Re: <nettime> Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>]

Interesting question William --

>   >  So, does "capitalism" still have a broad social *purpose* once a
>   >  significant level of industrialization has already been achieved?
>
> I have a Harris tweed jacket that I like very much and wear almost
> every day. I like to take the train. Did the history that brought
> those things to me have to be a tale of depopulation, exile, disease,
> famine, cultural genocide and concentration of wealth? I can't see any
> reason why it had to happen that way.

For a specific process stream (a Harris Tweed jacket would be the outcome of 
such a process), if you look at it from an open-systems pov, I'm thinking that 
yes, it would have to be that way. Unless mitigating factors like you living on 
a sheep farm with the requisite tools to process and assemble the object your 
self, or barter for it locally in a way. However, as soon as you look at the 
reality of the genesis of the looms, for example (needing steel, iron as 
integral (not possibly substituted by a 'local' product), it then ties the 
process into the wider global extractives industry, etc, etc... Which relies on 
massive collective social/relational structures which capitalism seemingly has 
acted as an optimizing force (as it rests on engineering).

If you look at more general processes, I can imagine that there are, 
theoretically, more ways to 'accomplish' a particular task -- (that is, setting 
up process-flows that arrive at a similar goal/product).  However, if you look 
at the constituent sub-tasks, this perhaps begins to unravel the possibility of 
that accomplishment in any way other than the way it was accomplished (i.e. a 
Harris Tweed jacket falling into your hands in the way it did at that moment of 
history as fully embedded in the indeterminate conditions that it was in...). 
Again, say, back to the extractives necessary for the loom -- how can you get a 
fine steel object from iron/coal industries remotely located from the loom 
location without a now-globalized transport network which rests on capital 
investment (or collective investment of a social systems energies), which, 
crucially, relies on the suspension of a concern (interest, care) for the 
individual over that of the collective... (thus the 'genocide', the 
environmental unsustainability (disease, exile)), etc., etc.

Perhaps an infinitely recursive argument, but it in the end the dots between the 
product and the social system that directs its energies to construct that 
product in that particular form are absolutely connected...

Not even to mention Nike's use of Harris Tweed as a retro consumable 'fashion' 
statement in their shoes...!

Cheers,
John

--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
John Hopkins
Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow!
http://neoscenes.net/
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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