Reason is the only thing which lets us escape the pleasure principle and its manifold traps, along with the obverse the human-as-animal.
Hmm interesting, do you think so? The reality principle serves that function for Freud, and even then, not very well. It could easily be said that the elevation of "reason" a la the Enlightenment Project is what got us into the capitalist mess to begin with (via utilitarianism, pragmatism, and eventually free market-based 'democracy' as Empire)
But how does this differ from the bread and circuses of Ancient Rome? In what sense is that specific to capitalist consumerism?
Biopolitics might be the stated or exo-ideology of our 'society', I think the mechanisms keeping it in place are nothing of the sort and more to do with symbolic manipulation on a massive scale. I'd say we need to look at using the same kind of techniques to counter it. 'Reason' isn't the whole story as we're talking about operating on minds at a pre-rational level - it's a creative, poetic, imaginal endeavor.Perhaps- but what other tool would you posit using against such forces? I mean would you argue that it is reason which maintains these forces today or what? It seems rather than reason to be a kind of reduced humanism (or what Badiou terms animal-humanism) / biopolitics, which forecloses the possibility of escape from its own inexorable reality, under the guise of recoiling in horror from, essentially, terror, as realised in the twentieth century. Its more a kind of nightmarish consenual common sense!
The egalitarian delusion we live under
Perhaps- but what other tool would you posit using against such forces? I mean would you argue that it is reason which maintains these forces today or what? It seems rather than reason to be a kind of reduced humanism (or what Badiou terms animal-humanism) / biopolitics, which forecloses the possibility of escape from its own inexorable reality, under the guise of recoiling in horror from, essentially, terror, as realised in the twentieth century. Its more a kind of nightmarish consenual common sense!
under capitalism you have a system that is impervious to corruption, that can in fact absorb any and all political corruption easily and only serves to gain from the multiplication of new forms of corruption.
Why does this bring Vimothy so clearly to mind...
I don't know what tool you might posit, but I do think that reason is all too often the friend of the Id rather than a part of a system of checks and balances against it. Even the reality principle, ESP the reality principle, is vulnerable to corrosive forces like capitalism. In fact, I would say it's Reason qua the reality principle that makes capitalism chug along so mechanically unstoppably--were the reality principle not in place to ensure that people make self-preserving and stability-enhancing long term decisions/goals, the pleasure principle would basically have all of us spending all day everyday strung out on dope, or video games, or food, or what have you. This would eventually lead to the individual's hasty demise, or at very least an inability to function well enough to serve as an optimal consumer. It's the reality principle's dictates--balance business with pleasure! have just enough fun on the weekend to make your work week bearable!--that keeps us all plodding along.
Its free from being impacted by political corruption, true, but there are forms of corruption within capitalism which can undermine it, merely of a different nature. Though it is difficult to envisage a financial collapse strong enough to take the whole edifice with it, the recent credit crunch springs to mind as a form of corruption-within-capital: where greed and mendacity conspire together with a high level of abstraction and the sophistication of the credit system to begin to actually undermine the entire construct.
Well, see, I happen to think that had we not stumbled on a huge largely untapped, unmined, and pre-deforested landmass abundant with natural resources at just about the same time the merchant class was rising and a bunch of religious fundamentalists needed a home where they could judge everyone else without fear of social retribution, "capitalism" as we know it may not have accelerated so fast nor spread so far as it happened to.
I keep saying to capitalist fundamentalists who really credit the System with, you know, civil rights gains and women's rights, and with all scientific progress and whatnot--wait just a minute. When this land dries up (and it's beginning to), we'll see just how well-oiled the capitalist machine can remain. I really do think that capitalism "lucked out" in a huge way. That's as optimistic as I get.
But the pleasure principle in either its out-of-control mode or within the limits of what you're terming the reality principle undoubtedly serves consumer capital. Demand for dope, video games and food all results in expanding production, keeps the machine ticking over nicely. Obviously a terminal collapse into pure-pleasure-loop-circuitry would result in the collapse of this form of society. However, its the way the pleasure principle is enslaved to the other drives of Capital that make it so useful.
Biopolitics might be the stated or exo-ideology of our 'society', I think the mechanisms keeping it in place are nothing of the sort and more to do with symbolic manipulation on a massive scale. I'd say we need to look at using the same kind of techniques to counter it. 'Reason' isn't the whole story as we're talking about operating on minds at a pre-rational level - it's a creative, poetic, imaginal endeavor.
'Nightmarish consensual common sense' is an interesting perception - could it be that there are those reality constructs that the people have been persuaded to voluntarily accept and buy into.
I think 'consumer capital' is something of a red herring as a target. The machine doesn't run on 'money', what it really wants is your attention and hijacked imagination. That way you do all the work and manufacture the required reality. This 'capitalist' machine really functions as a bonus, a happy bi-product and ingenious mechanism, but it is not the fundamental trouble. I'm not sure what the real trouble is but I wonder why we always end up talking about 'emergent mechanistic processes'.
Of course it doesn't function on "money", it functions on "capital", which is not roughly equivalent to money. I do agree that "immaterial labor" (attention and hijacked imagination) are just as important to capitalism as money. But I don't know if I'd say capitalism is simply a symptom of something else--I think capitalism is a virus and we've become the symptom. Unfortunately.
As much as any idea is a virus though! But yes, a particularly virulent strain which seems impossible to shake off. But this is why the consumer dimension is as important as the capitalist one, in the way which it reconfigures the relation between the individual and the world, at the level of identity and interoperability...?
I don't think capitalism is the whole story. We may be implicated in the construction and operation of capital whenever we use money or reinforce the relationships it defines but some other people are far more pro-active in their collusion. I don't think they are simply at the mercy of a viral construct, there is something more deliberate and directed going on. It's nice to pat ourselves on the back for our sophistication in avoiding conspiracy theory by talking about emergence and self-perpetuating viral memes but I'm really not so sure it 'just happened', and I'm not sure that capitalism is the fundamental problem at all, that just sets people like Marx up as saviours or opposites in the dialectic and we've already had that storyline.But I don't know if I'd say capitalism is simply a symptom of something else--I think capitalism is a virus and we've become the symptom. Unfortunately.