point that the spectacle is in part manufactured by the nature of the proletariat? Society is simply not composed merely of exchange and use values, but also of a multitude of other social facts.

Do you mean Debord? Anyway, that's not anyone's point. The spectacle, in Debord's sense, *is* exchange-value: "The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image" (Society of the Spectacle, no.34). I was going to talk about this on the "God" thread, but would you lot listen?

 

[nino_savatte]

All the characters in "Doctor Faustus" are pastiche, which is what led Frederic Jameson to describe it as "the first postmodern novel." The devil is basically Adorno (he's a dillentante, amateur composer etc) expounding Schoenberg in the same terms as his "The Philosophy of Modern Music." But the temptation scene is closely modelled on "The Brothers Karamazov." Schoenberg himself was convinced he was Leverkuhn, and in fact forced Mann to append a disclaimer to subsequent editions. But Mahler's in there too, and the scene in which Leverkuhn catches syphilis is drawn word-for-word from Nietzsche's letter recounting his own contraction of that disease, while his theological speeches are verbatim Luther, even down to the archaic (and untranslatable) German. There are also, of course, countless allusions to Spies's Faustbuch, Marlowe, Goethe etc.

What utter waffle...

I have never seen such shite written in one post before. The "devil is Adorno"? You really are quite mad...as well as being a vain, arrogant pseudo-intellectual poseur. You obviously haven't worked out the difference between Goethe's work and that of Marlowe.

 

[nino_savatte]

I have indeed. Do you reckon the Devil in Mann's novel is meant to be Adorno? I read a paper somewhere that thought it was Mahler instead.

The devil as ultimate modernist creator comparison only makes sense in the context of Adorno's depiction (indebted to Benjamin) of the 19th phantasmagoria of commodity-images as baroque vision of hell.

Nah, it's Habermas...surely.

 

[phildwyer]

What utter waffle...

I have never seen such shite written in one post before. The "devil is Adorno"? You really are quite mad...as well as being a vain, arrogant pseudo-intellectual poseur. You obviously haven't worked out the difference between Goethe's work and that of Marlowe.

Nino, a word of advice. It I was as ignorant as you, I'd keep my mouth very firmly shut until I'd done some basic research. For a start, we are discussing neither Goethe nor Marlowe (both of whom of course died centuries before Adorno's birth) but Mann. Moreover, the notion that, in Mann, Adorno represents the devil is hardly as outrageous as, in your ignorance, you seem to imagine. This "mad," wild, laughable theory was first advanced by *Mann himself,* in "The Genesis of a Novel." And the implications of Adorno-as-Satan have been explored by literally *thousands* of academic studies, of which the most famous is probably Jean-Francois Lyotard's "Adorno as the Devil." Google it, fool. And *then* come back and try to debate with people who are intellectually serious.

 

[articul8]

Do you mean Debord? Anyway, that's not anyone's point. The spectacle, in Debord's sense, *is* exchange-value: "The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image" (Society of the Spectacle, no.34).

but surely exchange value was in existence long before the society of the spectacle? Presumably, the spectacle is where exchange value begins to cast its image across the totality of social relations? Otherwise the spectacle would just be a simple synonym for capitalism, rather than a specific mode of late capitalism?

 

[nino_savatte]

Nino, a word of advice. It I was as ignorant as you, I'd keep my mouth very firmly shut until I'd done some basic research. For a start, we are discussing neither Goethe nor Marlowe (both of whom of course died centuries before Adorno's birth) but Mann. Moreover, the notion that, in Mann, Adorno represents the devil is hardly as outrageous as, in your ignorance, you seem to imagine. This "mad," wild, laughable theory was first advanced by *Mann himself,* in "The Genesis of a Novel." And the implications of Adorno-as-Satan have been explored by literally *thousands* of academic studies, of which the most famous is probably Jean-Francois Lyotard's "Adorno as the Devil." Google it, fool. And *then* come back and try to debate with people who are intellectually serious.

Dwyer, a word of advice: if you are going to start a thread or make contributions to one, make sure that your intent is honest, if not honourable. I do not believe your intention on this thread is either. I find your thesis and your 'ideas' laughable in the extreme. Your posts are full of diversions and efforts to derail and give vent to your ego.

I'll bet you've never read any Adorno. All you can do is regurgitate the same stuff many others have said about him, but I doubt you have actually read and understood him. Anyone can say "Adorno hates jazz" and leave it at that, but that is only part of the story; and not even an accurate part at that.

