1949 object lessons from the enemy.
1) Primitively accumulate (mechanism of extraction and control)
[Brief value-producing interlude:
Culture industry reinvigoration via slotting in of the barbarian, he who does not speak as you, who does not speak at all. Circulate capital (read: bring not just a wheelbarrow but the sticky, voracious good intentions of the young ducks, for always remember Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!) back through the geographical site of original extraction.]
2) Weaponize the primitives (mechanism of self-destruction and leveling) on their home turf
3) Leave be to flatten itself in the echo chamber of a disavowed zone (mechanism of walking away while "sadly" looking back)
(And no, no one doubted that you would "take vanilla".)
I take it you've read the classic anti-imperialist polemic 'How To Read Donald Duck'?
ReplyDeleteIndeed, though oddly, it wasn't at the front of my mind while writing this. Somewhere skulking through the back and pulling levers.
ReplyDeleteI think the reference to zombies is fascinating.. the zombie that doesn't eat or sleep or get tired, that destroys its own ties to precapitalist life-forms - is it just a capitalist fantasy, or is it actually the real form, the abstract real, of labour power as a commodity. The commoditised logic of labour power bouncing endlessly and inexhaustibly downhill in zombie form.
ReplyDeleteIt means.... something!
One question, then, would be of labor power as instantiated by individuals (in which case it has political/social/physiological limits, hence the limits of absolute surplus value) or as a general caloric output, one that cuts across the entire laboring population, a real force less abstracted from than indifferent to the human limits of its sources.
ReplyDelete