Actually, while agreeing with
the idea of the pernicious nature of the
internet, I'm beginning to suspect the reality of the problem
is much deeper
and more complex than is sketched in the text included below.
In my view, it is
an oversimplification (and perhaps even a perversion of the
term in its
original sense) to blame "capitalism". To do so is to distract
from the real
problem in ways that perhaps make a functional understanding
impossible. The
really fundamental problem is very likely to be "consumerism"
-which developed
(perhaps automatically) out of the
industrialisation process in order to solve
the "economy of surfeit" inevitably generated by the
industrialisation process
itself.
Consumerism develops
the market for (essentially useless) products -while
Socialism (can) provide the economic redistribution of income
required to keep
the system going. Of course, this latter is a taboo thought in
the mainstream
USA. However, the ultimate problem is surely the
self-sustaining and all
consuming nature of the modern industrial-military-edutainment
complex: A
system which provides a very unfortunate example of
"sustainable development"
-because (like a cancerous vampire) it continually expands and
nourishes itself
through the destruction of all that is not part of itself -and
can thus only
survive by finding new victims, because all are destroyed that
are subsumed
into it.
Galbraith repeatedly mentions (in the "
New Industrial State")
how the American
political theory is so
directly opposed to the way the system works in
practice. He also
states the dangers of this -not only because it obscures the
true nature of the beast -but also because of the dangers
involved if political
leaders believe the rhetoric and take it at face value.
A fascinating question is then surely:
How did
America mutate from a
revolutionary
paradise (theoretically) based on freedom and equality to a
centralised,
globally domineering, feudal bully?
If one reads "Only Yesterday
-An Informal History of the 1920s" a 1931 book by
Frederick Lewis Allen <
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/allen/cover.html>.
then I believe one can see that Allen has skilfully
documented the changes in
America which took place in the '20's -apparently presaging
the rise of modern
consumerism -because largely based on the need to market
industrial
over-production. A situation that appears to have been
replayed globally, since
WWII. Even the 1930's crash seems currently present in the
contemporary post
WWII global rerun (which has also speeded up in the post
9/11 period, for
various reasons, perhaps in a misguided attempt to avoid the
terminal decline
it may be, inherently, heading towards).
The 1920's period thus
seems a pivotal moment in the history of the US
-because
that is when it became apparent that the industrial
production was starting to
exceed (and transcend) the "capital" requirements of
industry. By "capital" one
means here the use of production to increase the production
of the
industrialisation process itself: Iron and steel and
railways and agricultural
machinery -all involve "capital" goods that increase
production. But in the
1920's the production shifts to consumer goods -which have
to be explicitly
marketed, because there is no inherent market for these
things (as there is
with capital goods). The marketing of this overproduction
(an economy of
surfeit) produces marked social and cultural changes in the
1920's. Social
engineering thus becomes an essential part of modern
marketing.
Howard Zinn suggests that the
American Civil War was not primarily about
slavery, as most people seem to prefer to assume. Clearly
issues of State
"independence" (the right to live one's life as one wishes)
are implicit within
any demand for succession. But what was the major issue (if
not slavery) that
might threaten the Southern way of life? For Zinn (and this
seems credible) the
real issue was the
industrialisation of America -and in particular
the economic
potential of the unexploited Southern coal fields. From this
perspective, the
Civil War was, literally, a "class" war -in which the urban,
organised,
industrialised bourgeois of the North won against the rural,
anarchic,
agricultural "freeman" lifestyle of the South: i.e The
social transition from
the agrarian and independent world of Jeffersonian democracy
described by
Crevecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer" (interrupted
by the
Revolutionary War of independence) and de Tocqueville's
"Democracy in
America" (later destroyed by the American Civil War) towards
"modern",
industrialised and organised America (more or less) as we
now know it. Harald
Robbin's "The Carpet Baggers", describing the post-war
situation, is surely
more reminiscent of the post Soviet rape of Eastern Europe
and the current
drive for "regime change" in the Middle East -rather than
the bucolic,
gentlemanly, world of the original (pre-Civil War) American
ideals. Apparently
the end of the American Civil War was more than a military
victory, it was a
socio-economic "regime change".
Because most intellectuals aspire to an urban lifestyle
(despite their physical
location) -it is perhaps difficult for them to appreciate the
fundamental
differences between urban and rural contexts. However, both
Crevecoeur and
Thomas Jefferson were influenced by
Physiocratic ideas. Clearly, these ideals,
in various (mutated) forms are still active today in various
socio-political
contexts.
The wikipedia entry for
Physiocracy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiocracy>
states:
<
begin quote Wikipedia>
Physiocracy (
from the Greek for
"Government of Nature") is an economic theory
developed by the Physiocrats, a group of economists who
believed that the
wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of
"land agriculture" or
"land development." Their theories originated in France
and were most popular
during the second half of the 18th century. Physiocracy is
perhaps the first
well-developed theory of economics.
The movement was particularly dominated by
François Quesnay
(1694–1774) and
Anne-Robert-Jacques
Turgot (1727–1781).[1] It immediately preceded
the first
modern school, classical economics, which began with the
publication of
Adam
Smith's The Wealth of Nations
in 1776.
The most significant contribution of the
Physiocrats was their
emphasis on
productive work as the
source of national wealth. This is in contrast to
earlier schools, in particular mercantilism, which often
focused on the ruler's
wealth, accumulation of gold, or the balance of trade.
At the
time the
Physiocrats were formulating their ideas, economies were
almost entirely
agrarian. That is presumably why the theory
considered only agricultural labor
to be valuable.
