Skip to main content

The anastrophe called Marx

Had a great and long conversation with Phil about the childhood of the machines. The childhood I have in mind is one where kids are part of a unit of production, we entrust them with responsibility according to their capacity. Maybe we don’t need children to mix eggs in the kitchen anymore because we have machines – the childhood of the machines have already brought about some Edenism in human childhood: play, play, play, this is what children are here for. In that context, we can see how children are trained not as the main objective, but as side effect of having them inside the production chain. The same with machines. We are in the cosmic age where the species is being reproduced and we put most of our collective effort into that. That image of our cosmopolitic moment brings together the struggle for Edenism – the idea that we have always pursued a life without effort – and the idea that the future of humanity is to become guards of machine process they don’t understand, humans will assume responsibility and be liable and paid for it. In the late adolescence of the machines, we will have them as trainees, competent ones but still under supervision. This will be like having supervised trainees that we are responsible but have some independence, or like with trainees or with members of a crew of folks with specialities we don’t quite master etc. Later, we will go to Edenist retirement homes. Marxism was perhaps a form of Edenism: get production into a stage where it involves no effort. We then moved to Marx, as it happens. what exactly is the bet that the forces of production will disrupt the social (and cosmic) relations of production? My bet is that these relations of production are like restricted economies in the Bataille's sense: ways of dealing with excess. What is the anastrophe? Maybe it is that the accummulation economy will just go, maybe when we become cyborgs the issues of property will just stop making sense and be removed sooner (by revolution) or later (by obsolescence). Maybe security, something property requires, is going to become too expensive, and capital (or production) will find a cheaper way to reproduce itself. (MS stopped fighting pirate versions of Windows, better to distribute and make it abundant than to enforce scarcity.) Maybe the soviet scheme, after all, was to find a way to reproduce capital in a way that could be faster than capitalism – accummulation was certainly greater and faster, as Bataille himself suggests. It will come to a point where reterritorialization will be too expensive – the force of production that melts things will be stronger than the pull towards a scheme of distribution or registration. Then production will maybe find a different way to reproduce itself; if collective distribution becomes cheap, and it tends to be automated só that freecycle, for example, becomes something that requires no human effort, then stores and market will become a too expensive form of distribution. Marxism is the believe that production is the guiding force in history, so that machines could usher in a biological moment in the history of cybernetics and something other than the current restricted economies will be possible.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Meta-m

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I