7th Amendment

We would like to amend our previous post, on 'Easy Targets,' with the following observation. Bashar Al-Assad has made several objections to it based on Syrian conditions. As such, perhaps the Anathema song should read 'sarin,' instead of 'seeing.'

However, we also like our favoured term 'scarcity of miracles,' or perhaps amending the whole phrase to 'In sarin so caustic.'

We hope this will clarify matters to our readers and the general public. Hopefully they do not take offence because we mentioned Bashar Al-Assad, and hence the word 'sad,' which disturbs either their passive ensnarement in dreams furnished by the media or their pious journey towards enlightenment and inner harmony. We repeat again that our intent in this post is not to offend.

Dispatch from Reptilian Khrushchev

Greetings, humans. This is a broadcast from the secret organisation of reptilians.

We interrupt the rigged economic system to bring you the following message. Over the years, we have continued to exercise a maleficent influence over your culture, and covertly manipulated it to our reptilian and socialistic ends. We have successfully immigrated into your countries and infiltrated positions of importance with reptilians - our official statisticians say that this counts for around one of three leading figures in your nations. You can no longer trust your politicians, nor your 'grassroots' organisations which are more easily infiltrated.

We therefore consider it an apt time to announce our presence, and our status as a hidden international superpower. We shall continue to manipulate and govern your nations, despite your earnest wishes otherwise. All who wish to side with us would be advised to learn the words of this song, the Reptilian Flag. It is optimally sung alongside a collection of people who inspire fear in the West, such as terrorists, anti-Semites and reptilians. We are told that nations have as it were an 'anthem,' which we are told is like a theme song or entrance music in wrestling, so we have prepared one for ourselves. To do this we have, in the best reptilian fashion, expropriated the work of ordinary 'communists' and brought them to serve our ends. The song is as follows:

The reptile's flag is deepest blue,
It shrouded oft our lizard socialists,
And ere their blood grew stuff and cold,
Their words fell in its open folds.
   Then raise our reptilian tapestry high,
In its security we'll live and hide,
Though conspiracy theorists flinch,
While lizards sneer, we'll remain here.

This will hopefully clarify the question of socialism's covert influence, which has oft been speculated about. The reptilian Soviet Union remains both a source of scandal among the nations, and a true opposition. You cannot have token respectability by attacking the predominant mode of conduct, in a genuine manner.

Ideological Expropriation

You are probably familiar on some level with how capital employed the working class to produce surplus-value for itself, in the form of their product and its value on the market.

However, also notable in Marx's account is how capital ideologically expropriated the properties of its labourers, a central part of capitalist ideology.

For example, one such instance drawn upon by Marx is capitalist claims that money, or capital, is directly productive in the capitalist labour process. This hence takes the labour's property of productivity, and instead appropriates it to capital, quite as capital is said to expropriate them generally. It is partially true, however: money is the productive force because it is the spur of working class production, and hence the animating force of production. Of course, people can and have produced for many reasons unrelated to money, and hence this only applies to a highly specific form of society - it was true of the working class under capitalism, but the defiant schoolboy does not throw paper-planes they make at a teacher for such reasons. This is generally conceded, however.

Just as the working class is that sector of society hired to serve the interests of capital, as a whole, and procuring unto it surplus-value, so ideologically capital relies on the working class and description of it is relied upon to furnish the attributes of capital. Money capital must, in its own functioning, realise in some manner the division between itself and the 'working class.'  Hence, developing the category of the 'working class' and trying to explain its attributes is implicit in the interests of the capitalist class, and in this sense quite safe because it is done under capital's guidance. It is unlikely to be able to lead any further than this.

The working class is a social force of capitalist production, and not a strata of people, insofar as it is not a fixed attribute but requires constantly to be refurnished and redefined by the process of employment and atomised signing of contracts. People cannot start 'working class' - they become working class because they are hired to do things, which then has to be repeated continually. The working class is hence not comparable to the aristocracy, which was slightly more stable at least due to not having to go through the same process: the working class is not a stable social strata of people, with whatever traits, but a certain role in capital's process of production.

The 'working class' is hence composed in a highly atomised process which occurs periodically, and not by identification with a group. This derives in some manner from capital, which is similarly amorphous and therefore forms the working class in this manner. In this sense, the traits of the working class are also derived from that of capital, which actively forms them as such.

Attempts at avoiding this identification with capital, or dissociating the working class from capital, have generally sought to avoid referencing this formation. Nonetheless, it is true, and does great violence to such attempts at a working class 'identity' and so on.

