My salute to monochrom’s & Telekommunisten’s DISMALWARE @ c-base
February 4th, 2011A salute to you, comrades in the trenches of cyber class war! To the deformed situationist abberation of Monochrom! To the Telekommunisten in their MANIFESTO phase that hopefully precedes their CAPITAL phase! To the unknown soldier!
Yes, the stinkin’ lazy hippie commie bastard Kulla is overworked, overwrought and can be described by a third synonymous adjective, as well. That’s why I can’t show up tonight but still I can bless you with my usual nagging.
Concerning your event announcement, I don’t think it’s just about “POISONED children, LETHAL mines, TOXIC SWEATshops and the construction of the MOST SOPHISTICATED surveillance apparatus”, not even about poison, death and control, but about commanding other people’s lives and their labor, to begin with. If you scandalize the extremes – just like media, big and small, do – you strengthen the idea of good normality and create classes of oppression where a homeless guy here is at least not homeless in Africa, where “only” non-consensual sex at least wasn’t violent, and where the leaders here at least hand-out some peanuts to the loyal and ambitious.
You can scare everyone with something worse into not fighting, except the ones at the very bottom who lack the means and the bargain for a fight – the world already demonstrated to them that they are not needed.
Talking about extremes is a way of moving things further away from you, so that you don’t have to deal with them. If you WANT to deal with them, however, you look at the incentive for all this shit: 1) If you outcompete others in access to society’s wealth, you’re gonna get more of it, or just get any. 2) If you care next to only for the exchange value you get out of something and next to not for actual needs and benefits, you win. 3) If you have others compete for you, if you can control a large part of their lives by means of the sanctified institution of private property over the means of production, then you win, then you get some.
And this is so deeply ingrained that there are all kinds of psychological and social benefits for the win, you really get a kick out of controlling someone, getting something, outperfoming somebody, being better, not being one of the losers.
This is the remote administration of lives that’s going on everywhere. And ALL OF IT is the problem, and all of it has to be changed, not just the extremes better hidden away, if everyone’s lives should be better.
Also, the hardships of capitalism do not necessarily contrast the “gloss of the latest iJunk” because also in a world where things would be produced according to needs and wishes and desires, people will probably still want their iJunk glossy or their Mars Rovers smooth or their disco strobos shiny or whatever they want however they want it. Technology isn’t good or evil, its mode of production is what needs to be changed. If it’s not about my needs, it’s not about my needs, if it is, it is.
With all this said, have a nice self-defense training!
Or as Weatherman said: “Times are hard, go get a helmet!”
—Kulla
I wasn’t there, but Dmytri Kleiner read my salutes. The event announcement: DISMALWARE
February 4th, 2011 at 13:32
It’s a bit of an hen-or-egg debate. What’s worse, the working man society or the surveillance regime, depends on your definition of bad – whether it is in terms of overall damage caused, or in terms of obstacle to change. A fireman might think even worse than that the building is burning is that the exits are blocked, but a houseowner might see it differently depending on inside/outside distinctions. What’s certain is that if only one of these two things existed, once it was failing there was the possibility of underground insolvency administration, and either an economy in crisis or a government in paranoia could be guided into nonviolent transformation from somewhere they did not reach at. But once the two components come together, a society lacks the freedom to take this path. The option of underground insolvency administration is not available because anyone who could do it would be busy either working for the system or being hunted by it. When the negotiorum gestio is depreciated, historically this means that the anchor of Theodor Herzl’s state philosophy in ancient Roman law is loose. A system which is rather stabbing its own heart than accepting underground guidance must by any means be abolished.