The writer no more creates writing than the electrician creates electricity. Invisible currents move at their own speed, out there, among unknown elements – and the writer merely captures a bit of that invisible world in the poor conductors available to him, and measures it and deludes others – though not himself – that he made the conductor, the current, the speeds and fluctuations.
New, yes, to our science, but not to that invisible world itself. Nothing is new or old, there.
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads
Thursday, April 05, 2018
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
the economists and the plutocrats
Economists have really missed some chances in the last decade. For instance, where is the model that shows the way that the wealthy will, quite rationally, spend money on other than productive ventures to remain wealthy? And since the wealth we are talking about was accumulated under the paradox of its not really being useful per se to the wealthy - once you have five hundred million dollars, it is unlikely your lifestyle is going to get better with another 100 million dollars - the amounts involved can be seen as pure instruments of prestige.
This is an area that the economists never venture into, because, of course, it is at the intersection of economics and politics. In fact, it is the proper subject of the political economy, which until the twentieth century was where the study of economcs was located. As it ejected itself from this category, economics became technocratic - and pretended to become non-political. But of course that is nonsense.
What the plutocrats do is not something unusual - they operate as aristocrats have operated for the last six thousand years or so of human civilization. Non-productive expenditure involves such things as raising the barriers to entry to wealth - that is, slowing down social mobility by freezing or pushing back wages - and buying off threats to prestige wealth - that is, producing a political system in which the politicians operate as bribed factotums of the plutocrats - and creating a universe of plutocratic spinners - as per the endowment of, say, libertarian think tanks, which exist in gross disproportion to the number of libertarians that live in this country, where libertarianism has never been politically popular.
When an economy reaches the point where a certain large percentage of the wealth lying in private hands is about maintaining the system in which the wealthy maintain their positions and prestige, you have a massive problem. We have that massive problem at the moment, and it is getting worse.
This is an area that the economists never venture into, because, of course, it is at the intersection of economics and politics. In fact, it is the proper subject of the political economy, which until the twentieth century was where the study of economcs was located. As it ejected itself from this category, economics became technocratic - and pretended to become non-political. But of course that is nonsense.
What the plutocrats do is not something unusual - they operate as aristocrats have operated for the last six thousand years or so of human civilization. Non-productive expenditure involves such things as raising the barriers to entry to wealth - that is, slowing down social mobility by freezing or pushing back wages - and buying off threats to prestige wealth - that is, producing a political system in which the politicians operate as bribed factotums of the plutocrats - and creating a universe of plutocratic spinners - as per the endowment of, say, libertarian think tanks, which exist in gross disproportion to the number of libertarians that live in this country, where libertarianism has never been politically popular.
When an economy reaches the point where a certain large percentage of the wealth lying in private hands is about maintaining the system in which the wealthy maintain their positions and prestige, you have a massive problem. We have that massive problem at the moment, and it is getting worse.
Sunday, April 01, 2018
The unacknowledged father of YA - Dostoevsky
"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man
came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as
though in hesitation towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the
staircase."
Prophetic words, I thought. A whole future suddenly seemed possible to me. And I was fourteen.
My favorite young adult novel is Crime and Punishment. I read this before I read any of Dostoevsky’s other novels. I read it when I was in the ninth grade. It transfixed me. It did what I expect a novel to do, on the highest level: it became part of my inner equipment.
I read the translation by Constance Garnett. It was in the
Clarkston High School library, which, looking back, was surprisingly well
stocked. This was undoubtedly the result of the influx of suburbanites into
Dekalb County in the 1960s, when Atlanta was still swanning it as the “capital”
of the “New South”. My family had moved, like so many others, from New York
(via Pennsylvania), and at the time, the regional difference was something that
penetrated childhood games – accents were still markedly different, and of
course the Civil War was the myth that boys could enroll themselves in when
throwing nuts and burrs at each other in imaginary battle.
As a result of the swelling population and the can do spirit
of the New Deal/Great Society, the County put up a number of schools, and even
created a junior college. I have no idea, now, who was in charge of purchasing
for the library – luckily, the person was not bothered, back then, by
fundamentalist backbiters. Thus, our high school library had the wonderful
Random House Ulysses, with the great big U on the cover. And it had the Modern
Library collection. As I learned much latter on, Bennett Cerf bought the Modern
Library titles from Boni and Liveright back in the twenties. The titles were a
sort of wink – for back then, the modern classics were also risqué. Describing “lovemaking”
or discussing “free love” was definitely a selling point for the modern. It was
really one of the most significant business deals in American culture, though
it is much less known than, say, the story of the Bell Labs inventing and
giving away the rights to the transistor.
So much of my education came from the Modern Library! I
remember Dos Passos’s USA and its drawings, for instance: another great Young
Adult novel, one that gave me a sense that history was a larger thing than
dates and great names. But it was Crime
and Punishment that pulled me out of my dogmatic, tv lulled slumbers.
Although … really, TV cooperated with the Modern Library in my sentimental
education. At the same time that Dekalb County was pumping money into the
educational system, Public TV was coming on line – which, in the Atlanta area,
meant channel 8 and, I believe it was, 36. Public TV was full of amazing things
in the early seventies, little Dadaist American programs sandwiched among
foreign movies and British imports. Among the latter was Masterpiece theater,
which televised the Russians. My images of the characters in The Possessed are still yoked to the
faces of those probably now deceased players.
As Adam gets older, I will doubtless discover a world of YA
a bit different from Dostoevsky. I know little about the YA world, but from
what I have read, the themes are still Dostoevskian. He is the unacknowledged
father of adolescent angst, still.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
The philosopher as spy: the case of Alexandre Kojeve
In the Spring of 2019, the rightwing French journal, Commentaire, published a story about the philosopher, Alexandre Kojève, by Raymond Nar...
-
You can skip this boring part ... LI has not been able to keep up with Chabert in her multi-entry assault on Derrida. As in a proper duel, t...
-
The most dangerous man the world has ever known was not Attila the Hun or Mao Zedong. He was not Adolf Hitler. In fact, the most dangerous m...
-
In messing around in the vaults – the vaults under the surface of history and literature, as per the posts of last week - LI recently came...