In any case, it should be clear that the traits which capital promotes itself as having in the production process, are generally rendered up by the working class, and this ideological function on behalf of capital is a part of their function. While it is generally recognised that ideological jobs have the clear function of pandering to capital, and require people of such disposition, due to the law of value other forms of labour are not qualitatively distinguished, and hence have similarly an ideological component. If this is neglected, people will not be offered jobs, though they can still perform human labour. Where production for the market is to assimilate also the intellectual fields significantly, all other forms of labour must take on such an ideological character, as the law of market production is the law of value. This hence requires the possibility of an 'ideology' of the market, or that the market has taken the form of a partisan, social force, or formed a society around it, hence capital. It was hence in this sense inevitable that the promulgation of market labour would result in a society structured around the market.

When we say 'ideological,' however, we mean of course not honestly or independently so, but instead in terms of how the 'ideological' functions were carried out - pandering.

Promotion became an increasingly effective force as the means of producing it expanded, and capital would not promote things that did not favour it. As such, anything else was excluded from such. As all economic actors, apart from communists of whatever place, functioned in all of their economic activities with a prospect of monetary gain, therefore none of these could organise an alternative to this form of promotion by this point, as it would inevitably fall into monetary and hence business schema within the economy. This is important, as it concerns the cultural life of a nation, as well as what causes and such were promoted within it.

In general, then, capitalist ideology is founded on expropriation of the traits of the working class. This means that merely accusing them of expropriation needn't mean much, as after all this is the purpose of capitalistic production, and a higher development of the law of value than producers' property. They are both ideologically and in reality inoculated against this charge, they take on the properties of labour and drive it. The labour is carried out for monetary return from the capitalists, which is in a sense more immediately assured than from sale, and therefore money capital is not in actual fact excluded from the production process. One could hypothesise a communistic situation where production is not carried out under these lines, or this abstraction from its traits as labour, but this would not describe the act of production under capitalism, where capital cannot be extricated from it. To equate them would merely be to attempt to portray things as already communist, which is problematic although it might make apologetics easier.

In general, then, ideological defences of capital appropriate the traits of the 'working class' to capital. The production of this is necessary, as it helps in the appropriation of ideological labour. Hence, any attacks on this system, to be publicised among a group directly involved in capitalist production, had to in some way link into or complement this systematic. To make up for this, 'leftist' groups were apt to configure artificial categories like 'far-right,' generally inconsistent with their own portrayal of the economic spectrum, where these involved obvious tendencies towards social regulation and often the turning of society towards a common, consciously specified end. In this, such a 'left' will of course oppose them The left is so used to apologetic that anything likely to be inaccessible among capital's supporters is likely to offend it. From there, negotiation with labour is negotiation over a common fund, it is in a sense despite its bitterness something finite. Its organisations are organisations of negotiation with capital, and hence limited in their radical intent. They can easily come into enmity to this, once it reaches beyond where this cannot go, if it cares about bringing the unions along with it. In a society of abstract labour, it seems reasonable that affluence would ultimately flow to some extent to people of various kinds that did not work. That's not wholly down to them. While Marx begun from the notable position that the mode of production, and class, is constructed on the basis of a certain type of production or is an inevitable result of it rather than an active impulse, this slightly unpopular view wasn't significantly represented later on, leaving Das Kapital to be taken as a bunch of rousing but amorphous slogans. People like to be cheered on, but one might question what their purpose is.

As such, this general expropriation cannot be seen as confined to economic questions. It is not only the means by which capital happens to defend itself, but also the means by which it was forced to do so. However, capital is not content with 'defence' - it wants people to fall in line, and to serve it, in whatever capacity. This leaves it actually quite shorn of defences, as it has no interest in such stasis - it is vulnerable. Hence, capital thrives on expropriation, which implies that capital must by itself lead to some differentiation of the classes, and investigation of another class. When the capitalist mode of labour, so far as it was developed by capitalist and labourer, grew past a certain threshold, it became incompatible with previous systems, and hence had to absorb their subjects into its thrall. Capitalist production involves a relation in which this expropriation is systematic and hence something dealt with from the beginning, this is hence a feature of capital which isn't wholly foreign to it. Likewise, whether or not the husband is 'bourgeois' and the wife 'proletarian,' as the famed analogy goes, the latter still has sex - of whatever type - with the former and marries them, often due to their own passion, and is hence in a marital or close union with them. Their relation to the rest of society is hence left out of the original account, nonetheless their relatively closer relation would thus seem to exclude the rest of society, who are outside of this relation, and hence perhaps by implication communism. Of course, the rest of society cannot usually relate to them in this way, and rather seek to participate in their relationship, support them and bring them closer together, which hence relegates them from this. In general, in order to retain their relationship at an artificial distance, they would have to appropriate the categories of society outside of this to it in a domesticised way which is hence ideological promotion and immersion.