Physiocrats
viewed the production of goods and services as
consumption of the
agricultural surplus, since the main source of power was
from human or animal
muscle and all energy was derived from the surplus from
agricultural
production..........
Individualism and
laissez-faire
Main articles: Individualism and Laissez-faire
The Physiocrats,
especially Turgot, believed that self-interest is the
motivation for each segment of the economy to play its
role. Each individual is
best suited to determine what goods he wants and what
work would provide him
with what he wants out of life. While a person might
labor for the benefit of
others, he will work harder for his own benefit;
however, each person's needs
are being supplied by many other people. The system
works best when there is a
complementary relationship between one person's needs
and another person's
desires, and trade restrictions place an unnatural
barrier to achieving one's
goals...........
Investment capital
Both Quesnay and Anne
Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune recognized that
capital was needed by farmers to start the production
process, and both were
proponents of using some of each year’s profits to
increase productivity.
Capital was also needed to sustain the laborers while
they produced their
product. Turgot recognizes that there is opportunity
cost and risk involved in
using capital for something other than land ownership,
and he promotes interest
as serving a “strategic
function in the economy.”[10]
<
end quote
Wikipedia>
The same Wikipedia article
also states:
"The perceptiveness of the
Physiocrats' recognition
of the key significance of
land was reinforced in the following half-century, when
fossil fuels had been
harnessed through the use of steam power. Productivity
increased manyfold.
Railways, and steam-powered water supply and sanitation
systems, made possible
cities of several millions, with land values many times
greater than
agricultural land. Thus, whilst modern economists also
recognise manufacturing
as productive and wealth-creating, the underlying
principles laid down by the
Physiocrats remain valid. Physiocracy also has an
important contemporary
relevance in that all life remains dependent on the
productivity of the raw
soil and the ability of the natural environment to renew
itself."
However, I believe this interpretation, by focusing on the
materialistic aspect
of the theory -misses the
fundamental
politico-economic changes that occur
automatically with the
transition from an urban to a rural environment.
This contrast is described
effectively in
Ralph
Borsodi's "Flight
From The
City"
New York: Harper & Row, 1933. The book "
Chronicles the Borsodi
family's
journey from
job-in-the-city dependency to self-sufficient country
independence.
Borsodi was far-sighted enough to accomplish this move
during the
prosperity of the 1920s; his books served as guideposts for
many anguished
wage-slaves who saw his book as a guiding light toward
financial security, even
survival, during the Great Depression. More, Ralph Borsodi
was an amazingly
intelligent social critic whose view cut through to the very
heart of the
contradictions and problems of industrial civilization.
PUBLIC DOMAIN."
<
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/0302homested.html>
(taken as an idealistic theory, without the practical
problems of defining its range of inclusivity) is possible in
a society of
economically independent "
freemen",
living off the land. However, an urban
environment generally does not permit this. Land is scarce in
cities and
nowadays it is generally considered uneconomic to use city
land for natural
(
non-processed) food
production. Consequently, cities are essentially
(
immaterial)
money based economies:
Where economic independence can only be
obtained by
acquiring
enough monetary wealth (via traditional Marxist
capitalism) to exist either outside, or through
exploitation of, the system of
monetary exchange.
The
Jeffersonian
democratic ideal of a society of "
free (and
equal) men" thus
seems
impossible within an
urban context -simply because
economic independence is
contrary to urban economic principles based on trade
and a
money based economic
inter-dependence (necessary to drive the trade which
is the life-blood of the city economy).
Similarly, the "
hidden hand
of God" invented by
Adam
Smith, was, in practice, a
theory of the
rural market
place -and, one might argue, has no place within the
pseudo-monopolistic
corporate system that grows naturally out of the
large
scale production, distribution and "marketing" system inherent
in an
industrialised, urban, society.
Marxism, clearly bases its theories also on
an
industrial interpretation
of the "
market" -which
is perhaps why it fails to be
sufficiently aware of the difference between "
capitalism" as a general
principle of
sustainability
-and "
financial
capitalism" which easily becomes
inherently
exploitative
(and ultimately unsustainable) -unless an inherent
redistribution principle is included.
In conclusion:
The exploitative nature of the internet is an
inherent and
inevitable
characteristic of an economic system based on industrial
overproduction
focused on consumer goods rather than capital goods.
Under these conditions, expansion is not an expression of the
success of the system
-but expansion of the market becomes absolutely essential for
the survival of the
system itself. Otherwise it would be impossible to deal with
the surfeit of
goods mass produced so effectively by the system. Post-1920's,
social
engineering (backed up by the modern edutainment industry) is
now an essential
part of the marketing strategy required to keep production of
the inessential
surplus going: Here, "
education"
(via the news media, "
think
tanks" and
lobbyists, schools and
colleges, or via the
internet) plays an essential role
in s
ocially engineering
the
consumer market.
Foreign invasions fill
the gap, where the edutainment system is ineffective for
political, social or religious reasons. Secularism is also an
essential part of consumerism
-otherwise
religious
taboos would
limit
consumption and
undermine
the system.
However, this is largely masked by the confusing nature of
much
politico-economic rhetoric -which has actually become
dysfunctional, if not
deliberately, then by the
continued
application of pre-industrial, rural,
social and economic theory,
long after the living conditions which made these
theories appropriate have
generally disappeared.
In order to understand the complex subtlety of the processes
involved -it may
be necessary to develop a wider, more creative and
McLuhan like approach to
the
concept of "
media"
-which extends beyond
mass
communication media and includes
the way innovative thought processes (both analytical and
synthetic) are
intertwined with (and manifest in) physical processes and
cultural products (as
opposed to lifestyle products).
In this context, maybe creative "artistic media" are
more valid (as models)
than propaganda based "communication media".