You, my sad egotistical friend are the fool - only you are to arrogant to even notice that you are a laughing stock. This part of your post is somewhat revealing.

come back and try to debate with people who are intellectually serious.

You aren't exactly either one though - are you?

 

[phildwyer]

but surely exchange value was in existence long before the society of the spectacle? Presumably, the spectacle is where exchange value begins to cast its image across the totality of social relations? Otherwise the spectacle would just be a simple synonym for capitalism, rather than a specific mode of late capitalism?

Well yes, exchange-value has always taken a visible form. When a table is designed to be sold rather than to be used, it will *look* different because its manufacture has been determined, to variable degrees, by the dictates of exchange-value. But the Society of the Spectacle involves the dialectical leap from quantitative change to qualitative: at a certain point the visible influence of exchange-value reaches the stage where it becomes something else. Debord would argue that this happened in the post-war West, with the explosion of "mass media." His influence on the Sex Pistols is particularly revealing in this context.

 

[phildwyer]

Dwyer, a word of advice: if you are going to start a thread or make contributions to one, make sure that your intent is honest, if not honourable. I do not believe your intention on this thread is either. I find your thesis and your 'ideas' laughable in the extreme. Your posts are full of diversions and efforts to derail and give vent to your ego.

I'll bet you've never read any Adorno. All you can do is regurgitate the same stuff many others have said about him, but I doubt you have actually read and understood him. Anyone can say "Adorno hates jazz" and leave it at that, but that is only part of the story; and not even an accurate part at that.

You, my sad egotistical friend are the fool - only you are to arrogant to even notice that you are a laughing stock. This part of your post is somewhat revealing.

Stop stalking me Nino. Your intent is only to disrupt this discussion, because you are incapable of participating in it. Quite obviously, you thought the idea of Adorno as the Devil was "mad" because you know nothing about Adorno. An honorable person would admit his ignorance and continue to participate on other topics. But *you* react to being exposed in public with rage and insults, which is the mark of a buffoon and ignoramus. Please leave this thread now, you are no longer welcome here.

 

[nino_savatte]

Stop stalking me Nino. Your intent is only to disrupt this discussion, because you are incapable of participating in it. Quite obviously, you thought the idea of Adorno as the Devil was "mad" because you know nothing about Adorno. An honorable person would admit his ignorance and continue to participate on other topics. But *you* react to being exposed in public with rage and insults, which is the mark of a buffoon and ignoramus. Please leave this thread now, you are no longer welcome here.

Paranoid phil? That's not like you. Disrupting discussions is your business - non? Of course it is.

Besides, you were the one who brought up Adorno...and Goethe's Faust. Who's derailing the thread? Not me, I merely challenged you.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Please leave this thread now, you are no longer welcome here.

Who the hell do you think you are to order people around?

Did you start this thread?
Unless you have more than one log-in and one of your others is "october lost" then you didn't, so you don't have the right to request let alone order someone to leave a thread.

I'd suggest that you get over yourself, dwyer. Maybe one day you'll learn that courtesy goes further than bombastic pomposity.

 

[phildwyer]

Who the hell do you think you are to order people around?

Did you start this thread?
Unless you have more than one log-in and one of your others is "october lost" then you didn't, so you don't have the right to request let alone order someone to leave a thread.

Panda, do you have anything of substance to contribute here? We would be delighted, for example to hear your views on the spectacle as manifested in postmodernity. Or perhaps you have an opinion to express on Malcolm Maclaren's relation to Guy Debord? If so, let's hear it. Or perhaps are you merely *trolling,* seeking to pursue your personal vendettas by means of this thread? If so, I must request that you leave us in peace. Go away, until you have something of relevance to say. Thank you.

 

[gorski]

Postmodernity? Surely not in this thread, with so many seriously knowledgable people?

The next thing we know Habermas will be invoked again and this will become a Po-Mo shite thread...

 

[nino_savatte]

Panda, do you have anything of substance to contribute here? We would be delighted, for example to hear your views on the spectacle as manifested in postmodernity. Or perhaps you have an opinion to express on Malcolm Maclaren's relation to Guy Debord? If so, let's hear it. Or perhaps are you merely *trolling,* seeking to pursue your personal vendettas by means of this thread? If so, I must request that you leave us in peace. Go away, until you have something of relevance to say. Thank you.

How does Debord, Situationism and Malcolm McLaren relate to this thread? They don't and in desperation you chuck around a few names (though I noticed you didn't mention Situationism by name). They are about as releveant to this thread as Goethe is...they aren't.