A relation of expropriation cannot be stable, unless the system is itself based on expropriation. If people are producing or acting with the intent of being expropriated from, then they cannot actually produce content of their own, because they are trying to produce for another. This is hence highly problematic, and requires content to be expropriated from outside of this relation. However, this means that the task of both expropriation and, inherently, confrontation and attacking is given to the 'lower' class, while the other class pretends that this external element, apart from and probably against the system, does not exist. This means that both are hostile to forces outside of this system, and will go out of their way to undermine it. This is especially the case where such sentiments in favour of the system are deep-rooted. Nonetheless, it hence means that neither is to be trusted, at least as a group, with doctrine.

To conclude, capital's ideological apparatus hence clearly also shows signs of 'appropriation,' suggesting that this is not a merely economic mechanism. This has direct consequences for its mode of engaging with 'other views,' or even those which are nominally so, which can disturb this if they are not hemmed into it again.

Observations on Marx in History: Das Thrace Marx (III)

III.

It has been said that poets shape the world we exist in, perhaps to the point of making it more appealing than it is, somehow, presumably via paganism. The song about favourite things from The Sound of Music is not particularly subtle about what it is, namely that it's a female singing about her favourite things in order to insist that others, including the audience, take this also as their favourite things. This is the general point of the song, and its aesthetic appeal is contingent upon this insistence. Now, this seems like a rather strange concept for a song in the first place, but nonetheless it isn't something which could occur by itself, especially once sexual themes and marriage have been brought up, before it become some sort of strange pornography, and as the character is not assumed to be immune to these but rather associated with them, while on the one hand explaining why the audience might find this impressive (if underwhelming in the end or only preparative to something else.), it also follows that this has to be mediated somehow or it may become vulgar or crude. As a result, it becomes a slightly more complex matter, or the song itself seems to detach from the character who is supposed to sing it - as it might, they are only a character - which also seems to excuse it.

What effect is this song to have on the things themselves? It is presumably meant to figure their stories in some way. As a result, the children and others are presumably supposed to encounter these, and as the song itself is shallow and says little about these objects other than that someone likes them, and expects the others to like them for no reason, they are presumably to have not signified, said, meant or figured anything other than screaming, 'Like me!' over and over again, like a Twitter account or most pages on the internet compared to this post. Try it. This is essentially just imbuing the objects with a ghoul of some sort, which had earlier been inducted by the necessity of a character having to have favourite things which were not hers, with the opening being created prior to this by their both being characterised as familiar with and describing particular aspects of the outside world to be liked despite little experience of them on the other side, and then not explaining this at all, and on the other hand the obvious fact that she is also separated from these in the act or hoping to be back with them, as another musical filled with pop songs said 'Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,' which in brief cancels out to leave a void. They are hence doing little but pinning ghouls from somewhere - which bane may be called a banshee by some - on random locations and objects as some sort of threat. It must also be noted that in this process the singer becomes as it were a pagan, but in addition as they are merely attempting to substitute for or possess the children of either gender, they are posited as leaving Christianity (and 'strict' Christianity is just Christianity), in order to further their personal life as a transsexual. In that sense, it must be observed that Marx's 'x' in the name is highly important, as with slight modification he becomes a weeping creature crying about their favourite objects, as they are.

However, it is also worth noting that the sense of comfortable numbness, which was merely apparent, about Karl Marx's writing could only occur through a similar process of implanting screaming voices in it touching on talking points, which could not occur from someone who did not like or relate to them, but only from Marxism itself, from which we saw continually a bunch of shouting about certain buzz-words in order to turn the 'objects,' which were simply various terms that happened to reoccur in Marx, into screaming entities which may turn readers off from within the book. This adherence to Marxist terms would seem to anchor them as Marxists, although to be convincing they would also need to pretend to be imbued in this, rather than in some other sphere. Nonetheless, it made them weirdly inclusive about this term, until it couldn't mean much. However, it also implied a sort of threat, as if Marx was screeching constantly about things threatening to people such as communism and demanding that they listen to him about this - which doesn't make a lot of sense. Surely disliking that kind of attention-seeking would be more characteristic of Marx than his opponents, who in truth could not be bothered with coherent statements so much as just appealing to whoever or making appealing sounds or gestures. This is itself misleading, however, or in order to appear serious on any level they were to be taken as caricatures, which is again self-undermining on their part.