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.
So, can one find a
similar "watershed" moment for the industrialisation process
itself, within the
American national historical context?
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>
Jeffersonian democracy (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 socially
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".