This thread is titled "Economic determinism, Marxian style". None of your posts are directly relevant to this thread. Anyone can produce the sort of posts that you have by simply feeding the correct bits of language into a generator - like the postmodernism generator et voila! Impenetrable nonsense that, on closer inspection, reveals a distinct lack of substance.

You're a fraud.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Panda, do you have anything of substance to contribute here? We would be delighted, for example to hear your views on the spectacle as manifested in postmodernity. Or perhaps you have an opinion to express on Malcolm Maclaren's relation to Guy Debord? If so, let's hear it. Or perhaps are you merely *trolling,* seeking to pursue your personal vendettas by means of this thread? If so, I must request that you leave us in peace. Go away, until you have something of relevance to say. Thank you.

Phil, may I cordially suggest that you insert a traffic cone up your capacious rear and swivel on it?

I have no "personal vendetta" with you. Please don't flatter yourself that you're worth that kind of attention, because you're not.

As for my leaving this thread, request away, just don't expect anyone with any self-respect to follow your juvenile posturing dressed up as "authority".

I'd suggest that you grow up, and grow out of your habit of attempting to blind people with the "brilliance" of your intellect" (have you noted how few people are actually impressed by your efforts?), but I'm sure you wouldn't listen.

Finally, to repeat myself, it isn't within your gift to order people from threads, so please don't do it (unless of course you are actively seeking to illustrate the depths of your poor behaviour and arrogance).

 

[Fruitloop]

Do you mean Debord? Anyway, that's not anyone's point. The spectacle, in Debord's sense, *is* exchange-value: "The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image" (Society of the Spectacle, no.34). I was going to talk about this on the "God" thread, but would you lot listen?

I meant Gramsci. Had I meant Debord I would have said Debord, as this discussion is hardly crying out to be more obfuscated than it already is. I was thinking of the notion of hegemony, rather than the spectacle, but in any case (to borrow a discursive technique), the spectacle *is* hegemony.

 

[nino_savatte]

Well yes, exchange-value has always taken a visible form. When a table is designed to be sold rather than to be used, it will *look* different because its manufacture has been determined, to variable degrees, by the dictates of exchange-value. But the Society of the Spectacle involves the dialectical leap from quantitative change to qualitative: at a certain point the visible influence of exchange-value reaches the stage where it becomes something else. Debord would argue that this happened in the post-war West, with the explosion of "mass media." His influence on the Sex Pistols is particularly revealing in this context.

There are two seperate issues here from what I can see, and neither are related to the thread.

When are you going to mention Marcel Duchamp?

 

[articul8]

Well yes, exchange-value has always taken a visible form. When a table is designed to be sold rather than to be used, it will *look* different because its manufacture has been determined, to variable degrees, by the dictates of exchange-value. But the Society of the Spectacle involves the dialectical leap from quantitative change to qualitative: at a certain point the visible influence of exchange-value reaches the stage where it becomes something else.

Think I agree with this - the key dialectical 'leap' occurs, of course, when the commodity-image circulates in the absence of the (so-called) 'real' commodity itself. (BTW - for Phil's critics - this IS relevant to the thread...this leap can only occur when the visual technologies have developed to the degree that the mass reproduction of images becomes possible. see also Walter Benjamin on this. In other words capitalism's economic development does not precede or determine its cultural development, as a crude version of Marxism would have it.)

Debord would argue that this happened in the post-war West, with the explosion of "mass media." His influence on the Sex Pistols is particularly revealing in this context.

Don't forget that no member of the Sex Pistols had actually read Debord. Only McClaren and Jamie Reid. You could make the case that this was capitalism's attempt to recuperate the SI's teachings back into the spectacular form of 'entertainment'. It is the punk ethos, not the celebrity punks that really reflect Debord's argument.

 

[Fruitloop]

Hang on - the technical innovation of 'mechanical reproduction' or whatever, precedes the dissemination of its spectacular images, so surely it's a classic example of a feedback loop between base production (TV sets etc) which influences superstructural culture (the emergence of the mechanically disseminated commodity-image) which serves to reinforce the hegemonic nature of society's productive structures. This all seems exactly as you would expect, and differs from the introduction of newspaper printing (for example) only in the spectacularly immersive nature of the new media.

 

[articul8]

Hang on - the technical innovation of 'mechanical reproduction' or whatever, precedes the dissemination of its spectacular images, so surely it's a classic example of a feedback loop between base production (TV sets etc) which influences superstructural culture (the emergence of the mechanically disseminated commodity-image) which serves to reinforce the hegemonic nature of society's productive structures. This all seems exactly as you would expect, and differs from the introduction of newspaper printing (for example) only in the spectacularly immersive nature of the new media.

think that the difference lies in the capacity of (spectacular) images to function as a 'virtual reality', something which isn't true of newspaper printing. However, you could argue that the invention of photography does prefigure the emergence of capital by eroding that aura surrounding the artwork.

 

[nino_savatte]

Don't forget that no member of the Sex Pistols had actually read Debord. Only McClaren and Jamie Reid. You could make the case that this was capitalism's attempt to recuperate the SI's teachings back into the spectacular form of 'entertainment'. It is the punk ethos, not the celebrity punks that really reflect Debord's argument.

Exactly and it unlikely any of them would have understood either Debord or Situationism. Even McLaren was a little late out of the traps when it came to SI.

 

[phildwyer]

Think I agree with this - the key dialectical 'leap' occurs, of course, when the commodity-image circulates in the absence of the (so-called) 'real' commodity itself. (BTW - for Phil's critics - this IS relevant to the thread...this leap can only occur when the visual technologies have developed to the degree that the mass reproduction of images becomes possible. see also Walter Benjamin on this. In other words capitalism's economic development does not precede or determine its cultural development, as a crude version of Marxism would have it.)

Nino and Panda are hardly equipped to know what is relevant to this discussion. The point is, in the society of the spectacle, the "economy" *itself* is made up of images. The manipulation of images, in advertising and the mass media, is a greater source of profit than "material" production. And money, as I've said before, is revealed to be nothing more than an image itself.

 

[nino_savatte]

Nino and Panda are hardly equipped to know what is relevant to this discussion. The point is, in the society of the spectacle, the "economy" *itself* is made up of images. The manipulation of images, in advertising and the mass media, is a greater source of profit than "material" production. And money, as I've said before, is revealed to be nothing more than an image itself.

How about you address me directly instead of behaving like a wee spoilt brat who's had his lolly taken from him?

You aren't relevant to this discussion in spite of your protests to the contrary. In fact as far as most of us are concerned' you're nothing more than a cod-academic with a superficial knowledge of certain authors.

 

[phildwyer]

Don't forget that no member of the Sex Pistols had actually read Debord. Only McClaren and Jamie Reid. You could make the case that this was capitalism's attempt to recuperate the SI's teachings back into the spectacular form of 'entertainment'. It is the punk ethos, not the celebrity punks that really reflect Debord's argument.

Yeah, but the Pistols were originally Maclaren's brainchild, and the Situationist influence is very clear. I mean, whole *lyrics* to their songs are lifted directly from the Situationists, "a cheap holiday in other people's misery" being but one example. Capital *did* recuperate the SI via punk, but that was most certainly not its plan. The mass media's hysterically hostile reaction to the emergence of punk was born of genuine fear.

 

[phildwyer]

How about you address me directly instead of behaving like a wee spoilt brat who's had his lolly taken from him?

Actually its because I like the sound of "Nino and Panda," it sounds like a children's TV show, and you offer approximately the same level of intellectual discourse as Andy and Teddy too.

 

[nino_savatte]

Yeah, but the Pistols were originally Maclaren's brainchild, and the Situationist influence is very clear. I mean, whole *lyrics* to their songs are lifted directly from the Situationists, "a cheap holiday in other people's misery" being but one example. Capital *did* recuperate the SI via punk, but that was most certainly not its plan. The mass media's hysterically hostile reaction to the emergence of punk was born of genuine fear.

Even a year one cultural studies student could have told you that. Your last sentence overlooks the tendency of the state and the media to engage in periodic moral panics and witchhunts. Punks were not the only youth subculture to have been greeted in this fashion. But then, you don't know exactly what you are talking about - do you?

 

[nino_savatte]

Actually its because I like the sound of "Nino and Panda," it sounds like a children's TV show, and you offer approximately the same level of intellectual discourse as Andy and Teddy too.

Still trolling phil? And you do it in such an articulate fashion. Shame that some of us can spot the obvious bullshit and lack of substance within your posts - isn't it?

The ego has landed, move out the way or be crushed under the weight of dwyer's self-importance.

 

[phildwyer]

Still trolling phil? And you do it in such an articulate fashion. Shame that some of us can spot the obvious bullshit and lack of substance within your posts - isn't it?

The ego has landed, move out the way or be crushed under the weight of dwyer's self-importance.

Well, its been fun and all, but I think we've had enough of your distractions now. Since you have nothing of substance to contribute, I must ask you to leave this thread without any further protest. And take your cuddly toy with you too. "Bye bye, bye bye, Nino and Panda are waving Goodbye..."